June 2009                   Volume 07                           Issue 02

Editor's "Introduction and Comments": 

We open this issue with a vigorous exchange on a matter that, to put  it mildly, is politically fraught. In a series of provocative  publications beginning in 2006, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt  address what they call “the Israel Lobby” and detail what they see as  the dire consequences that that lobby has generated for American  foreign policy making. In our lead essay here, Robert Lieberman  challenges Walt and Mearsheimer in precisely the way I think debate on  their thesis needs to proceed. Lieberman focuses on the causal claims  Walt and Mearsheimer advance, the evidence they adduce for those  claims, and the ways that their arguments fit with established research  on how American politics operates. Mearsheimer and Walt have written a  spirited response to Lieberman who, in turn, offers a brief reply. It  is safe to say that neither party to this exchange has persuaded the  other. Yet, though their exchange is frank, both Lieberman and  Mearsheimer and Walt keep their eye on the ball—they are concerned to  establish whether and to what extent the Israel lobby exists and  operates in the way Mearsheimer and Walt claim it does.

In our  next two contributions Ido Oren and Piki Ish-Shalom step back from the  first-order debate that we see in our opening exchange. Oren wonders  how realists like Mearsheimer and Walt can consistently take part in  debates over policies and ideas, given their own views about how  recalcitrant political reality is in fact. Ish-Shalom raises questions  that are perhaps even broader. He is concerned to assess the extent to  which political theorists are responsible for the sometimes strange  careers their academic research may take on once it is appropriated by  various agents in the “real” world of politics.

In the next essay  in this issue Debra Candreva asks us to consider the writings of Joseph  Conrad for what they can contribute to contemporary debates over  imperialism. On a personal level, I am especially pleased to see this  paper appear in print. I participated on a panel where Candreva  presented an early version of this essay, encouraged her to consider  submitting it to Perspectives, and have watched as she  refined her argument through the editorial process. Following Candreva,  we have another political theorist, Ben Berger, who hopes to persuade  political scientists to retire the concept of civic engagement. He  recommends that we replace it with a finer-grained set of concepts that  will facilitate our understanding of the ways—political, social, and  moral—in which Americans interact. Only then, he suggests, can we grasp  the ways various forms of engagement might work to sustain democratic  politics.  Read the full Introduction and Comments.

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