Work Of Political Theory Research Articles

Identity, causality and social cohesion

ABSTRACTAccording to the Identity Thesis, sharing an identity tends to promote social cohesion. The article focuses on two aspects of social cohesion, namely trust and solidarity. It distinguishes between different versions of the Identity Thesis that differ regarding the causal efficacy attributed to specific values and the sharing of values, and with respect to the value sets that may be fed into the thesis (relying on work in political theory on nationalism, liberalism and multiculturalism). Having established the existence of different versions of the thesis, four different accounts of why shared identities could be expected to promote social cohesion are considered and assessed.

Pow(d)er to the People? Voter Manipulation, Legitimacy, and the Relevance of Moral Psychology for Democratic Theory

What should we do if climate change or global injustice require radical policy changes not supported by the majority of citizens? And what if science shows that the lacking support is largely due to shortcomings in citizens’ individual psychology such as cognitive biases that lead to temporal and geographical parochialism? Could then a plausible case for enhancing the morality of the electorate—even against their will –be made? But can a democratic government manipulate the will of the people without losing democratic legitimacy? This paper explores the problems that governmental manipulation of voters pose for democratic legitimacy and the tensions between non-manipulated input and morally acceptable output. These venerable issues of political theory resurface in light of recent suggestions to tackle today’s global mega-problems by Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu. They suggest that to avert the looming catastrophe, governments should alter psychological traits of the citizenry through biomedical means, from pharmaceuticals to genetics. However, we argue that a government cannot rule with democratic legitimacy if elected by a will of the people it manipulated before. Normatively, conferring power from the governed onto governors is a one-directional relation that is incompatible with manipulation. But while it is tempting to rebut suggestions to morally enhance the people as antithetical to essential ideas of democracy, swift rebuttals tend to overlook the deeper challenge: Majoritarian decision-making may lead to inacceptable outcomes. The dilemma between input and output runs through major works in political theory. Rather than wishfully ignoring the dangers of democracy, democratic theory has to provide answers.

Troubling appropriations: JS Mill, liberalism, and the virtues of uncertainty

Described as the ‘exemplary liberal’, John Stuart Mill is employed to support a dizzying array of different, even competing visions of liberalism. That he has been so widely appropriated is certainly a result of the plural perspectives and tensions embedded in Mill’s political writings. Yet, while Mill scholars have generally been attuned to these tensions, contemporary critics of liberalism have been less careful in their uses of his work. Mill is used as an archetype of liberalism, and is often depicted as a less complex thinker than is justified. He is now a popular target in debates concerning the dilemmas of liberal individualism, and the inadequacies of liberal approaches to culture, harm, and to progress in the context of empire. Such studies present Mill as a thinker driven by ideological certainty, whereas he is more appropriately regarded as someone moved by political uncertainty. Drawing on his Autobiography, I recover Mill’s appreciation for the uncertainties of political thought and action to provide a more complex, and capacious view of Mill’s work than is allowed in contemporary studies of liberalism. My examination thus troubles those contemporary appropriations, and suggests that scholarly focus on liberalism can unduly restrict interpretive work in political theory.

Poor Man’s Love Song

Poor Man’s Love Song Shann Ray (bio) Is there anything pureanymore? Not me,I know. But you well, yes, hell yes you arepure sweet vintage is what I hearsung in hardwood cathedrals from way back,the sound going on forever andso good to the ear, like medicine soothe my soul soft sweet pure swishpure honey money swish snap whap thwapsweet sweat rhythm deep fade swish three thunder on the mountain wherelightning strikes, so let it rainpure money swish coin cash love light that light that match so it rainsfire pure fire en fuego fuegofire on fire so every forest blazes pure true cotton cash moneycotton cash money honeyswish sweet cold cash money cotton honey, honey honey love, honey pure love pure honey love. [End Page 177] Shann Ray Shann Ray’s collection of short stories, American Masculine, received the American Book Award, the High Plains Book Award, and the Bakeless Prize. He is also the author of the debut novel American Copper; a work of political theory, Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity; and Balefire, a poetry collection. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Montana Quarterly, Narrative, Northwest Review, and Poetry. He spent part of his childhood on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeast Montana and has lived in Alaska, Canada, and Germany. A systems psychologist focusing on the psychology of men, he now lives with his wife and three daughters in Spokane, Washington, where he teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University. Copyright © 2015 University of Nebraska Press

