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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Liberalism & centre democratic ideologies
This book critically examines the relationship between civility, citizenship and democracy. It engages with the oft-neglected idea of civility (as a Western concept) to explore the paradox of high democracy and low civility that plagues India. This concept helps analyse why democratic consolidation translates into limited justice and minimal equality, along with increased exclusion and performative violence against marginal groups in India. The volume brings together key themes such as minority citizens and the incivility of caste, civility and urbanity, the struggles for ‘dignity’ and equality pursued by subaltern groups along with feminism and queer politics, and the exclusionary politics of the Citizenship Amendment Act, to argue that civility provides crucial insights into the functioning and social life of a democracy. In doing so, the book illustrates how a successful democracy may also harbour illiberal values and normalised violence and civil societies may have uncivil tendencies. Enriched with case studies from various states in India, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of political science, political philosophy, South Asian studies, minority and exclusion studies, political sociology and social anthropology.
'A tremendous book, timely, wise, authoritative and clear' Stephen Fry 'A brilliantly eloquent, incredibly insightful reimagining of liberalism' Owen Jones 'Thank God Daniel Chandler has written this fine and necessary book' Russell Brand 'Inspiring ... impassioned ... full of hope' Zadie Smith 'This is a fantastic book' Thomas Piketty Imagine: you are designing a society, but you don't know who you'll be within it - rich or poor, man or woman, gay or straight. What would you want that society to look like? This is the revolutionary thought experiment proposed by the twentieth century's greatest political philosopher, John Rawls. As economist and philosopher Daniel Chandler argues in this hugely ambitious and exhilarating intervention, it is by rediscovering Rawls that we can find a way out of the escalating crises that are devastating our world today. Taking Rawls's humane and egalitarian liberalism as his starting point, Chandler builds a careful and ultimately irresistible case for a progressive agenda that would fundamentally reshape our societies for the better. He shows how we can protect free speech and transcend the culture wars; get money out of politics; and create an economy where everyone has the chance to fulfil their potential, where prosperity is widely shared, and which operates within the limits of our finite planet. This is a book brimming with hope and possibility - a galvanising alternative to the cynicism that pervades our politics. Free and Equal has the potential not only to transform contemporary debate, but to offer a touchstone for a modern, egalitarian liberalism for many years to come, cementing Rawls's place in political discourse, and firmly establishing Chandler as a vital new voice for our time.
This book provides a unified account of the connection between justice and the good life. It argues that the virtues of character require institutions, while good institutions enable persons to live together virtuously. Although virtue ethics and political philosophy are rich and sophisticated philosophical traditions, there has been an unfortunate divergence, in theory and practice, between the virtues of character and the virtues of institutions. This book has two primary purposes. First, it reorients political philosophy around the concept of the good life. To do so, the author addresses the problem of political authority from a virtue ethics perspective. He also considers whether a political theory oriented around the good life is compatible with Rawls's notion of reasonable pluralism. Second, the book explains the relationship between the virtues of institutions and the virtues of character. The author shows how institutions support the development and exercise of the virtues of character, while examining specific other-regarding virtues such as justice and friendship. The Authority of Virtue will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in virtue ethics, social and political philosophy, ancient philosophy, and political theory.
International Aid and Democracy Promotion investigates the link between foreign aid and the promotion of democracy, using theory, statistical tests, and illustrative case studies. This book challenges the field of development to recognize that democracy promotion is unlike other development goals. With a goal like economic development, the interests of the recipient and the donor coincide; whereas, with democratization, authoritarian recipients have strong reasons to oppose what donors seek. The different motivations of donors and recipients must be considered if democracy aid is to be effective. The author examines how donors exercise their leverage over aid recipients, and, more importantly, why, using selectorate theory to understand the incentives of both aid donors and recipients. International Aid and Democracy Promotion will be of great interest to academics and students of development and democratization, as well as policy makers with authority over foreign aid allocation. "The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003050438, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Open Access for this book is generously supported by the Ashoka University.
Reformulating a problem of both constitutionalism and liberalism discussed in the works of Ernst-Wolfgang Boeckenfoerde, Hannah Arendt, and Alexis de Tocqueville, the book examines one generally overlooked manifestation of constitutionalism: the role of the courts in shaping democratic politics and the inter-relationship between citizens and state. Drawing on constitutional history, law, and political theory, David Miles argues that constitutionalism cannot be seen merely as an institutional mechanism to limit government, as it also has a crucial civic dimension upon which the liberal state depends. Utilising the works of Boeckenfoerde, Arendt, and Tocqueville, constitutionalism is conceived in the book as part of a broader system of communal norms which sustains representative democracy and liberalism. Through an analysis of judicial interventions in the electoral processes of the United States and Germany, Miles explores the role of civil society actors in transforming constitutionalism through legal challenges to oligarchical or exclusionary practices. He assesses how, in adjudicating these cases, the US Supreme Court and the German Constitutional Court have mediated the tension between threats to stability and the imperative of democratic renewal. Democracy, the Courts, and the Liberal State will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners interested in comparative politics, political theory, and constitutional law and history.
