Recent proposals concerning Confucian meritocratic perfectionism have justified Confucian perfectionism in terms of political meritocracy. In contrast, 'Confucian democratic perfectionism' is a form of comprehensive Confucian perfectionism that can accommodate a plurality of values in civil society. It is also fully compatible with core values of democracy such as popular sovereignty, political equality, and the right to political participation. Sungmoon Kim presents 'public reason Confucianism' as the most attractive option for contemporary East Asian societies that are historically and culturally Confucian. Public reason Confucianism is a particular style of Confucian democratic perfectionism in which comprehensive Confucianism is connected with perfectionism via a distinctive form of public reason. It calls for an active role for the democratic state in promoting a Confucian conception of the good life, at the heart of which are such core Confucian values as filial piety and ritual propriety.

With the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935, the US government ushered in a new era of social welfare policies, to counteract the devastation of The Great Depression. While political philosophers generally view the welfare state to be built on values of equality and human dignity, America's politicians, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt, argued on different grounds. From the beginning, Roosevelt based his defense of the welfare state on the individualist, or Lockean premises inherent in America's political culture. As a result, he not only encouraged the United States' commitment to individualism, but also contributed to distinctively harsh American stigmatization of welfare recipients. In The Transformation of American Liberalism, George Klosko explores how American political leaders have justified social welfare programs since the 1930s, ultimately showing how their arguments have contributed to notably ungenerous programs. Students of political theory note the evolution of liberal political theory between its origins and major contemporary theorists who justify the values and social policies of the welfare state. But the transformation of liberalism in American political culture is incomplete. Individualist values and beliefs have exerted a continuing hold on America's leaders, constraining their justificatory arguments. The paradoxical result may be described as continuing attempts to justify new social programs without acknowledging incompatibility between the arguments necessary to do so and American culture's individualist assumptions. An important reason for the striking absence of strong and widely recognized arguments for social welfare programs in American political culture is that its political leaders did not provide them.

What did democracy mean before liberalism? What are the consequences for our lives today? Combining history with political theory, this book restores the core meaning of democracy as collective and limited self-government by citizens. That, rather than majority tyranny, is what democracy meant in ancient Athens, before liberalism. Participatory self-government is the basis of political practice in 'Demopolis', a hypothetical modern state powerfully imagined by award-winning historian and political scientist Josiah Ober. Demopolis' residents aim to establish a secure, prosperous, and non-tyrannical community, where citizens govern as a collective, both directly and through representatives, and willingly assume the costs of self-government because doing so benefits them, both as a group and individually. Basic democracy, as exemplified in real Athens and imagined Demopolis, can provide a stable foundation for a liberal state. It also offers a possible way forward for religious societies seeking a realistic alternative to autocracy.

Thomas Paine, though prominent in two Revolutions and almost hanged for attempting to raise a third, is grown in our day, somewhat dim. He incurred the bitter hostility of three men not generally united: Pitt, Robespierre, and Washington. Of these the first two sought his death, while the third carefully abstained from measures designed to save his life. Pitt and Washington hated him because he was a democrat; Robespierre, because he opposed the execution of the King and the Reign of Terror. Trevor Griffiths' thrilling screenplay carries Tom Paine from persecution in England, to the American War of Independence, to Revolutionary France, mixing politics, love and war. as a consequence, Tom Paine's light shines brighter as his bi-centenary approaches.

Liberal candidates, scholars, and activists mainly promote pragmatism rather than large and powerful narratives - which may be called 'alpha stories' for their commanding presence over time. Alternatively, conservative counterparts to such liberals tend to promote their policy preferences in alpha stories praising effective markets, excellent traditions, and limited government. In this face-off, liberals represent a post-Enlightenment world where many modern people, following Max Weber, are 'disenchanted', while many conservatives, echoing Edmund Burke, cherish stories borrowed from the past. Politics without Stories describes this storytelling gap as an electoral disadvantage for liberals because their campaigning lacks, and will continue to lack, the inspiration and shared commitments that great, long-term stories can provide. Therefore, Ricci argues that, for tactical purposes, liberals should concede their post-Enlightenment skepticism and rally around short-term stories designed to frame, in political campaigns, immediate situations which they regard as intolerable. These may help liberals win elections and influence the course of modern life.