Editors’ Note

Editors’ Note

Knowing and Loving: Public Engagement beyond Discourse

This article builds on STS scholarship on public engagement with science to refl ect on the role of the non-discursive, arguing that this has been under-studied in analyses of engagement. I make this point in three stages: I review literature that has analysed public engagement, suggesting that it can be understood as focusing on process, eff ects, framing or context, and has therefore largely ignored features such as site, materiality and aff ect; I draw on recent work in political theory to emphasise the importance of the emotional and creative within deliberation; and I present an example of what it might look like to be attentive to emotion in public participation by exploring the role of pleasure in engagement activities. As a whole this discussion is used to point to a lacuna in studies of public engagement, and to suggest some implications for both practice and empirical research.

Office politics: Reading the business management manual as political theory

Like the public political sphere, the world of the workplace contains literary works (popular, scientific and those somewhere in-between) offering analysis, advice and philosophy to those in positions of command. In this article, I read business management advice manuals as works of political theory, focusing on their treatment of the problem of legitimacy in the relationship between employer and employee. I highlight and analyze key strategies of legitimation, draw their connections to discussions of legitimacy in the history of political thought and examine changes in workplace legitimation in the context of macroeconomic transformation.

Fascist Pizza and the Lyceum Bakery: Remix, Mash-Up, and Student Generated Mixed Media in an Introductory Political Theory Course

This paper explores the pedagogical value of adding remix and mash-up to an introductory political theory course as a means of promoting greater student engagement with the material. The paper begins by reviewing the underlying rationale for this move, the viability of using remix and mash-up in a political theory course, and how they were integrated into the specific course I was teaching. The middle sections illustrate the viability of remix and mash-up as pedagogical resources. I provide case studies for each, drawing on classic works in political theory. The final section discusses examples of student work, student feedback on the projects, and faculty perceptions of the effort.

Federalist #10 in Management #101

Business students typically do not read James Madison’s Federalist #10, a seminal work in political theory on the causes of and remedies for factions. I make the case that they should and offer suggestions for teaching and assessment. Factions are a subset of stakeholders that have interests adverse to the organization. Madison cogently argues that the causes of factions are rooted in human nature; therefore, managers should embrace diversity and not try to eliminate factions by surrounding themselves with “yes men.” Rather, he urges managers to focus on organizational design to channel ambition in a positive way and constrain the more corrosive effects of factions. Madison emphasizes a critical lesson for negotiation by focusing on adverse interests rather than positions or characteristics. Beyond these management lessons, Federalist #10 exposes business students to the foundations of American politics and helps to inform the ongoing debate about the relationship between business and government. Finally, Federalist #10 takes business students out of their comfort zone, changing their reading workout and strengthening their ability to learn management lessons from the broader world around them.

