"Political Sociology as a Connective Social Science: Between Old Topics and New Directions"

Our aim is to identify the characters of a real political sociology as a «connective social sci-ence» that studies political phenomena by creating fruitful connections with other perspectives. Modern politics may be defined as the set of activities designed to regulate human coexistence in a given social context through a prearranged establishment of a certain order. Such an order can only be guaranteed if a social group is able to acquire the power guaranteed by the exclusive use of force. From this point of view, modern politics, to be explained, must be observed in its complexity. Reasoning on the relationship be-tween social and political structures (and between sociology and political science) is not enough. Political analysts should also pay attention to other dimensions, aware that politics is not made only of social and political-institutional relations. It is also made of individuals, cultures, economic arrangements, territories. For this reason, political sociologists should also consider the typical explanatory variables of psychology, anthropology, economics and geography. The classic topics of political sociology are well known. It is a dis-cipline that, through different approaches, has historically focused on the forms and relations of power wi-thin the territorial dimension of the nation state. The trans-nationalization of social processes, the fre-quent financial and economic crises, the explosion of new war zones, the crisis of classical political actors have led to new studies on the relationship between society and politics in a global society, redefining the boundaries of political sociology. The issues are always the same, but the lens through which they are investigated is different.