Claus Offe
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 274011 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Claus Offe |
| NOMBRES | Claus |
| APELLIDO | Offe |
| FIRMA | OFFE C |
| AFILIACIONES | Hertie School |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 130 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 970 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 126 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 4 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1972 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2023 |
| ÍNDICE H | 13 |
The Common Good “In Question”? Notes on Christian Blum
In response to Blum, this commentary highlights the core problem: the notion of a common good is indispensable on the one hand, yet nebulous, pluralistic, and ideologically biased on the other. We do not know the processes, in retrospect, that guarantee the common good as outcome. All we can posit is that the common good is the mitigation of “common bads” and that its beneficiaries are not just societies enshrined in the confines of the nation-st…
Übergänge
The Politics of Social Policy in East European Transitions
Das Dilemma der Gleichzeitigkeit. Demokratisierung und Marktwirtschaft in Osteuropa (1991)
On the Will of the People
The “will of the (national) people” is the ubiquitously invoked reference unit of populist politics. The essay tries to demystify the notion that such will can be conceived of as a unique and unified substance deriving from collective ethnic identity. Arguably, all political theory is concerned with arguing for ways by which citizens can make e pluribus unum—for example, by coming to agree on procedures and institutions by which conflicts of inte…
Interview
In this interview, Claus Offe and Helmut Anheier examine the state of Eastern Europe 30 years after the fall of communism, explore the relationship between capitalism and democracy, and discuss what the social sciences mean today. They talk about the stresses liberalism is currently experiencing, current political developments in the US and UK, and the current relevance the fields of sociology and economics
Democracy against the Welfare State ? Structural Foundations of Neoconservative Political Opportunities (1987)
Some Contradictions of the Modern Welfare State (1981)
Political Institutions and Social Power
Participatory Inequality in the Austerity State
Sozialstaat (2008)
New Social Movements
Der Wohlfahrtsstaat und seine Bürger
Liberale Demokratie und soziale Macht
Institutionen, Normen, Bürgertugenden
Democratic Institutions and Moral Resources (1991)
Political culture and Social Democratic administration
The political stability of democracy in developed, industrial-capitalist societies presupposes a certain form of political culture. Richard Lowenthal, one of the most influential social-democratic intellectuals of the older generation, has emphasized the importance of this connection. The statist administration of social problems, forms of action and values of the social base, becomes entangled in the problem that it can never be certain whether …
Theses on the theory of the state
Marxist economic theory has developed various, though controversial, theorems which could explain the failure of such equilibrating mechanisms. In contemporary Marxist theories of the state, there is a cleavage between two approaches. One approach suggests that there is a particular instrumental relationship between the ruling class on the one side and the state apparatus on the other side. Rather, what the state protects and sanctions is a set o…
Some contradictions of the modern welfare state
The welfare state has served as the major peace formula of advanced capitalist democracies for the period following the Second World War. The contradiction is that while capitalism cannot coexist with, neither can it exists without, the welfare state. A major aspect of the socialist critique of the welfare state is to demonstrate its political-ideological control function. A political force that could bring about such dramatic changes is nowhere …
Legitimacy versus efficiency
Since the famous typology of Max Weber, legitimacy is conceived as the essential and indispensable basis of political authority. According to Weber there are different historical modes of legitimating political authority, and one of these modes, the legal-rational one, tends to become the dominant one in the modem world. One can argue, on a descriptive level, that to maintain both legitimacy and efficiency is a major task of modern democratic reg…
Alternative strategies in consumer policy
If the &s;welfare&s; of consumers is taken as the normative and strategic reference point of consumer research and consumer policy, it can readily be shown that this welfare is influenced either positively or negatively by three types of actors. These actors include manufacturers or suppliers of goods and services consumed within the domestic household; the state, especially in its capacity as a judicial and legislative power; and individual cons…
The separation of form and content in liberal democracy
The ultimate separation of state power from the will and the moral and political aspirations of individuals in the way of a benevolent technocracy would presuppose that the effects of state power do not significantly affect the fife of the individual. Conflict is allowed to be carried out only to the extent it takes place in political forms which make sure that it will not be permanent and universal. Seen from the angle of conflicting interests t…
European socialism and the role of the state
A theoretical discussion about socialism encounters problems similar to those of talking scientifically about the future: by definition , this future does not constitute a &s;present reality&s; and is therefore but an imaginary object of reflection. The powerlessness of state power as a means of transformation appears to render any statist solution, whether a traditional social democratic or a communist. The constraints that the capitalist econom…
Reflections on the welfare state and the future of socialism An interview
Reflections on the welfare state and the future of socialism An interview * - 1
‘Crises of crisis management’
A sporadic crisis concept is at best suitable for the analysis of well-demarcated subsystems : for instance, a business enterprise goes bankrupt because it is confronted by its environment with data and events incompatible with its continued existence. Crises endanger the identity of a system. If the dominant organizational principle of the social processes of every capitalist society is that of exchange, a theory of the crises of capitalist soci…
