政治理论

PAR — 2026-07-31 Original Consolidating Liberal Democracy From Within A Theory of Public Institutional Leadership Sandra Groeneveld, Heidi Houlberg Salomonsen Abstract ABSTRACT Recent developments in also established democracies have made clear that public administration and management research alike have neglected giving scholarly attention to public organizations as institutions. Drawing upon research on leadership of institutions and leadership in public organizations we suggest a theory of public institutional leadership . Public institutional leadership reconnects public management with democracy by suggesting three central dimensions of leadership behaviors that instill and sustain liberal democratic values in public organizations. These behaviors include articulating and reaffirming democratic values through top‐down vision‐setting; building “character” bottom‐up through role modeling and fostering psychological safety to enable dialogue and deliberation around these values as well as demonstrating constrained responsiveness to political principals relative to those values enabled by the cultivation of bureaucratic autonomy. Although the necessity of such behaviors is made salient by rising populism and democratic backsliding, their relevance extends to public management situated in liberal democracies in general.

APSR — pp. 1-12 2026-07-30 Original A Democratic Theory of Labor Unions STEVEN KLEIN Abstract Recently, political theorists have been increasingly concerned with the implications of democratic values for work. This article contributes to these debates by examining the main vehicle through which workers, historically, have sought democracy at work: the labor union. The article defends a vision of economic democracy that arises from the practice of labor unions. It then emphasizes the distinctive features of labor unions that make them potential vehicles for democracy in other domains. Labor unions are particularly important means of advancing democratic values for three reasons: (1) their ability to appeal to the short- and mid-term self-interest of their members; (2) their anchor in the material reproduction of society; and (3) that they rely on attitudes of cooperation and solidarity among their members. Yet these three features also point to potential limitations of labor unions as laboratories of democracy.

PNAS 123/30 pp. e2509766123-e2509766123 2026-07-20 Original Statutory construction and interpretation for AI Luxi He, Nimra Nadeem, Michel Liao, Howard Chen, D Chen, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Peter Henderson

JOP 88/3 pp. 1162-1174 2026-07-01 Original Professorial Silence: Academic Freedom, Domination, and Self-Censorship in Contemporary Russia Evgeny Roshchin Abstract （原文未提供摘要） 中文 教授沉默：当代俄罗斯的学术自由、支配与自我审查 Evgeny Roshchin 摘要 原文未提供摘要 关键词 学术自由、支配、自我审查、俄罗斯、教授沉默 DOI: 10.1086/736025 查看原文 →

JOP — 2026-06-29 Original Is Innovation Good for the Soul? Joseph Soloveitchik and the Virtue Ethics of Technological Progress Mathis Bitton Abstract （原文未提供摘要） 中文 创新是否有益于灵魂？约瑟夫·索洛维契克与技术进步的美德伦理 Mathis Bitton

APSR — pp. 1-16 2026-06-23 Original Efficient Production without Domination: The Case of Labor-Managed Firms IÑIGO GONZÁLEZ-RICOY

PAR 86/5 pp. 1213-1224 2026-06-21 Original Reclaiming Weber: Bureaucracy as Democracy's Last Line of Defense Patricia Nemeth Abstract ABSTRACT Max Weber's rational–legal bureaucracy remains a vital safeguard amid populist backlash, civil service politicization, and democratic backsliding. This article reframes bureaucracy as a conditional democratic safeguard—one that depends on ethical orientation and professional integrity, not technical capacity alone. When legality is hollowed out through obedience or anticipatory compliance, institutions corrode from within. Evidence from recent cases of executive politicization illustrates how ethical substance erodes behind formally intact institutions. By integrating Weber's structural rationality with Waldo's claim that democracy is fundamentally an ethic requiring value‐laden judgment, the article develops the notion of a “compliance trap” and recasts public servants as ethical constitutional agents rather than passive implementers. It also advances a framework for bureaucratic renewal grounded in ethical discipline, participatory design, and professional autonomy, arguing that administrators must be prepared to exercise principled judgment when other democratic safeguards weaken.

APSR — pp. 1-13 2026-06-08 Original The Expressive Duty to Vote CÉCILE FABRE Abstract Standard arguments for the moral duty to vote in nationwide elections or referendums appeal to citizens’ general duty of reciprocity not to free ride on the provision of the public goods of democratic governance and its benefits, to a nonreciprocal duty to maintain and strengthen democratic institutions, or to a general duty to bring about just outcomes. In this article, I argue that citizens are under an expressive duty to vote, as grounded in a more general duty to manifest support for just and democratic laws, and for democratic institutions as the instantiation of the requirement to treat one another with equal concern and respect. Even if (in circumstances I elucidate) citizens are morally permitted not to vote for either of the options on offer, it does not follow that they are morally permitted to abstain: sometimes, participating in the poll and voiding one’s ballot is, on expressive grounds, the right thing to do.

APSR — pp. 1-13 2026-05-14 Original The Politics of Privilege: Discrimination, Monopolized Social Rights, and Reform ANDREW SABL Abstract This article analyzes three kinds of privilege—roughly, the monopoly or near-monopoly of a prized social good by a group—in terms of the political barriers facing attempts to reform them. Extending previous work, it distinguishes among discrimination privileges, which are zero-sum and relative, benefiting some groups at others’ expense; monopolized social right privileges, involving goods enjoyed only by some that can and should be extended to all; and differential treatment privileges, involving disagreement over whether a good currently monopolized by some should be extended to all or to none. The political barriers to reforming discrimination privilege involve group interest; those to reforming monopolized social rights include privilege, ignorance, cost, priorities, policy uncertainty, and the psychological wage. Differential treatment privilege is complicated. An exercise in applied political realism, this article treats normative categories as political inputs rather than philosophical conclusions and seeks to demonstrate the insights enabled by doing so.

CQ 266 pp. 309-324 2026-05-11 Original Ideology Without Unity: The Rhizomatic Logic of Xi Jinping Thought Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt Abstract Abstract This article reconceptualizes Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (Xi Thought hereafter) not as a coherent doctrine but as a rhizomatic ideological formation. Drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, it treats Xi Thought as a configuration in which coherence is not presupposed but produced through the continual recombining of fragments across institutional sites. Based on an analysis of official publications, including collected works, excerpt volumes and study readers, the article shows how Xi’s speeches are disassembled and reassembled across domains such as law, economy, diplomacy and culture. These recompositions render ideology modular and resilient, allowing elements to be activated, re-weighted or sidelined without destabilizing the system as a whole. The article further argues that ideological coherence is generated through distributed and compulsory participation by Party and state actors, who are required to embed fragments of Xi Thought into institutional practice. Conceptualizing Xi Thought as a rhizome shifts analysis from doctrinal meaning to the operational logic through which ideology acquires administrative force within the Chinese party-state.