Economists and political observers in recent years have bemoaned the decline of American competitiveness in traditional industries such as steel, automobiles, and textiles. Some of these observers worry that the U.S. economy will increasingly be dominated by service industries. At least one service industry in the United States does appear to be growing and thriving, despite some very adverse economic circumstances. That industry is the non-profit public policy research industry, more commonly known as “think tanks.” The think tank universe has become much more diverse over the past decade, reflecting both new entrants into the marketplace of ideas and changes in these organizations' environment. There are, moreover, inherent tensions in any of the three main models (“university without students,” contract researcher, and advocacy tank) that think tanks may pursue. Attempting to mix the models can be difficult too.

These tensions and environmental changes have created tremendous uncertainty, but also some entrepreneurial opportunities, for think tank managers. Increasingly, these managers must be concerned with finding a viable niche in a crowded, fragmented market. And they must do so while dealing with staffs who may be resistant not only to specific courses of change, but also to external direction of any sort.

In the seven weeks from later April to early June China has displayed to the world—and to itself—politics at its best and worst. It is in the comparison of the two that the true horror of what has occurred can be seen. The worst is easy to specify. It is the massacre of unarmed civilians by soldiers who have been called on to defend those reluctant to give up power, and to aid them in a struggle with other leaders who would displace them.

Politics at its best can perhaps be suggested by describing some scenes that I witnessed during my stay in Beijing throughout the month of May. In one of the many peaceful demonstrations, journalists marched under a banner saying “We don't believe what we write.” In a different demonstration, school teachers proudly marched at the head of a column of their junior high school students, all of whom were dressed up in school uniforms. Perhaps most suggestive and poignant of all were the parents holding up their babies to the marchers as if to say, you are the future and I show you my allegiance by displaying those who have the most to gain from your courage.

All of these moments were embedded in an outpouring of good will, good humour, discipline and inventiveness the likes of which the world has rarely if ever seen. It was as if the students wished to prod the political leadership by the sheer force of their example of restraint and courage.

When turnout fell to a near-historic low in 1988, the two sources of government statistics suggested opposite reasons. One is that fewer and fewer people are registered to vote, and the other that registered voters are going to the polls less and less.

According to the figures supplied by state election officials who tally up county registration totals and record election returns, voting by registered voters is down 15 percentage points since 1960: 85.4% voted that year, but only 70.5% in 1988. By contrast, the U.S. Census reported that 86.2% of registered voters cast ballots in 1988, down only 4.8 percentage points since 1968 (when the Census postelection sample surveys of both registration and voting were first undertaken) (U.S. Bureau of Census, 1989). The 1988 result confirmed the earlier Census summary conclusion for the presidential elections between 1968-80 that registered voters “overwhelmingly go to the polls” (U.S. Bureau of Census, 1984a).

The Census surveys show that falling registration is the more important cause of declining turnout: the level slipped from 74.3% in 1968 to 66.6% in 1988, or 7.7 percentage points. Adjusting that result downward by about 10% to correct for the tendency by some respondents to tell the Census interviewers they are registered when they are not, the 1988 level of registration was 59%. State data, by contrast, show a much higher registration level: 70.9% in 1988, off only 4.5 percentage points since 1960.

American politics seems constantly surprising even to many of its most attentive domestic observers. It seems nearly unfathomable to many of their foreign counterparts. Is there something about American politics which really is distinct, even unique, in world perspective? Something which implies that this politics can be understood only in terms of the peculiar characteristics of the larger political system in which it occurs? Something which justifies the old term for such nearly untranslatable peculiarity—something “exceptional”?

If there is an exceptionalism to American politics, it must by definition be found in one or more of three areas. It must be found in the public attitudes at the base of that politics, especially in what people want from politics or in how they think about the process of politicking. It must be found in the key organizations in the middle of that politics, those which link individual citizens to the institutions of government, especially political parties and interest groups. And/or it must be found at the very top in those institutions of government themselves, in distinctive conformations or distinctive operation.

