In Memoriam: Brian Barry

Brian Leiter has the news. Harry Brighouse follows up.

Update: My only sustained public engagement with him as a thinker was not a particularly sympathetic one. But I was tremendously impressed with both Sociologists, Economists and Democracy and Political Argument as a grad student; he was a lifelong advocate of keeping normative political work engaged with social science and social theory; and his long work at the journal Ethics did a tremendous amount for political and moral philosophy and theory. By my reckoning he didn't just raise the standards of the journal; he raised the standards of the field.

On a more personal level: I didn't know Barry well-- but I got to know him toward the end of my time as a graduate student, when I was commuting from New York to Princeton and he was teaching at Columbia. He and his wife Anni were personally incredibly warm and welcoming to me; and intellectually he treated me as someone worth talking and arguing with about our areas of shared interest. I shared a drink with him on several occasions, and always enjoyed the experience and the conversation.

I had cause to complain about the way in which he read the work of some other people, but with regard to my own work, he had read it before we ever met, talked about it (in person and in print) fairly and accurately, and was supportive and encouraging about it. I think he was the first person who included my work on a syllabus, and I was still a grad student at the time; it's hard to overstate how flattered I was by this. And he was generous with time and advice, though he had no advisorly obligations to me.

Because he genuinely retired, I almost never saw him after the publication of my review linked to above; but he was in touch enough to make clear that he took it in good spirit, and indeed he asked whether I'd follow up with a review of Why Social Justice Matters. There's a traditional joke in political theory about the mismatch between official intellectual positions and personal style-- the civic republican who's a terrible departmental citizen, the deliberativist who will never let anyone else talk and the deliberativist who hates to talk, that kind of thing. Brian Barry often comes up as a central example-- the pugilist, brawler, or (depending on your perspective) dirty fighter on the printed page who was exceptionally warm, generous, and open in person. He knew this himself, and it seemed to amuse him. I had my quarrels with the printed pugilist-- but remember and appreciate that warm and generous man.

further update: Valuable comments continue to be posted at the Crooked Timber thread from Barry's colleagues and friends. Wyn Grant gets at what I was trying to express here: "He could certainly be pugancious and unwilling to suffer fools gladly, but he was very supportive to younger scholars." Jo Wolff recounts some more examples of the pugnaciousness-- and suggests that it represents a sense on Barry'spart that "political theory can be much easier than most people make it, provided that one keeps things clear, puts down one’s ideological axe, and resists the temptation to seek novelty or paradox for its own sake.” And Paul Kelleyalso emphasizes Barry'sinterest in keeping political philosophy intellectually engaged with the social sciences, in the service of doing normative work aimed at the world.

States of the same nature

Now posted at SSRN:

"States of the Same Nature": Bounded Variation in Subfederal Constitutionalism

"That the federal constitution should be composed of states of the same nature, above all of republican States," Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws.

Abstract:
This paper offers a defense of the bounded variation in state- or provincial-level constitutionalism within a federation. The extreme positions are the traditionally easy normative ones: there's no reason for state-to-state variation in fundamental questions of constitutional value (because once we know what justice demands, it demands it the same everywhere), or the several states' sovereign peoples may enact any old rules they want, because democratic positivism trumps liberal justice. On the second model, states may be constitutionally constrained from the outside, by the federal courts enforcing the federal constitutions, but as a domestic matter their substantive variation could be unbounded. I don't deny that one or the other of these might accurately describe the legal situation in one or another federation. But I will argue that bounded variation is normatively preferable, not just as a middle way but as the right way to attain the benefits of a federal system. And there are at least some good reasons for internalizing the at least some of the boundaries within the constitutionalism and jurisprudence of each state. Constitutions are not social contracts, either of the positivist or the realist sort; and the hybrid constitutionalism of a federal order can't be understood just with reference to founding or with reference to moral truth. It seems to me that this leaves us in the domain of non-dispositive reason-giving and argument about the scope for constitutional variation. It typically does not count as much intellectual progress to say that answers will lie at some indeterminate point in the middle. But the claims of federal supremacy and of state sovereignty have been such that the middle has sometimes seemed squeezed out; there has been a perceived need to resolve the logic of state constitutionalism to a greater degree than the nature of the problem permits.

And one bit from further in the paper:

It is apparent that the position described here allows federal constitutional norms to have some weight in a state's domestic constitutional interpretation. It is perhaps less apparent, but noteworthy, that it allows sister-state constitutional norms and jurisprudence to have such weight. And, perhaps most surprisingly, it allows state-level norms to have weight at the federal level. Perhaps the gravitational weight of federal constitutional interpretation is greater than that of the interpretation of any one of the states, but gravity is mutual, and planets pull on the sun as well as being pulled by it.

Since I finished that draft of the paper, Professor Solum has drawn my attention to this extremely interesting argument which I'll have to incorporate into that section!

Federal Bar Association Indian Law Conference

I'll be revisiting the perversities of Indian Law thesis in light of last year's Plains Commerce Bank v Long, in a talk at the Federal Bar Association's Indian Law Conference, April 3, Pueblo of Pojoaque outside Santa Fe.

Here's an utterly unsurprising spoiler: the outcome in Plains Commerce only aggravated the perversity of the incentives facing tribal governments. In the article I said that the Montana exceptions had been whittled away to near-nothingness; in Plains Commerce the Court just shaved a bit more wood off the paper-thin bit that remained. Step by step, the Court continues to make a bad situation worse.

For newcomers to Plains Commerce, I recommend the superb amicus brief from the Solicitor General.

Stanley Fish inhabits a very different academic world from the one I inhabit...

If this is true.

I’ve been asking colleagues in several departments and disciplines whether they’ve ever come across the term “neoliberalism” and whether they know what it means. A small number acknowledged having heard the word; a very much smaller number ventured a tentative definition. I was asking because I had been reading essays in which the adjective neoliberal was routinely invoked as an accusation, and I had only a sketchy notion of what was intended by it.

Research Workshop on Thomas Hobbes

March 21-22, 2009, McGill University, Montreal
http://profs-polisci.mcgill.ca/abizadeh/Hobbes-Workshop.htm

This two-day workshop brings together a number of scholars working on Hobbes today to discuss two recent book-length manuscripts: Thomas Hobbes and the Creation of Order by Kinch Hoekstra and The Oscillations of Thomas Hobbes by Arash Abizadeh. Topics include Hobbes's treatment of morals, politics, religion, language, mind, and knowledge.

Format: To maximize the quality of discussion, participants are expected to have read the two manuscripts beforehand. Each panel will begin with two fifteen minute critiques of a section of the manuscript, followed by a brief response by the author and general discussion.

