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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Liberalism & centre democratic ideologies
Liberal peacebuilding too often builds neither peace nor Liberalism. In a growing number of cases, people aren't rejecting and relegating democracy because it's bad; they're challenging it because it isn't relevant to their priorities and needs. The peacebuilding 'moment' - when consent for intervention is present and the opportunity to build a sustainable social contract between peacebuilders and people is most fruitful - is being squandered. This relationship, between governed and governance, relies on mutual needs realization, but there is no formal or informal requirement and mechanism for ascertaining what the 'subjects' of peacebuilding might prioritize. Instead, peacebuilders give the 'subjects' of peacebuilding what they think they should have. This legitimacy gap - between what peacebuilders give and what subjects want - is the subject of this book. Through a range of empirical case studies conducted by country specialists, the book reveals that, when asked, people often prioritize roads, electricity, jobs, housing, schooling and pertinent justice (amongst other things) in the immediate aftermath of war. We find that mapping this locus of legitimacy may help develop the kind of relationship upon which the sustainability of any social contract between governed and governance rests. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.
Classical Liberalism in the Age of Post-Communism reconstructs the theory of classical liberalism as a unified doctrine that encompasses political economy, jurisprudence and social philosophy. Norman Barry's essay provides explanations of the market economy, entrepreneurship, property rights theory and constitutionalism from a classical liberal perspective. The main elements of this doctrine are defended by Professor Barry against the criticisms of egalitarians, communitarians and the new reconstructed socialists. Despite some intellectual and practical successes the classical liberal doctrine has failed to capture the imagination of the establishment in the social sciences or the support of the electorate at large. Professor Barry shows how classical liberal public choice theory can counteract the apparent decline of the doctrine and enable us to explore the meanings of liberty, social justice and law in the context of contemporary social theory.
The notion that we are experiencing a change in times, whereby an old global order is giving way to a new one, has been gaining legitimacy in international debates. As US power is waning, the argument goes, so is the set of liberal norms, rules and institutions around which the Unites States organised its global supremacy. Ideational contests, power shifts, regional fragmentation, and socio-economic turmoil paint a broad picture of complex and often inter-related challenges that fuel contestation of the liberal order, both as a normative project and as an emanation of US power. Major players - China and India, Europe and Russia, and the United States itself - are all engaged in a process of global repositioning, most notably in areas where the liberal project has only fragile roots and order is contested: Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. This volume aims to provide critical frames of reference for understanding whether geopolitical and ideational contestations will eventually bring the US-centred liberal order down or lead to a process of adjustment and transformation. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue in The International Spectator.
In a compelling meditation on the ideas that shape our lives, one of the world's most provocative and creative philosophers explains how his eccentric early years influenced his lifelong critique of liberalism. Liberalism is so amorphous and pervasive that for most people in the West it is background noise, the natural state of affairs. But there are nooks and crannies in every society where the prevailing winds don't blow. Raymond Geuss grew up some distance from the cultural mainstream and recounts here the unusual perspective he absorbed: one in which liberal capitalism was synonymous with moral emptiness and political complacency. Not Thinking like a Liberal is a concise tour of diverse intellectual currents-from the Counter-Reformation and communism to pragmatism and critical theory-that shaped Geuss's skeptical stance toward liberalism. The bright young son of a deeply Catholic steelworker, Geuss was admitted in 1959 to an unusual boarding school on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Outside was Eisenhower's America. Inside Geuss was schooled by Hungarian priests who tried to immunize students against the twin dangers of oppressive communism and vapid liberal capitalism. From there Geuss went on to university in New York in the early days of the Vietnam War and to West Germany, where critical theory was experiencing a major revival. This is not a repeatable journey. In tracing it, Geuss reminds us of the futility of abstracting lessons from context and of seeking a universal view from nowhere. At the same time, he examines the rise and fall of major political theories of the past sixty years. An incisive thinker attuned to both the history and the future of ideas, Geuss looks beyond the horrors of authoritarianism and the shallow freedom of liberalism to glimpse a world of genuinely new possibilities.