From Upper Canal to Lower Manhattan: Memorialization and the Politics of Loss

The New Orleans Katrina Memorial is located at the upper end of Canal Street, an inexpensive and relatively short trolley car ride from the city's tourist hub in the French Quarter. Despite its ease of access, and close proximity to the more famous cemeteries to which tourists regularly make pilgrimage, the memorial is little visited and largely unknown, even to many of the city's own residents. In this it stands in stark contrast to the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan, which drew its millionth visitor less than four months after its opening on September 12, 2011. Recent work in political theory on memory, mourning, and memorialization—as well as Ancient Greek concerns about the same—point to the ways in which the manner of remembrance, grieving, and commemoration employed by a democratic polity help to shape political outcomes. In what follows, I trace the history and design of the New York City and New Orleans memorials to suggest the ways in which they embody and perpetuate national strategies of remembrance and forgetting, in which injustices perpetratedagainstthe polity are prioritized over injustices perpetratedwithinit. Drawing on John Bodnar's distinction between national and vernacular commemoration, I nevertheless conclude with a counter-intuitive suggestion: that while on anationallevel the public's relative ignorance of the Katrina Memorial is indeed indicative of a polity more concerned with injustices perpetrated against it than within it; on alocallevel the erection and subsequent forgetting of the Katrina Memorial is a manifestation of a mode ofvernacularmemory, mourning and commemoration with far more democratically-productive potential than its counterpart in New York City. In particular, I argue that it cultivates, and historicallyhascultivated, a more forward-looking, progressive, and polyphonic response to loss than the type of dominant national narratives embodied by the 9/11 Memorial. Whereas the latter continually replays the loss in ways that rob the polity of its capacity to move beyond its initial response, the former acknowledges and incorporates the loss while steeling the community for the challenges ahead.

The People, Rhetoric, and Affect: On the Political Force of Du Bois'sThe Souls of Black Folk

In recent decades, the concept of “the people” has received sustained theoretical attention. Unfortunately, political theorists have said very little about its explicit or implicit use in thinking about the expansion of the American polity along racial lines. The purpose of this article in taking up this issue is twofold: first, to provide a substantive account of the meaning of “the people”—what I call its descriptive and aspirational dimensions—and second, to use that description as a framework for understanding the rhetorical character of W.E.B. Du Bois's classic work,The Souls of Black Folk, and its relationship to what one might call the cognitive–affective dimension of judgment. In doing so, I argue that as a work of political theory,Soulsdraws a connection between rhetoric, on the one hand, and emotional states such as sympathy and shame, on the other, to enlarge America's political and ethical imagination regarding the status of African-Americans.

The Trial Transcript as Political Theory: Penn-Mead in Anglo-American Political Thought

One of the most exciting developments in the field of political theory in recent years has been the increasing attention to issues of form and genre. No longer content to analyze abstract principles of justice, political theorists have embraced an interdisciplinary approach that is increasingly sensitive to the ways in which political texts “work” not only in narrowly political but in broader cultural, social, and rhetorical ways. This paper draws on such an expanded view of political theory, exploring an important text in the legal tradition and its consequences for Anglo-American political theory and practice. The People’s Ancient and Just Liberties Asserted (1670), a purported transcript of the trial of young William Penn and his colleague William Mead for unlawful preaching, not only gave rise to important principles of jury nullification (despite repeated threats and punishments from the judge, the jury refused to convict the defendants); it also spawned a contentious public and polemical exchange about the principles of common law, popular liberties, and the rights of conscience. Although Penn denied authorship of the article, he did endorse its basic account of his trial and defended the work against those who denounced it. The Penn-Mead trial entered the mythos of the maturing Quaker movement and Penn’s own political career, which led to his insistence on the right of jury trial for his colony’s inhabitants.But such legacies do not always remain neatly within the mythic boxes that political actors attempt to construct for them. Ten years after the founding of Pennsylvania, a schism rocked the colony, and dissident Quakers were brought before civil courts on charges of sedition. One result of those trials (aside from the convictions) was a publication entitled New England’s Spirit of Persecution Transmitted to Pennsylvania, purporting to present a transcript of the trials. The work, written by George Keith, one of the defendants, was self-consciously modeled on the early transcript of the Penn-Mead trial, and thus sought to cast Keith in the role of Penn, and to associate the colonial authorities with English persecutors. This paper explores the ways in which these trial transcripts represent serious works of political theory: they present a vision of social order and an argument about the nature of liberty and authority, and engage in a spirited engagement with rival views of the good. Considering both the rhetorical and performative strategies on the one hand, and the substantive arguments on the other – and, perhaps most importantly, the interconnections between the two – gives political theorists new tools in the attempt to understand the many ways in which political ideas are shaped, articulated, and communicated.

