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Materiality has been largely left out of the study of Muslim life in Europe, and limited to an etic rather than emic approach. In this paper, I analyse a conservative London mosque community (the East London Mosque) that depends on the material––what I term “ethical substance”––to reinforce its ascetic rejection of the world. Drawing from five months of ethnographic research in this mosque, I examine three aspects of materiality––clothing, the mosque building, and technology––in order to explore how the community negotiates its position in the city at hand, as well as more broadly vis-à-vis modernity. The mosque emerges as a site of discursive-material tension where ethics and locale intersect, and where intention (niyya) matters more than the constitution of objects. It elucidates European modernity as broader than liberal democratic ideals (i.e. in a community stressing a returns towards, rather than away from, tradition).

Peppered with galleries, ateliers, and upscale designer boutiques, Tokyo’s Shibuya ward is often described as a commercial haven for Japan’s urban fashionistas and style-conscious visitors. Within it, a narrow park sits atop a 1960s parking structure that was once a refuge for nearly one hundred homeless city residents until most were forcibly removed in 2010 by city officials. Dozens of blue tarp tents, umbrellas, weathered shoes, and cherished belongings were discarded, and the people who had lived there were fenced out indefinitely. Although this striking contrast of urban socioeconomic disparity is one that characterises many cities across the globe, the juxtapositions in Shibuya have been made increasingly visible by strong cohorts of unrelenting activists who have ignited decades of discourse and scholarly debate about individual rights to cities, as well as the role and agency of architects in the designing of public spaces. This article combines participant observations of art activists, semi-structured and oral history interviews of homeless residents in Tokyo, as well as historical analysis, to examine these tensions as they have played out at Miyashita Park in Shibuya, including how perpetual redesigns of the park by architects and urban planners tasked with ‘re-activating’ the park in the 1960s, 2000s, and again in the late 2010s, have been vehemently opposed. More specifically, the article examines how a vocal group of art activists organised in opposition to the park’s most recent redesign efforts sponsored by Nike and the idea that such a public-private partnership could produce an inclusive public space. Instead, the activists worked to problematise the appropriateness of terms such as ‘public’ altogether. Through art installations, writing, impromptu concerts, sporting events, and protests that engaged with the politics of their own bodies, the activists turned to alternative genealogies and definitions of ‘public’ as a way to connect more particularly to Japanese urban form and to resist hegemonic and imported concepts of ‘public’ as reproduced and reinforced by architects often without challenge. By drawing on alternative terms, such as akichi, meaning ‘open land’, the activists argue for a different sense of spatial inclusivity than the supposedly universal democratic ideals associated with designs for public spaces in Tokyo.

The right to vote and participate in the political process is a quintessential feature of any democratic society. Systematic risks to the integrity of US elections and passive civic participation in the EU political process present fundamental threats to the constitutional aspirations and the democratic ideals connected to “We the People” in the US and “United in Diversity” in the EU. The existence of power imbalances, social inequalities and information asymmetries in electoral and political processes illustrate that both jurisdictions are in peril and in risk of democratic backsliding. Blockchain-based voting can transform existing electoral and political processes in the digital age. This raises the question whether blockchain-based voting can be utilised as a digital tool to enhance the democratic legitimacy of US and EU electoral and political systems. Accordingly, this article aims to examine the prospects and limits of blockchain technology to secure foundational democratic norms connected to the right to vote and civic participation at the heart of contemporary constitutionalism. It contends that the decentralised, immutable, accessible, transparent, and secure processes of blockchain technology have the potential to enhance the legitimacy of the US and EU constitutional orders, since blockchain-based voting can act as a forum for enhanced civic participation, public deliberation, and democratic contestation. Nevertheless, the article concludes that a number of important steps must be taken to fully realise the potential of blockchain-based voting in a manner that combats the risks associated with the technology, strengthens public confidence in electoral and political processes and secures a balanced system of governance in the US and the EU constitutional orders.

