Good Society

None WEERTS

The Good Society

Civic Inspiration or Civic Disillusionment? The Mixed Legacy of the Wisconsin Idea

公民激励还是公民幻灭？威斯康星理念的复杂遗产

None PETERS

The Citizen Professionalism of a Weed Scientist

杂草科学家之公民专业素养

None MADHAVAN

Maintenance

维护

None FORESTER

Truth Telling in the Face of Power

面对权力的真相陈述

None LI

Fragmented Pragmatism

零散的实用主义

Abstract Americans interested in community today often lament precisely what conservative Americans prize: the perceived emphasis on individual rights and absence of explicit endorsements of civic duty, collective authority, and social equality in our eighteenth-century founding documents. Many who are familiar with the influence John Rawls had on contemporary political theory likewise fault him for prioritizing liberty over equality, a preference widely criticized by communitarians insisting that the common good is the proper end and measure of government. This article challenges those understandings of our nation’s founding, and of Rawls’s work, in order to show that concerns with the common good run as deeply through American history as do celebrations of individual rights.

James T. Kloppenberg

The Common Good Tradition from Madison to Rawls

从麦迪逊到罗尔斯的公共善传统

Abstract In democratic, pluralistic societies, diverse constituencies need ways to collectively negotiate for their interests. Coalitions are one way that stakeholders can collectively solve problems and negotiate for change on behalf of their constituencies. But often, coalitions fail to achieve their goals. How can coalitions more effectively create change? This literature review synthesizes research from across academic disciplines to identify the practices that make coalitions effective. The features that make coalitions effective are intangibles: member buy-in, commitment, trust, and agency. But these do not appear by chance. Rather, they develop directly from the early and ongoing investments that a coalition makes in its architecture—or the structures, practices, and processes that the coalition collectively creates to organize itself, its work, and its relationships. Three main features of good coalition architecture are democratic governance, processes for learning and flexibility, and practices that create clear roles and trusting relationships. These design choices facilitate negotiation across difference and, ultimately, allow coalition members to advocate more productively for their interests in the public space. Although the design choices laid out in this article do not and cannot guarantee success, they can create the conditions for more effective coalition work in the immediate and long term.

