¹ I have elaborated this argument in Citizenship and Monarchy: A Hidden Fault Line in Our Civilisation (London: The Institute of United States Studies, 1998)Google Scholar. I am here assuming, of course, that America as a civil society has emerged from a thousand years of European, and especially English, political development.

² Elshtain, Jean Bethke, Democracy on Trial (Concord, Ontario: Anasi Press, 1993), ch. 1.Google Scholar

³ Kant, Immanuel, “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” in Kant's Political Writings, ed. Reiss, Hans (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 100.Google Scholar

⁴ For a discussion of the evidence for this view, see Ray, James Lee, “Does Democracy Cause Peace?” in Annual Review of Political Science, 1998, ed. Polsby, Nelson (Palo Alto: Annual Reviews, 1998), 27–46.Google Scholar

⁵ See Galbraith, John Kenneth, The Good Society: The Humane Agenda (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1996), ch. 2 and passim.Google Scholar

⁶ Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), sections 11–13.Google Scholar

⁷ See Gallie, W. B., “Essentially Contested Concepts,” in Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (London: Chatto and Windus, 1964), 157.Google Scholar

⁸ See Glotz, Gustave, The Greek City and Its Institutions, trans. Mallinson, N. (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969).Google Scholar

⁹ See Mill, James, “An Essay on Government,” in Utilitarian Logic and Politics, ed. Lively, Jack and Rees, John (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 79Google Scholar: “[A]ll those individuals whose interests are indisputably included in those of other individuals may be struck off without inconvenience.… In this light,… women may be regarded, the interest of almost all of whom is involved either in that of their fathers or in that of their husbands.”

¹⁰ New York Times, Metro Section, 08 9, 1998.Google Scholar

¹¹ The term “pensioner” is today yoked to the idea of state payment to the old and the retired, but the word was in earlier centuries used to refer to any sort of ex gratia payment, usually intended to generate goodwill. We do not have any general word to refer to those who, for any reason, receive regular payments from the state. Hence, “pensioner” seems to be the best available term to adapt.

¹² See Paine, Thomas, “The Rights of Man,” in The Thomas Paine Reader, ed. Foot, Michael and Kramnic, Isaac (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987), 221.Google Scholar

¹³ See Kymlicka, Will, “Three Forms of Group-Differentiated Citizenship in Canada,” in Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. Benhabib, Seyla (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 157ff.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See Tully, James, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ See, for example, Brennan, Geoffrey and Lomasky, Loren E., “Large Numbers, Small Costs: The Uneasy Foundation of Democratic Rule,” in Politics and Process: New Essays in Democratic Thought, ed. Brennan, and Lomasky, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 42ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. The argument is that it is almost impossible to justify democracy on the basis of its responsiveness to the preferences of the electorate (ibid., 43).

¹⁶ An “ideal speech situation” is the most familiar formulation of the quest, in the work of Jürgen Habermas, for a conception of public discussion which has freed itself from the distortions of money and power. See Habermas, , The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), and vol. 2 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987).Google Scholar

¹⁷ In the United States, the Surgeon General is full of wise advice for the foolish. The British government increasingly crams the school curriculum with courses on parenting, how to manage condoms, and, most recently, a general course for primary schools to be called “preparation for life.” The French government has run campaigns to persuade the French to be nicer to foreigners, in order to help the tourist industry. The Austrian government has recently legislated the household duties of males. And the list could be continued endlessly. The interesting question is whether people in need of this kind of instruction have the political sense to vote intelligently.

¹⁸ See Schumpeter, Joseph A., Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), esp. ch. 22.Google Scholar

¹⁹ See Hofstadter, Richard, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1979)Google Scholar. Hofstadter's target in this essay was primarily, of course, the conspiracy theories of what he recognized as “right-wing” or “pseudo-conservative” movements, but democratic axioms clearly intensify the likelihood of occult forces blocking the people's will. His remark (ibid., xiii) that “[t]he curse of what we call ‘second class citizenship’ is perennial in American politics” points to the problem to which the search for a pure representation of the popular will would be the solution.

²⁰ Gutmann, Amy, “Democracy, Philosophy, and Justification,” in Democracy and Difference, ed. Benhabib, 341.Google Scholar

²¹ See Sandel, Michael, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

²² The situation reminds one of Beatrice Webb's famous reply when asked whether she or her husband Sidney made the family decisions. “Sidney makes all the big decisions,” she is reported to have said, “and I make all the small decisions. But I decide what is big and what is small.”

²³ Judgments differ about just how redistributive welfare systems actually are, on the ground that members of the middle class derive many benefits from the system. But we may safely assume that some money does pass from rich to poor.

²⁴ See Hegel's Philosophy of Right, trans, and ed. Knox, T. M. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952)Google Scholar, whose third part on “ethical life” is divided into three sections: one on the family, one on civil society, and one on the state.

²⁵ See, for example, Marquand, David, The New Reckoning: Capitalism, States, and Citizens (Oxford: Polity Press, 1997).Google Scholar

²⁶ Plato, , Laws, Book V, 739c-dGoogle Scholar, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Hamilton, Edith and Cairns, Huntington (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 1324.Google Scholar

²⁷ Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, esp. sections 4 and 24Google Scholar; Habermas, , The Theory of Communicative Action.Google Scholar

²⁸ Warren, Mark E., “What Should We Expect from More Democracy? Radically Democratic Responses to Politics,” Political Theory 24, no. 2 (05 1996): 264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ It is almost as if there were a flight from governments using their power, especially where the decision might cause embarrassment. Thus, the British government, facing in Northern Ireland the conflict between Orange marchers and Republican protesters, handled the issue of whether this or that march through disputed territory should go ahead, by handing it over to an agency whose decisions were to be based upon the prevention of disorder. Such decisions were presented as “the rule of law.”

³⁰ See, for example, “Reinventing Civic Republicanism,” in Marquand, , The New Reckoning, 37.Google Scholar

³¹ Barber, Benjamin R., Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 296.Google Scholar

³² Christie, Agatha, And Then There Were None (reprint, London: HarperCollins, 1993).Google Scholar