Registration: The workshop is open to everyone, but attendance is by registration and limited in number. Those wishing to attend should RSVP to the workshop coordinator Douglas Hanes, douglas.hanes@mail.mcgill.ca .

Manuscripts: Manuscripts are available on the workshop website for download. Access requires a password, which all participants will receive upon registration.

Program:

Saturday March 21
Arts 160, McGill University

9:55 am Welcome

10:00 am - 11:45 am: Linguistic Convention and Mental Inspection
Chair: Emily Carson (McGill, philosophy)
Commentators: Douglas Jesseph (South Florida, philosophy)
Justin E. H. Smith (Concordia, philosophy)
Author/Respondent: Arash Abizadeh (McGill, politics)

11:45 - 1pm: Lunch Break

1:00 pm - 2:45 pm: The State of Nature
Chair: Dario Perinetti (UQAM, philosophy)
Commentators: Ioannis Evrigenis (Tufts, politics)
Jacob Levy (McGill, politics)
Author/Respondent: Kinch Hoekstra (Berkeley, politics/law)

2:45 pm - 3:00 pm: Coffee Break

3 pm - 4:45 pm: Morals and War
Chair: Catherine Lu (McGill, politics)
Commentators: Michael LeBuffe (Texas A&M, philosophy)
Patrick Neal (Vermont, politics)
Author/Respondent: Arash Abizadeh (McGill, politics)

5 pm: Reception

6:30 pm: Dinner


Sunday March 22
Arts 160, McGill University

9:30 am - 11:15 am: Commonwealth by Acquisition and Institution
Chair: Christina Tarnopolsky (McGill, politics)
Commentators: Michael Green (Pomona, philosophy)
Travis Smith (Concordia, politics)
Author/Respondent: Kinch Hoekstra (Berkeley, politics/law)

11:15 am - 12:30 pm: Lunch Break

12:30 pm - 2:15 pm: Sovereignty and the State's Ideological Program
Chair: TBA
Commentators: Jeffrey Collins (Queen's, history)
Will Roberts (McGill, philosophy/politics)
Author/Respondent: Arash Abizadeh (McGill, politics)

2:15 pm - 2:30 pm: Coffee Break

2:30 pm - 4:15 pm: Justice Made Reasonable? The Reply to the Foole
Chair: Victor Muniz-Fraticelli (McGill, politics/law)
Commentators: Tom Sorell (Birmingham, philosophy)
Ed King (Concordia, politics)
Author/Respondent: Kinch Hoekstra (Berkeley, politics/law)

4:30 pm: Reception


This workshop has been made possible by generous support from the Dean of Arts Development Fund (McGill), Department of Political Science (University of California - Berkeley), Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique de Montréal (GRIPP), Department of Political Science (McGill), and Department of Philosophy (McGill).

There's bibliophilia, and then there's...

I'm as guilty as anyone of buying all the Berlinalia that anyone slapped between two covers and marketed (e.g.). But I can recognize that an as excess, not to be repeated.

On the other hand, Berlin was an inspires-intense-loyalty charismatic thinker, not an inspires-serious-thought rigorous philosopher. It seems to me that publishing Berlin's juvenilia is a bit more in his spirit than publishing Rawls' senior thesis on religion from the days when he was religious is in Rawls' spirit.

John Rawls never published anything about his own religious beliefs, but after his death two texts were discovered which shed extraordinary light on the subject. A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith is Rawls’s undergraduate senior thesis, submitted in December 1942, just before he entered the army. At that time Rawls was deeply religious; the thesis is a significant work of theological ethics, of interest both in itself and because of its relation to his mature writings. “On My Religion,” a short statement drafted in 1997, describes the history of his religious beliefs and attitudes toward religion, including his abandonment of orthodoxy during World War II.

The present volume includes these two texts, together with an Introduction by Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel, which discusses their relation to Rawls’s published work, and an essay by Robert Merrihew Adams, which places the thesis in its theological context.

The texts display the profound engagement with religion that forms the background of Rawls’s later views on the importance of separating religion and politics. Moreover, the moral and social convictions that the thesis expresses in religious form are related in illuminating ways to the central ideas of Rawls’s later writings. His notions of sin, faith, and community are simultaneously moral and theological, and prefigure the moral outlook found in Theory of Justice.

I'm sure I'll read the Cohen and Nagel pieces at some point, as well as "On My Religion." Ordinarily wanting to read three essays in a book would be more than enough for me to buy it-- and my book-buying habit dovetails with a certain collectors' completism. (Why else is J.S. Mill's System of Logic on my shelves?) But I'm determined to be strong and not buy A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith , as the act of publishing it seems to me to indicate something unhealthy.

I'm going to live forever, cancer-free; part of a continuing series

via Pejman Yousefzadeh, the latest in the parade of good news about the health benefits of the nectar of the gods.

A cup of joe a day may help keep skin cancer away: A new study shows that caffeine helps kill off human cells damaged by ultraviolet light, one of the key triggers of several types of skin cancer.

The finding, detailed in Feb. 26 online issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, could one day lead to the development of caffeine creams or ointments to help reverse the effects of UV damage in humans and prevent some skin cancers.

Nonmelanoma skin cancers, which rarely metastasize or cause death, are the most common form of cancer in humans, with more than 1 million new cases occurring each year in the United States alone. (Melanoma is, however, one of the deadlier cancers.)

Exposure to ultraviolet light is one of the most important factors in causing nonmelanoma cancers. The rays cause DNA damage to skin cells, which then mutate or become cancerous.

Several studies have shown that people who regularly drink coffee or tea seem to have lower incidences of nonmelanoma skin cancers. One recent study of more than 90,000 Caucasian women found that with each additional cup of caffeinated coffee consumed, there was an associated 5 percent decreased risk of developing one of these skin cancers (decaf coffee had no effect).

CREUM postdoc

Le Centre de recherche en éthique de l’Université de Montréal (CREUM) est heureux d’offrir, pour l’année académique 2009-2010, plusieurs bourses de séjour post-doctorales d’une valeur maximale de 27,000$. La durée du stage pourra varier en fonction du dossier soumis et de la nature de la recherche.

La mission du CREUM est de contribuer à la recherche interdisciplinaire et à la qualité de la formation dans les domaines de l’éthique fondamentale et appliquée.

Nous encourageons les applications qui proviennent de chercheurs oeuvrant dans les axes de recherche principaux du CRÉUM : éthique fondamentale, éthique et politique, éthique et santé, éthique et économie, éthique et environnement.

Nous recevons également les candidatures provenant de disciplines diverses, pourvu que leur sujet de recherche soit en rapport direct avec des problématiques éthiques.

