The Last Half-Century
Societal Change and Politics in America
For Janowitz, social control denotes a society's capacity to regulate itself within a moral framework that transcends simple self-interest. He poses urgent questions: Why has social control been so drastically weakened in our advanced industrial society? And what strategies can we use to strengthen it again?
The expanation rests in part on the changes in social structure which make it more and more complicated for citizens to calculate their political self-interest. At the same time, complex economic and defense problems also strain an already overburdened legislative system, making effective, responsive political rule increasingly difficult.
Janowitz concludes by assessing the response of the social sciences to the pressing problem of social control and asserts that new forms of citizen participation in the government must be found.
I. Frame of Reference
1. Sociological Objectives
2. The Idea of Social Control
3. The Logic of Systemic Analysis
II. Master Trends, 1920-1976
4. Political Participation: Emergence of Weak Regimes
5. Social Stratification: Occupation and Welfare
6. Military Participation and Total War
III. The System of Social Organization
7. Bureaucratic Institutions: The Hierarchical Dimension
8. Residential Community: The Geographical Dimension
9. Societal Socialization: Mass Persuasion
10. Societal Socialization: Legitimate Coercion
IV. Rationality, Institution Building, and Social Control
11. The Management of Interpersonal Relations
12. Experiments in Community Participation
13. Political Elites and Social Control
Analytic and Subject Index
The University of Chicago Press: Gordon J. Laing Award