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The Way of the World

APD is "purged of teleology" (p. 120) and that it avoids the "deterministic" or "normative" characteristics of historicism's proposition of a particular "direction in politics" (p. 174). It is by rejecting the teleological or directional features of historicism, and talking instead about "shifts in authority" and the power of "human volition/' that the authors' account of APD appears to ally itself more with the Nietzschean and less with the Hegelian version of historicism. Regardless of its particular brand of historicism, APD is clearly grounded in the rejection of nature as an overriding, foundational concept in American politics. In this way, APD is closely aligned with the presuppositions of the Progressive movement in America—a movement which was responsible for exalting history over nature as a standard for moral and political life in the United States. It is a credit to Orren and Skowronek that they recognize this alliance, devoting substantial attention, for example, to Woodrow Wilson's role in the progressive critique of traditional American constitutionalism—in particular, to Wilson's critique of limited constitutional government based upon a permanent or ahistorical understanding of nature. In this respect, the authors could just have easily pointed to the connection between APD and the methodology of John Dewey, whose Liberalism and Social Action might well be considered one of the best and earliest examples of the APD approach. In that work, Dewey contends that the only way to understand America is to understand the history of its development—especially the development of America's conception of liberalism. The American Founders, Dewey proclaimed, "lacked historic sense and interest," failing to conceive of liberty as an historically contingent idea and grounding it, instead, in the ahistorical concept of nature. The real meaning of liberty, Dewey countered, could only be understood through the development brought about by history. Seeing this connection between APD and Dewey's account of America's political development is useful, because it raises the question about the appropriateness of the term "development" as it is used by both Dewey and APD. "Development," presumably, implies some degree of continuity. Yet the understanding of the founding generation was that the principles of politics were grounded in nature, while the understanding of modern liberalism (starting with the Progressives) is that principles are grounded in history. Whether such a "shift" might more properly be called a radical transformation in America's selfunderstanding, as opposed to a mere "development," is a legitimate question, both for scholars inside as well as outside of this new subfield known as APD.