While there had been much radical thought before John Stuart Mill, Joseph Persky argues it was Mill, as he moved to the left, who provided the radical wing of liberalism with its first serious analytical foundation, a political economy of progress that still echoes today. A rereading of Mill's mature work suggests his theoretical understanding of accumulation led him to see laissez-faire capitalism as a transitional system. Deeply committed to the egalitarian precepts of the Enlightenment, Mill advocated gradualism and rejected revolutionary expropriation on utilitarian grounds: gradualism, not expropriation, promised meaningful long-term gains for the working classes. He endorsed laissez-faire capitalism because his theory of accumulation saw that system approaching a stationary state characterized by a great reduction in inequality and an expansion of cooperative production. These tendencies, in combination with an aggressive reform agenda made possible by the extension of the franchise, promised to provide a material base for social progress and individual development. The Political Economy of Progress goes on to claim that Mill's radical political economy anticipated more than a little of Marx's analysis of capitalism and laid a foundation for the work of Fabians and other gradualist radicals in the 20th century. More recently, modern philosophic radicals, such as Rawls, have deep links to this Millean political economy. These links are still worthy of development. In particular, a politically meaningful acceptance of Rawls's radical liberalism waits on a movement capable of re-engineering the workplace in a manner consistent with Mill's endorsement of worker management.

Winner of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung prize

The financial crisis seemed to present a fundamental challenge to neo-liberalism, the body of ideas that have constituted the political orthodoxy of most advanced economies in recent decades. Colin Crouch argues in this book that it will shrug off this challenge. The reason is that while neo-liberalism seems to be about free markets, in practice it is concerned with the dominance over public life of the giant corporation. This has been intensified, not checked, by the recent financial crisis and acceptance that certain financial corporations are 'too big to fail'. Although much political debate remains preoccupied with conflicts between the market and the state, the impact of the corporation on both these is today far more important.

Several factors have brought us to this situation: Most obviously, the lobbying power of firms whose donations are of growing importance to cash-hungry politicians and parties;The weakening of competitive forces by firms large enough to shape and dominate their markets;The power over public policy exercised by corporations enjoying special relationships with government as they contract to deliver public services;The moral initiative that is grasped by enterprises that devise their own agendas of corporate social responsibility.

Both democratic politics and the free market are weakened by these processes, but they are largely inevitable and not always malign. Hope for the future, therefore, cannot lie in suppressing them in order to attain either an economy of pure markets or a socialist society. Rather it lies in dragging the giant corporation fully into political controversy. Here a key role is played by the small, cash-strapped campaigning groups who, with precious little help from established parties, seek to achieve corporate social accountability.

Neoliberalism is easily one of the most powerful concepts to emerge within the social sciences in the last two decades, and the number of scholars who write about this dynamic and unfolding process of socio-spatial transformation is astonishing. Even more surprising though is that there has, until now, not been an attempt to provide a wide-ranging volume that engages with the multiple registers in which neoliberalism has evolved. The Handbook of Neoliberalism seeks to offer a wide-ranging overview of the phenomenon of neoliberalism by examining a number of ways that it has been theorized, promoted, critiqued, and put into practice in a variety of geographical locations and institutional frameworks. With contributions from over 50 leading authors working at institutions around the world, the volume's seven sections provide a systematic overview of neoliberalism's origins, political implications, social tensions, knowledge productions, spaces, natures and environments, and aftermaths in addressing ongoing and emerging debates. The volume aims to provide the first comprehensive overview of the field and to advance the established and emergent debates in a field that has grown exponentially over the past two decades, coinciding with the meteoric rise of neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology, state form, policy and program, and governmentality. It includes a substantive introductory chapter and will serve as an invaluable resource for undergraduates, graduate students, and professional scholars alike.

Why nationalism is a permanent political force-and how it can be harnessed once again for liberal ends Around the world today, nationalism is back-and it's often deeply troubling. Populist politicians exploit nationalism for authoritarian, chauvinistic, racist, and xenophobic purposes, reinforcing the view that it is fundamentally reactionary and antidemocratic. But Yael (Yuli) Tamir makes a passionate argument for a very different kind of nationalism-one that revives its participatory, creative, and egalitarian virtues, answers many of the problems caused by neoliberalism and hyperglobalism, and is essential to democracy at its best. In Why Nationalism, she explains why it is more important than ever for the Left to recognize these qualities of nationalism, to reclaim it from right-wing extremists, and to redirect its power to progressive ends. Far from being an evil force, nationalism's power lies in its ability to empower individuals and answer basic human needs. Using it to reproduce cross-class coalitions will ensure that all citizens share essential cultural, political, and economic goods. Shifting emphasis from the global to the national and putting one's nation first is not a way of advocating national supremacy but of redistributing responsibilities and sharing benefits in a more democratic and just way. In making the case for a liberal and democratic nationalism, Tamir also provides a compelling original account of the ways in which neoliberalism and hyperglobalism have allowed today's Right to co-opt nationalism for its own purposes. Provocative and hopeful, Why Nationalism is a timely and essential rethinking of a defining feature of our politics.

