The importance of the countryside (rief) for the social and economic development of Arab societies whose populations are still greatly peasant in composition and whose wealth is still based on agriculture seems incontestable. Less obvious, but equally important, is the political role of the peasantry and the rural areas in the process of transition from traditional to more modern types of social and political systems in the Middle East. There is plenty of evidence that political modernization cannot take place without a solution to the peasant problem — without their incorporation into the political system. Huntington holds that in modernizing countries where the bulk of the population is rural but where politics remains a predominately urban game, governments are likely to be ephemeral, unstable and ineffective. He argues that the establishment of stable and effective regimes requires bridging the urban-rural gap through some coalition of urban and rural forces which will bring the peasantry into the system. Furthermore, both Huntington and Barrington Moore argue that the particular type of leadership under which the peasants are brought into the political system greatly shapes the whole subsequent development of the system. The countryside, according to Huntington, plays a crucial swing role and this role varies from very conservative to very revolutionary. Three possibilities seem to be typical. One outcome is where peasants are brought into the system by upper-class leadership, sometimes through a formally liberal type electoral system, informally based on patronage and traditional symbolism, sometimes through a conservative authoritarian system.

The work of Eric Voegelin is primarily to be understood in relation to the problems created by the modern civilizational disorder. They are the problems that not only motivated his original search for order in man, society and history, but also determine the new directions in which his inquiry continues to move. This essay first traces the principal stages through which his thought acquired progressively more adequate instruments for a theoretical penetration of the nature of the modern disorder. Second, it examines the alternative vision of order that has correlatively emerged as the appropriate remedy in the course of this diagnostic analysis. Finally, it attempts a critical evaluation of the efficacy of Voegelin's critique as a response to the simultaneously spiritual, intellectual and political crisis of the age. In particular his reluctance to regard Christianity as the answer to the anxieties at the root of the modern disorder is explored at some length.

Quentin Skinner's method for studying the history of political thought has been widely and heatedly debated for decades. This article takes a new tack, offering a critique of Skinner's approach on the grounds he has himself established: consideration of his historical work as exemplifying the theory in practice. Three central assumptions of Skinner's method are briefly reviewed; each is then evaluated in the context of his writings on Hobbes. The analysis reveals problems and ambiguities in the specification and implementation of the method and in its underlying philosophy. The essay concludes by examining the broader practical and philosophical implications of adopting this approach to the study of political ideas: the method operationalizes a set of philosophical commitments that transforms ideological choices into questions of proper method.

Rational choice scholars argue that there is no such thing as legislative intent, and that courts should abandon futile efforts to find and enforce that intent. Faced with ambiguous statutes, these scholars suggest judges either actively interpret statutes to achieve the best public policy possible; or they advise the judges to accept a default assumption that congressional ambiguity will be read as implicit delegation of interpretive discretion to the executive branch. Both options pose problems for the American system of separated institutions. Though legislative intent may be impossible to discern, an effort to identify legislative purpose may be critical to assure the maintenance of a balance of institutional power. How that purpose is identified is a problem not only for the Court, but for the legislative institutions responsible for statutory drafting and approval.

Judicial architecture and iconography play important roles in the symbolic lives of courts. Political scientists have noted that symbols of justice, judicial objectivity, and neutrality convey to the public “legitimizing messages” about the judiciary. In the United States these legitimizing symbols frequently expressed themselves through the temple-like attributes of courthouses. Modern architects, however, have rejected this classic paradigm and replaced it with dignified, yet open, edifices. The Israeli Supreme Court building, dedicated in 1992, is an outstanding example of such innovative design. Its emblems of legitimacy include historical, religious, and judicial symbolism. Within a comparative framework, this article explores the unique architectural images of Israel's high court and argues that they may help it to survive the fractious Israeli political milieu into which the tribunal has inserted itself.

The symbolism of judicial structures can convey voluminous messages about classic themes in the study of law, history, and politics. Judicial images reflected in court architecture and art may reveal the importance of the rule of law, judicial independence, and judicial power in a political and legal culture. The physical manifestations of a court structure, and how they are transmitted to the public, may also influence media and other public perceptions of tribunals, judges, and their decisions. The architecture of the Israeli Supreme Court building, which opened to rave reviews in 1992, adds two other facets to this mix, namely, religion and historic location.

