title: Hume's Politics: Coordination and Crisis in the History of England
author:  Andrew Sabl 
description: "Andrew Sabl has written an exceptionally fine overview of David Hume's <i>History of England</i>. . . . The <i>History</i> into which Hume poured such brilliance remains an undiscovered continent. . . . But with Sabl's full-length study, we can say that it has finally been mapped."<b>---David Walsh, <i>Perspectives on Politics</i></b><br /><br />"David Hume's <i>History of England</i>, a long-neglected classic of political philosophy, has recently become the object of serious study by political theorists. <i>Hume's Politics</i>, one of the best books on Hume published in recent years, shows convincingly how much political theorists and political scientists have to learn from Hume's masterpiece. . . . Sabl shows that Hume's political theory is a more than worthy conversation partner with the political science of today. He thus points to a political science that is superior to both merely normative political theorizing and positivistic political science."--."<b>---Thomas W. Merrill, <i>Review of Politics</i></b><br /><br />"[E]xtraordinarily painstaking and erudite study of [Hume's <i>History</i>] in its six-volume entirety." (<i>Political Theory</i>)<br /><br />"Sabl extracts from Hume's neglected <i>History</i> a wide-ranging and powerful work of political theorythe theory of dynamic coordinationpointing out that the tools with which to state it explicitly and abstractly <i>as</i> a theory were not invented until two centuries later. He refers of course to game theory, and to Schelling's clarification of coordination and the focal point phenomenon. Sabl's work is a persuasive, revealing, and masterful synthesis."<b>Randall Calvert, Washington University in St. Louis</b><br /><br />"This remarkable book restores David Hume's political thought to its rightful place at the center of political theory and connects Hume to central themes in contemporary political analysis. Sabl does justice to the details of Hume's account without ever losing the thread of the main arguments. A magnificent achievement."<b>William A. Galston, Brookings Institution</b><br /><br />"<i>Hume's Politics</i> engages Hume's <i>History</i> with unrivalled erudition and sensitivity to detail, and convincingly unlocks the structure and logic of that work through a novel analysis of the principle of dynamic coordination. Sabl not only gives us a new way to understand Hume's theory of political authority but also develops, through his reading of Hume, an original conception of the grounds of authority and the basis of political coordination. Throughout, he powerfully models a form of normative theorizing that fruitfully integrates historical and empirical studies of politics. A truly impressive achievement."<b>Sharon R. Krause, Brown University</b><br /><br />"Sabl shows how Hume might be read as a political theorist, and believes that Hume's <i>History of England</i> is a paradigm example of what realist political theory should be like. Sabl's approach is a fruitful one that deserves our attention. There is much that anyone interested in Hume and in his <i>History</i> stands to learn from this book."<b>James Harris, University of St. Andrews</b><br /><br />"Sabl has written an ambitious and often surprising book. He rescues the neglected <i>History of England</i>the work for which Hume was best known in his own timeand shows that it is an important part of his political theory. But this is no mere historical study. In Sabl's hands, Hume becomes perhaps the first political theorist to study the evolution of and change in coordination strategies in politics and the implications for understanding political institutions and behavior."<b>John T. Scott, University of California, Davis</b>
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  # WHETHER THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT INCLINES MORE TO ABSOLUTE MONARCHY, OR TO A
  REPUBLIC
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### David Hume
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  
  IT affords a violent prejudice against almost every science, that no prudent
  
  
  man, however sure of his principles, dares prophesy concerning any event, or
  
  
  foretel the remote consequences of things. A physician will not venture to
  
  
  pronounce concerning the condition of his patient a fortnight or month
  
  
  after: And still less dares a politician foretel the situation of public
  
  
  affairs a few years hence. HARRINGTON thought himself so sure of his general
  
  
  principle, that the balance of power depends on that of property, that he
  
  
  ventured to pronounce it impossible ever to re-establish monarchy in
  
  
  ENGLAND: But his book was scarcely published when the king 