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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Liberalism & centre democratic ideologies
The issue of public morality, so often at the center of heated debates about pornography, narcotics, public indecency, violent entertainment, "family values," et cetera, is at once a continuing reality and a persistent dilemma in our liberal society. With Public Morality and Liberal Society, Harry M. Clor makes an important contribution to this perennial and intensely debated theme by considering how public morality can be justified in theory and accommodated in practice within a liberal society. Clor develops his argument in five parts. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the various controversies and ambiguities about public morality in American life and public opinion. In Chapter 2 Clor presents the case for a public standard of morality and defends it against the most persistent objections. Chapter 3 covers some of the themes prominent in recent treatments of the subject of public morality, and Chapter 4 critically analyzes the two theoretically dominant liberal orientations of recent decades, the libertarian and egalitarian views. In Chapter 5 Clor compares the traditional ethical indictment of pornography with the current feminist indictment.
Looking at the Latin American liberal project during the century of postindependence, this collection of original essays draws attention to an underappreciated dilemma confronting liberals: idealistic visions and fiscal restraints. Liberals, Politics, and Power focuses on the inventiveness of nineteenth-century Latin Americans who applied liberal ideology to the founding and maintenance of new states. The impact of liberalism in Latin America, the contributors show, is best understood against the larger backdrop of struggles that pitted regional demands against the pressures of foreign finance, a powerful church against a decentralized state, and aristocratic desire to retain privilege against rising demands for social mobility. Moving beyond the traditional historiographical division between Eurocentric and dependency theories, the essays attempt to account for a uniquely Latin American liberal ideology and politics by exploring the political dynamics of such countries as Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Peru. Contributors discuss liberal efforts to build a viable legal order through elections and to implement a means of public finance that could fund the states' operations. Essays that span the entire century address issues such as the emergence of caudillos, the role of artisans, and popular participation in elections in light of fiscal, and other, impediments to progress. In their introduction, Vincent C. Peloso and Barbara A. Tenenbaum provide a hemispheric overview of liberalism that illustrates its similarities across Latin America. By exploring the liberal constitutional and economic order lying beneath apparently dictatorial states, this pathbreaking volume underlines the importance of fiscal policy in the fashioning of state power. Liberals, Politics, and Power serves not only as a guide to the liberal principles and practices that governed state formation in nineteenth-century Latin America but also as a means to evaluate the complex relationship between ideas and practical politics.
Despite the enormous influence of Michel Foucault in gender
studies, social theory, and cultural studies, his work has been
relatively neglected in the study of politics. Although he never
published a book on the state, in the late 1970s Foucault examined
the technologies of power used to regulate society and the
ingenious recasting of power and agency that he saw as both
consequence and condition of their operation.
"The purpose of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 is to offer opportunity, not an opiate. . . . We are not content to accept the endless growth of relief rolls or welfare rolls."--President Lyndon B. Johnson "I would just provide that every person in this country is given a certain minimum income. If he wants to work in addition to that, he keeps what he earns."--Senator George S. McGovern Between LBJ's statement in 1964 and McGovern's in 1972, American liberals radically transformed their welfare philosophy from one founded on opportunity and hard work to one advocating automatic entitlements. Gareth Davies' book shows us just how far-reaching that transformation was and how much it has to teach anyone engaged in the latest round of debates over welfare reform in America. When Lyndon Johnson declared a "War on Poverty," he took great care to align his ambitious program with national attitudes toward work, worthiness, and dependency. Eight years later, however, American liberals were dominated by those who believed that all citizens enjoyed an unqualified right to income support with no strings or obligations attached. That shift, Davies argues, was part of a broader transformation in political values that had devastating consequences for the Democratic Party in particular and for the cause of liberalism generally. Davies shows how policy failure, the war in Vietnam, domestic violence, and the struggle for black equality combined to create a crisis in national politics that destroyed the promise of the Great Society. He reevaluates LBJ's role, demonstrating that while detractors such as McGovern and Robert Kennedy embraced the "new politics of dissent," LBJ remained true throughout his career to the values that had sustained the New Deal coalition and that continued to retain their mass appeal. Davies also explains in rich detail how the dominant strain of American liberalism came to abandon individualism, one of the nation's dogmas, thus shattering the New Deal liberal hegemony with consequences still affecting American politics in the mid 1990s. Placing today's welfare debates within this historical context, Davies shows that the current emphasis on work and personal responsibility is neither a liberal innovation nor distinctively conservative. Based on a wide range of previously untapped archival sources and presented in a very accessible style, From Opportunity to Entitlement will be especially useful for courses concerned with the 1960s, the decline of the New Deal political order, the history of social welfare, the American reform tradition, and the influence of race upon American politics.