To anticipate the analysis here: I believe that the array of American national institutions of government qualifies as exceptional. I am sure that the key arrangement structuring the nature and behavior of our parties qualifies. And I suspect that a peculiar and wide-spread attitude toward politics is additionally distinctive, though I am least confident about this.

A great opportunity, coupled with a strong moral obligation to accept it, confronts political science: to give major attention to the separation of powers between the President and the Congress in the Constitution of the United States. The critical scrutiny of a growing number of public persons reminds us that this separation was attacked by the redoubtable Charles H. McIlwain as posing a danger to constitutional government itself.

Mcllwain on the Separation of Powers

“Among all the modern fallacies that have obscured the true teachings of constitutional history, few are worse than the extreme doctrine of the separation of powers and the indiscriminate use of the phrase ‘checks and balances.’” When representative assemblies took over from kings, “they assumed a power and a responsibility that had always been concentrated and undivided.” McIlwain rejected the separation of powers in favor of the limitation of powers. “The true safeguards of liberty against arbitrary government are the ancient legal limitation and the modern political responsibility” or “full political responsibility … to the whole people.” The latter is “utterly incompatible with any extended system of checks and balances.”

McIlwain could find no “good precedents” in history for “this dissipation of government” which has “worked disaster ever since it was adopted.” He feared that if the dissipation of government developed much further it would precipitate a reaction that might sweep away “every protection of any sort, legal as well as political, to leave the individual naked and unprotected against the ever-present danger of arbitrary government.”

For a period of more than three years, from spring 1985 through the summer of 1988, the U.S. Congress labored hard to come to terms with the nation's staggering trade deficit. Since the voluminous ‘Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988’ was passed into the law, much of the ensuing policy debate has focused on whether or not this legislation is protectionist in nature. Far less attention has been given to an issue which deserves at least as much attention: What lessons regarding the future of economic policy making can be drawn from this lawmaking experience?

A Major Case of Legislative Miscarriage?

An argument can be made that, after all the agitation, commotion, and self-flagellation which went into the legislative exercise, the one tangible result of the 1988 Trade Act was the preservation of the status quo ante. Viewed in a critical light, one could go further and argue that what really happened was the performance of a national rite. This rite involved a large group of players who each invested vast amounts of political energies into the effort of making a new trade law. The problem was that their inputs traveled along largely predetermined paths and primarily satisfied the actors' symbolic needs, while it only obscured a national policy issue urgently awaiting resolution.

As the standard textbook of American politics has it, Congress is to respond to every pressure group knocking at its door. Members indeed introduced a myriad of provisions which covered every angle of trade policy, from the regulation of imports of aluminum, titanium, sugar and photo albums down to the outright prescription of world market shares as well as of interest and exchange rate policies abroad.

The subdiscipline of political theory and political philosophy continues to suffer some misunderstanding within political science as a whole. Notwithstanding its renaissance in the last decade, political theory/philosophy is still too often characterized in terms that obscure its roles and functions within the discipline. Political theory/philosophy is often referred to as “normative theory” as a way of distinguishing its concerns with values from the “empirical theory” and research of political science proper. Where the concerns of political theory/philosophy are not just normative, political scientists often characterize it as “speculative theory” to distinguish it from “empirical theory” that can be confirmed or refuted by reference to observable data. The terms of such a distinction suggest, of course, that theories grounded in certainties can and ought to replace the speculative approaches of traditional political thought. And because political theory/philosophy relies heavily on the history of political thought, many see it as part of history and the humanities rather than political science—interesting and necessary for any culturally literate person, but fundamentally distinct from contemporary political research.

Terminological distinctions such as these solidified in an era in which behavioralist agendas shaped subdisciplinary boundaries, and they reflect the influence that neo-positivist views of explanation once had within the discipline. Since that time, however, we have developed more sophisticated understandings of how theory and philosophy relate to empirical research. These developments have in turn affected the way we understand the explanatory concerns of political science, while also expanding political theory/philosophy beyond its traditional boundaries.