num_pages: 276
description: In this classic analysis, H. Mark Roelofs challenges America's complacency about its political system. Maintaining that the American political system is not working well enough to inspire confidence that it can meet the challenges of our time, he attributes that failure not to its practitioners but to its very design. He sees the system as split between its legitimizing self-image, social democracy, and its operational element, liberal democracy. Based on this novel understanding of the American political system, Roelofs presents a devastating and closely reasoned critique that traces our nation's political ills to fundamental flaws in the very design of its founding principles, the character of its major institutions, and the basic pattern of its processes."…Roelofs has intrepidly pursued a 'new political science,' reconstituted as a critical science.…[this] is a tour de force, combining an original analysis of American ideologies with critical application of contradictory streams of thought to the workings of American political institutions." -- Theodore J. Lowi"Both in sorrow and in anger, Mark Roelofs dissects the 'systematic paradox' which lies at the heart of the American polity. All has never been well with us, he insists, but neither is all lost. A provocative, highly readable work." -- Jean Bethke Elshtain
language: English
title: The Poverty of American Politics: A Theoretical Interpretation
titlecomplete: The Poverty of American Politics: A Theoretical Interpretation
ratings_count: 11
publisher: Temple Univ Pr