Recent years have witnessed the development of new Christian Democratic movements in Northern and Eastern Europe, and the revival of those in Western Europe, which are subject to change in an increasingly secular society. The Christian Democratic parties are being required to respond to the new political challenges which address any party, such as the future of the welfare state, or the search for a new security agenda in Europe. These developments are assessed in this text, together with an analysis of the challenges the parties face, and suggestions for their future development.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal was a turning point in the role of the federal government and in the expectations of American citizens. Now, Alan Brinkley, whose Voices of Protest won the American Book Award for History, shows how New Deal liberalism was transformed into a new beast during and after World War II--and why it is faring so poorly in the 1990s.
Since 1989, the Cold War has ended, new nations have emerged in Eastern Europe, and revolutionary struggles to establish liberal ideals have been waged against repressive governments throughout the world. Will the promise of liberalism be realized? What can liberals do to make the most of their opportunities and construct enduring forms of political order? In this important and timely book, a leading political theorist discusses the possibility of liberal democracy in Western and Eastern Europe and offers practical suggestions for its realization. Bruce Ackerman begins by sketching the challenges faced a Western Europe free for the first time in half a century to determine its own fate without the constant intervention of the United States and the Soviet Union. Unless decisive steps are taken, this moment of promise can degenerate into a new cycle of nationalist power struggle. Revolutionary action is now required to build the foundations of a democratic federal Europe-a union strong enough to keep the peace and to combat the threat of local tyrannies. Ackerman next considers Eastern Europe and discusses fundamental problems overlooked in the rush to build market economies there. He points out that leading countries-including Poland, Hungary, and Russia-have yet to establish new constitutions, contenting themselves instead with hasty amendments to old Communist documents. This is a great mistake, says Ackerman, for there is an urgent need to constitutionalize liberal revolution, and the window of opportunity for doing this is far smaller than many people realize. Neither judicial efforts to punish collaborators with the old regimes and to redress wrongs done to their victims nor the judicial activism now sweeping Eastern Europe should take priority over the formulation of democratically legitimated constitutions. Ackerman concludes by considering the impact of 1989 on South Africa, Latin America, and the United States, exploring how decisive liberal action throughout the world can help to expand the range of functioning constitutional democracies and recover liberalism's lost revolutionary heritage. .
"Democracy in Britain "includes a rich and varied selection of key writings, from the debates around Britain's representative and democratic institutions, from constitutional commentary and diaries to poetry and fiction; from Locke and Burke to Dryden and Auden; and from Magna Carta to "Spycatcher."Provides the best resource available for the understanding and study of Britain's system of representative democracy The editors have made efforts throughout to make the material selected accessible to non-specialists Rather than following one side of the debate on British democracy, this presents the reader with both sides of the argument Sponsored by the British Council, the book will receive special advertising and promotion
" What is the meaning of individualism in a modern democracy? In this rich and penetrating book, a major political theorist examines the nature of individualism-the concept of self it implies, the ethic it sustains, the personal connectedness it supports, and the politics it requires-and provides a challenging answer. George Kateb argues that democracy is founded on respect for the dignity of individuals as individuals, and that this respect transforms all human relations. Democratic individuality, in his view, is a way in which individuals whose rights are protected may dare to live their private lives and to conceive their roles as citizens. Kateb employs the concept of individuality not only to criticize communitarianism and to define the limits of the role of the state, but also to approach global concerns involving our relation to nature. The ten essays of this book explore democratic individuality in light of such topics as the power of political institutions to accommodate and express different values, the moral distinctiveness of representative democracy, the implications of the liberal social contract, and the possibility of human extinction. Eloquently addressing issues at the heart of democratic life, The Inner Ocean will be of vital interest to scholars and students in American studies, political theory, and moral philosophy.