Around 1940, the Southern Association Study in Secondary Schools and Colleges and the Secondary School Study of the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools for Negroes implemented cooperative educational experimentation in the American South. This was a progressive education method for improving schools exemplified in the national Eight-Year Study. The research detailed here reconstructs the work of the two southern studies as it occurred in tandem and in connection with the Eight-Year Study and the General Education Board. The white Southern Study utilized the progressive cooperative study as a clinical technique largely divorced from democratic ideals. The black Secondary School Study leveraged the progressive cooperative study as a means to democratize African American education in the South. The findings reported here confirm and complement conclusions in the historiography of African American education, extend historical perspectives on the Eight-Year Study, and contribute to an understanding of how progressive education was interpreted and translated into practice.

The ‘systems turn’ amongst deliberative democrats advocates incremental institutional reform guided by deliberative democratic ideals. Whilst ideal global democracy is beyond our reach, incremental reforms can improve the quality and inclusiveness of global deliberation. However, incremental reform in non-ideal circumstances involves trade-offs between competing normative goals. The paper highlights a neglected purpose of democratic deliberation: the integration of highly fragmented technocratic deliberation on isolated issues with more holistic social perspectives emerging from the public sphere. As global governance has shifted beyond the nation state, jurisdictions have become functionally fragmented encouraging issue-specific technical framings of problems (trade policy is institutionally separated from labour, the environment and development). Fragmentation across the domestic executive is mitigated by the legislature’s role in bringing isolated technical perspectives together and subjecting them to wider public scrutiny. No analogous institution exists internationally. Highlighting functional fragmentation is important because dominant concerns with cosmopolitanism (unsettling state-centric issue framing) and republicanism (the need for institutional variety to combat the potential domination of a world state) in global governance lead to an active enthusiasm for overlapping functional jurisdictions in much of the literature, obscuring important trade-offs with the need for social integration.

Several recent reports seek to evaluate the impact of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Canadian democracy by documenting his government's efforts to curtail established democratic processes and mechanisms for public debate. However, this article uses examples of the Harper government's changes to legislative and parliamentary norms to demonstrate that this government's efforts to curtail multi-directional public debate were importantly accompanied by efforts to amplify unidirectional communication of the government's partisan messages. The paper finds that this corresponding emphasis on communication exemplified a “photo-op” approach to democracy, which highlights points of compatibility between the seemingly contradictory authoritarian-populist “publicity state” and neoliberal democratic ideals. This research demonstrates the necessity of attention to government communication in analysis of the Harper government's impact on the Canadian public sphere. It also illustrates the pragmatic rather than doctrinaire nature of New Right politics in Canada and the affinity between neoliberal and authoritarian-populist approaches to governance.

Normative democratic theory assumes that political systems should ensure civil, political and social rights, and this claim has become more salient since the economic crisis that began in 2008. This conception of citizenship was developed most prominently by T.H. Marshall (1950), and it has been further elaborated by numerous other authors, resulting in a clear division between procedural/electoral democracy concepts and authors emphasizing egalitarian concepts of democracy. We use latent class analysis to assess democratic ideals among European citizens as reported in the 2012 European Social Survey. The findings demonstrate that a majority of Europeans consider political and social rights as equally important, while some citizens predominantly emphasize either political or social rights. Furthermore, the focus on social rights is not limited to those with left-leaning ideologies. Considering current manifestations of discontent about the politics of austerity, we discuss the implications of social citizenship concepts for democratic legitimacy in Europe. ispartof: Government and Opposition vol:53 issue:4 pages:595-620 ispartof: location:Maastricht status: published

In contrast to sterile forms of apology or the evasions of color-blind political discourse, calls for reparations explicitly link the realization of democratic ideals to a history of antiblack violence and exploitation. I explore three dimensions of Ida B. Wells's antilynching writings that anticipate and enrich contemporary demands for reparations for slavery and Jim Crow. First, Wells's commitment to truth-telling, a centerpiece of reparations efforts around the world, models how to criticize received understandings of both past and present and revise them in the service of more democratic ways of life. Second, her gender- and sexuality-conscious analysis of the political and economic causes and effects of antiblack violence adds a dimension that is missing from many reparations arguments. Third, Wells both advocates an active citizenry and demands collective responsibility for the protection of black citizenship; in so doing, she reveals the racial and gendered underpinnings of contemporary disavowals of responsibility for racial justice, dressed up as “personal responsibility,” and offers a powerful rebuttal.

