Ordoliberalism and the 'Freiburg School' have gained traction in contemporary political economy in response to two factors: a rising interest in governmentality studies and the banking, financial and sovereign debt crisis in Europe. In the face of these crises, Germany has assumed a position of quasi-hegemony in the European Union, making decisions about bailouts, the politics of crisis management and the rise of austerity. This volume gathers together English translations of seminal ordoliberal texts by thinkers ranging from Walter Eucken and Wilhelm Roepke to Franz Boehm, Alexander Rustow and Hans Grossmann-Doerth. Offering some foundational insights into ordoliberalism, these essays give insight into a field that is much misunderstood outside Germany. The second half of the book comprises of analyses of contemporary issues in light of ordoliberal thought, showing how its ideas endure and relate directly to austerity policy across Europe.

We live in the twilight of neoliberalism: the ruling classes can no longer rule as before, and ordinary people are no longer willing to be ruled in the old way. Pursued by global elites since the 1970s, neoliberalism is defined by dispossession and ever-increasing inequality. The refusal to continue to be ruled like this - 'ya basta!' - appears in an arc of resistance stretching from rural India to the cities of the global North. From this network of movements, new visions are emerging of a future beyond neoliberalism. We Make Our Own History responds to these visions by reclaiming Marxism as a theory born from activist experience and practice. This book marks a break both with established social movement theory, and with those forms of Marxism which treat the practice of social movement organising as an unproblematic process. It shows how movements can develop from local conflicts to global struggles; how neoliberalism operates as a social movement from above, and how popular struggles can create new worlds from below.

We live in an age of economics. We are encouraged not only to think of our work but also of our lives in economic terms. In many of our practices, we are told that we are consumers and entrepreneurs. What has come to be called neoliberalism is not only a theory of market relations; it is a theory of human relations. Friendship in an Age of Economics both describes and confronts this new reality. It confronts it on some familiar terrain: that of friendship. Friendship, particularly close or deep friendship, resists categorization into economic terms. In a sustained investigation of friendship, this book shows how friendship offers an alternative to neoliberal relationships and can help lay the groundwork for resistance to it.

In "Portraits and Miniatures," Roy Jenkins brings his penetrating intelligence and elegant prose to subjects ranging from literature and political history to wine and croquet. Long experience in both Houses of Parliament and as President of the European Commission has given him unparalleled insight into political figures such as R. A. Butler, Aneurin Bevan, Konrad Adenauer, and de Gaulle. A varied selection of essays, "Portraits and Miniatures" is fascinating, witty, and endlessly entertaining.

The recent, devastating and ongoing economic crisis has exposed the faultlines in the dominant neoliberal economic order, opening debate for the first time in years on alternative visions that do not subscribe to a 'free' market ethic. In particular, the core contradiction at the heart of neoliberalism -- that states are necessary for the functioning of free markets -- provides us with the opportunity to think again about how we want to organise our economies and societies. "The Rise and Fall of Neloberalism" presents critical perspectives of neoliberal policies, questions the ideas underpinning neoliberalism, and explores diverse response to it from around the world. In bringing together the work of distinguished scholars and dedicated activists to question neoliberal hegemony, the book exposes the often fractured and multifarious manifestations of neoliberalism which will have to be challenged to bring about meaningful social change.

The recent, devastating and ongoing economic crisis has exposed the faultlines in the dominant neoliberal economic order, opening debate for the first time in years on alternative visions that do not subscribe to a 'free' market ethic. In particular, the core contradiction at the heart of neoliberalism -- that states are necessary for the functioning of free markets -- provides us with the opportunity to think again about how we want to organise our economies and societies. "The Rise and Fall of Neloberalism" presents critical perspectives of neoliberal policies, questions the ideas underpinning neoliberalism, and explores diverse response to it from around the world. In bringing together the work of distinguished scholars and dedicated activists to question neoliberal hegemony, the book exposes the often fractured and multifarious manifestations of neoliberalism which will have to be challenged to bring about meaningful social change.

