Search

Begin New Search Topic Political Theory Author Wolfgang Streeck

1. Man weiß es nicht genau: Vom Nutzen de Sozialwissenschaften für die Politik

Author:
Wolfgang Streeck
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
Based on a talk presented at the University of Göttingen in a lecture series on the use of scientific advice for public policy, the paper discusses what the social sciences in particular can contribute to policy-making. Nomothetic theories, which scholars often believe to be the highest achievement of their disciplines and which contribute most to a scholar's reputation, seem to be least useful for policy. Explanations of past events are usually not of interest to policy-makers; predictions are hardly possible in the social world; and the technical application of social theories to influence social behavior or change social conditions (“social engineering”) is and remains by and large utopian. By comparison, descriptions of social reality by counting, measuring and observing social facts can be of considerable political use. Furthermore, while social science will never be able to replace the intuition of the experienced practitioner or relieve him of having to make responsible decisions under high uncertainty, it can help him to understand better the experiences of the past and the possibilities of the future and free himself at present from powerful myths as to what is the case, what is possible, and what is impossible. Finally, the social sciences, this time including their more theoretically oriented branches, may exercise a powerful long-term influence on policy since their debates, although they may sometimes appear merely academic, may shape the cultural self-description of society, and with it the basic ideas informing the actions of future generations of voters and decision-makers.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Political Theory, Sociology, and Culture

2. Complex, Historical, Self-reflexive: Expect the Unexpected!

Author:
Wolfgang Streeck and Sandra Mitchell
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
The object world of the social sciences is complex, historical and self-reflexive. It generates nonlinear effects, it is unique, and it is able to understand the theories developed about it and respond to them intentionally. Recognizing the emergent, historically contingent and self-organizing nature of the social world, and developing responsive policy vehicles for managing its complexity, requires a shift in our conception of science in general and of economics in particular.
Topic:
Economics, Political Economy, Science and Technology, and Political Theory

3. Von der gesteuerten Demokratie zum selbststeuernden Kapitalismus

Author:
Wolfgang Streeck
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
The paper is an expanded and revised version of a lecture given at the 2008 Annual Colloquium of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG). Its subject is the relationship between social theories and political-economic change. The paper's central claim is that theories of society can by nature be fully understood only if related to and interpreted in the horizon of action of a virtual user located in the social world that is being explained. This is illustrated with reference to the development of political macrosociology since the Second World War. Next, five tendencies in today's social sciences are briefly discussed, all of which seem to indicate growing uncertainty about the practical usefulness of basic research in social science, in light of the demise of the democratic nation-state: the transition from Steuerungstheorie to research on “governance”; the departure from participatory models of democracy; the rise of economics to academic and political hegemony; a functionalist, efficiency-theoretical turn in theories of social policy; and growing doubts about the usefulness of a scientistic model of theory. In the final section it is suggested that the social sciences might find new theoretical orientation and practical self-confidence by defending in public discourse its fundamental insights on the limits of a market-driven organization of social life.
Topic:
Democratization, International Political Economy, Political Economy, and Political Theory

4. Flexible Markets, Stable Societies?

Author:
Wolfgang Streeck
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
The dissolution of the standard employment relationship since the 1970s has been paralleled by a destabilization of family relations. The paper, which is a slightly revised version of a plenary lecture at the 2008 Meeting of the German Sociological Association, discusses possible connections between the rise of more flexible labor market and family structures, and explores how they might tie in with the declining birth rate. The co-evolution of labor markets and family relations can be explained by both the attractions and the constraints of free markets. The current shift toward a new social policy aimed at increasing fertility is presented as an example of how expanding market relations and the uncertainty to which they give rise in personal life cause demands for state intervention. The logic seems remarkably similar to that of the current banking crisis, where the liberation of financial markets from traditional constraints and the progressive commodification of money have ultimately issued in irresistible pressures on the state to step in and restore the social commons of stable expectations and mutual confidence. In both cases, and perhaps generally, capitalism seems to imply a need for a public power capable of creating substitutes for social relations invaded by market relations and as a consequence losing their capacity to perform some of their previous functions.
Topic:
Government, Markets, Political Economy, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Germany

5. Economic Sociology and Political Economy: A Programmatic Perspective

Author:
Jens Beckert and Wolfgang Streeck
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
The paper presents some of the ideas underlying the current research program of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG). It begins with a discussion of how the institute's programmatic orientation has evolved since it was founded in 1984. Programmatic change over the years involved (1) recognition of a secular decline in the capacity of the nation-state to organize and guarantee social order, and of the growing significance of self-regulating, “free” national and international markets for social life; (2) increased attention to issues of meaning and to “culture” and cultural symbolism, as well as to normative questions; (3) a gradual shift in emphasis from policy to politics; and (4) more explicit recognition of history and of the historicity of the questions posed and the observations analyzed in social science. The second part of the paper argues that Gesellschaftsforschung today is most appropriately conceived as the study of the economy and society of contemporary capitalism. It is suggested that the most promising approach is close cooperation between the scholarly traditions of political economy and economic sociology, with the former standing to benefit from a more explicit micro-foundation in a sociological theory of action and the latter from more systematic consideration of politics and the state. Third, the paper shows how the approach that has evolved at the MPIfG differs from mainstream economic sociology, from the so-called new institutional economics, and from behavioral economics. The paper concludes by enumerating four subject areas that are likely to be of particular importance for research at the MPIfG: (1) the nature of rational-economic action, (2) the constitution of markets, (3) the emergence and change of institutions, and (4) the relationship between capitalism and democracy.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, Political Economy, and Political Theory

6. Industrial Relations Today: Reining in Flexibility

Author:
Wolfgang Streeck
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
The paper was presented as a keynote lecture at the 10th anniversary of the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) in April 2008. It surveys the trajectory of scholarly work on labor after 1945, from its initial emphasis on rights of industrial and social citizenship to its present preoccupation with “flexibility” and “flexicurity”. It recalls the dissolution of the “Fordist” compromise in the 1970s and the subsequent gradual expansion of markets as the dominant mechanism for the allocation of life chances and the governance of society. Marketization encountered surprisingly little resistance, in real life as in the evolving conceptual apparatus of scholarly work. Liberalization proceeded and continues to proceed regardless of the social dislocations it causes, on a scale wholly unimaginable and indeed unacceptable under the postwar settlement. The paper ends with speculation on what if at all might be the forces today that could trigger a Polanyian counter-movement to the progress of capitalist social and economic relations. In particular it discusses whether demographic change, in terms of both a declining birth rate and increasing life expectancy, might bring about a new wave of market-containing social policy.
Topic:
International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, Markets, Political Economy, and Political Theory