'The Political' by Stefano Bartolini ─ 'the feel and gravitas of an instant classic'

Just published by ECPR Press and Rowman & Littlefield International is The Political

‘Politics’ is a noun that points to a field or sphere of human activity and interaction.

‘Political’ is an adjective that usually associates with other names to qualify and specify them.

Political behaviour, political institutions, political participation and political groups denote special kinds of behaviour, institutions, participation and groups whose specialty resides in their being 'political'. What does this specification refer to? This is the question that this book aims to answer.

The book unpacks the 'politics' understood as the production and distribution of 'behavioural compliance,’ as opposed to the view of politics as a distribution of values, an aggregation of preferences or a solution to social dilemmas.

Starting from a motivational definition of elementary political action, the endeavour proceeds to a differentiation of compliance instigations in different social fields of interaction, characterised by various levels of confinement of the actors and of monopolisation of command.

Praise for The Political

'…original, comprehensive, ingenious, and profound.' – Gary Marks, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

'When the horizontality of politics is celebrated everywhere, Bartolini re-emphasizes the centrality of its vertical dimension… A work of such precision is urgent and necessary.' – Daniel Innerarity, Director of Globernance: Institute for Democratic Governance

'…a powerful conceptual framework for analyzing the effectiveness and vulnerability of political rule in historical and contemporary empirical contexts.' – Fritz W. Scharpf, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

'…has the feel and gravitas of an instant classic.' – Joseph Weiler, European Union Jean Monnet Chaired Professor

'…will stimulate your creativity and conceptual attentiveness.' – Herbert P. Kitschelt, Duke University

'…a tour de force… It rethinks the political from the ground-up while challenging much of the received wisdom in political science with clarity and elegance.' – Vivien A. Schmidt, Boston University

In his own words

Stefano Bartolini 'The realm of the political engenders no teleological optimisms or invisible hands, and the vigour of wills breeds no harmonious combination or good outcome. Hands are visible in politics, and often armed. Unsurprisingly, discussion of the concept of ‘politics’ has always evidenced a striking diversity of perspectives and approaches, and a definite lack of a common vocabulary or of a dominant view.

The underlining concern of this book is to reemphasise the centrality of the vertical dimension of the political in an age in which a horizontal understanding prevails.

The terms 'politics’ and ‘political’ have exploded to cover all sorts of newly developing horizontal phenomena and almost every type of human interaction. From the local to the global, and from the single individual protester to top decision-makers, politics has been so much diluted that we may find any attempt to reflect on its specific nature daunting. In my view, this obfuscation of verticality is unhealthy from the knowledge point of view, and sometimes it presents itself as an ideological world of flattened and hyper-individualised entities.

The concern of this work is to see whether behind this phenomenological effervescence it is still possible to retrace the nucleus of the political in its archetypal form.'

About Stefano

Stefano Bartolini (1952) has taught at the University of Bologna (1976), Florence (1985), Trieste (1990), Geneva (1991), and the European University Institute (1994 and 2013). He directed the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the EUI (2006–2013).

He was awarded the Stein Rokkan UNESCO Prize in 1990 and the Gregory Luebbert APSA Prize in 2001.

Stefano's research interests focus on Western European political development, comparative methodology, institutional analysis, European integration and empirical political theory.

His most recent books in English include Restructuring Europe: Centre formation, system building and political structuring between the nation state and the EU (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005); The Role of Parties in Twenty-First Century Politics: Responsive and Responsible? (edited with L. Bardi and A.H. Trechsel, London, Routledge, 2015).