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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Liberalism & centre democratic ideologies
This book examines the work of one of the most controversial figures in recent social and political thought. Revered by some as the most important twentieth century theorist of the free society, Hayek has been reviled by others as a mere reactionary. Impartial throughout, the author offers a clear exposition and balanced assessment, that judges Hayek's theory by its own lights. The author argues that the key to understanding Hayek lies in an appreciation of the proper link between descriptive social science and normative political theory. He probes the idea of a spontaneous order and other notions central to Hayek's thought and concludes that they are unable to provide the 'scientific' foundation Hayek seeks for his liberalism. By drawing out the distinctive character of Hayek's thought, the author presents a new and more accurate picture of this important social and political theorist.
What are the core values of liberalism and how can they best be promoted? Liberals in the classical tradition championed individual freedom, limited government and a capitalist economic system with strong rights to private property. Contemporary liberals, in contrast, embrace more egalitarian values and allow for a far more prominent role for government intervention in the market to reduce inequality, redistribute wealth and regulate economic activity. What accounts for these very disparate liberal views of property rights and economic freedom? How should we understand the transition from the classical view of liberalism to its more egalitarian modern version? And what, ideally, should the relationship be between the central values of liberalism and the economic institutions of capitalism? The eleven essays in this volume address these questions and examine related issues.
This book explores the politics, institutional dynamics, and outcomes of neoliberal restructuring in Israel. It puts forward a bold proposition: that the very creation of a neoliberal political economy may be largely a state project. Correspondingly, it argues that key political conflicts surrounding the realization of this project may occur within the state. Neoliberal restructuring and the institutionalization of permanent austerity are dependent on reconfigured power relations between state actors and are manifested in a new institutional architecture of the state. This architecture, in turn, is the context in which efforts to change social and employment policies play themselves out. The volume frames the coming of neoliberalism in Israel as a set of concrete and far-reaching changes in the power and modes of operation of the key players in the political economy. These changes undermined and neutralized veto players and enabled the ascendance of two state agencies - the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank - which gained greatly augmented authority and autonomy. These reconfigurations were set in motion by state initiatives that combined punctuated and incremental change. The volume comprises case studies of changes in specific social and labor market policies, revealing a close elective affinity between programmatic neoliberal changes on the one hand, and on the other the proactive drive of the Ministry of Finance to enhance its control over public spending and policy design. The book explores successful neoliberal reforms but also reforms that were blocked, undermined, or overturned by opposition, emphasizing the importance of reformers' capacity to translate temporary achievements into entrenched strategic advantages.
No account of contemporary politics can ignore religion. The liberal democratic tradition in political thought has long treated religion with some suspicion, regarding it as a source of division and instability. Faith in Politics shows how such arguments are unpersuasive and dependent on questionable empirical claims: rather than being a serious threat to democracies' legitimacy, stability and freedom, religion can be democratically constructive. Using historical cases of important religious political movements to add empirical weight, Bryan McGraw suggests that religion will remain a significant political force for the foreseeable future and that pluralist democracies would do well to welcome rather than marginalize it.
