Lee Ward

Professor of Political Science

Education

Courses at Baylor

PSC 4383 Contemporary Political Theory
Since the dawn of the modern era, nation states have grappled with a central question: How can individuals and distinct groups bearing greatly different moral, ethical, cultural and religious beliefs and points of view live together peacefully, productively and freely in a shared political community? This course will examine this question with a particular focus on works of contemporary political theory that explore the challenges posed for liberal democratic societies by the demands of pluralism and multiculturalism. The thinkers that we will consider will include John Rawls, Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, Will Kymlicka and James Tully.

PSC 5340 The American Founding
This course will examine the philosophical roots of the American Founding beginning with the English constitutional struggles of the 17th century exemplified in the works of Robert Filmer, John Locke, Algernon Sidney and James Tyrrell.  It will then consider the development of 18th-century British Constitutionalism in Trenchard and Gordon's Cato's Letters, as well as selected writings of Hume, Bolingbroke and Montesquieu, before turning to the American tracts from the imperial dispute with Britain prior to the Revolution including writings from James Otis, John Dickinson, Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine.  This will be followed by analysis of the Articles of Confederation and various state constitutions in the revolutionary period.  The course will conclude by examining the debates surrounding the drafting and ratification of the Constitution.

Selected Publications

Recovering Classical Liberal Political Economy: Natural Rights and the Harmony of Interests (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke on a Liberal Right of Secession (Political Research Quarterly. Vol. 70, No.4 (December) 2017: 876-88).

Modern Democracy and the Theological-Political Problem in Spinoza, Rousseau, and Jefferson (New York: Palgrave MacMillan Publishers, 2014).

John Locke and Modern Life (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

The Ashgate Research Companion to Federalism (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2009).

The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

"Democracy and the Problem of Political Change in Canada," in Applying Political Theory to Canadian Politics, David McGrane and Neil Hibbert, editors. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (forthcoming 2017).

"The Challenge of Modernizing Seventeenth-Century English Political Texts: A Response to Foster," in Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 43:2 (Winter 2017): 279-287.

"Republican Political Theory and Irish Nationalism," in The European Legacy 21:1 (February 2016): 19-37.

"James Otis and the Americanization of John Locke," in American Political Thought, 4:2 (Spring 2015): 181-202.

"Gods would be needed to give men Laws: Rousseau on the Modern Republican Legislator," in Perspectives on Political Science 43:1 (January 2014): 41-51.

"Benedict Spinoza on the Naturalness of Democracy," in Canadian Political Science Review 5:1 (January 2011): 55-73.

"Montesquieu on Federalism and Anglo-Gothic Constitutionalism," in Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 37:4 (Fall 2007): 551-577.

"Locke on the Moral Basis of International Relations," in American Journal of Political Science, 50:3 (July 2006): 691-705.

"Locke on Executive Power and Liberal Constitutionalism," in Candian Journal of Political Science, 38:3 (September 2005): 719-744.