L’Université de Montréal est une institution francophone. Les candidats doivent avoir une maîtrise du français qui leur permette de participer aux activités du Centre.

Les chercheurs intéressés doivent soumettre leur candidature avant le 30 avril 2009.

Le centre de recherche en éthique offrira aux candidats choisis :

Pour les boursiers post-doctoraux ayant terminé leur doctorat depuis moins de cinq ans :

* Une bourse post-doctorale de 3 000$ par mois ;
* Un poste de travail individuel pour chacun des boursiers post-doctoraux du CREUM ;
* L’accès aux infrastructures de l’Université de Montréal (bibliothèques, centre sportif, etc.) ;
* De l’assistance pour l’organisation matérielle du séjour.

En retour, les boursiers s’engagent à :

* Mener un projet de recherche conforme à celui soumis lors de leur candidature ;
* Participer aux activités organisées par le Centre (conférences, séminaires, colloques) ;
* Effectuer une présentation de leurs travaux en cours dans le cadre de séminaires ou de workshops organisés par le Centre.

Les dossiers seront évalués selon :

* La nature des projets de recherche et leur pertinence dans le cadre de la mission du CREUM ;
* La qualité de la recherche précédente et la capacité du candidat de bénéficier des activités du Centre.

Les candidats doivent soumettre les documents suivants au CREUM :

* Un curriculum vitae ;
* Un texte académique (publication ou travail) écrit dans le courant des trois dernières années ;
* Un projet de recherche de 1500 mots ou moins ;
* Deux lettres de référence (envoyées directement au CREUM avant la date limite) ;
* Un relevé de notes des études doctorales (s’il y a lieu) ;
* Le formulaire de candidature ci-inclus dûment rempli télécharger ici.

La date limite pour la réception des candidatures est le 30 avril 2009.
Nous encourageons les candidatures faisant l’objet d’un partenariat entre le CRÉUM et d’autres Centre de recherche ou institution universitaire.

Veuillez envoyer votre dossier à l’adresse suivante :

Daniel M. Weinstock, directeur
Centre de recherche en éthique (CREUM)
Université de Montréal
C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-Ville
Montreal (Quebec)
Canada H3C 3J7

Grade Expectations

Hmm. This NYT piece and Michelle Cottle's follow-up both seem a bit overwrought to me.

Yes, of course, grades are earned by performance, not deserved by effort. And, yes, of course, "I showed up for class and did the reading" doesn't count as spectacular effort anyways; that's the beginning of trying, not the end.

On the other hand: in any field of endeavor, "But I tried very hard!" is the first response to being told that you didn't do a good job. It's not strictly speaking relevant, but it's part of how a person defends him- or herself, and tried to redeem his or her standing in the eyes of the other person. If you really make it the grounds of an appeal of a grade, of course, that's a silly mistake. But the mere fact that you can find some undergrad sentences that express a sense of desert and entitlement doesn't mean that there's some new crisis wave of such things. I can "kids these days!" with the best of them, but Professor Marshal Grossman's complaint that "Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before" is utterly banal and trivial. Of course they do. Of course college is a new experience and there's a shock to the system compared with high school. Of course that's especially true for a college with competitive admission, when high schools are basically just admission-by-geography. The perennial condition of the 18-year-old college frosh does not make for a deep anomaly to explain in terms of the last generation's parenting skills, etc., etc.

Grossman and Cottle are both saying the sorts of things professors say to each other all the time, but it's trivial-level grumbling, on a par with saying "hot enough for you?" in the summer. (See also: Rate Your Students, passim.)

Maybe I'm undersensitive to such things, because the truth is I've experienced *very* little grade-grubbing during my academic life, despite being a medium-hard grader. I do believe that women faculty get hit with grade appeals more often than men, so at least on that front I've been unfairly insulated from the problem to the extent that there is a problem. And I have some other reasons to think that my experience isn't totally representative. But at the end of the day: I like undergrads, and in my experience they try to do well. To the extent that they don't understand what it means to do well, I think they respond well to having it explained to them. Making fun of them, by name, in the pages of the New York Times doesn't seem to me like the way to go. Neither does the Allan Bloom/ Harvey Mansfield approach of elevating "Kids these days!" into social criticism.

(I'm sure that there have been other days in my scholarly career when I would have written a "Go Grossman!" post. But the mood passes-- and grownups are supposed to know how to let a mood pass without committing it to print at other people's expense.)

Elsewhere

Lots of great and interesting stuff on traditional themes of interest around here.

Will Wilkinson on inequality and American exceptionalism... and race.

Many people on liberaltarianism; Ross Douthat, twice; Reihan Salam; Will, and again (I especially like that last post); Ilya Somin; Virginia Postrel.

A characteristically epic and rich post from Russell Arben Fox on some of his own favorite themes, some of which he and I have discussed from time to time (and I chip in in comments there). A sample:

The point is, I suspect, that trying to extricate liberal ideas in all their varieties from any political argument that doesn't address capitalism (and the mostly or at least increasingly democratic forms of modern life it presumes to be valuable) itself directly is probably always going to end up failing. Burke himself, who is usually held as the very font of modern conservatism, was a liberal, or at least was liberal; as Jacob Levy (among others) has persuasively argued, Burke was a Whig whose "pluralist liberalism" led him to greatly respect the "ancient liberties--of churches, guilds, parlements, provinces, cities, nobles, and all the rest--[that] provided a place to stand against absolutism." So from the beginning, any conservatism which speaks of liberty in the context of modern democratic capitalism--the arena within which different groups (the small platoons!) as we know them today can form and seek the freedom and power to live their lives as they see fit in the first place--is going to be, at most, a form of liberalism, one that is, as Alasdair MacIntyre once put it, a "conservative liberalism," a liberalism more pluralist in its devotions, more sensitive to history and less rational in its ambitions, but a liberalism nonetheless.

Now in some ways this is obviously a kind of silly point to make. Political theorists like Jacob and Patrick (and, sometimes, me) can argue all we like about the conceptual and/or historical connections between Burke and other early modern liberals, but in historical fact it is the conservatives--certainly at least since Russell Kirk--that have seen in Burke's appreciation of tradition and natural limits a conservative response to Rousseau and thus to all the revolutionary or egalitarian implications of liberalism. And, of course, the liberal reading of Burke can itself be contested: the man did rhapsodize about how moved he was by the glorious presence of Marie Antoinette, after all. So (perhaps to allude back to the aforementioned debate between Patrick and Damon) there are elements of a fundamentally illiberal appreciation of authority in his thought. Still, overall, I think the general point stands: every successful modern conservative political argument has been, to a degree, in the same position as that which Michael Walzer once famously said about the relevance of communitarianism to our modern liberal world (about which, more here); namely, that it is, however interesting and important an ideology, nonetheless parasitic on liberalism, a "recurrent critique," at best.

