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Time is of the Essence: Remarks on Michael Mann’s The Sources of Social Power
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I would like to begin this commentary on Michael Mann’s (b. 1942)
work by focusing upon his critical engagement with Theda Skocpol in
the second volume of The Sources of Social Power, his magnum opus
and one of the most ambitiously conceived sociological treatises of the last
few decades. The object of this engagement is post-revolutionary France.
In Mann’s view, while it is indisputable that French revolutionaries modernized
and bureaucratized state administration, this does not mean that the size
or scope of total administration increased at all. Also, the performance of the
revolutionary state was far from the image of efficiency it projected of itself.
For instance, its fiscal record was pathetic; it was unable to collect more than
10% of the taxes it demanded. For most of the nineteenth century, France had
not one administration but several ministries, in which personal discretion
prevailed over the abstractness and universality one associates with modern
bureaucracy. Mann writes: ‘So the French Revolution, like the American, promised more bureaucracy than it delivered. (…) Skocpol and Tilly emphasize
bureaucratization and state power; I emphasize their limits’’ (Mann, 1993,
p. 463).
Descrição
Palavras-chave
Mann, Michael, 1942- Sociólogos
Contexto Educativo
Citação
Silva, F. C. da (2013). Commentary “Time is of the Essence: Remarks on Michael Mann’s The Sources of Social Power”. Análise Social, 209, xlviii (4.º), pp. 959-964
Editora
Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa