Rethinking the Separation of Powers with McGill University Jacob T. LevyApril 16, 2021, 3:30pmonlineMcGill University Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory Jacob T. Levy will explore two sources of dysfunction in the separation of powers as currently understood in the Constitution—the interaction of separate powers with separate parties and the growing complexity of the executive branch—arguing that the first calls for serious reform while the second demands both far-reaching re-consideration of how we conceive of executive power and the application of separation of powers reasons to institutional changes in the branch itself. The talk will be held via Zoom on April 16 at 3:30pm, and interested parties should contact Thomas Kane, KaneTC@missouri.edu, to be added to the email list of people who receive Zoom links for all Kinder Institute talks on the day of the events.
Abstract
This talk will describe two sources of dysfunction in the separation of powers as currently understood in the U.S. Constitution: the interaction of separate powers with separate parties, and the growth in complexity within the executive branch. I’ll argue that the first means the U.S. separation of powers has never worked as imagined by the Founders, and that the weakness that has been exposed in it in recent years calls for serious reform, not just a hope to return to normal. The second ultimately calls for a far-reaching change in how we understand executive power, and for applying separation of powers reasons to institutional changes within the executive branch itself.
Jacob T. Levy is Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory and Director of the Yan P. Lin Centre at McGill University, as well as Senior Fellow at The Niskanen Center and The Institute for Humane Studies. He received his A.B. with Honors in Political Science from Brown University, his M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University, and an LLM from University of Chicago Law, and he was a 1993-94 Visiting Fulbright Scholar at University College, University of New South Wales. Prof. Levy is the author of two Oxford University Press monographs, Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom (forthcoming) and The Multiculturalism of Fear (2000), and has edited or co-edited a number of volumes, including The Interpretation of Modernity: Essays on the Work of Charles Taylor (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020) and Colonialism and Its Legacies (Lexington Press, 2011). He was a visiting scholar in 2018 at Stanford’s McCoy Family Center for Ethics and a 2017 endowed visitor in the University of Otago (New Zealand) Department of Philosophy, and received a Mellon Foundation “New Directions Fellowship” for a year of study at University of Chicago Law. Prof. Levy also currently serves on the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review, Political Studies, and Social Philosophy and Policy.
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Two Views of Universal Suffrage: Anticolonial and NeoliberalApril 9, 2021, 3:30pmonlineAs part of our regular Friday Colloquium Series, University of Virginia Assistant Professor of Politics Kevin Duong will reconstruct and assess two competing, post-WW II utopian constructs of universal suffrage: anticolonial radicals’ conception of mass franchise as paving the way to economic democracy and “African” socialism and neoliberals economists’ counter-argument that the free market offered a superior suffrage to mass franchise. The talk will be held via Zoom on April 9 at 3:30pm, and interested parties should contact Thomas Kane, KaneTC@missouri.edu, to be added to the email list of people who receive Zoom links for all Kinder Institute talks on the day of the events.
Abstract
Universal suffrage is as much a utopian construct as an institutional design. This talk reconstructs two competing utopian constructs of universal suffrage after the Second World War. Many anticolonial radicals hoped a mass franchise could pave the way to economic democracy and “African” socialism. In contrast, early neoliberal economists affiliated with the Mont Pèlerin Society argued the free market offered a superior suffrage to the mass franchise. For the latter, “one person, one vote” would lead to tyrannical economic planning on behalf of newly liberated subject peoples. This talk explains how these two utopian constructs of suffrage were separated by more than a dispute over who should benefit from universal suffrage. At stake was also a belief in popular sovereignty. As anticolonial radicals demanded participation in the exercise of popular sovereignty, the latter argued that popular sovereignty was theoretically deficient compared to “consumer sovereignty” and market coordination.
Kevin Duong received his B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from Vanderbilt, his A.M. in Social Science from the University of Chicago, and his Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University, and is currently Assistant Professor of Politics at University of Virginia. He is the author of The Virtues of Violence: Democracy Against Disintegration in Modern France (Oxford University Press, 2020), and his scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in American Political Science Review, French Politics, Political Theory, The Review of Politics, and Politics & Gender, among other places. Formerly an Assistant Professor of Political Studies at Bard College, Prof. Duong received the American Political Science Association’s 2017 Leo Strauss Award for best dissertation in the field of political philosophy and was an Honorable Mention for the Nineteenth Century Studies Association’s 2020 Article Prize. He also received a Gustave Gimon Visiting Scholar Fellowship in French Political Economy from Stanford University in Fall 2015.
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The Recurring Crises of American DemocracyMarch 26, 2021, 3:30pmonlineCo-authors Suzanne Mettler, John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions in Cornell University’s Department of Government, and Robert C. Lieberman, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, will stop by our Friday Colloquium Series to present on their August 2020 St. Martin’s Press book, Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy, an urgent, historically-contextualized exploration of the major factors that undermine democracy in the U.S. and what we can do to address them (see abstract and book description below). The talk will be held on March 26 at 3:30pm via Zoom, and any parties interested in attending should contact Thomas Kane, KaneTC@missouri.edu, to be added to the email list of people who get Zoom links for all Kinder Institute talks on the morning of events.
