elites
Sometimes spelled with an accent, the word has now been anglicized in its sociological usage. The term is often loosely used to refer to any superior or privileged group, but it more properly refers ...
governmentality
Introduced in the later work of Michel Foucault as a more refined way of understanding his earlier idea of power/knowledge. Government refers to a complex set of processes through which human ...
Kenneth Joseph Arrow
(1921– ).Leading theorist of social choice, winner of a Nobel Prize in 1972. In Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), Arrow studied the determination of rational choice at the collective ...
oligarchy
Any form of government in which there is ‘rule by a few’; for example, by members of a self-regulating elite having domination over a larger society. See also Michels; political sociology.
political psychology
Overlapping the field of social psychology, political psychology emphasizes the psychological dimension of political behavior and values. It includes a variety of methods and objects of analysis: the ...
political science
The study of the state, government, and politics. The idea that the study of politics should be ‘scientific’ has excited controversy for centuries. What is at stake is the nature of our political ...
psephology
The study of elections, voting patterns, and electoral behaviour, and the forecasting of election results. This became a specialist field of political sociology with the spread of regular opinion ...
social movement
A large number of people who act together in order to pursue some shared objective, such as environmentalism.
sociology
The scholarly study of society, an ancient pursuit dating at least to classical Greece, if not earlier, that was systematized with linkages to economics, politics, history, demography, and vital ...