From THE ENEMY AT HOME:
"In this book I make a claim that will seem startling at the outset. The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11. ... In faulting the cultural left, I am not making the absurd accusation that this group blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I am saying that the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector, and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world. The Muslims who carried out the 9/11 attacks were the product of this visceral rage--some of it based on legitimate concerns, some of it based on wrongful prejudice, but all of it fueled and encouraged by the cultural left. Thus without the cultural left, 9/11 would not have happened.
"I realize that this is a strong charge, one that no one has made before. But it is a neglected aspect of the 9/11 debate, and it is critical to understanding the current controversy over the 'war against terrorism.' ... I intend to show that the left has actively fostered the intense hatred of America that has led to numerous attacks such as 9/11. If I am right, then no war against terrorism can be effectively fought using the left-wing premises that are now accepted doctrine among mainstream liberals and Democrats."
Whenever Muslims charge that the war on terror is really a war against Islam, Americans hasten to assure them they are wrong. Yet as Dinesh D'Souza argues in this powerful and timely polemic, there really is a war against Islam. Only this war is not being waged by Christian conservatives bent on a moral crusade to impose democracy abroad but by the American cultural left, which for years has been vigorously exporting its domestic war against religion and traditional morality to the rest of the world.
D'Souza contends that the cultural left is responsible for 9/11 in two ways: by fostering a decadent and depraved American culture that angers and repulses other societies--especially traditional and religious ones-- and by promoting, at home and abroad, an anti-American attitude that blames America for all the problems of the world.
Islamic anti-Americanism is not merely a reaction to U.S. foreign policy but is also rooted in a revulsion against what Muslims perceive to be the atheism and moral depravity of American popular culture. Muslims and other traditional people around the world allege that secular American values are being imposed on their societies and that these values undermine religious belief, weaken the traditional family, and corrupt the innocence of children. But it is not "America" that is doing this to them, it is the American cultural left. What traditional societies consider repulsive and immoral, the cultural left considers progressive and liberating.
Taking issue with those on the right who speak of a "clash of civilizations," D'Souza argues that the war on terror is really a war for the hearts and minds of traditional Muslims--and traditional peoples everywhere. The only way to win the struggle with radical Islam is to convince traditional Muslims that America is on their side.
We are accustomed to thinking of the war on terror and the culture war as two distinct and separate struggles. D'Souza shows that they are really one and the same. Conservatives must recognize that the left is now allied with the Islamic radicals in a combined effort to defeat Bush's war on terror. A whole new strategy is therefore needed to fight both wars. "In order to defeat the Islamic radicals abroad," D'Souza writes, "we must defeat the enemy at home."

'A well argued and clearly written critique of liberal political theory, organized around its leading concepts -very accessible for student use.' Professor David Beetham. In this book Maureen Ramsay provides an accessible and comprehensive critique of the key concepts that underpin liberal political philosophy. Each chapter tackles a different concept and analyses the contribution of representative thinkers in seventeenth- and eighteenth- century liberal thought, and contemporary developments and modifications to classical librealism. The purpose of each chapter is to evaluate the concepts and theories central to the liberal tradition from a variety of critical perspectives, in order to expose the empirical, theoretical, practical and moral deficiencies at the heart of liberal thought. The arguments presented here challenge the validity of liberal political ideas, values, institutions and policies, and demonstrate the bankruptcy of liberalism in theory and preactice. This book will be essential reading for students of politics, government and moral and political philosophy. Maureen Ramsay is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Leeds.

`The author has provided us with a masterful overview and critique of liberal theorizing of the past quarter-century. While dealing exhaustively and fairly with each of a variety of broadly liberal approaches, Gaus also presents a compelling argument for his own preferred "justificatory" approach. His analyses range across familiar territory - Berlin, Gauthier,

Baier, Habermas, social choice theory, Rawls, and so on - and are always

illuminating and, taken together, provide both the newcomer and the old-hand much to ponder' - Fred D'Agostino, University of New England, Armidale

`[A]ll that man is and all that raises him above animals he owes to his reason' - Ludwig von Mises

Contemporary Theories of Liberalism provides students with a comprehensive overview of the key tenets of liberalism developed through Hobbes, Locke, Kant and Rawls to present day theories and debates.

Central to recent debate has been the idea of public reason. The text introduces and explores seven dominant theories of public reason, namely, pluralism, Neo-Hobbesianism, pragmatism, deliberative democracy, political democracy, Rawlsian political liberalism and justificatory liberalism.

As a proponent of justificatory liberalism, Gaus presents an accessible and critical analysis of all contempoary liberal political theory and powerfully illustrates the distinct and importsant contribution of justificatory liberalism.

Contemporary Theories of Liberalism is essential reading for students and academics seeking a deeper understanding of liberal political theory today.

Contents:
Part One: A Critique of Political Agency 1. Agency and Politics - Problems for Liberal Theory? 2. The Scope of the Political Part Two: Passions and Reasons 3. If All Are Wicked, How Can They Change? 4. Liberalism Grown Pale and Konigsbergian Part Three: No Secret Agents 5. Landfills and Justice 6. On Collective Agency 7. Who is an Agent? 8. Agency and Liberal Legitimacy

The people of the Congo have suffered from a particularly brutal colonial rule, American interference after independence, decades of robbery at the hands of the dictator Mobutu and periodic warfare which continues even now in the East of the country. But, as this insightful political history makes clear, the Congolese people have not taken these multiple oppressions lying down and have fought over many years to establish democratic institutions at home and free themselves from foreign exploitation; indeed these are two aspects of a single project. Professor Nzongola-Ntalaja is one of his country's leading intellectuals and his panoramic understanding of the personalities and events, as well as class, ethnic and other factors, make his book a lucid, radical and utterly unromanticized account of his countrymen's struggle. His people's defeat and the state's post-colonial crisis are seen as resulting from a post-independence collapse of the anti-colonial alliance between the masses and the national leadership . This book is essential reading for understanding what is happening in the Congo and the Great Lakes region under the rule of the late President Kabila, and now his son. It will also stand as a milestone in how to write the modern political history of Africa.