This book explores the relationship between different versions of liberalism and toleration by focusing on their shared theoretical and political challenges. Toleration is among the most pivotal and the most contested liberal values and virtues. Debates about the conceptual scope, justification, and political role of toleration are closely aligned with historical and contemporary philosophical controversies on the foundations of liberalism. The essays in this volume focus on the specific connection between toleration and liberalism. The essays in Part I reconstruct some of the major historical controversies surrounding toleration and liberalism. Part II centers on general conceptual and justificatory questions concerning toleration as a central category for the definition of liberal political theory. Part III is devoted to the theoretical analysis of applied issues and cases of conflicts of toleration in liberal states and societies. Toleration and the Challenges to Liberalism will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in social and political philosophy, ethics, and political theory.
Revisiting the magnetic poles of Karl Polanyi and Friedrich Hayek on the utopian springs of political economy, this book seeks to provide a compass for questioning the market economy of the twenty-first century. For Polanyi, in The Great Transformation, the utopian springs of the dogma of liberalism existed within the extension of the market mechanism to the 'fictitious commodities' of land, labour, and money. There was nothing natural about laissez-faire. The progress of the utopia of a self-regulating market was backed by the state and checked by a double movement, which attempted to subordinate the laws of the market to the substance of human society through principles of self-protection, legislative intervention, and regulation. For Hayek, in The Road to Serfdom, the utopia of freedom was threatened by the abandonment of individualism and classical liberalism. The tyranny of government interventionism led to the loss of freedom, the creation of an oppressive society, and the despotism of dictatorship that led to the serfdom of the individual. Economic planning in the form of socialism and fascism had commonalities that stifled individual freedom. Against the power of the state, the guiding principle of the policy of freedom for the individual was advocated. Taking these different aspects of market economy as its point of departure, this book promises to deliver a set of essays by leading commentators on twenty- first- century political economy debates relevant to the present conjuncture of neoliberalism. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of the journal Globalizations.
Caring for Liberalism brings together chapters that explore how liberal political theory, in its many guises, might be modified or transformed to take the fact of dependency on board. In addressing the place of care in liberalism, this collection advances the idea that care ethics can help respond to legitimate criticisms from feminists who argue that liberalism ignores issues of race, class, and ethnicity. The chapters do not simply add care to existing liberal political frameworks; rather, they explore how integrating dependency might leave core components of the traditional liberal philosophical apparatus intact, while transforming other aspects of it. Additionally, the contributors address the design of social and political institutions through which care is given and received, with special attention paid to non-Western care practices. This book will appeal to scholars working on liberalism in philosophy, political science, law, and public policy, and it is a must-read for feminist political philosophers.
In the wake of health and economic crises across the world, solidarity is emerging as both a moral imperative and urgent social goal. This book approaches solidarity as a political good, both a framework of power structures and grounds for moral motivation. The distinct approaches to public goods and social value demonstrate how social connectedness is intricately tied to the distribution of public goods, and the moral commitments that grow out of them. The essays in this book explore different features of the political, moral and civic approaches to solidarity. They offer moral justification for solidarity, grounded in the intrinsic value of social connectedness and epistemic deference; propose structural accounts of solidarity as action against racial oppression, or as an effective non-moral framework; propose to redefine property relations, so as to capture and redistribute property's social value, and envision public goods as both an instrument of civic relations and as a condition to well-rounded, meaningful human lives. By providing a series of thought-provoking debates about social obligations and justice, the book reestablishes solidarity and public goods as an urgent and timely topic. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.
This book provides a robust theoretical and empirical exploration of the interrelationship between economic neoliberalism and international development. Putting the experiences of developing and transitional economies centre stage, the book investigates how their economic policies compare with the nature of economic liberalism during and after the significant economic reforms which took place from the mid-1980s. Beginning with two chapters which provide an introduction to the concept of economic neoliberalism, the second section focuses on its application to 'practice', and the book moves on to country/regional case studies, taken from Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Latin America, China, and Eastern Europe. The book closes with some concluding remarks summarising some of the principal findings. Bringing together a wealth of expertise, this book clarifies controversial economic and political issues which have been significantly misunderstood in public discourse, and as such, it will be of interest to a range of researchers interested in the economic, social and political dynamics of developing and transitional countries.
