For courses in political sociology. Successfully bringing together accessible readings that cover the broad range of issues of importance to political sociologists. Readings address both classic issues in political sociology, as well as more recent developments such as globalization. The reader offers a coherent analysis of power that reflects the contributions of a variety of critical perspectives including Marxism, feminism, critical race theory, postmodernism and power structure theory.

Table of Contents:
I. CRITICAL THEORIES OF POWER. Karl Marx, The Fetishism of Commodities. Herbert Marcuse, The New Forms of Control. Antonio Gramsci, Hegemony. George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness. Anne Phillips, Public Spaces, Private Lives. Michel Foucault, The Body of the Condemned. II. STATE THEORY. Hal Draper, The State as Superstructure. G. William Domhoff, Defining the Class Dominance View. Fred Block, Political Choice and the Multiple “Logics” of Capital. Mimi Abramovitz, A Feminist Theory of the State. III. ELECTORAL POLITICS. Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Does Voting Matter? G. William Domhoff, How the Power Elite Dominate Government. Dan Clawson, Alan Neustadtl, and Mark Weller, Follow the Money. Lani Guinier, The Tyranny of the Majority. IV. THE WELFARE STATE. Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Relief, Labor, and Civil Disorder. Linda Gordon, Who Deserves Help? Who Must Provide? Kenneth J. Neubeck and Noel A. Cazenave, Welfare Reform as Race Population Control. Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. V. MEDIA AND IDEOLOGY. Robert Perrucci and Earl Wysong, The Pacification of Everyday Life. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent. Jerry Lembcke, Yellow Ribbons and Spat Upon Veterans: Making Soldiers the Means and Ends of War. VI. NATION STATES AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY. James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, “Globalization” or “Imperialism”? Robert O'Brien, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Art Scholte, and Marc Williams, The World Bank and Women's Movements. Manfred B. Steger, Five Central Claims of Globalism.  Bogdan Denitch, Ethnic Nationalism as It Really Exists. Tom Nairn, Demonizing Nationality. VII. WAR, GENOCIDE, AND REPRESSION.  Charles Tilly, War Making and State Making as Organized Crime. Gabriel Kolko, The Making of American Foreign Policy: Successes and Failures. Ward Churchill, The United States and the Genocide Convention: A Half-Century of Obfuscation and Obstruction. Mike Davis, The Ecology of Fear. VIII. REVOLUTION. Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff, Class Contradictions and the Collapse of the Soviet Union.. Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein, The Liberation of Class Struggle? Mark Neocleous, Fascism: Revolution Against the Revolution. John Foran, Magical Realism: How Might the Revolutions of the Future Have Better End(ing)s? IX. SOCIAL MOVEMENTS. Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, The Structuring of Protest. Suzanne Staggenborg, Can Feminist Organizations Be Effective? Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America. Robert D. Bullard, Environmentalism and Social Justice. Kim Moody, Toward an International Social-Movement Unionism. Naomi Klein, Bad Mood Rising: The New Anticorporate Activism.