This article is a response to Hauerwas’s, O’Donovan’s and Muir’s engagements with Christ and the Common Life. Three distinctions that operate in the book are clarified, namely that between formal and informal politics, bottom-up forms of democratic politics and top-down forms of statecraft, and social and political relations. In setting these out, the distinction between public and private is critiqued and two, interrelated moves made in the book are defended. First, that democratic politics precedes and sustains a liberal polity. And second, that human law and the state should serve the antecedent and superordinate good of association.

中文翻译：

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为社会服务的政治：对我的对话者的回应

这篇文章是对豪尔瓦斯、奥多诺万和缪尔与基督和共同生活的约定的回应。书中阐明了三个区别，即正式和非正式政治、自下而上的民主政治形式和自上而下的治国方式，以及社会和政治关系之间的区别。在阐述这些时，对公共和私人之间的区别进行了批评，并为书中提出的两个相互关联的举措进行了辩护。首先，民主政治先于并维持自由政体。其次，人法和国家应该为联合的先行和上级利益服务。