Contradictions of the Welfare State
Governance
Advanced Capitalism and the Welfare State
II. Democracy Against the Welfare State
Within any modern state, citizens are structurally related to state authority in three basic ways. Citizens are collectively the sovereign creators of state authority, they are potentially threatened by state-organized repression and coercion, and they are dependent upon the services and provisions organized by the state. The notion of citizenship within liberal-democratic welfare states involves all three aspects: citizens are conceived of as (1…
Varieties of Transition
The European Model of “Social” Capitalism
Journal of Political PhilosophyVolume 11, Issue 4 p. 437-469 The European Model of “Social” Capitalism: Can It Survive European Integration? Claus Offe, Claus Offe Political Sociology, Humboldt University, BerlinSearch for more papers by this author Claus Offe, Claus Offe Political Sociology, Humboldt University, BerlinSearch for more papers by this author First published: 12 November 2003 https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1467-9760.2003.00185.xCitations…
Homogeneity” and Constitutional Democracy
In this article I explore some ancient issues of political theory in the light of some contemporary social and cultural issues. After developing a check list of the virtues and vulnerabilities of constitutional democracy (Section I), I go on to discuss some types and symptoms of difference, conflict, fragmentation and heterogeneity (Section II). I then proceed to a critical review of a particular set of strategies and institutional solutions—poli…
Political Authority and Class Structures – An Analysis of Late Capitalist Societies
(1972). Political Authority and Class Structures – An Analysis of Late Capitalist Societies. International Journal of Sociology: Vol. 2, Current Issues in German Sociological Theory (Part II), pp. 73-108
Referendum vs. Institutionalized Deliberation
This essay proceeds in three steps. First, it will briefly outline the often invoked “crisis” of representative democracy and its major symptoms. Second, it will discuss a popular yet, as I shall argue, worryingly misguided response to that crisis: namely, the switch to plebiscitarian methods of “direct” democracy, as advocated, for example, by rightist populist forces in many European Union member states. The United Kingdom's Brexit referendum o…
Postcommunist Democracy
Competitive party democracy and the Keynesian welfare state
Theses on the Theory of the State
Crisis and Innovation of Liberal Democracy
The paper explores the possible contributions of deliberative procedures of political will formation to solving the problems encountered by liberal democracies today. To begin with, four functions of liberal democracy are distinguished: securing international peace, guaranteeing legal as well as political peace domestically, and producing good active citizens. The following part of the argument distinguishes four structural features characteristi…
Modernity and the State
Some contradictions of the modern welfare state
This paper concedes that the argument of the right, that the welfare state both contributes to the economic crisis and undermines work incentives, has some validity. The right is unable, however, to demonstrate how the economy can do without the welfare state, and it cannot produce a political strategy to get rid of it. For its part the left, while criticising the welfare state for its ineffectiveness, for being repressive, and for serving a poli…
The Separation of Form and Content in Liberal Democratic Politics
To speak about the state, the individual, and the relationships existing between the two involves a difficulty of conceptual distinction. This difficulty lies in the fact that the two concepts appear to refer to phenomena that can be clearly delineated. However, if we look more closely at the relationship between the two, we discover that the matter is more complicated than indicated by a simple logical opposition
Vers le capitalisme par construction démocratique? La théorie de la démocratie et la triple transition en Europe de l'Est
Capitalism by democratic design? Democratic theory facing the triple transition in east central europe In contrast to comparable transformations that have occurred in other epochs and parts of the world, post-Communist transitions in contemporary East and Central Europe lack the temporal sequence of their three component steps : the building of a territorial and national state, the privatization of the economy, political democratization. The essa…
Political Liberalism, Group Rights, and the Politics of Fear and Trust
Disqualification, Retribution, Restitution
German reunification as a ‘natural experiment
The post‐1989 situation in the former GDR is a unique opportunity for comparative observation. Three questions are singled out. First, what are the cultural roots of associative action and how can they grow in an atomized society marked by cynicism and apathy inherited from the previous regime? Second, what expectations concerning security and distributive justice has the former regime left behind for the new authorities to deal with? Third, wwwh…
Civil society and social order
Social change is currently occurring in three directions: political democratisation, economic globalisation, and the spread of postmodern culture. The consequent problems cannot be treated by any of the three known methods of macrosocial regulation: the state, the market, the community. 'Civil society' has been assigned the role of synthetic and pluralistic rationalisation
Industry and Inequality
From Migration in Geographic Space to Migration in Biographic Time
The German Welfare State
This article presents an overview of the institutional architecture and the organizing principles of the German welfare state, which is widely and rightly considered to be the model case of North West European Continental welfare states. The author's ambition is to be both systematic and historical in his presentation, emphasizing the process in which different layers of the historically evolved structure serve certain functions, such as poor rel…
On the Tactical Use Value of National Sentiments