Foundation is a crucial concept in Hannah Arendt's work. She was especially interested in modern attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to found new bodies politic. Arendt maintained, however, that totalitarian movements were hostile to the project of foundation. Far from seeking to stabilize the world, totalitarianism set the world in motion and tried to keep it moving. But when we turn to National Socialist ideology itself we discover that foundation was vital to the Nazi project; Hitler understood himself as the founder of his people. Arendt's own interpretation of Nazism is mistaken, but I believe that her general theory of foundation can help us to make sense of the National Socialist experience. This article examines the project of foundation in Hitler's Weltanschauung and redeploys Arendt's concepts to explain his unsuccessful attempt to create a new body politic.

The theme of the second Nixon administration appears to be “Save the Presidency.” It is clear that Mr. Nixon views his best defense against critics to be the claim of a constitutional imperative to defend his office. And, he continually reminds us, it is an obligation to defend not only the Presidency, but the strong Presidency.

Mr. Nixon's attachment to the strong Presidency is more than a protective strategy. It grows out of American practice and recent theory. His language and themes are predictable within our political system. In American national politics, substantive issues and questions of institutional roles are continually entangled.

Liberal political thought has fractured into “classical” and “modern” camps. This division is rooted in differing reactions to the rise of capitalism and democracy, which are institutional outgrowths of liberal principles, unanticipated by its seminal thinkers. Both “classical” and “modern” liberalism are led astray by classifying liberal democracy as a kind of state. But democracies are not states; they are selforganizing systems. When the nature of this error is grasped, a more coherent liberal vision emerges, where the key tension in liberal society is between selforganizing systems and instrumental organizations. Possibilities in public policy take on new dimensions as well.

The world we know is largely the institutional outcome of liberalism's political triumph, first in the West and increasingly worldwide. Yet today liberal thought is deeply divided against itself and, in this division, often unable to comprehend a world in many ways its product. This division grows primarily from tensions between two liberal institutions: liberal, or representative, democracy and the market, and also from the near universal failure of liberals to grasp democratic government's unusual systemic character. Tensions between liberal democracy and the market are central issues, whereas the character of democratic government receives far less attention. Yet how the first issue is evaluated depends in part on understanding the last. Liberalism has strengthened the intellectual, legal, economic and political status of individuals within society, emphasizing equality of status for all people.

This article explores an attitude which I call perfect constitutionalism. Perfect constitutionalists believe that, properly interpreted, the Constitution requires that our society conform to the best principles of human governance. This belief that the Constitution is nearly flawless not only underlies the so-called fundamental values strand of constitutional thought but also those strands of constitutional argument based on conceptions of the democratic process or the original intentions of the framers. Unfortunately, empirical and theoretical problems result when constitutional theory is reduced to political philosophy. In order to overcome these problems we need to essay a different interpretive approach, one which I call imperfect constitutionalism. Imperfect constitutionalism emphasizes the value of constitutions, even ones that might be improved in many ways.

Hannah Arendt's last work, The Life of the Mind, was published in 1978 in two volumes entitled, Thinking and Willing. She planned to write a third volume, “Judging,” and in fact had just begun writing it the day she died. Instead of the final book, “Judging,” Willing, the second volume of The Life of the Mind, contains excerpts from her lectures on Kant's political philosophy and theory of judgment given at the New School for Social Research in 1970. From these excerpts we can get some idea of Arendt's theory of judgment, although we will never know her final thoughts on this subject since she intended to revise and expand the lectures for the “Judging” volume.

This essay seeks to demonstrate that the different generic parts of Cicero's corpus are but different sides of the mind of the same man, and, thus, that all parts of the corpus—including the forensic speeches, once they have been corroborated by other passages in his corpus—should be regarded as valuable evidence for understanding Ciceronian political thought. A comparison of Cicero's Peripatetic criticism of the Younger Cato's Stoicism in the Pro Murena to the view of Cato's politics expressed in his private correspondence of 61–60 BC and in De Finibus 4.61 reveals that this criticism is more than just a humorous digression to win the case. As an extended expression of Cicero's belief that the inflexible moral certainties of Cato's Stoicism could be detrimental to the managing of the consensus necessary to political life in a republic, the Pro Murena should also be recognized as an articulation of Cicero's philosophical approach to the practice of politics.

