Here are some final stats on the books themselves:

Total Fiction (Challenge/Total):   30 / 39

Total Non-fiction (Challenge/Total):  35 / 35

Here’s how non-fiction broke down into categories (a book can belong to multiple categories):

I’m pretty happy with my reading list for the year, although I’d have imagined I’d read more biology and more literature.  Most of my fiction was on the lighter side, and I suspect that the biology counts are skewed because I did read a fair amount of biology in the form of journal articles.  In fact, I’m guessing that my non-fiction reading was a lot more balanced if you include journal articles. 

What were my top books of the year?  I’m not going to try to rank them, but here’s the top 10 books I read last year:

Richard Rorty, "Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity"

Richard Rorty, "Achieving Our Country : Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America"

John Banville, "The Untouchable"

Akhil Amar, "America’s Constitution : A Biography"

Charles Taylor, "Modern Social Imaginaries (Public Planet)"

Charles Stross, "Accelerando"

Michael Sandel, "Democracy’s Discontent : America in Search of a Public Philosophy"

Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle:

"Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)"

"The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2)"

"The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 3)"

What does 2006 hold for my reading list?  Like Will Baude, I am looking forward to a year without feeling forced to write about every book I read (although I didn’t hold to this rule and did read 9 books I just didn’t count towards my total).  Also like Will, I read fewer books in 2005 than I had in 2004.  I’m pretty sure the reason for this has little to do with the Challenge and more to do with a series of difficult personal and family events. 

In 2006 I resolve to read about the same mix (percentage-wise) of fiction and non-fiction, but the fiction will (hopefully) be better quality.  I hope to read more biology/anthropology in 2006, although given that books are often out-of-date, I expect journal articles to continue as primary in that field.  I also resolve to read more economics and particularly economic history.  I expect law-related books to taper off a bit, mostly because I have less of a backlog now of older stuff and will expect to read mostly newly published works and journal articles.  I resolve to read more empirical political and social science; 2005 was a philosophy and theory-heavy year and it’s time for more balance. 

But first, Happy New Year to everyone reading, and have a terrific celebration tonight!

This is important because the neo-roman theory stands in stark contrast to the classical liberal tradition, in which freedom is constituted by any situation in which the preferences and actions of individuals are free of interference. Skinner, Pettit, and to some extent Michael Sandel call into question whether the strict liberal tradition is, in fact, the best constitutive theory of freedom available to us; all believe that what we call “liberal” goals in the United States today are best achieved not through a society founded on classical liberal (or “libertarian”) non-interference, but rather through a revival of the “republicanism” of the Founding era, the Commonwealthmen in England, both ultimately deriving from “neo-roman” principles.

I have to admit a considerable sympathy for this viewpoint, which I hope to elaborate on at length here or at Progressive Commons. I want to finish Pettit’s book first, and connect some threads between Pettit, Skinner, Sandel, Charles Taylor (about which more in my next post), and Richard Rorty. Right now, as the year ends, I merely want to record my impressions reading Skinner, and say that I will be back for more, including Skinner’s two-volume work “The Foundations of Modern Political Thought”.

Of course, most people reading the book come for the constitutional issues, like myself.  Here, I find myself on changing ground.  Insofar as "originalism" of any stripe involves reconstruction of past intents or "public meanings," we have an empirical problem not unlike that faced by archaeologists "reconstructing" past cultural practices.  Such interpretations are unfalsifiable almost by definition, and thus strict "originalists" face the same problem they accuse the "living constitution" folks of having:  ultimately both methods produce arguments that are made in the present by actors who vary widely in their motives, allegiences, and ideas of permissible judicial action.  To the extent that originalists rely only upon "public meaning" (the current method in vogue within originalist circles), and use only textual sources for public meaning (i.e., dictionaries, publicly available writings), the interpretive method may verge upon textualism — which is ultimately the position that Scalia describes as his own. 

Mary Ann Glendon does an excellent job in her comment describing how civil-law systems in Europe have retreated from strict textualism over the last generation, and explores their reasoning.  Ultimately, she provides an excellent rationale for a synthetic approach to constitutional interpretation, which combines textual structural analysis (of the kind that Amar’s recent book does so brilliantly for the American case) with a formalist common-law approach similiar to that common in Germany’s constitutional court.  I need to think a bit more on this, and review how this relates to both Amar’s liberal textualism and Larry Solum’s "neo-formalist" approach, but it does seem to avoid the unacknowledged unfalsifiability of originalism while not falling into the tarpit of "realist" approaches to liberal "living" constitutionalism. 