The crisis of liberalism is found in the liberal claim to endorse a set of neutral procedures that allow individuals and groups to pursue their own good, when the very possibility of such neutrality is brought into question by the growth of plural societies, and the divided loyalties that go with them. This collection explores this crisis. Modern states rely on agreements to secure the loyalty of citizens. But growing social pluralism means a growing division in loyalties among citizens along lines of ideology, ethnicity, gender, religion and locale. The liberal answer to diversity is to devise a set of fair procedures - which do not dictate the ultimate good chosen by members. The question which the contributors directly confront is whether such neutrality is genuinely possible.
In "Beyond Nihilism, "Michael Polanyi argued that a merely "negative" liberty of doing as one pleases so long as one does not impinge upon the equal liberty of others--must and has led to destructive nihilism and a fierce reaction to collectivism. R.T. Allen takes up this argument in "Beyond Liberalism, "and shows how Polanyi's political philosophy evolved into a more "positive" and distinctly conservative concept of liberty, converging upon the archetypal conservatism of Edmund Burke. Allen examines Polanyi's and F.A. Hayek's thinking with respect to the nature, value, and foundations of liberty. Negative and positive liberties are two sides of one liberty, and Allen believes negative conceptions of liberty are as dangerous as positive ones. He distinguishes among general and abstract definitions of liberty and shows how all, including that of Hayek, ultimately dissolve. According to Allen, only tacit conceptions of liberty, such as those of Burke and Polanyi, prove viable. This is because they rest on concrete tradition. Allen examines how the skeptical, rationalist, and utilitarian philosophies of Ludwig von Mises and Sir Karl Popper fail to support the value of liberty and even proved to be destructive of it. Allen argues that society cannot rely upon the classically liberal notion of contract but rather upon prescriptive and inherited obligations. In turn, this means that citizens have positive, as well as negative, duties to each other and the body politic of which they are part and upon whose support liberty depends. A free society is held together by emotional bonds and the traditions and rituals that sustain them. A free society also presupposes that the individual has inherent value in and for himself. For R.T. Allen, only Christianity, and certainly no modern philosophy, has a conception of the unique individual and his irreplaceable value and of a political order that transcends itself into the moral order. Even Polanyi's liberty is ultimately insufficient, for it gives no inherent value to the person himself but instead to the ideals which he serves. "Beyond Liberalism "challenges deeply ingrained notions of liberty and its meaning in modern society. It is a call for traditions of self-restraint and justice for their own sakes. This noteworthy volume is an essential addition to the libraries of political scientists, philosophers, and theologians alike.
Nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals were faced with a dilemma. They had to choose between modernizing their country, thus imitating the West, or reaffirming what was perceived as their country's own values and thereby risk remaining socially underdeveloped and unable to compete with Western powers. Scholars have argued that this led to the emergence of an anti-Western, anti-modern ethnic nationalism. In this innovative book, Susanna Rabow-Edling shows that there was another solution to the conflicting agendas of modernization and cultural authenticity - a Russian liberal nationalism. This nationalism took various forms during the long nineteenth century, but aimed to promote reforms through a combination of liberalism, nationalism and imperialism.
This is an agenda-setting exploration of the relationship between green politics and liberal ideology. Ecological problems provide unique challenges for liberal democracies. This challenge is examined by the author who aims to fill the gap between short-term ecological modernization and the politically infeasible longer term utopian approaches.
Not available since the 1980s, this up-dated edition by the leading political philosopher, John Gray, outlines his new position on Hayek. In a substantial new chapter, Gray assesses how far the historical development of the last ten years can be deployed in a critique of Hayek's thought. His reassessment is not only a provoking study of a classical philosopher. It is also a timely contribution to the debate over the future of conservatism, as Gray argues that Hayekian liberalism - 'the most well-articulated political theory of the new right' - is flawed.