The truth and reconciliation commissions of Latin America and Africa are paradigms of transitional justice, often regarded as part of the process of transitioning from authoritarian to democratic rule. But truth commissions are also common in first-world settler states, which raises the question of what “transition” such commissions effectuate in Canada, Australia, and the United States. This paper examines the efforts of Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples to resolve a controversy over a government relocation of Inuit families in the 1950s for which the relocatees were demanding compensation. Concurrent with historical controversies in the Canadian courts concerning Aboriginal rights and title, the historical controversy over the relocation raised questions about the Canadian state's ability to “hear the voices” of First Nations people, who objected that their accounts of the past had been disregarded by government-contracted historians and courts alike. I argue that the Royal Commission's efforts to hear the voices of Inuit relocatees, showcased in nationally televised hearings, was a phatic ritual in which communicative contact between marginalized citizens and the state was ritually established. The ritual was presented as a remedy for failures to achieve phatic communion among citizens and state—a condition of communicative contact held up as essential to the realization of liberal democratic ideals. The work of the Royal Commission and other truth commissions highlights the growing prominence of communication, particularly liberal communicative events construed as “open,” “equal,” and “free,” as a concern of both theory and practice in liberal democratic polities.

The diffusion of gender quotas reflects the legitimation of the normative principle of women's equality in public life. Legislative gender quotas, whether adopted through top-down elite decision making or through bottom-up feminist activism, are frequently justified via appeals to norms of inclusion and fairness. These democratic ideals of women's full representation and participation have indeed gained traction: Over the past two decades, quotas have extended beyond legislatures to public institutions, such as cabinets and executive agencies, and to state advisory councils, subnational governments, labor union directorates, and corporate boards. Such diffusion signals a profound gendering of public space and leadership, a transformation initiated by states assuming active roles as the guarantors—rather than mere promoters—of equality.

The books under review address different aspects of democracy’s tortuous path as both a much-cherished political value and an institutional arrangement in modern Iranian society. They do so by explaining how the struggle for basic rights and freedoms has over time necessitated a national yearning for a “clear consciousness” that constantly traverses the boundaries of the familiar and the foreign, the universal and the particular. It is the great merit of all three works that they approach the troubled pursuit of democratic ideals through a contextual reading of Iranian political and social history over the past century. They are not given to fixed ideas and false binaries so fashionable today in writings on Muslim-majority societies (e.g. Islam vs. secularism, modernity vs. tradition, West vs. East), nor are they guided by melodramatic prophecies about the apparent “End of History” or an impending “Clash of Civilizations.”

Contact with the criminal justice system is greater today than at any time in our history. In this article, we argue that interactions with criminal justice are an important source of political socialization, in which the lessons that are imprinted are antagonistic to democratic participation and inspire negative orientations toward government. To test this argument, we conduct the first systematic empirical exploration of how criminal justice involvement shapes the citizenship and political voice of a growing swath of Americans. We find that custodial involvement carries with it a substantial civic penalty that is not explained by criminal propensity or socioeconomic differences alone. Given that the carceral state has become a routine site of interaction between government and citizens, institutions of criminal justice have emerged as an important force in defining citizen participation and understandings, with potentially dire consequences for democratic ideals.

Extensive political science research reveals that the decisions of the US Supreme Court are deeply political. And both advocates and critics of judicial elections concede that partisan elections are a democratic method of judicial selection. Does the value of democratic representation mean that US Supreme Court Justices should be selected through partisan elections? I argue not. Partisan judicial elections are actually far poorer institutional mechanisms for capturing the judgment of the people on legal matters than has been recognized. The role of parties in structuring a campaign distorts the deliberative environment surrounding judicial elections, creating significant barriers to voters expressing a judgment on matters of legal meaning. The kind of distortion is best understood through reference to aprocessualcriterion of deliberative democracy, which provides a fitting normative template to ground theoretical inquiry into the reason-giving possibilities of existing democratic institutions and practices. Hence, answering why the US Supreme Court should not be elected on democratic grounds also reveals new insights about the role of parties in sustaining (or subverting) deliberative democratic ideals.

