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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political science & theory
In the mid-1780s Bentham drafted his first sustained discussions of
political economy and public finance for Projet Matiere (itself
part of Projet d'un corps de loix complet). Those discussions are
now lost, but the corresponding marginal contents open this volume,
followed by three closely related appendices. The volume continues
with Defence of Usury, first published 1787, which was well
received, quickly translated, and established some reputation for
Bentham in political economy. In 1790, whilst preparing a second
edition, Bentham drafted the raft of additional materials included
here in five appendices. At the same time he began Manual of
Political Economy, an introductory handbook which he never
finished, while the surviving text appears here, supplemented by
seven appendices. In March 1793 Bentham reacted to press reports of
the Irish Budget by composing A Protest against Law Taxes, a
trenchant critique of the taxation of legal proceedings, and the
denial of justice to the poor, which was printed in 1793, published
in 1795, and extended in 1816, and which completes the volume.
Centripetal democracy is the idea that legitimate democratic
institutions set in motion forms of citizen practice and
representative behaviour that serve as powerful drivers of
political identity formation. Partisan modes of political
representation in the context of multifaceted electoral and direct
democratic voting opportunities are emphasised on this model. There
is, however, a strain of thought predominant in political theory
that doubts the democratic capacities of political systems
constituted by multiple public spheres. This view is referred to as
the lingua franca thesis on sustainable democratic systems (LFT).
Inadequate democratic institutions and acute demands to divide the
political system (through devolution or secession), are predicted
by this thesis. By combining an original normative democratic
theory with a comparative analysis of how Belgium and Switzerland
have variously managed to sustain themselves as multilingual
democracies, this book identifies the main institutional features
of a democratically legitimate European Union and the conditions
required to bring it about. Part One presents a novel theory of
democratic legitimacy and political identity formation on which
subsequent analyses are based. Part Two defines the EU as a
demoi-cracy and provides a thorough democratic assessment of this
political system. Part Three explains why Belgium has largely
succumbed to the centrifugal logic predicted by the LFT, while
Switzerland apparently defies this logic. Part Four presents a
model of centripetal democracy for the EU, one that would greatly
reduce its democratic deficit and ensure that this political system
does not succumb to the centrifugal forces expected by the LFT.
Historically speaking, our vices, like our virtues, have come in
two basic forms: intellectual and moral. One of the main purposes
of this book is to analyze a set of specifically political vices
that have not been given sufficient attention within political
theory but that nonetheless pose enduring challenges to the
sustainability of free and equitable political relationships of
various kinds. Political vices like hubris, willful blindness, and
recalcitrance are persistent dispositions of character and conduct
that imperil both the functioning of democratic institutions and
the trust that a diverse citizenry has in the ability of those
institutions to secure a just political order of equal moral
standing, reciprocal freedom, and human dignity. Political vices
embody a repudiation of the reciprocal conditions of politics and,
as a consequence of this, they represent a standing challenge to
the principles and values of the mixed political regime we call
liberal-democracy. Mark Button shows how political vices not only
carry out discrete forms of injustice but also facilitate the
habituation in and indifference toward systemic forms of social and
political injustice. They do so through excesses and deficiencies
in human sensory and communicative capacities relating to voice
(hubris), vision (moral blindness), and listening (recalcitrance).
Drawing on a wide range of intellectual resources, including
ancient Greek tragedy, social psychology, moral epistemology, and
democratic theory, Political Vices gives new consideration to a
list of "deadly vices" that contemporary political societies can
neither ignore as a matter of personal "sin" nor publicly disregard
as a matter of mere bad choice, and it provides a democratic
account that outlines how citizens can best contend with our most
troubling political vices without undermining core commitments to
liberalism or pluralism.
How political realities are formed when the government ceases to be
a guarantor of rights and democracy Neocitizenship explores how the
constellation of political and economic forces of neoliberalism
have assailed and arguably dismantled the institutions of modern
democratic governance in the U.S. As overtly oligarchical
structures of governance replace the operations of representative
democracy, the book addresses the implications of this crisis for
the practices and imaginaries of citizenship through the lens of
popular culture. Rather than impugn the abject citizen-subject who
embraces her degraded condition, Eva Cherniavsky asks what new or
hybrid forms of civic agency emerge as popular sovereignty recedes.
Drawing on a range of political theories, Neocitizenship also
suggests that theory is at a disadvantage in thinking the
historical present, since its analytical categories are wrought in
the very historical contexts whose dissolution we now seek to
comprehend. Cherniavsky thus supplements theory with a focus on
popular culture that explores the de-democratization for
citizenship in more generative and undecided ways. Tracing the
contours of neocitizenship in fiction through examples such as The
White Boy Shuffle and Distraction, television shows like Battlestar
Galactica, and in the design of American studies abroad,
Neocitizenship aims to take the measure of a transformation in
process, while evading the twin lures of optimism and regret.
For American Indians, tribal politics are paramount. They determine
the standards for tribal enrollment, guide negotiations with
outside governments, and help set collective economic and cultural
goals. But how, asks Raymond I. Orr, has history shaped the
American Indian political experience? By exploring how different
tribes' politics and internal conflicts have evolved over time,
Reservation Politics offers rare insight into the role of
historical experience in the political lives of American Indians.
To trace variations in political conflict within tribes today to
their different historical experiences, Orr conducted an
ethnographic analysis of three federally recognized tribes: the
Isleta Pueblo in New Mexico, the Citizen Potawatomi in Oklahoma,
and the Rosebud Sioux in South Dakota. His extensive interviews and
research reveal that at the center of tribal politics are
intratribal factions with widely different worldviews. These
factions make conflicting claims about the purpose, experience, and
identity of their tribe. Reservation Politics points to two types
of historical experience relevant to the construction of tribes'
political and economic worldviews: historical trauma, such as
ethnic cleansing or geographic removal, and the incorporation of
Indian communities into the market economy. In Orr's case studies,
differences in experience and interpretation gave rise to complex
worldviews that in turn have shaped the beliefs and behavior at
play in Indian politics. By engaging a topic often avoided in
political science and American Indian studies, Reservation Politics
allows us to see complex historical processes at work in
contemporary American Indian life. Orr's findings are essential to
understanding why tribal governments make the choices they do.
Global Public Governance is a text written for students, scholars
and lay people interested in learning about this global system,
which emerged and has evolved in response to global challenges that
no one actor can effectively address. Drawing on what has been
published over the last several decades, this text highlights the
importance of states and nonstate actors seeking to provide global
public goods through collective action. Covering conceptual,
theoretical, and empirical issues, as well as eight main themes -
global security, human rights, global criminal justice, global
health, global education, global finance, global trade, and the
global environment - this text offers a comprehensive treatment of
global public governance. It concludes that the current system
remains far from effective, but world government is not a better
alternative. In short, this text proposes a regional approach to
global public governance.
Global Public Governance is a text written for students, scholars
and lay people interested in learning about this global system,
which emerged and has evolved in response to global challenges that
no one actor can effectively address. Drawing on what has been
published over the last several decades, this text highlights the
importance of states and nonstate actors seeking to provide global
public goods through collective action. Covering conceptual,
theoretical, and empirical issues, as well as eight main themes -
global security, human rights, global criminal justice, global
health, global education, global finance, global trade, and the
global environment - this text offers a comprehensive treatment of
global public governance. It concludes that the current system
remains far from effective, but world government is not a better
alternative. In short, this text proposes a regional approach to
global public governance.
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