This study, based largely on Chinese journals rarely available to Western scholars, explores the abrupt turnabout of Chinese views of the Soviet Union from condemnations of revisionism" to appreciation for problems common to both countries. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Why was there a Liberal Government in Britain from 1905 until the First World War? And why was the Liberal party replaced by the Labour party so shortly afterwards? These are the kinds of problems which Dr Clarke examines in his study of the Liberal revival in Lancashire. The vote in north-west England was largely responsible for bringing the Liberal Government into power and for maintaining its position, but it also produced almost half the new Labour MP's in 1906. Thus any satisfactory interpretation of electoral history in the early twentieth century must account for what happened in Lancashire. This book calls into question many of the conventional assumptions about British politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
'A panorama of the unravelling world order as riveting as any beach read' New Yorker 'Read this book: in the three hours it takes you will get a new, bracing and brilliant understanding of the dangers we in the democratic West now face. Luce is one of the smartest journalists working today, and his perceptions are priceless' Jane Mayer, staff writer on the New Yorker 'No one was more prescient about the economic malaise and popular resentment that has hit the United States than Ed Luce in his previous book, Time to Start Thinking. His new book, Retreat of Western Liberalism, broadens that picture to cover the Western world. It is a must read for anyone trying to make sense of the waves of populism and nationalism we face today' Liaquat Ahamed In his widely acclaimed book Time to Start Thinking, Financial Times columnist and commentator Edward Luce charted the course of American economic and geopolitical decline, proving to be a prescient voice on our current social and political turmoil. In The Retreat of Western Liberalism, Luce makes a larger statement about the weakening of western hegemony and the crisis of democratic liberalism - of which Donald Trump and his European counterparts are not the cause, but a symptom. Luce argues that we are on a menacing trajectory brought about by ignorance of what it took to build the West, arrogance towards society's losers, and complacency about our system's durability - attitudes that have been emerging since the fall of the Berlin Wall, treated by the West as an absolute triumph over the East. We cannot move forward without a clear diagnosis of what has gone wrong. Luce contrasts Western democratic and economic ideals, which rest on an assumption of linear progress, with more cyclical views of economic strength - symbolized by the nineteenth-century fall and present-day rise of the Chinese and Indian economies - and with the dawn of a new multipolar age. Combining on-the-ground reporting with intelligent synthesis of the vast literature already available, Luce offers a detailed projection of the consequences of the Trump administration and a forward-thinking analysis of what those who believe in enlightenment values must do to defend them from the multiple onslaughts they face in the coming years.
Marshalling historical materials to make a descriptive argument in social theory, this wide-ranging book compares the liberal revolution in France to the liberal revolutions in England and America and argues that the causes and outcomes of these upheavals were decisive in shaping later patterns of politics. "Conflict is the stuff of politics," writes Anne Sa'adah, and liberal politics, because of its emphasis on the individual and its legitimation of self-interest, complicates the task of creating political community in a particularly interesting way. In England and America, the tension between conflict and community was resolved in a manner consistent with political stability. In France, the tension produced an instability that has surfaced periodically throughout subsequent French history. Why this is so is the subject of a work that treats the making of the modern political world in an unusually systematic way. In France, England, and America, the relationship of the state to society under the prerevolutionary regime limited revolutionary options. Sa'adah focuses on how this relationship created a politics of exclusion in France, while allowing a politics of transaction in England and America. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Whereas most writing on the Communist Revolution in China has concentrated on the influence of intellectual leaders, this book examines the role of peasants in the upheaval, viewing them not as a malleable mass but as a dynamic social force interacting with the radical intelligentsia. Focusing on the Xinjiang region, Kamal Sheel traces the historical roots of the early twentieth-century agrarian crisis that led to a large-scale revolution in the late 1920s, one of the most successful peasant movements organized by the Chinese Communists. A fresh analysis emerges of the remarkable Marxist intellectual Fang Zhimin, who used his deeply entrenched rural connections to organize the movement through a creative synthesis of traditional folk concepts with modern Marxist thought. This history begins with the impact of the Taiping Rebellion and proceeds to document the rapid disintegration of the small peasant economy under the pressures of world economics, a "state in crisis," and a qualitatively different landed upper class. It discusses exploitation, protest, and rural uprisings in the context of the "crisis of paternalism," marked by a progressive deterioration in the social relationships in rural areas. Integrating this investigation of rural upheaval with recent social science theories on peasant movements, the study ultimately explores the growth of the Xinjiang revolutionary movement. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
