In a sense, it's harder to argue with a text that you actually like. Certainly, I find Mann much more engaging than Staub, especially when it comes to empirical analysis. His weakness so far is that he's not as good a theorist as he is an empiricist. While he's boundlessly more organized than Staub (not necessarily an achievement, but let's give credit where credit is due--he's about as together as we might expect from a solid academic writer), his theory is not as well-distilled as it might be. I'm about three pages into his second chapter. It looks like a normative theory developed from and given in conjunction with an empirical account of the development of democracy in Western Europe. The writing is very breezy and, naturally, as the subject is quite thorny, the text has already raised a few red flags. I don't think he sees concepts as clearly as he should if he is to understand the full consequences of his argument. It's still early, however. He may yet bowl me over. Mann definitely keeps me quite interested. He's a good deal more fun than Staub.
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