Foreword Editor‐in‐Chief

• Date: 01 January 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12221
• Published date: 01 January 2018

The AMERICAN JOURNAL of

ECONOMICS and SOCIOLOGY

Published Q U A R T E R L Y in the interest of constructive

synthesis in the social sciences, under grants from the

FRANCIS NEILSON FUND and the ROBERT SCHALKENBACH

FOUNDATION. Founded in 1941

Volume 77 January 2018 Number 1

Foreword

Editor-in-Chief

I have been planning for some time to produce an issue of this jour-

nal on radical civic republicanism. It offers an important, but

neglected, alternative to liberal individualism, conservatism, and

socialism, which are the three major ideological options in the

United States today. Indeed, one of my aims as editor has been to

examine how the philosophy of republicanism might help us think

about solutions to a wide range of social problems. Rather than

defining republicanism and then working out the implications of it

deductively, my hope is that this journal might begin a process of

inductively discovering how civic republicanism might be relevant

in today’s world. A consideration of the concrete implications of

civic republicanism is necessary, in my view, because the analysis of

republican principles in most other venues is at a high level of

abstraction and deals only with formal political institutions. A more

pressing need is to determine the social and economic conditions

that could make republicanism a viable political option.

Thus, when I read the introduction to this issue by the guest editor,

Christopher England, I was surprised and pleased to discover that he

had already prepared an issue consciously devoted to civic

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 77, No. 1 (January, 2018).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12221

V

C2018 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.