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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Liberalism & centre democratic ideologies
First published in 1991, this is a reissue of the pathbreaking Dictionary of Conservative and Libertarian Thought, the first book to examine the ideals and arguments produced by the intellectual traditions of both conservatism and classical liberalism. Covering the ideas of many such distinguished thinkers as Hayek, Scruton, Friedman and Buchanan, the volume provides a valuable survey of the historical development of both schools of thought in all of the major western countries and their contributions to contemporary debates. From American Conservatism to French Liberalism, Invisble Hand to Organic Society, from Scientism to Scepticism and Utopianism to Voluntarism, this is a vital work whose reissue will be welcomed as much by the keen layperson as by students of political science, the history of philosophy, economics and public policy.
First published in 1911, this pioneering and ambitious work provides a history of the evolution of republican thought and practice in Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the twentieth century. Based a series of lectures delivered by the author at Lowell Institute in 1910, this is a comprehensive treatment of the subject which moves deftly from the political thought of the middle ages through to the rise of Protestantism, the wave of revolution across Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, concluding with an analysis of the republican cause and the permanence of the Republican idea in the consciousness of Europe.
This work examines ideas about the role of law and legal reform in the creation of market economies, focusing on the process of post communist transition in Russia. Processes of transition in Russia were guided by a set of very specific neoliberal ideas about the nature of markets and capitalism, about the role of law and the primacy of the economic over the legal and political. These ideas however have come under fire as a result of the Russian experience of transition and the serious problems encountered by reforms. This led to a revision of the original neoliberal ideas, not least concerning the role of law and its relationship to the economic and the political. The result has been the emergence of a much more complex body of ideas about the role law plays in economic transformation. This book aims to close a gap in the literature on post communist transition by offering a theoretical interpretation of Russia's experience which makes transition reform models comparable to development reform models. Focusing on the role of law and the relationship of economic priorities to law reform, this work offers a critical evaluation of currently dominant theories of economic and legal reform put to use in varied transition and development scenarios. In looking at the ideas which directed and animated reform in Russia, an enquiry is thus made into the wider relationship between democracy, regulation and the market in contemporary capitalism. Neoliberalism and the Law in Post Communist Transition will equip scholars and students of development studies, law, political economy and international economics with a critical guide to transition focused on the often neglected legal aspect of the reforms.
Although modern neoliberalism was born at the "Colloque Walter Lippmann" in 1938, it only came into its own with the founding of the Mont Pelerin Society, a partisan "thought collective," in Vevey, Switzerland, in 1947. Its original membership was made up of transnational economists and intellectuals, including Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Karl Popper, Michael Polanyi, and Luigi Einaudi. From this small beginning, their ideas spread throughout the world, fostering, among other things, the political platforms of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and the Washington Consensus. The Road from Mont Pelerin presents the key debates and conflicts that occurred among neoliberal scholars and their political and corporate allies regarding trade unions, development economics, antitrust policies, and the influence of philanthropy. The book captures the depth and complexity of the neoliberal "thought collective" while examining the numerous ways that neoliberal discourse has come to shape the global economy. "The Road from Mont Pelerin is indispensable for anyone wishing to gain an understanding of neoliberalism, whether as an end in itself or as a means for constructing alternative, non-neoliberal futures." -Daniel Kinderman, Critical Policy Studies "If you work on post-war history of economics, there is almost no reason not to read this book." -Ross B. Emmett, Journal of the History of Economic Thought
With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, New York Times-bestselling author Thomas Frank exposes how, in the last few decades, the American Left has made an unprecedented shift away from its working-class roots. Financial inequality is one of the biggest political issues of our time: from the Wall Street bail-outs - where bankers still received huge bonuses while thousands of people lost their homes - to the rise of 'the One Percent', who between them control 40 per cent of US wealth. So where are the Democrats - the notional party of the people - in all this? In his scathing examination of how the Democratic Party has failed to combat financial inequality, despite being given near perfect conditions for success, Thomas Frank argues that the Left in America has abandoned its roots to pursue a new class of supporter: elite professionals. Under this 'meritocratic' system, the educated middle class prosper, but ordinary workers continue to suffer. Unless the Democrats remember their historic purpose and win back the working class, Frank warns, the rift between America's rich and poor will deepen further still, with dire consequences for both sides.