In starting with Bentham, Macpherson argues that “liberal” democracy really has its origins in the early 1800’s, rather than in the England of the 1640’s, or in the American colonies of the 1750’s and 60’s. I find his argument convincing, in the sense that earlier than this, “democrats” had typically been utopian radicals, disinclined to accept people as they are or the economy as it existed, and thus no earlier theory of “pure” democracy can be called “descriptive” instead of speculative. In some ways, even Jefferson’s vision of agrarian democracy advocated a single-class society of “yeoman” farmers which constituted the citizenry, and required Jefferson (and his followers) to repudiate the growing industrial and commercial nature of the American (and Atlantic) economy. By contrast, Bentham’s utilitarian democracy accepts both people and the growing industrial capitalism as givens, and asks what political arrangements could yield the greatest good for the greatest number. His answer, of course, is the distinctly laissez-faire version of liberal democracy that modern libertarians and “market” liberals identify as “classical liberalism” (or at least, a major source and strain of classical liberalism). It is this sense of “liberal” which gives rise to the Liberal parties in the UK and later, Canada, and which serves as the basis for “neo-liberal” economic theory.

Macpherson’s second model is “liberal” democracy in the second, and more modern, sense of the term. John Stuart Mill recognized that the laissez-faire liberalism of Bentham and James Mill was insufficient to the achievement of any goals but “non-interference” (to use Pettit’s term), and that liberal democracy could also function as a moral agent in the improvement of society. This view leads, uncertainly but eventually, to the “social democracy” of the Labour party and FDR’s New Deal, and to the modern welfare state. It is this sense of the term “liberal” to which modern “progressives” feel allegience.

Within his analysis, Macpherson points out that the second model is less descriptive of actual society than the first, and although he doesn’t use the term, it is obvious that model two is largely normative. It is not clear, however, that model 1 is fully descriptive, since Bentham and especially James Mill distorted the descriptive accuracy of their theory in order to avoid its implications for universal suffrage and political participation. Instead, a third consensus model emerges in the mid-twentieth century, from the empirical work of Robert Dahl, Buchanan, and others on voter preferences, rational choice theory, and a market-oriented view of the political process. In model 3, groups of elites compete for the votes of the populace, who do not vote directly on issues but instead ratify choice of party blocs or slates of candidates, who then pursue their own agenda when in office. At some level, one must agree that model 3 is an accurate description of actual politics in today’s advanced democracies. The controversial part of model 3 is normative, however: the idea that the workings of the political “market” actually seek out and deliver the “optimal” solution to the aggregate preferences of voting “consumers.” The latter is a much more controversial statement, and in fact is likely false. On an empirical level, polling data frequently demonstrate that our chosen representatives rarely act in strict accordance with aggregate voter preferences, and any link between voter preference and the acts of elected officials is tenuous except perhaps immediately prior to elections.

A deeper structural problem with model 3, or what we might term “competitive” democracy, is that the assumption that polyarchy provides optimal aggregate preferences to voters is drastically overblown. It only does so in the vastly simplified (and overly linear) models one sees in Dahl and Buchanan’s early works. As research into complex systems and non-linear dynamics have shown, evolving systems are frequently trapped in local, lesser “optima” when the fitness or reward landscape is complex. When decisions are linked and tradeoffs complex, as they invariably are in modern political decision-making, we can expect that the fitness landscape represented by the matrix of available decisions will be very rugged. Idealizations such as Kauffman’s NK model vividly depict the consequences for the overall quality of available solutions — from any particular starting point in such a rugged decision landscape, the probability that a single “vote” or “move” on that decision landscape being optimal is vanishingly small.

Of course, Macpherson’s final model is intended to be a solution to the moral dilemma of model 3. In achieving substantial descriptive accuracy, we essentially have a more accurate version of model 1, but without the morally uplifting normative thrust of John Stuart Mill, the Progressive Era, and the New Deal. Macpherson describes something called “participatory” democracy as his solution, but the model amounts only to layered schemes of “direct” democracy designed to improve overall political participation in specific issues. His discussion is frankly speculative and ultimately unsatisfying.

I don’t recall precisely why I found Macpherson compelling back in 1985, but today the value I find in this book lies in the framework of formal models he provides for thinking about the historical development of liberalism (classical or welfare) and democratic participation. His solution for the future may be unconvincing, but his conviction that our task as liberals must be to blend descriptively accurate models of politics with normatively satisfying goals for the liberal state remains convincing as ever.

The novels I’ve read thus far are those which are reasonably “official” parts of the B5 storyline, wrapping up details (such as the Icarus trip to Zha’ha’dum and Sinclair’s leadership of the Rangers on Minbar) that could not be told fully during the series.  I’ll likely read a couple of the others, focusing on Londo Mollari’s years as Emperor after the close of the series, and the Telepath War (which clearly occurs in the series between the final two episodes of season 5).  Some of the other novels appear to be far more incidental and less expository of the main storyline, and I have no interest. 

