Polity articles from October 2005

Polity archives from October 2005

Editor's note.(publishing management of the periodical)
October 1, 2005... When I assumed the editorship of Polity six years ago, I hoped to give the journal a new look and feel while continuing its tradition of publishing articles of general interest to students of politics, broadly understood, and to secure the...

Fairness, political obligation, and benefits across borders *.
October 1, 2005... According to the fairness theory of political obligation, a legitimate state should be regarded as a cooperative scheme for mutual benefit. Provided certain conditions are met, individuals who have received benefits from the cooperative efforts...

Modern theorist of tyranny? Lessons from Rousseau's system of checks and balances *.(Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
October 1, 2005... Competition is fierce for the title of "The Greatest Muse of the Tyrants" Plato, Hobbes, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche have all had their moments of infamy Perhaps no one, however, has so consistently been despised for the supposed consequences of...

The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan: environmental or economic sustainability?
October 1, 2005... Donald Worster describes in his history of the American West how large-scale water manipulation served as the key in the integration of the region into the national, and, subsequently, the international economy. (1) Irrigation systems, dams,...

Political culture and African Americans' forgiveness of elected officials.
October 1, 2005... Introduction Since the 1940s there have been a number of prominent elected officials who have been able to redeem their standing in the black community after involvement in scandals. By the 1990s, it appeared that one of the cultural...

Polity forum: introduction to roundtable on periodization and American politics.
October 1, 2005... The discipline of history like its close political-science cousin American political development (APD), is at bottom concerned with permanence and change. What features of the U.S., or any other, polity endure across time, and what aspects...

Rethinking periodization? APD and the macro-history of the United States.
October 1, 2005... Dividing American history into discrete periods dates to the first European colonists in North America, several of whom variously declared their region or colony to represent a "new beginning" a "new land of Canaan," a New England, and so...

No tool is perfect: periodization in the study of American political development.
October 1, 2005... Periodization can be defined, simply, as the division of historical time into discrete units. Although drawing historical lines may sometimes be done for descriptive convenience, I take our concern to be with how we use periodization schemes to...

Suggested guidelines for periodization.
October 1, 2005... For those who would analyze American political history by breaking it into periods, here are five suggested guidelines: (1) For the most part, don't do it. The presumption should be against trying to do it. That is for at least three...

In defense of realignment and regimes: why we need periodization.(political parties' electoral realignment)
October 1, 2005... Being human, our scholarship is affected by our lived experience. Anyone who has lived half a century or more is aware of having moved through distinct periods of political consciousness, action, and possibility. I grew up in the South in a...

Orders and eras in American politics.
October 1, 2005... In the abstract, periodization is a major element of what was once known as "empirical theory", the attempt to assemble what we believe that we know about various aspects of politics, and then to "connect the dots" so that larger...

Habermas and his Others *.(Ethics and Politics in Contemporary Theory: Between Critical Theory and Post-Marxism)(Habermas and Aesthetics: The Limits of Communicative Reason)(Democracy, Power, and Legitimacy: The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Mark Devenney Ethics and Politics in Contemporary Theory: Between Critical Theory and Post-Marxism, London: Routledge, 2004. Pieter Duvenage. Habermas and Aesthetics: The Limits of Communicative Reason, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003. ...