What would a sustainable society look like? How could it be achieved? By challenging conventional wisdom about the ecological crisis and reframing the traditional values of green politics "Real Green; Sustainability after the End of Nature" offers new answers to the key questions of the environmental debate. In this ground-breaking and challenging work Manuel Arias-Maldonado convincingly argues that, since nature has now been transformed into a part of the human environment, it can be seen to no longer exist. Ecological problems thus become an inevitable and normal feature of our relationship with nature. Hence a post-natural environmentalism, realistic and liberal while remaining green, is advocated. In this framework, sustainability, democracy and liberalism become mutually reinforcing elements rather than conflicting ones. Only by combining them can a green society be realised.
This book examines the influence of neoliberal ideas and practices on the way knowledge has been conceptualized, produced, and disseminated over the last few decades at different levels of public education and in various national contexts around the world.
This book traces the transformation of slaves into subordinate citizens in the U.S. South, in order to reassess the relation between race and republican and liberal accounts of citizenship in America. In the late 1860s the U.S. federal government initiated the most abrupt transition from slavery to citizenship in the Americas. The transformation, of course, did not stick, but it did permanently alter the terms of American citizenship and initiated a century long struggle over the place of African Americans in the American polity. Southern Progressives, crucial in this account, were faced with a significant ideological challenge: how to reconcile their liberal principles with their commitments to racial hierarchy. The ideological work performed by Southern Progressives was instrumental to the establishment of white supremacist institutions in the heart of a putatively liberal democracy and illuminate how combinations of liberal and illiberal principles have affected the history of American political thought. Steedman demonstrates how Southern Progressives combined commitments to liberal, even democratic, politics with equally strong commitments to the maintenance of racial hierarchy. He shows that there are systematic features of the traditions of liberal and republican thought, on the one hand, and ideologies of race, on the other, that facilitate their combination. Jim Crow Citizenship relates familiar developments in American state-building, legal development, and political thought to race, thus showing how race intertwines with these developments, often shaping them in decisive fashion.
Neoliberalism has had a major impact on schooling and education in the Developing World, with social repercussions that have affected the salaries of teachers, the number and type of potential students, the availability of education, the cost of education, and more. This edited collection argues that the privatization of public services and the capitalization and commodification of education have resulted in the establishment of competitive markets that are marked by selection, exclusion and inequality. The contributors - academics and organization/social movement activists - examine aspects of neoliberal arguments focusing on low- and middle-income countries (including Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, China, Pakistan, India, Turkey, Burkina Faso, Mozambique and South Africa), and suggest where they fall short. Their arguments center around the assumption that education is not a commodity to be bought and sold, as education and the capitalist market hold opposing goals, motivations, methods, and standards of excellence.
Comprising essays by Michael W. Doyle, Liberal Peace examines the special significance of liberalism for international relations. The volume begins by outlining the two legacies of liberalism in international relations - how and why liberal states have maintained peace among themselves while at the same time being prone to making war against non-liberal states. Exploring policy implications, the author focuses on the strategic value of the inter-liberal democratic community and how it can be protected, preserved, and enlarged, and whether liberals can go beyond a separate peace to a more integrated global democracy. Finally, the volume considers when force should and should not be used to promote national security and human security across borders, and argues against President George W. Bush 's policy of "transformative" interventions. The concluding essay engages with scholarly critics of the liberal democratic peace. This book will be of great interest to students of international relations, foreign policy, political philosophy, and security studies.
