This paper examines what is involved in using comparative methods within political theory and whether there should be a comparative political theory subfield. It argues that political theory consists of multiple kinds of activities that are either primarily "scholarly" or "engaged." It is easy to imagine how scholarly forms of political theory can be, and have been, comparative. The paper critiques (not rejects) existing calls for the creation of a comparative political theory subfield focused on the study of non-Western texts. Comparative political theory needs to explain why it is not merely expanding the canon to include non-Western texts and why a certain non-Western text is "alien," thus justifying the moniker comparative. Ten discrete theses are presented that argue that the strongest warrant for an engaged comparative political theory is the first-order evaluation of the implication of the contestations of norms, values, and principles between distinct and coherent doctrines of thought.Political theories wholly removed from the controversies of their world become a banal and trivial "wisdom" literature. --Judith ShklarIn recent years, there has been a steady increase in the visibility of comparative political theory in the field of political science. Just over twelve years ago, there was an explicit call "to inaugurate or launch a field of inquiry which is either nonexistent or at most fledgling and embryonic in contemporary academia: the field of 'comparative political theory' or 'comparative political philosophy.' What is meant by these titles is an inquiry which, in a sustained fashion, reflects upon the status and meaning of political life no longer in a

T his article intervenes in the debate on the place of religious arguments in public reason. I advance the debate not by asking whether something called "religious reasons" ought to be invoked in the justification of coercive laws, but by creating a typology of (a) different kinds and forms of religious arguments and, more importantly, (b) different areas of political and social life which coercive laws regulate or about which human political communities deliberate. Religious arguments are of many different kinds, are offered to others in a variety of ways, and the spheres of life about which communities deliberate pose distinct moral questions. Turning back to the public reason debate, I argue then that political liberals ought to be concerned primarily about the invocation of a certain subset of religious reasons in a certain subset of areas of human activity, but also that inclusivist arguments on behalf of religious contributions to public deliberation fail to justify the use of religious arguments in all areas of public deliberation. all gave invaluable feedback and suggestions for improvement on revised drafts of the article. Naz Modirzadeh helped with a particularly, and characteristically, incisive close reading, without which an adequate revision would not have been possible. Finally, I am grateful to Devin Gouré for crucial research and editorial assistance at multiple stages.to religious concerns in the broader public sphere than public reason liberalism. However, on my reading, the shared concerns with reciprocity, reason giving, and the ideal of consensus mean that discourse-theoretic approaches to religion and public reason have more in common with political liberalism than with any of the strongly inclusivist positions.

This essay focuses on questions that pertain to the ideological, normative, symbolic, and epochal aspects of political Islam. Political theorists, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists have disagreed on whether political Islam is an exclusively modern political phenomenon or is indebted to longstanding Islamic religious commitments. More specifically, they have also disagreed on whether the shape and ambitions of political Islam are entirely determined by the powers and institutions of the modern, bureaucratic state, particularly its secular desire to control, regulate, and reshape religion. These interpretive debates have often sat uneasily with ongoing normative debates about what kind of secularism democracy requires and whether democracy has priority over liberal rights and freedoms.

This article analyses the rhetorical legitimation strategy of post-Soviet Uzbekistan under Islam Karimov as an authoritarian state. I show that the most important mode of legitimation in this case is neither the consequentialist appeal to stability, order or welfare, nor a direct appeal to guardianship, i.e., special knowledge. Rather, Karimov and his court intellectuals seek to advance a conception of 'ideology' as the comprehensive pre-political consensus of the political community. Their concept of 'ideology' is used to advance a political logic whereby the nature of the political community, the purpose of the state, the unifying political telos and the present regime are fused into a single entity. This ontological fusion is presented as a hegemonic reality and occurs at the pre-political level, resulting in the vanishingly small space left over for politics that characterizes authoritarian systems. I then suggest that such analysis of the hegemonic strategy of authoritarian regimes, and above all the teleological conception of politics it advances, is a superior approach to authoritarian legitimation than the search for explicit 'consequentualist' versus 'principled' arguments.

Th is paper argues that the four most plausible arguments compatible with public reason for an outright legal ban on all forms of polygamy are unvictorious. I consider the types of arguments political liberals would have to insist on, and precisely how strongly, in order for a general prohibition against polygamy to be justifi ed, while also considering what general attitude towards "marriage" and legal recognition of the right to marry are most consistent with political liberalism. I argue that a liberal state should get out of the "marriage business" by leveling down to a universal status of "civil union" neutral as to the gender and aff ective purpose of domestic partnerships. I then refute what I regard as the four most plausible rational objections to off ering this civil union status to multi-member domestic partnerships. Th e most common objection to polygamy is on grounds of gender equality, more specifi cally, female equality. But advancing this argument forcefully often involves neglecting the tendency of political liberalism (by whatever name it goes in contemporary, complex, multicultural societies) to tolerate a certain amount of inequality in private, within the bounds of robust and meaningful freedoms of choice and exit. Properly understood, polygamy involves no inherent statement about the essential inferiority of women, and certainly not more than many other existing practices and institutions (including many expressions of the main monotheistic religions) which political liberals regard as tolerable, even reasonable. Arguments from the welfare of children, fairness in the spousal market, and the abuse of family subsidies are also considered and found insuffi cient for excluding polygamy.