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Political theorist Wendy Brown has argued recently that contemporary neoliberalism, with its relentless obsession on the economy, has all but undone the tenets of democracy. This book suggests one way of thinking out of the current moment, and it does so by looking to a perhaps unlikely figure: Niccolo Machiavelli. Ronald J. Schmidt, Jr. argues that if we imitate Machiavelli's interpretive method in reading The Prince and Discourses of Livy, we can find in them solutions to the neoliberal problems Brown warns about.

'Reading Politics with Machiavelli' is an anachronistic reading of certain key concepts in Machiavelli's The Prince and The Discourses (as well as some of his correspondence).

Political theorist Wendy Brown has argued recently that contemporary neoliberalism, with its relentless obsession on the economy, has all but undone the tenets of democracy. This book suggests one way of thinking out of the current moment, and it does so by looking to a perhaps unlikely figure: Niccolo Machiavelli. Ronald J. Schmidt, Jr. argues that if we imitate Machiavelli's interpretive method in reading The Prince and Discourses of Livy, we can find in them solutions to the neoliberal problems Brown warns about

Community-based organizations (CBOs) have become important vehicles for articulating a growing ethnic consciousness in the U.S. This essay first examines the reasons behind the development of CBOs in recent decades, and then considers the effectiveness of CBOs as instruments for enhancing cultural pluralism.

The substantive themes stressed by policy-makers & popular evaluations of a major Ur policy (the War on Poverty) are examined. It is hyp'ed that public att's toward major themes in the "war on poverty" are signif'ly related to their general evaluations of the program & the direction of those associations reflects the expectations of policy-makers. Data were collected in an area probability sample survey of adult residents of the city of Detroit, Mich, in 1966. Public perspectives concerning the theme of innovation or change were signif'ly related to att's toward the anti-poverty program. The results, however, disclosed an inverse rather than a direct association between the approval of community change & public support for the war on poverty. In general, citizens who supported numerous changes in the city opposed the anti-poverty program, & people who resisted change tended to favor it. This was true for both white & black segments of the pop. The data, therefore, provided surprisingly little corroboration for the description of the anti-poverty program as an "innovative" Ur policy. Contrary to the expectations reflected in the discussions of policy-makers, the war on poverty may have been perceived more as a status quo policy than as a radical & imaginative effort to ameliorate Ur problems. The major support for the policy was found among those city residents who upheld the status quo rather than those who sought to achieve broad soc & pol'al changes. The anti-poverty program did not draw the support of most persons who were primarily concerned with higher levels of gov, ie, citizens with a major interest in nat'l pol. Further res should focus on public responses to additional themes in gov'al policies & an analysis of the relationships between policy themes & sources of public opposition or support for the programs. 2 Tables. M. Maxfield.