The basic idea of deliberative democracy is an appealing one. Suppose we are faced with this basic problem of social choice. There is an important issue facing a community. There are a small number of policy options that might be chosen. The community wants to choose among these options "democratically." There are several ways in …
Power elites after fifty years
When C. Wright Mills wrote The Power Elite in 1956, we lived in a simpler time. And yet, with a few important exceptions, the concentration of power that he described continues to seem familiar by today's standards. The central idea is that the United States democracy -- in spite of the reality of political parties, …
What holds a country together?
When you consider the enormous differences that exist across regions and traditions in the United States, it raises an interesting question: what factors serve to knit this population together into a single polity? We don't share a single set of cultural values, a single religion, or a single political tradition. So what helps this population …
Rawls’s schematic sociology
John Rawls offers an interesting thought along the way in his development of the theory of justice, on the question of the stability of a well-ordered society. Basically, the idea is that a set of principles of justice need to satisfy a condition of publicity and social stability: the principles need to be such that, …
Understanding Society 