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.

The Anatomy of the New Poland examines the nature and scope of political change in the first years of post-communist politics in Poland. Poland is significant not only because events there triggered the downfall of Communism throughout the region, but also because of the bold economic experiments of the new Polish leadership. Covering the period from the Round table negotiations of 1989 to the second free parliamentary elections in September 1993, the book blends an examination of the general features of communist systems and the challenges for democratic development in Eastern Europe with a specific analysis of the situation in Poland. In an authoritative analysis, Frances Millard discusses the shaping of the new constitutional framework and the interplay of political institutions in Poland while highlighting the influences upon the development of political parties and the emergence of a new party system. The dilemmas and achievements of post-communist politics are illustrated with reference to topical issues of decommunization and privatization. Written in a clear, accessible style, this book links developments in Poland to general themes in political science. As an assessment of the factors that undermine, and those that further, the emergence of democratic politics, it will be welcomed by scholars and students of the development and transformation of post-communist societies.

Russian democracy in the post-totalitarian era is intimately bound up with the fate of its representative institutions. In Russia's Road to Democracy, Victor Sergeyev and Nikolai Biryukov assess why the Congress of People's Deputies, and the other newly elected institutions founded under perestroika, not only failed to prevent, but also seemed to speed up and provoke, the disintegration of the Soviet Union. By studying the early history of the Congress, the book seeks insights on the prospects for democracy in Russia.Following an inquiry into the roots of Soviet political culture and the implications for future representative institutions, the book then examines the genesis of the Congress of People's Deputies and attempts a hermeneutical reconstruction of the deputies' models of social reality, as expressed in the texts of their parliamentary debates. The authors argue that the adoption of the concept of sobornost - a belief in society's organic unity - as the basic model for this institution proved utterly inadequate to the challenges the country faced. Including substantial new source material which is being made available in English for the first time, Russia's Road to Democracy presents an in-depth analysis with conclusions that contradict the hitherto prevailing theoretical assumptions.

What ever happened with that liberal intellectual "boom" of the 1980s and 1990s? In The Disappearing Liberal Intellectual , Eric Lott- author of the prizewinning Love and Theft - shows that the charter members of the "new left" are suffering from a condition that he has dubbed "boomeritis." Too secure in their university appointments, lecture tours, and book deals, the once rising stars of the liberal elite- including Richard Rorty, Todd Gitlin, Michael Lind, Paul Berman, Greil Marcus, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.- have drifted away from their radical moorings toward the political centre. At once a chronicle of recent intellectual life and a polemic against contemporary liberalism's accommodations of the conservative status quo, The Disappearing Liberal Intellectual eviscerates the complacency that has seeped into the politics of the would-be vanguard of American intellectual thought. Lott issues a wake-up call to the great public intellectuals of our day and challenges them to reinvigorate political debate on campus, in their writing, and on the airwaves.

Is history driven more by principle or interest? Are ideas of historical progress obsolete? Is it unforgivable to change one's mind or political allegiance? Did the eighteenth century really exchange the civilizing force of commercial advantage for political conflict? In this new account of liberal thought from its roots in seventeenth-century English thinking to the end of the eighteenth century, Annabel Patterson tackles these important historiographical questions. She rescues the term "whig" from the low regard attached to it; denies the primacy of self-interest in the political struggles of Georgian England; and argues that while Whigs may have strayed from liberal principles on occasion (nobody's perfect), nevertheless many were true progressives. In a series of case studies, mainly from the reign of George III, Patterson examines or re-examines the careers of such prominent individuals as John Almon, Edmund Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Erskine, and, at the end of the century, William Wordsworth. She also addresses a host of secondary characters, reshaping our thinking about both well-known and lesser figures of the time. Tracking a coherent, sustained, and adaptable liberalism throughout the eighteenth century, Patterson overturns common assumptions of political, cultural, and art historians. The author delivers fresh insights into the careers of those who called themselves Whigs, their place in British political thought, and the crucial ramifications of this thinking in the American political arena.

This important new study presents a systematic and definitive critique of the work of Ronald Dworkin, America's leading public philosopher. Focusing on Dworkin's brilliant and highly influential theory of liberal equality, the study reveals the hazards and limitations of basing the central ideals of liberalism on the logic of the market.

An illuminating examination of contemporary liberalism. -Times Literary Supplement Neal does a fine job of showing the flaws in leading academic theories and accounts of liberalism. He shows the amazing vigor of Thomas Hobbes's ideas, now more than three centuries old and still in many ways the clearest and best expression of the liberal order. And he provides a salutary cold shower for those grand dreamers among us who want liberalism not only to order our lives, but also to inspire, to shape, to teach us: 'A liberal order cannot even nearly fulfill the longings of the heart and soul which move us.' -Michael Harvey, H-Net Should the state be neutral with regard to the moral practices of its citizens? Can a liberal state legitimately create a distinctively liberal character in its citizens? Can liberal ideals constitute a point of consensus in a diverse society? In Liberalism and Its Discontents, Patrick Neal answers these questions and discusses them in light of contemporary liberal theory. Approaching the topic of liberalism from a sympathetic and yet immanently critical point of view, Patrick Neal argues that the political liberalism of theorists like John Rawls and the perfectionist liberalism of theorists like Joseph Raz fail to fully express the generosity of spirit which is liberalism at its best. Instead, Neal finds resources for the expression of such a spirit in the much maligned tradition of Hobbesian, or vulgar, liberalism. He argues that a turn in this direction is necessary for the articulation of a liberalism more genuinely responsive to the diversity of modes of life in the twenty-first century.

Baumann examines the recurring efforts to establish fraternal relations in modern societies by political, and in particular, radical means. He proceeds by examining a series of related examples, beginning with a brief discussion of the metaphor for fraternity itself, and then he turns to a consideration of the historical development of the quest for fraternity.

He first examines the quest for fraternity among the Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s. Baumann then turns to the "sans-culottes" before and during the period of the French Revolution. The third analysis is philosophical, rather than historical, and treats Jean-Paul Sartre's attempt to understand radically and thus justify the relation of fraternity to terror. His conclusion sums up the argument about the necessary self-contradiction and failure of the pursuit of political fraternity and points to the long-discarded concept of aesthetic education developed as an alternative to the political pursuit of fraternity by the poet and philospher Friedrich Schiller.

Democracy is emerging as the political system of choice throughout the world. Peoples now freed from the shackles of totalitarian systems seek to share the benefits made possible by democracy in its "home bases" in North America and Western Europe. Yet, paradoxically, in the last decade liberal democracy has been subjected to an onslaught of criticism from thinkers at its "home bases". Criticisms of democracy have been informed by scholarship in feminism, postmodernism and communitarianism as well as the revived interest in applying ethics to public policy. These criticisms raise important questions about the traditional values - liberalism, neutrality or equality, autonomy, and human rights - thought to justify democracy. They also raise questions about the success of democratic systems in promoting alternative values and in protecting lifestyles not desired by majorities. This anthology contains essays by authors at the forefront of the controversy as well as by acute observers of the processes by which "democratic" public policy is formed. The essays include criticisms of democratic theory and practice, defences of liberalism (the set of values often thought to ground democracy), calls for major revisions of democratic institutions and practices, and recommendations for new ways of understanding our rights and responsibilities as members of democratic communities.

"David Hardwick and Leslie Marsh have assembled a contentious collection of independent thinkers on liberalism's identity and prospects. Should liberalism be democratic, classical, ordo, legalistic, culture-based, market-based, or what? The international crew of authors-from Australia, Canada, China and the USA-draw upon the insights of key historic figures from Locke to Montesquieu to Burke to Dewey to Hayek to Rawls (and of course others, given liberalism's rich history), and they leave us with a set of liberalisms both in collision and in overlapping agreement. This book is stimulating reading for those engaged with next-generation liberal thought." -Stephen R. C. Hicks, Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University. This collection redresses the conceptual hubris and illiteracy that has come to obscure the central presuppositions of classical liberalism - that is, the wresting of epistemic independence from overwhelming concentrations of power, monopolies and capricious zealotries, whether they be statist, religious or corporate in character.

