Congress hears more and more from everyday citizens. How do modern Congressional offices use this information to represent their constituents? Drawing on original interviews and a survey of Congressional staff, we explore how representation works in practice when new data and tools, such as databases and downscaled public opinion polls, are available. In contrast with established theories that focus on responsiveness, we show that representation is a two-way street. Congressional offices both respond to incoming constituent opinion and reach out to elicit opinions from stakeholders. Offices record correspondence into databases, identifying the most salient issues and the balance of opinion among correspondents. They tend not to use polls on policy. To understand the opinions of electorally influential constituencies, staffers also proactively reach out to stakeholders and experts in a practice we call provoked petitioning. If the Washington pressure system is a chorus, Congressional staff often serve as conductors, allowing well-resourced and organized constituents, including interest groups, to sing with the loudest voices. While Congress has some new tools and strategies for representation, its modern practices still reinforce existing biases.

After growing for decades, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts both experienced a dramatic drop in membership during the 1970s. Since then their membership patterns have diverged as the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) continues to decline and the Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) has reached near record numbers. These patterns raise two questions: Why the decline? And why the divergence? On the cause of decline, I argue that a younger civil rights generation, informed by a new set of post-materialist values, did not join traditional organizations like the BSA and GSUSA because their values were deemed to be outdated. The challenge for traditional organizations therefore was how to respond. Using path dependency theory, I argue that BSA and GSUSA—shaped by their own unique origins and identities—responded very differently to the critical juncture of the civil rights generation, which in turn explains the subsequent divergence in membership patterns from the 1980s onward. While the BSA rejects such changes in order to defend traditional values, the GSUSA, which established a commitment to challenging gender norms from its birth, embraces the new values and adapts virtually every aspect of its organizational identity to this new generation. As young people see themselves reflected back in the values endorsed by the GSUSA, its membership resurges, while the BSA continues to decline. I conclude by drawing out larger theoretical lessons on the meaning of change in American civil society in light of an increasingly diverse population.

Sometimes political theorists like to imagine that they are lonely humanists misplaced in social science departments. In fact, political theory was created as part of a political science composed of both humanistic and social-scientific elements. Rather than trying to locate political theory somewhere between the humanities and the social sciences, we should instead dismantle the boundary between the two and create a unified discipline of questioning that embraces both kinds of inquiry.

The Eurozone crisis revealed fundamental flaws in the institutional architecture of the Economic and Monetary Union. Its lack of political steering capacity has demonstrated the need for a broad but seemingly unachievable political union with shared economic governance and a common treasury. Agreement on further measures has been difficult to achieve, as different actors have imposed divergent external criteria for the success of the Eurozone. As part of their heritage in Western Marxism, the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School sought to overcome such problems by identifying internal standards for social criticism. Building on their understanding of immanent critique, I argue that the Eurozone already contains the normative principles necessary to support greater political integration. While the citizens of Europe must provide the democratic legitimation necessary to realize this latent potential, the flaws revealed by the crisis are already pushing Europe towards greater transnational solidarity.

China, also known as “the People’s Republic of China,” is indisputably the world’s most populous country and also a rising superpower on the world economic and political stage. In The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2015), Daniel A. Bell argues that China also represents a distinctive “model of governance” that is neither liberal democracy nor authoritarianism—a “political meritocracy.” Expanding on themes developed in a number of previous books, Bell outlines the logic of this “model;” compares it, rather favorably, to liberal democracy, especially as a regime well suited to Chinese history, culture, and political experience; and also considers, briefly, its more general relevance to the politics of the 21st century. The issues he raises are relevant to students of comparative politics, democratic theory, world politics, and U.S. foreign policy. And so we have invited a range of political scientists to comment.

The US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, which deposed the Taliban regime, was followed by a major international effort to stabilize that country. More than a decade later, this effort has yielded neither security nor political stability in Afghanistan. After having been ousted from power, the Taliban reestablished itself in the borderlands of Pakistan and began fighting an effective guerrilla war against international and Afghan government forces. Despite heavy losses in recent years, the insurgency shows no sign of giving up. Meanwhile, attempts to establish a credible and legitimate Afghan government have been similarly disappointing. President Hamid Karzai, once hailed as the country's democratic savior, came to be seen instead as the leader of one of the most corrupt regimes on the planet, a perception that has damaged his government's legitimacy both at home and abroad. Afghanistan's development and human rights indicators have improved, but it remains to be seen if these gains can be sustained as the international effort is scaled back. Finally, although the United States and its partners succeeded in weakening Al Qaeda in the region, both Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan appear to have become considerably less stable over the course of the mission, with untold consequences for the future.

