Reconceiving the Political: Notes toward a New Pluralism

Abstract

Within the U.S. constitutional context, issues over the control of civil association are often debated in terms such as free exercise of religion, freedom of association, or the individual liberty guarantees of the 14th Amendment. These constitutional debates have not gone deep enough. It is necessary to reconsider the understanding of politics that pervades much contemporary discussion, an understanding that views public institutions as plenipotentiary and civil society as a political construction possessing only those liberties that the polity chooses to grant and modify or revoke at will.