James Madison's Political Theory: Hostage to Democratic Fortune

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard K. Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
James Madison

Professor Alan Gibson's insightful article contains much that is admirable. He is, in my view, correct in calling scholars' attention—particularly political scientists—to James Madison's often neglected views in his National Gazette essays and the foundational role of public opinion on all governments. In addition, Gibson asserts several claims hoping to establish Madison's credentials as a democratic theorist that should be of interest as well. Specifically, he seeks to accomplish four tasks: (1) “to clarify the enduring debate over the credibility of Madison's democratic credentials”; (2) to “examine Madison's role in justifying, popularizing, and understanding… public opinion”; (3) to “highlight some of Madison's neglected insights into democratic theory, especially his understanding of the problem of collective action, and thereby establish him as a prescient democratic theorist”; and (4) to argue the case that Madison “contributed to a developing tradition of political thought in America upon a broad-based conception of freedom of speech and on the belief that political truths best emerge from the full flow of ideas.”While I concur with much of Gibson's position—especially his fourth, indisputable point—I also disagree with him on at least one significant position: James Madison was not a democrat.

Veneration and Vigilance: James Madison and Public Opinion, 1785–1800

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political System ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
Governmental Institutions ◽  
Common Character ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines the evolution from 1785 to 1800 of Madison's understanding of the proper role of public opinion in the American political system. It provides an insight into Madison's transformation from the leading architect of the Constitution during the 1780s to the opposition leader of the Jeffersonian party during the 1790s. The essay challenges the contention that Madison's writings on public opinion establish his support for using governmental institutions and statesmanship to improve the souls of the citizenry and to develop a common character among them. Instead, it is argued, Madison defended the sovereignty of public opinion as a means for citizens to influence and monitor their representatives’ actions in an extended republic where these tasks were at once difficult and imperative. In the course of this defense, Madison contributed to a developing libertarian tradition of political thought in America based upon the broad protection of freedom of speech and the belief that political truths best emerge from the free flow of ideas.

Politikberatung der Öffentlichkeit?

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Pitlik
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
General Public ◽  
Policy Advice ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Academic System ◽  
Countervailing Power

Abstract Due to the incentives of both suppliers and users of policy advice the influence of economists on government decisions is almost negligible. This paper aims to explore the prospects of policy advice addressed to the general public as a countervailing power. It is argued that in order to have some impact on public opinion economists must rely primarily on propaganda and have to overcome a serious collective action problem. Yet, the organization of the academic system provides no incentives for economists to fulfil the role of general-public-oriented advisers.

HOPE AND MEMORY IN THE THOUGHT OF JUDITH SHKLAR

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATRINA FORRESTER
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Liberalism ◽  
Judith Shklar ◽  
Exclusive Focus

Current interpretations of the political theory of Judith Shklar focus to a disabling extent on her short, late article “The Liberalism of Fear” (1989); commentators take this late essay as representative of her work as a whole and thus characterize her as an anti-totalitarian, Cold War liberal. Other interpretations situate her political thought alongside followers of John Rawls and liberal political philosophy. Challenging the centrality of fear in Shklar's thought, this essay examines her writings on utopian and normative thought, the role of history in political thinking and her notions of ordinary cruelty and injustice. In particular, it shifts emphasis away from an exclusive focus on her late writings in order to consider works published throughout her long career at Harvard University, from 1950 until her death in 1992. By surveying the range of Shklar's critical standpoints and concerns, it suggests that postwar American liberalism was not as monolithic as many interpreters have assumed. Through an examination of her attitudes towards her forebears and contemporaries, it shows why the dominant interpretations of Shklar—as anti-totalitarian émigré thinker, or normative liberal theorist—are flawed. In fact, Shklar moved restlessly between these two categories, and drew from each tradition. By thinking about both hope and memory, she bridged the gap between two distinct strands of postwar American liberalism.

Jacques Rancière

In the Street ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 121-150
Author(s):  
Çiğdem Çidam
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Theory Of Education ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
Action Taking ◽  
As If

This chapter demonstrates that Rancière’s journey to democratic theory started in the aftermath of May 1968 with his efforts to overcome the problematic transformation of political theory into “a theory of education.” For Rancière, unpredictability is integral to democratic politics. Thus, in an anti-Rousseauian move, he emphasizes the theatrical aspect of democratic action: taking on a role other than who they are, acting as if they are a part in a given social order in which they have no part, political actors stage their equality, disrupting the existing distribution of the sensible. Rancière’s focus on the moments of disruption, however, opens him to the charge of reducing democratic politics to immediate acts of negation. Insofar as he erases the role of intermediating practices in the stagings of equality, Rancière imposes on his accounts a kind of purity that his own work, with its emphasis on broken, polemical voices, cautions against.

Re-Telling the History of Political Thought

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-49
Author(s):  
Katherine H. Bullock
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
History Of

This paper explores the construction of the canon of political theory. I argue that the interpretation of the canon that defines ancient pagan Greeks as the founders of western political thought, includes medieval Christian thinkers, and yet defines out Muslim and Jewish philosophers is based upon western eth­nocentric secular assumptions about the proper role of reason, experience and revelation in philosophical thinking.