Liberalism in Russia is one of the most complex, multifaced and, indeed, controversial phenomena in the history of political thought. Values and practices traditionally associated with Western liberalism-such as individual freedom, property rights, or the rule of law-have often emerged ambiguously in the Russian historical experience through different dimensions and combinations. Economic and political liberalism have often appeared disjointed, and liberal projects have been shaped by local circumstances, evolved in response to secular challenges and developed within often rapidly-changing institutional and international settings. This third volume of the Reset DOC "Russia Workshop" collects a selection of the Dimensions and Challenges of Russian Liberalism conference proceedings, providing a broad set of insights into the Russian liberal experience through a dialogue between past and present, and intellectual and empirical contextualization, involving historians, jurists, political scientists and theorists. The first part focuses on the Imperial period, analyzing the political philosophy and peculiarities of pre-revolutionary Russian liberalism, its relations with the rule of law (Pravovoe Gosudarstvo), and its institutionalization within the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets). The second part focuses on Soviet times, when liberal undercurrents emerged under the surface of the official Marxist-Leninist ideology. After Stalin's death, the "thaw intelligentsia" of Soviet dissidents and human rights defenders represented a new liberal dimension in late Soviet history, while the reforms of Gorbachev's "New Thinking" became a substitute for liberalism in the final decade of the USSR. The third part focuses on the "time of troubles" under the Yeltsin presidency, and assesses the impact of liberal values and ethics, the bureaucratic difficulties in adapting to change, and the paradoxes of liberal reforms during the transition to post-Soviet Russia. Despite Russian liberals having begun to draw lessons from previous failures, their project was severely challenged by the rise of Vladimir Putin. Hence, the fourth part focuses on the 2000s, when the liberal alternative in Russian politics confronted the ascendance of Putin, surviving in parts of Russian culture and in the mindset of technocrats and "system liberals". Today, however, the Russian liberal project faces the limits of reform cycles of public administration, suffers from a lack of federalist attitude in politics and is externally challenged from an illiberal world order. All this asks us to consider: what is the likelihood of a "reboot" of Russian liberalism?

This book comes out of a conference in April of 1999 at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University on the topic of 'Gender Parity and the Liberal Tradition: Proposals and Debates in Europe and the United States.' It is a collection of short essays that attempt to capture the theoretical arguments and policy changes presented at the conference. The essays are divided into three sections, each of which approaches from a different angle the central question of whether liberalism has failed women. The first section aims to frame the discussion by outlining the theoretical arguments for the amendments or revisions implied by the proponents of the Parity Movement in Europe and for the concerns raised by critics. The second describes recent changes in party rules, European legal framework, and national constitutions, as well as the gains made by women in response to rule change. The third section provides American perspectives on the lessons that parity advocates might draw from affirmative action policies and speculations about how parity rules would work in the American context. The essays are drawn from top European and American scholars.

This book focuses on urban crime and policing in Turkey since the steady economic decline of the 1990s. Concentrating on the attempts to 'modernize' the policing of Izmir, Zeynep Gonen highlights how the police force expanded their territorial control over the urban space, specifically targeting the poor and racialized segments of the city. Through in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations of these 'targeted' populations, as well as rare ethnographic data from the Turkish police, surveys of the media and politicians' rhetoric, Gonen shows how Kurdish migrants have been criminalized as dangerous 'enemies' of the order. In studying the ideological and material processes of criminalization, The Politics of Crime in Turkey makes the case for the neoliberal politics of crime that uses the notion of 'security' to legitimize violence and authoritarianism. The book will be of interest to criminologists, as well as those investigating the modern Turkish state and its relationship to the Kurds in the wider region. The multilayered methodology and conceptual approach sheds light on parallel developments in penal and security systems across the globe.

A study of the clash of two traditions, British liberalism and African nationalism, and an examination of how Michael Blundell in Kenya and Garfield Todd in Zimbabwe used their liberal backgrounds to further the future of their adopted countries, despite threats and detention. Both Blundell and Todd believed that political leaders had a responsibility to serve the needs of the people as a condition of national development. By the time each came to power, European colonization had had a profoundly negative effect on the lives of Africans; Blundell and Todd sought to correct this by putting their positive views of Africans into practice.

