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The formative mechanisms and mobilizing arenas of civic opportunity and their efforts to encourage political engagement such as civic education is highlighted. Civic knowledge plays an important role to promote democratic values and political participation as well as to alter one's opinion on specific issues.

Edited by Amy Gutmann. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. 382p. $77.50 cloth, $20.95 paper. The morning I began writing this review, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in [...]

Budding on suggestions by Isaiah Berlin, a number of thinkers have elaborated a moral theory of value B pluralism. Berlin himself believed that value pluralism was consistent with liberalism, which [...]

The Virtues of Liberalism. By James T. Kloppenberg. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 240p. $35.00. James Kloppenberg is a distinguished historian of American ideas. His latest book brings together [...]

The article presents a report from the American Political Science Association (APSA) Presidential Task Force on new partnerships.

By Ira Katznelson. Princeton, N J: Princeton University Press, 1996. 192p. $19.95. William A. Galston, University of Maryland, College Park Liberalism's Crooked Circle is not (in any of the usual [...]

Edited by Roger Soder. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996. 293p. $29.95. How do young people become good citizens of a democratic polity? What is the role of the public schools in [...]

Political theory is not a purely theoretical enterprise; it is intended to be practical and action-guiding. To perform this role, the requirements of political theory must be possible, and the standard of possibility it employs must be appropriate to the political domain. Because human beings vary in their capacity for morality and justice, a reasonably just society, as Rawls understands it, must not be expected. Despite his concerns to the contrary, the possibility of a just polity is not needed to ward off resignation and cynicism. There is a principled path between a politics of complacency that thwarts feasible progress and a politics of utopian aspiration that ends by inflicting harm in the name of doing good. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This volume marks the end of John Chapman's distinguished editorial participation in the NOMOS series. It carries on the characteristic virtues of its predecessors: first-rate contributors representing a wide range [...]

Although I welcome the opportunity to discuss Alex Zakaras's fine essay, I fear that my response will disappoint him (and perhaps others as well). I find his arguments cogent and plausible, if not altogether persuasive, but many of them are directed against claims that I do not think I made. Two examples will suffice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented on pluralist constitutionalism. It aims to examine ways in which a broadly pluralist outlook can help illuminate old constitutional theory and practice issues. It explores the diversity of constitution by citing its defining characteristics including its basis on a principle of authorizing legitimacy, its establishment of governing institutions including their responsibilities and powers and its orientation toward ensembles of public purposes. It offers some clarifications to some of the technical issues raised by value pluralism.

While Isaiah Berlin considered himself principally as a political theorist in the liberal tradition, his was an unorthodox liberalism in both method and substance, rooted in the confluence of three traditions-British, Russian, and Jewish. Unlike many liberals, he wrestled with the tension between universalism and particularism, and also between individualism and communalities. He rejected all monistic approaches to morality (including liberal monism) but repudiated as well the moral relativism of much modern thought, espousing instead value pluralism. While we cannot arrive at a universally valid conception of the summum bonum, we can specify the summun malum-the great evils of the human condition. Berlin saw political theory as a branch of moral philosophy but drew political morality from political life rather than imposing it on politics. The range of goods and principles that human beings rightly prize cannot be combined into harmonious wholes in either our individual or collective existence. Some goods exclude others, and we must choose among them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which distinguishes the concept of old liberalism, with a robust conception of private property and a defined role for government in the economy, and a new liberalism that allows government to override individual property rights in the pursuit of the general welfare. It also discusses the concept of liberalism as limited government.

Presents an article on the need for mutualism and a progressive market strategy after the presence of socialism. Lessons from the relation between socialism, markets and liberal democracy; Components for a theory of postsocialist governance; Parts of a normative framework for a postsocialist political community.

Perspectives on Politics is a general journal of political science that seeks to provide political insight on important problems, as it emerges from rigorous, broad-based research and integrative thought. The editors anticipate authors and readers primarily comprising political scientists, but also including journalists, policy analysts, public officials and their staff, and other social scientists. The articles aim to clarify for such an audience the political significance of accumulated research regarding a particular area of the world, an important policy problem, a deep normative conflict, or a significant institution or process; they may also demonstrate the insights that accrue from viewing politics from a distinctive viewpoint, method, or type of evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]