UPDATE 12/29: I had some downtime recently for health purposes, and read more of this series, about 7 in all at this point. I’m counting them all as one book for Challenge purposes, since they really are fairly insubstantial reads. Many of them are pretty good, though I’m a bit irritated that the third book in the Centauri Prime series is basically unavailable except at collector’s prices — considering that it’s just a paperback like books 1 and 2.

Dahl answers the title question by surveying the various departures from “fair” representation present in our constitutional system, by analysis of the pragmatic tradeoffs made by the Framers and Federalists, and through comparison with more recent democratic constitutional systems worldwide. The list of problems should come as no surprise to anyone: amending the Constitution through Article V requires a super-human effort today, with a tiny portion of the population able to exercise effective veto over the amendment process, the Senate provides drastically unequal representation on a effective-votes-per-person basis to small states, and the electoral college gives similar weight to small state voters in electing the Presidency.

In focusing on these issues as the yardstick of whether our Constitution is “democratic,” Dahl centers his analysis of the “quality” of democracy around adherence to the one-person-one-vote principle. In using this principle, Dahl is (somewhat explicitly) dismissing any claims that states (as holistic entities) may have for representation of state-level interests in the federal system. To be clear, Dahl is not denigrating the structural principle of federalism, insofar as it serves the role of providing local self-government, separation of powers, and division of responsibilities, but he is saying that “state’s aren’t people, and don’t deserve representation – only people do.” Whether this is a controversial working definition of democracy or not, Dahl does use this principle to point out the quantitative effects of unequal representation in the Senate and electoral college, and one is left fairly convinced that regardless of one’s stance regarding “liberal” versus “conservative” policies, democratic self-government in this country would be better served if it were possible to reform the Senate and Electoral College.

The latter part of the book is given over to an evaluation of the reform possibilities for these shortcomings. Dahl is not at all optimistic about reforming unequal representation in the Senate; doing so via the Article V process requires the highest bar of all — unanimity among all 50 states, since Article V guarantees that no state’s representation in the Senate shall be altered without the permission of that state. And the prospects of amendment to improve the democratic character of our government flow from there — unequal Senate representation will make it exceedingly difficult to reform the Electoral College and institute direct popular election of the Presidency, or to ensure that one-person-one-vote is more than a formal principle, but is the way our electoral system works in practice. Thus, Dahl recommends focusing on simpler electoral reforms, achievable without Senate super-majorities. States have the power to choose Presidential electors via their own internal rules, as well as set rules for Congressional elections. This means that state-level, or national (but not Congressional) campaigns to reform winner-takes-all voting in favor of instant runoff elections and the splitting of electoral votes according to the strict popular vote count (e.g., Maine) could be effective ways to begin serious democratic reform.

Dahl’s book is refreshing after reading immense amounts of constitutional law, focusing as it does on what citizens can do to reform elected officials, rather than reform-through-litigation strategies that center on the Supreme Court. Dahl is sobering but inspiring, and well worth reading regardless of your level of previous exposure to the issues or arguments.

Scott is careful not to restrict his argument only to centralized, bureaucratic, or authoritarian schemes for societal “improvement.” Clearly, the same oversimplifications can exist — and in fact, are rampant — within market economies. As the “scale and scope” (to use Chandler’s apt phrase) of corporate activity grows, oversimplification of local conditions, needs, and idiosyncrasies are inevitable and essential for manageability (what Scott refers to as making complexity “legible”). When this occurs, centralized planning can lead to social, economic, and ecological failures, of the kind we see around us.

His solution is to recover “metis” — a Greek term referring to local knowledge and learned skill, and balance our globalizing, centralizing, rationalizing impulse with a recognition of the importance of local adaptation, diversity, and fluidity. In this, Scott reveals himself a follower of Jane Jacobs’s style of urban planning, rather than Corbusier, and if asked I’m sure he would resonate strongly with Wendell Berry on agriculture. Naturally, I’m not doing Scott’s argument justice, but the balance between the “rationalizing” impulse of Enlightenment thought and sympathy with diversity, local knowledge, local decisionmaking is a balance we have yet to properly work out — in our economics, in our ecology, in our politics. As Levy notes in the aforementioned paper, this balance is the tension at the core of early versions of liberalism, not our current arguments over welfare versus market versions of liberal political economy. Such a balance is also at the core of the endless tension in American constitutional history between nationalism and meaningful federalism, local control versus national uniformity. And in evolutionary theory, diversity and local adaptation are frequent and natural outcomes of selective processes. Scott’s book stimulated much thinking on the interconnections between all of these areas for me, and a book which can stimulate so many diverse connections deserves high praise.