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"Interest" Is a Verb

Arthur Bentley and the Language of Interest

University of California, Santa Cruz, dpmath{at}ucsc.edu

The hundredth anniversary of Arthur Bentley's The Process of Government is an occasion to recover his distinctive but forgotten view of interest, namely, that an appeal to "interest" is an activity of provoking political identity and agency—an activity exemplified by the "group process" of politics. Bentley's insight has been lost as students of politics, as diversely inclined as David Truman, Bill Connolly, and many others, approach interests instead as a psychological bulwark and expression of sovereign agency. Reading Bentley prompts us to see how the language of "interest" undercuts such a picture, encouraging instead a critical theory of interests—and of politics more generally—that is sensitive to the active provocation of identity at sites of contestation.

Key Words: agency • action • Bentley • concepts • Connolly • contestation • grammar • groups • interest • language • political theory • social science • Truman

This version was published on December 1, 2008

Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 4, 622-635 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1065912908317029


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