Virtue or Art?: Political Friendship Reconsidered

In Talking to Strangers (2004), Danielle Allen argues that democratic citizens will need to acquire new habits for contending with distrust in order to prolong the democratic experiment. Though Allen's solution recalls her reading of the Republic, it is to Aristotle, not Plato, that she turns for help theorizing those habits. Drawing upon the Nicomachean Ethics, she proposes arts or techniques that might substitute for and outpace justice by enabling democratic strangers to treat one another like friends. While I endorse Allen's analysis of the problems posed by rising levels of distrust, I propose a different solution. First, I argue that the habits Allen describes would have to be virtues and not merely techniques in order to effect real political change. Then, second, I identify those habits as “piety” and “gratitude”—virtues which, I contend, are not so much substitutes for as supplements to justice. My argument thus elaborates Thomas Aquinas's account of justice and its “potential parts” in the Summa Theologiae.     

The politics of a conversion – the case of Robert Isaac Wilberforce

Robert Isaac Wilberforce (1802–1857) was an Anglican archdeacon and a supporter of the Oxford Movement. This article claims that his conversion to the Roman Catholic Church in 1854 had theo-political dimensions. To Wilberforce the constitutional establishment of the Church of England was not only a question of political pragmatics. His sacramental vision of the Church and his diagnosis of the actual ecclesiastical situation in England as ‘Erastian’ meant that his conversion could be seen as an act of existential political theology. His conversion is a strong suggestion that the Oxford Movement needs to be considered both as a spiritual and a political force in nineteenth-century England.     

Does the Candidate Matter? Comparing the Voting Choice of Early and Late Deciders

Candidate personality traits have long been recognized as influential in the determination of voting choice. However, little is understood of how the perception of candidates' traits influences different categories of voters. Based on a large‐scale electoral‐panel survey (ITANES, ITAlian National Election Studies), the present study investigated whether the voting choice of early and late deciders differentially relied on candidate traits. Results showed that after considering the influence of ideology and economy assessment, candidate traits still influenced the voting choice of early deciders and, even more, of late deciders. However, while early deciders took into account both incumbent and challenger traits, late deciders mainly relied on incumbent traits. Political sophistication moderated this effect, with high‐sophisticated early deciders relying even more on the challenger, and low‐sophisticated late deciders relying even more on the incumbent. The distinction between incumbent and challenger is discussed as a key variable in explaining the role of candidate traits in the choice of voters differing as to voting decision time and political sophistication.