This major book brings together four essays which rigorously defend classical liberal philosophy and present a convincing justification of the minimal state.In Before Resorting to Politics, the first essay, Anthony de Jasay rejects political solutions, seeks to de-politicise society and provides an original analysis of liberty, coercion, the role of chance and deserts in the distribution of resources. This is followed by Norman Barry's Classical Liberalism in the Age of Post-Communism, a succinct but comprehensive reconstruction of classical liberal theory explaining its implications for law, constitutionalism and public policy. Adam Smith into the Twenty-First Century by Edwin West shows how Smith's liberalism - less ambivalent than that of J.S. Mill and his followers - continues to thrive and is enjoying a revival in the 1990s. In the final essay, Economic Policy in a Liberal Democracy, Richard E. Wagner offers an approach to welfare economics and economic policy appropriate for a classically liberal society. The essays are co-ordinated by an introduction in which Charles K. Rowley explains why some notable classical liberal scholars have abandoned classical liberalism and presents a vigorous philosophical justification for the minimal state. Including essays by some of the most eminent scholars in the field, The Political Economy of the Minimal State makes an important and distinguished contribution to one of the most contentious issues in twentieth century political economy.
When talking about his film Salo, Pasolini claimed that nothing is more anarchic than power, because power does whatever it wants, and what power wants is totally arbitrary. And yet, upon examining the murderous capital of modern sovereignty, the fragility emerges of a power whose existence depends on its victims' recognition. Like a prayer from God, the command implores to be loved, also by those whom it puts to death. Benefitting from this "political theurgy" as the book calls it (the idea that a power, like God, claiming to be full of glory, constantly needs to be glorified) is Barnardine, the Bohemian murderer in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, as he, called upon by power to the gallows, answers with a curse: 'a pox o' your throats'. He does not want to die, nor, indeed, will he. And so, he becomes sovereign. On a level with and against the State.
Here is the first book to cover the history of British Liberalism from its founding doctrines in the later eighteenth century to the final dissolution of the Liberal party into the Liberal Democrats in 1988. The Party dominated British politics for much of the later nineteenth-century, most notably under Gladstone, whose premierships spanned 1868-1894, and during the early twentieth, but after the resignation of Lloyd George in 1922 the Liberal Party never held office again. The decline of the Party remains a unique phenomenon in British politics and Alan Sykes illuminates its dramatic and peculiar circumstances in this comprehensive study.
Beginning with the new worlds of the Renaissance and the Reformation, this book traces the growth of liberal doctrine through the advent of the French Revolution. It shows the relationship of liberalism to the emerging economic system of capitalism, and the impact of this relationship upon science, philosophy, and literature. Laski explains how the same causes which produced the socially active aspect of liberalism also inspired the growth of socialism. The contributions of men like Machiavelli, Locke, and Voltaire, the influence of the voyages of discovery, and the effect of the Puritan Rebellion are among the special topics discussed. The Rise of European Liberalism is a historical survey of the development of liberal thought, from its earliest whispers in early Protestantism to its significance in the "Red Decade" of the 1930s. Laski argues that liberalism as a philosophy came into existence with the rise of capitalism and thus functions primarily as an ideological defense of private property in a business civilization. Hence, liberalism's progressive side is doomed to defeat because, throughout its history, the bourgeois nature of the ideology has always prevailed. In the new introduction, John Stanley traces the history and influences of Laski's thought and provides a detailed analysis of Laski's work. The essay provides a coherent study in itself of why Laski is better remembered than widely read. The Rise of European Liberalism is a classic text that deserves rediscovery for historians, philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists of the present day.
Since unification, fears of resurgent German nationalism have mounted. In particular, many believe united Germany is reverting to a xenophobic nationalist stance to deal with the increased pressures of migration unleashed by the raising of the Iron curtain. The author argues that these fears are exaggerated. He documents a longstanding, steadily increasing, committment to the liberal principles of the Basic Law in the Federal Republic's policies, which protect foreigners against hostile German nationalism. O'Brien goes on to criticize the very entrenched liberalism which holds German nationalism in check. He traces among German political elites the appeal and uses of "technocratic liberalism" - an overzealous protection of Germany's liberal democracy which, paradoxically, prevents minority groups from achieving full rights of political participation.
