Polity articles from March 1997

Polity archives from March 1997

At odds with themselves: David Hume's skeptical citizens.
March 22, 1997... The management of civic strain, the experience of feeling torn between conflicting identities or moral commitments, has become a matter of lively debate. Most liberal theorists have adopted either of two approaches to the problem, urging either...

Policy professionalism and the voices of dissent: the case of environmentalism.
March 22, 1997... Policy professionalism, being largely committed to the orderly operation of established institutions, often appears starkly at odds with dissenting social movements oriented by the goals of transformative politics. Nonetheless, the two have...

Reed's rules and the partisan theory of legislative organization. (legislator Thomas Brakett Reed)
March 22, 1997... Recent studies of legislative organization have advanced competing distributive, informational, and partisan theories of legislative organization. Analyzed in light of a principal-agent framework, each offers a distinct account of the reasons for...

What's wrong with liberal perfectionism?
March 22, 1997... Having dropped the claim of complete neutrality among conceptions of the good life and political values, liberals face anew the question of identifying the defining features of their rhetorical tradition. Through an examination of the works of...

The dilemma of eudaemonic legitimacy in post-Mao China.
March 22, 1997... The post-Mao leadership of China turned to a strategy of eudaemonic legitimacy after the earlier strategies of ideology and revolutionary charisma were perceived to have faded during the Cultural Revolution. Yet this new strategy created...

Poverty in the writings of Albert Camus.
March 22, 1997... Albert Camus approached the understanding of poverty from the viewpoint of both an internal and an external witness. He had experienced poverty in his youth, as he describes in his autobiographical novel, Le premier homme, but acknowledged that...