From a major British political thinker and activist, a passionate case that both the left and right have lost their faith in ordinary people and must learn to find it again. This is an age of polarization. It’s us vs. them. The battle lines are clear, and compromise is surrender. As Out of the Ordinary reminds us, we have been here before. From the 1920s to the 1950s, in a world transformed by revolution and war, extreme ideologies of left and right fueled utopian hopes and dystopian fears. In response, Marc Stears writes, a group of British writers, artists, photographers, and filmmakers showed a way out. These men and women, including J. B. Priestley, George Orwell, Barbara Jones, Dylan Thomas, Laurie Lee, and Bill Brandt, had no formal connection to one another. But they each worked to forge a politics that resisted the empty idealisms and totalizing abstractions of their time. Instead they were convinced that people going about their daily lives possess all the insight, virtue, and determination required to build a good society. In poems, novels, essays, films, paintings, and photographs, they gave witness to everyday people’s ability to overcome the supposedly insoluble contradictions between tradition and progress, patriotism and diversity, rights and duties, nationalism and internationalism, conservatism and radicalism. It was this humble vision that animated the great Festival of Britain in 1951 and put everyday citizens at the heart of a new vision of national regeneration. A leading political theorist and a veteran of British politics, Stears writes with unusual passion and clarity about the achievements of these apostles of the ordinary. They helped Britain through an age of crisis. Their ideas might do so again, in the United Kingdom and beyond.

Is the way in which political philosophy is conducted today too ahistorical? Does such ahistoricism render political philosophy too abstract? Is political philosophy thus incapable of dealing with the realities of political life? This volume brings together some of the world's leading political philosophers to address these crucial questions. The contributors focus especially on political philosophy's pretensions to universality and on its strained relationship with the world of real politics. Some chapters argue that political philosophers should not be cowed by the accusations levied against them from outside of their own field. Others insist that these accusations require a dramatic reshaping of normative political thought. The volume will spark controversy across political philosophy and beyond.

Is the way in which political philosophy is conducted today too ahistorical? Does such ahistoricism render political philosophy too abstract? Is political philosophy thus incapable of dealing with the realities of political life? This volume brings together some of the world's leading political philosophers to address these crucial questions. The contributors focus especially on political philosophy's pretensions to universality and on its strained relationship with the world of real politics. Some chapters argue that political philosophers should not be cowed by the accusations levied against them from outside of their own field. Others insist that these accusations require a dramatic reshaping of normative political thought. The volume will spark controversy across political philosophy and beyond.

This is a major work of history and political theory that traces radical democratic thought in America across the twentieth century, seeking to recover ideas that could reenergize democratic activism today. The question of how citizens should behave as they struggle to create a more democratic society has haunted the United States throughout its history. Should citizens restrict themselves to patient persuasion or take to the streets and seek to impose change? Marc Stears argues that anyone who continues to wrestle with these questions could learn from the radical democratic tradition that was forged in the twentieth century by political activists, including progressives, trade unionists, civil rights campaigners, and members of the student New Left.

These activists and their movements insisted that American campaigners for democratic change should be free to strike out in whatever ways they thought necessary, so long as their actions enhanced the political virtues of citizens and contributed to the eventual triumph of the democratic cause. Reevaluating the moral and strategic arguments, and the triumphs and excesses, of this radical democratic tradition, Stears contends that it still offers a compelling account of citizen behavior--one that is fairer, more inclusive, and more truly democratic than those advanced by political theorists today.

Liberalism is the dominant ideology of our time, yet its character remains the subject of intense scholarly and political controversy. Debates about the liberal political tradition - about its history, its central philosophical commitments, its implications for political practice - lie at the very heart of the discipline of political theory. Many outstanding political theorists have contributed to the growing sophistication of these debates in recent years, but the original voice of Michael Freeden deserves particular attention. In the course of a body of work that spans over thirty years, Freeden's iconoclastic contributions have posed important challenges to the dominant understandings of liberal ideology, history, and theory. Such work has sought to redefine the very essence of what it is to be a liberal. This book brings together an international group of historians, philosophers, and political scientists to evaluate the impact of Freeden's work and to reassess its central claims.

In the first three decades of the twentieth century, two groups of radical political theorists - one British and one American - were bound together in a unique ideological relationship. Progressives, Pluralists, and the Problems of the State provides the first comprehensive examination of the intellectual dialogue that constituted that bond. Drawing on extensive original archival research, and employing new methods of conceptual analysis, the book examines the efforts of these two initially distinctive political movements to forge a single ideology capable of motivating far-reaching reform in both of their countries. In so doing it challenges traditional narratives emphasizing the exceptional development of American progressivism and British socialism, arguing instead that the intellectual inspirations and political programmes of both movements were constantly shaped and reshaped by international ideological exchange. Such an analysis transforms our understanding of the complex political demands of these movements and enables the works of their leading protagonists, including G. D. H. Cole, Herbert Croly, Harold Laski, and Walter Lippmann, to emerge as rich and sophisticated contributions to modern political thought.

This book is the first comprehensive examination of the close relationship that obtained between leading groups of British socialists and American progressives in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Employing new methods of conceptual and institutional analysis, and drawing on extensive original archival research, the book examines the efforts of leading political theorists to transform the initially distinctive theories of the British and American lefts into a single unified ideology. In so doing it challenges traditional narratives emphasising the exceptional development the American and British lefts, and argues instead that the central theoretical and practical commitments of both movements were constantly shaped and reshaped by international ideological exchange.

Political theorists are too often silent on questions of method and approach. David Leopold and Marc Stears have assembled a distinguished group of contributors to break that silence and to explain and defend the research methods they utilise in their own work. The result is a rich and varied collection which does not suggest that there is only one right way to conduct political theory, but rather introduces readers to many of the often unelaborated methods and approaches that currently inform the work of leading scholars in the field. Amongst the topics covered are the complex and contested connections between political theory and a range of adjacent disciplines - including moral philosophy, the empirical social sciences, the history of political thought, the world of 'real' politics, critical social theory, and ideology. Both individually and as a collection, these essays will promote understanding and provoke further debate amongst students and established scholars alike. They will be encouraged to reflect on their own methodological assumptions, to re-examine the practical tools of analysis they employ, and to re-evaluate why the research they do matters.