Between Sky and Water

Represented as the face of Venice, the houses of the Grand Canal were used during the Renaissance to support the portrayal of the Venetian Republic's unique structure of governance. Paolo Paruta's dialogue, Della perfettione della vita politica, a work of political theory on the Venetian Republic, is one such text used here to examine how in a changing context of modernization, architecture has been presented as a representation of state. Paruta's use of architecture as a representation of state was conceptually different from those earlier writers such as Gasparo Contarini who presented the uniqueness of Venice's social qualities through its orderly governance and law. Fundamental to Paruta's incorporation of architecture to the conceptualization of Venice was Daniele Barbaro's interpretation of Vitruvius’ representation of the body-of-state, being reflected in the architectural makeup of the city. However, Vitruvius’ text, De architectura, described the monarch's body reflected in the architecture and urban strategies of the late Roman Republic. Paruta's use of the text and of Daniele Barbaro aimed to transfer these values to the Venetian Republic and its social formations. Subtly forging links between the radicalism of Doge Andrea Gritti's renovatio programmes and the power struggles of the young patricians, Paruta's aim for architecture was to support the preservation of Venetian values as distinct from those of Rome. Indications are that Paruta's message was understood. To examine the comprehensibility of Paruta's political propositions, his terms and arguments are analysed in the context of three different architectural composition types used in Venetian houses of the mid-sixteenth century.

Republicanism or Modern Natural Right?: The Question of the Origins of Modern Representative Democracy and the Political Thought of Giuseppe Duso

Giuseppe Duso's work in political theory during recent decades has focused on contradictions or aporiae implicit in very idea of representative democracy. This theme is not surprising coming from a theorist who began his career as a scholar of Fichte and Hegel in 1970s and went on to introduce work of Weber and Schmitt into post-Marxist debate in 1980s. But unlike Schmitt and other more recent critics of modern liberal democracy, Dusos project is an attempt to save democracy democracy,1 that is, beyond its current representative form, to give a participatory role in political life back to people. Dusos central critique of modern representative democracy is based on following claim: the theoretical system that is constitutive of power and of its legitimacy assigns modern concept of equality a function that

Nomadism, Dependency, Slavery and Nationhood: Comparative Politics in the Book of Exodus

This paper continues the analysis of the Hebrew Bible as a work of political theory. Previous papers have presented the Garden of Eden story as a prolegomenon outlining concepts of legitimate authority; the stories of the Dark Age and the Flood as a justification for the role of government and law in facilitating human flourishing; and the accounts of the Patriarchs as an exploration of patriarchy as a form of social organization. The present paper examines the first fifteen chapters of the book of Exodus. In Exodus, the author moves to the topic of political authority – the exercise of power over people not connected by close family ties. The author demonstrates that political authority is the only feasible way to govern populations that have grown to any substantial size. He compares and contrasts four types of political organization, each of which was well known in the ancient Near East: nomadism, dependency, slavery, and nationhood. The author demonstrates that nationhood is strictly superior to the alternatives as a means for structuring political power.

Introduction: Revisiting The Public and Its Problems

This special section of Contemporary Pragmatism is about John Dewey’s book The Public and Its Problems, published in 1927. Scholars consistently turn to this work when assessing Dewey’s conception of democracy and what might be imagined for democracy in our own time. This special section contains four articles by James Bohman, Eric MacGilvray, Eddie Glaude, and myself. Published in 1927 and reissued in 1946 with an added subtitle and introduction, The Public and Its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry is not John Dewey’s (1859-1952) only work on politics. Indeed, at least three other works of political theory would follow: Individualism: Old and New (1930), Liberalism and Social Action (1935), and Freedom and Culture (1939). Still, The Public and Its Problems is his richest and most systematic meditation on the future of democracy in an age of mass communication, governmental bureaucracy, technological complexity, and pluralism that implicitly draws on his previous writings and prefigures his later thinking. In this work, he argues for the importance of civic participation, elucidates the meaning and role of the state, the proper relationship between the public and experts in decision making, the extent to which democracy can be understood as a moral ideal or a set of institutional mechanisms, and the source of democracy’s legitimacy. In fact, it is this work, above all else, to which scholars consistently turn when assessing Dewey’s conception of democracy and what might be imagined for democracy in our own time. This is because these themes remain as important today as they did when Dewey first engaged them, and for this reason The Public and Its Problems is worth careful consideration. As many readers of this journal will undoubtedly know, Dewey came to prominence in the late nineteenth century as a philosopher, but it was his writings on education, ethics, religion, democracy, and contemporary issues in the twentieth century that garnered him both national and international fame as a public intellectual of the highest order. If America was viewed as the modern experiment in democracy, then Dewey was its greatest defender and most reflective critic. As historian Henry Commager observed in 1950, attesting to