In this article examining Black Lives Matter in France, we consider how French politicians and others in the public sphere use a U.S./France contrast frame to deny or downplay the existence of systemic racism within France. In so doing, they delegitimize as un-French or as too Americanized those French anti-racist activists who claim that racism in France is systemic and who challenge republican difference-blindness. To demonstrate this, we specifically focus on anti-racist activism against police violence and argue that, contrary to accusations by French political leaders, anti-racist activists do not directly impose U.S. Black Lives Matter discourse onto the French context. Rather, they deploy it in conversation with existing and long-standing anti-racist mobilization in France. This comparison between the United States and France also reveals the unique challenges of addressing police violence as a manifestation of racism in France, where anti-racist activists must fight to even name race and racism.

In July 2016, Pakistani social media celebrity Qandeel Baloch was asphyxiated by her brother and gained posthumous celebrity in the West where her death was sensationally categorized as an honor-killing. Yet Qandeel was a celebrity in her own right among South Asians long before her death. Through skillful use of social media, she created new forms of public space and used them to challenge dominant social norms and political practices. I examine Qandeel’s “do-it-yourself activism”—her innovative use of the digital public sphere to position herself as a worthy representative of Pakistani nationality; to critique long-established norms governing gender, class, and sexuality; and to expand the boundaries of national belonging in Pakistan to include culturally rebellious women of limited economic means. By examining Qandeel’s audacious means of standing for Pakistan, her deployment of marriage proposals as a mode of subversive political activism within the political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice, PTI), and her use of visual culture (“selfies”) to challenge the moral authority of a powerful Islamic cleric, I theorize a form of political activism grounded in women’s agency that deploys celebrity to illuminate and politicize injustices.

The State of Working America, 2008/2009. By Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Heidi Shierholz. An Economic Policy Institute Book. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009. 461 p. $59.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

In the coming decade religion will become an increasingly salient issue in European politics. This prediction runs counter to the conventional wisdom that Europeans are “post-Christian.” When comparing Europe to the United States, observers note that church pews are empty, that fewer people profess to believe in God, and that Europeans are moral relativists who shy away from principled positions against authoritarian countries. In the European view, modernization implies secularization, and by this standard Europeans are modern while Americans are, depending on who the observer is, either postmodern or irrational. Why then are we flooded with evidence of the “re-Christianization” of Europe?Jytte Klausen is associate professor of comparative politics at Brandeis University ([email protected]).

George W. Bush elevated the value of definition in presidential leadership and made it central to his political stance. This was as much a strategic calculation of political advantage in the moment at hand as it was a reflection of the man's innate character. Accounting for Bush's leadership posture in this way helps to situate it on a larger historical canvas as a particular rendition of a familiar type; reference to general characteristics of the type facilitates, in turn, an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Bush's performance over the course of his first term. Conclusions consider deviations from the patterned political effects of leadership of this sort and weigh their possible significance.Stephen Skowronek is the Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political and Social Science at Yale University ([email protected]). He is author of The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton and more recently with Karen Orren, The Search for American Political Development. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at CIDE in Mexico City, at the University of Texas, and the University of Tulsa. It was also featured as the Abbott Memorial Lecture at the Sondermann Symposium on the Presidency at Colorado College, Colorado Springs (December 2004). The version printed here was completed on May 10, 2005.

We know much about “how democracies die”: elites and masses become polarized, and norms of mutual toleration, forbearance, and institutional restraint erode. But why do elites feel free to undermine these guardrails of democracy? What are the sources of backsliding? Answers to these questions have focused on the impact of economic and cultural change, and on autocratic meddling. I consider another potential source of backsliding around the world: the impact of the reconfiguration of global politics after the Cold War and 9/11 on politics in the main prodemocratic actors that Samuel Huntington highlighted in his book The Third Wave: the United States, the European Union, and the Vatican. Today, the international context gives leaders in these global powers relatively weaker incentives to stand up for democracy, even in the face of aggressive meddling from Russia and China. Changes in international politics has left democracy with weaker ideational support in the global arena, potentially facilitating backsliding.

