The importance of the countryside (rief) for the social and economic development of Arab societies whose populations are still greatly peasant in composition and whose wealth is still based on agriculture seems incontestable. Less obvious, but equally important, is the political role of the peasantry and the rural areas in the process of transition from traditional to more modern types of social and political systems in the Middle East. There is plenty of evidence that political modernization cannot take place without a solution to the peasant problem — without their incorporation into the political system. Huntington holds that in modernizing countries where the bulk of the population is rural but where politics remains a predominately urban game, governments are likely to be ephemeral, unstable and ineffective. He argues that the establishment of stable and effective regimes requires bridging the urban-rural gap through some coalition of urban and rural forces which will bring the peasantry into the system. Furthermore, both Huntington and Barrington Moore argue that the particular type of leadership under which the peasants are brought into the political system greatly shapes the whole subsequent development of the system. The countryside, according to Huntington, plays a crucial swing role and this role varies from very conservative to very revolutionary. Three possibilities seem to be typical. One outcome is where peasants are brought into the system by upper-class leadership, sometimes through a formally liberal type electoral system, informally based on patronage and traditional symbolism, sometimes through a conservative authoritarian system.

Liberal political thought has fractured into “classical” and “modern” camps. This division is rooted in differing reactions to the rise of capitalism and democracy, which are institutional outgrowths of liberal principles, unanticipated by its seminal thinkers. Both “classical” and “modern” liberalism are led astray by classifying liberal democracy as a kind of state. But democracies are not states; they are selforganizing systems. When the nature of this error is grasped, a more coherent liberal vision emerges, where the key tension in liberal society is between selforganizing systems and instrumental organizations. Possibilities in public policy take on new dimensions as well.

The world we know is largely the institutional outcome of liberalism's political triumph, first in the West and increasingly worldwide. Yet today liberal thought is deeply divided against itself and, in this division, often unable to comprehend a world in many ways its product. This division grows primarily from tensions between two liberal institutions: liberal, or representative, democracy and the market, and also from the near universal failure of liberals to grasp democratic government's unusual systemic character. Tensions between liberal democracy and the market are central issues, whereas the character of democratic government receives far less attention. Yet how the first issue is evaluated depends in part on understanding the last. Liberalism has strengthened the intellectual, legal, economic and political status of individuals within society, emphasizing equality of status for all people.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY Europe produced two major concepts for the reorganization of society: those of Marxian socialism and liberal nationalism. Each was regarded by its exponents as a liberating force. Marxian socialists wished to free mankind from the economic exploitation of the capitalistic system, while liberal nationalists wished to free the peoples of Europe from the oppression of authoritarian empires. Both had a strong admixture of utopianism. The socialists envisioned a classless society in which men would work in equality and harmony for the common good, while liberal nationalists envisioned a world composed of nation-states based on democratic constitutions. Both sought to banish war. To the socialists war was a function of capitalism and would disappear with its abolition. To the liberal nationalists war was the product of autocratic monarchical governments, whose liquidation would introduce a new era of international peace.

Foundation is a crucial concept in Hannah Arendt's work. She was especially interested in modern attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to found new bodies politic. Arendt maintained, however, that totalitarian movements were hostile to the project of foundation. Far from seeking to stabilize the world, totalitarianism set the world in motion and tried to keep it moving. But when we turn to National Socialist ideology itself we discover that foundation was vital to the Nazi project; Hitler understood himself as the founder of his people. Arendt's own interpretation of Nazism is mistaken, but I believe that her general theory of foundation can help us to make sense of the National Socialist experience. This article examines the project of foundation in Hitler's Weltanschauung and redeploys Arendt's concepts to explain his unsuccessful attempt to create a new body politic.

Contemporary critics have treated liberalism as synonymous with individualism. In light of this bias, too little attention has been focused on historical variations within the classical liberal tradition. The “associational” contributions of Burke, Tocqueville and other self-conscious liberals have been neglected largely because they do not conform to common assumptions about the contractarian and individualistic bases of liberal thought. This oversight has obscured perhaps the most distinguishing feature of Edmund Burke's political thought: namely, his attention to that domain known in contemporary terms as “civil society.” In his defense of intermediary institutions Burke demonstrates a prescient understanding of the requirements of modern constitutional arrangements. His thoughts on religious groups, political parties, and other intermediary attachments challenge the anti-associational bias of classical liberals such as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Madison, and Bolingbroke. Burke's attention to these relationships marks a significant qualification of classical liberalism's early obsession with the perils of pluralism and its dawning sensitivity to the vices of individualism.

