Political Philosophy for Public Office: The Good, the Just, and the Legitimate

Harvard HKS

This course examines three connected questions: (1) What normative principles should guide governments? (2) What institutional forms best realize these principles? (3) What duties and virtues do these principles and institutions require of officeholders and political actors? As recent political upheavals in several of the world’s established democracies show, not only is there deep disagreement about answers to these questions, but increasingly, there is deep disagreement about what to do…