This paper constructs, within the American liberal consensus, a conceptual frame into which the great paradoxes of American politics can be fitted without significant omission or unexplained contradiction. The foundation of the American liberal consensus is seen to be a Protestant-bourgeois individualism divided against itself. This fundamental division issues into conflicting visions of America as a democracy. In national, legitimizing myth, America is seen as a Protestant-tinctured social democracy organized in terms of sovereignty of the people, confederalism, separation of powers, and popular government. On the other hand, in the ideology of America as a legally functioning state, it is a bourgeois, liberal democracy organized in terms of constitutionalism, federalism, mixed government, and representative government. These distinctions make possible a consistent explanation of the consensus-cleavage paradox that lies at the core of American political life. They also explain the persistent ambiguity that confuses the democratic character of the American political system and also the biformalism of its major institutions.

“The national interest” is frequently criticized in the contemporary study of international relations as an ambiguous term that lends itself to the support of unethical state policies by justifying single-minded national selfishness. This article argues that much of the criticism of the national interest on normative grounds in fact derives from confusion over the meaning of the concept. It separates two meanings — national interest as the common good of the national society, set off from the international environment, and national interests as the concrete objects of value over which states bargain, within that international setting. It surveys six views of the link among the national interest, the international society that legitimates various state interests, and the demands of ethical action, and concludes that statesmanship which relies on both definitions of national interest can provide the best guide to ethical state conduct within the “anarchical society” of international politics.

This article explores the problem of why most Continental languages lack a term which distinguishes the concept of policy, and to what extent political scientists writing in them are handicapped. It employs a diachronic approach to explore historical shifts of meaning within the “polis-family of words” in English and German, with reference also to French and other languages. The analysis is related to the manner in which the concept and term for state flourished m these languages over time, and explores why a convergence in usages of the English policy and the Continental Policey was aborted in the early nineteenth century. The bureaucratic and ideological roots of the broad Continental police concept are traced. Then synchronic analysis is used to explore how in the contemporary setting the presence or absence of a policy term effects communication and conceptualization.

The issue of federalism at the Constitutional Convention was considerably more complex than it is normally taken to have been, and most of the prevailing understandings of the settlement of the federalism issue in the Constitution suffer from failing to appreciate that complexity. There were at least six rather distinct versions of federalism “on the table” in Philadelphia; most found embodiment in one or another of the major plans before the Convention, although two of the schemas that are especially important for understanding the final Constitution have gone almost entirely unrecognized because they were not incorporated in separate comprehensive plans. Neither the older view that the Constitution's federalism is a “bundle of compromises” nor the currently popular view that it is essentially a nationalist document with some few federal reservations holds up when examined in the light of the “federalisms” at the Convention.

Publication of the Peace Pastoral, which has been extensively discussed in journals, has had little effect in persuading scholars or commentators on the ethics of nuclear deterrence. A review of the literature generated by The Challenge of Peace provides a survey of the current state of opinion on this question. The bishops, who seek to apply traditional just war categories to the novel situation of the nuclear era, are opposed by representatives of other traditional positions (the arms control community, which tolerates the targeting of civilians, and the “limited war” school, which eschews civilian targets). Two new approaches, likewise opposed to that of the pastoral, set more radical limits to nuclear targeting. All the critics regard the teaching of the pastoral letter, which condemns all militarily meaningful use of the nuclear arsenal, as an anachronistic exercise in the nuclear era.

Many of the debates among competing paradigms in political science are concerned with peripheral elements rather than the basic assumptions of the paradigms. Since the major assumptions of any paradigm are rooted in metaphysical theories of the nature of reality, tests of one paradigm are likely to deal with phenomena that may not be considered in another. The article outlines the main metaphysical theories —materialism, idealism, and dualism —then proceeds to demonstrate that the primacy of matter versus ideas is central to paradigms of explanation in one area of political science, namely, theories of urban unrest. A survey of competing theories highlights the metaphysical assumptions and methodological preferences of each contending paradigm. The article argues that more attention should be paid to the metaphysical assumptions of paradigms in order to sharpen the focus of the research agenda.

Tocqueville's argument that great revolutions will become more rare is sobering, if not chilling. But we may warm to it when we realize that it is a prospectus of realignment, intended to raise the sights of democratic statesmen and political scientists. The problem of constitutionalist statesmanship it exhibits is to combine two antithetical moralities: revolutionary morals and the morals of commerce. This paper takes seriously Tocqueville's view that “the books that have made men reflect the most and have had the most influence on their opinions and actions are not those in which the author has sought to tell them dogmatically what it is suitable to think, but those in which he has set their minds on the road leading to truths and has made them find these truths for themselves” (to Corcelle, 17 September 1853). By highlighting Tocqueville's understanding of realigning statesmanship, it seeks to reopen his approach to the study of realignment as an exercise of significant choice by the electorate, a choice of constitutional forms.

This paper explores Simone Weil's objections to a philosophy grounded on human rights. Weil thinks impersonal justice cannot be expressed in terms of personal rights. Rights, for Weil, are personal possessions; they are claimed or borne by some subject or person (me, you, her or them). The right or the just, however, is not susceptible to possession. When one substitutes a personal pronoun for the definite article before the word right (my right or their right instead of the right), justice is articulated in the manner of liberal contractualism but is biased against a notion of impersonal justice which Weil champions. The incompatibility of Weil's understanding of justice and a rights-based notion of justice is the subject-matter investigated in this article.