Bringing together the work of top specialists and emerging scholars in the field, this volume is the first book-length study of the rapport between liberalism and the Spanish monarchy over the long nineteenth century in any language. It is at once a general overview and a set of original contributions to knowledge. The essays discuss monarchy's rapport with the pre-liberal, liberal and post-liberal nation-state, from the eve of the French Revolution, when the monarchy regulated a 'natural' order, to the unstable reign of Isabel II, fraught by revolutions that ended in her exile, to the brief republican monarchy of Amadeo I, the much-maligned foreign king, to Alfonso XIII's expulsion from Spain following the failure of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. The essays approach the subject through two main thematic-analytical axes. The first, political axis examines the monarchy's confrontation with, and adaptation to, liberalism as a political force that aimed to nationalize the Spanish people. The second axis is cultural, and studies the Crown's support of liberalism's nationalizing aims through various staging strategies that comprised visits, rituals, ceremonies, iconography, religiosity, and familial and military display. The dual approach invites the reader to question the boundaries between the political and the cultural, especially in regard to the ceremonial, and during critical times that witness the transformation of political power and the building of the nation-state. Designed for Hispanists and students of politics, ritual, liberalism and monarchy, this collection should appeal to academics and researchers as well as anyone interested in modern European history.
* Takes a unique perspective by examining political ideology and behaviour via evolutionary psychology and genetics to explain conservative and liberal differences * Fascinating reading for students and academics in psychology, the social sciences, and humanities, as well as general readers interested in political behavior * Explores the potential future of political behavior and participation in relation to possible consequences of evolution and genetics
* Takes a unique perspective by examining political ideology and behaviour via evolutionary psychology and genetics to explain conservative and liberal differences * Fascinating reading for students and academics in psychology, the social sciences, and humanities, as well as general readers interested in political behavior * Explores the potential future of political behavior and participation in relation to possible consequences of evolution and genetics
This book offers transdisciplinary scholarship which challenges the agendas of and markers around traditional social scientific fields. It builds on the belief that the study of major issues in the global cultural and political economies benefit from a perspective that rejects the limitations imposed by established boundaries, whether disciplinary, conceptual, symbolic or material. Established and early career academics explore and embrace contemporary political sociology following the 'global' and 'cultural' turns of recent decades. Categories such as state, civil society, family, migration, citizenship and identity are interrogated and sometimes found to be ill-suited to the task of analyzing global complexities. The limits of global theory, the challenges of global citizenship, and the relationship between globalisation and situated and mobile subjects and objects are all referenced in this book. The book will be of interest to scholars of International Relations, Political Science, Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Theory, Geography, Area studies and European studies.
This book attempts to explore the effects of neoliberalism on particular forms of community. Guy Standing (2011) has popularised the notion of precariousness to describe the unpredictable neoliberal conditions faced by radically different people throughout the world. Members of Standing's 'precariat' lack occupational identities, treat work and other moneymaking activities instrumentally, are focused on the short-term and have no 'shadow of the future' hanging over their actions, leaving little incentive to sustain long-term relationships and productive, but unpaid, social activities. This issue presents an interdisciplinary account of the challenges faced by communities at a time in which neoliberalism seems unchecked and uncheckable by the rise of nationalist populism. At points, responses are presented, but it is perhaps reflective of the general sense of helplessness of those committed to tackling neoliberalism that the final article highlights serious deficits in an approach commonly presented as a practicable response: basic income. In the spirit of participation, each article is accompanied by a reply by a non-academic as well as an academic. This ought not to be seen as tokenism - the experience of the project has been that discussions can be advanced much more effectively through engagement with community members and professionals. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Global Discourse.
Multiculturalism is not a la mode nowadays. It is attacked by both right-wing populists and mainstream politicians and leaders of liberal democracies. Indeed, conflicts surrounding cultural diversity and recognition are among the most salient issues in contemporary societies. Should liberal democracies recognise specific cultural rights of minorities? If so, should they grant rights only to indigenous national minorities or also to immigrants? Is such a recognition compatible with the basic liberal principle of state neutrality? Practical questions of this kind are in quest of sound theoretical foundations. Alan Patten's approach to multiculturalism, developed in Equal Recognition (2014), is the most recent and prominent example of such an effort. Considered "the most important contribution to the philosophy of cultural diversity since Will Kymlicka's Multicultural Citizenship", Patten's work elaborates new and original conceptions of culture and liberal neutrality. It reasserts the case in favour of liberal multiculturalism and applies its theoretical framework to concrete contemporary issues, such as language rights, federalism, secession, and immigrant integration. This collection presents a critical review of Patten's approach to cultural plurality. The critics question the overall normative strategy of Equal Recognition, its account of neutrality, especially with regards to language rights, its assumptions about democracy and, finally, its relevance to public policy debates. It will be of interest to political scientists, philosophers, and legal theorists, and will inspire students and politicians alike. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.