Can, and should, liberalism make itself hospitable to a politics which does justice to climate change? To what extent are the values, methods, and assumptions of liberalism adaptable to the challenges raised? Liberal thinking - broadly construed - may dominate the Academy and the political landscape. Are the environmental priorities that are thrown into relief by climate change a threat to it, or are they an opportunity for it to show its worth? This book explores fresh arguments by leading scholars, both of whom are sceptical of liberalism's capacity to meet these challenges, and sympathetic to the project of developing liberal values so as to create a liberal approach that can deliver climate change justice. The chapters appeal to new insights and considerations reveal the complexity of the issues at stake in the real world of climate change politics. They make the political theory of climate change justice available to decision-makers whose practice will determine whether we achieve it. This book was previously published as a special issue of Critical Review of International Social and Political Economy.
Comprising essays by Michael W. Doyle, Liberal Peace examines the special significance of liberalism for international relations. The volume begins by outlining the two legacies of liberalism in international relations - how and why liberal states have maintained peace among themselves while at the same time being prone to making war against non-liberal states. Exploring policy implications, the author focuses on the strategic value of the inter-liberal democratic community and how it can be protected, preserved, and enlarged, and whether liberals can go beyond a separate peace to a more integrated global democracy. Finally, the volume considers when force should and should not be used to promote national security and human security across borders, and argues against President George W. Bush's policy of "transformative" interventions. The concluding essay engages with scholarly critics of the liberal democratic peace. This book will be of great interest to students of international relations, foreign policy, political philosophy, and security studies.
Since the Enlightenment, liberalism as a concept has been foundational for European identity and politics, even as it has been increasingly interrogated and contested. This comprehensive study takes a fresh look at the diverse understandings and interpretations of the idea of liberalism in Europe, encompassing not just the familiar movements, doctrines, and political parties that fall under the heading of "liberal" but also the intertwined historical currents of thought behind them. Here we find not an abstract, universalized liberalism, but a complex and overlapping configuration of liberalisms tied to diverse linguistic, temporal, and political contexts.
Consent of the People: Human Dignity through Freedom and Equality 1966-2021 explores how Australia's founding Enlightenment ideals were embodied in democratic institutions and shared values, and shaped into a unique national liberalism. Despite intense partisan loyalties, a politics of unequal power, and conservative and radical resistance, inequality was addressed and personal freedom strengthened. This final book in David Kemp's landmark five-volume Australian Liberalism series examines the role of liberal ideals in the legacies of prime ministers from Harold Holt to Malcolm Turnbull and the significance of challenges to the liberal project arising in response to the pandemic of 2020-21.It shows how reform urgency led to the nation's greatest political crisis in 1975, how prime ministers Fraser and Hawke struggled to manage an economy dominated by powerful union, business and global interests, how during seventeen crucial years Keating and Howard led one of the nation's greatest reform eras, and how social reform continued despite the leadership instability of the post-Howard era. In Consent of the People Kemp assesses political parties as the instruments of reform, highlighting the dangers of factionalism and loss of purpose. He examines how an international revival of liberal thought and rising levels of education revolutionised Australian society and politics, creating a moral-and moralistic-ruling class. In a remarkable half-century, Australian political parties and their leaders contested the impacts of government policies on personal freedom, on the distribution of political influence and power, and on wealth and opportunity. Throughout this period, Australians strove, with growing success, to achieve their dreams.
While it is uncontroversial to point to the liberal roots of feminism, a major issue in English-language feminist political thought over the last few decades has been whether feminism's association with liberalism should be relegated to the past. Can liberalism continue to serve feminist purposes? This book examines the positions of three contemporary feminists - Martha Nussbaum, Susan Moller Okin and Jean Hampton - who, notwithstanding decades of feminist critique, are unwilling to give up on liberalism. This book examines why, and in what ways, each of these theorists believes that liberalism offers the normative and political resources for the improvement of women's situations. It also brings out and tries to explain and evaluate the differences among them, notwithstanding their shared allegiance to liberalism. In so doing, the books goes to the heart of recent debates in feminist and political theory.