Liberal regimes shape the ethical outlooks of their citizens, relentlessly influencing their most personal commitments over time. On such issues as abortion, homosexuality, and women's rights, many religious Americans feel pulled between their personal beliefs and their need, as good citizens, to support individual rights. These circumstances, argues John Tomasi, raise new and pressing questions: Is liberalism as successful as it hopes in avoiding the imposition of a single ethical doctrine on all of society? If liberals cannot prevent the spillover of public values into nonpublic domains, how accommodating of diversity can a liberal regime actually be? To what degree can a liberal society be a home even to the people whose viewpoints it was formally designed to include?

To meet these questions, Tomasi argues, the boundaries of political liberal theorizing must be redrawn. Political liberalism involves more than an account of justified state coercion and the norms of democratic deliberation. Political liberalism also implies a distinctive account of nonpublic social life, one in which successful human lives must be built across the interface of personal and public values. Tomasi proposes a theory of liberal nonpublic life. To live up to their own deepest commitments to toleration and mutual respect, liberals, he insists, must now rethink their conceptions of social justice, civic education, and citizenship itself. The result is a fresh look at liberal theory and what it means for a liberal society to function well.

Many political theorists today deny that citizenship can be defended on liberal grounds alone. Cosmopolitans claim that loyalty to a particular state is incompatible with universal liberal principles, which hold that we have equal duties of justice to persons everywhere, while nationalist theorists justify civic obligations only by reaching beyond liberal principles and invoking the importance of national culture. In "Liberal Loyalty," Anna Stilz challenges both views by defending a distinctively liberal understanding of citizenship.

Drawing on Kant, Rousseau, and Habermas, Stilz argues that we owe civic obligations to the state if it is sufficiently just, and that constitutionally enshrined principles of justice in themselves--rather than territory, common language, or shared culture--are grounds for obedience to our particular state and for democratic solidarity with our fellow citizens. She demonstrates that specifying what freedom and equality mean among a particular people requires their democratic participation together as a group. Justice, therefore, depends on the authority of the democratic state because there is no way equal freedom can be defined or guaranteed without it. Yet, as Stilz shows, this does not mean that each of us should entertain some vague loyalty to democracy in general. Citizens are politically obligated to their own state and to each other, because within their particular democracy they define and ultimately guarantee their own civil rights.

"Liberal Loyalty" is a persuasive defense of citizenship on purely liberal grounds.

There is an enduring assumption that the French have never been and will never be liberal. As with all cliches, this contains a grain of truth, but it also overlooks an important school of thought that has been a constant presence in French intellectual and political culture for nearly three centuries: French political liberalism. In this collaborative volume, a distinguished group of philosophers, political theorists and intellectual historians uncover this unjustly neglected tradition. The chapters examine the nature and distinctiveness of French liberalism, providing a comprehensive treatment of major themes including French liberalism's relationship with republicanism, Protestantism, utilitarianism and the human rights tradition. Individual chapters are devoted to Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Aron, Lefort and Gauchet, as well as to some lesser known, yet important thinkers, including several political economists and French-style 'neoliberals'. French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day is essential reading for all those interested in the history of political thought.

The three decades after the end of World War II saw the rise and fall of a particular version of liberalism in which the state committed itself to promoting a modest form of economic egalitarianism while simultaneously embracing ethnic, racial, and religious pluralism. But by the mid-1970s, postwar liberalism was in a shambles: while its commitment to pluralism remained, its economic policies had been abandoned, and the Democratic Party, its primary political vehicle, was collapsing. Schiller attributes this demise to the legal architecture of postwar liberalism, arguing that postwar liberalism's goals of advancing economic egalitarianism and promoting pluralism ultimately conflicted with each other. Through the use of specific historical examples, Schiller demonstrates that postwar liberalism was riddled with legal and institutional contradictions that undermined progressive politics in the mid-twentieth-century United States.

