In recent years serious attempts have been made to systematize and develop the moral and political themes of great philosophers of the past. Kant, Locke, Marx, and the classical utilitarians all have their current defenders and arc taken seriously as expositors of sound moral and political views. It is the aim of this book to introduce Hobbes into this select group by presenting a plausible moral and political theory inspired by Leviathan. Using the techniques of analytic philosophy and elementary game theory, the author develops a Hobbesian argument that justifies the liberal State and reconciles the rights and interests of rational individuals with their obligations. Hobbes's case against anarchy, based on his notorious claim that life outside the political State would be a "war of all against all," is analyzed in detail, while his endorsement of the absolutist State is traced to certain false hypotheses about political sociology. With these eliminated, Hobbes's principles support a liberal redistributive (or "satisfactory") State and a limited right of revolution. Turning to normative issues, the book explains Hobbes's account of morality based on enlightened self-interest and shows how the Hobbesian version of social contract theory justifies the political obligations of citizens of satisfactory States.

This book analyses and compares how the USA's liberal allies responded to the use of torture against their citizens after 9/11. Did they resist, tolerate or support the Bush Administration's policies concerning the mistreatment of detainees when their own citizens were implicated and what were the reasons for their actions? Australia, the UK and Canada are liberal democracies sharing similar political cultures, values and alliances with America; yet they behaved differently when their citizens, caught up in the War on Terror, were tortured. How states responded to citizens' human rights claims and predicaments was shaped, in part, by demands for accountability placed on the executive government by domestic actors. This book argues that civil society actors, in particular, were influenced by nuanced differences in their national political and legal contexts that enabled or constrained human rights activism. It maps the conditions under which individuals and groups were more or less likely to become engaged when fellow citizens were tortured, focusing on national rights culture, the domestic legal and political human rights framework, and political opportunities.

Why do men and women sometimes risk everything to defend their liberties? What motivates principled opposition to the abuse of power? In "Liberalism with Honor," Sharon Krause explores honor as a motive for risky and difficult forms of political action. She shows the sense of honor to be an important source of such action and a spring of individual agency more generally.

Krause traces the genealogy of honor, including its ties to conscientious objection and civil disobedience, beginning in old-regime France and culminating in the American civil rights movement. She examines the dangers intrinsic to honor and the tensions between honor and modern democracy, but demonstrates that the sense of honor has supported political agency in the United States from the founders to democratic reformers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Honor continues to hold interest and importance today because it combines self-concern and personal ambition with principled higher purposes, and so challenges the disabling dichotomy between self-interest and self-sacrifice that currently pervades both political theory and American public life.

This is the first concise study to give full credit to the collaboration of works between French nobleman, writer and politician Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) and his travel companion and friend Gustave de Beaumont (1802-66), and puts this collaboration into its social, historical and theoretical context. It accompanies the two friends to the US and analyses the fruitful encounter between the New and the Old World that was the result of that journey, particularly in relation to emerging Atlantic democracies and revolutions. This includes the hopes but also the problems and contradictions that they have come to represent. The book also follows Tocqueville and Beaumont to England, Ireland, and Algeria. It discusses their political careers and their engagement in the abolitionist movement, their fight for liberal social and political reform, as well as their futile attempt to rationalize French colonization in Algeria.

The New Deal established the contours and character of modern American democracy. It created an anchor and a reference point for American liberal politics through the struggles for racial, gender, and economic equality in the five decades that followed it. Indeed, the ways that liberalism has changed in meaning since the New Deal provide a critical prism through which to understand twentieth-century politics. From the consensus liberalism of the war years to the strident liberalism of the sixties to the besieged liberalism of the eighties and through the more recent national debates about welfare reform and Social Security privatization, the prominent historians gathered here explore the convoluted history of the complex legacy of the New Deal and its continuing effect on the present.

In its scope and variety of subjects, this book reflects the protean quality of American liberalism. Alan Brinkley focuses on the range of choices New Dealers faced. Alonzo Hamby traces the Democratic Party's evolving effort to incorporate New Deal traditions in the Cold War era. Richard Fried offers a fresh look at the impact of McCarthyism. Richard Polenberg situates Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, in a tradition of liberal thought. And Melvin Urosfsky shows how the Roosevelt Court set the legal dimensions within which the debate about the meaning of liberalism would be conducted for decades. Other subjects include the effect of the Holocaust on relations between American Jews and African Americans; the limiting effects of racial and gender attitudes on the potential for meaningful reform; and the lasting repercussions of the tumultuous 1960s.

Provocative, illuminating and sure to raise questions for future study, "The Achievement of American Liberalism" testifies to a vibrant and vital field of inquiry.

