This paper presents an analytical framework for the study of constitutional design from the point of view of the structure of interaction and mechanisms of institutional selection that affect the behavior and choices of the actors involved in a constitution-making process. This framework is used to explain the various limitations introduced to the powers of the President in the Argentine constitution of 1994. I argue that two levels of causation determined this reform. At the macro level, the limitation of presidential powers was the outcome of a distribution of political resources and a configuration of preferences among the actors that made possible the resolution of conflicts by means of compromise. At the micro level, the new set of institutions derived from the limited influence of the incumbent executive over constitutional design, the pluralism of the constituent assembly that approved the constitution, and the prevalence of bargaining as a mechanism of collective decision-making. Both levels of action facilitated a consensual constitution-making process from which emerged a powersharing structure that has the potential to lower the stakes of political competition for presidential office and create new rules of mutual trust between government and opposition.

Social inequality has long been subject to theoretical dispute with moral and political overtones. The most recent debate was over the argument of American sociologists Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore that unequal rewards were ‘functionally’ necessary to maintain a complex division of labour. Their theory has gained new credibility as a market model of occupational selection assuming competition among self-interested individuals. Its abstractness and limited scope need recognition, but it remains a valuable starting point for the consideration of inequality.

The controversy between Pasteur and Pouchet on spontaneous generation (1859–1864) has received great interest in the sociology of scientific knowledge. This paper shows that some statements were shifted by Pennetier's biased version (1907). The study of the correspondence between Pouchet and the members of the Academie des Sciences reveals that Pouchet was on intimate terms with many members of this institution, and also that the two commissions appointed in 1862 and 1864 did not collude with any Pastorian lobby. The discovery of Pouchet's forgery leads to a quite different estimate of this controversy. Pouchet's defeat can be explained by his repeated retreats in front of the commissions, his dogmatic faith in heterogeny, lobbying by the press, and an immoderate need for glory. Beyond the lack of replies to the rationale against heterogeny, such a transgression of the norms of scientific ethos seems to have been a source of irritation among the Academicians.

The notion ‘elementary’ was used from different perspectives as a modality of anthropological explanation by two authors: Durkheim in relation to religion, and Lévi-Strauss in relation to kinship. They developed a methodology for studying the most simple, the most essential, and the most general properties of social phenomena within a regional context. In this context, the movement towards the ‘complex’ is used only to analyse the additions, the evolutions, or the combinations of pure forms or structures. The less systematic approach taken by Mauss in his article on the gift highlights the complexity of the entire social fact.

Recent interptetive work suggests ways of historically situating French post-structuralism as a mingling of Nietzschean philosophy with elements of Durkheimian sociology. This article aims to demonstrate the presence of Nietzschean themes in the life-work of the Durkheimian Robert Hertz and to recognize him as a key figure in the history of this intellectual confluence. An examination of published and private sources reveals Hertz as a prototype of the Nietzschean/Durkheimian intellectuel pathitique of the inter-war period in France.

This article critically examines recent claims that Weber's political thought has close associations with classical republicanism. One salient indication of Weber's distance from this tradition is his theory of Ceasarism, and his view that modern polities are most robust when they assume a version of it consistent with civil liberties. By employing the resources of Begriffsgcschichte, I examine the extent of Weber's departure from the ‘ancient sense of politics’ and the originality of his own political theory.