Телеграм канал «Политическая теория и философия (Political theory and philosophy)»

Claus Offe and the Critical Theory of the Capitalist State

Back in 1972, German political sociologist Claus Offe published a book on the Structural Problems of Late Capitalism which, for almost two decades, inspired and stimulated an international and transdisciplinary debate on the role of the state in contemporary capitalism. An academic debate which, paradoxically, began to wane as the issues about which Offe had been writing became even more prominent: the "Contradictions of the Welfare State" (the title of a collection of Offe’s main contributions to the debate published in English in 1984) and democratic capitalism’s reality of the permanent "crises of crisis management". Since 2008, it has again become a widely shared diagnosis that advanced capitalism is in crisis. However, there is either scholarly disagreement or (more often so) mere perplexity when it comes to understanding this crisis and to explaining the prevalent patterns in dealing with it.In this volume, Jens Borchert and Stephan Lessenichcritically combine a reconstruction Claus Offe’s approach to state theory with an analysis of the current constellation of democratic capitalism based on that same theory. In doing so, they expertly argue that his relational approach to state theory is much better equipped analytically to grasp the contradictory dynamics of the financial crisis and its political regulation than competing contributions. This is why systematically revisiting the theory of "late capitalism" is not only of a historical concern, but constitutes an essential contribution to a political sociology of our time.

Jon Elster - Solomonic Judgements: Studies in the Limitation of Rationality

This volume of essays is very much a sequel to the two earlier collections by Jon Elster, Ulysses and the Sirens and Sour Grapes. His topic is rationality--its scope, its limitations, and its failures. Elster considers rational responses to the insufficiency of reason itself and to the "indeterminacies" in deploying rational choice theory, and discusses the irrationality of not seeing when, where, and what these are. A key essay that gives the collection its title examines disputes in cases of child custody that are paradigmatically indeterminate. Leaving aside cases where one parent is patently unfit and assuming that protracted dispute is against the immediate interests of the child, Elster argues that three options present themselves: a strong presumption in favor of the mother, a strong presumption in favor of the primary caretaker, and tossing a coin. Though the first two options may be preferable in the short term, Elster argues that there is a case for randomization in the long term.

Rational Choice Theory: Resisting Colonisation

Rational Choice Theory is flourishing in sociology and is increasingly influential in other disciplines. Contributors to this volume are convinced that it provides an inadequate conceptualization of all aspects of decision making: of the individuals who make the decisions, of the process by which decisions get made and of the context within which decisions get made. The ciritique focuses on the four assumptions which are the bedrock of rational choice: rationality: the theory's definition of rationality is incomplete, and cannot satisfactorily incorporate norms and emotions individualism: rational choice is based upon atomistic, individual decision makers and cannot account for decisions made by ;couples', 'groups' or other forms of collective action process: the assumption of fixed, well-ordered preferences and 'perfect information' makes the theory inadequate for situations of change and uncertainty aggregation: as methodological individualists, rational choice theorists can only view structure and culture as aggregates and cannot incorporate structural or cultural influences as emergent properties which have an effect upon decision making.