We appreciate Dan Carpenter's thoughtful assessment of our book and are eager to respond to his reflections about the political theory of the republic of statutes. He is right that we did not discuss some highly entrenched statutory schemes that might well deserve small-c constitutional status as superstatutes. Although we do treat the Defense of Marriage Act as a superstatute in our chapter on the antihomosexual constitution and its disentrenchment, we might have included a chapter on the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act of 1938 (along with the many subsequent amendments that helped shape the drug enforcement regime we have today) if we had as many original things to say about the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) administrative constitutionalism as Carpenter did in his book. It would have been a big chapter, too.

Dan Carpenter's massive new study of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a definitive study of regulatory politics and administrative behavior destined to stand alongside other classic studies of administrative agencies, such as Herbert Kaufman's The Forest Ranger (1960) or Martha Derthick's Policy Making for Social Security (1979). Like Carpenter's earlier work, Reputation and Power is marked by deep erudition, thorough scholarship, painstaking attention to detail, and a wide-ranging attention to alternative disciplinary paradigms. And it is argued with great craft, subtlety, and creativity both in developing its historical narrative and in its cogent theoretical analysis.

How do republicanism and regulation coexist? How does the politics of administrative constitutionalism constrain and enable the action of regulators in their governance of economic, political, and scientific realms? How can an adaptive republic strike a set of appropriate, lawful, representative, and efficient balances among the contending interests in regulatory policy? These are what I take to be the central questions raised by John Ferejohn in his perceptive review of Reputation and Power. His answer, as applied to US pharmaceutical regulation, is not intended to be definitive but aims, rather, to pose a set of hypotheses and questions.

Few books can be called workmanlike as well as exciting, analytic as well as poignant. Hiring and Firing Public Officials achieves those rare pairings by methodically pursuing an academic coup. Justin Buchler aims to replace electoral theory's dominant “market paradigm”—whose pioneers include Joseph Schumpeter (Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942) and Anthony Downs (An Economic Model of Democracy, 1957)—with a more accurate “employment model,” and to defend that new model against all manner of attack. Buchler prosecutes his goals doggedly, repetitively, and quite effectively. The result is an intelligent, important new book that may not dazzle but will challenge settled convictions and change more than a few minds. The author's occasionally defensive tone is understandable given the nature of his ambition. His book advocates paradigmatic revolution and, to borrow from Mao Zedong, revolution is not a dinner party.

I am encouraged by Ben Berger's reaction to my book, and hopeful that other readers will be as open-minded. Of course, the drawback of Berger's Cassandra comparison is that if it is apt, that will not be the case. Similarly, the drawback of any attempt at a paradigm shift in Kuhn's terms is that nearly every attempt fails, and it is difficult for the author himself to distinguish a negative reaction motivated by philosophical conservatism from a negative reaction motivated by intrinsic weakness in the unconventional argument itself.

“Civic engagement” is the cornerstone of democracy, right? Everyone knows we need more civic engagement—everyone, that is, except Ben Berger, whose willingness to argue against convention, particularly when that convention is a key tenet of good governmentism, makes me reflexively sympathetic to his argument. Berger and I both attack foundational assumptions of conventional democratic thought, but we differ in our approaches. I base my arguments on economic theory and quantitative analysis, whereas he bases his arguments primarily on interpretations of canonical theorists, most importantly Hannah Arendt and Alexis de Tocqueville. Ultimately, I am convinced by Berger's argument that civic engagement is a messy concept that cannot be considered an “intrinsic good” for democracy, but like most formal theorists, I needed little convincing because the debate that he characterizes is remarkably similar to one that game theorists held some years ago, and resolved in the same direction. Ironically, then, he may face a more hostile audience from within his own subfield than outside of it.

Rational choice theorists and political theorists have much to gain in open exchange, as shown in Jon Elster's masterly analyses of Alexis de Tocqueville (1993, 2009) and Russell Hardin's engagement with David Hume (2009). Thus, I appreciate Justin Buchler's insights into my book, and since my points of agreement with him will be obvious, I will focus on the areas of contention.

A major debate in the literature on the political economy of development centers on the relationship between regime type and economic development. This debate has been heavily influenced by the East Asian development model, where authoritarianism has often gone hand in hand with high growth rates. In South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, development has been propelled by authoritarian or semidemocratic regimes. One key element of this argument is that the repression of labor under these authoritarian regimes has been especially helpful in states' pursuit of high growth rates because it has ensured political stability and checked societal demands.

To what extent does Mobilizing Restraint provide insights that are useful to the study of developing countries beyond South Asia? This question deserves serious attention, but in raising doubts about whether my study has broader applicability, Erik Kuhonta does not engage key arguments in the book as well as much of the empirical evidence that I present to support them.

In his book, Erik Kuhonta advances an institutional theory of equitable development. He argues that an institutionalized party helps to promote social and human development by privileging public over private interests and by promoting programmatic politics rather than clientelistic exchange. A party is fully institutionalized when it is autonomous, coherent, and organizationally complex, but is rooted in society in a way that enables it to address the needs of the poor (pp. 23–24). To test his argument, Kuhonta draws on evidence from two sets of paired comparisons. The primary comparison is of Malaysia and Thailand, and in a separate chapter, he extends the argument by comparing the Philippines and Vietnam.

Emmanuel Teitelbaum raises some very valuable points regarding my book. First, on the issue of regime type, I argued that the central variables that affect equitable development are the character of institutions, especially institutionalized political parties and cohesive state structures, and pragmatic ideology—not regime type. While one conclusion that emerges from the study is that illiberal regimes (Malaysia and Vietnam) have done better than liberal regimes (Thailand and the Philippines), I do not argue that illiberalism is a necessary variable for equitable development. The record across the developing world shows that many authoritarian regimes have very dismal economic outcomes. My argument hinges on the power, responsiveness, and capacity of institutions.