What Is Political Science For?

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Mansbridge
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Infinite Number ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Free Access ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Collective Action Problems

This address advances three ideas. First, political science as a discipline has a mandate to help human beings govern themselves. Second, within this mandate we should be focusing, more than we do now, on creating legitimate coercion. In a world of increasing interdependence we now face an almost infinite number of collective action problems created when something we need or want involves a “free-access good.” We need coercion to solve these collective action problems. The best coercion is normatively legitimate coercion. Democratic theory, however, has focused more on preventing tyranny than on how to legitimate coercion. Finally, our discipline has neglected an important source of legitimate coercion: negotiation to agreement. Recognizing the central role of negotiation in politics would shed a different light on our relatively unexamined democratic commitments to transparency in process and contested elections. This analysis is overall both descriptive and aspirational, arguing that helping human beings to govern themselves has been in the DNA of our profession since its inception.

Madison v. Hamilton: The Battle Over Republicanism and the Role of Public Opinion

2004 ◽  
Vol 98 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
COLLEEN A. SHEEHAN
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Alexander Hamilton ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Federalist ◽  
Participatory Politics ◽  
Republican Government ◽  
Political Advantage

This article examines the causes of the dispute between James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in the early 1790s. Though Hamilton initially believed that Madison's opposition to the Federalist administration was probably motivated by personal animosity and political advantage, in later years he concluded what Madison had long argued: the controversy between Republicans and Federalists stemmed from a difference of principle. For Madison, republicanism meant the recognition of the sovereignty of public opinion and the commitment to participatory politics. Hamilton advocated a more submissive role for the citizenry and a more independent status for the political elite. While Madison did not deny to political leaders and enlightened men a critical place in the formation of public opinion, he fought against Hamilton's thin version of public opinion as “confidence” in government. In 1791–92 Madison took the Republican lead in providing a philosophic defense for a tangible, active, and responsible role for the citizens of republican government.

C.B. Macpherson and Philosophy, “Crypto” or Otherwise: A Response to Frank Cunningham

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Response ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
High Regard ◽  
Possessive Individualism ◽  
Limited Accuracy ◽  
Oxford University Press

I have a high regard for Frank Cunningham and his work, on socialism, on democratic theory—and on C.B. Macpherson. To take one example, his new introductions to the recent reissues of Macpherson's books from Oxford University Press, including The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism and Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval, are excellent. Lucid and informative, they highlight the value Macpherson's ideas hold for contemporary political thought. So I am grateful that he has offered so fulsome a critical response to my book—even though he finds my approach, based on the idea that there is a suppressed philosophical dimension in Macpherson's work, though (dubiously) audacious, to be of limited accuracy or usefulness—indeed ultimately misguided. It results, he claims, in an analysis that “detracts from Macpherson's political-theoretical and political strengths.”

Public Opinion and the Formation of Civic Character in Madison's Republican Theory

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen A. Sheehan
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
American Founding ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Civic Character ◽  
Republican Theory

John Adams's complaints notwithstanding, no one of the American Founding generation has been so consistently misunderstood as James Madison. In recent decades a small handful of scholars have made significant strides toward correcting the Madisonian record. In addition to the justly acclaimed study of Madison by Lance Banning, The Sacred Fire of Liberty, the thoughtful work of Alan Gibson stands out in this regard. In particular, Professor Gibson's efforts to parse the contemporary debate over the character of Madison's political thought constitute a distinctive and valuable contribution to the literature on Madison and the Founding.In his most recent essay, “Veneration and Vigilance: James Madison and Public Opinion, 1785–1800,” Professor Gibson makes three central claims, namely, that Madison never wavered in his commitment to popular sovereignty and deserves to be considered a leading and prescient democratic theorist of the Founding, that Madison's conception of the nature and role of public opinion in the 1790s signifies a substantial revision of the earlier Humean understanding of public opinion he embraced in the 1780s, and that Madison did not seek to foster civic education in the American republic. I agree with the first of these claims, though I would make the case for Madison's democratic credentials even more emphatically than Gibson does. In general, however, Gibson and I share common ground in the recognition of the critical importance of the concept of public opinion in Madisonian theory.

Response to Ivan Ermakoff's review of Fear of Enemies and Collective Action

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-167
Author(s):  
Ioannis D. Evrigenis
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Negative Association ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Precise Nature ◽  
History Of

I would like to thank Ivan Ermakoff for his comments and Jeff Isaac for inviting us to participate in this critical exchange about our work. As Ermakoff points out, the continuity of negative association in the history of political thought is striking, and this continuity is an important part of my argument about the role of negative association in collective action and the lessons that ought to be drawn from this. The precise nature, extent, and limits of this continuity, however, are indispensable parts of my story, ones that Ermakoff leaves out. As I note in Fear of Enemies and Collective Action, when one looks more closely, one realizes that the genealogy of negative association consists of episodes of action and reaction. The thinkers I study agree about much, but they also disagree quite strongly. Taken together, the continuity and disagreement show that it is a mistake to consider the discourse, as Ermakoff does, to be simply atemporal and represented by any single thinker.

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