The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution (Johns Hopkins Series in Constitutional Thought)

Rating:
Summary: Where's the democracy in our "democracy"?
Review: Sheldon Wolin is an excellent political theorist. He is less compelling in his policy recommendations and as an analyst of present-day politics (he is paranoid in the style of Krugman, Chomsky, & Zinn). Nevertheless, though Wolin's politics are decidedly Left, he is an important thinker who should be read by conservatives and liberals.
What makes Wolin's thought compelling is his clear-eyed understanding of the American political system as one conceived of and founded in conscious opposition to democracy. Thus James Madison, a key architect of the US Constitution, used the practices and theory behind ancient Athenian democracy as his foil. He rejected the method of choosing representatives by lot, argued for the necessity of elite expertise in politics, and made elections less frequent so as to distance the judgement of representatives from the demands of the electorate. Wolin's analysis is also compelling in that he further finds the repression of the democratic impulse in such governmental forms as bureaucracy, the courts, and the armed forces. Thus, if one reflects on the massive institutions of modern day government, one finds that democractic practices are rarely in play. One finds this especially in the executive, where once the president is chosen, all vestiges of democratic practice are absent (for another four years). Such conclusions may seem like heresy to our modern ears, but the US is exactly what Madison and gang wanted it to be: in Aristotelian parlance, a mixed-regime--one that combines democratic, aristocratic (or oligarchic), and monarchic elements. As Machiavelli and others have long argued, such regimes are more stable and endure.
Wolin takes all of this to be bad, and this is where he begins to go wrong. Against the stable, slow-moving, elite-driven politics of the modern age, Wolin wants to see a resurgence of democratic moments. Wolin finds in the 1960's such democratic moments: civil rights, women's rights, and the "antiwar, antinuclear, and ecological movements". This is all well and good, but times have changed. For those outside of the echo chamber of academia, it is apparent that the contemporary democratic impulse is not left-wing, but decidedly conservative, sometimes reactionary, and sometimes exclusionist. Thus, without Madisonian institutional constraints we would find movements against taxation, abortion, gay marriage, immigrants, free speech, excessive lawsuits and affirmative action. Of course, conservatives are already leading such movements, but the result of their efforts are mild compared to how they might be. Thus, while Wolin may be a worthwhile read (and an excellent theorist), it might behoove the retired professor to expand his social circle to include some conservatives and others more representative of our times.