Harold D. Lasswell on Political Sociology

9780226469201

0226469204

Harold D. Lasswell's pioneering work in the field of political sociology is distinguished by his insistence on studying major contemporary problems, his willingness to try new methods of inquiry, and--above all--his conviction that, to understand events on the political stage, one must also analyze the social and historical context. From the huge corpus of Lasswell's work, Dwaine Marvick has chosen representative selections that demonstrate the wide range of his interests, the intellectual framework of this thought, the characteristics of his style, and the diversity of his methods. The volume is organized around the five fields of central interest to Lasswell: elite analysis in an contextual perspective, developmental constructs, political communications research, the use of psychoanalysis to explain political behavior, and the role of intellectuals in policy-making processes.