In the super-heated anticommunist politics of the early Cold War period, American liberals turned to the FBI. With the Communist party to the left of them and McCarthyism to the right, liberal leaders saw the Bureau as the only legitimate instrument to define and protect the internal security interests of the state. McCarthyism provided ample proof of the dangers of security by congressional investigation. In response, liberals delegated extensive powers to J. Edgar Hoover--creating a domestic intelligence capacity that circumvented constitutional and legal controls. This balanced account of the link between liberal leaders in the United States and the growth of the FBI will appeal to a broad audience of readers interested in the American political climate. William Keller identifies a tension between liberalism and the security of the state that can never be fully resolved, and analyzes the exact mechanisms through which liberals and liberal government came to tolerate and even venerate an authoritarian state presence in their midst. The author shows how the liberal offensive against domestic communism succeeded both in weakening McCarthyism and in disabling the Communist party in the United States. What was the cost of these successes? Keller's answer assesses the liberal community's contribution to changes in the FBI between 1950 and 1970: its transformation into an independent, unaccountable political police. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
This study, based largely on Chinese journals rarely available to Western scholars, explores the abrupt turnabout of Chinese views of the Soviet Union from condemnations of revisionism" to appreciation for problems common to both countries. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Western societies are suffering from a multi-faceted political and economic crisis to which traditional ideologies of the Left and Right no longer offer viable solutions. This book advocates as an alternative 'associative democracy'. Far from being a utopian idea, it offers new forms of economic and social governance as supplements to representative democracy and market economies. Associative democracy addresses the problems of the overload of big government by democratizing and empowering civil society. It transfers social provision to self-governing voluntary associations, whilst retaining public funding and political accountability. It 'publicises' civil society, placing political responsibility and governmental tasks in the hands of citizens. Accountable government becomes possible because service performance and public control are separated. In the economic sphere it advocates regional economic regulation through public-private partnerships, the promotion of self-governing industrial districts, and the democratization of the firm. In this way, Hirst argues, public regulation can be made less remote, promoting the growth of relationships based on co-operation and trust and, therefore, ensuring those flows of information and commitment on the part of actors necessary to the pursuit of "quality" in market economies. This book is highly distinctive in the way it combines political theory with social analysis and political advocacy. It forms an outstanding contribution to contemporary political discussion.
The typical workplace is a hotbed of human relationships-of friendships, conflicts, feuds, alliances, partnerships, coexistence and cooperation. Here, problems are solved, progress is made, and rifts are mended because they need to be - because the work has to get done. And it has to get done among increasingly diverse groups of co-workers. At a time when communal ties in American society are increasingly frayed and segregation persists, the workplace is more than ever the site where Americans from different ethnic, religious, and racial backgrounds meet and forge serviceable and sometimes lasting bonds. What do these highly structured workplace relationships mean for a society still divided by gender and race? Structure and rules are, in fact, central to the answer. Workplace interactions are constrained by economic power and necessity, and often by legal regulation. They exist far from the civic ideal of free and equal citizens voluntarily associating for shared ends. Yet it is the very involuntariness of these interactions that helps to make the often-troubled project of racial integration comparatively successful at work. People can be forced to get along-not without friction, but often with surprising success. This highly original exploration of the paradoxical nature-and the paramount importance-of workplace bonds concludes with concrete suggestions for how law can further realize the democratic possibilities of working together. In linking workplace integration and connectedness beyond work, Estlund suggests a novel and promising strategy for addressing the most profound challenges facing American society.
The Practice of Liberal Pluralism defends a theory, liberal pluralism, which is based on three core concepts - value pluralism, political pluralism, and expressive liberty - and explores the implications of this theory for politics. Liberal pluralism helps clarify some of the complexities of real-world political action and points toward a distinctive conception of public philosophy and public policy. It leads to a vision of a good society in which political institutions are active in a delimited sphere and in which, within broad limits, families, civil associations, and faith communities may organize and conduct themselves in ways that are not congruent with principles that govern the public sphere. The final section of the book defends liberal pluralism against attacks that it is internally incoherent or that it denies, without justification, key theological premises. Written in a nontechnical style, this book should appeal to professionals in philosophy, political science, law, and policy making.
Countries throughout the world are grappling with the practical and moral issues raised by increasing numbers of refugees. Matthew Gibney's book asks how Western countries should respond to the claims of refugees who arrive on their territory, and relates the question to wider issues surrounding immigration, citizenship and the responsibilities of democracies. Examining policy in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and Australia, this book offers an important contribution to a highly topical subject.
