First, I’m not quite sure that I agree with McCraw that “Schumpeter’s analysis of . . . democracy is a good deal less compelling than his dissection of capitalism.” Well, maybe it is–an economist can judge better than I just how compelling is his dissection of capitalism–but I’ve actually found his analysis of democracy, which I hadn’t found terribly compelling in my grad school days, more compelling since then. I’m not sure what that says about him or me. Maybe I’ve read one too many blogs (certainly not O&M or orgtheory!) where it does indeed seem that “the typ[ical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance . . . argu[ing] and analyz[ing] in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests.”

Second, it might be interesting to see somebody take on Weber’s meatier full Sociology of Religion writings (Beacon published a version in ’93) rather than just The Protestant Ethic.

Historians of the 1920′s were trying to come up with reasons why China was “destined” to be an economic failure, and one thing that current historians of China are trying very hard not to do is to come up with theories of history that mark China’s current economic growth as “historically inevitable.” The term that you hear a lot is “path dependence” that where we are is often a result of random decisions and the outcome could be very different.

See

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/10/114.html