All POLS 120 - Theory

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Liberal Plebeianism: John Stuart Mill on Democracy, Oligarchy, and Working-Class Mobilization
Liberal Plebeianism: John Stuart Mill on Democracy, Oligarchy, and Working-Class Mobilization

How should democratic societies address inequality in an age of plutocratic encroachment and populist indignation? What role should popular movements play in progressive reform efforts? This article turns to the nineteenth-century liberalism o [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000363
Type: Journal Articles
Policing, Democratic Participation, and the Reproduction of Asymmetric Citizenship
Policing, Democratic Participation, and the Reproduction of Asymmetric Citizenship

Can democratic participation reduce inequalities in citizenship produced by policing? We argue that citizen participation in policing produces a paradox, which we call asymmetric citizenship. For some citizens, expanding participation in polic [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000636
Type: Journal Articles
Development in Decolonization: Walter Rodney, Third World Developmentalism, and “Decolonizing Political Theory”
Development in Decolonization: Walter Rodney, Third World Developmentalism, and “Decolonizing Political Theory”

Developmentalism is the idea that progress entails the temporal movement of societies along a universal trajectory. Prevailing accounts conceptualize Eurocentric developmental discourses as ideological weapons of imperial domination, specifica [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000570
Type: Journal Articles
The Marketplace of Ideas and the Agora: Herodotus on the Power of Isegoria
The Marketplace of Ideas and the Agora: Herodotus on the Power of Isegoria

Popular discourse about freedom of speech tends to default to the metaphor of the marketplace of ideas, notwithstanding empirical evidence undermining this concept. Its persistence illustrates the profound attachment freedom of speech inspires [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000661
Type: Journal Articles
Whitman’s Undemocratic Vistas: Mortal Anxiety, National Glory, White Supremacy
Whitman’s Undemocratic Vistas: Mortal Anxiety, National Glory, White Supremacy

Walt Whitman’s Democratic Vistas (1871) has become a touchstone of democratic theory. Commentators of unusual ideological range uphold the book as politically exemplary. This article demonstrates that recent theoretical celebrations of Democra [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000727
Type: Journal Articles
Capture or Empowerment: Governing Citizens and the Environment in the European Renewable Energy Transition
Capture or Empowerment: Governing Citizens and the Environment in the European Renewable Energy Transition

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422001034
Type: Journal Articles
Ideology for the Future
Ideology for the Future

Political parties sometimes adopt unpopular positions that condemn them to electoral defeat. This phenomenon is usually ascribed to expressive motives—namely, parties’ desire to maintain their ideological purity. Could ideological parties inst [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000843
Type: Journal Articles
Realism and Responsible Parties
Realism and Responsible Parties

Realism can mean many things in political theory. This article focuses on “common-sense realism,” an approach to decision making under uncertainty characterized by its posture toward risk. Common-sense realist arguments have become popular in [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422001204
Type: Journal Articles
Ideology Critique without Morality: A Radical Realist Approach
Ideology Critique without Morality: A Radical Realist Approach

What is the point of ideology critique? Prominent Anglo-American philosophers recently proposed novel arguments for the view that ideology critique is moral critique, and ideologies are flawed insofar as they contribute to injustice or oppress [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422001216
Type: Journal Articles
Unrepresentative Claims: Speaking for Oneself in a Social Movement
Unrepresentative Claims: Speaking for Oneself in a Social Movement

Sometimes, people engaged in politics actively refuse to speak for anyone but themselves. These unrepresentative claims multiply in social movements in times of crisis. During the French Yellow Vest movement of 2018–2019, such unrepresentative [...]

License: CC BY-NC-ND
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055421001210
Type: Journal Articles
Representative Democracy and Colonial Inspirations: The Case of John Stuart Mill
Representative Democracy and Colonial Inspirations: The Case of John Stuart Mill

Abstract Focusing on John Stuart Mill, a particularly illuminating contributor to modern democratic theory, this article examines the connections between modern democracy and the European colonial experience. It argues that Mill drew on the ex [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-politicalscience/
Type: Journal Articles
The Urban/Rural Divide in Athenian Political Thought
The Urban/Rural Divide in Athenian Political Thought

Abstract Contemporary analyses of Athenian democracy have focused on binaries such as mass/elite, free/slave, and male/female, overlooking the urban/rural divide. In this article, I argue that urban/rural was a central cleavage in the Athenian [...]

License: CC BY-NC
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S000305542200017X
Type: Journal Articles
The gendered politics of researching military policy in the age of the ‘knowledge economy’
The gendered politics of researching military policy in the age of the ‘knowledge economy’

Abstract: This article explores our experiences of conducting feminist interpretive research on the British Army Reserves. The project, which examined the everyday work-Army-life balance challenges that reservists face, and the roles of their [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210521000036
Type: Journal Articles
A Formal Theory of Democratic Deliberation
A Formal Theory of Democratic Deliberation

Abstract: Inspired by impossibility theorems of social choice theory, many democratic theorists have argued that aggregative forms of democracy cannot lend full democratic justification for the collective decisions reached. Hence, democratic t [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000674
Type: Journal Articles
Democracy versus Security as Standards of Political Legitimacy: The Case of National Policy on Irregular Migrant Arrivals
Democracy versus Security as Standards of Political Legitimacy: The Case of National Policy on Irregular Migrant Arrivals

Abstract: Democratic citizens confront a range of problems framed as “security” issues, in policy areas such as counterterrorism and migration control, which place substantial political pressure on democratic norms. We develop a normative theo [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719003402
Type: Journal Articles
Making Offenders Vote: Democratic Expressivism and Compulsory Criminal Voting
Making Offenders Vote: Democratic Expressivism and Compulsory Criminal Voting

Abstract: Is criminal disenfranchisement compatible with a democratic political order? This article considers this question in light of a recently developed view that criminal disenfranchisement is justified because it expresses our commitment [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000297
Type: Journal Articles
Political Theory in an Ethnographic Key
Political Theory in an Ethnographic Key

Abstract: Should political theorists engage in ethnography? In this letter, we assess a recent wave of interest in ethnography among political theorists and explain why it is a good thing. We focus, in particular, on how ethnographic research [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000431
Type: Journal Articles
The Power to Nudge
The Power to Nudge

Abstract: Nudging policies rely on behavioral science to improve people's decisions through small changes in the environments within which people make choices. This article first seeks to rebut a prominent objection to this approach: furnishin [...]

License: CC BY
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055417000028
Type: Journal Articles
The Well‐Ordered Society under Crisis: A Formal Analysis of Public Reason vs. Convergence Discourse
The Well‐Ordered Society under Crisis: A Formal Analysis of Public Reason vs. Convergence Discourse

Abstract: A well‐ordered society faces a crisis whenever a sufficient number of noncompliers enter into the political system. This has the potential to destabilize liberal democratic political order. This article provides a formal analysis of [...]

License: CC BY-NC-ND
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12445
Type: Journal Articles