stasiology
Jan. 6th, 2017 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordstasiology - n., the study of political parties and factions.
With a strong sub-theme of how political conflict results in static, self-perpetuating governing bodies. Not a common word, and political science has trouble defining the scope of stasiology, in part over debates over what constitutes a party or faction. As an indication of how underdeveloped the field is, people have been writing about parties for centuries but the term was only coined in 1951 -- in French by sociologist Maurice Duverger from Ancient Greek stásis, band/party/faction (with strong connotation of factions in conflict and so impeding the polis) + -ology, study of (well, in French it was -iologie).
---L.
With a strong sub-theme of how political conflict results in static, self-perpetuating governing bodies. Not a common word, and political science has trouble defining the scope of stasiology, in part over debates over what constitutes a party or faction. As an indication of how underdeveloped the field is, people have been writing about parties for centuries but the term was only coined in 1951 -- in French by sociologist Maurice Duverger from Ancient Greek stásis, band/party/faction (with strong connotation of factions in conflict and so impeding the polis) + -ology, study of (well, in French it was -iologie).
---L.
