PTP Working Group

The Political Theory Project Working Group, launched in September 2009, takes place in the PTP's seminar room at 8 Fones Alley. Chaired by John Tomasi, with PTP postdocs serving as core members, the group is open to all Brown Faculty and graduate students. Participants complete a reading in advance for discussion during the twice-monthly lunch hour meetings.

The Group’s inaugural reading, Joyce Appleby’s Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790’s, discussed the roles of commerce and virtue within the Jeffersonian movement of the 1790’s. Readings, selected by the Director, address the broad question at the core of the Political Theory Project’s mission: What ideas and institutions might make societies free, prosperous and fair? As always, the Project has a special interest in approaches to this question that synthesize normative, social scientific, and historical perspectives. 

Past readings have included: John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930); How the West Grew Rich, The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World, by Nathan Rosenberg and L.E. Birdzell, Jr.; and Russ Roberts' The Price of Everything.