Jeremy Waldron's important new book might be divided into four unequal parts: the eponymous first chapter; the second, “Constitutionalism: A Sceptical View,” along with two later chapters on judicial review; two final chapters, reflecting on Isaiah Berlin's and Hannah Arendt's relationship to the study of constitutions and institutions; and what I will refer to as the book's core. This core consists of chapters on the separation of powers, loyal opposition, bicameralism, representation, legislation, and political agency and accountability: the subtitle's promised “essays on institutions.” While the opening chapter, “Political Political Theory,” offers a general call to bring the study of institutions squarely back into political theory, the core puts that call into practice.

The chapters on judicial review will seem familiar to long-time readers of Waldron's work, even if they have not encountered these pieces before. (Most of the chapters are modified versions of already published work, but the modifications have been substantial and successful; this is a book-length argument, not a collection of papers.) They are continuous with his project of dethroning Dworkinian Herculean philosopher-king-judges, and of criticizing judicial review of legislation. The criticism in chapter 2 of understanding constitutionalism as primarily constraining and limiting state power aims at the American law professoriate's romantic image of the judge whose task it is to say “no,” to protect the minority or the individual from the tyranny of the majority. The second chapter's appearance so early in the book risks misleading readers into thinking that the book just reiterates some of Waldron's most famous views, and that the methodological call of the first chapter is really only a way to buttress them.

But the core—chapters 3–8—casts chapter 2 in a different light. Waldron is skeptical of reducing constitutionalism to mere naysaying, not only because he is against judicial naysaying, but because he is interested in the normative question of how one affirmatively constitutes politics. It becomes clear in these chapters—especially those on bicameralism, the separation of powers, and loyal opposition—that there is no simple majoritarianism behind Waldron's critique of judicial review. Rather, he thinks that if we take seriously the constitution of democratic politics, and the norms implicit in it, we will find that it can be, and sometimes is, well organized for a world of majorities and minorities, of differences of opinion and judgment, of debate about rights. I think the superb chapter on bicameralism in particular will come as a surprise to those who have suspected Waldron of simple majoritarianism, with its forceful call for protecting Westminster parliaments from executive domination, and its suggestion that a democratic second chamber could fulfill this function.

The tone is sometimes elegiac. Perhaps, for example, a separation of powers worthy of the name is unsustainable today, and we are doomed to executive dominance; but let us at least understand the value of what we are losing. I think this is a virtue. Waldron neither uncritically celebrates existing institutions nor produces cure-all blueprints for new ones. But much of the point is to identify the genuine values already implicit in real representative legislatures, democratic partisan elections, and associated institutions. Once we have articulated those values, Waldron argues, we can think more clearly about how they might be protected or instantiated and about proposals for reform.

Another of the book's virtues is that it is both Arendtian and institutional. Like Arendt, Waldron is insistent on plurality and disagreement; his democratic theory is importantly free from reliance on a unified and singular “people.” This much is relatively familiar in democratic political theory these days (though much less so in political philosophy), but it is not the whole of Waldron's debt to Arendt. He frequently recurs to her vivid imagery of a constitution's framing of the house that politics inhabits, and of political institutions as the furniture of our shared social world. The table we sit at separates us but also relates us to one another in a stable and fixed way. He takes seriously her arguments about the fundamental importance of founding such stable interpersonal facts. Institutions and procedures are precisely how we coexist in a world of human plurality. As he notes, this importantly differs in emphasis from those who look to Arendt as inspiration for agonistic and spontaneous democratic action; but it draws on real themes in her work. These ideas run throughout the book, starting from the first chapter. They are the central topic of the last, “The Constitutional Politics of Hannah Arendt,” a highlight and appropriate culmination of the whole project.

The direction he calls for is not wholly new, of course. Waldron frequently and rightly acknowledges (and builds on) Nancy Rosenblum's work on political parties as an example of political political theory. But he does not find many conversation partners in political theory; most of his approving references are to legal scholars. Indeed, I think one criticism of the book is that—despite what one might expect, despite what he seems to advocate—Waldron rarely directly engages with scholarship in empirical political science, either. His picture of those institutions is thick with norms and procedures but sometimes thin on considerations of power or bureaucratic inertia. Indeed the bureaucratic and security state for the most part falls outside his attention here, though he has written on it elsewhere. I think there is plenty of room for other practitioners of political political theory to push the enterprise in different directions, with more attention to political science and to institutions besides legislatures and elections. That means that we should not read the enterprise as leading necessarily to Waldron's particular views, including his views on judicial review. His examples of work done in the research approach he encourages are just that.

“Political political theory” (the chapter) was first developed as Waldron's Inaugural Lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford, probably the most influential chair in the field. In its letter it is a call to adjust how political theory is taught at Oxford. In spirit it is a declaration of intellectual independence from his predecessors. Isaiah Berlin comes in for “not particularly respectful” (289) criticism, in this chapter as well as in the later one devoted to Berlin's neglect of constitutionalism in Enlightenment political thought. (I do not say “alleged neglect”; Waldron is right.) Waldron also, unsurprisingly, has no patience with Berlin's dismissal of Arendt, to whom he refers as Berlin's “nemesis” (290). Berlin held that political philosophy's purpose was “to examine the ends of life,” and in consequence “to read almost any of Berlin's work is to read essays that are resolutely uninterested in the political institutions of liberal society” (4).

Charles Taylor and G. A. Cohen are mentioned more briefly, predecessors who leaned toward the “philosophy” in “political philosophy.” But the lecture's title suggests that this is not a minor point. Waldron's wish to reorient political theory toward politics and political institutions, and away from “the fifty-seven varieties of luck-egalitarianism” (20), seems to announce a decisive break with Cohen and his widespread influence. I do not think it too strong to say that announcing that break was the major point of delivering this argument in that particular setting.

In the event, Waldron held the Chichele Professorship for only four years, not enough time to effect this ambition for a new direction in the field. It would be a great shame if that meant that the ambition went unfulfilled. This book, both in its call for a new approach and in its work to show what it might be like, should help prevent that.