Talcott Parsons’ sociology of the nation-state (original) (raw)

Talcott Parsons' understanding of political phenomena was subjected to severe criticisms during his lifetime. His work was seen as carrying totalitarian ideological implications (Dahrendorf), overemphasising the importance of intra-unit processes (Poggi) and portraying a reductionist conception of the nation-state (Giddens). Against such interpretations, more recent scholarship has demonstrated that Parsons' personal politics were strongly against Fascism and in favour of New Deal policies. This paper rejects the early critique as fully misplaced and although it endorses the newer interpretations it departs from them on methodological grounds as it concentrates on Parsons' sociological analysis of specific political phenomena rather than on his personal political opinions. With a particular focus on his conceptualisation of the nation-state, the bulk of the article reconstructs what I would like to call Parsons' sociology of politics on the basis of four of the political events to which he devoted explicit attention: the rise and main features of Fascism in the 1940s, the emergence of right-wing McCarthyism in the 1950s, the cause for civil rights in the 1960s and finally Cold War politics also in that last decade. In reading these works together, the paper seeks to demonstrate that Parsons: (1) favoured a highly pluralistic conception of integration within the societal community on the basis of a universalistic comprehension of the rule of law; (2) consistently included into his sociological analysis of concrete political phenomena internal as well as external trends and events and; (3) began to develop a kind of cosmopolitan layout within which Cold War international could peacefully unfold. The conclusion is that the key of Parsons' sociology of politics is that he regarded the liberal and democratic nation-state as a modern and indeed desirable form of societal arrangement but by no means as the natural or necessary representation of modernity.