American Political Thought Journal: Fall 2020 Issue
American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture, has recently published its Fall 2020 issue, which includes pieces by JMC faculty partners Jeremy Bailey and Carol McNamara and fellows Brian Schoen, Nora Hanagan, Jordan Cash, and Sarah Burns.
>> Table of Contents <<
Articles:
- “Declaration in Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom,” Philip Yaure
- “Francis Lieber on Institutional Liberty, Secession, and the Modern State,” Brian Schoen
- “Alexander Hamilton and the Origin of Political Obligation,” Stephen Wirls
- “Locke and Tocqueville on Religious Foundationalism,” Sanford Kessler
Review Essays:
- “Has Liberalism Failed or Succeeded?” Helena Rosenblatt
- “The Forgotten Heritage of American Christian Socialism,” Patrick Allitt
Book Reviews:
- “The Drum Major Instinct: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Theory of Political Service, by Justin Rose,” Nora Hanagan
- “Democratic Responsibility: The Politics of Many Hands in America, by Nora Hanagan,” Justin Rose
- “,” Lisa Gilson
- “The Will of the People, by T. H. Breen,” Noah R. Eber-Schmid
- “American States of Nature: The Origins of Independence, 1761–1775, by Mark Somos,” Jeremy Bailey
- “Presidential Leadership in Political Time, edited by Stephen Skowronek,” Jordan T. Cash
- “Democracy and Dysfunction, by Sanford Levinson and Jack M. Balkin,” Sarah Burns
- “The Pursuit of Happiness and the American Regime, by Elizabeth Amato,” Carol McNamara
“Francis Lieber on Institutional Liberty, Secession, and the Modern State,“ Brian Schoen
“Francis Lieber (1800–1872), professor at South Carolina College and Columbia College, New York City, spent his career grappling with the nature of political organization. A German émigré, Lieber’s political theory of the state grew around a critique of social contract theory, which he believed fostered a “Gallican liberty” prone to centralization and democratic absolutism. He contrasted this tradition with one premised on a healthy “Anglican liberty” that diffused power through societal institutions and cooperative government structures. This transatlantic perspective informed Lieber’s response to the primary threats confronting the American political system at midcentury: Calhounite states’ rights theory and Democrats’ amoral understanding of “popular sovereignty,” both of which opened the door for slavery’s expansion. Preserving institutional liberty and the Union led Lieber to a full-throated defense of the United States as an organic nation-state capable of squashing secession and advancing civilization and freedom through constitutional reform and international law.”
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Brian Schoen is Associate Professor, Assistant Chair, and Director of the Master of Social Science in the Department of History at Ohio University. His research and teaching focus on the political, social, economic, and intellectual history of the early United States from its early struggles through its near dissolution in the midst of the Civil War. His research also examines how international developments shaped regional perception, politics, commitment or opposition to slavery, and relationships to and within the federal union. Professor Schoen is currently working on a new book-length study of the statecraft of the sectional and secession crises and shorter pieces on Civil War diplomacy and Ohio politics during the Civil War. His work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Commission, the Filson Institute, and an Ohio University Baker Fund Grant.
Professor Schoen is a JMC fellow.
Learn more about Brian Schoen >>
“The Drum Major Instinct: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Theory of Political Service, by Justin Rose,” Nora Hanagan
“Despite being one of the most influential political actors of the twentieth century, Martin Luther King Jr. has received little attention from scholars interested in normative politics. Political theorists have simultaneously lauded King for his vision of an egalitarian future and his commitment to nonviolent protest and dismissed him as a political activist who doesn’t offer insight into concepts like freedom, justice, and democracy. In The Drum Major Instinct – the first monograph on King written by a political theorist, Justin Rose demonstrates that King’s political thought is not only original but also especially helpful in confronting our contemporary neoliberal racial order, which assumes that racial inequality is the result of individual behaviors as opposed to white supremacist institutions and processes.”
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Nora Hanagan is a Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She previously served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of of Political Science and Managing Director for the Program in American Values and Institutions at Duke University. Professor Hanagan’s research interests include American political theory, contemporary democratic theory, food politics, critical race theory, and feminist theory. She has published several peer-reviewed articles on these topics.
Professor Hanagan is a JMC fellow.
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“American States of Nature: The Origins of Independence, 1761–1775, by Mark Somos,” Jeremy Bailey
Jeremy Bailey reviews American States of Nature:The Origins of Independence, 1761-1775, by JMC fellow Mark Somos, which draws on an impressively “wide array of speeches, sermons, legal arguments, and pamphlets” that addresses the true impact of John Locke’s philosophy on American political development.
