The present essay sketches the outline and the intention of Hesiod's Works and Days. Hesiod's principal task appears to be the identification (and praise) of the best way of life for his wayward brother Perses, but in carrying out this task, Hesiod speaks of justice and its human and divine supports in such a way as to go well beyond what would be of benefit to his brother. For in the course of his analysis of justice, or as a result of it, Hesiod praises also the life of autonomous understanding, the life that appears to be the poet's own. In crucial ways, then, Hesiod explores the chief themes of what was to become political philosophy, and for this reason, among others, he deserves the attention of all those who are also concerned with it.

This essay seeks to demonstrate that the different generic parts of Cicero's corpus are but different sides of the mind of the same man, and, thus, that all parts of the corpus—including the forensic speeches, once they have been corroborated by other passages in his corpus—should be regarded as valuable evidence for understanding Ciceronian political thought. A comparison of Cicero's Peripatetic criticism of the Younger Cato's Stoicism in the Pro Murena to the view of Cato's politics expressed in his private correspondence of 61–60 BC and in De Finibus 4.61 reveals that this criticism is more than just a humorous digression to win the case. As an extended expression of Cicero's belief that the inflexible moral certainties of Cato's Stoicism could be detrimental to the managing of the consensus necessary to political life in a republic, the Pro Murena should also be recognized as an articulation of Cicero's philosophical approach to the practice of politics.

Locke claims that his moral and political teaching is capable of a fully rational demonstration. It would seem then that Lockean citizens are expected to grasp the rational bases of their regime. But Locke was notoriously vague or incomplete on what the rational demonstration entailed, in matters of theology especially, but in other matters as well. I examine this question in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the Two Treatises of Government, and Some Thoughts Concerning Education, and conclude that Locke did not expect most citizens to grasp the full philosophical demonstration of liberalism, but they would understand a simplified version of it. This, however, risks leaving liberal culture in an unsettled state.

Whereas Eric Voegelin's main works from the 1950s to the 1980s are well known and have been widely discussed, his early work has gained academic attention only recently. Voegelin scholars have now entered into a wide-ranging discussion of the specific nature of those early writings. The following reflections seek to contribute to this general discussion by focusing on one of the most interesting—and, at the same time, the most puzzling—of Voegelin's early unpublished texts. Concentrating on the fragment entitled the Theory of Governance, this article will also present certain sources that have not yet appeared in English. Its aim will be to clarify some of the crucial questions and principles of Voegelin's early conception of political science in general. After presenting that conception, the article will indicate that Voegelin's later critique of the modern ideologies of political collectivism has not yet come into focus in this early text.

Can we gain any fresh insight into the problem of mediating among competing truth claims in political life? This essay will demonstrate that the political theory of Mahatma Gandhi provides us with a novel way to understand and arbitrate the conflict among moral projects. Gandhi offers us a vision of political action that insists on the viability of the search for truth and the implicit possibility of adjudicating among competing claims to truth. His vision also presents a more complex and realistic understanding, than do some other contemporary pluralists, of political philosophy and of political life itself.

“Totalitarianism” is a powerful word rich in historical associations and rebounding in current political usage. The four books under review reflect both the term's range of usage and the enduring fascination with the phenomena it described. Totalitarianism's initial terminological siblings, “nazism” and “communism,” are applied chiefly to the original historical subjects that generated them. A close political cousin, “fascism,” long ago escaped its close ideological family and is applied to everything from brutal police to road hogs. In contrast, “totalitarianism,” formerly confined to a narrow political as opposed to a cultural context, is suddenly in play. In recent issues of the New York Times, David Brooks excoriates Iraqi proponents of “totalitarian theocracy” (5/16/2004); President Bush deplores the terrorists’ “totalitarian ideology” (5/29/05), and Condoleezza Rice abhors Iran as a “totalitarian state” (5/29/2005). A Central Asian despot is characterized as a “fragile totalitarian” in a feature by David E. Sangler (5/29/2005), and the group of army officers (the Military Council for Justice and Democracy) that overthrew President Maouya Sidi Ahmed Taya in Mauritania in August 2005 defend their decision “to put an end to the totalitarian practices of the deposed regime.” Totalitarianism is back, but what does it mean?

