J.S. Maloy

author of "Democratic Statecraft: Political Realism and Popular Power"

February 4, 2014

J.S. Maloy is associate professor of political science at Oklahoma State University. His teaching and research range widely across the history of political thought, with special emphasis on democratic institutions and constitutional law. He's the author of two books from Cambridge University Press, "The Colonial American Origins of Modern Democratic Thought" (2008) and "Democratic Statecraft" (2013), as well as several peer-reviewed articles, symposium contributions, and book reviews in academic journals.

The theory of statecraft explores practical politics through the strategies and maneuvers of privileged agents, while the theory of democracy dwells among abstract concepts and lofty values. Can these two ways of thinking be somehow reconciled and combined? Or is statecraft destined to remain the preserve of powerful elites, leaving democracy to ineffectual idealists? J.S. Maloy demonstrates that the Western tradition of statecraft, usually considered the tool of tyrants and oligarchs, has in fact been integral to the development of democratic thought, and that it contains unmined resources for new ways of thinking strategically about politics. Five case-studies of political debate, ranging from Greece in the fourth century B.C. to the United States in the 1890s, illustrate how democratic ideas can be relevant to the real world of politics instead of reinforcing the idealistic delusions of both conventional wisdom and academic theory.

URL: https://library.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2014-honorees/j.s.-maloy

Last Updated: 21 December 2015