In Toward a Liberalism, Richard Flathman shows why and how political theory can contribute to the quality of moral and political practice without violating, as empiricist- and idealist-based theories tend to do, liberal commitments to individuality and plurality. Exploring the tense but inevitable relationship between liberalism and authority, he advances a theory of democratic citizenship tempered by appreciation of the ways in which citizenship is implicated with and augments authority. Flathman examines the relationship of individual rights to freedom on one hand and to authority and power on the other, rejecting the quest for a single homogenous and authoritative liberal theory.

How did the banks run wild for so long? Why are so many aged-care residents malnourished? And how is it that arms manufacturers sponsor the Australian War Memorial? In this passionate essay, Richard Denniss explores what neoliberalism has done to Australian society. For decades, we have been told that the private sector does everything better, that governments can't afford to deliver the services they once could, but that security and prosperity for all are just around the corner. In fact, Australians are less equal, and more of us are economically vulnerable. But now that a royal commission has lifted the rug on the reality of corporate regulation, it seems the era of blind faith in free markets is well and truly over. So where to from here? In Dead Right, Denniss looks at ways to renew our democracy and discusses everything from the fragmenting Coalition to an idea of the national interest that goes beyond economics. "Neoliberalism, the catch-all term for all things small government, has been the ideal cloak behind which to conceal enormous shifts in Australia's wealth and culture . . . Over the past thirty years, the language, ideas and policies of neoliberalism have transformed our economy and, more importantly, our culture." Richard Denniss, Dead Right

A compelling history of liberalism from the nineteenth century to today Despite playing a decisive role in shaping the past two hundred years of American and European politics, liberalism is no longer the dominant force it once was. In this expanded and updated edition of what has become a classic history of liberalism, Edmund Fawcett traces its ideals, successes, and failures through the lives and ideas of exemplary thinkers and politicians from the early nineteenth century to today. Significant revisions-including a new conclusion-reflect recent changes affecting the world political order that many see as presenting new and very potent threats to the survival of liberal democracy as we know it. A richly detailed account of a vulnerable but critically important political creed, this book reminds us that to defend liberalism it is vital to understand its character and history.

This is a noted systematic survey of the Liberal Party for the key period 1867 to 1905, when the party was in its prime. It is particularly strong on the career of W.E. Gladstone after 1868. It explores key policy themes, and it is an important work placed alongside J.R. Vincent's classic The Formation of The Liberal Party 1857-1868. The book examines the question of what leading Liberal politicians understood the purpose of the Liberal Party to be, and what were their reasons and assumptions which led to their supporting or promoting particular policies. Professor Hamer examines at length the philosophies and strategies of Joseph Chamberlain, Gladstone, Sir William Harcourt, Lord Rosebery and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. He also highlights the major organizing and controlling themes, both in relation to their own ideas and in relation to their Conservative opponents.

As host of the CNN show "Piers Morgan Live," Piers Morgan has come a long way from his days as a British tabloid editor and judge on "America's Got Talent." Love him or hate him, it's undeniable that Morgan is one of the most talked-about, controversial figures in the media today. From gun control and gay marriage to religion and pop icons, he tackles the hot-button topics head on.

In The Hot Seat (previously published as Shooting Straight), he discusses candidly his refusal to bend to public pressure or political correctness, from his childhood in England to his career as a tabloid editor to his meteoric rise to fame in the United States. Offering an inside view of the real-time drama behind covering huge breaking news stories such as the killing of Osama bin Laden, Hurricane Sandy, and the massacre at Newtown, Morgan's account is a riveting, no-holds-barred depiction of an adrenaline-fueled life anchoring a nightly news show in the world's most ruthless, competitive, and pressurized media marketplace.

Written in a compelling diary format, The Hot Seat provides a heartfelt account of Morgan's extraordinary new life and his continuing love affair with America. Shocking, funny, and incisive, it proves once again why Piers Morgan has taken the world by storm.

This book lays the conceptual groundwork for a coalition of struggles under the neoliberal age. In doing so, the author demonstrates that, despite talk of fragmention, divisions and conflicts, the present situation offers fresh opportunities for connecting diverse solidarities. Critique and Resistance in a Neoliberal Age explores what connects individuals, not only between neoliberal conditions of economic, cultural and environmental domination but also in resistance. It also highlights the transformative power of human action, by grounding neoliberal processes in human action and demonstrating the relevance of, and opportunities for, emancipatory politics today. Offering a critique oriented towards social change, informed by a broad range of theoretical traditions and empirical research, the book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of sociology, politics and philosophy, as well as those interested in the possibilities for social change.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) may be best known as a statesman. He served in the administrations of presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford; was ambassador to India and the United Nations; and represented New York in the U.S. Senate for four terms. But he was also an intellectual of the first order, whose books and papers on topics ranging from welfare policy and ethnicity in American society to international law stirred debate and steered policy. Moynihan was, journalist Michael Barone remarked, ""the nation's best thinker among politicians since Lincoln and its best politician among thinkers since Jefferson."" He was, Greg Weiner argues, America's answer to the 18th-century Anglo-Irish scholar-statesman Edmund Burke. Both stood at the intersection of thought and action, denouncing tyranny, defending the family, championing reform. Yet while Burke is typically claimed by conservatives, Weiner calls Moynihan a ""Burkean liberal"" who respected both the indispensability of government and the complexity of society. And a reclamation of Moynihan's Burkean liberalism, Weiner suggests, could do wonders for the polarized politics of our day. In its incisive analysis of Moynihan's political thought, American Burke lays out the terms for such a recovery. The book traces Moynihan's development through the broad sweep of his writings and career. ""The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society,"" Moynihan once wrote. ""The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself."" In his ability to embrace both of these truths, this ""American Burke"" makes it bracingly clear that a wise political thinker can also be an effective political actor, and that commitments to both liberal and conservative values can coexist peaceably and productively. Weiner's work is not only a thorough and thoroughly engaging intellectual exploration of one of the most important politicians of the twentieth century; it is also a timely prescription for the healing of our broken system.