In poland, unlike the other satellites, Communist policy toward the Church in the past ten years has been largely cautious and at times even conciliatory. There were no wholesale persecutions, no spectacular trials like those of Mindszenty or Stepinac. That is not to say that the Communists were willing to tolerate the rival claims of the Church to shape the mind and soul of the population. They merely found it wiser to pursue their goal slowly. The progress toward that goal, involving among other things the signing of a bilateral agreement, provides some insights into the course and outcome of a seemingly mild Communist policy.

Communitarians are derided for their commitment to closed borders. According to their critics, if we balance the claims of cultural preservation (deployed primarily by wealthy countries) against the claims of economic betterment (deployed primarily by the very poor), the correct moral ordering will prioritize the claims of economic betterment, and thus support claims for open borders over closed borders. Yet, this standard way of framing the debate ignores the deep connection between cultural claims and freedom of movement. In the near-exclusive focus on the relationship between cultural preservation and the alleged importance of closed borders, free movement advocates have lost sight of how frequently culture bolsters claims in favor of freedom of movement. I argue that cultural claims should not be ignored in discussions of free movement. To do so fails to give a full account of the reasons we have to favor free movement, oftentimes across borders.

Through a new argumentative strategy, this article shows that the claims offered by some contemporary Confucian scholars in support of hierarchical social relations do not hold in contemporary societies. Exegetical disagreements that are arguably difficult to overcome are sidestepped and empirical claims in support of hierarchical Confucianism are assessed. Empirical evidence and recent developments in Western philosophy suggest that social hierarchies are detrimental to key factors for people's material well-being, ethical development, and the political order. Egalitarian social relations organized in a representative democratic system appear to be more suitable for the pursuit of the fundamental aims of a Confucian government which are accepted by the proponents of hierarchical Confucianism.

Scholars have emphasized Adam Smith's critique of the dangers of patriotism, but have not paid close attention to its potential value. This article recovers from Smith's work an attractive model of patriotism without nationalism. The potential value of patriotism lies in inspiring individuals to realize an ideal of impartial beneficence, which consists in overcoming selfishness and other subpolity partialities and in promoting the greater happiness of all fellow citizens. Smith defends virtuous patriotism against strong cosmopolitanism by arguing that a global division of labor, which directs individuals to benefit their compatriots, more effectively serves the interests of humanity than directly trying to promote global happiness. This article illuminates aspects of Smith's work that contrast with the “invisible hand” argument and favor the conscious pursuit of public interest in some contexts. It contributes to recent discussions of patriotism a distinctive way of understanding its relation to impartiality.

According to Isaiah Berlin's influential interpretation, J. G. Herder (1744–1803) deserves to be recognized as the first cultural pluralist in the West, and thus also as an important historical source of the pluralistic ideas espoused by increasing numbers of political theorists today. Herder's importance actually lies in the ambivalent stance he takes toward his own pluralistic insights. That is, convinced that it is impossible to adhere to a completely pluralistic view of the world, Herder sets out to combine pluralism and its theoretical opposite (“monism”) into a novel theory of historical progress according to which history reaches its culmination in the realization of a purified form of Christianity. Contemporary pluralists have much to learn—both historically and theoretically—from Herder's confrontation with his pluralism.

Ronald Dworkin's legal essays have provoked considerable commentary on the nature of rights, law, and judging. Curiously unexplored, however, is the central claim of his work: that it presents a coherent and liberal theory of law. This article examines that claim and finds that Dworkin is most successful in establishing two propositions: (1) in “hard cases” at law there are “right answers” and (2) “articulate consistency” is the appropriate method of discovering and expressing them. Neither of these propositions, however, has any essential relation to the individual rights that he admonishes us to take seriously. Moreover, the right which Dworkin takes most seriously, “equal concern and respect,” rests upon a foundation incompatible with his argument on behalf of “right answers.” Thus, Dworkin's theory of law is neither coherent nor liberal.

Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), a self-styled “Christian Democrat” who dominated two generations of Dutch political history, has received passing mention rather than scholarly examination outside the Netherlands. Ernst Troeltsch, speaking of Kuyper's theological work, called him a key figure in the development of modern Calvinistic thought. And Michael Fogarty mentions Kuyper's influence in building “one of the most successful, and in many ways the most instructive political, economic and social movements to be found anywhere in the Christian world.” But, apart from such brief notes, there is little. We propose in this article to sketch Kuyper's career and summarize the ideas with which he attacked Liberalism.