Polity articles from September 1997

Polity archives from September 1997

"Narcissism of the minor differences": what is at issue and what is at stake in the civic humanism question.
September 22, 1997... Debate about the nature and vitality of a civic humanist tradition in America long featured an argument between adherents of Louis Hartz's thesis of the United States as the world's most liberal nation and J. G. A. Pocock's claim that the...

Building a workers' republic: Charles A. Beard's critique of liberalism in the 1930s.
September 22, 1997... Charles Beard's sympathizers have correctly dismissed conservative claims that he was a Marxist, but they have often substituted the equally misleading claim that he was a forebearer of mainstream liberalism in the post-New Deal United States. In...

Philosophy as the mirror of liberalism: the politics of Richard Rorty.
September 22, 1997... Too little attention has been paid, by Richard Rorty and his critics alike, to the tension between his moral and political commitments. His views of knowledge and the self have led him to insightful discussions of cruelty and humiliation, and...

Social Security and political investment.
September 22, 1997... Current explanations of the establishment and expansion of the Social Security system, which focus mainly on the popularity of the program and the commitment and political skills of the bureaucrats in charge of it, fail to explain many of the...

From intervention to disengagement: domestic structure, the state, and the British information technology industry, 1979-1990.
September 22, 1997... British policy toward the information technology industry in the 1980s illuminates the circumstances in which political leaders can alter the domestic political structure and effect significant policy change. Though preferring to reduce the role...

Politics and bipartisanship at the water's edge: a note on Bush and Clinton.
September 22, 1997... This research extends an earlier study of the bipartisan and political perspectives for evaluating congressional-executive relations on foreign policy to cover the Bush administration and the first Clinton term. As expected, the end of the Cold...

The 1996 elections and the logic of regime politics.(Polity Forum)(Panel Discussion)
September 22, 1997... Elections are complex, multi-tiered events expressing historical patterns that can be analyzed in many ways. However, some analytical frameworks capture a broader range of election phenomena than others, and I believe we can understand how many...

Continuities of Democratic ideology in the 1996 campaign.(Polity Forum)(Panel Discussion)
September 22, 1997... A regime perspective illuminates the current tactical position of the Democratic Party, but does not fully answer a question that has puzzled academics and commentators for quite some time: what does the Democratic Party stand for? Does it--some...

The era of big government lives.(Polity Forum)(Panel Discussion)
September 22, 1997... Although my own research focuses on regulation and bureaucracy rather than parties and elections, I was delighted with the invitation to participate in a forum analyzing the question of whether the 1996 general elections signaled the emergence of...