Elizabeth Zack

Lynsy Smithson-Stanley

Designing Effective, Resilient Coalitions

设计有效、弹性的联盟

In the mid-fourteenth century Italy was experiencing a crisis of unprecedented magnitude. The competing swords of the two universal authorities—the spiritual and the temporal—were unable to command the respect and loyalty of those they were supposed to rule. The Catholic Church was corrupt and internally divided; the papacy, no longer based in Rome but forcedly transferred to Avignon (1309–76), had become a puppet in the hands of French monarchs; and the emperor lacked the military and political power to prevail over his multiple enemies—a chaotic array of local factions, lawless tyrants, and rebellious cities (not to mention the Ottoman Turks at the door of Constantinople). Further contributing to the apocalyptic perception of a world on the verge of collapse were the far-reaching implications of the Black Death (1343–53). The pandemic had wiped out one-third of Europe's population, plagued its nascent financial system, and abysmally exacerbated socioeconomic inequalities.Amid such a hopeless turmoil, a new generation of scholars envisioned a brave, long-term program of intellectual, moral, and political renewal. The Italian "civic humanists" who lived and wrote in the century and a half (the "long Quattrocento") spanning from Petrarch—the spiritual leader and forerunner of the Renaissance—to Machiavelli believed in the regenerative potential of education as the "doorway" to good character and, in turn, to an enlightened exercise of political power. On their account, intellectual distinction and moral excellence were the prerequisites for legitimate political authority; any ruler who lacked both was doomed to be a tyrant. Resonating through their writings and letters was the firm belief that virtue was the staple of true political legitimacy in a world of waning or crumbled legitimacies. On their account, a virtue-centered politics entailed love of justice and the common good, respect of the laws, self-restraint on the part of rulers and ruled alike, and the capacity to look past the allure of partisan interests.Disgusted by the poor ethics of those in positions of power, Italian humanists became increasingly critical of current university curricula. Medieval Scholasticism had turned into a preprofessional training in law, medicine, and the s.c. "ars nummaria" (the art of money-making), forging future elites who would venally obsess over questions of status and wealth and grow completely oblivious of the qualities that good leadership ultimately required. To this end, Petrarch, Salutati, Bruni, and those following in their footsteps initiated an educational revolution that was part of a broader moral and political one, revolving around the core idea that soulcraft and statecraft represented two sides of the same ambitious project.In lieu of the unimaginative memorization of legal technicalities, degrading the study of the law to a "loquax ignorantia" (talkative ignorance) for Petrarch and a "scientia oscitans" (yawning science) for Bruni, the Italian literati—almost all law school dropouts—rethought from scratch the "artes liberals" (the Medieval liberal arts divided into Trivium and Quadrivium) and boldly forged a new educational paradigm: the "studia humanitatis." A fourteenth- and fifteenth-century ancestor of our humanities, this alternative curriculum sought to nurture the minds and souls of students and thus craft a well-educated and virtuous leadership that could guide Italy, Europe, and possibly the Western world out of the darkness. Major ingredients in the recipe for virtuous minds and, consequently, virtuous rulers were the study of grammar and rhetoric but also poetry, history, and moral philosophy, in the attempt to make rulers-to-be finally capable of speaking eloquently, imitating the ancients, and governing their own life and community by means of virtue.Interestingly, the reformers of Renaissance humanism anticipated Thomas Jefferson's famous distinction between a "natural aristocracy" (superior due to proven virtue and ability) and an "artificial" one (based on ancestry and wealth). They firmly believed that those who ruled by hereditary right had to prove themselves worthy of political authority—that is, of a place of distinction and prominence that, unlike property, cannot be handed down to one's heirs. At the same time, the program advocated by the Italian humanists was at once meritocratic and egalitarian. While championing virtuous individuals' right to rule, they made it clear that the virtuous politician was educated, not born, precisely because virtue could be learned. Anyone, if properly trained, could cultivate it. Likewise, they warned that those born into the ruling elite and thus blindly privileged by the lottery of life might eventually fail the test of virtue, should they be reluctant to pursue intellectual—and thus moral—excellence. The fact that the civic humanists of Renaissance Italy cut widely across the political spectrum further alerts to the purportedly egalitarian, non-elitist tenor of their call for of an empowered meritocracy.This story—of real crisis and aspirational renewal—is the one told in the recent book by Harvard historian James Hankins, Virtue Politics. Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy (Harvard University Press, 2019), as well as of his most recent monograph Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy. The Virtuous Republic of Francesco Patrizi of Siena (Harvard University Press, 2022). Drawing on a life-long study of Renaissance political thought and intellectual history and a quarter-century of first-hand archival work, Virtue Politics successfully combines impressive historical erudition (both in breadth and depth) with a distinctively philosophical reading of the writings, ideas, and lessons from one of the richest chapters in the history of Western political theory and practice.This roundtable builds on an "Author Meets Critics" panel that I organized and chaired in the context of the 2021 meeting of the American Political Science Association. It brings together four leading historians of political thought (ancient and early modern) to critically discuss the main claims of the book. Each of them engages with the landmark monograph of Professor Hankins to highlight how, with its unrivaled philological rigor, it commandingly integrates or challenges influential narratives of Renaissance political ideas (from Hans Baron to Quentin Skinner and beyond) as well as how it opens new and promising venues for future research at the crossroads of historical political thought and contemporary political theory. By doing so, the contributors to this roundtable have managed to skillfully write both as enthusiastic readers offering fine-grained analyses of the study's core arguments and as friendly critics thinking through and beyond a magnum opus that, ever since its publication, has been consistently described as "magisterial" and celebrated as an instant classic.The roundtable proceeds as follows. The essay of Prof. Ryan Balot (University of Toronto) investigates the differences between Renaissance and classical virtue theory and asks which place (if any) partisan politics had in the proudly nonpartisan "virtue politics" of Italian humanists—a question that has, as he points out, significant and far-reaching implications for contemporary political discourse. The essay of Prof. Michelle Clarke (Dartmouth College) examines the role that Ciceronian eloquence played in the "virtue politics" agenda of the Italian humanists and how Machiavelli vigorously criticized his predecessors' account of language and antiquity. The essay of Prof. Vickie Sullivan (Tufts University) focuses on the themes of empire and cosmopolitanism that loom large in the political thought of Renaissance Italy and its account in Virtue Politics. It traces the humanists' concern with empires back to their "painful recognition" that their own world could not live up to the bygone greatness of the Roman empire, cutting across Europe, Africa, and Asia; it also details how they sought to build a cosmopolitan (and politically ecumenical) "empire of thought" to cope productively with their fraught and hyperpolarized times.Finally, Prof. Gabriele Pedullà (University of Roma Tre) zooms in on a few details of the historical and historiographical geography mapped by the book to constructively nuance its account or suggest possible alternative readings: the contribution of Neapolitan political thought in the second half of the fifteenth century ("the second wave of humanist political theory"), especially through the writings of Giovanni Pontano; the extent to which the Italian humanists' reform truly amounted to a defense of political meritocracy; the reasons why Machiavelli, raised as a humanist, articulated a radical critique and unconditional rebuttal of the classical-philosophical tradition and its followers in his times; and the place of "virtue politics" (and its failure) in the overall genealogy of political modernity.The roundtable ends with an extensive reply by Professor Hankins to his readers and critics.Note: I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Professor Hankins, the distinguished contributors to the roundtable as well as the participants in the panel that set the stage for this exchange, and to Dr. Trygve Throntveit for generously welcoming the present essays in the journal The Good Society.

