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Governing Ideas | Number 11

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A Governance Studies Event

Reexamining American Exceptionalism

U.S. Politics, Immigration, Inequality, Civil Society, Governance


Event Summary

What exactly is "America"? And does the idea live up to the reality? During the nation’s infancy, Alexis de Tocqueville meticulously studied America’s democratic experiment and defined the contours of American exceptionalism. Nearly 200 years later, scholars James Q. Wilson and Peter Schuck have gone back to reconsider what defines the United States and its role in our rapidly changing world. Their new book, Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation (Public Affairs, 2008), is the ground-breaking result.

Governing Ideas

Event Information

When

Wednesday, April 23, 2008
10:00 AM to 12:00 PM

Where

Saul/Zilkha Room
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC
Map

Event Materials

Contact: Brookings Office of Communications

E-mail: events@brookings.edu

Phone: 202.797.6105

On Wednesday, April 23, Brookings hosted a panel discussion featuring Wilson and Schuck. They were joined by expert panelists, who commented on how federalism and bureaucracy structure our institutions, and on how economic inequality and immigration shape our democratic society. The discussion was part of the “Governing Ideas” series moderated by Brookings Senior Fellow William A. Galston. The series, hosted by Governance Studies at Brookings, is intended to broaden the discussion of governance issues through forums on timely and relevant books on history, culture, legal norms and practices, values and religion.

Transcript

WILIAM GALSTON:  Let me make it clear that exceptional does not mean superior, contrary to what many Americans believe, and contrary to what many non-Americans believe we believe. Rather, exceptional means different. It means an instance that breaks with a general pattern. Let me give you the most familiar example of that. A century ago the famous sociologist Max Weber hypothesized that with the progress of modernization would come a steady increase in secularization. As everybody knows, he was mostly right about Europe and mostly wrong about the United States, and the question or a question is why? What does that mean? There are dozens and dozens of examples like that not all of them so dramatic, but all of them significant. It is these phenomena that this book explores.

Americans are famous rightly so for not understanding other nations, a lack of understanding that often has practical consequences. It is less well known but equally true that other nations don't understand the United States very well either. Tocqueville's book "Democracy in America" has instructed generations of Americans in their polity, but if you look at Tocqueville's forward and introduction it was clearly designed to explain America to the French and more broadly to Europeans. It was written about America, but its target audience was overseas. This volume I think will serve to explain us to ourselves but also to the extent that these essays receive the attention they deserve, will explain us to the rest of the world as well.

Participants

Welcome and Moderator

William A. Galston

Senior Fellow, Governance Studies

Introduction

James Q. Wilson

Professor of Public Policy, Pepperdine University

Panelists

Martha Derthick

Professor Emeritus, University of Virginia

Ron Haskins

Senior Fellow, Economic Studies

Donald Kettl

Director, Fels Institute of Government, University of Pennsylvania
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution

Peter Schuck

Professor of Law, Yale University


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