Peter Wagner

Bio: Peter Wagner is an academic researcher from University of Barcelona. The author has contributed to research in topics: Modernity & Politics. The author has an hindex of 24, co-authored 95 publications receiving 2332 citations. Previous affiliations of Peter Wagner include European University Institute & Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies.

After Justification Repertoires of Evaluation and the Sociology of Modernity

Abstract: This article presents the moral and political sociology developed by the research group around Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot from its gradual dissociation from the tradition of critical sociology during the 1980s to the present. Taking the major presentation of this approach, De la justification, as the point of departure, the key items of criticism to which this book was exposed are discussed, both in terms of their intellectual merit and in light of the ongoing debates in French social and political theory. The work of this group was often rather erroneously taken to have provided both a new theory of society and a new normative political philosophy. What it aimed at achieving in the first place, in contrast, was a questioning of the assumptions on which reasonings in social theory and political philosophy are based and how those reasonings relate to social actors' own engagement with the world. Not least in response to the criticism received, however, the approach has been further elaborated in re...

Social sciences and modern states : national experiences and theoretical crossroads

Abstract: Acknowledgements Notes on contributors Part I. National Experiences in Comparative Perspective: 1. The policy orientation: legacy and promise Peter Wagner, Carol Hirschon Weiss, Bjorn Wittrock and Hellmut Wollmann 2. Social science and the modern state: policy knowledge and political institutions in Western Europe and the United States Bjorn Wittrock, Peter Wagner and Hellmut Wollmann 3. Political events and the policy sciences Peter Deleon 4. From policy analysis to political management: An outside look at public-policy training in the United States Werner Jann 5. Networks of influence: the social sciences in the United Kingdom since the war Cyril S. Smith 6. National contexts for the development of social-policy research: British and American research on poverty and social welfare compared Martin Bulmer 7. Political culture and the policy orientation in Dutch social science Stuart S. Blume, Rob P. Hagendijk and AD A. M. Prins 8. Arenas of interaction: social science and public policy in Switzerland Raimund E. Germann 9. The influence of social sciences on political decisions in Poland Wladyslaw Markiewicz and Witold Morawski 10. The impact of social sciences on the process of development in Japan Joji Watanuki 11. Changing roles of new knowledge: research institutions and societal transformations in Brazil Simon Schwartzman Part II. Policy Sciences at the Crossroads: 12. Frame-reflective policy discourse Martin Rein and Donald Schon 13. Research programmes and action programmes, or can policy research learn from the philosophy of science? Giandomenico Majone 14. Policy research: data, ideas, or arguments? Carol Hirschon Weiss 15. Social knowledge and public policy: eight models of interaction Bjorn Wittrock Part III. Epilogue: 16. Summing up: social sciences and modern states Carol Hirschon Weiss and Bjorn Wittrock Index.

Modernity: Understanding the Present

Abstract: Preface Part I Re-theorizing modernity Chapter 1 Retrieving modernity's past, understanding modernity's present Chapter 2 Changing views of modernity: from convergence and stability to plurality and transformations Chapter 3 Successive modernities: crisis, criticism and the idea of progress Chapter 4 Disentangling the concept of modernity: time, action and problems to be solved Part II Analyzing contemporary modernity Chapter 5 The link between capitalism and democracy reconsidered Chapter 6 European and non-European trajectories of modernity compared Chapter 7 Violence and justice in global modernity: reflections on South Africa with world-sociological intent Chapter 8 Towards a world-sociology of modernity References

Modernity as Experience and Interpretation: A New Sociology of Modernity

Abstract: * Preface * Chapter 1 * Ways of understanding modernity * Part I * Interpretations of political modernity: liberty and its discontents * Overture * Multiple interpretations of political modernity * Chapter 2 * Modernity and the question of freedom * Chapter 3 * The political forms of modernity * Chapter 4 * Modernity as a project of emancipation and the possibility of politics * Part II * Interpretations of economic modernity: the endgame and after * Overture * Capitalism and modernity as social formations and as imaginary significations * Chapter 5 * The critique of capitalism and its impasse * Chapter 6 * Towards a comparative-historical sociology of capitalism * Chapter 7 * The exit from organized economic modernity * Part III * Interpretations of epistemic modernity: distance and involvement * Overture * The quest for knowledge beyond experience and interpretation * Chapter 8 * The critique of science and its prospects * Chapter 9 * Varieties of socio-political interpretations of modernity * Part IV * The European experience and interpretation of modernity * Overture * European integration as an interpretation of modernity * Chapter 10 * Logics of European history * Chapter 11 * Regionalizing European modernity * Part V * The analysis of modernity and the need for a new sociology * Overture * When the light of the cultural problems has moved on * Chapter 12 * The social theory and political philosophy of modernity * Chapter 13 * The conceptual history and historical sociology of modernity * References