"This book is a highly valuable contribution to the current debate on how to achieve stabilization and structural adjustment programs in the Middle East presenting widely differing country profiles." Digest of Middle East Studies "This book is an excellent collection of ten country case-studies by well-known Middle East political scientists... " MESA Bulletin ..". a highly original and valuable contribution on an important and most timely topic.... combines clarity of focus and breadth of geographic coverage." Robert Bianchi International specialists take stock of the problems and prospects for privatization of state-run economies and other liberalization efforts throughout the Middle East and North Africa."
Professor Wrigley, an authority on Lloyd George's relationship with
the Labour Movement, has produced a brief life of Lloyd George
which draws on both the vast literature on him and on the main
archival collection.
In this book Richard E. Flathman argues vigorously for a new understanding of the proper place of voluntarism, individuality, and plurality in the political and moral theory of liberalism. Giving close and sympathetic attention to thinkers who are seldom considered in debates about liberalism, he draws upon thinking within and outside the liberal canon to articulate a refashioned liberalism that gives a more secure prominence to plurality and a robust individuality. Flathman focuses on political philosophers whose work deals with willfulness and the will in human practice. He is concerned with the thinking of such nominalist medieval theologians as John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham; of Hobbes; and of Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William James. He also explores the writings of such contemporary philosophical psychologists as Brian O'Shaughnessy and, in particular, Wittgenstein, and of such twentiethcentury political theorists as Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, Hannah Arendt, and especially Michael Oakeshott. Appropriating ideas from widely disapproved thinkers and from theological sources commonly thought to be incompatible with liberalism, he formulates what is in many ways a strongly personal statement, one that is unorthodox and potentially disturbing. Sharply controversial, Willful Liberalism is certain to enliven and invigorate political and moral debate, and it may well help to revive liberalism as the dominant public philosophy of our culture, setting it on a new and better course.
Britain in the 1950s had a distinctive political and intellectual climate. It was the age of Keynesianism, of welfare state consensus, incipient consumerism, and, to its detractors - the so-called 'Angry Young Men' and the emergent New Left - a new age of complacency. While Prime Minister Harold Macmillan famously remarked that 'most of our people have never had it so good', the playwright John Osborne lamented that 'there aren't any good, brave causes left'.Philosophers, political scientists, economists and historians embraced the supposed 'end of ideology' and fetishized 'value-free' technique and analysis. This turn is best understood in the context of the cultural Cold War in which 'ideology' served as shorthand for Marxist, but it also drew on the rich resources and traditions of English empiricism and a Burkean scepticism about abstract theory in general. Ironically, cultural critics and historians such as Raymond Williams and E.P. Thompson showed at this time that the thick catalogue of English moral, aesthetic and social critique could also be put to altogether different purposes. Jim Smyth here shows that, despite being allergic to McCarthy-style vulgarity, British intellectuals in the 1950s operated within powerful Cold War paradigms all the same.
Herbert Gladstone (1854-1930) was the only one of the sons of the renowned nineteenth-century Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone to enjoy a significant political career in his own right. Yet he has been generally relegated to the wings of history's stage, destined, it seems, to remain permanently in the shadow of his illustrious parent. Such an outcome would not have troubled him unduly, for his whole life was shaped by deep affection and respect for his father while as a political actor he was happiest operating in the political shadows rather than in the limelight - serving for 30 years as a Liberal MP for Leeds with short periods as Home Secretary (1905-1910) and, as Viscount Gladstone, Governor-General of South Africa (1910-1914). In exploring the intimate connection between Herbert Gladstone's public and private lives this new biography, the first for eighty years, reveals an unambitious, self-effacing man of faith and throws new light not only on his own career but also on significant episodes in British Victorian and early-twentieth century history.
Widely hailed as one of the most significant works in modern political philosophy, John Rawls's Political Liberalism (1993) defended a powerful vision of society that respects reasonable ways of life, both religious and secular. These core values have never been more critical as anxiety grows over political and religious difference and new restrictions are placed on peaceful protest and individual expression. This anthology of original essays suggests new, groundbreaking applications of Rawls's work in multiple disciplines and contexts. Thom Brooks, Martha Nussbaum, Onora O'Neill (University of Cambridge), Paul Weithman (University of Notre Dame), Jeremy Waldron (New York University), and Frank Michelman (Harvard University) explore political liberalism's relevance to the challenges of multiculturalism, the relationship between the state and religion, the struggle for political legitimacy, and the capabilities approach. Extending Rawls's progressive thought to the fields of law, economics, and public reason, this book helps advance the project of a free society that thrives despite disagreements over religious and moral views.
