Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
9-2025
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Political Science
Advisor
Robyn Marasco
Committee Members
Michael Fortner
Leonard Feldman
Subject Categories
American Politics | Political Theory
Keywords
Neoconservatism, Democratic Theory, Urban Politics, Authority, Policing, Law and Order
Abstract
Scholars typically understand the rise of the modern Right in the US during the latter half of the twentieth century as, mutatis mutandis, a period when democracy was curtailed and social hierarchies were reinforced under the aegis of preserving free markets, personal liberty, and moral order. “Problems with Authority” tells a different story about democracy in the neoliberal era. It centers on a set of neoconservative political scientists who sought to teach conservatives how to build broad political coalitions and govern over increasingly diverse populations. Neoconservatives offered the Right a counter-theory of democracy to challenge welfare liberalism and reasons to remake and even expand the state to serve conservative purposes. This dissertation shows how long before neoconservatives became notorious for their disastrous schemes to bring democracy to the Middle East, they emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as an intellectual movement dedicated to restoring democracy to American cities.
The first generation of neoconservative political scientists, like Edward C. Banfield, James Q. Wilson, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, were internal critics of Great Society liberalism. Accusing welfare technocrats of eroding traditional relations of authority essential for social cohesion and cultivating capacities for self-rule, they diagnosed the urban crisis rattling American cities as, at root, a crisis of authority, not one of material deprivation, as liberals believed. Over four chapters, “Problems with Authority” tracks the advance of neoconservative political thought from its critical break with the political episteme of welfare liberalism to the development of its own theory of social behavior and political rule. The dissertation argues that neoconservative political theory is, at its core, an Aristotelian theory of social reproduction, which posits that habituating traditional relations of and deference to authority is the key to engendering the political sensibilities necessary for a mass democracy. This materialistic theory of authority remains at the center of the conservative approach to governance today.
Recommended Citation
Ward, Milo, "Problems with Authority: The Political Theory of Neoconservative Political Science" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6376
