Essays
Book review of “Christianity Without the Cross—God and Other Famous Liberals: Reclaiming the Politics of America”
– National Review, Vol. 44, No. 4, March 2, 1992, pp. 48-51.Are Homo Economicus and Homo Politicus Kin?
– Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: In the ten years that have passed since Schumpeter published these words ridiculing James Mill’s Essay on Government, an extensive literature has appeared that attempts to do the very thing that Schumpeter said could not be done. This… More
The Dangerous Goodness of Democracy
– Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: The reason for our inveterate devotion to these millennial ideas is to be found in the nature of our kind of democracy. Ours is the only country in which the public at large participates actively in the daily conduct of government; it is the only… More
Evaluating a Federal Program
– In Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991). Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Excerpt: Evaluation of federal government programs is in a way a nonsubject because there hasn’t been a serious evaluation of a federal program for reasons I’ll go into a little later. My thought is to tell you how a particular federal program was… More
Leo Strauss
– In Remembering the University of Chicago: Teachers, Scientists and Scholars, Edward Shils, ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 490-501.The Illiberal Tocqueville
– In Interpreting Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Ken Masugi, ed., Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991, pp. 239-54.Book review of “The Conquest of Politics: Liberal Philosophy in Democratic Times”
– in Reason, Vol. 21, No. 3, July 1989, p. 54.Was the Founding an Accident?
– in Saving the Revolution: The Federalist and the American Founding, Charles R. Kesler, ed., New York: The Free Press, 1987, pp 265-275.Federalism and the Dilemma of Popular Government
– In How Federal is the Constitution?, Robert A. Goldwin and William Schambra, eds. (Washington: AEI, 1985), pp. 1-15. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: Beginning with the Truman administration, there have been persistent and sometimes strenuous efforts to devolve many federal activities to state and local governments. These efforts have almost entirely failed. Meanwhile, the number and variety of… More
Book review of “The Public Library in the 1980’s: The Problems of Choice”
– in The Public Interest, Vol. 73, Fall 1983, pp. 138-141.Excerpt: THE public library is one of those institutions-others include the museum and the park-that are peculiarly American. As such it has special claim on our attention. As invented by Benjamin Franklin, the library was an association of subscribers who… More
The Zoning of Enterprise
– Cato Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1982, pp. 339-354. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: This chapter seeks to make two principal points. The first is that upward mobility on the part of disadvantaged persons in the cities has been, is being, and doubtlessly will be, hampered by laws and regulations the manifest purpose of which is to… More
Art versus Collectibles
– Harper’s, Vol. 265, August, 1982, pp. 28-34.Book review of “The Philosopher in the City: The Moral Dimensions of the Urban Crisis”
– in The American Spectator, November 1981, p. 36.Book review of “Knowledge and Decisions,” by Thomas Sowell
– in National Review, May 1980, pp. 667-668.Book review of “The Ungovernable City: The Politics of Urban Problems and Policy Making”
– Policy Analysis, Vol. 6, No. 2, Spring 1980, p. 243.America’s Cities Enter a Crucial Decade
– Chicago Tribune, March 23, 1980, p. A1.Party ‘Reform’ in Retrospect
– In Political Parties in the Eighties, Robert A. Goldwin, ed. (Washington: The AEI Press, 1980), pp. 20-33. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: In a paper written almost twenty years ago, I maintained that a political system is an accident, and that to meddle with one that works well is the greatest foolishness of which men are capable. Nevertheless, I said, a democracy will always meddle,… More
Policy Science as Metaphysical Madness
– In Robert C. Goldwin, ed., Statesmanship and Bureaucracy (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1977), pp. 1-35. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: In the past dozen years or so, policy-oriented social science research and analysis has become a growth industry in the United States. This has occurred in response to demand created by the spate of social welfare programs initiated by the Great… More
Present Orientedness and Crime
– In Assessing the Criminal, R. E. Barnett and J. Hagel, eds., Cambridge: Ballinger, 1977, pp. 133-142. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: Since the seventeenth century, political philosophers have maintained that an irrational bias toward present as opposed to future satisfactions is natural to both men and animals and is a principal cause of crime and, more generally, of threats to… More
The Beginnings of a Balanced Fiscal System
– in Urban Administration: Management, Politics, and Change, Alan E. Bent and Ralph A. Rossum, eds., Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1976, pp. 81-87.Corruption as a Feature of Governmental Organization
– in The Journal of Law and Economics, December 1975, Vol. 18, pp. 587-605. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Excerpt: This is an exploratory paper, the purposes of which are to identify the principal variables having to do with corruption in governmental organizations in the United States and to point out some significant relationships among them. The paper begins… More
The City and the Revolutionary Tradition
– (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1974), speech delivered, April 11, 1974. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: It would be very pleasant on such an occasion as this to say that the American city has been and is a unique and unqualified success—and to be able to show that its successes all derive from adherence to principles established and given… More
The Unheavenly City: Is it Doomed?
