PO 362 - Senior Seminar in Public Policy and Law: Books

Editors Ira Katznelson and Helen V. Milner of Columbia University sought to "reflect the vibrant, often contested, diversity of political science while chronicling the past decade's scholarship and prompting thought about future directions."Breaking away from a traditional organization around the four major fields of political science, the editors chose to create a framework that focuses first on the state, followed by democracy, then agency, and concluding with means of inquiry.This volume is an important resource for all scholars interested in reading across fields and includes an essential unified bibliography.

Understanding Liberal Democracy presents notable work by Nicholas Wolterstorff at the intersection between political philosophy and religion. Alongside his influential earlier essays, it includes nine new essays in which Wolterstorff develops original lines of argument and stakes out novelpositions regarding the nature of liberal democracy, human rights, and political authority. Taken together, these positions are an attractive alternative to the so-called public reason liberalism defended by thinkers such as John Rawls. The volume will be of interest to philosophers, politicaltheorists, and theologians, engaging a wide audience of those interested in how best to understand the nature of liberal democracy and its relation to religion.