Andrew Sabl    Ph.D., Political Science (Harvard University, 1997)  Associate Professor of Public Policy and Political Science  Phone: 310-825-7196 Fax: 310-206-0337 sabl@ucla.edu

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Andrew Sabl is a political theorist whose research focuses on political ethics; democratic and constitutional theory; theories of toleration and political pluralism, and, most recently, the political theory of David Hume and questions of leadership and coordination.

Sabl's research combines an interest in historical and contemporary political theory and ethics with a focus on live questions of politics and policy. His book attempts to discuss systematically, through both theory and biographical examples, the range of political action that takes place, and ought to take place, in a pluralistic, constitutional democracy such as the United States, and the range of character dispositions required in the leaders who facilitate each type of action. This theme of moral pluralism in politics has run throughout his early work. His current project, which reads Hume’s History of England as political theory, continues the enterprise of exploring how political theory both shapes and is shaped by judgments of actual political decisions and actors. His most recent theoretical explorations concern the relationship between political theory, questions of leadership, and economic theories of coordination (including the various competing but also complementary ways of achieving coordination: constitutions, focal points, evolution and natural selection, leadership, common knowledge). The work on Hume's History will read it partly as a theory of how one moves from one source of coordination to another—without claiming that Hume's massive and comprehensive work should be seen as being only about that.

Sabl received his Ph.D. in political science and a B.A. summa cum laude in government from Harvard University. Before coming to UCLA he taught at Vanderbilt University, and he has held visiting positions at Williams and Harvard as well as a Harvard postdoctoral fellowship. His research credentials include an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship (2003-4) and the Leo Strauss Award of the American Political Science Association for Best Dissertation in Political Philosophy (1997). His book, Ruling Passions: Political Offices and Democratic Ethics, was published by Princeton University Press in March 2002. His many articles include work appearing in Political Theory, the Journal of Political Philosophy, Polity, the American Journal of Political Science,, NOMOS, the Journal of Moral Philosophy,, the Election Law Journal, and other publications.

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Selected Publications:  

Ruling Passions: Political Offices and Democratic Ethics.
Princeton University Press, 2002.