"Means as Ends"

Syllabus | Introduction | Unit I | Unit II | Unit III 

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Since its origins, political science has raised questions about the ends of political life as well as about the means necessary to secure those ends. For Aristotle, the Father of Political Science, a study of the ends of particular regimes was inseparable from a detailed analysis of the various institutions and processes associated with those regimes. Means were important primarily because they could either support or undermine the end of any particular regime. A change in the selection process for public officials, for example, could result in a "revolution," or regime change.

The great modern political scientists have also interested themselves in the means as well as the ends of politics. For example, one of the great themes of The Federalist Papers is the relationship between means and ends, and the work illustrates how discussion of means and ends can occur on multiple levels. At the most general level, Publius claims that a regime ordered toward liberty must feature the separation of powers, which is both an array of distinct institutions and a process for securing the rule of law. However, within the system of separated powers, each department has its own purpose(s), which must be secured with the assistance of another set of means. For example, in the bicameral legislature, the House of Representatives was designed to ensure that government would "have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people." The means essential for securing this attachment were frequent elections. The American Framers' entire political system is a network of interrelated ends and means of varying degrees of generality and specificity.

While traditional political science understood ends and means as inextricably intertwined, contemporary scholars all too often discuss them in isolation from one another. On the one hand, political theorists tend to downgrade the importance of such means as institutions and processes by focusing on more abstract questions of justice and the good society. On the other hand, scholars can pay detailed attention to how institutions and processes work without thinking much about what they are for.

The purpose of this course is to follow the traditional method of considering institutions and processes as "means" in the context of particular political systems as well as "ends" in their own right, i.e., in light of the specific purposes they serve. Specifically, we will focus on various means that have been used in the context of liberal democratic regimes, with particular emphasis on the United States.

An intellectual examination of the formal institutions, processes, and mechanisms of liberal democracy will give students insight into how liberal democracies work and the analytical tools to consider how they might work better. A study of formal mechanisms is by no means intended to denigrate the importance of political culture as a vital element in the creation and maintenance of liberal democratic regimes. Rather, it assumes the importance of political culture yet also assumes that to perpetuate itself, political culture must become embedded in formal processes and institutions.

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[1] Aristotle, Politics, trans. Carnes Lord, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), V.3.

[2] James Madison, Federalist 51, in The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter, introduction by Charles R. Kesler (New York: Signet Classics, 2003).

[3] Jeremy Waldron, "Separation of Powers and the Rule of Law," in Political Political Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), ch. 3.

[4] Madison, Federalist 52.

[5] Waldron, "Political Political Theory," in Political Political Theory, ch. 1.