Careful inspection of state-created institutions and of interactions that surround them may explain many ambiguous details about domestic politics in the Arab world. Advancing this broad message in Structuring Conflict in the Arab World, Ellen Lust-Okar provides analytical tools and case studies that explain the abilities of incumbent elites to use different structures and rules to control their opponents. She tackles gaps in available research affiliated with the conventional wisdom that has failed to explain the absence of unrest in countries experiencing prolonged economic crises or to clarify the strengthening of regimes in countries promoting political liberalization and inclusion of reformist oppositions. This work uses a formal model of politics to study “how state created institutions shape government-opposition relations” (20). It also reviews literatures ranging from modernization, the Third Wave, liberalization, and rational choice theories to the politics of protest and theories of social revolution. To build on earlier models and point to new directions in research on government-opposition relations, Lust-Okar uses Robert Dahl's classic work and diagram of the paths to polyarchy (37).

America's Miracle Man in Vietnam presents a prime example of the controversial new cultural trend in U.S. diplomatic history. On the surface, the author's depiction of the process whereby Ngo Dinh Diem became America's candidate to head the new country of South Vietnam is familiar (see, for instance, George Herring, America's Longest War, Temple University Press, 1986, 50–69). Echoing others, Jacobs argues that the U.S. promotion of Diem ultimately led to severe setbacks in Southeast Asia. So blatant were Diem's flaws, Jacobs insists, virtually any prescient observer could have predicted his unsuitability to lead nascent South Vietnam. Diem had no political base, was “undeniably an autocrat,” and appeared to be an eccentric loner by virtually all accounts (38). Once in office, Diem predictably launched his “reign of terror and error,” alienating legions of his countrymen and strengthening his opposition, which emerged officially as the National Liberation Front in 1960 (17).

Augusto Pinochet's unexpected 1998 London arrest provided a rare opportunity for a trial of a former head of state outside his own country for crimes committed while in office. The drama and visibility of the arrest and subsequent trial also prompted a wave of scholarly research on the case and its consequences. Among a crowded field, Naomi Roht-Arriaza's book stands out for doing much more than simply recounting the Pinochet story or discussing its significance for international law. Her meticulously researched book goes beyond a simple focus on the Pinochet case per se, to artfully weave together the series of interactions that helped the case possibly transform transnational global justice. In the process, she provides insights for students of law, democratization, human rights, and international relations.

Legal philosophy as a discipline, was, at best, a marginal topic of philosophical inquiry before H. L. A. Hart turned his attention to it. It may be said of Hart that no philosopher after Hart's work in the philosophy of law could ever reasonably regard legal philosophy as marginal again. Before Hart, legal positivism had, of course, its important advocates, but Hart's The Concept of Law showed that its earlier proponents had been wedded either to a command theory of law that was clearly indefensible (Hobbes, Bentham, and Austin) or a conception of norms that was inadequately defended (Kelsen, Hagerstrom, Alf Ross). In the place of the foundational concepts of command or norm, Hart rigorously defended a sociologically informed account of the operation of legal systems (marked by certain indicia of observance and acceptance) and an illuminating distinction between primary and secondary rules that explained important distinctions in law, for example, between the criminal and civil law and the constitutional law establishing the scope and limits of the competence of officials. On this basis, Hart offered an account of law as a subset of social rules, marked by its monopoly of coercive power over a well-defined territory and the finality of its authority over matters involving the scope and limits of such power. Since truth claims about law are made on the basis of ascertaining such rules, determined by observance and acceptance, such claims in law truthfully can be and are made without knowing whether such rules are substantively just according to a philosophically defensible theory of justice. For this reason, Hart argued that legal positivism is the better philosophy of law, since law can be known without knowing its justice, and positivism makes clear the responsibility of independent ethical criticism of law's sometime amorality and immorality. No one after Hart wrote about these matters, would ever think of law in the same way, and the case for legal positivism, as a philosophy of law, had been placed on an altogether sounder philosophical basis.

Anne Hutchinson is one of those iconic figures whose place in living memory is bought at the price of dislocation from her own space in time. Hutchinson's spirited witness against Puritan power and orthodoxy, displayed in her famous trials before the Massachusetts General Court and the Boston Church, has encouraged modern scholars to portray her as, among other things, a prophet of civil, religious, and women's liberty; the specifics of these interpretations matter less than the interpreters' shared sense that Hutchinson was a woman who stood apart from her culture. By contrast, Michael Winship wants to tell the story of “[t]he historical Anne Hutchinson [who] fit fairly comfortably into that seemingly alien and claustrophobic world” of Puritanism (4).