Alan Houston introduces a new level of rigor into contemporary debates over republicanism by providing the first complete account of the range, structure, and influence of the political writings of Algernon Sidney (1623-1683). Though not well known today, Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government influenced radicals in England and America throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To many, it was a "textbook of revolution." Houston begins with a masterful intellectual biography tracing the development of Sidney's ideas in the political and intellectual context of Stuart England, and he concludes with a detailed study of the impact of Sidney's writings and heroic martyrdom on revolutionary America. Documenting the interdependence of what have previously been regarded as distinctly "liberal" and "republican" theories, the author provides a new perspective on Anglo-American political thought. Many scholars have assumed that the republican language of virtue is distinct from and in tension with the liberal logic of rights and interests. By focusing on the contemporary meaning of concepts like freedom and slavery or virtue and corruption, Houston demonstrates that Sidney's republicanism and Locke's liberalism were not rivals but frequently complemented each other. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Whereas most writing on the Communist Revolution in China has concentrated on the influence of intellectual leaders, this book examines the role of peasants in the upheaval, viewing them not as a malleable mass but as a dynamic social force interacting with the radical intelligentsia. Focusing on the Xinjiang region, Kamal Sheel traces the historical roots of the early twentieth-century agrarian crisis that led to a large-scale revolution in the late 1920s, one of the most successful peasant movements organized by the Chinese Communists. A fresh analysis emerges of the remarkable Marxist intellectual Fang Zhimin, who used his deeply entrenched rural connections to organize the movement through a creative synthesis of traditional folk concepts with modern Marxist thought. This history begins with the impact of the Taiping Rebellion and proceeds to document the rapid disintegration of the small peasant economy under the pressures of world economics, a "state in crisis," and a qualitatively different landed upper class. It discusses exploitation, protest, and rural uprisings in the context of the "crisis of paternalism," marked by a progressive deterioration in the social relationships in rural areas. Integrating this investigation of rural upheaval with recent social science theories on peasant movements, the study ultimately explores the growth of the Xinjiang revolutionary movement. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

At the start of the twenty-first century, 1 percent of the U.S. population is behind bars. An additional 3 percent is on parole or probation. In all but two states, incarcerated felons cannot vote, and in three states felon disenfranchisement is for life. More than 5 million adult Americans cannot vote because of a felony-class criminal conviction, meaning that more than 2 percent of otherwise eligible voters are stripped of their political rights. Nationally, fully a third of the disenfranchised are African American, effectively disenfranchising 8 percent of all African Americans in the United States. In Alabama, Kentucky, and Florida, one in every five adult African Americans cannot vote.
Punishment and Inclusion gives a theoretical and historical account of this pernicious practice of felon disenfranchisement, drawing widely on early modern political philosophy, continental and postcolonial political thought, critical race theory, feminist philosophy, disability theory, critical legal studies, and archival research into state constitutional conventions. It demonstrates that the history of felon disenfranchisement, rooted in postslavery restrictions on suffrage and the contemporaneous emergence of the modern "American" penal system, reveals the deep connections between two political institutions often thought to be separate, showing the work of membership done by the criminal punishment system and the work of punishment done by the electoral franchise.
Felon disenfranchisement is a symptom of the resolved tension that persists in democratic politics between membership and punishment. This book shows how this tension is managed via the persistence of white supremacy in contemporary regimes of punishment and governance.

Why have neo-liberal economic ideas been so resilient since the 1980s, despite major intellectual challenges, crippling financial and political crises, and failure to deliver on their promises? Why do they repeatedly return, not only to survive but to thrive? This groundbreaking book proposes five lines of analysis to explain the dynamics of both continuity and change in neo-liberal ideas: the flexibility of neo-liberalism's core principles; the gaps between neo-liberal rhetoric and reality; the strength of neo-liberal discourse in debates; the power of interests in the strategic use of ideas; and the force of institutions in the embedding of neo-liberal ideas. The book's highly distinguished group of authors shows how these possible explanations apply across the most important domains - fiscal policy, the role of the state, welfare and labour markets, regulation of competition and financial markets, management of the Euro, and corporate governance - in the European Union and across European countries.

The rise of post-truth politics marks the most serious crisis of Western liberal democracy since the end of the Cold War. The decline of trust in expert knowledge and mainstream media, the rise of social media devoid of a gatekeeping function and the growth of covert external interference in electoral processes have led to fragmentation, polarization and destabilization of Western democratic systems. What makes post-truth politics so difficult to resist is its apparently democratic character that claims to challenge bureaucratic depoliticisation, the rule of experts and the disappearance of alternatives to the hegemonic policy. Biopolitics after Truth refutes this interpretation, arguing that the post-truth ideology leads to the degradation of the public sphere that is essential to democratic governance. Rather than enable resistance to expertise-based biopolitical governmentalities, truth denialism dissolves the only framework where their contestation and transformation could take place. In contrast, Biopolitics after Truth argues for a positive role of truth-telling in the democratization of biopolitical governance.

