Perspectives on Politics

The Two Cultures of Democratic Theory: Responsiveness, Democratic Quality, and the Empirical-Normative Divide Andrew Sabl Empirical political scientists and normative political theorists both seek to assess the quality of democracy. But they apply to this […]

Political Science and the Public Sphere Today Rogers M. Smith The potential of political science to contribute to debates over public issues has long been hindered by tensions in the discipline’s goals of achieving scientific […]

Innovation without Reputation: How Bureaucrats Saved the Veterans’ Health Care System Colin D. Moore The Veterans Health Administration (VA) is among the most unusual and misunderstood institutions in the American welfare state. Unlike most American […]

Compared to What? Judicial Review and Other Veto Points in Contemporary Democratic Theory David Watkins and Scott Lemieux Many democratic and jurisprudential theorists have too often uncritically accepted Alexander Bickel’s notion of “the countermajoritarian difficulty” […]

Developmental Perspectives on Lesbian and Gay Politics: Fragmented Citizenship in a Fragmented State Stephen M. Engel Responding to recent criticism that American political development (APD) has yet to fully engage with both contemporary and historical […]

Technique Trumps Relevance: The Professionalization of Political Science and the Marginalization of Security Studies Michael Desch explains the disconnect between the discipline’s self-image as balancing rigor with relevance with the reality of how political scientists […]