The Origins of Talcott Parsons’ Conception of Polity as a Subsystem of Society

• In Event: 209 - Theory Section Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 12. Political Sociology

Abstract

In the early 1960s, Talcott Parsons worked on a general interpretive volume on American society, but never completed it. His working materials include two long chapters attempting to clarify his conception of a polity or political subsystem of society. The chapters build on earlier essays, notably “Voting and the Equilibrium of American Society”, but precede his famous paper, “On the Concept of Political Power”. They attempt to conceptualize an analytically defined subsystem of society analogous to the economy as conceived in Parsons and Smelser’s Economy and Society. The polity is treated as a complex of institutions serving the goal attainment function whereas the economy had been treated as serving the adaptive function. Collective action is treated as the distinctive characteristic of political processes, as market institutions are distinctive of economies; the polity is defined as the aggregate of collective institutions and processes much as definitions of the economy emphasize aggregate market transactions. Parsons adhered to the emphasis on the collective throughout his writings on political institutions. Yet, the approach is awkward: “the economy” can be conceived as the sum of market transactions, but transactions of families, universities, hospitals, and other entities have primarily non-economic purposes. Collective processes in kinship groups, universities, and many private associations have political aspects yet are primarily non-political in orientation. We discuss the positive and problematic theoretical commitments that the working papers created for Parsons’ subsequent theorizing on political institutions and conclude by proposing a more restrictive conception of the polity as a subsystem of society.

Authors

• Victor Meyer Lidz, Drexel University

• Helmut Staubmann, University of Innsbruck