The Place Where It All Starts
At Starting Points, we take the long view of American politics. Non-partisan and interdisciplinary, we aim to understand American politics by looking before and beyond our current political situation—before to the historical, cultural and intellectual roots of American politics, and beyond to the overarching ideas and guiding ideals of our unique political tradition.
As Madison argued both in 1833 and in 1787-88, majority rule reflects the best version of democratic governance given the limitations of human nature and our constitutional arrangements. We tend to think of James Madison as the founder who inspired our understanding of the complex relationship between majority rule and minority rights. We attribute to […]
A Political Theory Review interview with John T. Scott, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis, about his new book, The Routledge Guidebook to Machiavelli’s The Prince (Routledge, 2016). Hear more interviews from The Political Theory Review.
A common starting point for analyzing both the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Bill of Rights is a neglected earlier document: the Continental Congress’s Resolution of May 10 and 15, 1776. It is common for scholars to assume that the starting point for interpreting the Declaration of Independence is the Virginia Bill of Rights. […]