First published in 1991, this is a reissue of the path-breaking Dictionary of Conservative and Libertarian Thought, the first book to examine the ideals and arguments produced by the intellectual traditions of both conservatism and classical liberalism. Covering the ideas of many such distinguished thinkers as Hayek, Scruton, Friedman and Buchanan, the volume provides a valuable survey of the historical development of both schools of thought in all of the major western countries and their contributions to contemporary debates. From American Conservatism to French Liberalism, Invisible Hand to Organic Society, from Scientism to Scepticism and Utopianism to Voluntarism, this is a vital work whose reissue will be welcomed as much by the keen layperson as by students of political science, the history of philosophy, economics and public policy.
Named moral father of the Internet by Wired Magazine and quoted by President Barack Obama in his historic first inaugural address, Thomas Paine is an American revolutionary figure who continues to intrigue and infuriate. New Directions in Thomas Paine Studies offers an interdisciplinary perspective on Paine's distinctive influence on a number of eighteenth-century discourses, from politics and literature, to human rights and religion. This volume aims to expand the field of study on one of the most important figures not simply in the American, but the global revolutionary period of the late eighteenth-century. Drawing on an international group of scholars who hope to deconstruct the nationalistic boundaries that have hampered Paine studies for decades, the essays offer not only new interpretations of Paine's major works, but new methodologies that reflect the enduring presence of Paine in American cultural discourse.
Having survived the process of modernization and reasserted themselves in public life, religious traditions play an increasingly important public role in shaping and defining social institutions and interactions. This book examines Rawls's theory of political liberalism in the context of Muslim societies, where religion wields a significant social and political influence. Contrasting a sociological analysis with a theoretical approach, the author explores the political questions brought up by religious individuals, organizations, and minorities, and examines fundamental notions such as neutrality of state, public/private distinction, and individual autonomy. Offering a rich set of conceptual and normative instruments, the author presents new ways to incorporate political liberalism into political discourses and advocating policy prescriptions for the advancement of democracy in Muslim societies. Independent of the focus on Muslim societies, this book makes a significant contribution to the political liberalism debate. As such, it will be of interest not only to students of Islam and the Middle East, but also to those with an interest in political philosophy, democracy, religion and contemporary political theory.
Liberalisms, a work first published in 1991, provides a coherent and comprehensive analytical guide to liberal thinking over the past century and considers the dominance of liberal thought in Anglo-American political philosophy over the past 20 years. John Gray assesses the work of all the major liberal political philosophers including J. S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, Karl Popper, F. A Hayek, John Rawls and Robert Nozick, and explores their mutual connections and differences.
This book explores the complex issue of international ethics in the two dominant schools of thought in international relations; Liberalism and Realism. Both theories suffer from an inability to integrate the ethical and pragmatic dimensions of foreign policy. Liberal policy makers often suffer from moral blindness and a tendency toward coercion in the international arena, whilst realists tend to be epistemic sceptics, incorporating Nietzsche's thought, directly or indirectly, into their theories. Mark Gismondi seeks to resolve the issues in these two approaches by adopting a covenant based approach, as described by Daniel Elazar's work on the covenant tradition in politics, to international relations theory. The covenant approach has three essential principles: policy makers must have a sense of realism about the existence of evil and its political consequences power must be shared and limited liberty requires a basis in shared values. Ethics, Realism and Liberalism in International Relations will be of interest to students and researchers of politics, philosophy, ethics and international relations.
This book contributes to the literature on the change of governance in the context of its European multilevel organization. The integration of Europe is a process of fundamental social change: a process of constructing a European society and of deconstructing the national societies. M?nch demonstrates that there is a movement away from republican and representative features of a democracy and towards liberal and pluralistic features. The book illustrates this change in the nature of European political regulation, European jurisdiction and the intellectual debates in France, Germany and Britain on legitimising the emerging system of multilevel governance. He discusses how far the new European regime of liberal governmentality converges with the US-American type of constitutional liberalism. Following a sociological approach, the book focuses on identifying the causes, features and consequences of the fundamental social change taking place in the process of European integration. This book will be of interest to scholars and graduate students from political science, sociology, law and philosophy interested in political theory, comparative politics, international relations and political communication as well as practitioners of policy-making in governments, administration, parties, associations and the media.