Why have neo-liberal economic ideas been so resilient since the 1980s, despite major intellectual challenges, crippling financial and political crises, and failure to deliver on their promises? Why do they repeatedly return, not only to survive but to thrive? This groundbreaking book proposes five lines of analysis to explain the dynamics of both continuity and change in neo-liberal ideas: the flexibility of neo-liberalism's core principles; the gaps between neo-liberal rhetoric and reality; the strength of neo-liberal discourse in debates; the power of interests in the strategic use of ideas; and the force of institutions in the embedding of neo-liberal ideas. The book's highly distinguished group of authors shows how these possible explanations apply across the most important domains - fiscal policy, the role of the state, welfare and labour markets, regulation of competition and financial markets, management of the Euro, and corporate governance - in the European Union and across European countries.

The core issue of this work is how far the West may need to modify or extend the liberal philosophy informing its responses to the multiple world crisis it is now attempting to deal with. Coming after the author's "Engaging the Cosmos: Astronomy, Philosophy & Faith" and "The Geography of Human Conflict", this text will complete a trilogy addressing very comprehensively the challenges of our times. It provides a review of the strengths and weaknesses of Social Liberalism that, broadly speaking, occupies the ground between moderate Right and moderate Left. The work is informed by the conviction that the world, half a century hence, will be either considerably better than now (freer, more peaceable, more enriching...) or else a good deal worse. Those concerned to effect the former outcome should promote the spread among emergent states of well-founded democracy. But they must also look stringently at how well democratic institutions may function in the mass societies of the West. History indicates that pell-mell cultural change, constant ecological impoverishment, and endless leap forwards in applied science may not augur well for stability and peace. The author's accepted expertise in History, International Security, Planetary Development and Applied Geophysics means he can address a variety of issues such as: climate change and resource depletion; community decay, data saturation, the future of universities, democratic devolution, leaders and led, and medical philosophy; and biowarfare, the management of Near Space, international currency, and a planetary ethos. It is contended that we are not approaching the "end of History" in any meaningful sense. Instead we are passing through, at accelerated pace, an evolutionary transition as impacting as that between the Old and New Stone Ages. Our perspectives on the immediate future may be honed by free-ranging speculation about what mankind can anticipate over the next few centuries.

Liberal individualism, or 'classical liberalism' as it is often called, refers to a political philosophy in which liberty plays the central role. This book demonstrates a conceptual unity within the manifestations of classical liberalism by tracing the history of several interrelated and reinforcing themes. Concepts such as order, justice, rights and freedom have imparted unity to this diverse political ideology by integrating context and meaning. However, they have also sparked conflict, as classical liberals split on a number of issues, such as legitimate exceptions to the 'presumption of liberty', the meaning of 'the public good', natural rights versus utilitarianism, the role of the state in education, and the rights of resistance and revolution. This book explores these conflicts and their implications for contemporary liberal and libertarian thought.

Presents the theoretical and practical arguments for liberalism. The term comes from the Latin word 'liber' (free). Mises defines liberalism as 'the liberal doctrine of the harmony of the rightly understood interests of all members of a free society, founded on the principle of private ownership of the means of production'. The foundation of liberalism, Mises says, rests on an understanding and appreciation of the institution of private property, social cooperation, the freedom idea, ethics and morality, democracy and the legitimate role of government. Liberalism is not a political party. The liberal program offers no special privileges to anyone; it aims at securing equality under law for everyone, so as to allow equal opportunity to all human beings to make their own choices and decisions. The role of government should be limited to protecting the lives, property, and freedom of its citizens to pursue their own ends and goals. Hardback editions are also available.

This work focuses on the political thought of Benjamin Constant and Germaine De Stael, the first figures in France to call their thought 'liberal'. In doing so, it advances a new interpretation of the timing and character of French (and more broadly European) liberalism."

Understanding the various meanings given to human and citizenship rights in Argentina is an important task, particularly so given the nation's prominence in global discussions. An "exporter" of tactics, ideas, and experts, Argentina has become a site of innovation in the field of human rights. This book investigates two prominent Buenos Aires protest organizations--Memoria Activa and the BAUEN workers' cooperative--to consider how each has framed its demands within a language of rights.
Fundamentally, this book is concerned with the complex interrelationship between the discourse of human rights and the neoliberal project. In exploring the way in which "rights talk" is used and adapted locally by various activist groups, the book looks at the mutually formative and contentious interactions between ideas of human rights, rights of citizenship, and the concrete and envisioned social relationships that form the basis for social activism in the wake of neoliberalism.