Liberalism is the dominant ideology of our time, yet its character remains the subject of intense scholarly and political controversy. Debates about the liberal political tradition - about its history, its central philosophical commitments, its implications for political practice - lie at the very heart of the discipline of political theory. Many outstanding political theorists have contributed to the growing sophistication of these debates in recent years, but the original voice of Michael Freeden deserves particular attention. In the course of a body of work that spans over thirty years, Freeden's iconoclastic contributions have posed important challenges to the dominant understandings of liberal ideology, history, and theory. Such work has sought to redefine the very essence of what it is to be a liberal. This book brings together an international group of historians, philosophers, and political scientists to evaluate the impact of Freeden's work and to reassess its central claims.

Modern psychological and political theory meet head-on in this powerful re-evaluation of America's contradictory and sometimes dangerous addiction to individualism. Best-selling author Gaylin and co-author Jennings investigate the contentious intersections of interdependence and autonomy, rights and public responsibility. They examine the painful abrasion occurring between America's tradition of personal freedom and privacy, as it rubs against the still valuable if almost vanishing ideals of sacrifice and social order.

Our current culture of autonomy -- championed by both liberals on the left and libertarians on the right -- is based on the idea of rationality as the motivation for human conduct. But, as the authors remind us, people are not simply rational creatures -- appeals to emotions are always far more effective than logical argument in changing our behavior.

This timely edition includes a new preface; updated examples and illustrations throughout; and new coverage of contemporary social critics and their work since the publication of the first edition. Two essential new chapters, one on the movement to forgo life-sustaining treatment and the other on physician-assisted suicide, particularly clarify the authors' arguments. Drawing on these and numerous other illustrations -- with significant emphasis on the state of American health care -- Gaylin and Jennings demonstrate that society has not just the right but the "duty" to occasionally invoke fear, shame, and guilt in order to motivate humane behavior.

As cases of AIDS are once again on the upswing, as the dangerously mentally ill are allowed to wander free and untreated, as starvation and poverty still hold too many in its grip in the richest nation on the planet, this controversial book, considerably revised and expanded, is needed more than ever. If we are to indeed preserve and nurture a genuinely free -- and liberal -- society, the authors suggest that these "coercions" may be essential for the health and the maturity of a nation where we all too often avert our eyes, not seeing that our neighbor is in pain or trouble and needs our help.

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.

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.

Liberal political philosophy and natural law theory are not contradictory, but - properly understood - mutually reinforcing. Contemporary liberalism (as represented by Rawls, Guttman and Thompson, Dworkin, Raz, and Macedo) rejects natural law and seeks to diminish its historical contribution to the liberal political tradition, but it is only one, defective variant of liberalism. A careful analysis of the history of liberalism, identifying its core principles, and a similar examination of classical natural law theory (as represented by Thomas Aquinas and his intellectual descendants), show that a natural law liberalism is possible and desirable. Natural law theory embraces the key principles of liberalism, and it also provides balance in resisting some of its problematic tendencies. Natural law liberalism is the soundest basis for American public philosophy, and it is a potentially more attractive and persuasive form of liberalism for nations that have tended to resist it.

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.

The experience of exiles was fundamental for shaping Italian national identity. Risorgimento in Exile investigates the contribution to Italian nationalism made by the numerous patriots who were forced to live in exile following failed revolutions in the Italian states.
Examining the writings of such exiles, Maurizio Isabella challenges recent historiography regarding the lack of genuine liberal culture in the Risorgimento. He argues that these emigres' involvement in debates with British, continental, and American intellectuals points to the emergence of Liberalism and Romanticism as international ideologies shared by a community of patriots that stretched from Europe to Latin America.
Risorgimento in Exile represents the first effort to place Italian patriotism in a broad international framework, revealing the importance and originality of the Italian contribution to European Anglophilia and Philhellenism, and to transatlantic debates on federalism. In doing so, it demonstrates that the Risorgimento first developed as a variation upon such global trends."

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.

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.

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?

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 is a study of the impact of liberal academic ideas on the concept of civil society in Russia in the years following the revolution of 1905. David Wartenweiler shows how, in its efforts to further the cause of civil society, the academic community combined liberal notions of the individual and the citizen with their own professional claim to cultural leadership.

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.

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.

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.

This insightful book sheds light on three competing ideological windows on the world: conservatism, liberalism and socialism. David Reisman explores the importance of these perspectives not only to generating public policy, but also in our capacity to explain the very nature of reality. Surveying the diversity of beliefs that govern and guide contemporary society, Reisman illustrates the pre-eminence of three all-encompassing meta-ideologies that capture heterogenous philosophies. The book traces the history of these meta-ideologies through key figures and moments in their development, illuminating the paradox at the heart of political beings: the conceptual wedding of independence and integration. Refusing a partisan perspective, Reisman argues in favour of a tolerant vision of society that promotes understanding as an avenue by which to achieve the peaceable coexistence of plurality and diversity. Offering a clear, intellectual and unbiased presentation of contemporary political philosophy, this book is crucial reading for researchers and students of social and political thought, particularly those focusing on ideology and the history of philosophy.

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.

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.

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.

This book is an original critique of contemporary liberal theories of justice, focusing on the problem of how to relate the personal point of view of the individual to the impartial perspective of justice. Margaret Moore's examination of prominent contemporary arguments for liberal justice reveals that individualist theories are subject to two serious difficulties: the motivation problem and the integrity problem. Individualists cannot explain why the individual should be motivated to act in accordance with the dictates of liberal justice, and - related to this - offer radically incoherent accounts of the person. Revisionist liberal attempts to ground liberalism in contextual and perfectionist terms offer more defensible foundations, but Dr Moore argues that such theories do not support liberal political principles. She concludes by sketching a historical and concrete approach to political and ethical theorizing which reformulates the relation between self-interest and morality, and is not subject to the problems that beset liberal individualist theories of justice. Her book advances the debate between communitarians and liberals about the kind of moral foundation which a liberal society requires.

Ralph Brauer defines Liberal America as a place where government exists to keep the playing field level. The success of the American experiment, he argues, depends on how well we maintain this equity and its four cornerstones: economic justice, educational equity, voting rights, and media fairness. His book is both a political and intellectual history examining the various threats to these cornerstones, and a social and cultural chronicle. Touching on music, television, movies, and sports, Brauer's thesis is underscored by a historical discussion that begins with the New Deal and works its way to the present, ending with Global Warming and the Iraq War. Arguing that the patient is in intensive care, Brauer identifies three reasons for the decline of the level playing field: 1) a Republican counterrevolution dedicated to rolling back the values of the New Deal, 2) an inability of both parties to answer questions raised by decades of Civil Rights revolutions, and 3) the transformation of suburban America from a place of opportunity created by government programs to a battleground. These three ideas form the basis for the book's three sections. Part One follows the development of the Counterrevolutionary Coalition, beginning with the Southern Strategy and ending with a chapter on America's politicized media. Part Two focuses on questions that have been raised by people of color and by women, and treats the Democratic Party's failure to answer those questions as illustrated by events like the Nader-LaDuke campaign and the 1964 Atlantic City convention. Part Three details the impact of suburban America on the cornerstones.