Does fair political representation for historically disadvantaged groups require their presence in legislative bodies? The intuition that women are best represented by women, and African-Americans by other African-Americans, has deep historical roots. Yet the conception of fair representation that prevails in American political culture and jurisprudence--what Melissa Williams calls "liberal representation"--concludes that the social identity of legislative representatives does not bear on their quality as representatives. Liberal representation's slogan, "one person, one vote," concludes that the outcome of the electoral and legislative process is fair, whatever it happens to be, so long as no voter is systematically excluded. Challenging this notion, Williams maintains that fair representation is powerfully affected by the identity of legislators and whether some of them are actually members of the historically marginalized groups that are most in need of protection in our society. Williams argues first that the distinctive voice of these groups should be audible within the legislative process. Second, she holds that the self-representation of these groups is necessary to sustain their trust in democratic institutions. The memory of state-sponsored discrimination against these groups, together with ongoing patterns of inequality along group lines, provides both a reason to recognize group claims and a way of distinguishing stronger from weaker claims. The book closes by proposing institutions that can secure fair representation for marginalized groups without compromising principles of democratic freedom and equality.
Liberal theory seeks agreement on political principles in spite of the moral, religious, and philosophical diversity of contemporary societies. Democratic Procedures and Liberal Consensus breaks new ground in developing principles from research on liberal citizen's attitudes towards rights and liberties, distributive justice, and religious beliefs. Because liberal citizens do not generally accept strong individual rights or strongly egalitarian principles of distributive justice, the principles of liberal consensus must be based on almost universal support for democratic political systems and democracy as a value. The details of central liberal principles, including those bearing on democracy itself, must be worked out by appropriate democratic procedures.
Since the nineteenth century, Greek financial and economic crises have been an enduring problem, most recently engulfing the European Union and EU member states. The latest crisis, beginning in 2010, has been - and continues to be - a headline news story across the continent. With a radically different approach and methodology, this anthropological study brings new insights to our understanding of the Greek crises by combining historical material from before and after the nineteenth century War of Independence with extensive longitudinal ethnographic research. The ethnography covers two distinct periods - the 1980s and the current crisis years - and compares Mystras and Kefala, two villages in southern Greece, each of which has responded quite differently to economic circumstances. Analysis of this divergence highlights the book's central point that an ideology of aspiration to work in the public sector, pervasive in Greek society since the nineteenth century, has been a major contributor to Greece's problematic economic development. Shedding new light on previously under-researched anthropological and sociological aspects of the Greek economic crisis, this book will be essential reading for economists, anthropologists and historians.
In "Two Faces of Liberalism," John Gray argues that liberal thought
has always contained two incompatible philosophies. In one,
liberalism is a theory of a universal rational consensus, which
enables the achievement of the best way of life for all humankind.
In the other, liberalism is the project of seeking terms of
peaceful coexistence between different regimes and ways of life.
John Gray argues that the liberalism of rational consensus is
anachronistic in a time when most late modern societies contain
several ways of life, with many people belonging to more than one.
The future of liberalism lies with a project of "modus vivendi,"
first outlined in the writings of Thomas Hobbes. In the course of
his argument, Gray presents a new interpretation of liberal
toleration and argues that value-pluralism in ethics can support a
revised view of universal human rights. This accessible book will be of great interest to students and scholars of political thought, moral and political philosophy, social and critical theory and cultural studies.
This book discusses the justifications and limits of cultural nationalism from a liberal perspective. Chaim Gans presents a normative typology of nationalist ideologies, distinguishing between cultural liberal nationalism and statist liberal nationalism. Statist nationalisms argue that states have an interest in the cultural homogeneity of their citizenries. Cultural nationalisms argue that people have interests in adhering to their cultures (the adherence thesis) and in sustaining these cultures for generations (the historic thesis). Gans argues that freedom- and identity-based justifications for cultural nationalism common in literature can only support the adherence thesis, while the historical thesis could only be justified by the interest people have in the long-term endurance of their personal and group endeavors. The Limits of Nationalism examines demands often made in the name of cultural nationalism, such as claims for national self-determination, historical rights claims to territories and demands entailedby cultural particularism as opposed to cultural cosmopolitanism.