David Ragazzoni

Rethinking the Foundations of Political Rule: Introduction to Roundtable on James Hankins’s <i>Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy</i> (Harvard University Press, 2019)

重新思考政治统治的基础：《美德政治：文艺复兴时期意大利的灵魂塑造与国家治理》（哈佛大学出版社，2019年）圆桌讨论会引言

Abstract This article presents a successful example of fostering pluralism by reducing affective polarization through facilitated conversations. Drawing from the results of a Deliberative Polling experiment, this article finds significant depolarization and moderation as a result of deliberation on policy issues by like-minded high school students who predominantly self-identified as liberal. While critics of deliberation are concerned with like-minded participants becoming more extreme and living in echo chambers, this article shows that Deliberative Polling, even among like-minded individuals can depolarize. Deliberation of eighteen economic and healthcare reform proposals by thirty-eight groups of participants demonstrated no systematic trend of group polarization. A split-half experimental design allowed inference that deliberation was not just correlated with but caused decreases in both affective and issue polarization. Remarkably, deliberation not only moderated opinions on the issues deliberated, but also moderated opinions on related issues not deliberated. The deliberation procedures necessary to achieve such an outcome are discussed, including not setting consensus as a goal, providing supplementary information, and moderating discussions. After a literature review, the methods of the experiment are detailed, followed by a discussion of the results and a brief conclusion about future prospects for bridge building.

Willoughby J. Winograd

Alice Siu

Depolarizing Through Deliberation in Civics Education: A Case Study of Like-Minded High School Students

公民教育中通过审议去极化：以志同道合高中生为例的个案研究

James Hankins

Was Renaissance Virtue Politics a Failure?

文艺复兴时期的德政是否失败了？

ISSN	1089-0017, 1538-9731
h-index	10

Publication Information	Publisher: Penn State University Press，Publishing cycle: ，Journal Type: journal，Open Access Journals: No
Basic data	Year of publication: 2010，Proportion of original research papers: 0.00%，Self Citation Rate:N.A.， Gold OA Rate: 0.00%

Good Society

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