PRACTITIONERS IN THE CLASSROOM: THE VIEW FROM ONE SIDE

Putting practitioners into the classroom to teach graduate public administration courses is a practice about which surprisingly little has been written. The issues raised in this article are the practitioners role in teaching MPA courses. The author examines three important considerations when practitioners become teachers. First, the method of teaching is explored with special attention being given to case-study type approaches. Next, the authority worlds of academics and practitioners are compared with several differences being highlighted. Finally, the image world of practitioners is examined with a keen eye being placed on critical analysis.     

THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF RICHARD CUMBERLAND: SOVEREIGNTY AND THE ESCAPE FROM THE SEARCH FOR ORIGINS

Abstract. Much of what seventeenth-century writers and preachers had to say about allegiance was framed in terms of deference to the past: subjects owed obedience now because they were heirs to some ancient obedience rightfully exacted. Patriachalists and contractualists alike supposed that questions of legitimacy were best resolved by examining what they took to be the origins of human society. Eventually it became possible to construct a utilitarian political theory which instead judged a given system in terms of the needs it met; Richard Cumberland's De Legibus Naturae (1672) marks an important stage in this process. His cosmology is Christian and his political theory shares many trappings with those of his contemporaries, but from an examination of human interdependence he succeeds in establishing an unequivocally utilitarian account of sovereignty.