The Politics of Disorder

Periods of disorder in the United States have generally been regarded as evil times which must be terminated as quickly as possible. But in this provocative analysis of our political system, pursuing the argument of his noted study The End of Liberalism, Theodore J. Lowi maintains that political disorder affords new opportunities for effective political action—or that it can, in system of juridical democracy. Professor Lowi presents a convincing case for the workable possibility of juridical democracy—formal democracy, whose main feature is rule of law—as against interest-group democracy, characterized by policy-without-law.