The contributors to this collection offer seven case studies that treat different aspects of political and ritual legitimation in China and Europe over the past two millennia. With a primary focus on crisis and change, the contributors analyze how rulers and states work to produce a popular political consensus that accepts their rule.

This title was first published in 2000: Politics cannot be conceived of as just a subsystem of society, or as a network of particular interests. The concept of interests and their role within the normative political debate is given a new interpretation by this book, which examines how political interest, market mechanisms and rational choice theories exist in the light of democratic freedom and social justice. The book builds on different concepts of procedural justice, from Schumpeter, Buchanan and Habermas’s conceptions of democracy and the role of political compromise and coalition in the idea of consensus as a condition for political legitimation.

The new edition of this classic text provides a comprehensive introduction to the concept of legitimacy as applied to political systems. Now addressing the issue of legitimacy beyond the state, the book also includes a new introduction and two major additional chapters which update the argument in the light of developments and debates.

Informed by currents in sociology, cultural anthropology, and literary theory, Galileo, Courtier is neither a biography nor a conventional history of science. In the court of the Medicis and the Vatican, Galileo fashioned both his career and his science to the demands of patronage and its complex systems of wealth, power, and prestige. Biagioli argues that Galileo's courtly role was integral to his science—the questions he chose to examine, his methods, even his conclusions. Galileo, Courtier is a fascinating cultural and social history of science highlighting the workings of power, patronage, and credibility in the development of science.

This book adopts an inter-disciplinary approach to the study of the theology, symbolism and argument of Hebrews. Employing sociological models, the book examines Hebrews in the context of the early Christians' construction and maintenance of a social world. In that respect, the book elaborates the thesis that Hebrews was designed to serve a legitimating function in the realm of social interaction, that its theology, symbolism and argument were designed to construct and maintain the symbolic universe of the community of the readers. It is argued that we cannot properly understand the theology, symbolism and argument of Hebrews apart from its first-century context.

The Northern Wei was a dynasty which originated outside China and ruled northern China when the south of China was ruled by a series of dynasties which originated inside China. Both during the time that the Northern Wei dynasty was in power and over many centuries subsequently, the legitimacy of the Northern Wei dynasty has been questioned. This book outlines the history of the Northern Wei dynasty, including its origins and the history of its southern rivals; considers the practices adopted by both the Northern Wei dynasty and its rivals to establish legitimacy; and examines the debates which preoccupied Chinese scholars subsequently. The book casts light on traditional ideas about legitimate rule in China, ideas which have enduring relevance as tradition continues to be very significant in contemporary China.