So does this mean that Patrick's search for a conservatism that can truly be tried and made fruitful is, in the end, in vain? Not necessarily--it just means that one needs to get clear on what it is you're searching for, and think again about where to find it and what one hopes to accomplish There are different sorts of recurrent critiques, after all.

Read the whole thing.

Pettit and His Critics

Pettit and His Critics

Saturday 14 March 2009

Research Beehive room 2.21
Old Library Building
Newcastle University

Philip Pettit is one of the most significant moral and political philosophers today. This conference will bring together new work on Pettit’s many philosophical contributions by three philosophers—Thom Brooks (Newcastle), Cecile Laborde (University College London), and Michael Ridge (Edinburgh)—with replies to each by Philip Pettit.


Program

10.30-11.00am
Registration (tea/coffee)

11.00-12.30pm
Speaker: Michael Ridge (Edinburgh)
An Opportunity for Expressivists?
Sincerity, Belief Expression and Ecumenical Expressivism
Respondent: Philip Pettit (Princeton)

12.30-1.15pm
Lunch

1.15-2.45pm
Speaker: Thom Brooks (Newcastle)
Moral and Political Freedom
Respondent: Philip Pettit (Princeton)

2.45-3.00pm
Tea/coffee

3.00-4.30pm
Speaker: Cecile Laborde (UCL)
Tbc
Respondent: Philip Pettit (Princeton)

I don't know...

How one could possibly determine what the best John Holbo post at Crooked Timber is. But if the question is "what's the best John Holbo post-plus-ensuing-comments-thread, I think we may have an all-time winner: Lewd and Prude, riffing on the old Amartya Sen argument about the impossibility of a Paretian liberal and the parable of Lewd and Prude

But what really impresses me is the story itself. It’s timeless and speaks to all ages and sexes and classes of society. Why has no one developed it? I want Lewd vs. Prude comics. In each installment, Lewd acquires a new pornographic novel and, with child-like enthusiasm, attempts to get Prude to read it. Meanwhile, Prude is busy trying to destroy it – burn it, dynamite it, bury it, sink it beneath the waves, send it by post to Australia. But the efforts on both sides invariably cancel out. In the final panel, Prude sits down to read. Again.

We could have “Lewd and Prude on Holiday”, “Lewd and Prude Go Ballooning”, “Lewd and Prude at Baffin Bay”, “Lewd and Prude in the Big City”, “Lewd and Prude at Sea”, “Lewd and Prude and the Doctor’s Orders”, “Lewd and Prude at the Opera”. (I think comics would be best, but mere prose may, just may, be a match for such high occasions.)

It will be much better than “Spy vs. Spy”, because Lewd and Prude obviously have a somewhat dysfunctional, asymmetric-yet-mutual love. It’s like “Krazy Kat”, with a pornographic novel playing the role of the thrown brick. And yet: this brick will have subtly different moral properties! Will there be some sort of Offica Pup figure? Perhaps a pained, Millian liberal who can see it is all going nowhere very impressive. But this will be Offica Pup without a jail, because – strictly – there is no inconsistency with liberalism. (How sublime!)

That's brilliant enough, as one would expect from John playing with this kind of material. But you've got to read the comments and see what Rich Pulasky gets up to.

I haven't had time

to blog about the connections between our partisanship symposium and the Senate's silly display of bipartisanship for its own sake. But see: Ross Douthat, djw, Matt Yglesias, etc.

Liberaltarianism, west coast edition, continued

(See earlier posts here, here, here, and here.)

Josh Cohen has posted the text of his remarks from the Stanford panel. (via Henry Farrell.)

Yay...

for choice of law and legal pluralism.

I've long since...

stopped reading David Brooks' columns as a matter of course. (Indeed, I stopped reading all NYT op-ed columnists during the TimeSelect era, and have only resumed reading Kristof on anything like a regular basis.) But I agree with Noam; passages like this are why Brooks was put on this earth.

Now lifestyle standards for the privileged class are set by people who live in Ward Three.

For those who don’t know, Ward Three is a section of Northwest Washington, D.C., where many Democratic staffers, regulators, journalists, lawyers, Obama aides and senior civil servants live. Thanks to recent and coming bailouts and interventions, the people in Ward Three run the banks and many major industries. Through this power, they get to insert themselves into the intricacies of upscale life, influencing when private jets can be flown, when friends can lend each other their limousines and at what golf resorts corporate learning retreats can be held.

The good news for rich people is that people in this neighborhood are very nice and cerebral. On any given Saturday, half the people in Ward Three are arranging panel discussions for the other half to participate in. They live in modest homes with recently renovated kitchens and Nordic Track machines crammed into the kids’ play areas downstairs (for some reason, people in Ward Three are only interested in toning the muscles in the lower halves of their bodies).

Nonetheless, many people in Ward Three do have certain resentments toward those with means, which those of you in the decamillionaire-to-billionaire wealth brackets should be aware of.

In the first place, many people in Ward Three suffer from Sublimated Liquidity Rage. As lawyers, TV producers and senior civil servants, they make decent salaries, but 60 percent of their disposable income goes to private school tuition and study abroad trips. They have little left over to spend on themselves, which generates deep and unacknowledged self-pity.

Second, they suffer from what has been called Status-Income Disequilibrium. At work they are flattered and feared. But they still have to go home and clean out the gutters because they can’t afford full-time household help.

Third, they suffer the status rivalries endemic to the upper-middle class. As law school grads, they resent B-school grads. As Washingtonians, they resent New Yorkers. As policy wonks, they resent people with good bone structure.

In short, people in Ward Three disdain three things: cleavage, hunting and dumb people who are richer than they are.

Rosenblum symposium elsewhere

Nancy Rosenblum is engaged in another symposium on her partisanship thesis elsewhere, over at the admirable Cato Unbound. (Hat tip to its admirable editor, Will Wilkinson.) Responses are forthcoming from Brink Lindsey, Henry Farrell, and James Fishkin.

UpdateAll of us here except for Andrew Rehfeld were basically on board with Rosenblum's thesis, so readers might be especially interested in this dissent by Lindsey. Then see Henry Farrell's reply.

On the Side of Angels symposium
22. Nadia Urbinati: Pluralism and Parties continued

In comments here, Paul Gowder asks

“On your final point, can you say more about how you get from pluralism to parties? Can one have pluralism that is not merely a "social given," but is also not instantiated in political parties as such? Perhaps, say, citizens could come to the table with ideologies (drawn from their Rawlsish comprehensive doctrines), and those ideologies could permit them to be understood as bodies of interest and permit a representative to say that she stands in a certain relation to those bodies ("I'm sympathetic to the Catholics"), but without the voters being organized into parties?”

