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Moderate government is a time-honored and cherished doctrine. It
has been considered the best solution of preventing tyranny and
anarchy alike. However, expositions of the doctrine tend either to
be entrenched by the technicalities of constitutional and public
choice theory, or to remain largely exhortative. This book aims at
providing a larger and more commonsensical defense of it. It
addresses the issue of moderation but within a broader perspective
of reflecting on how governments have developed with inherent
constraints. This offers an analysis of the Antigone and Measure
for Measure to discuss the necessary fall of tyranny, and the
problems of how to distinguish between order and disorder. It is
then argued that doing political theory is another important
constraint on governments. Even conceptions that envision an
unconstrained sort of government run into difficulties and as an
unintended consequence, confirm the soundness of the idea that
governing is an inherently constrained business. The book then
takes issue with the recently growing awareness, associated with
political realism, that governing is as much a personal as an
institutional activity. In this context, the virtue of moderation
will be discussed, and shown how it grows out of the experience of
shame, whereby we are made conscious of our limitations of control
over ourselves. Governing is to a large part about control, and as
a personal activity it preserves the centrality of shame, and the
insight that moderation is the best way to maintain effective
control without pretending to have full control. Then, the book
discusses three offices of government, traditionally considered to
be the pivotal ones: the legislator, the chief executive, and the
judge. Each will be analyzed by help of three fundamental
distinctions: normal vs exceptional times, personal vs
institutional aspects, and governing vs anti-governing. They
highlight and confirm the inherent constraints of each office.
Finally, three political conceptions of governing will be
discussed, ending with a reflection on the principle of the
separation of powers.
The separation of powers is one of the most cherished principles of
constitutional government in the Western tradition. Despite its
prestigious status, however, it has always been controversial. It
has been attacked for being inadequate to account for institutional
realities; for being inapplicable to parliamentary systems; for
lacking a convincing normative grounding and even for being
harmful, inasmuch as it hampers both the immediate enforcement of
popular will and efficient political leadership. Current political
crises all over the world, especially the rise of populist
democracies and authoritarian regimes, however, make the principle
worth a closer, more positive examination. This book takes stock of
the criticisms of the principle of separation of powers and
attempts to offer a new normative account of it. It argues that the
separation of powers cannot be restricted to governmental
institutions, agencies and decision-making procedures. Rather, it
must be derived from the very basics of government, from the very
notions of political order and articulated government and from the
distinct though related concepts of social and governmental power
and of authority. Once these distinctions are made, institutional
separations are easier to be established. Contrary to the classical
and most contemporary conceptions of the principle, the present
account argues for a relational and negative conception of the
separation of powers. The legislative branch in conceived of as the
one where political authority, political power and social power are
all equally represented. The executive branch is best understood as
excluding social power whereas the judicial branch is marked for
its opposition to the influence of political power. This conception
avoids the pitfalls of essentialism and functionalism and makes the
principle applicable in a much wider international context.
Aurel Kolnai was born in Budapest, in 1900 and died in London, in
1973. He was, according to Karl Popper and the late Bernard
Williams, one of the most original, provocative, and sensitive
philosophers of the twentieth century. Kolnai's moral philosophy is
best described in his own words as intrinsicalist, non-naturalist,
non-reductionist", which took its original impetus from Scheler's
value ethics, and was developed by using a natural phenomenologist
method. The unique combination of linguistic analysis and
phenomenology yields highly original ideas on classical fields of
moral theory, such as responsibility and free will, the meaning of
right and wrong, the universalisability of ethical norms, the role
of moral emotions, internalism vs externalism, to mention a few.
The volume presents a selection of essays by Kolnai, including his
main political theoretical work, "What is Politics About",
available in English here for the first time. The second half of
the book Kolnai's work is analyzed in a series of essays by eminent
scholars
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