It is widely assumed that celebrities are imbued with political capital and the power to move opinion. To understand the sources of that capital in the specific domain of sports celebrity, we investigate the popularity of global soccer superstars. Specifically, we examine players’ success in the Ballon d’Or—the most high-profile contest to select the world’s best player. Based on historical election results as well as an original survey of soccer fans, we find that certain kinds of players are significantly more likely to win the Ballon d’Or. Moreover, we detect an increasing concentration of votes on these kinds of players over time, suggesting a clear and growing hierarchy in the competition for soccer celebrity. Further analyses of support for the world’s two best players in 2016 (Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo) show that, if properly adapted, political science concepts like partisanship have conceptual and empirical leverage in ostensibly non-political contests.

Environmental devastation is not only a byproduct of war, but has also been a military strategy since ancient times. How have the norms and laws of war addressed the damage that war inflicts on the environment? How should “environmental war crimes” be defined and addressed? I address these questions by critically examining the way that distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate wartime environmental destruction have been drawn in debates on just war theory and the laws of war. I identify four distinctive formulations for framing the wartime significance of nature that appear in such debates and analyze how each is associated with distinctive claims regarding what constitutes “humaneness” in times of war: nature as property; nature as combatant; nature as Pandora's Box; and nature as victim. I argue that efforts to investigate and judge the environmental impact of war destabilize and expose the limitations of core distinctions that animate humanitarian norms, but also offer an important and neglected source of guidance in addressing those limitations.

A key question in the study of minority representation is whether descriptive representatives provide superior substantive representation. Neglected in this literature is the distinction between two forms of substantive representation: rhetoric versus policy. We provide a systematic comparison of presidential minority representation along these two dimensions. Barack Obama was the first African American president, yet his substantive representation of African Americans has not been fully evaluated. Using speech and budget data, we find that relative to comparable presidents, Obama offered weaker rhetorical representation, but stronger policy representation, on race and poverty. While we cannot rule out non-racial explanations, Obama’s policy proposals are consistent with minority representation. His actions also suggest that descriptive representatives may provide relatively better policy representation but worse rhetorical representation, at least when the constituency is a numerical minority. We thus highlight an understudied tension between rhetoric and policy in theories of minority representation.

Women face more harassment and intimidation as politicians than men, but little is known about how this affects representation. I develop a theoretical framework for studying the gendered costs of political violence for descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation. Testing the framework using interview and survey data on Swedish women and men politicians, I uncover the costs of violence against politicians in all three dimensions empirically. Violence makes women more frequently than men consider leaving politics and enforces male-coded characteristics for political candidates, affecting prospects for gender-diverse descriptive representation. Substantive representation is harmed by violence silencing feminist debates and obstructing women politicians’ policy debate activities. Women’s symbolic representation is threatened by violence coercing women to decrease their visibility.

Faith in the resilience of the US Constitution prompts many observers to discount evidence of a deepening crisis of governance in our day. A long history of success in navigating tough times and adapting to new circumstances instills confidence that the fundamentals of the system are sound and the institutions self-correcting. The aim of this article is to push assessments of this sort beyond the usual nod to great crises surmounted in the past and to identify institutional adaptation as a developmental problem worthy of study in its own right. To that end, we call attention to dynamics of adjustment that have played out over the long haul. Our historical-structural approach points to the “bounded resilience” of previous adaptations and to dynamics of reordering conditioned on the operation of other governance outside the Constitution’s formal written arrangements. We look to the successive overthrow of these other incongruous elements and to the serial incorporation of previously excluded groups to posit increasing stress on constitutional forms and greater reliance on principles for support of new institutional arrangements. Following these developments into the present, we find principles losing traction, now seemingly unable to foster new rules in support of agreeable governing arrangements. Our analysis generates a set of propositions about why the difficulties of our day might be different from those of the past in ways that bear directly on resilience and adaptability going forward.

The title of this essay might strike some people as odd. Rawls a revolutionary? Could one ever imagine the careful, gentle, and eminently sensible figure of John Rawls manning a barricade? The very strangeness of this image illustrates the uneasy connection between equality and politics in his work. Rawls's egalitarian vision would take nothing short of a revolution to bring about, and Rawls was anything but a revolutionary.Simone Chambers is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto ([email protected]). Special thanks go to Robert Amdur for his helpful, careful, and as usual, accurate criticisms of an earlier draft. She would also like to thank Steven E. White for his research, the many reviewers at Perspectives on Politics for their comments, and Joe Carens, Duncan Ivison, and Jeff Kopstein for all the equality talk.