Samuel Pufendorf: majority rule (logic, justification and limits) and forms of government

The article analyses one of the first and more important doctrines of majority rule and its relationship with forms of government, the one presented by Samuel Pufendorf in his De jure naturae et gentium , the most popular work of political theory in the 17th and 18th centuries. It also considers some of the objections raised in the contemporary debate concerning its limits.

Metaphysics or Theology? A Comment on Michael Gillespie's Theological Origins of Modernity

Michael Gillespie's Theological Origins of Modernity provides a historically grounded and philosophically ambitious, at times even provocative, account of the deep unity of the modern tradition. The book is more historical than most works of political theory, and exhibits a healthy freedom from received wisdom about who the important thinkers are and about what they might have to say. Yet it would be quite wrong to read this book as a simple history: it is also—perhaps even primarily—a philosophical diagnosis of the present. Gillespie's thesis, stated far too crudely, is that the familiar Enlightenment story of an age of reason preceded by an age of darkness, superstition, and religion is far too simplistic. We late moderns, too, have thoughts about first things and divinity; but we hide the enduring presence of those thoughts and questions from ourselves by the pride we take in having overcome the atavisms of theology. Gillespie argues that, so far from being wholly novel, those thoughts are in fact the descendants of the theology of late medieval nominalism. Where others speak of the secularization of Christianity, Gillespie prefers to speak of the transference of divine attributes from God to man or nature.

Political liberalism and the good life

Fred Dallmayr, author of numerous excellent works in political theory and political philosophy, here, in this book, In Search of the Good Life: A Pedagogy for Troubled Times, offers us a 'pedagogy', a teaching for troubled times. Dallmayr should have little difficulty getting us to agree that these are troubled times, although the diagnosis given in the book of the so-called 'times' bears some investigation. And what of the teachings ? First things first. What does the book mean by troubled times? Only after the diagnosis can we evaluate the teaching.

Questioning authority: political resistance and the ethic of natural science

The West is currently witnessing the slow destruction of the classical liberal tradition. The casualties are reason, the willingness to question political or religious authority, and the validity of natural science. Replacing these are a crippling intellectual relativism, political apathy, and a grave misunderstanding of natural science and its concomitant ethic. In this work, Diana M. Judd gets to the root of the matter by directly addressing the following questions: What is modern natural science? What effect did it have on how we think about politics? What are the dangers surrounding the marginalization of natural science and the liberal intellectual and political tradition?This is a work of political theory. It seeks to engage the political by addressing the question first posed by the ancient Greeks: How ought we to live? If we have indeed entered the age of endarkenment where religious dogma, intellectual apathy, and unquestioned authority increasingly hold sway, there is a need now, more than ever, to explore the meaning and significance of the origins of the modern political and scientific traditions Americans take for granted. It is from these traditions that Americans received the ideas of legitimate political resistance, reason, individual rights, religious freedom, and natural science. The importance of modern natural science and its relationship to these tenets of classical liberalism is the central concern of this book.Claims that science is dogmatic and ideological, and that the tenets of liberalism divide individuals, have become commonplace. It is Judd's intention to show how these claims err, by exploring what natural science is and how it evolved. This ethic centers on the radical idea that authority must be questioned. We ignore this to our peril. If individuals do not question what leaders say, we abdicate the rights and responsibility of self-rule and individual freedom.