(See also his post here.)

My answer:

Cultural and social pluralism is not the same as party pluralism, and this distinction is very important.

John Rawls described the “depth” and “breadth” of overlapping consensus – what Hegel would call the “constitutional ethos” -- in the following terms:

“…once a constitutional consensus is in place, political groups must enter the public forum of political discussion and appeal to other groups who do not share their comprehensive doctrine. This fact makes it rational for them to move out of the narrower circle of their own views and to develop political conceptions in terms of which they can explain and justify their preferred policies to a wider public so as to put together a majority.”

Political groups (parties) articulate the “general” view from peripheral or civil association kinds of viewpoints. Parties are partial-yet-communal associations and essential points of reference that allow citizens and representatives to recognize one another (and the others,) form alliances, and moreover situate ideologically the compromises they are ready to make. As Pitkin wrote, “But in fact, one of the most important features of representative government is its capacity for resolving the conflicting claims of the parts, on the basis of their common interest in the welfare of the whole.” Representation is the institution that allows civil society (in all its components) to identify itself politically and to influence the political direction of the country. Its ambivalent nature –social and political, particular and general-- determines its inevitable link to participation.

Political representation transforms and expands politics insofar as it does not simply allow the social to be translated into the political; it also facilitates the formation of political groups and identities. Hence Hegel could write that representation brings dissent into politics because in politicizing the social sphere it brings plurality and difference into the public, and Weber could accentuate that the political aspect of voting lies in the chance the citizens have to transcend their social being by their own doing, that is to say to act independently of their social identity and become themselves representatives of their political community.

It might be useful to recall Tocqueville’s prescient diagnosis of the two forms of associations democratic citizens tend to create: civil associations that bind (and divide) individuals according to their specific and most of the time uni-dimensional interests or opinions; and party associations that bind (and divide) citizens along the lines of their evaluative interpretations of matters that are general, or of “equal importance for all parts of the country.” The former produce fragmentation “ad infinitum about questions of detail” that can hardly have a general breadth since the life of civil associations depends on the relative closure of their borders. The latter interrupts fragmentation, not however by imposing homogeneity or concealing difference (making the whole society in the image of one party), but by creating new forms of “difference” between citizens. Political partisanship both brings people together and separates them on issues that are general in their rich and implications. The function of parties goes well beyond the instrumental one of providing organization and resources for political personnel rotation and the peaceful resolution of succession claims. Their function is above all that of “integrating the multitude” by unifying people’s ideas and interests and of making the sovereign permanently present as an agent of extra-state influence and oversight.

Cited Texts:

Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich. “The English Reform Bill,” in Political Writings, Trans. T.M. Knox, 295-330. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.

Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. The Concept of Representation, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

Rawls, John. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Trans. J.P. Mayer. New York: Harper Perennial, 1969.

Nadia Urbinati

On the Side of Angels symposium
23. Jacob T. Levy: Exclusions from government

Our symposium was scheduled to end yesterday, and Nancy Rosenblum is hereby released if she wants-- she's been writing full responses to every set of comments all week. But I've heard from a few commentators that they have things they'd still like to say, and I do too, so I'll keep the shop open for a while.

I had meant to make a few substantive posts in response to On the Side of Angels, but the time spent juggling the postings and so on took away from planned commenting time. So, even recognizing the possibility that Rosenblum may not have time to keep responding, here's the first of the leftover points I had meant to develop.

The final full chapter of the book examines, sceptically, arguments for "banning parties, outlawing political practices, and disqualifying certain partisans from participation in elections and government." Those last two words led me to expect something that I didn't find in the chapter. Rosenblum offers a careful examination of arguments about parties associated with political violence; parties that aren't really parties but are masks for some other kind of political organization; parties that incite hatred; parties that threaten the existential identity of the state, e.g. by supporting separatism or minority rights; and parties that are controlled from outside the polity. As always, both in this book and in Membership and Morals, Rosenblum is suspicious of the quick urge to suppress pluralism and dissent, and she offers good arguments as to why the boundaries around democratic contestation should not be drawn so narrowly as many in the "militant democracy" literature have thought.

I especially value this chapter because it both recognizes that many political parties aren't the parties of political theories (liberal, socialist, communist) but rather the parties of a religious or ethnocultural group, and argues against the delegitimation of such parties that's common in both majoritarian politics and democratic theory. (I once wrote in a symposium on Membership and Morals that I wished it had paid more attention to specifically cultural pluralism; Angels does so, and I'm glad to see it.)

But the chapter is centrally an argument against banning parties and prohibiting participation. It's the political-theory equivalent of a First Amendment argument. And I wonder what Rosenblum thinks about the alternative, the option I was waiting to see her examine: legally permitting parties to campaign, compete, win elections, and hold seats, but creating a taboo around their participation in government.

In parliamentary systems this means a taboo around forming a coalition government with them, or perhaps even a coalition government dependent on their passive support. Arab parties are normally allowed to contest elections and hold seats in the Israeli Knesset; but there is a powerful political norm that a legitimate government must command a Jewish majority, a majority of seats in the Knesset without depending on the Arab parties. The Bloc Quebecois has never entered into a coalition government in Canada, and during our recent constitutional crisis when there was a chance of a Liberal-NDP coalition displacing the ruling Conservatives, the Conservatives made great political hay out of the fact that the coalition would have been dependent on the votes of the Bloc (which nonetheless would not have been a partner in it). Post-totalitarian parties in Europe, sometimes post-Communist and sometimes post-Fascist, have often taboo in some countries and at some times.

On the one hand, such taboos might inhibit the important and beneficial process Rosenblum describes in the case of Christian Democrats: the normalization and liberalization and reconciliation to a constitutional order of a bloc that otherwise stands outside of it. On the other hand: voluntary isolation and rejection and shunning is the appropriate liberal response to things that should not be banned but nonetheless are beyond the pale. When a center-right party cedes power rather than join a coalition with fascists, or a center-left party does so rather than join with communists, are they acting as good partisans on Rosenblum's understanding, or bad ones? What about taboos around ethnic and religious parties?

I can think of prudential arguments on both sides. On the one hand, a taboo provides an incentive for reform in a particular direction; when a communist party breaks with Moscow and reorganizes itself as a democratic socialist party, when a separatist party becomes just an ethnic-regionalist party, when a fascist party becomes just a party of the right, the taboo could be relaxed. On the other hand, the isolation could itself discourage such reform because the party leadership never acquires the discipline of responsible party government. A taboo could provide voters with an incentive to support a more moderate party, one within the acceptable boundaries; or it could contribute to their further alienation from the system.

