Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 February 2007
An anonymous late eighteenth century British painting at the Ackland Museum in Chapel Hill portrays “Satan Leaving the Court of Chaos,” a reference to Book II of John Milton's Paradise Lost. In an assertion of demotic power, Satan, “the adversary of God and man,” travels “full fraught with mischievous revenge” from Chaos, where he is most at home, to God's created world in order to corrupt Adam and Eve and induce original sin.Ira Katznelson is Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University ([email protected]). This text is a slightly revised version of the presidential address delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 31, 2006. The program's theme, “Power Reconsidered,” animated the choice of subject. He is particularly grateful to the Program Chairs, Judith Goldstein and Richard Valelly, for their intellectual and instrumental leadership.