Toleration matters to us all. It contributes both to individuals leading good lives and to societies that are simultaneously efficient and just. There are personal and social matters that would be improved by taking toleration to be a fundamental value. This book develops and defends a full account of toleration-what it is, why and when it matters, and how it should be manifested in a just society. Cohen defends a normative principle of toleration grounded in a new conception of freedom as freedom from harm. He goes on to argue that the moral limits of toleration have been reached only when freedom from harm is impinged. These arguments provide support for extensive toleration of a wide range of individual, familial, religious, cultural, and market activities. Toleration and Freedom from Harm will be of interest to political philosophers and theorists, legal scholars, and those interested in matters of social justice.
Presents a radical, but compelling, argument that liberal democracies must be able accommodate violent protest. Examines case studies to demonstrate that not only can violent protest be acceptable; at times of grave injustice, it is unavoidable. This book will appeal to a broad range of academics, in legal and political theory, sociolegal studies, criminology, history and philosophy, as well as others with interests in contemporary forms of protest.
It addresses recent changes in Central and Eastern Europe in order to critically consider the impact of illiberal conservatism on constitutionalism. This book will appeal to constitutional lawyers, as well as to legal and political theorists with interests in contemporary populism and liberal thought.
This study aims to fill the gap in the existing literature on China's Democratic development, by presenting a comprehensive and detailed examination of the key factors that have created and sustained state domination over society in China.
NATO, an organisation brought together to function as an anti-communist alliance, faced existential questions after the unexpected collapse of the USSR at the beginning of the 1990s. Intervention in the conflict in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995 gave it a renewed sense of purpose and a redefining of its core mission. Abe argues that an impetus for this change was the norm dilemma that the conflict in Bosnia represented. On the one hand a state which oversaw the massacre of its civilians was in breach of international norms, but on the other hand intervention by outside states would breach the norms of sovereign integrity and non-use of force. NATO, as an international governance organisation, thus became a vehicle for avoiding this kind of dilemma. A detailed case study of NATO during the Bosnian war, this book explores how the differing views and preferences among the Western states on the intervention in Bosnia were reconciled as they agreed on the outline of NATO's reform. It examines detailed decision-making processes in Britain, France, Germany and the USA. In particular Abe analyses why conflicting norms led to an emphasis on conflict prevention capacity, rather than simply on armed intervention capacity.
Explores the relationship between sexuality and politics in Britain's recent political past. Includes four case studies to illustrate the arguments made. Important contribution to the understandings of sexuality, identity and inequalities, as well as of crisis and neoliberalism.
Liberal Ideals and the Politics of Decolonisation explores the subject of liberalism and its uses and contradictions across the late British Empire, especially in the context of imperial dissolution and subsequent state- building. The book covers multiple regions and issues concerning the British Empire and the Commonwealth, in particular the period ranging from the late-nineteenth century to the late- twentieth century. Original intellectual contributions are offered along with new arguments on critical issues in imperial history that will appeal to a wide range of scholars, including those outside of history. Liberal Ideals and the Politics of Decolonisation exposes commonalities, contradictions and contexts of different types of liberalism that animated the late British Empire and its rulers, radicals, subjects and citizens as they attempted to forge new states from its shadow and understand the impact of imperialism. This book examines the complexities of the idea and quest for self-government in the last stages of the British Empire. It also argues the importance of the political, intellectual and empirical aspects of liberalism to understand the process of decolonisation. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.
Interest in the study of Marx's thought has shown a revival in recent years, with a number of newly established academic societies, conferences, and journals dedicated to discussing his thought. This book brings together distinguished and up-and-coming scholars to provide a major re-evaluation of historical issues in Marx scholarship and to connect Marx's ideas with fresh debates in contemporary Anglo-American social and political philosophy. Among the topics discussed are Marx's relationship to his philosophical predecessors-including Hegel, the young Hegelians, and the utopian socialists-his concept of recognition, his critique of liberalism, and his views on the good life. This book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students interested in Marx, Hegel, the history of political thought, and social and political philosophy.
Originally published in 1957, The Unservile State looks at the theme of liberty in the Welfare State. Has it survived Welfare - is it even better for it? What of Parliament and our civil liberties? Does the present state of property distribution, of industry, agriculture and our social services satisfy the Liberal mind? And what would a liberal policy for foreign and Commonwealth affairs be like? These are some of the questions which this book sets out to answer. It is the first full scale study of the attitudes and policies of contemporary British Liberalism. |
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