Abstract
American democracy has endured repeated crises since the founding of the republic. Four threats have repeatedly threatened the progress of democracy throughout American history. As we put the Trump era in the rearview mirror, Suzanne Mettler and Robert Lieberman discuss how these threats have combined over time and why they still pose a danger to American democracy today.
Book Description
While many Americans despair of the current state of U.S. politics, most assume that our system of government and democracy itself are invulnerable to decay. Yet when we examine the past, we find that the United States has undergone repeated crises of democracy, from the earliest days of the republic to the present.
In Four Threats, Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman explore five moments in history when democracy in the U.S. was under siege: the 1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate. These episodes risked profound—even fatal—damage to the American democratic experiment. From this history, four distinct characteristics of disruption emerge. Political polarization, racism and nativism, economic inequality, and excessive executive power—alone or in combination—have threatened the survival of the republic, but it has survived—so far. What is unique, and alarming, about the present moment in American politics is that all four conditions exist.
This convergence marks the contemporary era as a grave moment for democracy. But history provides a valuable repository from which we can draw lessons about how democracy was eventually strengthened—or weakened—in the past. By revisiting how earlier generations of Americans faced threats to the principles enshrined in the Constitution, we can see the promise and the peril that have led us to today and chart a path toward repairing our civic fabric and renewing democracy.
Robert Lieberman is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. He studies American political development, race and American politics, and public policy. He has also written extensively about the development of American democracy and the links between American and comparative politics.
Suzanne Mettler is the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions at Cornell University. Her research and teaching focus on American political development, public policy, and political behavior. She is particularly interested in issues pertaining to gender and politics, race and politics, democratization, inequality, and citizenship.
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The Prescient Mind of James Madison: A Mini-SymposiumMarch 19, 2021, 3:30pmonlineRebooting an event originally scheduled for Spring 2020, Kinder Institute 2019-21 Distinguished Research Fellow Alan Gibson and University of Notre Dame Nancy R. Dreux Professor Emeritus of Political Science Michael Zuckert will lead a symposium revisiting the political thought and career of James Madison. Prof. Gibson will give a talk entitled, “James Madison: Thinking Revolutionary,” while Prof. Zuckert will present on “Slavery and the Constitution: A Neo-Madisonian Perspective.” Interested parties can email Thomas Kane, KaneTC@missouri.edu, to be added to a list of people who receive Zoom links for all Kinder Institute talks on the day of the events.
Alan Gibson is currently a Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the Kinder Institute. His focus is American political thought, especially that of the American founding. Gibson has held fellowships from the International Center for Jefferson Studies in Charlottesville, Virginia, the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has published articles in, among other journals, American Political Thought, Polity, History of Political Thought, and The Review of Politics. Gibson is the author of two books on the historiography of the American founding, both published by University Press of Kansas. He is currently working on a study of the political thought of James Madison, tentatively titled James Madison and the Creation of an Impartial Republic. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame.
Michael P. Zuckert is the Nancy R. Dreux Professor of Political Science, Emeritus. He has published extensively in both Political Theory and Constitutional Studies. His books include Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, the Natural Rights Republic, Launching Liberalism, and (with Catherine Zuckert) The Truth About Leo Strauss and Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy, in addition to many articles. He has also edited The Spirit of Religion & the Spirit of Liberty and (with Derek Webb) The Antifederal Writings of the Melancton Smith Circle. He is completing Natural rights and the New Constitutionalism, a study of American constitutionalism in a theoretical context. Professor Zuckert taught graduate and undergraduate courses in Political Philosophy and Theory, American Political Thought, American Constitutional Law, American Constitutional History, Constitutional Theory, and Philosophy of Law. His advising specialties were graduate programs in political science. He is a 2019 Visiting Professor in Arizona State University’s School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership. He co-authored and co-produced a public radio series, Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson: A Nine Part Drama for the Radio. He was also senior scholar for Liberty! (1997), a six-hour public television series on the American Revolution and served as senior advisor on the PBS series on Ben Franklin (2002) and Alexander Hamilton (2007).
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Rebeccah Bechtold is Associate Professor of English at Wichita State University, with an M.A. and Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Her areas of interest in research and teaching include eighteenth and nineteenth century American literature and culture, soundscape studies, sentimental literature, and women’s studies. Dr. Bechtold’s research analyzes how antebellum authors used sound to negotiate the social tensions that afflicted nineteenth century American culture. Her work has appeared in Southern Quarterly, ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, J19: The Journal of Nineteenth Century Americanists, and the New England Quarterly, among other journals. In 2016 she was awarded the Ralph D. Gray Article Prize for her article, “A Revolutionary Soundscape: Musical Reform and the Science of Sound in Early America, 1760–1840,” published in a 2015 issue of the Journal of the Early Republic. In 2018 she was awarded the Jerome Stern Article Prize for her article, “Feeling Right: The Limits of Sympathy and the Problem of History in Making a Murderer,” published in a 2017 issue of Studies in American Culture.