– in Real Estate Appraiser, July-August 1974, Vol. 40, No. 4, p. 12.Nixon, the Great Society, and the Future of Social Policy
– Commentary, Vol. 55, No. 5, May 1973, pp. 31-34.Race and Class in Cities: A Conservative View
– in American Urban History: An Interpretive Reader with Commentaries, Alexander B. Callow, ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 1973, pp. 544-562.Making a New Federal Program: Model Cities, 1964-68
– In Policy and Politics in America: Six Case Studies, Allan P. Sindler, ed. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1973), pp. 124-158. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: During the evening of the first full day of Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency—at 7:40 P.M. on November 23,1963, to be precise—Walter Heller, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, came to tell him that three days before his assassination… More
A Critical View of the Urban Crisis
– in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 405, January 1973, pp. 7-14. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: From the farmhouse in Vermont where this is written, it is several miles to the nearest city, the population of which is about ten thousand, but one can find here most of the “big problems” that together are usually thought of as constituting… More
Book review of The Evangelistic Bureaucrat: A Study of a Planning Exercise in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
– in Policy and Politics, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1972, pp. 163-169.The Urban Crisis—Reality or Myth?
– Manpower, Vol. 4, No. 5, May 1972, pp. 9-13.Some Alternatives for the Public Library
– In The Metropolitan Library, Ralph W. Conant and Kathleen Molz, eds., Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1972, pp. 89-100. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: The public library has more users and more money today than ever before, but it lacks a purpose. It is trying to do some things that it probably cannot do, and it is doing others that it probably should not do. At the same time, it is neglecting… More
How Many, and Who, Should Be Set At Liberty?
– In Civil Disorder and Violence: Essays on Causes and Cures, Harry M. Clor, ed., Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1972, pp. 27-45. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: It is now widely held, one might almost say officially held, that not only robberies, murders, and rapes but civil disorder in general arise from society’s neglect of and injustice toward the poor and the black. The Kerner Commission Report… More
Political Ethos Revisited
Revenue Sharing in Theory and Practice
– The Public Interest, No. 23, Spring 1971, pp. 33-45. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: How one evaluates revenue sharing will depend upon what one takes the central issues to be. Oddly enough, what must appear to many people to be the issue—namely, how to keep the cities and states from going bankrupt—is not properly speaking an… More
Putting Social Science to Work Is a Risky Undertaking
– Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 4, March 1971, pp. 854-859.The Cities: Babies for Sale
– New York Times, October 13, 1970, p. 45.The Cities: The ‘Lower Class’
– New York Times, October 12, 1970, p.37.Model Cities: A Step Towards the New Federalism
– The Report of the President’s Task Force on Model Cities, U.S. Government Printing Office, August 1970.Edward C. Banfield chaired this task force, which included James Q. Wilson (a former student of his), Richard Lugar (then Mayor of Indianapolis), Professor James Buchanan, and others. Excerpt: Although federal support of the cities has increased sharply in… More
Race: Thinking May Make It So
– Wall Street Journal, May 11, 1970, p. 14Power Structure and Civic Leadership
– (with James Q. Wilson), Strategies of Community Organization, Fred M. Cox and others, eds., Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock Publishers, 1970, pp. 112-122.Welfare Reform: Choose Your Evil
– Wall Street Journal, August 14, 1969, p. 8.Welfare: A Crisis Without ‘Solutions’
– The Public Interest, No. 16, Summer 1969, pp. 89-101.Businessmen in Politics
– (with James Q. Wilson), Democracy in Urban America, revised edition, Oliver P. Williams, ed., Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969, pp. 366-379.‘Weak’ Mayor Government in Chicago
– (with Martin Meyerson), in Democracy in Urban America, revised edition, Oliver P. Williams, ed., Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969, pp. 259-267.An Act of Corporate Citizenship
– In Programs to Employ the Disadvantaged, Peter B. Doeringer, ed., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969, pp. 26-59.Why Government Cannot Solve the Urban Problem
– Daedalus, Vol. 94, No. 4, Fall 1968, pp. 1231-1241.Book review of The Second Rebellion: The New York City Draft Riots of 1863
– New York Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 29, 1968, pp. 55-57.Rioting Mainly for Fun and Profit
