The consensus view of today's Congress — that its decentralized structure and dispersed power has pushed it to the edge of chaos — is badly in need of correcting. Despite the legacy of decentralization and fragmentation from the 1960's and 1970's reform era, the 1980's have seen a discernible trend toward leadership and order. Leading elements of this “new centralization” in congressional operations are described in this article. These include: contraction of the legislative workload; limitations in the numbers of participants at crucial junctures; resort to omnibus “mega-bills” to enact controversial policies; high levels of partisanship in voting; resurgence of leadership, especially in the House; and subtle shifts in power within the two chambers, primarily away from authorizing committees and toward fiscal committees. Taken together, these developments denote an institution markedly more cohesive and even hierarchical than portrayed in scholarly or journalistic accounts.

This article examines the doctrine of tyrannicide in John of Salisbury's mid-twelfth century political treatise, the Policraticus, in light of recent scholarly skepticism that John never meant to advocate a theoretical defense of slaying the tyrant. It is argued that John's conception of tyrannicide in fact possesses a philosophical foundation derived from his idea of the state as a political organism in which all the members cooperate actively in the realization of the common utility and justice. When the ruler of this body politic behaves tyrannically, failing to perform his characteristic responsibilities, the other limbs and organs are bound by their duty to the public welfare and God to correct and, ultimately, to slay the tyrant. John illustrates this position by reference to the many historical and scriptural instances of tyrants who have legitimately been killed. Thus, John not only proposes a theory of tyrannicide, but also roots it in a strong positive obligation to raise the sword against tyrannical rulers in the name of public benefit and justice.

Tyrannicide has traditionally been distinguished from political assassination in terms of the difference between public and private life. Tyrannicide was a self-sacrificing act for public benefit (and so morally esteemed); common assassination, its opposite, namely, a self-serving act for private gain (and correspondingly censured). Terrorist assassinations, though similarly condemned, raise a special problem since they purport to be self-denying acts for the public good. It is argued that a satisfactory distinction between them and tyrannicide cannot be drawn on the basis of historical or behavioral criteria alone, and consequently a supplementary “teleological” criterion is required. This leads to a consideration of the “classical” and “ideological” styles of politics as the respective contexts of tyrannicide and terrorism. In context, terrorism and tyrannicide can be seen as not only categorically different but also antithetical kinds of political violence. Terrorism, in short, is a form of tyranny of which tyrannicide is a negation.

What follows is an attempt to contribute to the renewal of democratic theory. The argument does not offer yet another substantive definition of “genuine” democracy. Nor does it proceed through the usual method of textual exegesis of the texts of democratic thinkers. Instead, it explores the implications for representative government of the set of political and economic practices to which comparativists have attached the label of corporatism. The central proposition of the argument is that corporatism poses a challenge to traditional notions about the core principles of democratic representation. Part one shows that corporatism can be seen as an alternative to the mode of democratic interest articulation known as pluralism. However, part two will show the ways in which the logic of corporatism implies a significant shift from established conventions of representation. The third section tries to build a defense of pluralism as a more democratic mode of representation than either corporatism or neo-Marxism.

Thomas More described how Utopia held no place for criminals, beggars and vagabonds. Marx called these people “the lumpenproletariat,” and, like More, he wished to exclude them from his vision of a communist society. However, the lumpenproletariat stood outside productive society, as such, they also stood outside the dialectic. For them to be excluded from Utopia in a theory of scientific socialism they needed to be reincorporated into the dialectic. This Marx did in his analysis of Louis Napoleon's coup. Marx was simultaneously concerned to distinguish the proletariat from the violent reactionary crowds of 1848 to 1851. He did so by labeling such crowds lumpenproletarian. By focusing on lumpenproletarians as a degenerate mob, Marx precluded consideration of how they might have been victims of capitalist society. He also foreshadowed the tactics of those radical politicians who appealed to the crowd by a similar denigration of a degenerate outgroup.