Debating the American State

Debating the American State seeks to join together what contemporary political scientists and historians have all too often torn asunder—political thought and the study of institutions. Yet, although she presumes the existence of an American state—indeed, dubs it the “new leviathan”—Anne M. Kornhauser fails to uncover a principled defense of an executive-centered, expertise-driven authority. Her core argument is that fundamental concerns about the administrative state transcend “ideological or partisan differences”—a position emphasized by illustrating that “even some of the most convinced defenders of the modern American state have found significant reasons for concern” (p. 222). However, the angst of these “sympathetic critics of statist liberalism” has not been transformed into a public philosophy that effectively reconciles traditional liberal values and national administration (p. 49). Instead, traditional American mores such as individualism, rule of law, and self-government are suspended in favor of necessity—“the emergency conditions in which the new state was consolidated” (p. 225). As Louis Hartz argued more than a half century ago, “pragmatism” is the watchword of American statism (Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, 1955

Epistemology · Ideology · Individualism · Law and economics · Liberalism · Mores · Political science · Politics · Politics of the United States · Pragmatism · Sociology · State (computer science · Statism · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy