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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Liberalism & centre democratic ideologies
Labour and the Caucus provides a new, innovative pre-history of the Labour party. In the two decades following the Second Reform Act there was a sustained and concerted campaign for working-class parliamentary representation from a range of labour organisations to an extent that was hitherto unseen in British political history. The franchise revolution of 1867 and the controversial introduction of more sophisticated forms of electoral machinery, which became known as the 'caucus', raised serious questions not only for a labour movement seeking to secure political representation but also for a Liberal party that had to respond to the pressures of mass politics. Through a close examination of the interactions between labour and the 'caucus' from the 1868 general election to Keir Hardie's independent labour candidature in 1888, this book provides a comprehensive and multi-layered picture of the troubled relationship between working-class radicals and organised Liberalism. The electoral strategy of labour candidates, the links between urban and rural radicalism, the impact of the National Liberal Federation, the influence of American and Irish politics on the labour movement, the revival of socialism, and the contested identity of a 'Labour party' are all examined from fresh perspectives. In doing so, this book challenges the existing teleological assumptions about the rise of independent labour, and explores the questions that remain about how working-class radicals and Liberals shared and negotiated power, and how this relationship changed over time.
Regions are not simply bounded spaces on a map, this book argues. Using research of England during the 1980s to show how regions are made and unmade by social processes, it examines how lines of division, both social and geographical, were laid down as free-market growth and re-constructed as a "neo-liberal region". The authors argue that a more balanced form of growth is possible - within and between regions as well as between social groups. This book aims to show that to grasp the complexities of growth we must re-think "the region" in time as well as in space.
Originally published in 1955 as The Case for Modern Man, this book challenges the reader to believe in the essence of the modern temperament: the belief in the human mastery of destiny. It remains a brilliant answer to pessimists who try to frighten individuals with tales of sin and disaster, or those who hold the view that human beings are victims of circumstances. This is a positive statement, a distinguished and inspiring one, which examines human beings today in the light of human history, and demonstrates that improvements in social life were ever a function of intelligence. Frankel discusses the basic notions of Freud and Marx and their influence on the present epoch. He gives close scrutiny to the writings of Jacques Maritain, Reinhold Niebuhr and other doctrinal thinkers. This is a masterly reexamination of the liberal tradition and the people who created it. Frankel shows how Enlightenment has greater usefulness than ever before. Writing within a broadly naturalistic tradition, he argues that the way to restore our faith in ourselves and to restore confidence in our ability to make a better future is to deal with modernity in affirmative terms. The reader will find in these pages a hopeful and reasoned message about human values. Upon its publication, Robert M. McIver noted that Frankel "revives with remarkable clarity and incisiveness the much abused liberal tradition." And Lyman Bryson called the text "fresh and persuasive, of greatest importance in the present state of mind of America." A critical new introduction by the distinguished philosopher, Thelma Z. Lavine, will increase the value of this modern classic.
Provides a new perspective on the continuing debate about how liberalism should be defined and what it means incountries with an established parliamentary system, particularly in the democricies of Central and Eastern Europe.
Through a critical evaluation of the works of Norman Angell and David Mitrany, this book explores the liberal roots of the academic discipline of International Relations (IR). Ashworth argues that, far from being the product of timeless realist truths, IR's origins are rooted in liberal attempts to reform international affairs. Norman Angell's work represents the first attempt to develop a comprehensive 'new liberal' approach to the problem of global governance, while David Mitrany's exploration of the problems of international life led him to apply the left-liberal idea of functional government to global governance. Both writers demonstrated the extent to which early twentieth century liberal writers on international affairs had answered the critics of earlier nineteenth century liberal internationalists. The penultimate chapter argues that the realist-idealist 'Great Debate' never happened, and that liberal scholars such as Angell and Mitrany have been unfairly dismissed as 'idealists.' The final chapter evaluates the writings of Angell and Mitrany and claims that the works of both authors can be criticised for theoretical weaknesses common to the liberal paradigm.
Locke has iconic status as the "founder of Western liberalism", yet his legacy is contested by both conservatives and social democrats. These volumes contain over 60 important texts, with scholarly annotation and explanatory headnotes, that debate Locke's political ideas.
This volume brings together well-versed authors from four continents to critically discuss the roots of neoliberalism and how academics use the word today. Neoliberalism has recently recycled and mutated towards new forms of radicalization where fear plays a leading role legitimating policies, which would otherwise be overtly neglected by citizens. The authors ignite a new discussion within social sciences, combining the advances of sociology, history, anthropology, communication and the theory of mobilities to understand the different faces and guises of neoliberalism.
An explosive expose of the man who devoted his career to shackling democracy - and succeeded. Libertarian billionaires are using their wealth and power to drastically curtail the US democratic process, disempowering ordinary citizens whilst entrenching the influence of corporations as never before. In Democracy in Chains, award-winning historian Nancy MacLean reveals how the ideas of Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan have been used to undermine the power of voters in a country whose Constitution is founded on the principle 'We the people'. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, this chilling movement has a loyalist in the White House, as well as supporters in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts. Democracy in Chains is a timely, important book, which should be read by anybody interested in the future of democracy.
First published in 1997. Examining race, law, and religion in today's America, The Least of These highlights the power of these principles to both divide and unite, and promotes a new form of liberalism that incorporates the spiritual values long neglected by earlier progressive liberals. Relaunching the fundamental tenet of progressive liberalism-that a justly ordered society must protect the interests and promote opportunities for the least advantaged of its population-Anthony Cook argues for a revival of the progressive vision of American politics. While the affirmative action debates smolder around the country, Cook contends that the spiritual foundation of this liberal tenet must be unearthed and elaborated to fit our times before we can attempt to tackle the issues that the civil rights era has left unanswered. As the twentieth century closes, The Least of These provides a greater understanding of the roots of our ongoing socio-political struggles, and serves as an invaluable profile of progressive liberal politics from World War II to the present.
The premature death in 1991 of the Brazilian essayist, thinker and diplomat Jose G. Merquior robbed the international intellectual community of a gifted 'friend of reason and a defender of liberty'. Several essays in this volume, directly or indirectly, broadly or personally, pay tribute to the life and work of this 'politically engaged intellectual'. Part I examines Merquiorian thought itself and - aptly enough - begins with Merquior's own incisive review of the rebirth of the liberal idea and recommitment to democracy itself. Part II ranges more widely: here, such distinguished contributors as John Hall, Ernest Gellner and Noberto Bobbio develop some of Merquior's favourite themes - liberalism as it relates to social cohesion, political stability, morality, republicanism and democracy, and the relativism and scepticism that characterize postmodern thinking. The book's application to two regions of the world is direct and obvious: to Merquior's own Latin America and to Central and Eastern Europe, where rapid political change and economic transition have brought debates on liberalism to the forefront. But in Merquior's thought there are also lessons for Western Europe and the United States, where the very familiarity of the liberal tradition can lead to a certain sterility of ideas. These various perspectives in liberal political thought are brilliantly drawn out by Ernest Gellner in the Preface - one of the last pieces he wrote before his death in November 1995.
Opens up new histories of freedom and republicanism by building on Quentin Skinner's ground-breaking Liberty before Liberalism nearly twenty five years after its initial publication. Leading historians and philosophers reveal the neo-Roman conception of liberty that Skinner unearthed as a normative and historical hermeneutic tool of enormous, ongoing power. The volume thinks with neo-Romanism to offer reinterpretations of individual thinkers, such as Montaigne, Grotius and Locke. It probes the role of neo-Roman liberty within hierarchies and structures beyond that of citizen and state - namely, gender, slavery, and democracy. Finally, it reassesses the relationships between neo-Romanism and other languages in the history of political thought: liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and the human rights tradition. The volume concludes with a major reappraisal by Skinner himself.
This study is devoted to recent developments in Central European (especially Polish) political thought, and concentrates on the emergence of liberal ideas, a subject largely neglected by Western observers. It provides a clear account of protoliberal and liberal thinking in Central Europe both before and after 1989, a critical appraisal of the democratic opposition to communism, and an analysis of economic liberalism as its rival orientation. The author examines the changes which occur in classical liberal ideas when they are implemented in a region with practically no liberal tradition and no socioeconomic infrastructure, and shows how liberal ideas in Central Europe are becoming constructivist, functioning as the ideological justification for a new kind of Utopian social engineering that aims at constructing capitalism.
This new textbook invites readers to explore their own responses to
debates about democracy's meaning. It provides tools for thinking
actively about democracy as a practice, an ideal, and a site of
contestation. Open-minded and written with genuine clarity for an
undergraduate audience, Saward's book avoids providing easy answers
to democracy's dilemmas. Instead, it offers to students the diverse
approaches to democracy, showing how the key narratives of
contemporary political life have been created and adapted.
Working through a series of compelling real and hypothetical cases, twentieth-century narratives of democracy and their roots, and major new challenges such as globalization and environmentalism, the book makes the ideal starting point both for students already curious and those needing to be enticed and provoked. It concludes with an extraordinary snapshot and appraisal of the new theories of democracy that are making waves in the twenty-first century, and invites informed speculation on the shape of the democracy of the future. "Democracy" includes an extensive glossary of types of democracy, as well as a guide to further reading.
John Stuart Mill is the father of modern liberalism. His most remembered work, On Liberty, which was published in 1859, changed the course of the liberal tradition. What is less well-known is that his ideas have profoundly influenced the American constitutional rights tradition of the latter half of the twentieth century. Mill's 'harm principle' inspired the constitutional right to privacy recognized in Griswold v Connecticut, Roe vs Wade and other cases. His defense of freedom of expression influenced Justices Holmes, Brandeis, Douglas, Brennan and others and led to greatly expanded freedom of speech in the twentieth century. Finally, Mill was an ardent feminist whose last important work, The Subjection of Women, was a full-scale and, for its time, radical defense of complete gender equality. This is a book for lawyers who want to understand the intellectual origins of modern constitutional rights, and for political philosophers interested in the constitutional implications of Mill's conception of freedom.
For many liberal commentators at the turn of the 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union represented a final victory for Western reason and capitalist democracy. But, in recent years, liberal norms and institutions associated with the post-Cold War moment have been challenged by a visceral and affective politics. Electorates have increasingly opted for a closing inwards of the nation-state, not just in the democratic heartlands of Europe and North America, but also on the periphery of the world economy. As the popular appeal of the 'open society' is thrown into question, it is necessary to revisit assumptions about the permanence of its enabling political and ethical projects. Previously promoted by the US and its allies as a necessary complement to liberal capitalist culture and the globalisation of markets, humanitarian multilateralism seems to have lost strategic currency. In this collection of essays, public intellectuals, scholars, journalists and aid workers reflect on the relationship between humanitarianism and 'liberal order'. What role has humanitarianism played in processes of liberal ordering? Amidst challenges to liberal order, what are the implications for the political economy of humanitarianism, and for the practices of humanitarian agencies?
In spite of the fact that Conservative, Christian democratic and Liberal parties continue to play a crucial role in the democratic politics and governance of every Western European country, they are rarely paid the attention they deserve. This cutting-edge comparative collection, combining qualitative case studies with large-N quantitative analysis, reveals a mainstream right squeezed by the need to adapt to both 'the silent revolution' that has seen the spread of postmaterialist, liberal and cosmopolitan values and the backlash against those values - the 'silent counter-revolution' that has brought with it the rise of a myriad far right parties offering populist and nativist answers to many of the continent's thorniest political problems. What explains why some mainstream right parties seem to be coping with that challenge better than others? And does the temptation to ride the populist wave rather than resist it ultimately pose a danger to liberal democracy?
This pioneering work is the basic and largely unmatched study of the single transatlantic community of thought shared by nineteenth century British and Canadian Liberals and American Democrats. The result of more than tens years of comparative research, "The Transatlantic Persuasion" explores the roots of those ideas hat comprise a coherent Liberal-Democratic worldview: ideas about society, human relations, the economy, equality, liberty, the ethnocultural dimension of life, the proper role and nature of government, and the world community. In Britain, Canada, and the United States, Liberal-Democrats saw themselves as battlers against social evils caused by corrupt, self-seeking aristocracies. This was true whether their power was based on business wealth, land, or vested religious privilege; and in all three countries they developed practically identical public policy agendas. Widely praised for its graceful narrative style, its intriguing political and cultural analysis, and its sensitive feeling for the nuances of personality and the human condition, "The Transatlantic Persuasion" finds that cultural forces such as ethnicity, religion, and style of life have played an astonishingly central role in politics. Kelley sees a similar confrontation within each of the three countries between the core culture, including the Establishment and its institutions, and the outgroups, the culturally, socially, and often economically peripheral peoples. In Britain, for example, the Tories (Conservatives) were the aggressively dominant English, who look down on such minorities as the Scots and the Irish. These outgroups gathered within Gladstone's Liberal party, and from this base fought for equal status and treatment against prejudices. Similar patterns in Canada and the United States led to Kelley to conclude that these cultural facts of life were as important and powerful in public life as those that were purely economic in nature. Greeted with praise on its original publication in the general media as well as in major scholarly journals, "The Transatlantic Persuasion" performs history's highest office: It explains the present by placing it in the deep perspective of time, thus demonstrating how the past prefigures and shapes current events.
This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in "A Theory of Justice" but changes its philosophical interpretation in a fundamental way. That previous work assumed what Rawls calls a "well-ordered society," one that is stable and relatively homogenous in its basic moral beliefs and in which there is broad agreement about what constitutes the good life. Yet in modern democratic society a plurality of incompatible and irreconcilable doctrines -- religious, philosophical, and moral -- coexist within the framework of democratic institutions. Recognizing this as a permanent condition of democracy, Rawls asks how a stable and just society of free and equal citizens can live in concord when divided by reasonable but incompatible doctrines? This edition includes the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," which outlines Rawls' plans to revise "Political Liberalism, " which were cut short by his death. "An extraordinary well-reasoned commentary on "A Theory of Justice."..a decisive turn towards political philosophy." -- "Times Literary Supplement"
How has Christianity engaged with democracy? In this authoritative new treatment of a sometimes troubled relationship, Donald Norwood reflects on the way that democracy has become, especially under the auspices of the United Nations and the World Council of Churches, not just an ideal but a universally applicable moral principle. Yet, as the author demonstrates, faith and democracy have not always sat comfortably together. For example, the Vatican has dealt harshly with radical theologians such as Leonardo Boff and Hans Kung; while churches with a dictatorial style have all too often shown a willingness to accommodate authoritarian regimes and even dictators. Norwood argues that if democracy is a universal norm, a basic right, it is not possible for the Church to be indifferent to its claims. Offering a sustained exposition - from Marsilius of Padua to Christian Democracy and Christian Socialism - of the often uneasy interaction between Christianity and democratic politics as both idea and ideal, this is a major contribution to church history and to wider topical debates in politics and religious studies.
The premise of The Diversity of Darkness and Shameful Behaviors is to emphasize the need for enlightened, rational thinking as a paradigm of thought as the culture of shamelessness continues to grow and cast its repulsive dark shadow over those who embrace enlightened reason and basic human rights for all. Diversity of Darkness is an innovative work and represents the third book of a trilogy written by the author that underscores the reality that there are many shamefully hateful and deadly behavioral threats that have jeopardized the very notions of civility, decency and justice around the world. This unique book utilizes evidence-based approaches in the examination of human behaviors in society that have become increasingly shameful and tolerated among a growing number of enablers. Key features include a combination of academic analyses that draw on numerous and specific examples of the diversity of darkness that encompasses the world along with a balanced practical, everyday-life approach to the study of the socio-political world we live in through the use of contemporary culture references and featured popular culture boxes. Social scientists, social thinkers and the general audience alike will be intrigued by the diversity of topics covered, including anti-civil rights movements; the rise of supremacist groups; hate crimes; mass shootings and active shootings; terrorism, war and genocide; an increase in shameful behaviors and attempts to shame others; and attacks on science, reason and rationality. We should realize that humanity has the intellect to accomplish great feats but heed the growing culture of shamelessness, irrationality and the diversity of darkness.