This article critically addresses the varied ways in which political parties can be said to represent. Three important ideal-typical modes of party representation are outlined: the popular, the statal, and the reflexive. Arguments are offered for countering the common view that, for example, popular modes are the most democratic, and statal modes the least democratic. Statal modes in particular are often taken to be an indicator of a decline in parties’ representative functions; however, shifting modes of party representation often have more to do with strategic choices and contextual pressures than democratic ideals. No one ideal-typical mode is intrinsically more democratic than others. Further, there is evidence that a new mode of party representation, the reflexive, may be emerging; parties may be transforming into something they never were in order to continue to do the things they have always sought to do. Whether democracy is unthinkable save for political parties is no longer the question we need to ask. Rather, we need to ask: what kinds of representative democracy are thinkable? And what forms of party claims, if any, are appropriate to them?

This article identifies how democracy and transparency in Thailand have been subverted since 2001. Specifically, it appraises the sentiments and trends that have been in place since 1993 to prevent a return to authoritarian government. Additionally, it also examines structures and policies that have thwarted democratic consolidation since 2000. The central hypothesis of the article is that there has been a structural weakening of democracy in Thailand under the Thai Rak Thai government since 2001. In other words, Thailand's democratic consolidation has been held in abeyance since the electoral victory of the Thaksin government.This study utilizes an admixture of the institutionalist and agency approaches to make its case. There is sufficient evidence to discern since 2001 the direction and nature of state–society relations in Thailand and Thaksin has also undertaken a number of policies by way of elite strategic choices. Consequently, bringing these two approaches into strategic convergence obtains better and more comprehensive results of the state of democratic consolidation in Thailand, both from an elite as well as societal perspective for a more balanced approach. The evidence culled thus far suggests that, whereas Thaksin came to power using democratic means and in fact consolidated his democratic credentials after his second victory in 2005, domestic political and social developments reflect a weaker commitment to democratic ideals and its structural and cultural consolidation.

It is a fairly common criticism of deliberative democratic ideals that one cannot involve thousands, let alone millions, of people in a decision-making process and still retain its deliberative character, at least not in any sense as strict as those of the classic expositions of deliberative democratic principles. Various solutions to this scale problem have been proposed, but implicit in most deliberative designs is the media solution. People can watch the debate unfold on television, can listen to it on the radio, can follow it, or even contribute to a limited extent, online. This is supposed to ensure not only that deliberation is subject to the check of publicity, but also that it is dispersed throughout the public sphere.This is precisely the idea behind James Fishkin's deliberative poll technique, designed to be televised so that deliberation among a few would be brought to ‘an audience of millions’, ‘bridging the gap’ between informed and uninformed opinion, and acting as a ‘catalyst’ to change the nature of discussion on a topic in a broader community. But what happens when we rely on the media to bear the weight of responsibility for generating links between insiders and outsiders in public deliberation? The media are not broad pipes which simply convey whatever is put into them but, like all institutions, shape that input in sometimes significant ways. If we are to understand the value of the media in addressing problems of deliberative scale, we need to understand those institutional effects.In this Research Note I examine the effects the media had on the kinds of information transferred from deliberators to audience in a deliberative poll that took place in the United Kingdom in July 1998.

Freedom of speech, press, assembly, and petition have long been celebrated as crucial to democratic government. (I will often refer to these rights collectively as ‘freedom of expression’ or as ‘freedom of speech’.) United States Supreme Court decisions have, quite rightly, justified strong protection of these freedoms because of their crucial role in the functioning of American democracy. (Of course, there are other justifications as well, but I will not discuss them in this paper.)

This article addresses the question of whether, or under what conditions, democratic institutions contribute to ‘developmental governance’ in sub-Saharan Africa, in forms such as coherent policy formulation, effective public administration, and limited corruption. While few dispute the desirability for Africa of democracy and good governance in theory, many remain sceptical about whether the two necessarily go together in practice. Using a simple framework informed by the new institutional economics, I analyse the impact of political institutions on governance quality in a sample of 38 sub-Saharan African countries. The main finding is that a combination of democratic contestation and institutional restraints on governments' discretionary authority substantially improves developmental governance. Judged against liberal democratic ideals, Africa's emerging democracies have many shortcomings. Yet the article shows that democratic institutions systematically enhance African states' performance as agents of development.