While colonial governments designed strategies for controlling Africans to serve political and economic interests at home in Europe, Africans themselves established their own effective strategy, not only to ensure their survival in the colonial setting, but also to initiate a process for the restoration of their sense of self. Michael Blundell and Garfield Todd, with their liberal beliefs, served as excellent allies in this period of a rising African consciousness. Using sources obtained in Kenya and Zimbabwe over the past 15 years, this work examines democratic traditions that have survived tumultuous times in recent years.

This book brings together in one place the liberal and conservative arguments that face the Republican and Democratic parties in the run-up to the 2008 election. In each chapter, David Coates lays out the popular conservative case and then presents a point-by-point liberal response. Each chapter challenges right-wing ways of framing the issue and pulls discussion back into the civilized center of American politics. The sources and evidence sustaining both conservative and liberal arguments are listed in endnotes and developed more fully on an associated blog site. A Liberal Tool Kit helps to redress the conservative bias in the way news and arguments are generally reported. Coates argues that conservative media outlets are currently more powerful and numerous than liberal ones, contending that conservative arguments tend to be presented more clearly than their less simplistic, more nuanced liberal alternatives. In this book, he presents the complexities of the conservative arguments while at the same time clarifying liberal positions in straightforward, everyday language, so leveling the playing field.

This volume is a theoretical analysis of the current crises of state and societal transformations in the Middle East and North Africa. The emphasis on the impact and limits of neoliberal governmentality places these uprisings within the specific contextual and structural environment of neoliberal globalization.

In settler societies, some conflicts have roots that are both ethnic and colonial in nature. These are conflicts between an indigenous ethnic group and groups and between an ethnic group and groups of settlers who have been transplanted to a territory by a colonial power as part of a colonizing effort. This study examines the role that liberal parties have played and can play in recent conflicts in Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. Typically, such parties reject the conventional wisdom of the settler population regarding the nature of the conflict. They also reject the radical thinking of the liberation movements and offer, instead, a third alternative. Mitchell hopes that this study will provide useful information for current liberal parties in Central and Eastern Europe and Israel.

Ultimately, many of the liberal party's ideas are adopted by the main settler parties, allowing for a resolution of the conflict, generally through a compromise between the liberal and indigenous positions. However, before such resolution can occur, the liberals must achieve an electoral breakthrough that gives them a minimum of between five and ten percent of votes; they must also obtain significant stable representation in parliament. Liberal leadership must be innovative, offering new solutions that depart from the conventional wisdom of both sides. Mitchell provides the most detailed account yet published on the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland. He also includes extensive information on the KwaZulu/Natal Indaba of 1986 and analysis of the electoral fortunes of the Progressive Federal Party in South Africa.

In this sequel to his prize-winning book,AThe Eyes of the People, Jeffrey Edward Green draws on philosophy, history, social science, and literature to ask what democracy can mean in a world where it is understood that socioeconomic status to some degree will always determine opportunities for civic engagement and career advancement. Under this shadow of unfairness, Green argues that the most advantaged class are rightly subjected to compulsory public burdens. And just as provocatively, he urges ordinary citizens living in polities permanently darkened by plutocracy to acknowledge their second-class status and the uncomfortable civic ethics that come with it - specifically an ethics whereby the pursuit of egalitarianism is informed, at least in part, by indignation, envy, uncivil modes of discourse, and even the occasional suspension of political care. Deeply engaged in the history of political thought,AThe Shadow of UnfairnessAis still first and foremost an effort to illuminate present-day politics. With the plebeians of ancient Rome as his muse, Green develops a plebeian conception of contemporary liberal democracy, at once disenchanted yet idealistic in its insistence that the Few-Many distinction might be enlisted for progressive purpose. Green's analysis is likely to unsettle all sides of the political spectrum, but its focus looks beyond narrow partisan concerns and aims instead to understand what the ongoing quest for free and equal citizenship might require once it is accepted that our political and educational systems will always be tainted by socioeconomic inequality.

