Year by year, law seems to penetrate ever larger realms of social, political, and economic life, generating both praise and blame. Nonet and Selznick's Law and Society in Transition explains in accessible language the primary forms of law as a social, political, and normative phenomenon. They illustrate with great clarity the fundamental difference between repressive law, riddled with raw conflict and the accommodation of special interests, and responsive law, the reasoned effort to realize an ideal of polity.

To make jurisprudence relevant, legal, political, and social theory must be reintegrated. As a step in this direction, Nonet and Selznick attempt to recast jurisprudential issues in a social science perspective. They construct a valuable framework for analyzing and assessing the worth of alternative modes of legal ordering. The volume's most enduring contribution is the authors' typology-repressive, autonomous, and responsive law. This typology of law is original and especially useful because it incorporates both political and jurisprudential aspects of law and speaks directly to contemporary struggles over the proper place of law in democratic governance.

In his new introduction, Robert A. Kagan recasts this classic text for the contemporary world. He sees a world of responsive law in which legal institutions-courts, regulatory agencies, alternative dispute resolution bodies, police departments-are periodically studied and redesigned to improve their ability to fulfill public expectations. Schools, business corporations, and governmental bureaucracies are more fully pervaded by legal values. Law and Society in Transition describes ways in which law changes and develops. It is an inspiring vision of a politically responsive form of governance, of special interest to those in sociology, law, philosophy, and politics.

Providing a capstone to Philip Selznick's influential body of scholarly work, "A Humanist Science" insightfully brings to light the value-centered nature of the social sciences. The work clearly challenges the supposed separation of fact and value, and argues that human values belong to the world of fact and are the source of the ideals that govern social and political institutions. By demonstrating the close connection between the social sciences and the humanities, Selznick reveals how the methods of the social sciences highlight and enrich the study of such values as well-being, prosperity, rationality, and self-government.
The book moves from the animating principles that make up the humanist tradition to the values that are central to the social sciences, analyzing the core teachings of these disciplines with respect to the moral issues at stake. Throughout the work, Selznick calls attention to the conditions that affect the emergence, realization, and decline of human values, offering a valuable resource for scholars and students of law, sociology, political science, and philosophy.

"Philip Selznick has profoundly affected how all serious students of organizations think about their subject. "Leadership in Administration" is, perhaps, his masterpiece: a lucid, rigorous, yet humane analysis of the essential task of leadership that brilliantly reaffirms the organic, value-infused character of a successful enterprise, whether private or public. The central concepts of the book--'mission, ' 'distinctive competence'--have become so much a part of our vocabulary that we sometimes forget they had to be invented and that Selznick invented them. His reminder that the true exercise of leadership transcends a concern with mere efficiency is even more appropriate in today's era of quasi-scientific thought about organizations than it was when, presciently, he first set it forth in 1957."--James Q. Wilson, Harvard University
"The reappearance of "Leadership in Administration" will be most welcome to students of organizations because it provides the most lucid and complete statement available of Selznick's special view of organizations. This view has given rise to the institutionalist school of organizational analysis, one of the liveliest and more irrelevant alternatives to mainstream rationalist formulations."--W. Richard Scott, Stanford University
""Leadership in Administration" has become a classic in the art of executive leadership. In fact, it is stimulating more managerial thought and organizational research today than ever before."--Robert H. Miles, Harvard Business School

The famous and influential study of politics in action at all levels in the creation and expansion of the Tennessee Valley Authority -- with all its land use, agricultural, political and human effects. Landmark application of political and social theory coupled with prodigious research and insightful analysis made this a legendary work. Newly republished in print and digital formats in the Classics of the Social Sciences Series from Quid Pro Books, this acclaimed book is presented to a new generation of social scientists and historians with a new Foreword by Berkeley law professor Jonathan Simon. All formats include embedded page numbers from prior editions for continuity of reference and citation. This edition is reproduced in modern format with hyperaccurate proofreading of text and notes, and properly formatted tables.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1959.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1959.

In this new collection of essays, Paul van Seters brings together an international group of scholars from diverse academic backgrounds to reflect upon the remarkable rise of communitarianism in contemporary studies of law and society. Taking account of the intricate relationship between law and communitarianism, these essays critically assess the communitarian perspective in order to gain a more systematic insight into its distinctive constraints and the special opportunities it provides. At its core, this work contends that law necessarily presupposes community, but also essentially extends it. Arguing that communitarianism must be understood as an effort to reconstruct liberalism, and not just debunk it, Communitarianism in Law and Society explores what good is to come of this movement for legal theory and practice.

In this new collection of essays, Paul van Seters brings together an international group of scholars from diverse academic backgrounds to reflect upon the remarkable rise of communitarianism in contemporary studies of law and society. Taking account of the intricate relationship between law and communitarianism, these essays critically assess the communitarian perspective in order to gain a more systematic insight into its distinctive constraints and the special opportunities it provides. At its core, this work contends that law necessarily presupposes community, but also essentially extends it. Arguing that communitarianism must be understood as an effort to reconstruct liberalism, and not just debunk it, Communitarianism in Law and Society explores what good is to come of this movement for legal theory and practice.

Philip Selznick's study of moral and social theory establishes the intellectual foundations of an important new movement in American thought: communitarianism. Emerging in part as a response to the excesses of American individualism - particularly rampant during the 1980s - communitarianism seeks to restore the balance between individual rights and social responsibilities. "The Moral Commonwealth" attempts to explain and justify this communitarian turn and give it a liberal interpretation. Selznick begins by challenging the pervasive subjectivism and relativism of modern and postmodern thought. He vigorously defends the place of objectivity in moral discourse, particularly in establishing the common good - in how we make and justify our moral choices, whether in educating children, supporting the arts or protecting the community against private indifference and greed. He then examines three closely connected levels of moral experience - persons, institutions, and communities. The book ends with wide-ranging discussion of the foundations of community and, most importantly, of the promise of justice and democracy. Selznick grounds his theory of community in the experience of everyday

The communitarian movement aims to balance the individual liberties prized by modernity with the health of the community in which those liberties are exercised. The movement arose in 1980s America-a society asserting, on the left, personal self-realization and, on the right, unrestrained capitalism and distrust of government, both sides assailing social institutions.

In "The Communitarian Persuasion" esteemed thinker Philip Selznick shows how the communitarian response to such pressures is not opposition but integration. "Communities have this remarkable feature: they build upon and are nourished by other unities, which are persons, groups, practices, and institutions. What we prize in community is not unity of any sort at any price, but unity that preserves the integrity of the parts."

Selznick situates communitarianism as a public philosophy and relates the communitarian project to key social and political questions raised by the recent transformations of modern life. He also reflects on the appropriate demands of the common good and on religious faith's contributions to community. Readers new to communitarian ideas and readers long acquainted with them will find "The Communitarian Persuasion" well worth their attention.