Between 1989 and 1993, with the end of the Cold War, Tiananmen, and Deng Xiaoping's renewed reform, Chinese intellectuals said goodbye to radicalism. In newly-founded journals, interacting with those who had left mainland China around 1949 to revive Chinese culture from the margins, they now challenged the underlying creed of Chinese socialism and the May Fourth Movement that there was 'no making without breaking'. Realistic Revolution covers the major debates of this period on radicalism in history, culture, and politics from a transnational perspective, tracing intellectual exchanges as China repositioned itself in Asia and the world. In this realistic revolution, Chinese intellectuals paradoxically espoused conservatism in the service of future modernization. They also upheld rationalism and gradualism after Maoist utopia but concurrently rewrote history to re-establish morality. Finally, their self-identification as scholars was a response to rapid social change that nevertheless left their concern with China's fate unaltered.
The Brexit and Trump shocks of 2016 mark a deep caesura in the history of liberal societies. It is no longer sufficient, if it ever was, to look at Western states' immigration and citizenship policies through the single lens of advancing liberalism. Instead, two additional forces need to be reckoned with: a new nationalism, but also the neoliberal restructuring of state and society in which it is generated. Joppke demonstrates that many of the new policies have their roots in neoliberalism rather than the new nationalism. Moreover, some of them, such as 'earned citizenship', are the product of neoliberalism and nationalism working in tandem, in terms of a neoliberal nationalism. The neoliberalism-nationalism nexus is complex, its elements sometimes opposing but sometimes complementing or even constituting one another. This topical book will appeal to students and scholars of populism, nationalism, and immigration and citizenship, across comparative politics, sociology and political theory.
The Brexit and Trump shocks of 2016 mark a deep caesura in the history of liberal societies. It is no longer sufficient, if it ever was, to look at Western states' immigration and citizenship policies through the single lens of advancing liberalism. Instead, two additional forces need to be reckoned with: a new nationalism, but also the neoliberal restructuring of state and society in which it is generated. Joppke demonstrates that many of the new policies have their roots in neoliberalism rather than the new nationalism. Moreover, some of them, such as 'earned citizenship', are the product of neoliberalism and nationalism working in tandem, in terms of a neoliberal nationalism. The neoliberalism-nationalism nexus is complex, its elements sometimes opposing but sometimes complementing or even constituting one another. This topical book will appeal to students and scholars of populism, nationalism, and immigration and citizenship, across comparative politics, sociology and political theory.
This study addresses the complex and often fractious relationship between liberal political theory and difference by examining how distinctive liberalisms respond to human diversity. Drawing on published and unpublished writings, private correspondence and lecture notes, the study offers comprehensive reconstructions of Immanuel Kant's and John Stuart Mill's treatment of racial, cultural, gender-based and class-based difference to understand how two leading figures reacted to pluralism, and what contemporary readers might draw from them. The book mounts a qualified defence of Millian liberalism against Kantianism's predominance in contemporary liberal political philosophy, and resists liberalism's implicit association with imperialist domination by showing different divergent responses to diversity. Here are two distinctive liberal visions of moral and political life.
Compared to rival ideologies, liberalism has fared rather poorly in modern Iran. This is all the more remarkable given the essentially liberal substance of various social and political struggles - for liberal legality, individual rights and freedoms, and pluralism - in the century-long period since the demise of the Qajar dynasty and the subsequent transformation of the country into a modern nation-state. The deeply felt but largely invisible purchase of liberal political ideas in Iran challenges us to think more expansively about the trajectory of various intellectual developments since the emergence of a movement for reform and constitutionalism in the late nineteenth century. It complicates parsimonious accounts of Shi'ism, secularism, socialism, nationalism, and royalism as defining or representative ideologies of particular eras. Hidden Liberalism offers a critical examination of the reasons behind liberalism's invisible yet influential status, and its attendant ethical quandaries, in Iranian political and intellectual discourses. |
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