The contributors to this collection approach the confused and paradoxical state of modern liberalism intending to clarify some new tendencies in liberal policy and philosophy. Prominent political scientists and political philosophers reflect on the difficulty of defining liberalism in a complex world for which it has neither lost its relevance nor proven its adequacy. They speculate on religion, family, economics, foreign policy, and other issues in relationship to recent changes in the liberal idea. The contributors do criticze some liberal practices and tendencies, but their basic...

This is not a true handbook' if by that term one means a brief reference work or a practical manual. It is, rather, a well-ordered collection of articles with a common concern: the relation between policy science (which is essentially empirical and instrumental) and normative political theory (which includes moral evaluation of the goals of political action and institutions). . . . The editors have designated three general points of view which, respectively, hold the relation between political theory and policy science to be complementary, ' integral, ' or mutually exclusive.' There are...