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

Abstract: Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

Two Treatises of Government.

Abstract: All these premises having, as I think, been clearly made out, it is impossible that the rulers now on earth should make any benefit, or derive any the least shadow of authority from that, which is held to be the fountain of all power, Adam's private dominion and paternal jurisdiction; so that he that will not give just occasion to think that all government in the world is the product only of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of beasts, where the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition and rebellion, (things that the followers of that hypothesis so loudly cry out against) must of necessity find out another rise of government, another original of political power, and another way of designing and knowing the persons that have it, than what Sir Robert Filmer hath taught us.

The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences

Abstract: ▪ Abstract In recent years, the concept of boundaries has been at the center of influential research agendas in anthropology, history, political science, social psychology, and sociology. This article surveys some of these developments while describing the value added provided by the concept, particularly concerning the study of relational processes. It discusses literatures on (a) social and collective identity; (b) class, ethnic/racial, and gender/sex inequality; (c) professions, knowledge, and science; and (d) communities, national identities, and spatial boundaries. It points to similar processes at work across a range of institutions and social locations. It also suggests paths for further developments, focusing on the relationship between social and symbolic boundaries, cultural mechanisms for the production of boundaries, difference and hybridity, and cultural membership and group classifications.

The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders

Abstract: The history of international political orders is written in terms of continuity and change in domestic and international political relations. As a step toward understanding such continuity and change, we explore some ideas drawn from an institutional perspective. An institutional perspective is characterized in terms of two grand issues that divide students of international relations and other organized systems. The first issue concerns the basic logic of action by which human behavior is shaped. On the one side are those who see action as driven by a logic of anticipated consequences and prior preferences. On the other side are those who see action as driven by a logic of appropriateness and a sense of identity. The second issue concerns the efficiency of history. On the one side are those who see history as efficient in the sense that it follows a course leading to a unique equilibrium dictated by exogenously determined interests, identities, and resources. On the other side are those who see history as inefficient in the sense that it follows a meandering, path-dependent course distinguished by multiple equilibria and endogenous transformations of interests, identities, and resources. We argue that the tendency of students of international political order to emphasize efficient histories and consequential bases for action leads them to underestimate the significance of rule- and identity-based action and inefficient histories. We illustrate such an institutional perspective by considering some features of the coevolution of politics and institutions, particularly the ways in which engagement in political activities affects the definition and elaboration of political identities and the development of competence in politics and the capabilities of political institutions.

Deliberative policy analysis : understanding governance in the network society

Abstract: Editors' introduction Maarten A. Hajer and Hendrik Wagenaar Part I. Policy Conflict and Deliberation in the Network Society: 1. Collaborative policy making: governance through dialogue Judith Innes and David Booher 2. Place, identity and local politics: analysing initiatives in deliberative governance Patsy Healey, Claudio de Magelhaes, Ali Madanipour and John Pendlebury 3. A frame in the fields. Policy making and the reinvention of politics Maarten Hajer Part II. Rethinking Policy Practice: 4. Democracy through policy discourse Douglas Torgerson 5. Understanding policy practices: action, dialectic and deliberation in policy analysis Hendrik Wagenaar and Scott Noam Cook 6. Reframing practice David Laws and Martin Rein Part III. Foundations of a Deliberative Policy Analysis: 7. Beyond empiricism: policy analysis as deliberative practice Frank Fischer 8. Accessing local knowledge: policy analysis and communities of meaning Dvora Yanow 9. Theoretical strategies of post-structuralist policy analysis: towards an analytics of government Herbert Gottweiss.