For too many political scientists, “political history” means little more than poll results, aggregate vote totals, and DW-NOMINATE scores. Useful as these data may be for narrow purposes, they miss the complexity of political life. Real political history concerns the interplay of ideas, interests, institutions, and individuals.

Accessible and thought-provoking, DeGroot's history of nuclear weaponry from its theoretical origins through its Cold War escalations makes a diverse cast of characters seem familiar and a tale of earthshaking proportions unfold in a relatively sensible fashion. Written for interested nonexperts, the book does not engage scholarly debates directly. It covers the race to beat the Germans to the bomb through to the entrenchment of nuclear deterrence. Disarmament treaties and peace movements concern DeGroot only long enough to discount them. He adds color to the political and technological history of the bomb by supplementing it with considerations of its social repercussions and its representations in literature, film, music, and consumer items.

The single organizing fact of the Cold War was “the bomb.” In our present age of unipolarity, globalization, and the clash of civilizations, it is useful to remember that our current complexities exist only because the previous age of stark simplicity has passed into history. The decades from the end of World War II until the fall of Communism were years shaped by a nuclear standoff. The threat of nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union framed the politics and culture of the age. This framing was especially apparent in the 1950s and 1960s, before arms-control agreements lent an air of manageability to nuclear politics.

How the Cows Turned Mad describes the centuries-long search for the cause of obscure and always fatal diseases that first apparently afflicted sheep and later were found to attack people as well. This search led to the discovery of prions, the paradoxical proteins that scientists now believe are the cause of mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD), kuru, and scrapie. Along the way, researchers earned two Nobel Prizes. Author Maxime Schwartz is a molecular biologist, former head of the Institut Pasteur, and director of laboratories for the French agency for food safety, among his other scientific achievements. He is also an exceptionally clear writer.

Mark Blitz's Duty Bound is a penetrating treatment of responsibility. Unlike the work of many political theorists, Blitz's work transcends textual interpretation toward the realm of philosophy as such. Responsibility is the phenomenon, and Blitz is the rigorous scientist.

Araujo and Lucal have written a lucid and scholarly history of papal diplomacy from the medieval period to the end of the League of Nations as the first volume in their projected two-part study. Both Jesuits have served on the Permanent Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations and so have developed the ability to read the documents with a critical eye as they parse the meaning of what is sometimes fairly vague diplomatic language that, in reality, is framing an agenda. In the nine chapters of this book, the reader will be immersed into the ongoing attempts of the Holy See to fulfill the church's commitment to maximize the dignity of each person through the diplomacy that it has conducted since the Middle Ages. In the course of their analysis, the authors probe how the diplomats of the Holy See have developed the appropriate conditions that have made possible meaningful negotiations, how they have tried to insert the social teachings of the Catholic Church into each diplomatic agenda, and how they have tried to safeguard the exercise of each person's religious conscience.

Bettina Koch has written an important book that challenges the traditional typologies of medieval versus modern political thought. She provides extended comparisons of Marsilius of Padua, Johannes Althusius, and Thomas Hobbes on a number of key topics and shows that their differences point to a common, central concern for medieval Christendom: the relationship of temporal and spiritual powers, the so-called Gelasian two swords. In arguing for continuity between medieval and modern thought (where Marsilius is ostensibly medieval, Hobbes is modern, and Althusius is often seen as a hybrid), she follows the path laid out by scholars including Brian Tierney, James H. Burns, J. G. A. Pocock, Antony Black, and Cary Nederman. However, she draws on an eclectic range of thinkers, including Eric Voegelin, Michael Oakeshott, Norbert Elias, Hans Blumenberg, and Jacob Taubes to articulate both the continuity and discontinuity between medieval and modern thought. The result, as indicated by her title, is that the categories of “medieval” and “modern” cannot be completely useful except as a sort of shorthand, because medieval elements can be found in modern thought and vice versa. There is continuity but also discontinuity, and her book provides a subtle analysis of how both work.