"Sheldon S. Wolin [1922–] is Emeritus Professor of Politics at Princeton University. He taught political theory for forty years at Oberlin College, the Universities of California, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Los Angeles, Princeton University, Cornell University, and Oxford University. He was the founding editor of the journal democracy....His books include Politics and Vision [1960] and Tocqueville between Two Worlds [2001]... (paraphrased from publisher)

"...His most famous book, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought [1960], influenced a generation of political theorists."(publisher)

"...Wolin defended a radical account of democracy. He took it not as a form of government, but as a form of political judgment which needs to be wrested away from its close association with the liberal megastate....

...Wolin's work has energized participatory democracy in the United States by theorizing democracy as a mode of being that is external to the political institutions of the state. This shift has encouraged a decoupling of democracy from political liberalism (towards postliberal democracy) which restores to 'democracy' its rightful power to judge Power.

Wolin is often described as representing the hard-Left in his views that the United States has turned into the oxymoronic entity of 'superpower democracy' and that neo-conservative policy makers are turning the United States into an 'inverted totalitarian' state (with all of the fascist implications). However, Wolin might also be understood within either the conservative or socialist traditions of political thought in providing a prophetic counter to the excesses and dangers of political liberalism embodied in the 'megastate'.

Wolin's propheticism about U.S. political life seeks to recognize the fugitive character of democracy in order to retain its reformative power, encouraging local and particular modes of political participation which can resist the totalizing tendencies of statist power...." (from Wikipedia.com)