And I can think of other reasons on both sides, too: the argument from the right of the voters to be represented, and the argument that we'll likely get fewer bans and more respect for free speech precisely insofar as the threatening parties are sure not to govern. But I can't think of a general way to balance these considerations, even though the case seems to call for a general norm, and I wonder whether Rosenblum can.

On the Side of Angels symposium: contents so far

Jacob Levy, Prologue
Jacob Levy, Introduction (and introductions)
1. Nancy Rosenblum, Glorious Traditions of Anti-Partyism and Moments of Appreciation, Part I
2. Nancy Rosenblum, Glorious Traditions of Anti-Partyism and Moments of Appreciation, Part II
3. Nancy Rosenblum, The Moral Distinctiveness of ‘Party ID’, Part I: Independence
4. Nancy Rosenblum, The Moral Distinctiveness of ‘Party ID’, Part II: Moments of Appreciation of Partisanship
5. Nadia Urbinati, A third tradition of anti-partyism
6. Nadia Urbinati, Parties are not an option in representative democracy
7. Melissa Schwartzberg, The development of parties' programs
8. Mara Marin, Holism and the Public Interest
9. Henry Farrell, Comparative questions
10. Patrick Deneen, Progressivism and Partisans
11. Nancy Rosenblum, Response to Schwartzberg
12. Nancy Rosenblum, Response to Marin
13. Nancy Rosenblum, Response to Urbinati
14. Andrew Rehfeld, What About Interest Groups?
15. Andrew Rehfeld, Regulated Conflict and a “proto-Millian” defense of parties or “Vote for me, I’ve probably got the right answers.”
16. Andrew Rehfeld, Institutional responses
17. Nancy Rosenblum, Response to Deneen
18. Nancy Rosenblum, Response to Farrell
19. Jacob T. Levy, Anti-partyism and presidentialism
20. Nancy Rosenblum, Response to Levy
21. Nancy Rosenblum, Response to Rehfeld

On the Side of Angels symposium
21. Nancy Rosenblum: Response to Rehfeld

Prof. Rehfeld’s exuberant self-description as a die-hard antipartisan echoes the “divine right to bolt” from parties often touted as the right path for sensible citizens. I have failed to convert him, not surprisingly given his avowed contempt for partisans (“politically detached ignoramuses”) and his attraction to impartiality. I can’t quite tell whether his response is partly playful or entirely sober; in any case, I have enjoyed grappling with it.

Consider a moderate position that antiparty theorists might take. If we understand the value of parties in a proto-Millian sense of shaping lines of political division and staging the battle we can assign partisans a modest role. We could reluctantly concede that democracy needs just enough partisans to “man” the parties. Ardent partisans may not be deliberative personally but at the level of the polity they are the agents of “trial by discussion”. For the rest and for the most part, on this view, democracy needs open-minded Independents to adjudicate among them. Even this grudging, truncated view concedes something important to party leaders and to activists in the electorate. It is, however, more than Rehfeld would allow. He admits (for reasons not entirely clear) that citizens will be and should be partisan -- by which he means they will have conflicting interests and opinions, they will be partisans of a cause, say, but he concedes nothing to real partisans ((“party id”; attachment to others in a party that contests elections and takes responsibility for governing).

Rehfeld’s diffuse notion of partisanship does not accept my case for real partisanship as the distinctive political identity of representative democracy. He certainly does not accept the moral claims I make for partisans who try to make parties comprehensive, inclusive, and compromising. I won’t repeat my assessment of the minimal case for real partisanship: the comparative knowledgability and engagement of partisans (Rehfeld rejects – or ignores -- empirical work on party id).

His witty characterization of Millian partisan officials who do not claim to be on the side of the angels but rather present themselves as only “probably right” is not what I commend. I assess with care the Humean notion that partisans can be injected with “a small tincture of Pyrrhonism” and hesitation – instants in which they appreciate that the other side is sometimes in the right and assume the pose of the impartial observer. Hume’s prescriptions are too stringent and phenomenologically alien to partisanship. My modest ethic of partisanship suffices. It stands opposed to Rehfeld’s independent, impartial, “professional” legislator. (I leave aside the question who elects these types?)


Rehfeld’s chief concern is to dispose altogether of any role for parties and partisans in organizing legislatures and in representation – it is a frontal challenge to Prof. Urbinati’s argument in this blog. He would divorce partisanship from the business of decision-making. What about all these interest and advocacy groups that are allowed, even encouraged, to lobby legislators? The problem of differential resources and organization arises in earnest here. It is not clear that Rehfeld wants to empower these advocates, these partisans without party – only that his professional legislators are an audience for their more or less organized voices.

In any case, it seems to me that what Rehfeld does is extend the institutional ambition of deliberative democratic theorists. They have typically focused on “deliberative polls” or “citizen juries” that do not make binding decisions, where the force of their judgments comes solely from the moral authority of popular deliberation based on full information. Or, deliberative institutionalists propose courts or nonpartisan expert commissions to substitute for decision-making by elected representatives in certain areas (districting, say). Or, like Philip Pettit, they propose nonpartisan popular mechanisms to review, contest, and emend egregious democratic political decisions. Rehfeld would bring impartial deliberation into the heart of government decision-making tout court.

Think about his legislature. Rehfeld does not address the question of how interests and opinions are consolidated, if only temporarily, into coherent, principles or consistent policy positions. From early on, parties have served that purpose; their importance in government for setting agendas and regulating rivalry (in contrast to party in the electorate) has gone largely undisputed. The profusion of interest and advocacy groups lobbying legislators (can we call them representatives?) he proposes is a recipe for chaos and for much more short-term and strategic alliances than presently exist. It is bound, I would argue, to result in the formation of parties – though this time caucuses within legislatures rather than large-scale comprehensive ones tied to the electorate.

Rehfeld assumes, I assume, that his model would produce better decisions – better in the sense of untainted by special pleading and directed impartially at the common good. This assumption even on his own terms is dubious, and as a theoretical matter goes to the heart of long-standing debates in political philosophy that I cannot review here. In “Correcting the System” I try to systematically distinguish nonpartisanship and types of impartiality. One problem with impartiality as a regulative ideal is, again, that we do not have standards for the relevant universe of alternative proposals and reasons. It is still less clear what “professional” adds to the characterization of legislators as nonpartisan or impartial. In any case, it does not seem that Rehfeld holds a strong epistemic view of democracy; rather, he aims to correct for the worst prejudices and naked self-serving. The attempt to draw a bright line between interests and passions on the one hand and reasonable or impartial evaluation on the other is one of the heroic endeavors of contemporary political theory. Angels is an extended answer to this antipolitical ideal.