Neoliberalism is among the most commonly used concepts in the social sciences. Furthermore, it is one of the most influential factors that have shaped the formation of public policy and politics. In Governing Practices, Michelle Brady and Randy Lippert bring together prominent scholars in sociology, criminology, anthropology, geography, and policy studies to extend and refine the current conversation about neoliberalism. The collection argues that a new methodological approach to analyzing contemporary policy and political change is needed. United by the common influence of Foucault's governmentality approach and an ethnographic imaginary, the collection presents original research on a diverse range of case studies including public-private partnerships, the governance of condos, community and state statistics, nanopolitics, philanthropy, education reform, and pay-day lending. These diverse studies add considerable depth to studies on governmentality and neoliberalism through a focus on governmental practices that have not previously been the focus of sustained analysis.

Two of the UK's leading economists call for an end to extreme individualism as the engine of prosperity 'provocative but thought-provoking and nuanced' Telegraph Throughout history, successful societies have created institutions which channel both competition and co-operation to achieve complex goals of general benefit. These institutions make the difference between societies that thrive and those paralyzed by discord, the difference between prosperous and poor economies. Such societies are pluralist but their pluralism is disciplined. Successful societies are also rare and fragile. We could not have built modernity without the exceptional competitive and co-operative instincts of humans, but in recent decades the balance between these instincts has become dangerously skewed: mutuality has been undermined by an extreme individualism which has weakened co-operation and polarized our politics. Collier and Kay show how a reaffirmation of the values of mutuality could refresh and restore politics, business and the environments in which people live. Politics could reverse the moves to extremism and tribalism; businesses could replace the greed that has degraded corporate culture; the communities and decaying places that are home to many could overcome despondency and again be prosperous and purposeful. As the world emerges from an unprecedented crisis we have the chance to examine society afresh and build a politics beyond individualism.

This volume makes a compelling case for the continued relevance and significance of Herbert Spencer (1820-1904), one of the foremost intellectuals of the Victorian era whose work now tends to be regarded as being of purely historical interest. One of the originators of the evolutionary classical liberal or libertarian approach exemplified later by F. A. Hayek, Spencer engaged with such issues as the relationship between the individual and the state; the nature of majoritarian democracy; the legitimacy of private property; the consequences of the transition from relatively simple, feudal communities to complex, industrial societies; and the causes of war and the prospects of international peace. For him the future was individualist. However, as the scope of state action expanded and classical liberal ideas became increasingly marginalised during the course of his life, Spencer grew ever more pessimistic about the future prospects for liberty.

Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992), winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, was an influential economist and political philosopher. The increased attention he received in the late 20th century with the rise of conservatism in the US and UK, led him to publish "Why I Am Not a Conservative," an essay in which he berated conservatism. He preferred to be identified as what Edmund Burke called an "Old Whig." Amongst his most important contributions are his writings on general equilibrium, central planning and social justice as well as his political theory work, The Constitution of Liberty, in which he explained the proper role of the government.

Friedrich Hayek was a founding figure of the neo-liberalism that flourished in the 1980s. Yet, despite his antagonistic relationship with socialism, his work became a surprising source of inspiration for several influential thinkers on the left. This book explains the left's unusual engagement with Hayek and reflects on its significance. Engaging Enemies uses the left's late discovery of Hayek to examine the contemporary fate of socialism and social democracy. Did socialism survive the twentieth century? Did it collapse with the fall of the Berlin Wall as Hayek claimed? Or did it transform into something else, and if so what? In turn this allows an examination of ideological and historical continuity. Was the left's engagement with Hayek part of a wider break with a period of ideological continuity that marked the twentieth century, but which did not survive its ending? As such, the book is also a study of how ideologies change with the times, incorporating new elements and jettisoning others. The left's engagement with Hayek was also influential on party politics, particularly on the 'modernization' of the Labour Party and the development of New Labour. Engaging Enemies concludes with a discussion of the wider role of the market for the left today and the contemporary significance of the engagement with Hayek for Labour in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis.