Discusses the justification for a minimal welfare state independent of political rhetoric from the right or the left.

The dramatic rise in inequality in the United States over the past generation has occasioned considerable attention from economists, but strikingly little from students of American politics. This has started to change: in recent years, a small but growing body of political science research on rising inequality has challenged standard economic accounts that emphasize apolitical processes of economic change. For all the sophistication of this new scholarship, however, it too fails to provide a compelling account of the political sources and (...) effects of rising inequality. In particular, these studies share with dominant economic accounts three weaknesses: they downplay the distinctive feature of American inequality —namely, the extreme concentration of income gains at the top of the economic ladder; they miss the profound role of government policy in creating this “winner-take-all” pattern; and they give little attention or weight to the dramatic long-term transformation of the organizational landscape of American politics that lies behind these changes in policy. These weaknesses are interrelated, stemming ultimately from a conception of politics that emphasizes the sway of the “median voter” in electoral politics, rather than the influence of organized interests in the process of policy making. A perspective centered on organizational and policy change —one that identifies the major policy shifts that have bolstered the economic standing of those at the top and then links those shifts to concrete organizational efforts by resourceful private interests —fares much better at explaining why the American political economy has become distinctively winner-take-all. (shrink)

The central argument of this book is that liberalism, constitutionalism, and democracy, as well as, specifically, liberal constitutional democracy all work, when they do, because they serve the mutual advantage of the politically effective groups in the society through coordination of those groups on a political and, perhaps, economic order. These arguments are applied both to the early history of constitutional developments in the United States and to contemporary transitions from autocratic regimes to market democracies. A subsidiary claim is that (...) constitutional political institutions and democratic procedures generally require not so much active support as merely acquiescence in order to survive and work. These are explanatory theses, not normative claims, but they have relevance for normative claims if one takes seriously some relative of Kant's dictum that ought implies can. If we are to insist that some form of government is normatively right for a particular society, we must be able to say that it would or could work for that society. It is commonly argued that what makes democracy right is that it works by consent. If so, it is such a distressingly minimal form of consent—acquiescence—as to be normatively disqualified. If we rule out mere acquiescence as adequate for consent, it seems likely that no credible argument can be adduced to defend liberal constitutional democracy in any detail on grounds of consent or contractarianism. Hence, concern for workability, which should be central to any moral assessment of principles of social order, undercuts the entire consent school of political theory. (shrink)

David Hume’s position on religion is, broadly speaking, “politic”: instrumental and consequentialist. Religions should be tolerated or not according to their effects on political peace and order. Such theories of toleration are often rejected as immoral or unstable. The reading provided here responds by reading Hume’s position as one of radically indirect consequentialism. While religious policy should serve consequentialist ends, making direct reference to those ends merely gives free reign to religious-political bigotry and faction. Toleration, like Hume’s other “artificial virtues” (...) (justice, fidelity to promises, allegiance to government), is a universally useful response to our universal partiality—as established uniformity, however tempting, is not. This implies that toleration can progress through political learning, becoming broader and more constitutionally established over time. A sophisticated Humean approach thus shares the stability and normative attractiveness of respect- or rights-based arguments while responding more acutely and flexibly to problems the former often slights: antinomian religious extremism; underdefined political agency; and internationalized, politicized religious movements. (shrink)

The long republican tradition is characterized by a conception of freedom as non‐domination, which offers an alternative, both to the negative view of freedom as non‐interference and to the positive view of freedom as self‐mastery. The first part of the book traces the rise and decline of the conception, displays its many attractions and makes a case for why it should still be regarded as a central political ideal. The second part of the book looks at the sorts of political (...) and civil institutions that would be required in a society in which freedom as non‐domination is systematically fostered. It outlines the causes and policies, the constitutional and democratic forms, and the regulatory controls that a republican state ought to endorse. And it argues for a vision of the state's relation to civil society in which there is no pretence of doing without widespread civility and trust; the argument is that the state ought, at once, to foster and build on such extra‐political foundations. (shrink)