Long Arms

The philosopher Joseph Heath ended his 2014 bestseller, Enlightenment 2.0, with a damp squib. That book explored the limitations of human rationality — both individual and collective — and presented a depressing portrait of a decline of reason in contemporary society, with its politics “enslaved by speed” and vulnerable to demagoguery. But even Heath seemed to recognize that his Slow Politics Manifesto —“a firm defense of quiet, rational deliberation is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life”— was pretty thin gruel as a recipe for what to do.

With The Machinery of Government, Heath offers a proposal that is both meatier and more optimistic. The book, which deservedly won the 2020 Donner Prize, is a political philosopher’s take on the appropriate place of public administration in liberal democracies. Its argumentation is dense and academic.

In contrast with his earlier book, which obsessed over the craziness of American...