n this essay, I assess how comparative politics is taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels and what our approach to teaching says about the state of the subfield. What do practitioners emphasize in a comparative politics course in light of the enormous global changes of the past decade? Which topics are included and which ignored? What should be included that is now missing, even at the cost of excluding something else? I found that many undergraduate syllabi take as their starting point the triumph of the "third wave of democratization." Instructors use democracy and democratization as their organizing principle; this is reflected in the case studies covered in the courses. This choice comes at the cost of not studying countries or regions where democracy is underdeveloped or stunted. Many courses thus highlight a limited range of countries and conceptual themes while ignoring critical issues that dominate the headlines, such as the politics of nondemocracies and current U.S. national security preoccupations with rebuilding demolished states, containing Islamic fundamentalism, and disarming "rogue" states. In the not so distant past, national security concerns heavily influenced the structure and content of lower-level comparative politics courses, since instructors felt compelled to familiarize students with "totalitarian," or Soviet-style, regimes. Perhaps our excitement with the spread of democratic ideals and institutions has obscured the fact that numerous parts of the world are still governed by autocracies. Graduate courses also emphasize institutional developments and democratic structures at the expense of new topics (such as ideas, culture, norms, and values), as well as older themes (such as welfare state policy, social and political mobilization, gender, the impact of international trade, and state capacity). Field seminars have become more narrowly focused than they used to be, aiming primarily to summarize the endeavors of earlier generations of scholars, assess knowledge, and advance theory related to state-society relations first laid out by the founders of the social sciences: Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Vilfredo Pareto, and Robert Michels.

The choice of rules for the central government budget process represents a trade-off between potentially conflicting goals. Budgetary reforms triggered by serious imbalances in public finances over the last two decades indicate that a political reorientation has taken place, giving more emphasis to macroeconomic impacts, long-term budgetary restrictions, and transparency in budget decision making. The paper analyses a number of generic problems of collective decision-making in the fiscal policy area and their relation to fundamental values upon which democratic states are built. The discussion is illustrated by experiences from a major budget process reform in Sweden between 1992 and 1997. The conclusion is that tighter fiscal discipline can be achieved without encroaching upon democratic values; it is argued that democracy can in fact be strengthened by such a shift of regime.

For the Slovenian-born journalist, novelist and populist historian Louis Adamic, Ellis Island was as central to American civilization as Plymouth Rock. Throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s, Adamic dedicated himself to raising public awareness about the essential role of immigrants in the life of the nation. Adamic chronicled the stories and contributions of famous and not-so-famous immigrants from a variety of ethnic groups and challenged his adopted country to be true to its democratic ideals.

Despite the overwhelming prevalence of democratic ideals in contemporary political relations throughout the world, a potent ideological challenge to liberal democratic norms is the recent claim that “differential” rights are essential to foster and protect the identity of individual rights within culturally distinct groups. This article examines the claim that cultural identity confers sufficient normative force upon which to base distinct political rights for specific groups. In what, precisely, does the normative force of “cultural identity” lie? The article challenges the claims that individuals' sense of personal identity can only arise through a “secure cultural context”; that a passive sense of group identity is a “primary good” that equals or even precedes the importance of universal human rights; and that this “politics of inclusion” based upon differential rights for different groups will lead to greater equality and tolerance within the larger political community.

The Philippines in the immediate post-war years may be described as a nation in search of an identity. This preoccupation with what one journalist has dubbed ‘the question of identity’ spurred a sudden interest in the research and discussion of things Filipino: Filipino dance, theater, literature, language, music, art and cultural traditions. After four hundred and fifty years of colonial rule the Filipino intelligentsia began to wonder if indeed the western legacy of colonial rule was the annihilation of the very essence of Filipino culture. Under the aegis of American rule Filipinos were adamant about proving to their colonizers that they had been good pupils in western democratic ideals and were fit to govern themselves. From the 1920s to the early 1940s, the Filipino had become a sajonista (pro-American). The Japanese colonizers who replaced the Americans in the second world war were appalled not only at the pro-Americanism of the Filipino but at the magnitude of American influence absorbed by Filipino culture. In fact it was the Japanese who promoted the use of Tagalog and the ‘revival’ and appreciation of Filipino cultural traditions as part of the policy of ‘Asia for the Asians’. Once independence was achieved at last in 1946, the focus shifted. The nagging question was no longer ‘Are we western enough to govern ourselves?’ but its opposite—‘Have we become too westernized to the point of losing ourselves?’.