The significance of Spain's Second Republic has been largely overshadowed by the cataclysmic Civil War that immediately followed it. Stanley Payne brings his knowledge of Spanish history to bear on the five-year span of the Second Republic as an historic entity in its own right. In ""Spain's First Democracy"", he argues that the Republic was one of the major national attempts at political democratisation and reform in Europe between the World Wars and represented the most important effort to swim against the tide during Europe's era of fascism. Payne's study places the Republic within the historical framework of Spanish liberalism and the rapid modernisation of inter-war Europe, which was unlike any other period in Spain's history. Payne discusses the Republicans' efforts to establish Spain's first democratic political systems and to institute major reforms within the Republic. In highlighting reforms in politics and government, education and culture, public works, military affairs, and society as a whole, he assesses the successes and failures of these reforms as well as the reasons for their limitations. He also examines the economic and foreign policy issues of the period. Focusing particularly on political conflict and social cleavage, Payne explores the sources and character of the political polarisation that developed as a result of the assaults on the Republic from the Left and the Right. He identifies the main political actors in this schism and their role in the eventual breakdown of the Republic. Tracing the progressive collapse of the Republican polity in the first half of 1936, Payne stresses the importance of political violence in the democracy's downfall. In restoring perspectives that have been ignored or bypassed, Payne aims to present a consistent and detailed interpretation of Spain's Second Republic, demonstrating its striking parallels to the Weimar Republic in Germany.

How has Christianity engaged with democracy? In this authoritative new treatment of a sometimes troubled relationship, Donald Norwood reflects on the way that democracy has become, especially under the auspices of the United Nations and the World Council of Churches, not just an ideal but a universally applicable moral principle. Yet, as the author demonstrates, faith and democracy have not always sat comfortably together. For example, the Vatican has dealt harshly with radical theologians such as Leonardo Boff and Hans Kung; while churches with a dictatorial style have all too often shown a willingness to accommodate authoritarian regimes and even dictators. Norwood argues that if democracy is a universal norm, a basic right, it is not possible for the Church to be indifferent to its claims. Offering a sustained exposition - from Marsilius of Padua to Christian Democracy and Christian Socialism - of the often uneasy interaction between Christianity and democratic politics as both idea and ideal, this is a major contribution to church history and to wider topical debates in politics and religious studies.

As Claude Levi-Strauss wrote in his book, La pensee sauvage (Paris,1960): "biographical and anecdotal history ... is low-powered history, which is not intelligible in itself, and only becomes so when it is transferred en bloc to a form of history of a higher power than itself ... The historian's relative choice ... is always confined to the choice between history which teaches more and explains less and history which explains more and teaches less." This book oscillates between analysis, which tries to explain what man is, and anecdote, which tries to teach what he is capable of becoming. What better approach to understanding patriarchy, beyond learning the formal dictionary definitions of this term, than by examining the richly diverse descriptions of gender relationships found in the following chapters? It is the hope of these authors that the recognition of national differences and gender differences will provide new vantage points from which we may gain wider perspectives on our own prejudices and thereby find fulfillment of our aspirations to become more fully human.

A revelatory biography of the first Black woman to be elected Vice President, charting how the daughter of two immigrants in segregated California became one of this country’s most effective power players.

In Kamala’s Way, longtime Los Angeles Times reporter Dan Morain charts her career from its beginnings handling child molestation cases and homicides for the Alameda County District Attorney’s office and her relationship as a twenty-nine-year-old with the most powerful man in the state: married Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a relationship that would prove life-changing. Morain takes readers through Harris’s years in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, explores her audacious embrace of the little-known Barack Obama, and shows the sharp elbows she deployed to make it to the US Senate. He analyses her failure as a presidential candidate and the behind-the-scenes campaign she waged to land the Vice President spot. Along the way, he paints a vivid picture of her values and priorities, the kind of people she brings into her orbit, the sorts of problems she’s good at solving, and the missteps, risks, and bold moves she’s made on her way to the top.

Kamala’s Way is essential reading for all Americans curious about the history-making Vice President-Elect.