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Political Theory
This large-format book is comprised of some forty selections from touchstone texts in democratic theory. Its main sections and samples of authors represented are: Liberalism and Republicanism (Locke, Mill, Aristotle, Rousseau); Contemporary Theories (Hayek, Dahl, Schumpeter, Dewey); and Critiques (Bobbio, Foucault, Habermas, Young). Each of these broad sections is further subdivided, for instance, the Critiques section into Realism, Postmodernism, Discourse theory, Inclusion (i.e., anti-racist and anti-sexist) theories, and Non-Western views (e.g., of Gandhi and Bishop Tutu). With the exception of rational choice literature and treatments of the voters’ paradoxes and the like, the mainstream traditions of democratic theory are covered, and the editors have done as good a job as can be expected in striking a balance between providing enough different readings to cover the terrain and including enough material from each reading for it to be meaningful.
The book would be a useful text in an introductory-level course on democratic theory, since it blends classic and contemporary texts and its readings are less sophisticated than those in other standard collections, for example, as edited in David Held’s Prospects for Democracy, or The Idea of Democracy by David Copp et al. Because the editors’ introductions to sections are short and mainly of a summary nature, it would make sense to use the book in conjunction with one of the several basic surveys and explications in this area, such as Robert Dahl’s On Democracy or Ross Harrison’s Democracy.
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