How far ought good liberals to go in accommodating parents with religious objections to the public school curriculum? This article argues that liberal democratic ideals are best honored when we allow parents to structure their children's education in ways compatible with their religious beliefs. Both liberal and democratic theorists, as well as a number of recent judicial decisions, are criticized for opposing such accommodation and for arguing their case against religious parents on a distorted characterization of religious parents' goals. An account of religious parents' concerns that avoids privileging a secular worldview is presented and this account is used to argue for the political benefits of a broad “principle of parental deference.” In conclusion, a new account of where public schools ought properly to draw the line, detailing three exceptional cases in which parental religious concerns ought not to be accommodated, is offered.

Cultural and racial pluralism have increasingly become a “riveting reality” of contemporary Canadian society. Various dimensions of this reality are explored and critical observations are made about the contribution of Canadian political science to an understanding of the phenomenon and its impact on our political life. The increasing polyethnicity of Canadian society has pressured our decision-makers into articulating both a vision and a policy of multiculturalism. However, since the early 1980s both vision and policy have come under siege. The motives of the critics of multiculturalism are questioned, and an endorsement is made of policies which continue to seek answers in pursuit of the democratic ideals of procedural justice, human equality and mutual respect.

At First Sight it Might Appear Somewhat Curious to be studying the efficacy of the liberal democratic state just at that historic moment when liberal democracy seems to have triumphed on a global scale. Yet within contemporary Europe, the nature of political community and sovereign power have been thrown into question by the resurgence of ethnic nationalism, the intensification of regional integration and global turbulence. Taken together, these forces appear to deliver a fundamental challenge to the democratic ideals which underpin liberal democratic states. This article seeks to evaluate the nature of this challenge. It invites specific consideration of the consequences of these ‘threats from above’ and ‘threats from below’ for the character of the modern state.

Of the many endeavors in the last three decades to restate the central aspirations of liberalism, this important work is one of the most balanced, nuanced, and cogent. Part of its success lies in its willingness to stretch the boundaries of what we call liberalism, but in doing so, Spragens only brings liberal theory into better alignment with intuitions and sensibilities underlying liberal practice.

Engaging her contemporaries in debates over democratic ideals and processes, Iris M. Young offers a collection of seven essays that mitigate arguments on either side of those debates (participation vs. representation, localism vs. state, segregation vs. integration, identity vs. difference) by applying the critical ideal of inclusion. She argues that the normative legitimacy of democratic decisions rests upon the extent to which those affected by decisions are included in or have the opportunity to enter the decision making process. One might think that inclusion solves only one problem, the problem of exclusion, for democracy. However, Young extends the ideal of inclusion across manifold debates in democratic theory and speaks broadly to the less than ideal conditions under which we now practice democracy.

In 1975, after The New York Times published a devastating critique of the CIA, three government panels--the Rockefeller, Church, and Pike Committees--were formed to examine these allegations in depth. What they uncovered--assassination plots, opened mail, drug experiments against unsuspecting subjects (two of whom died from side effects)--shocked the American people and moved Senator Frank Church to call the CIA "a rogue elephant rampaging out of control." Clearly, America needs a strong, effective intelligence effort, but just as clearly, this effort must operate within the bounds of an open, democratic society. Based on hundreds of interviews with CIA officials, national security experts, and legislators, as well as a thorough culling of the archival record, America's Secret Power offers an illuminating and up-to-date picture of the Central Intelligence Agency, stressing the difficult balance between the genuine needs of national security and the protection of individual liberties. Loch Johnson, who has studied the workings of the CIA at first hand as a legislative overseer, presents a comprehensive examination of the Agency and its relations with other American institutions, including Congress and the White House (he offers particularly astute analyses of the CIA's use of journalists and academics to gather intelligence) and he illuminates the CIA's three major missions--intelligence analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action--providing vivid descriptions of their purpose and their pathologies. For example, he offers a fascinating analysis of the "Seven Sins" of intelligence work, revealing how the best intelligence reports can be distorted or ignored (in the mid-1960s, the evidence against a quick American victory in Vietnam was dismissed); how covert actions can spin out of control despite extensive safeguards, as in the Iran-Contra scandal; and how the CIA has spied on American citizens in clear violation of its charter. Further, he provides a thorough review of legislative efforts to curb these abuses, suggesting several important ways to achieve the delicate balance between national security and democratic ideals. Vividly written and meticulously documented, America's Secret Power draws the strands of a vast amount of research into a balanced critique of our intelligence networks. It is a work that stands alone in its thoroughness and objectivity, a thoughtful and sobering portrait of the contemporary CIA.