A growing number of political philosophers favour a view called liberal perfectionism. According to this view, liberal political morality is characterised by a commitment to helping individuals lead autonomous lives and making other valuable choices. In this book Jonathan Quong rejects this widely held view and offers an alternative account of liberal political morality. Quong argues that the liberal state should not be engaged in determining what constitutes a valuable or worthwhile life nor trying to make sure that individuals live up to this ideal. Instead, it should remain neutral on the issue of the good life, and restrict itself to establishing the fair terms within which individuals can pursue their own beliefs about what gives value to their lives. The book thus defends a position known as political liberalism. In the first part of the book Quong subjects the liberal perfectionist position to critical scrutiny, advancing three major objections that raise serious doubts about the liberal perfectionist position with regard to autonomy, paternalism, and political legitimacy. In the second part of the book Quong presents and defends a distinctive version of political liberalism. In particular, Quong clarifies and develops political liberalism's central thesis: that political principles, in order to be legitimate, must be publicly justifiable to reasonable people. Drawing on the work of John Rawls, Quong offers his own interpretation of this idea, and rebuts some of the main objections that have been pressed against it. In doing so, Quong provides novel arguments regarding the nature of an overlapping consensus, the structure of political justification, the idea of public reason, and the status of unreasonable persons.
Sylvia Chan examines the claim that liberal democracy on the Western model is the paradigm to which developing countries should aspire to provide good governance and economic success. The success of some countries, notably in Asia, which do not conform to that model has led many to question that link. Chan argues that these successful developing nations have enjoyed the economic and social liberties necessary to encourage economic development, without the need to adopt the formal democratic institutions and cultural values of the West.
This book is a collection of eleven essays by one of the most interesting moral philosophers currently writing. It examines challenges to liberal thought posed by the changing circumstances of the modern world such as the conflicting tendencies toward global integration, and greater ethnic and communal identification. The author considers whether liberal principles of justice can accommodate social and global interdependencies while reaffirming the importance of individual responsibility and acknowledging the significance of people's diverse personal and communal allegiances.
William Galston is a distinguished political philosopher whose work is informed by the experience of having served from 1993-1995 as President Clinton's Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy. Isaiah Berlin first advanced the moral theory of value pluralism in the 1950s and it subsequently was developed by a number of distinguisthed scholars, including Galston. In Liberal Pluralism, Galston defends a version of value pluralism for political theory and practice. Against the contentions of John Gray and others, Galston argues that value pluralism undergirds a kind of liberal politics that gives great weight to the ability of individuals and groups to live their lives in accordance with their deepest beliefs about what gives meaning and purpose to life. This account of liberal pluralism is shown to have important implications for political deliberation and decision-making, for the design of public institutions, and for the division of legitimate authority among government, religious institutions, civil society, parents and families, and individuals. Liberal pluralism leads to a vision of a good society in which political institutions are active in a limited sphere and in which, within broad limits, families and civil associations may organize and conduct themselves in ways that are not congruent with the principles that govern the public sphere. William Galston is Professor, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland and Director at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. He is the author of Liberal Purposes (Cambridge, 1991), which won the Spitz Prize. Galston's other books include Justice and the Human Good (Chicago, 1980) and IKant and the Problem of History (Chicago, 1975). He is also a Senior Advisor to the Democratic Leadership Council and the Progressive Policy Institute.
Neoliberalism is the dominant ideology shaping our world today. It dictates the policies of governments, and shapes the actions of key institutions such as the WTO, IMF, World Bank and European Central Bank. Its political and economic implications can hardly be overstated. Yet there are obvious problems with the neoliberal project. This book is a perfect introduction to neoliberalism that is ideal for anyone seeking a critical perspective. It explains the nature, history, strengths, weaknesses and implications of neoliberalism from the point of view of radical political economics. Short, self-contained chapters are written by leading experts in each field. The books is organised in three parts: the first section outlining neoliberal theory, the second exploring how neoliberalism has affected various policy areas, and a third looking at how neoliberal policies have played out in particular regions of the world. Using a broad range of left economic perspectives, from post-Keynesian to Marxist, this is a great resource for students of politics and economics, and anyone looking for a grounded critical approach to this broad subject. |
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