The integration of the GDR into a united Germany constitutes a strategy fostered by West German elites. The GDR regime had lost its legitimacy and its depoliticized population lacked the resources to oppose this fusion. An artificial German nationalism, necessary to develop support for the economic sacrifices needed to rescue the GDR economy and integrate it into the West German system has been promoted. However, mounting social and economic prob…
Political Authority and Class Structures – An Analysis of Late Capitalist Societies
(1972). Political Authority and Class Structures – An Analysis of Late Capitalist Societies. International Journal of Sociology: Vol. 2, Current Issues in German Sociological Theory (Part II), pp. 73-108
Advanced Capitalism and the Welfare State
Strukturprobleme des kapitalistischen Staates
Further Comments on Muller and Neususs
Recently, there has been a series of formal or informal, published or unpublished discussions and polemics concerning one of my articles. Even if I had been deluded into thinking I had uttered the last word on the power structure of late capitalist societies and the practical problems emerging during the socialist transformation, the responses I received should have taught me otherwise. But since such was not the case, the didactic effect of this…
Theses on the Theory of the State
Leistungsprinzip und industrielle Arbeit
Der Begriff der „Leistungsgesellschaft“ ist insofern ein Fremdkörper in der soziologischen Terminologie, als er über seinen deskriptiven Gehalt hinaus mit normativen Vorstellungen belastet ist; wegen dieser Ambivalenz hat er sich der wissenschaftlichen Verwendung — jedenfalls in Deutschland — bisher entzogen. Wie kaum ein anderer typisierender soziologischer Begriff vereinigt er beschreibende Elemente mit einer wertenden Selbstinterpretation eine…
Stress and Contradiction in Modern Capitalism
Industry and Inequality
Industry and Inequality
The Separation of Form and Content in Liberal Democratic Politics
To speak about the state, the individual, and the relationships existing between the two involves a difficulty of conceptual distinction. This difficulty lies in the fact that the two concepts appear to refer to phenomena that can be clearly delineated. However, if we look more closely at the relationship between the two, we discover that the matter is more complicated than indicated by a simple logical opposition
Toward a Rediscovery of Marxist Political Theory
Research Article| January 01 1980 Toward a Rediscovery of Marxist Political Theory Claus Offe Claus Offe Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Radical History Review (1980) 1979-80 (22): 117–123. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-1979-80-22-117 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Claus Offe; Toward a Rediscovery of Marxist Political Theory. Radical History Review 1 January 1980; 1979-80 (22…
Sozialwissenschaften zwischen Auftragsforschung und sozialer Bewegung
Im Jahre 1968 stand am Neubau der Mensa der Universität Frankfurt, mit roter Farbe an die Wand gemalt, ein merkwürdiger Satz. Dieser Satz lautete: "Nehmt Euch die Freiheit der Wissenschaft — erkennt was Ihr wollt"
"Ingobernabilidad." El renacimiento de las teorías conservadoras
Theses on the Theory of the State
Although important Marxist contributions to the long neglected problem of the state have recently begun to appear, these have often failed to keep pace with the increasing dislocation and crisis of the capitalist state itself. I While Miliband's study has taken into account changes in the nature of the ruling class, the absence of a theoretical approach to the social function and organization of the state limits his work to a redirection of the n…
Some contradictions of the modern welfare state
This paper concedes that the argument of the right, that the welfare state both contributes to the economic crisis and undermines work incentives, has some validity. The right is unable, however, to demonstrate how the economy can do without the welfare state, and it cannot produce a political strategy to get rid of it. For its part the left, while criticising the welfare state for its ineffectiveness, for being repressive, and for serving a poli…
The Capitalist State
Competitive party democracy and the Keynesian welfare state
Reaching for the Brake
1983). “Reaching for the brake”: The greens in Germany. New Political Science: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 45-52
An den Grenzen der Mehrheitsdemokratie
The Future of the Labor Market
In West Germany, there is a good deal of disagreement among leading political groups, economic decision makers and scientific experts concerning both the future of the labor market and the role of labor in society. This disagreement bears on all of the three relevant points: the prognosis of the likely future development, the policy most suited to this development, and the criteria and objectives that determine whether, in fact, a development cou…
What Is Happening to Western Welfare States
Corporatism as Macro-Structuring
A frayed theoretical discussion has been taking place in most Common Market countries since the mid-1970s, and it has been followed by large-scale empirical research. These studies demonstrate the unforeseen importance of socio-political formations which cannot be comprehended by frameworks based on constitutional law and its understanding of a sound political order. On the contrary, standard constitutional accounts often treat these formations a…
Toward a Theory of Late Capitalism
The contributions of economics, sociology, and political science to the analysis of social developments are nowadays guided by a political and theoretical framework within which not even the term “capitalism” is a significant component. The distinctive power of this concept must therefore be affirmed against established research practice, which bypasses the level of abstraction on which the concept of capitalism is located in one of two quite dif…
Challenging the boundaries of institutional politics
Political sociologists and political scientists who analyze Western European politics have made it a commonplace since the 1970s to emphasize the fusion of political and nonpolitical spheres of social life. They have seriously questioned the usefulness of the conventional dichotomy of “state” and “civil society.” Processes of fusion are evident not only on the level of global sociopolitical arrangements, but also among citizens as elementary poli…
Contradictions of the Welfare State.
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