Many German historians regard Emperor Frederick III (1831-1888) as a liberal sovereign who could have saved German history from its tragic course. Recent historians, however, have challenged the long-held view that liberalism's failure in 19th century Germany presaged Hitler's triumph, claiming that earlier scholars have overlooked liberalism's positive contributions to German history. This book reassesses Frederick III's contribution to the liberal movement. Using documents recently made available from the Hessische Hausstiftung, the author considers the question of whether Frederick abetted the liberal movement's successes or was part of its tragic history. As crown prince, Frederick maintained ties with prominent liberals and rejected Otto von Bismarck's conservative domestic and foreign policies. His liberal impulses were strengthened by his marriage to the Queen of England's daughter, Princess Victoria. But when Frederick came to the throne in 1888, he died after only 99 days. Many historians consider his untimely death the swan song of German liberalism. Kollander finds that the documents show Frederick to be a constitutional liberal who fought to preserve the constitution-the basis of liberal political power-from subversion by the conservatives. However, he only condoned liberal reform on the basis of the constitutional status quo, rejecting his wife's wish to see British political institutions adopted in Germany. Although Frederick contributed to the survival of liberalism as a political force, the author concludes, the extent of his liberal views have been exaggerated by many historians.

During the Cold War, writers and artists were faced with a huge challenge. In the Soviet world, they were expected to turn out works that glorified militancy, struggle and relentless optimism. In the West, freedom of expression was vaunted as liberal democracy's most cherished possession. But such freedom could carry a cost. This book documents the extraordinary energy of a secret campaign in which some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West became instruments - whether they knew it or not, whether they liked it or not - of America's secret service.

Populism is a genuine 'third way' in politics, a middle path between the extremes of corporate anarchy and collective authoritarianism. This is a trenchant and timely study.Populism is distinguished from other political movements by its insistence on two things conspicuously missing from modern systems of political economy: genuine democracy based on local citizen assemblies, and the widespread distribution among the population of privately-owned economic capital. Adrian Kuzminski's book, in offering a comprehensive historical account of populism. He shows that populism, now largely overlooked, has in fact had a consistent and distinct history since ancient times. Kuzminski demonstrates that populism is a tradition of practice as well as thought, ranging from ancient city states to the frontier communities of colonial America - all places where widely distributed private property and democratic decision-making combined to foster material prosperity and cultural innovation.The political economy of populism was first articulated by the ancient Greek philosopher Phaleas of Chalcedon and variously developed by thinkers as diverse as Aristotle, James Harrington, George Berkeley, Thomas Jefferson, Edward Kellogg and Frederick Soddy. Only where none are rich enough to dominate others economically nor poor enough to be so dominated, populists argue, can the public interest be served. By democracy-for-all, populists mean full and direct participation in empowered local citizen assemblies. This vision of a decentralised, 'bottom-up' democracy was developed in his later years by Thomas Jefferson, who called for completing the American revolution by rooting broader levels of government in such local assemblies, which he called 'ward republics.' The book includes extensive extracts from Jefferson's writings on the matter.In calling for a wide distribution of both property and democracy, populism opposes the political and economic system found today in the United States and other Western countries, where property remains highly concentrated in private hands and where representatives chosen in impersonal mass elections frustrate democracy by serving private monied interests rather than the public good. As one of very few systematic alternatives to our current political and economic system, populism offers a pragmatic program for fundamental social reform which deserves wide and serious consideration.

The constituent power of the people is one of the fundamental ideas of modern politics. It was first articulated during the early modern revolutions when the idea was deployed to legitimize the revolution and to develop constitutions. This study sketches the historical background and the articulation of the idea of constituent power of the people, using the threefold meaning of the idea initially suggested by Carl Schmitt: constituent power being power above the existing constitutional order, power within that order, and power beside the constitutional order. These conceptions are not only discussed in the historical context they were articulated in but also placed within the framework of contemporary political and constitutional thought. In doing so, this book explores the various emphasizes that different theorists place on the role of constituent power in democracies to provide a comprehensive understanding of how this cornerstone of political thought has evolved since it was first posited in the 18th Century.