The Progressive Revolution in Politics and Political Science: Transforming the American Regime (Claremont Institute Series on Statesmanship and Political Philosophy) [Hardcover]

John Marini (Editor, Contributor), Ken Masugi (Editor, Contributor), Paul Carrese (Contributor), Eric R. Claeys (Contributor), Edward J. Erler (Contributor), Tiffany R. Jones (Contributor), Will Morrisey (Contributor), Peter C. Myers (Contributor), Larry Peterman (Contributor), John G. West (Contributor), Thomas G. West (Contributor), Scot J. Zentner (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2005 | ISBN-10: 0742549739 | ISBN-13: 978-0742549739

We cannot understand our current political situation and the scholarship used to comprehend our politics without taking full account of the Progressive revolution of a century ago. This fundamental shift in studying the political world relegated the theory and practice of the Founders to an antiquated historical phase. By contrast, our contributors see beyond the horizon of Progressivism to take account of the Founders' moral and political premises. By doing so they make clear the broader context of current political science disputes, a fitting subject as American professional political science enters its second century.

The contributors to the volume specify the changes in the new world that Progressivism brought into being. Part I emphasizes the contrast between various Progressives and their doctrines, and the American Founding on political institutions including the presidency, political parties, and the courts; statesmen include Frederick Douglass, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and John Marshall. Part II emphasizes the radical nature of Progressivism in a variety of areas critical to the American constitutional government and self-understanding of the American mind. Subjects covered include social science, property rights, Darwinism, free speech, and political science as a liberal art. The essays provide intellectual guidance to political scientists and indicate to political practitioners the peculiar perspectives embedded in current political science.

Published in cooperation with The Claremont Institute.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Recommendeddddd (Choice )

If you want to know why the Constitution became a 'living' document, why the size and scope of government can’t be limited, and how we got here, you must get it. (Schramm, Peter W. )

Edited by Claremont Institute senior fellows John Marini and Ken Masugi, The Progressive Revolution in Politics and Political Science brings together eleven essays to explain the conflict between classic natural right and historicism that has been at the core of the Western philosophic tradition, and which plays itself out in an American context as the conflict between our country's founding principles and the modern administrative state. John Marini, who perhaps more than anyone has plumbed the depths of Progressive thought and found its source in Hegelian historicism, provides a breathtakingly accurate account of the Progressive transformation of the American Minddd (Claremont Review Of Books )

Edited by Claremont Institute senior fellows John Marini and Ken Masugi, The Progressive Revolution in Politics and Political Science brings together eleven essays to explain the conflict between classic natural right and historicism that has been at the core of the Western philosophic tradition, and which plays itself out in an American context as the conflict between our country's founding principles and the modern administrative state. John Marini, who perhaps more than anyone has plumbed the depths of Progressive thought and found its source in Hegelian historicism, provides a breathtakingly accurate account of the Progressive transformation of the American Mind (Claremont Review Of Books )

Recommended (Choice )

About the Author

John Marini is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is the coeditor of The Imperial Congress: Crisis in the Separation of Powers (1989) and the author of The Politics of Budget Control: Congress, the Presidency, and the Growth of the Administrative State (1992).

Ken Masugi is director of the Center for Local Government at the Claremont Institute. He is the coauthor, coeditor, or editor of seven books on American politics and political thought.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 388 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (September 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0742549739
• ISBN-13: 978-0742549739
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,075,414 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Counterrevolutionary Work, August 23, 2005

By 

D. Mahoney (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Progressive Revolution in Politics and Political Science: Transforming the American Regime (Claremont Institute Series on Statesmanship and Political Philosophy) (Paperback)

This volume comprises eleven essays by academic political scientists assessing the effect of the Progressive movement on their discipline and field of study. The essays are all, or virtually all, expanded versions of papers presented during the centenary convention of the American Political Science Association in late 2003. There are two sections of five essays each: the first dealing with the Progressive attack on the founding principles of the American regime; and the second dealing with the effect of Progressive "reforms" in practice. The central, and by far the longest, essay, by Edward Erler, concerns the Progressive transformation of American constitutional law, and that essay acts as a kind of hinge connecting the two main sections of the book.
Probably the most important essays are the keynote essays of each section, written by Thomas West and John Marini, respectively. West, whose published writings include both esoteric commentaries on ancient political philosophy and also sharp contemporary political analysis, finds the roots of the Progressive revolution in the philosophy of Rousseau and Hegel, which is antithetical to the natural rights tradition at the heart of American constitutional government. Marini, perhaps the most astute observer of the transformation of the American political system wrought by the Progressives, concentrates on the Progressives' substitution of the administrative state for the politics of self-government.
Each of the eleven essays is worthy of note in its own right, and all are redolent of serious research and profound reflection. Because the unifying theme of the volume is a critique of the Progressive "revolution" in political science, particular mention should probably be made of Larry Peterman's concluding essay, which leads the reader back beyond even the political science that informed the American founding, to the founding of political science itself, by Aristotle.
This volume, described by its publisher as a "counterrevolutionary work," must be regarded as indispensable reading for anyone who would understand the transformation of the American regime and as the starting point for recovery of an older (and better) political science. One last note: the careful reader is cautioned not to overlook the endnotes.