In his introduction to Political Institutions and Practical Wisdom, Maxwell Cameron of the University of British Columbia says, “My goal is to suggest the relevance of practical wisdom to political institutions” (4). By “practical wisdom,” he refers especially to Aristotle's notion of phronesis. Indeed, Cameron states that his book is “a footnote to Aristotle” (5). He adds that the line of inquiry he will take in his book also owes much to other contemporary scholars. Chief among these seems to be Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford, whom Cameron suggests is the originator of the practice of applying Aristotle to contemporary political problems (4).

In the event, most of Political Institutions and Practical Wisdom is devoted not to Aristotle but to Cameron's views about what is wrong with political institutions as they exist now, especially in Canada and the United States. He is especially critical of the “ideology” of “competitive utility-maximizing,” which he affiliates with rational choice theory and “neoliberalism.” Cameron claims that often free markets do not actually deliver on their promise of maximizing utility; even more importantly, they do not attain the common good. The authors he particularly opposes for advancing such inadequate views are Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Cameron is—perhaps surprisingly—much more receptive to Adam Smith, although it is the Smith of The Theory of Moral Sentiments rather than The Wealth of Nations for which he has sympathy.

Not only is Cameron indisposed toward utilitarian or consequentialist arguments in favor of free markets, but he does not much like deontological approaches either. He associates deontologism with rules, and rules undermine the options available to the sort of prudential decision-making that is needed for political institutions to run well. To be sure, Cameron understands that political institutions, such as regulatory institutions, may need to make rules in order to function, but such rules will be more like general guidelines or rules of thumb.

Political Institutions and Practical Wisdom also contains plenty of digs at recent and even current political leaders. It is predictable that Cameron does not approve of Reagan, Thatcher, and Pinochet, who were advocates of free markets and neoliberalism in general. He even takes a swipe at Howard Shultz and, broadly speaking, seems to have little use for corporations or wealthy entrepreneurs. He is openly disdainful of Citizens United and concludes a chapter on “neoliberal oligarchy” with a quotation from former secretary Clinton in which she complains about the presence of large sums of money in politics (119). According to Cameron, utility maximizing reaches its culmination with the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency; he says this despite the fact that Trump has frequently been criticized by market advocates for attempting to intervene in markets in order to protect American workers. Cameron's anti-Trump sentiments become palpable in a chapter titled “Hyper-Partisanship.” He even suggests that the American Founders, despite their efforts in the Federalist Papers, have now been shown to be failures at controlling partisanship through laws (133–35). He goes so far as to claim that we have no schools of politics today and advocates that potential candidates ought to attend some sort of boot camp prior to standing for office (136–39).

Perhaps Cameron is right about all this, but his arguments are not especially strong and certainly are not going to convince anyone who is not antecedently predisposed to agree with his presuppositions. The obvious rejoinder to Cameron's critique of neoliberalism or free markets is that he does not seriously address the question of the importance of freedom. The American Founders, and others, thought that self-government was a good thing because through it citizen legislators, chosen by their fellow citizens, were able to exercise autonomy and advance liberty. Prudence was surely valuable to them, but they did not think they had to surrender governmental decision-making to a small group of elites in order to promote it. It is not clear that Cameron has thought through the implications his claims have for the idea of liberty.

Be this as it may, what is potentially most interesting about Political Institutions and Practical Wisdom is the author's claim that he is tapping into the tradition of Aristotelian phronesis and seeking to employ it in today's political context. The central chapter of the book is titled “Wise Practitioners” rather than “prudent statesmen” or “philosopher kings,” but it is here that Aristotle's notions are treated more thoroughly than elsewhere. Prudence, or practical wisdom, of course seeks the best means to ends. It knows the most felicitous way to achieve the good in question and is able to execute its plan. Cameron links prudence to Aristotle's doctrine of the mean and says that the wise practitioner is particularly adept at balancing the various interests and aspects involved in institutional decision-making. Aristotle's practical wisdom is notoriously hard to define or even to describe with precision, so surely Cameron can be forgiven if his account is not as precise as we might want. The prudent decision is the right one at the right time and in the right circumstances. But how do we know what is right? Experience is surely relevant, as Cameron also notes.

One thing Aristotle is clear on, though, is that prudence aims at the good for human beings. But what is good for human beings are the virtues. The moral virtues thus give human activity its end, and prudence aims at and secures this end. Cameron is correct to note that Aristotle thinks that in some human activities the end is intrinsic to the activity; thus, for example, the end of playing the flute is simply playing the flute well. But when we are talking about the end of politics—including presumably political institutions—the end is the attainment of the human good, that is, moral virtue, or at least what pertains to or supports such an end. The problem in recovering Aristotle's notion for modern politics quickly comes to sight, however, as a disagreement about ends. In a “pluralistic” age, there is no agreement about ends, or at least little agreement, and Aristotle is clear that if we get the ends wrong, prudential decision-making is just shrewdness or cleverness.

Cameron is to be credited with seeing the problem. He does not want to adopt an openly teleological position like Aristotle, however, as that would be opposed to “value pluralism,” which he does not want to abandon. He tries to split the difference with what he calls “ethical convergence” (75). He does not develop this position extensively, but apparently what he means is that the current pluralism of goods that we encounter in modern politics is ultimately destined to converge in a certain small set of goods. Different peoples have different customs, he thinks, but beneath these customs is a common good. The argument is promising, but not especially well developed. What is this common good that we would want our wise practitioners to aim at? Political Institutions and Practical Wisdom thus leaves its most important question at best answered only vaguely.