The much‐noted decline of “state autonomy” theories owes partly to external challenges to state power, such as globalization, supranational regimes, and the like. But advanced democratic states have also long been seen as threatened from within, especially by powerful private interest groups. The extent of private‐interest influence on policy making depends in important part on corporate lobbyists, a group whose activities are chronicled in this essay. Lobbyists exercise considerably more autonomy from the private clients who hire them than has previously (...) been acknowledged. This portrait ultimately suggests that the national state and civil society may be mutually supportive rather than strictly separate spheres. (shrink)

This Comment treats each of Spinosa, Flores, and Dreyfus's three subjects ?entrepreneurship, democratic activity, and cultivation of solidarity ? in turn. Though marred by inattention to moral consequences and an accordingly unjustified meliorism, the authors? insights reaffirm and strengthen a number of convictions obscured in current political?theory debates. In particular, their account of the virtuous citizen, and of a variant of solidarity which grows out of such citizens? activity, deserves recognition. The basic contention that humans are ?at their best? when (...) self?consciously engaged in transformative activities is accepted, with the essential caveat that such activity can only be sustained for relatively short periods of time by individuals and polities alike. (shrink)

Among the principal targets of criticism in recent American politics has been the alleged corruption, inequity, overall cost, and regulatory complexity of the U.S. campaign‐finance system. Scholarship has not borne out any of these criticisms, and, if anything, empirical investigation suggests that the current system does a fair job in addressing—as much as this is possible under modern conditions—the problem of public ignorance in mass democracies.

In representing a fragmented pluralist polity, the U.S. Congress inevitably exhibits high levels of conflict and disagreement. Increasingly, the American public finds such conflict—the ordinary procedures of legislative democracy—distasteful. As members of Congress pay closer attention to approval ratings and other poll measures, their natural inclination may be to avoid legislating, especially on controversial issues. This response to the preference of the demos has profoundly antidemocratic implications.