This article analyzes the constitutional problems of “first use” of nuclear weapons. Its organizing principle is that Congress has a constitutional duty to ensure such control over nuclear weapons that first use (and first strike) is proscribed. After demonstrating that the Constitution requires collective decisionmaking in important policy decisions, it is recommended that Congress retrieve its delegated power over nuclear weaponry, and also establish a “council of state” within the office of the presidency with which the president must consult before taking important decisions, including those involving nuclear warfare. The council would take a sober “first look” at proposed policies, but the ultimate responsibility would be the president's.

Ronald Dworkin has shown that the doctrine of judicial self-restraint, although packaged as a defense of constitutional tradition, is grounded in a legalmoral skepticism that either inadvertently or covertly rejects the possibility of a genuinely normative constitution. The influence of Dworkin's argument challenges exponents of judicial self-restraint to show that their position is consistent with constitutionalist assumptions. This paper considers two attempts to meet that challenge. One defends restraint on epistemologieal grounds; the other on a substantive theory of natural rights. Together, these attempts constitute a comprehensive and systematic attempt to justify restraint within constitutionalist assumptions. Their failure indicates that the doctrine of restraint can form no part of a normative theory of the Constitution.

This article explores the Spanish franquist regime's attempts to resolve a succession crisis, as the death of Francisco Franco appeared imminent in the late 1960's. It argues that Franco established the mechanisms for a smooth succession to the posts of head of state and head of government. However, these mechanisms failed to achieve Franco's major goal: the continuation of authoritarian rule after his death. Ironically, Franco's apparently ingenious “solution” to the dilemmas of succession facilitated a democratic transition that would have horrified the dictator.

The integrity with which a thinker, a political decision-maker, or a society can claim to hold to the just war tradition depends upon the readiness to draw and to implement the consistent negative conclusion, when the honest application of the classical “just war” criteria renders a negative reading on the justifiability of a given (or contemplated) military enterprise. The most qualified just war thinkers stated this conclusion firmly in the 1950's, but others have not pursued the theme with equal consistency.

Federalist, No. 10, argues that human beings demand that their opinions concerning their distinctive excellence be recognized as true. This recognition, however, cannot be political. The political realm cannot do justice to the “angel” in man, and the futile attempts to secure such political recognition lead to tyranny. Where does the recognition of one's own humanity occur? The Federalist does not say. Yet it must occur somewhere for political freedom to be regarded as a human good. It is essential for the perpetuation of human freedom that the account of human nature given in The Federalist, which is comprehensive enough to secure political freedom, be supplemented by an account of the human being's transpolitical dimension. Madison provides such an account in “On Property” and in the Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments. These two sources show that political freedom is for the performance of religious duty, which is discoverable by human beings through their conscientious use of reason and should, therefore, be understood to complete American constitutional theory.

The East German government's commemoration in 1983 of the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's birth exemplifies its continuing effort to broaden domestic support by arguing over a thirty-year period that the regime's values are deeply rooted in German civilization. The representation of Luther in the German Democratic Republic has evolved from caricature to sophisticated portraiture. Fundamental to this reinterpretation has been the association of Luther with the bourgeois-democratic revolution, a process which the ruling Socialist Unity party claims to have completed in the course of establishing the GDR. Continuing interaction between East and West Germany has complicated the GDR's effort to utilize historical symbols in developing a unified political culture.

The question of WHO is the ultimate constitutional interpreter poses one of the fundamental problems with which a coherent constitutional theory must come to grips. Any answer will be closely connected to other basic theoretical interrogatives, such as WHAT is the constitution and HOW should it be interpreted. Three principal theories compete here: Judicial supremacy, legislative supremacy, and departmentalism. This paper suggests a sort of analysis that transforms the question of WHO from one that yields a universally applicable response into a more complex set of queries about degrees of deference one institution owes another under varying circumstances. What emerges is a modified version of departmentalism.

New York State provides institutional aid to nonpublic institutions of higher learning within the context of its constitutional prohibitions against aid to denominational institutions. To qualify for state aid, New York's private colleges and universities must prove they are constitutionally eligible, a process which has prompted extensive self-evaiuation and frequently some changes by many of those institutions with traditional religious affiliation. State aid administrators have chosen to restrict their constitutional approach to state standards and ignore the United States Supreme Court's tripartite standards articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, as modified by the Tilton-Hunt-Roemer decisions. The state law has been cautiously and diplomatically administered, but the possibility of future state “entanglement” with church-related institutions remains.

Conceptualizing the state-society relationship in order to explain its byproduct underdevelopment in all peripheral countries presupposes agreement on the definition of underdevelopment. Such agreement is possible only by making the concept less abstract. Dominant paradigms which have conceptualized the state-society relationship and attempted to explain underdevelopment have not generally been successful because of their failure to make operational the concept of underdevelopment and the corollary of their excessive reliance on “regional or local differences.”

This article analyzes the constitutional problems involved in “first use” of nuclear weapons. Its organizing principle is that Congress has a constitutional duty to ensure such control over nuclear weapons that first use (and first strike) is proscribed. After demonstrating that the Constitution requires collective decision-making in important policy decisions, it is recommended that Congress retrieve its delegated power over nuclear weaponry, and also establish a “council of state” within the office of the presidency with which the president must consult before taking important decisions, including those involving nuclear warfare. The council would take a sober “first look” at proposed policies, but the ultimate responsibility would be the president's.