Political sociology and political reality: The concept of democratic consensus

The investigation of consensus was a leading theme in the political sociology of democracy from the early 1950s until the late 1960s. Consensus has since become something of a suspect category of social inquiry. The consensus literature (V. O. Key, R. Dahl, H. Eckstein, S. M. Upset, G. A. Almond) has been charged by the ‘post‐behaviouralists’ as conservative politics disguised as impartial social science. This paper investigates the possibility of restoring consensus as a research category through an examination of its original use by John Stuart Mill. The link between Mill and contemporary political sociology is Edward Shils, who is here identified as one of the guiding spirits of the consensus literature. The paper compares consensus as treated in Mill's explicitly political science with Shils’ implicitly political science. The ‘post‐behaviouralists’ sought the recovery of the political as the leading theme of social inquiry. This is exactly as Mill originally intended. The consensus literature, however, took its bearing from Shils’ restatement of Mill, in which the political categories are submerged according to the demands of a novel and apolitical science of politics. The recovery of democratic consensus as a research category would greatly benefit from the substitution of Mill's original project in place of Shils's much weaker, if more influential, restatement of it.     

Institutions in context: Reconstructing Aristotle's defence of cultural studies

Within political science, there are two alternative approaches to understanding political institutions: traditional ‘institutional studies’ and the newer ‘cultural studies’. Each approach tends to go its own way, with little debate between the two. The former explains institutions by reference to their independent behaviour which has a formative influence on political culture. The latter explains institutions by reference to their dependent behaviour which reflects the formative influence of political culture. This paper proposes a synthesis between the two approaches, offering a third alternative based on a reconstructured application of Aristotle's ‘regime analysis’, along lines experimented with by J.S. Mill. My primary aim is analytical rather that historical: to reconstruct an approach to institutional analysis which better relates institution and culture.     

Book reviews

Australian politics

David Corbett, Australian Public Sector Management (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1992) pp.280. $24.95 ISBN 1 86373 312 4.

Chris James, Chris Jones and Andrew Norton (eds.), A Defence of Economic Rationalism (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993) pp.194. $19.95 ISBN 186 3735348.

James Jupp and Marie Kabala (eds), The Politics of Australian Immigration (Carlton, Vic: Bureau of Immigration Research, 1993) pp.302. $n.p. ISBN 9 780644 272933.

H.P. Lee and George Winterton (eds), Australian Constitutional Perspectives (Sydney: The Law Book Company, 1992) pp.347. $55.00 ISBN 0 455 21085 3.

Ian McAllister, Political Behaviour: Citizens, Parties and Elites in Australia (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1993) pp.308. $24.99 ISBN 0 582 86987 0.

Stephen Mills, The Hawke Years: The Story from Inside (Penguin, 1993) pp.330. $19.95 ISBN 0 670 84563 9.

P. Molr and H. Eijkman (eds), Policing Australia: Old Issues; New Perspectives (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1992) pp.391. $34.95 ISBN 0 7329 0390 4.

Jocelyn Pixley, Citizenship and Employment: Investigating Post‐Industrial Options (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1993) pp.339. $29.95 ISBN 0 521 44615 5.

S. Nicholas Samuel and Desh B. Gupta, Issues in Applied Economics: An Australian Text (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1993) pp.247. $26.95 ISBN 0 7329 2019 1.

M. Sawer and M. Simms (eds), A Woman's Place: Women and Politics in Australia, 2nd edition (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993) pp.345. $22.95 ISBN 1 86373 169 5.

Comparative and international politics

Tsuneo Akaha and Frank Langdon (eds), Japan in the Posthegemonic World (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993) pp.295. $US17.95 ISBN 1 55587 385 5.

Michael R. Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Level: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War (London: Little, Brown, 1993) pp.498. $40.00 ISBN 0 316 90523 2.

John Coates, Suppressing Insurgency: An Analysis of the Malayan Emergency, 1948–54 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992) pp.223. $US45.00 ISBN 0 8133 1436 4

Rafe de Crespigny, China This Century (Hong Kong, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) pp.353. $19.95 ISBN 0 19 585164 1.

Geoffrey K. Fry, Reforming the Civil Service: The Fulton Committee on the British Home Civil Service, 1977–1968 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993) pp.296. £45.00 ISBN 0 7486 0412 X.

Leslie Holmes, The End of Communist Power. Anti‐corruption campaigns and legitimation crisis (Cambridge: Polity, 1993) pp.358. $13.95 ISBN 0 7456 0580 X.

Joel Krieger (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World (London: Oxford University Press, 1993) pp.1056. $59.95 ISBN 0 19 505934 4.

Brij V. Lal, Broken Waves: A History of the Fiji Islands in the Twentieth Century (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992) pp.404. $US38.00 ISBN 0 8248 1418 5.

Malcolm McKinnon, Independence and Foreign Policy: New Zealand in the World Since 1935 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1993) pp.329. $29.95 ISBN 1 86940 070 4.

Marina Ottaway, South Africa: The Struggle for a New Order (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1993).pp.250. $US34.95 ISBN 0 1857 6716 1.

Bob Tucker and Bruce Scott (eds), South Africa: Prospects for a Successful Transition (Kenwyn, South Africa: Juta & Co, 1992). pp.314. $n.p. ISBN 0 7021 2920 8.

Richard B. Spence and Linda L. Nelson (eds), Scholar, Patriot, Mentor: Historical Essays in Honor of Dimitrije Djordjevic (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1992) pp.422. $US51.00 ISBN 0 8803 217 4.

Carol M. Swain, Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993) pp.275. $US37.50 ISBN 0 674 07615 X.

Katherine Tate, From Protest to Politics: The New Black Voters in American Elections (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993) pp.221. $32.50 ISBN 0 674 32538 9.

Howard Williams, Moorhead Wright and Tony Evans, A Reader in International Relations and Political Theory (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993) pp. 334. $39.95 ISBN 0 335 15667 3.

Political theory and methodology

F.G. Bailey, The Kingdom of Individuals: An Essay on Self‐Respect and Social Obligation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993) pp.231. $US15–35 ISBN 0 8014 8078 7.

Alan Carling, Social Division (London: Verso, 1991) pp.442. $45.00 ISBN 0 86091 506 9.

James W. Ceaser, Liberal Democracy and Political Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992) pp.242 $29.00 ISBN 0 8018 4511 4.

Eva Etzioni‐Halevy, The Elite Connection: Problems and Potential of Western Democracy (Cambridge: Polity, 1993) pp.239. $39.95 ISBN 0 7456 1068 4.

Shaun Hargeaves Heap, Martin Hollis, Bruce Lyons, Robert Sugden and Albert Weale, The Theory of Choice (Blackwell: Oxford, 1992) pp. 398. $49.00 ISBN 0 63118322 1.

Bonnie Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993) pp.269. $US17.95 ISBN 0 8014 8072 8.

Paul Patton (ed.), Nietzsche, Feminism and Political Theory (London: Allen & Unwin, 1993) pp.258. $24.95 ISBN 186373 445 7.