Chile is widely known as the first experiment in neoliberalism in Latin America, carried out and made possible through state violence. Since the beginning of the transition in 1990, the state has pursued a national project of reconciliation construed as debts owed to the population. The state owed a "social debt" to the poor accrued through inequalities generated by economic liberalization, while society owed a "moral debt" to the victims of human rights violations. "Life in Debt" invites us into lives and world of a poor urban neighborhood in Santiago. Tracing relations and lives between 1999 and 2010, Clara Han explores how the moral and political subjects imagined and asserted by poverty and mental health policies and reparations for human rights violations are refracted through relational modes and their boundaries. Attending to intimate scenes and neighborhood life, Han reveals the force of relations in the making of selves in a world in which unstable work patterns, illness, and pervasive economic indebtedness are aspects of everyday life. Lucidly written, "Life in Debt" provides a unique meditation on both the past inhabiting actual life conditions but also on the difficulties of obligation and achievements of responsiveness.
Brilliant...explains how the rhetoric of competition has invaded almost every domain of our existence." -Evgeny Morozov, author of To Save Everything, Click Here" "In this fascinating book Davies inverts the conventional neoliberal practice of treating politics as if it were mere epiphenomenon of market theory, demonstrating that their version of economics is far better understood as the pursuit of politics by other means." -Professor Philip Mirowski, University of Notre Dame "A sparkling, original, and provocative analysis of neoliberalism. It offers a distinctive account of the diverse, sometimes contradictory, conventions and justifications that lend authority to the extension of the spirit of competitiveness to all spheres of social life...This book breaks new ground, offers new modes of critique, and points to post-neoliberal futures." -Professor Bob Jessop, University of Lancaster Since its intellectual inception in the 1930s and its political emergence in the 1970s, neo-liberalism has sought to disenchant politics by replacing it with economics. This agenda-setting text examines the efforts and failures of economic experts to make government and public life amenable to measurement, and to re-model society and state in terms of competition. In particular, it explores the practical use of economic techniques and conventions by policy-makers, politicians, regulators and judges and how these practices are being adapted to the perceived failings of the neoliberal model. By picking apart the defining contradiction that arises from the conflation of economics and politics, this book asks: to what extent can economics provide government legitimacy? Now with a new preface from the author and a foreword by Aditya Chakrabortty.
Liberty is an expanded edition of Isaiah Berlin's classic of liberalism, Four Essays on Liberty. Berlin's editor Henry Hardy has incorporated a fifth essay, as Berlin wished, and added further pieces on the same topic, so that Berlin's principal statements on liberty are available together for the first time. He also describes the gestation of the book and throws further biographical light on Berlin's preoccupation with liberty in appendices drawn from his unpublished writings.
Today neoliberals argue that we should let ourselves be guided by
market forces and that there is little we can do to stem the flow
of economic globalization. On the other hand, thinkers on the left
continue to denounce domination and claim to speak in the name of
victims who are powerless to change the circumstances of their
lives. Despite the differences between these two political
positions, they suffer from a common weakness: they underestimate
the role of autonomous social actors who are capable of influencing
political decision-making. In this important new book Alain Touraine - the leading
sociologist and social theorist - attacks the positions of the
neoliberals and certain thinkers on the left and develops an
alternative view of the tasks for political thought and action
today. He argues that the globalization of the economy has not
dissolved our capacity for political action, and that the actions
of the most underprivileged sections of society are not restricted
to rebellion against domination: they can also demand rights (in
particular, cultural rights), and can therefore put forward an
innovative and not merely critical conception of society and its
future. "Beyond Neoliberalism" is an original and timely contribution to current debates about the changing nature and goals of politics in our contemporary, globalized age. It will be of great interest to students of politics and sociology and will also appeal to a broader readership interested in contemporary politics and current affairs. |
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