David Leslie Miller

an investigation into the nature, causes, and effects of good and bad government, and our picture not only encapsulates this quest, but expresses in striking visual form three ideas that stand at the very heart of the subject. The first is that good and bad government profoundly affect the quality of human lives.

if the people failed in their duty to keep a watchful eye on their representatives.

political philosophy claims that it can bring to us a kind of truth about politics, something different from the opinions that guide us from day to day.

Politicians very rarely concede that they might have to sacrifice one aim in order to achieve another, but perhaps in reality they do.

Take law and order versus individual liberty, for instance. Could our streets not be made safer by limiting individual liberty – for instance by giving the police greater powers to arrest people they suspected were about to engage in criminal acts? If so, which value should have the higher priority? Of course in order to decide that, she would need to say a bit more precisely what individual liberty means. Is it simply being able to do whatever you like, or is it doing what you like so long as you don’t harm anyone else? This makes a big difference to the question being asked.

There are two different directions we might take here: anarchists themselves fall broadly into two camps. One points towards community, the other towards the market.

The reason is that there is a widespread belief that ordinary people are simply not competent to understand the issues that lie behind political decisions, and so they are happy to hand these decisions over to people they regard as better qualified to deal with them. A

In most cases, making a political judgement will involve all of these three elements,

essentially requires a political judgement about what ought to be done in circumstances where there are several options open and there is disagreement about which option is best. What are the elements that go into such a judgement?

there is factual information about what will happen if one or other option is chosen. What effect will a particular tax increase have on the economy, for instance?