In recent years, our constitutional order has increasingly come under attack as irredeemably undemocratic, racist, and oppressive. At the same time, it is increasingly obvious that politic practices in the United States have strayed very far from the founders’ designs and become deeply dysfunctional. The time is thus ripe for renewed reflection about the American political tradition. This volume reintroduces readers to the conservative tradition of political and constitutional discourse. It brings together prominent political scientists and legal scholars, all of whom were deeply influenced by the life and work of the eminent constitutional scholar George W. Carey. For over 40 years, Carey strove mightily to explain the nature and requirements of our political tradition. How it fostered meaningful, virtuous self-government, and how our constitutional tradition has been derailed by progressivist ideology. He is perhaps best known for his concept of “constitutional morality,” the understanding that our republican constitutional order can be sustained only by a combination of formal mechanisms (e.g., separation of powers) and unwritten norms (“standards of behavior”) that act to foster deliberation and consensus, as well as keep political actors within the boundaries of their constitutional offices. Contributors, including Francis Canavan, Claes G. Ryn, Paul Edward Gottfried, and Peter Augustine Lawler, discuss and develop Carey’s key insights, applying them to issues from the nature of majoritarian government to the purposes of constitutionalism to the decline of virtue that has accompanied the expansion of power among national and international elites. Each essay provides penetrating analysis of key aspects of our tradition, its inherent purposes, growth, and subsequent derailment, as well as the resources remaining within that tradition for the rebuilding of our constitutional order and a decent common life.

First published in 1986. Based on the theme that defense procurement serves as an instrument of alliance and domestic politics, this book provides the first comprehensive analysis of post-war West German approaches to and experience with procurement strategies. Dr. Cowen explores how successive German governments have used military procurement to facilitate the rehabilitation of the new West German state and later to consolidate the German position within the alliance. The author shows that by the mid-1970s the Federal Republic had succeeded in its procurement policy, acting as a serious partner for defense projects in Europe and building a flourishing defense industry. The book's final chapters describe the structural tensions between competing procurement objectives that have recently emerged. The FRG must decide whether to continue to maintain a whole range of defense industrial capacities or to specialize nationally and purchase other necessary commodities in the United States. According to the author, national specialization is not seriously considered by the German government. Such a step, the author suggests, would diminish Germany's role in the alliance and jeopardize one of its foremost foreign policy goals: equality with Great Britain and France

As Asia looms larger in Western, and particularly U.S., security calculations, interest in the People's Republic of China (PRC) as a potential Security concern has grown. As China attempts to modernize its forces, is it becoming a "threat" to Western security in the region, and, if so, does it constitute a direct military threat? How successful have the Chinese been in upgrading their armed forces? How capable is China of projecting its forces beyond its borders? In attempting to answer these questions, it would be useful to know where current Chinese strategic and military priorities lay, and whether the PRC is investing enough resources in these priorities to constitute a serious security concern for the West. Since defense budgets are often a critical indicator of national defense priorities and policies, Western interest in Chinese defense spending has also grown considerably. The size of its defense budget, the rate of growth (or decline) in its military expenditures, and what it spends its defense dollars on can reveal much about a country's national security intentions and military plans. Defense budgets are usually an indicator of a country's military modernization priorities, and what future military capabilities it might possess. They can also serve as a gauge of a country's defense commitment and resolve, or its potential to threaten others.

In the transatlantic world of the late eighteenth century, easterly winds blew radical thought to America. Thomas Paine had already arrived on these shores in 1774 and made his mark as a radical pamphleteer during the Revolution. In his wake followed more than 200 other radical exiles—English Dissenters, Whigs, and Painites; Scottish "lads o'parts"; and Irish patriots—who became influential newspaper writers and editors and helped change the nature of political discourse in a young nation. Michael Durey has written the first full-scale analysis of these radicals, evaluating the long-term influence their ideas have had on American political thought. Transatlantic Radicals uncovers the roots of their radicalism in the Old World and tells the story of how these men came to be exiled, how they emigrated, and how they participated in the politics of their adopted country. Nearly all of these radicals looked to Paine as their spiritual leader and to Thomas Jefferson as their political champion. They held egalitarian, anti-federalist values and promoted an extreme form of participatory democracy that found a niche in the radical wing of Jefferson's Republican Party. Their divided views on slavery, however, reveal that democratic republicanism was unable to cope with the realities of that institution. As political activists during the 1790s, they proved crucial to Jefferson's 1800 presidential victory; then, after his views moderated and their influence waned, many repatriated, others drifted into anonymity, and a few managed to find success in the New World. Although many of these men are known to us through other histories, their influence as a group has never before been so closely examined. Durey persuasively demonstrates that the intellectual ferment in Britain did indeed have tremendous influence on American politics. His account of that influence sheds considerable light on transatlantic political history and differences in religious, political, and economic freedoms. Skillfully balancing a large cast of characters, Transatlantic Radicals depicts the diversity of their experiences and shows how crucial these reluctant émigrés were to shaping our republic in its formative years.