SOCIOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL-EVOLUTIONARY CONCEPTS OF WALTER BAGEHOT AND THEIR PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THOUGHT
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/3041-2005/2026-1.13Keywords:
W. Bagehot, political sociology, psychology, evolutionary theory of politics, society, custom, tradition, political leadership, Ukraine, warAbstract
The article offers a theoretical and historical analysis of the formation of political sociology and social psychology in the works of the nineteenth-century English thinker W. Bagehot. The study reconstructs his interdisciplinary conception of political society as a complex “super-organism” in which individuals, social groups and political institutions interact according to not only rational-legal principles but also evolutionarily shaped psychological and cultural patterns. It is shown that Bagehot was among the first to propose a holistic understanding of political order as the outcome of biological instincts, customary practices, moral beliefs and symbolic forms of authority. Special attention is paid to W. Bagehot’s evolutionary theory of political institutions, according to which the state and political power are formed and maintained not merely through formal legal mechanisms but primarily through traditions, collective representations, rituals and emotional dispositions that secure social cohesion and political legitimacy. In this context, his famous distinction between the “dignified” and the “efficient” parts of government is interpreted as an early sociological analysis of symbolic power and political legitimation. The article demonstrates that Bagehot’s ideas anticipated key concepts of political sociology and early social psychology, particularly in relation to leadership, political loyalty, imitation and collective behaviour. In the context of contemporary socio-political processes in Ukraine caused by the full-scale war, Bagehot’s theoretical legacy acquires renewed relevance for analysing the consolidation of the political nation, the integration of individuals into a collective political community, and the growing importance of traditions, normative practices and symbolic forms of solidarity under conditions of existential threat.
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