This essay seeks to demonstrate that the different generic parts of Cicero's corpus are but different sides of the mind of the same man, and, thus, that all parts of the corpus—including the forensic speeches, once they have been corroborated by other passages in his corpus—should be regarded as valuable evidence for understanding Ciceronian political thought. A comparison of Cicero's Peripatetic criticism of the Younger Cato's Stoicism in the Pro Murena to the view of Cato's politics expressed in his private correspondence of 61–60 BC and in De Finibus 4.61 reveals that this criticism is more than just a humorous digression to win the case. As an extended expression of Cicero's belief that the inflexible moral certainties of Cato's Stoicism could be detrimental to the managing of the consensus necessary to political life in a republic, the Pro Murena should also be recognized as an articulation of Cicero's philosophical approach to the practice of politics.

Quentin Skinner's method for studying the history of political thought has been widely and heatedly debated for decades. This article takes a new tack, offering a critique of Skinner's approach on the grounds he has himself established: consideration of his historical work as exemplifying the theory in practice. Three central assumptions of Skinner's method are briefly reviewed; each is then evaluated in the context of his writings on Hobbes. The analysis reveals problems and ambiguities in the specification and implementation of the method and in its underlying philosophy. The essay concludes by examining the broader practical and philosophical implications of adopting this approach to the study of political ideas: the method operationalizes a set of philosophical commitments that transforms ideological choices into questions of proper method.

In poland, unlike the other satellites, Communist policy toward the Church in the past ten years has been largely cautious and at times even conciliatory. There were no wholesale persecutions, no spectacular trials like those of Mindszenty or Stepinac. That is not to say that the Communists were willing to tolerate the rival claims of the Church to shape the mind and soul of the population. They merely found it wiser to pursue their goal slowly. The progress toward that goal, involving among other things the signing of a bilateral agreement, provides some insights into the course and outcome of a seemingly mild Communist policy.

This essay provides an overview of the life and theoretical concerns of Hannah Arendt. It traces the way her experience as a German Jew in the 1930s informed her analysis of totalitarianism in The Origins of Totalitarianism and her idea of the “banality of evil” in Eichmann in Jerusalem. The essay takes issue with those of Arendt's critics who detect a lack of “love of the Jewish people” in her writing. It also traces the way Arendt's encounter with totalitarian evil led to a deeper questioning of the anti-democratic impulses in the Western tradition of political thought—a questioning that finds its fullest articulation in The Human Condition and On Revolution. Throughout, my concern is to highlight Arendt's contribution to thinking “the political” in a way friendly to the basic phenomenon of human plurality. I also highlight her recovery and extension of the main themes of the civic republican tradition.

Scholars studying classic political texts face an important decision: Should these texts be read as artifacts of history or as sources for still-valid insights about politics today? Competing historical and “presentist” approaches to political thought do not have a methodological dispute—that is, a disagreement about the most effective scholarly means to an agreed-upon end. They instead have an ethical dispute about the respective value of competing activities that aim at different purposes. This article examines six ethical arguments, drawn primarily from the work of Quentin Skinner, in favor of the historical approach. It concludes that while both intellectual history and presentist theory are ethically justifiable, the best justification of the former enterprise is that it can help us achieve the purposes of the latter.

Marx had a specific theory about the nature of non-European societies, and this theory determined his views on the conditions and possibilities of industrialization and modernization in non-Western countries. Yet this theory is hardly known, though it is extremely interesting and sometimes contradicts the more sweeping and general claims made on behalf of Marxism as a universal philosophy of history. Marx elaborated his views on the nature of the non-European world in numerous articles and letters, discussed it in Capital and the Critique of Political Economy, and based his conclusions on a mass of economic, historical, and sociological data. This theory is worthwhile studying both for those who are interested in Marx and for those studying modernization: it has its own difficulties, but it sheds an intriguing light on some of Marx's best insights into historical development and may help to correct some of the current models of modernization.

Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), a self-styled “Christian Democrat” who dominated two generations of Dutch political history, has received passing mention rather than scholarly examination outside the Netherlands. Ernst Troeltsch, speaking of Kuyper's theological work, called him a key figure in the development of modern Calvinistic thought. And Michael Fogarty mentions Kuyper's influence in building “one of the most successful, and in many ways the most instructive political, economic and social movements to be found anywhere in the Christian world.” But, apart from such brief notes, there is little. We propose in this article to sketch Kuyper's career and summarize the ideas with which he attacked Liberalism.

According to Isaiah Berlin's influential interpretation, J. G. Herder (1744–1803) deserves to be recognized as the first cultural pluralist in the West, and thus also as an important historical source of the pluralistic ideas espoused by increasing numbers of political theorists today. Herder's importance actually lies in the ambivalent stance he takes toward his own pluralistic insights. That is, convinced that it is impossible to adhere to a completely pluralistic view of the world, Herder sets out to combine pluralism and its theoretical opposite (“monism”) into a novel theory of historical progress according to which history reaches its culmination in the realization of a purified form of Christianity. Contemporary pluralists have much to learn—both historically and theoretically—from Herder's confrontation with his pluralism.

Ronald Dworkin's legal essays have provoked considerable commentary on the nature of rights, law, and judging. Curiously unexplored, however, is the central claim of his work: that it presents a coherent and liberal theory of law. This article examines that claim and finds that Dworkin is most successful in establishing two propositions: (1) in “hard cases” at law there are “right answers” and (2) “articulate consistency” is the appropriate method of discovering and expressing them. Neither of these propositions, however, has any essential relation to the individual rights that he admonishes us to take seriously. Moreover, the right which Dworkin takes most seriously, “equal concern and respect,” rests upon a foundation incompatible with his argument on behalf of “right answers.” Thus, Dworkin's theory of law is neither coherent nor liberal.

In that famous passage in his De Civitate Dei which has been called the first “Mirror of Princes,” St. Augustine outlines the qualities of the good king. The passage is toolong to quote here, but certain of the qualities listed are pertinent to this discussion. He tells us that kings are happy

If they rule justly; … if they make their power the handmaid of His majesty by using it for the greatest possible extension of His worship; … if more than their own they love that kingdom in which they are not afraid to have partners; if they are slow to punish, quick to pardon; if they apply that punishment as necessary to government and the defense of the republic, and not to gratify their own enmity; … if they prefer to govern depraved desires rather than any nation whatsoever; and if they do all these things, not through ardent desire of empty glory, but through love of eternal felicity, not neglecting to offer to the true God, who is their God, for their sins the sacrifices of humility, contrition, and prayer.

“MANY of the troubles of today reflect the distraction of minds to which a sane and balanced view of society has never been adequately presented. … No other writer … has the classical strength and sanity of Professor Green, who was never more thorough and at home than when dealing with those questions affecting citizenship in and for which, it may be said, he lived” (Bosanquet).

Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the United States Supreme Court, has been criticized by some for failing to bring a woman's perspective to the Court, and by others for acting too much like the stereotypical woman who cannot make up her mind. Both criticisms overlook the possibility that O'Connor's impact as a female is derived from the fact that she is promulgating a very specific jurisprudence—that of the feminine. However, it is in employing this jurisprudence that she undermines the potential for both a feminist jurisprudence and for a cohesive conservative bloc on the Court.

Much of the literature on September 11 focuses on bin Laden as a terrorist or on the idea of a clash of civilizations. In criticizing both, this paper instead conceptualizes bin Laden as a “civilizational revolutionary.” As a revolutionary, bin Laden has sought to topple moderate regimes in the Middle East and to reestablish the caliphate. In contrast with most other national or transnational revolutionaries, however, he has emphasized culture—militant Islamism. Nevertheless, as the literature on social revolutions suggests, bin Laden has used the big strategy of most other revolutionaries in “externalizing” regional conflicts with his attacks on the United States. But his tactic of apocalyptic terrorism has made him unique as a revolutionary.