– In The Metropolitan Enigma: Inquiries into the Nature and Dimensions of America’s “Urban Crisis,” James Q. Wilson, ed., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968, pp. 283-308.Draw Young Working Men Into City’s Affairs
– The Boston Globe, November 21, 1967, p. 16.Economic Analysis of Political Problems
– Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: My main contentions are (1) social choice processes differ in their logical structures; economics deals with one category (“aggregation”), political science with another (“politics”); (2) aggregation processes are analyzable in terms of a… More
Book review of Urban Political Systems: A Functional Analysis of Metropolitan Toronto
– Interplay, October 1967, pp. 56-58.Cleavages in Urban Politics
– (with James Q. Wilson), in Politics in the Metropolis: A Reader in Conflict and Cooperation, Thomas R. Dye and Brett W. Hawkins, eds., Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill, 1967, pp. 43-55.The Uses and Limitations of Metropolitan Planning in Massachusetts
– In Taming Megalopolis, H. W. Eldredge, ed., New York: Doubleday, 1967, pp. 710-719.The Decision-Making Schema, A Review
– Administrative Questions and Political Answers, C. E. Hawley, ed.,Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1966, pp. 64-70.Book review of The City is the Frontier, by Charles Abrams
– Commentary, Vol. 41, No. 3, March 1966, pp. 93-95.Excerpt: In 1960 the Ford Foundation made grants of $25,000 each to ten authorities on housing and planning, in order to induce them to set down their thoughts on urban renewal. One of the ten was Charles Abrams, a former chairman of the New York State Rent… More
The Negro in City Politics
– (with James Q. Wilson), in Problems and Prospects of the Negro Movement, Raymond J. Murphy and Howard Elinson, eds., Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1966, pp. 376-394.Needed: A Public Purpose
– In The Public Library and the City, Ralph W. Conant, ed., Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1965, pp. 102-113.Public-Regardingness as a Value Premise in Voting Behavior
– (with James Q. Wilson), in American Political Science Review, Vol. 58, No. 4, December 1964, pp. 876-887.The Key Problem of the City
– The Harvard Review, Vol. 2, No. 4, Fall 1964, pp. 14-27.Government in Metropolis
– In New City, Man in Metropolis: A Christian Response, Chicago: Catholic Council on Working Life, Vol. 2, No. 2, April 15, 1963, pp. 7-9.Book review of Reason in Society: Five Types of Decisions and Their Social Conditions, by Paul Diesing
– Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 78, No. 1, March 1963, pp. 120-22.Book review of Capitalism and Freedom, by Milton Friedman
– National Review, Vol. 13, No. 20, November 20, 1962, pp. 401-403.Book review of Economic Development, by John Kenneth Galbraith
– National Review, Vol. 12, No. 22, June 5, 1962, pp. 412-413.No! Our Wants Are Limitless
– The Detroit News, February 18, 1962, pp. 13E-14E.Don’t Abdicate to the Experts
– Challenge, Vol. 9, No. 4 (January, 1961), pp. 39-41.In Defense of the American Party System
– In Political Parties, U.S.A., Robert A. Goldwin, ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1961), pp. 21-39. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: The American party system has been criticized on four main grounds: (1) the parties do not offer the electorate a choice in terms of fundamental principles; their platforms are very similar and mean next to nothing; (2)they cannot discipline those… More
The Limitations of Metropolitan Reorganization
– In Democracy in Urban America, Oliver P. Williams, ed., Chicago: Rand McNally, 1961, pp. 171-177.The Political Implications of Metropolitan Growth
– Daedalus, Vol. 90, Winter, 1960, pp. 61-78. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: The rapid growth of the metropolitan populations will not necessarily have much political effect. To be sure, many new facilities, especially schools, highways, and water supply and sewage disposal systems, will have to be built and much private… More
The Training of the Executive
– Public Policy, Vol. 10, 1960, Carl J. Friedrich and Seymour E. Harris, eds., pp. 16-43. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: The postwar popularity of executive development programs raises in slightly new form the old question of what should be the training of the executive. An executive development program is a conference, course, or seminar lasting from one or two days… More
A Report on the Politics of Boston
– Cambridge: Joint Center for Urban Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, 1960.Ends and Means in Planning
– International Social Science Journal, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1959, pp. 361-368. Reprinted in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays (Washington, DC: AEI, 1991).Abstract: The word planning is given a bewildering variety of meanings. To some it means socialism. To others, the layout and design of cities. To still others, regional development schemes like TVA, measures to control the business cycle, or “scientific… More