Changing the Wor(l)d draws on feminist publishing, postmodern
theory and feminist autobiography to powerfully critique both
liberal feminism and scholarship on the women's movement, arguing
that both ignore feminism's unique contributions to social analysis
and politics. These contributions recognize the power of discourse,
the diversity of women's experiences, and the importance of
changing the world through changing consciousness.
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.
Examining, in the widest sense, the changes in political philosophy that have occurred in Western capitalist states since the early 1980s, this book focuses on the introduction of neo-liberal principles in the combined area of social and education policy.;New Zealand presents a paradigm example of the neo-liberal shift in political philosophy. From constituting the "social laboratory" of the Western world in the 1930s in terms of social welfare provision, New Zealand has become the neo-liberal "experiment" of the fully "marketised" society in the 1990s. Against the theoretical background of educational theory and practice, this book examines neo-liberalism and its critiques as responses to the so-called crisis of the welfare state and argues for a reformulated critical social policy in the postmodern condition. The conclusions about social policy drawn by the authors can be generalized to similar situations in other Western capitalist countries.
The agenda of external actors often includes a number of objectives that do not necessarily and automatically go together. Fostering security and stability in semi-authoritarian regimes collides with policies aimed at the support of processes of democratization prone to conflict and destabilization. Meanwhile, the promotion of national self-determination and political empowerment might lead to forms of democracy, partially incompatible with liberal understandings. These conflicting objectives are often problematized as challenges to the effectiveness of international democracy promotion. This book presents systematic research about their emergence and effects. The contributing authors investigate (post-) conflict societies, developing countries, and authoritarian regimes in Southeast Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. They identify the socio-economic and political conditions in the recipient country, the interaction between international and local actors, and the capacity of international and local actors as relevant for explaining the emergence of conflicting objectives. And they empirically show that faced with conflicting objectives donors either use a 'wait and see'-approach (i.e. not to act to overcome such conflicts), they prioritize security, state-building and development over democracy, or they compromise democracy promotion with other goals. However, convincing strategies for dealing with such conflicts still need to be devised. This book was published as a special issue of Democratization.
"Democracy in Britain "includes a rich and varied selection of key writings, from the debates around Britain's representative and democratic institutions, from constitutional commentary and diaries to poetry and fiction; from Locke and Burke to Dryden and Auden; and from Magna Carta to "Spycatcher."Provides the best resource available for the understanding and study of Britain's system of representative democracy The editors have made efforts throughout to make the material selected accessible to non-specialists Rather than following one side of the debate on British democracy, this presents the reader with both sides of the argument Sponsored by the British Council, the book will receive special advertising and promotion
Examining, in the widest sense, the changes in political philosophy that have occurred in Western capitalist states since the early 1980s, this book focuses on the introduction of neo-liberal principles in the combined area of social and education policy. New Zealand presents a paradigm example of the neo-liberal shift in political philosophy. From constituting the social laboratory of the Western world in the 1930s in terms of social welfare provision, New Zealand has become the neo-liberal experiment of the fully marketised society in the 1990s. Against the theoretical background of educational theory and practice, this book examines neo-liberalism and its critiques as responses to the so-called crisis of the welfare state and argues for a reformulated critical social policy in the postmodern condition. The conclusions about social policy drawn by the authors can be generalized to similar situations in other Western capitalist countries.
Foucault is often thought to have a great deal to say about the history of madness and sexuality, but little in terms of a general analysis of government and the state.; This volume draws on Foucault's own research to challenge this view, demonstrating the central importance of his work for the study of contemporary politics.; It focuses on liberalism and neo- liberalism, questioning the conceptual opposition of freedom/constraint, state/market and public/private that inform liberal thought. |
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