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Jeremy Bailey is a Professor at the University of Houston, where he holds a dual appointment in Political Science and the Honors College. His articles have appeared in several journals and he is the author of The Idea of Presidential Representation: An Intellectual and Political History (University Press of Kansas, 2019), James Madison and Constitutional Imperfection (Cambridge University Press, 2015), The Contested Removal Power, 1789-2010 (University Press of Kansas 2013, coauthored with David Alvis and Flagg Taylor), and Thomas Jefferson and Executive Power (Cambridge University Press 2007). With Susan McWilliams Barndt, he is editor of American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture, published quarterly by University of Chicago Press, as well as the American political thought book series at the University Press of Kansas.
Professor Bailey is a JMC faculty partner.
Learn more about Jeremy Bailey >>
“Presidential Leadership in Political Time, edited by Stephen Skowronek,” Jordan T. Cash
Jordan Cash reviews Stephen Skowronek’s Presidential Leadership in Political Time. “In the third edition of his classic work Presidential Leadership in Political Time, Skowronek adds to his already immense contribution by turning his attention to the current incumbent Donald J. Trump…[the essays] taken together, along with the new material…provide an excellent overview of Skowronek’s methodology and its application to contemporary presidents.”
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Jordan T. Cash is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Baylor University. He studies American institutions, constitutional law, and political theory. Cash is currently working on a book examining how presidents who were isolated from other institutions used their constitutional authority to achieve their policy goals, providing a clearer view of the office’s constitutional logic and baseline of authority. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Polity, American Political Thought, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Law and History Review, and Laws. He has also published chapters in several edited volumes, as well as book reviews and encyclopedia entries. From 2018-2020 he was a fellow in the Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy at the University of Virginia.
Cash is a JMC fellow.
Learn more about Jordan T. Cash >>
“Democracy and Dysfunction, by Sanford Levinson and Jack M. Balkin,” Sarah Burns
Sarah Burns reviews Democracy and Dysfunction by Sanford Levinson and Jack M. Balkin, which discusses and debates “timely and perennial questions about America’s dysfunctional institutions.”
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Sarah Burns is a fellow at the Quincy Institute and an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Her research examines the process of constitutional design in the United States using Montesquieu’s understanding of the separation of powers to develop a model for salutary institutions. Professor Burns has written on war powers, American foreign policy, democratic peace theory, elections, and Montesquieu’s constitutionalism. In her book, The Politics of War Powers, she demonstrates how the Constitution purposely locks the president and legislature in a battle for control over military affairs. Her current book project examines American efforts to democratize other states due to a longstanding adherence to the concept of Democratic Peace Theory.
Professor Burns is a JMC fellow.
Learn more about Sarah Burns >>
“The Pursuit of Happiness and the American Regime, by Elizabeth Amato,” Carol McNamara
“The persuasive contention of Elizabeth Amato’s argument in “The Pursuit of Happiness and the American Regime” is that although the study of happiness by social science researchers has become more serious and precise, it is through the stories and characters of American novelists that we can most fully observe and consider the pursuit of happiness in the context of American political life, its possibilities and its challenges. Amato offers both happiness research and liberal theory as alternative paths to understanding the American pursuit of happiness but concludes that neither can give a thorough account of the human desire for happiness, nor provide guidance for the expectations the pursuit, so much a part of the American ethos rooted in the language and promise of the Declaration of Independence, raises.”
Click here to read the rest of the review here >>
Carol McNamara is the Associate Director for Public Programs for the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership and Senior Lecturer at Arizona State University. Prior to that, she worked as the founding Director with Olene Walker, a former governor of Utah, to build the Olene Walker Institute of Politics & Public Service at Weber State University in Utah. Her expertise includes classical political thought, Shakespeare’s politics, the Socratic education in Xenophon, Tom Wolfe, and the American presidency. Her publications include articles on the thought of Tom Wolfe, Shakespeare’s politics, and Xenophon’s Socrates, as well as an edited volume on The Obama Presidency in the Constitutional Order.
Professor McNamara is a JMC faculty partner.
Learn more about Carol McNamara >>
American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture is a JMC supported journal that bridges the gap between historical, empirical, and theoretical research. It is the only journal dedicated exclusively to the study of American political thought. Interdisciplinary in scope, APT features research by political scientists, historians, literary scholars, economists, and philosophers who study the foundation of the American political tradition. Research explores key political concepts such as democracy, constitutionalism, equality, liberty, citizenship, political identity, and the role of the state.
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