"Toward a Global 'Thin' Community re-examines aspects of the liberal-communitarian debate. While critical of both traditions, this book argues that a coherent form of communitarianism is the only plausible option for citizens today. Using the theories of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, Olssen shows how we can overcome traditional problems with communitarianism by using an ethic of survival that he identifies in the writings of Nietzsche and others to provide a normative framework for twenty-first century politics at both national and global levels. "Thin" communitarianism seeks to surmount traditional objections associated with Hegel and Marx, and to safeguard liberty and difference by applying a robust idea of democracy."
This work examines ideas about the role of law and legal reform in the creation of market economies, focusing on the process of post communist transition in Russia. Processes of transition in Russia were guided by a set of very specific neoliberal ideas about the nature of markets and capitalism, about the role of law and the primacy of the economic over the legal and political. These ideas however have come under fire as a result of the Russian experience of transition and the serious problems encountered by reforms. This led to a revision of the original neoliberal ideas, not least concerning the role of law and its relationship to the economic and the political. The result has been the emergence of a much more complex body of ideas about the role law plays in economic transformation. This book aims to close a gap in the literature on post communist transition by offering a theoretical interpretation of Russia's experience which makes transition reform models comparable to development reform models. Focusing on the role of law and the relationship of economic priorities to law reform, this work offers a critical evaluation of currently dominant theories of economic and legal reform put to use in varied transition and development scenarios. In looking at the ideas which directed and animated reform in Russia, an enquiry is thus made into the wider relationship between democracy, regulation and the market in contemporary capitalism. Neoliberalism and the Law in Post Communist Transition will equip scholars and students of development studies, law, political economy and international economics with a critical guide to transition focused on the often neglected legal aspect of the reforms.
Neoliberalism is based on the systematic use of state power to impose, under the veil of ?non-intervention?, a hegemonic project of recomposition of capitalist rule in most areas of social life. The tensions and displacements embedded within global neoliberalism are nowhere more evident than in the middle-income countries. At the domestic level, the neoliberal transitions have transformed significantly the material basis of social reproduction in these countries. These transformations include, but they are not limited to, shifts in economic and social policy. They also encompass the structure of property, the modality of insertion of the country into the international economy, and the domestic forms of exploitation and social domination. The political counterpart of these processes is the limitation of the domestic political sphere through the insulation of ?markets? and investors from social accountability and the imposition of a stronger imperative of labour control, allegedly in order to secure international competitiveness. These economic and political shifts have reduced the scope for universal welfare provision and led to regressive distributive shifts and higher unemployment and job insecurity in most countries. They have also created an income-concentrating dynamics of accumulation that has proven immune to Keynesian and reformist interventions. This book examines these challenges and dilemmas analytically, and empirically in different national contexts. This edited collection offers a theoretical critique of neoliberalism and a review of the contrasting experiences of eight middle-income countries (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and Venezuela). The studies included are interdisciplinary, ranging across economics, sociology, anthropology, international relations, political science and related social sciences. The book focuses on a materialist understanding of the workings of neoliberalism as a modality of social and economic reproduction, and its everyday practices of dispossession and exploitation. It will therefore be of particular interest to scholars in industrial policy, neoliberalism and development strategy.
Toward a Global Thin Community reexamines aspects of the liberal-communitarian debate. While critical of both traditions, this book argues that a coherent form of communitarianism is the only plausible option for citizens today. Using the theories of Frederich Nietzsche and Michael Foucault, Olssen shows how we can overcome traditional problems with communitarianism by using an ethic of survival that he identifies in the writings of Nietzsche and others to provide a normative framework for twenty-first century politics at both national and global levels. Thin communitarianism seeks to surmount traditional liberal objections associated with Hegel and Marx, and to safeguard liberty and difference by applying a robust idea of democracy. This work examines many different themes within the debate, including liberal autonomy, totalitarianism, and multiculturalism. It also considers the work of liberal writers such as Frederic Hayek, Karl Popper, and Isaiah Berlin. |
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