The title of this journal—Perspectives on Politics—presupposes, at least tacitly, that even if we view it from a variety of vantage points, we can identify and agree upon some thing called politics. We spend a lot of time and effort arguing about those vantage points, the theoretical and methodological “perspectives” from which we explore our object of inquiry. Rarely, however, do we direct our attention reflexively and systematically on the ways our own practices and institutions themselves are infiltrated by politics. The lead article in this issue, a study of how gender inequality operates, sometimes subtly, sometimes much less so, among faculty and administrators at one prominent American university. As the authors Kristen Monroe, Saba Ozyurt, Ted Wrigley, and Amy Alexander note at the outset, not everyone immediately sees how this topic fits within a conception of politics. Like the authors, I find it difficult to grasp that perspective. Monroe, Ozyurt, Wrigley, and Alexander not only chart in an innovative manner the ways that women faculty at a prominent research university encounter gender inequality but the strategies they have devised for responding to the predicaments that inequality creates for themselves and their colleagues. I am pleased to be publishing this provocative study and hope that it will generate much subsequent inquiry into this topic.

Is there gender discrimination in academia? Analysis of interviews with 80 female faculty at a large Research One university—the most comprehensive qualitative data set generated to date—suggests both individual and institutional discrimination persists. Overt discrimination has largely given way to less obvious but still deeply entrenched inequities. Despite apparent increases in women in positions of authority, discrimination continues to manifest itself through gender devaluation, a process whereby the status and power of an authoritative position is downplayed when that position is held by a woman, and through penalties for those agitating for political change. Female faculty find legal mechanisms and direct political action of limited utility, and increasingly turn to more subtle forms of incremental collective action, revealing an adaptive response to discrimination and a keen sense of the power dynamics within the university. Women attributed the persistence of gender inequality not to biology but to a professional environment in which university administrators care more about the appearance than the reality of gender equality and a professional culture based on a traditional, linear male model. Respondents described heart-wrenching choices between career and family responsibilities, with tensions especially intractable in the bench sciences. They advocated alternative models of professional life but also offered very specific interim suggestions for institutions genuinely interested in alleviating gender inequality and discrimination.

This article is an extended review essay that classifies the main literatures on American politics, somewhat unconventionally, in terms of four distinct narrative modes: comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony. The four modes are differentiated by their internal construction and external social message. The central assertion is that there are standardized trajectories inherent to many of the empirical analyses we advance, which can be used to understand ongoing debates in the field. Perceiving inherent harmony or discord, emphasizing the exalted or the mundane, projecting achievement or frustration, the various narratives of American politics present contrasting interpretations regarding regime tensions and prospects. The more that political scientists become conscious of the forms and limits of the models employed, the more sophisticated we can be at developing and debating them.

Many scholars have viewed the rise and political influence of religious conservatives in the U.S. with some alarm, arguing that their commitments are so illiberal and undemocratic as to be a substantial threat to the creation and maintenance of a just and stable democratic polity. In particular, many worry that religious conservatives lack the requisite civic virtues necessary to making pluralist democracies work. After attending to what sorts of virtues a good citizen ought to possess, we present evidence drawn from interviews with state-level religious conservative activists suggesting that political mobilization and integration into institutions of deliberation and electoral contestation actually works to make them better citizens, at least with respect to one important virtue, political autonomy. If such engagement can temporize the dangers politicized religion can sometimes pose, those concerned about religion's public influence might have their fears eased. Religious conservative activists can make for good citizens, fellow participants in the project of constructing a common political order that is durable, decent, and democratic.

While there is a vast and highly contentious literature devoted to understanding the economic, social, and political consequences of the welfare state, little attention has been paid to the fundamental question of whether social security programs actually improve the overall quality of human life. We attempt such an appraisal, using the extent to which individuals find their lives to be satisfying as an evaluative metric. Considering national rates of satisfaction in the industrial democracies from the 1970s to the present, we find that citizens find life more rewarding as the generosity of the welfare state increases, net of economic or cultural conditions. The implications for social policy are discussed.

In this article we aim to return labor (particularly the most vulnerable members of the labor market) to the core of the comparative political economy of advanced democracies. We formulate a framework with which to conceptualize cheap labor in advanced democracies. We propose that to understand the politics of cheap labor, the weakest members of the labor market need to be divided into two structural groups: those in standard and those in nonstandard employment. Standard cheap labor includes “regular jobs” while nonstandard cheap labor includes low-cost, flexible, and temporary jobs. We show that the use of cheap labor is significant in all industrialized democracies but that there are important contrasts in how different economies use cheap labor. We argue that there is a trade-off between standard and nonstandard cheap labor. Countries that satisfy their need for cheap labor through standard employment do not develop large nonstandard sectors of their economies. Countries that do not promote cheap labor in the standard sector, on the other hand, end up relying on an army of nonstandard workers to meet their cheap labor needs.