Although some scholars have argued that authoritarianism is characteristic only of the right and not of the left, persuasive reasons exist for doubting this claim. Intuitive observation of left-wing and right-wing regimes as well as radical political movements of the left and right reveals striking parallels in their styles of political engagement, their reliance upon force, their disdain for democratic ideals and practices and their violations of civil liberties. In addition, systematic inquiry into the similarities and differences between far-left and far-right radicals in the United States has been hampered by various methodological difficulties. One can list, among these, such problems as the obvious inappropriateness of the F scale (owing to its strong right-wing content) as a measure for identifying left-wing authoritarians; the difficulty of obtaining adequate samples of true believers of the extreme left and right; the self-image of the American left as a persecuted minority which, for reasons of self-interest, spuriously inflates the degree of support expressed by its members for individual rights and liberties; and the exposure of both extreme camps to the liberal democratic values dominating American political culture, which unmistakably colours their political rhetoric.We have reason to think that a similar study conducted in some – perhaps many – European countries would reveal even greater similarities between the far left and far right than we have turned up in the United States. Unlike the United States, which has enjoyed a strong liberal democratic tradition that has served to weaken and soften the intensity of its radical movements, a number of European countries, less wedded to liberal democratic principles, have developed a more vigorous, less diluted tradition of radical politics. These nations have long had to contend with powerful extremist movements actively and significantly engaged in the political struggles of their respective nations. The radical movements of Europe have been more extreme and zealous – more unequivocally revolutionary and reactionary – than the radical movements of the United States. The sustained confrontation of these extremist movements, in our view, is likely to have intensified the authoritarian propensities of each.In the present article, through a series of surveys in which we have tried to idenify, as best we can, supporters of the far left and far right, we have systematically compared the two camps on a variety of political and psychological characteristics. We find, in keeping with the conventional view, that the far left and the far right stand at opposite end of the familiar left–right continuum on many issues of public policy, political philosophy and personal belief. They hold sharply contrasting views on questions of law and order, foreign policy, social welfare, economic equality, racial equality, women's rights, sexual freedom, patriotism, social conventions, religion, family values and orientations towards business, labour and private enterprise.Nevertheless, while the two camps embrace different programmatic beliefs, both are deeply estranged from certain features of American society and highly critical of what they perceive as the spiritual and moral degeneration of American institutions. Both view American society as dominated by conspiratorial forces that are working to defeat their respective ideological aims.The degree of their alienation is intensified by the zealous and unyielding manner in which they hold their beliefs. Both camps possess an inflexible psychological and political style characterized by the tendency to view social and political affairs in crude, unambiguous and stereotypical terms. They see political life as a conflict between ‘us’ and ‘them’, a struggle between good and evil played out on a battleground where compromise amounts to capitulation and the goal is total victory.The far left and the far right also resemble each other in the way they pursue their political goals. Both are disposed to censor their opponents, to deal harshly with enemies, to sacrifice the well-being even of the innocent in order to serve a ‘higher purpose’, and to use cruel tactics if necessary to ‘persuade’ society of the wisdom of their objectives. Both tend to support (or oppose) civil liberties in a highly partisan and self-serving fashion, supporting freedom for themselves and for the groups and causes they favour while seeking to withhold it from enemies and advocates of causes they dislike.In sum, when the views of the far left and far right are evaluated against the standard left–right ideological dimension, they can appropriately be classifled at opposite ends of the political spectrum. But when the two camps are evaluated on questions of political and psychological style, the treatment of political opponents, and the tactics that they are willing to employ to achieve their ends, the display many parallels that can rightly be labelled authoritarian.

