Polity articles

Recent articles from Polity

Gay marriage as a religious right: reframing the legal debate over gay marriage in the United States *.
July 1, 2008... The definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman has origins in sectarian religious views of marriage. Nevertheless, proponents of gay marriage have not yet fully explored the religious discrimination inherent in public policies that embrace this sectarian definition of...

Spectacular resistance: the billionaires for Bush and the art of political culture jamming *.
July 1, 2008... Political theorists and pundits often attribute the malaise that they argue hangs over U.S. politics to the omnipresence of political spectacle, where participants are reduced to spectator-voters rather than engaged as active citizens in the political process. The result, many conclude, is...

Introduction *.(POLITY FORUM: Politics, History, and The State of the State)
July 1, 2008... Forty years ago, J.P. Nettl exhorted scholars to rescue the concept of the state from its "skeletal, ghostly existence" and to reintegrate it into the concerns and methods of social science. (1) Much effort has since been expended upon "bringing the state back in" to studies of politics and...

Appointing federal judges: law, politics, and democracy.
July 1, 2008... Michael Comiskey, Seeking Justices: The Judging of Supreme Court Nominees. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. Richard Davis, Electing Justice: Fixing the Supreme Court Nomination Process. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Lee Epstein and Jeffrey A. Segal,...

Valor and Valkyries: why the state needs Valhalla *.(POLITY FORUM: Politics, History, and The State of the State)
July 1, 2008... Whenever and wherever Vikings fought, they believed that the Valkyries would come. With sparks shooting from their spears and their corselets spattered with blood, the Valkyries would fly over the fighting and select the most valiant of those who died. The helmeted "Choosers of the Slain"...