Under what circumstances are Rehfeld’s concerns proportionate to extra-party correctives? One is when parties and their partisan officials are systemically corrupt so that all legislation is rightly understood as log-rolling for purposes of re-election or group self-serving, that is, when deliberation within and among parties about burdens, benefits, and the general interest does not occur or cannot explain any outcomes. The other is when parties are entrenched, so that the possibility of accountability and of change among parties (including new party-building) is impossible. These circumstances call for the intervention of nonpartisan commissions or courts, perhaps. But that is a far cry from Rehfeld’s legislature. I would have said his legislature of saints, but he is modest and calls it a legislature of professionals.

Nancy Rosenblum

On the Side of Angels symposium
20. Nancy Rosenblum: Response to Levy

Jacob offers an interesting speculation: that presidentialism with its promise of representing the nation as a whole expresses and fuels anti-partyism even if does not cause it. I think that whether and when the president-above-party exists (or is proffered as an ideal) is contingent and not a systemic constant. Historically, American presidents have been among the great party-builders (Jefferson and Van Buren, for starters). Institutionally, presidents are the heads of their parties and whether government is unified or divided their agendas are typically identified as partisan. In fact, it is the failure to enact the periodic rhetoric of standing above partisanship (except occasionally in matters of foreign policy and national security) that is striking, and expected. Inaugural addresses are momentarily anti-political in that they mark an instant in which – despite the presumptive wounds of political contest – citizens acknowledge their unity. This is an important ritual but it is less peculiarly anti-partisan than a reminder that political divisions do not entail a fatally divided nation. Again, presidential self-presentation, policy, and public reaction are variable and I would not tie anti-partyism to this institutional arrangement.

The roots of anti-partyism, as my first essay suggests, are deeper philosophically and culturally. The element of holist anti-partyism that interests me most in the American context is the tendency of majoritarianism to slip over into the majority as the nation. I discuss this dynamic in some detail in Chapter 1 of Angels. Majoritarianism by definition acknowledges pluralism and is anti-holist, but often enough the majority is taken temporarily as the whole – legally and rhetorically. That seems to me to be what presidents do: claim a majoritarian mandate for their admittedly partisan agendas. This is something short of true plebiscitarian democracy. It is not anti-party.

Bipartisanship of the sort touted during the 2008 presidential campaign and repeated by President Obama today is something else again. Senators Obama and McCain promised to govern in a bipartisan fashion. Both offered a track record of bucking their own party as a qualification for leadership. What should we make of this improbable self-distancing of our national leaders from their own parties? Again, I think it is explained by the moment and not by political structures. Antiparty sentiments have been fired up by several decades during which parties appeared to want to destroy one another as an effective and legitimate opposition, were hubristic in their claim to represent the nation as a whole rather than just a part, and where intransigence had become a virtue. Bipartisanship does not erase divides but promises compromisingness as partisans give up something of their principle or pay some material cost in order to get the public business done. Bipartisanship is different, or so it seems, from consensus or nation-as-a-whole, which is appropriately rare. At its best, compromise within and across party lines is the heart of democratic politics; it is not raw opportunism and is not morally compromising. It would be better if President Obama articulated and abided by an ethic of partisanship rather than implicitly conceding the moral high ground to Independents.

Nancy Rosenblum

On the Side of Angels symposium
19. Jacob T. Levy: Anti-partyism and presidentialism

I have already paid my compliments to On the Side of Angels and praised its methodological contributions in particular; I think it has set an excellent new example for political theory’s engagement with political science. Just as the “moments” of moral-psychology realism in her last book, Membership and Morals, made an important contribution understanding freedom of association as a theme in social theory, not just in abstract rights-theory, so does her serious and extended treatment of the political science of elections and parties in On the Side of Angels promise to improve the way we do democratic theory. And one thing worth noting early on is that Angels is an outgrowth of Membership, though she makes little of this in the book. Having written on the liberal theory of intermediate associations in civil society, Rosenblum seems to have noticed how little political parties figured in that literature; and she rapidly staked out the striking and provocative position that “among the associations of civil society, political parties are primus inter parus.” And Angels bring the same spirit of appreciation for real pluralism and disagreement to the special case of political parties that Membership brought to the general case of associations.


(Disclosure: as noted in the comments section of this post, it’s probably no accident that I’m a fan of Rosenblum’s methods and approaches, as she was my advisor and most important teacher as an undergraduate at Brown. On the other hand, not only do I not think that our areas of substantive or methodological agreement were things that she taught in the classroom back then; it’s not clear to me that she had yet worked out the methodology that she would go on to develop for Membership back in 1990-92.)


So much for throat-clearing. Angels brought the following questions to my mind.


1) In the developed west., how distinctively American is anti-partyism today, and might it be related to presidentialism? I noted in a prologue to the symposium that some descendant of anti-partyism seemed to be an especially strong trope in presidential inaugural addresses. (I think that it’s primarily the second “Glorious Tradition” of anti-partyism, that which accepts pluralism while disdaining zealotry; but I think that it partakes of the first as well. It’s not just “We Republicans respect you Federalists and will treat with you fairly rather than in a spirit of enmity;” it’s “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”) It seems to me that this is in part the appropriate transition from candidate to official, from party leader to head of government.


But it’s in part also about the ascension to being head of state the figure who is supposed to rise about political divisions in order to symbolize a unified nation, as a constitutional monarch in a parliamentary democracy is supposed to do. (The neutral head of state set above responsible party government was developed in fits and starts in England in the 18th century but was, I think, first fully theorized by Constant in France in the 19th. As it happens, France is now unusually among European democracies not to have a head-of-state who set apart from ordinary politics, whether a constitutional monarch or, as in Germany, a President who is not part of government.) And it’s a way for the President who is both head of state and head of government to contrast himself with the legislature, which in its nature is divided on party lines.


The attempt by the executive to reach around the supposed grandees of legislatures and courts to a putatively-unified People against is a worrisome feature in constitutional states. When the one offers the many an alliance against the few, he does not do so for the benefit of the many. And anti-partyism is an important weapon in the hands of plebiscitary executives who seek to do away with constitutional and legislative checks on their power. (Hugo Chavez is the obvious case.) In a more limited way, it seems to me that American presidential-antipartyism typically tends toward the delegitimation of Congress, and sometimes of the states as well—only the President speaks for the unified whole of society. But of course, qua head of government, he doesn’t; he just holds power over the whole of society.

