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Abstract
This essay explores the political implications of seventeenth century American Congregationalism. The essay describes the Puritan theory of church membership and relates it to contemporary liberal and democratic notions of citizenship. While the relationship of American Puritanism with liberalism has been previously examined, few commentators have discussed the Puritan connection with direct democracy. Following Wolin and others, I sharply distinguish between the political theories of democracy and liberalism, and discover that the Puritans were "proto-democrats" in their advocacy of small, highly autonomous participatory communities. The Puritan theory of covenanted church membership reveals the nature of citizenship in a direct democracy. "Universal membership" is more characteristic of the large nation than it is of the small democratic community because the latter places more power and responsibility in the hands of the citizenry, and because a democracy is identified with its citizens rather than with its leaders or agents.
Journal Information
Current issues are now on the Chicago Journals website. Read the latest issue. Established in 1939 and published for the Southern Political Science Association, The Journal of Politics is a leading general-interest journal of political science and the oldest regional political science journal in the United States. The scholarship published in The Journal of Politics is theoretically innovative and methodologically diverse, and comprises a blend of the various intellectual approaches that make up the discipline. The Journal of Politics features balanced treatments of research from scholars around the world, in all subfields of political science including American politics, comparative politics, international relations, political theory, and political methodology.
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Since its origins in 1890 as one of the three main divisions of the University of Chicago, The University of Chicago Press has embraced as its mission the obligation to disseminate scholarship of the highest standard and to publish serious works that promote education, foster public understanding, and enrich cultural life. Today, the Journals Division publishes more than 70 journals and hardcover serials, in a wide range of academic disciplines, including the social sciences, the humanities, education, the biological and medical sciences, and the physical sciences.
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The Journal of Politics © 1991
The University of Chicago Press
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Abstract
Growth and democracy (subjective indexes of political freedom) are analyzed for a panel of about 100 countries from 1960 to 1990. The favorable effects on growth include maintenance of the rule of law, free markets, small government consumption, and high human capital. Once these kinds of variables and the initial level of real per capita GDP are held constant, the overall effect of democracy on growth is weakly negative. There is a suggestion of a nonlinear relationship in which more democracy enhances growth at low levels of political freedom but depresses growth when a moderate level of freedom has already been attained. Improvements in the standard of living--measured by GDP, health status, and education--substantially raise the probability that political freedoms will grow. These results allow for predictions about which countries will become more or less democratic over time.
Journal Information
The Journal of Economic Growth serves as the principal outlet for theoretical as well as empirical research in economic growth and dynamic macroeconomics. The journal publishes high quality research examining neoclassical and endogenous growth models, growth and income distribution, human capital, fertility, trade, development, migration, money, the political economy, endogenous technological change, overlapping-generations models, and economic fluctuations. The editorial board consists of prominent researchers in the fields of economic growth, dynamic macroeconomics, international economics, urban economics, migration, and development.
Publisher Information
Springer is one of the leading international scientific publishing companies, publishing over 1,200 journals and more than 3,000 new books annually, covering a wide range of subjects including biomedicine and the life sciences, clinical medicine, physics, engineering, mathematics, computer sciences, and economics.
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This item is part of a JSTOR Collection.
For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions
Journal of Economic Growth © 1996
Springer
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