I started this Advent thread with the shameless promotion of my own thesis. But now Christmas Day is hard upon us and it is time for the really good stuff. Concise, provocative and eminently readable, Kenneth Minogue's Politics: a Very Short Introduction is the best non-fiction book I have read this year. Period.
I quote at length Minogue's explanation of how constitutions function. My thesis (at greater length and far less ably) tries to touch on these matters. As you read the brilliant paragraph below, just imagine trying to explain it to the closed mind of the Donald. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
The set of offices by which a polis was governed, and the laws specifying their relation, are the constitution. Government without a constitution would lack the very kind of moral limitation which distinguishes politics. Constitutions function in two essential ways: they circumscribe the powers of the office-holders, and as a result they create a predictable (though not rigid and fixed) world in which the citizens may conduct their lives. It is constitutions which give form to politics, and the study of them led to the emergence of political science.
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