There is a trend among behavioral scientists to view ever more complex attitudes or systems of belief as in some sense genetically determined (or “heritable”). Consistent with this trend is the recent article of Alford, Funk, and Hibbing titled “Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted?” in which the authors claim to have demonstrated that when it comes to the transmission of political ideologies, genes count for more than environment. Their article has received an enormous amount of attention among political scientists and in the popular press. I critically evaluate the research technique on the basis of which the authors' support their claims and argue that it suffers from significant methodological flaws. Such flaws notwithstanding, I demonstrate that the authors' data do not clearly support their conclusions. I then question the cogency, from an historical and theoretical perspective, of proposing the existence of “liberal” and “conservative” “phenotypes” and “genotypes.” My argument has implications beyond the findings of Alford, Funk, and Hibbing, and applies to all studies that claim to have demonstrated the heritability of complex and politically relevant attitudes.

In the past, most political scientists have been oblivious to the growing empirical evidence challenging environmental determinism. Professor Charney, apparently as a result of the fact that genes and the environment interact in a complex fashion, advocates that this passive unawareness be replaced by active denial. Science, however, does not advance by avoiding important relationships merely because they are complicated and, fortunately, science is not heeding Charney's ideologically-based fears. Molecular geneticists, often working in tandem with political scientists, are quickly moving beyond twin studies to identify the specific suites of genes and biological systems that predict variation in core political preferences, whatever labels those preferences might be given in a particular culture at a particular time. We sympathize with the fact that our empirical findings, like those of so many behavioral geneticists, make Charney uncomfortable; still, his critique serves up nothing new—empirically or otherwise. Just as analyses of the roots of sexual preferences cannot presumptively ignore genetics, neither can analyses of the roots of political preferences.

In his essay, “Genes and Ideologies,” Evan Charney wrangles with the question of the role of genes in the formation of political attitudes via a critique of Alford, Funk, and Hibbing's 2005 American Political Science Review article. Although critical evaluations are necessary, his essay falls short of what is required of a scientific critique on both empirical and theoretical grounds. We offer a comment on his essay and further contend that it is naïve to proceed on the assumption that a barrier exists between the biological and social sciences, such that the biological sciences have nothing to offer the social sciences. If we look beyond our discipline's current theoretical models we may find a more thorough, and not just competing, explanation of political behavior.

I would like to thank Alford, Funk, and Hibbing, and Hannagan and Hatemi, for agreeing to write critical responses to my article, and I am grateful for the opportunity afforded me to respond.

As always, this issue of the Book Review features a wide variety of books spanning the entire gamut of political science topics, methods, and subfields. At the same time, a number of core themes recur through the books under review.

The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. By the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. Forward by David H. Petraeus, James F. Amos, and John A. Nagl. Introduction by Sarah Sewall. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 472p. $15.00.

Stephen Biddle on The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. By the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. Forward by David H. Petraeus, James F. Amos, and John A. Nagl. Introduction by Sarah Sewall. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 472p. $15.00.

Stathis N. Kalyvas on The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. By the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. Forward by David H. Petraeus, James F. Amos, and John A. Nagl. Introduction by Sarah Sewall. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 472p. $15.00.

Wendy Brown on The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. By the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. Forward by David H. Petraeus, James F. Amos, and John A. Nagl. Introduction by Sarah Sewall. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 472p. $15.00.

Douglas A. Ollivant on The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. By the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. Forward by David H. Petraeus, James F. Amos, and John A. Nagl. Introduction by Sarah Sewall. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 472p. $15.00.

In his book, Corey Brettschneider defends a “substantive” conception of democracy—a “value theory of democracy”—against purely procedural accounts of democracy. Whereas “proceduralists” seek to define democracy strictly through reference to the (majoritarian) means by which decisions are rendered, Brettschneider fears that this leaves democracy rootless, at risk of producing undemocratic outcomes. His effort at solving the problem of “democratic autophagy”—the argument that democracy will consume itself through its own procedures, as I term it in Democracy and Legal Change—is twofold. First, he specifies the values that democratic rights should reflect and preserve. Second, he argues that even nonmajoritarian institutions, such as judicial review, act in a democratic fashion insofar as they help us to ensure that our laws actually do cohere with these values. The former effort is remarkably successful. In my view, however, the latter claim is less persuasive, partially because of the difficulty inherent in translating abstract substantive commitments into law.

Melissa Schwartzberg intelligently raises the important question of how we might move from the ideal of the value theory democracy, to which she is sympathetic, to its institutionalization. I share the concern she voices about the extent to which democratic contractualism can be directly applied in democratic institutions, but I differ with the conclusion she draws in response to this concern.

This book provocatively inquires into whether some aspects of law should be regarded as beyond the purview of democratic procedures. On Melissa Schwartzberg's account, “entrenchment,”—her term for those aspects of law thought not to be susceptible to revision by democratic majorities or to constitutional amendment by supramajoritarian procedures—damages democracy, despite its prevalence in modern history. She argues that entrenchment risks sedimenting law and deadening active democratic participation because it places crucial issues beyond debate. In resisting entrenchment, she aligns herself with Jürgen Habermas's project of invigorating democratic constitutionalism as a “living project.”

Thanks to Corey Brettschneider for his generous and perceptively critical review of my work and to Jeff Isaac for inviting us to discuss these issues.