Nature and History in American Political Development: A Debate

Extract

Nature and History in American Political Development: A Debate, James W. Ceaser; with responses from Jack N. Rakove, Nancy L. Rosenblum, Rogers M. Smith, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2006, pp. viii, 197.

James Ceaser gave the first Tocqueville Memorial Lecture on American Politics sponsored by the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard in 2004. This volume contains an expanded version of his lecture, the three responses by, respectively, a historian, a political theorist, and a political scientist, and Ceaser's rejoinder or, in the case of Rosenblum, rebuttal to each. There are two things going on in this volume: a scholarly debate on how to approach the elusive question of the role of ideas in politics and a rather acrimonious argument over Ceaser's motivation.