I speculate that anti-partyism can be institutionally-specific, and is often strongest in an independent executive. Constitutionalists and liberals have good reason to be wary of an especially powerful independent executive; the founding core values of constitutionalism included checking that kind of executive power with habeas corpus and related rights against arbitrary imprisonment and punishment. But, if Jeremy Waldron is right that the legislature is the core institution of democracy, then democrats also have a strong reason to be concerned; antipartyism will typically be a means by which legislatures are delegitimated.

So for this post, I’ll offer these three hunches: the special link of antipartyism with presidential systems, its differential impact on the perceived legitimacy of the legislature, or the special problem that impact would have for constitutional democracies.

Jacob T. Levy

On the Side of Angels symposium
18. Nancy Rosenblum: Response to Farrell


Henry Farrell invites me to jump right across the fuzzy boundary between theory and empirical social science and to join him on the other side. Angels is not a work in comparative politics, though I try to indicate the scope of my key arguments. Two things stand out at first blush when it comes to European party politics. One is the importance of parties for reconciling anti-democratic groups to constitutional democracy. Farrell points to social democratic parties insisting on the political efficacy of electoral politics and holding out the promise that their party can redeem democracy. This is a good illustration, though perhaps the key example is Christian Democratic parties, which had to contend with the anti-democratic force of the papacy and which successfully brought Catholics into the democratic fold. (In my final chapter I discuss Turkey in this context, and religious parties there.)

The second striking thing about European parties in contrast to the American case is the way in which party identity has been tied historically to claiming a location on a finely grained political spectrum, so that my norms of inclusiveness and comprehensiveness are enacted, where they are, at the level of government formation not within parties and among partisans. This has given rise to a continuation of one of the traditions of antipartyism that sees parties as fatally divisive – the instability of governments, the shifting coalitions, and the sheer paralysis of governments is more characteristic of European systems than the U.S.; it has produced a distinctive antiparty literature from Schmitt to contemporary constitutional attempts to circumscribe parties. But there is some evidence of the emergence of “umbrella” parties, of Green parties, say, expanding from original focus on ecology to more full-blown national agendas.

Farrell’s fascinating application of partisanship to the EU is worth fleshing out, and I am persuaded that there is an article waiting to be written that applies some of the defenses of partisanship to this case. The EU example also raises anew anti-party arguments of an anti-political stripe that value above all expert and judicial decision-making. A related set of questions, which I take up only briefly, is justification for “outside” support for national parties in this era of diasporae and boundary crossings.

All that said, my discussion of anti-partyism is rooted in political theory, and I’ll note one difference and one commonality between American and continental thought. The difference is this: the honorific “Independent” does seem to be peculiarly American. Antipartyism is widespread, and antipartisanship is a phenomenon in all advanced democracies, but as I show, “Independent” has roots in American political culture past and present and this distinctive political identity has no counterpart elsewhere. The commonality is also clear: a good deal of European political theory exhibits the same tendency as American theory to focus on deliberation as deracinated judgment that eschews interest, prejudice, and passion for public reason and disinterested consideration of the common good. The explicit divide between deliberation and partisanship is there, and should be contested. There is also a recurrent preference on the part of “left” theorists to focus on social movements, civil society groups, and other informal if agonistic modes of political contestation. Among theorists of multiculturalism, for example, the norms and avenues for accommodation explicitly eschew partisanship, and “a dialogically constituted multicultural society” (p. 455) is said to emerge from venues such as consultative councils, not from democratic party politics. It is the European right that has seized on parties, reviving the anti-party fears of the last generation.

Nancy Rosenblum

On the Side of Angels symposium
17. Nancy Rosenblum: Response to Deneen


Patrick Deneen and I share the view that the roots of many contemporary antiparty arguments in the U.S. are found in the Progressive era. It seems that we understand and evaluate the origins differently. Deneen sets up a contest between ethnic party politics (or, by implication, any from of solidaristic or identity-based partisanship) on the one hand and liberal individualism (“unemcumbered, monadic, rational individuals) with its notion of partisanship based on national interests. I’m not sure who is caught up in this schematic? Was Dewey a proponent of monadic individuals? Opponents of parties were often motivated not by a liberal ideal (as defined by Deneen) but by prejudice and sheer moral revulsion (“male suffrage meant “an invasion of peasants…an ignorant proletariat”, or “a nightmare of domination by Irish, black, and Chinese immigrants” (p. 181). Class and race were at work and contests among elites and the reduction to competing ideologies is a truncated view. Progressives typically subscribed neither to a “monadic” view of citizens nor to a politics of interest. Good progressives like Jane Addams had a sympathetic understanding of “Why the Ward Boss Rules”, and her account of neighborhood organization, patronage, and spoils is crucial to understanding this era. Or take Mary Follett, whose notion of group formation and group opinion fits neither Deneen’s “tribal” nor “liberal” category, and whose work I discuss as a crucial antecedent to the sort of antipartyism that looks to civil society groups as an antidote. I do not see what is gained by representing anti-partyism as a defense of some set of liberal assumptions.

Deneen asks what side I would be on in the Progressive charge against parties and partisanship? I have something to say in defense of corrupt, ethnic and community based parties the Progressives despised, and I draw on recent historical scholarship here. Among other things, parties as membership groups incorporated whole sections of the population into democratic politics and the system of patronage and spoils was important in the evolution of the national party system Deneen points to. We should not take charges of “backwardness”and “recidivism” at face value. In response I would also say that Angels is a critical challenge to progressive notions of “good government” and defining institutions -- with special attention to the most important on-going antiparty reform: open primary elections.

More generally, I explore in Angels the relation between party identity as a potentially profound form of political identity and other, social (“tribal” in Deneen’s terms) identities. This is a fascinating business – partisanship is not a simple reflection of some other deeper identity, I argue, but it is only sometimes an original one. Again, the group/individual, solidarity/interest schema does not do justice to what is most interesting about partisanship.

My praise of party and elements of an ethic of partisanship, Deneen writes, is made within the comfort of the liberal paradigm. It is made within the comfort of a stable constitutional democracy, yes. It is liberal insofar as liberalism is defined by an appreciation of pluralism and is friendly to freedom of association and its political expressions. That said, Angels has a lot to say about third parties, ideological and regional and religious parties, and about partisanship rooted in identity groups. I defend these against attempts to ban them or to legislate (as we have in the U.S.) a system that makes the formation of multiple parties and fusion parties a practical impossibility. I discuss at some length parties that challenge both liberal and democratic norms. My arguments for an ethic of partisanship today do not ignore the dynamics of party development and party-building, and they are not intended to “hollow out” devotions to the local and particular.

Nancy Rosenblum