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Changing Definitions of Politics and Power 41

                    it be achieved? What difference does the cultural politics of social move-
                    ments make to democracy? And what is their democratic legitimacy, given

                    that contesting and redefining issues that are supposed to alter global
                    policy agendas does not involve a global public and is never subjected to
                    popular vote?



                        Notes





                        1   This definition of power is also adopted by Marxisant political sociologists
                       (see Bottomore,  1993 : 1).

                        2   They then go on to do just that. Although they argue for seeing politics as a

                       class of actions rather than a set of institutions or organizations, in particular
                       as the establishing of the rules of social organization, their primary focus is
                       on government as a special set of this class, involving the setting of rules
                       intended to be absolute. In practice, therefore, their main focus is again on
                       the relation between state and society.


                        3   Although Weber ’ s term is usually translated as  “ iron cage, ”  Alan Scott has
                       convincingly argued that  “ steel - hard housing, ”  the casing which encloses
                       machines, is actually a more accurate translation and a better metaphor for
                       the constraints of modernity Weber wants to convey by it (Scott,  1997a ).
                        4   Pluralism is categorized as Weberian here more on the basis of its intellectual


                       orientation than its theoretical antecedents. It is better seen as founded by
                       American political scientists, notably Robert Dahl and his school, than by
                       Weber. Nevertheless, it may be taken as Weberian in relation to Marxism
                       insofar as it insists on the autonomy of the political process, and sees power
                       as dependent on the intentions and circumstances of social actors, rather than
                       on socio - economic structures.

                        5   There is a growing scholarship that might usefully be analyzed here in terms

                       of its neo - Durkheimian contribution to political sociology, if there were
                       enough space (e.g., Alexander, Giesen, and Mast,  2006 ; Boltanski and
                       Thevenot,  2006 ; Lamont and Thevenot,  2000 ; Smith,  2005 ).
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