‘Given the circumstances facing Indonesian governments in the years 1950–57’, a standard history of Indonesia comments, ‘it is not surprising that the democratic experiment foundered, for there were few foundations upon which representative democracy could be built. Indonesia inherited from the Dutch and Japanese the traditions, assumptions and legal structure ofa police state. The Indonesian masses – mostly illiterate, poor, accustomed to authoritarian and paternalistic rule, and spread over an enormous archipelago – were hardly in a position to force politicians in Jakarta to account for their performance. The politically informed were only a tiny layer of urban society and the Jakarta politicians, while proclaiming their democratic ideals, were mostly elitists and selfconscious participants in a new urban superculture. They were paternalistic towards those less fortunate than themselves and sometimes simply snobbish towards those who, for instance, could not speak fluent Dutch. They had little commitment to the grass-roots structure of representative government and managed to postpone elections for five more years. A plant as rare as representative democracy can hardly grow in such soil.’

The recently unfolding process of transition from twenty years of military government to a new republic with democratic ideals in Brazil brings, as one of its correlates, an upsurge of citizen interest about a previous period of transition which took place almost one hundred years ago. That transition, marked by the end of modern slavery, led to the implantation of a dependent capitalist bourgeois order. The focus of many controversies and the object of considerable debate, “transition” in the late nineteenth century, has been most widely researched in São Paulo. There, the influx of European immigration accompanied the expansion of coffee production in the western frontier and excess capital generated from the sale of coffee was injected into the incipient industrial sector of the economy.

For nearly half a century Paul Wallace Gates's research has illuminated brilliantly the history of American land policy and agriculture.' During much of this period his studies have been the directing and guiding influence in land-policy scholarship; so the hallmarks of Gates's work are well enough known to all students of American economic history, particularly to his colleagues in the Economic History Association. Always characteristic of his scholarship is prodigious research in archival records and other primary sources. The late Frederick Merk, who was Gates's mentor at Harvard, commented upon the remarkable range of sources that have been mined to produce both the quantitative and the interpretative constructs in Gates's studies: the land records in Washington and regional repositories, original census schedules, the federal and state archives of both trial and appellate courts, mortgage records, tax and probate archives, advertisements as well as the articles and statistics in newspapers and journals, state administrative records and agricultural reports, county histories and mug books, and private manuscript correspondence of all kinds.2 A second hallmark of Professor Gates's writings is the intimate and comprehensive knowledge of local economies and specific interests as they were affected historically by

This article proposes a structuralist alternative to mainstream behavioural studies of political culture in the United States. After first describing the deficiencies in the mainstream approach, the article suggests that political culture as attitudes and values should be seen as surface elements of a deep cultural structure. The structuralist alternative is presented in some detail, with emphasis upon cultural narratives. Building upon structuralist theory, American political culture emerges as ‘mythologized individualism’, the ramifications of which are described in terms of American ideological cognition and in terms of American capacities to use culture as a means of realizing democratic ideals. In these latter respects, mythologized individualism is found wanting.

To appreciate the political theories and institutions of Asia in the proper historical perspective, it is necessary to remember that, in spite of Switzerland, universal suffrage and the initiative and referendum are essentially young phenomena in Eur-America; and that republicanism cannot be pronounced to be a historic trait of the occidental mind.On the other hand, it is apparent that the liberal political movements in Young Asia have, if at all, only very remote blood-relationship with the theories and institutions developed in its past history. The Japanese constitutional monarchy, the ideals of the Young Turk, the Chinese republic, as well as the nationalist activities in Egypt, Persia and India, are chiefly based on the modern Eur-American achievements. These sources can be briefly mentioned as: (1) the English parliament, (2) the American federation, (3) the “ideas of 1789,” (4) the idealism of Fichte and Schiller, (5) the socialism of Karl Marx and Louis Blanc, (6) the political mysticism of Joseph Mazzini, and, last but not least, (7) the philosophy and methodology of John Stuart Mill.Within these limitations it should be possible to define the rightful place of the Asians in a scientific study of comparative politics.