G.W.F. Hegel on Self‐Determination and Democratic Theory

This article claims that the major alternative models of contemporary democratic theory—the aggregative, deliberative, and agonistic models—are grounded on a norm of self‐determination, but each conceptualizes this self‐determination in a different, and one‐sidedly narrow, way. G.W.F. Hegel provides a conceptual scheme in which to understand the development and synthesize the insights of these three articulations of self‐determination. He also argues that the political embodiment of a complete self‐determination must be founded on economic self‐interest, though a self‐interest expanded to a concern for the common good through the experience of self‐government in one's economic and political associations. Thus, rather than separating economic and political spheres, as contemporary democratic theorists do, Hegel makes a case that modern self‐determination requires a structural harmony between these spheres.     

A ‘Talent for Bureaucracy’: A.F. Davies and the Analysis of Government in Australia*

In an address in 2003, Senator Kim Carr cited A.F. Davies' much‐quoted observation that Australians have ‘a characteristic talent for bureaucracy’ (Carr 2003: 3). He referred to the achievements of bureaucrats like Nugget Coombs, then went on to discuss questions of accountability, values and political control in the Australian public service. How could the public service be responsive and responsible, and contribute to the maintenance of a democratic society, in today's world? Certainly, these were core concerns of Davies, as Walter argues in an insightful article (1999). Davies, Walter argues, ‘was concerned, throughout his career, with the links between bureaucracy and democracy’ (1999, 25), fearful that the life‐world is increasingly being structured by expertise, and in the domain of the experts, there is little room for individual voice, for passion, or for democratic control. Davies' concerns, and those of Carr and Walter, raise important questions about the way in which we understand the structure of government, the significance of our changing understanding for the democratic ideal, and the implications of these changes for social scientists.     

George F. Kennan’s Realism

Recent studies of the career diplomat and distinguished historian George F. Kennan, and particularly a little noted intellectual biography by Lee Congdon, reveal a side of this figure that has often been neglected. Despite his reputation as a critic of the Cold War, Kennan was in fact a strong anti-Communist and profoundly conservative thinker. His conventional defenders have stressed his displeasure with vocal anti-Communism in order to create an image of him that is consistent with their left-of-center politics. This has come at the expense of playing down unfashionable opinions that Kennan expressed on a wide range of issues. Many of his opinions, which he viewed as eminently “realistic,” would have been unacceptable to his mainstream admirers even fifty years ago, were it not for his stands on the Cold War and for certain isolated statements drawn from his post-World War Two speeches mentioning racial inequality and industrial waste. What is now being published on Kennan’s life, however, provides a more balanced picture. Congdon and John Lukacs have both offered this necessary corrective to earlier views about their subject in recent biographical studies. These and other commentators are now highlighting the anti-modernist perspective from which he viewed and criticized the twentieth century.