Sociologists economists and democracy

Two of the most prominent intellectual movements in modern social science are the "economic" and "sociological" approaches to political theory. The economic approach assumes a simple, precise definition of goals and situations and, from their interactions, attempts to predict an outcome. The sociological approach considers society a quasiorganism and looks for mechanisms which maintain the system in spite of threats from the environment. Both of these approaches are evaluated in this work by Brian Barry, who has added a new preface and a revised bibliography to update his pathbreaking study of democratic politics.
"Books which concisely summarize bodies of scholarly work and which provide in addition useful criticism of that work are probably less frequent than is desirable in political science. Brian Barry's book, Sociologists, Economists and Democracy, accomplishes both these tasks in truly masterful fashion for limited features of contemporary political analysis stemming from the work of Anthony Downs on the one hand and that of Talcott Parsons on the other. The book is... a highly selective treatment of the ways in which three political problems are treated in the two traditions. The problems which provide the central organizing scheme are party competition, political participation, and conditions for the maintenance of democratic political systems. This book is must reading for all graduate students, good advanced undergraduates, and all political scientists who care about systematic argument and its relation to systematic evidence.