The Nature of Political Theory is a controversial book which challenges the established nostrums of contemporary political theory. Its major contributions to current scholarship are threefold. It offers, first, a comprehensive, synoptic, and comparative analysis of the major conceptions of political theory, predominantly during the twentieth century. This analysis incorporates systematic critiques of both Anglo-American and continental contributions. The 'nature' of theory is seen as intrinsically pluralistic and internally divided. Secondly, the idea of foundationalism is employed in the...

Concerned with key debates in contemporary political theory, topics discussed in this text include: the relationship between history and theory; utilitarianism and rational choice; republicanism; and problems of difference, multiculturalism and postcolonial theory. Debates in current legal theory and international politics are considered along with issues in hermaneutics, feminism, communitarianism and poststructuralism. The essays reflect the state of political theory today, but also contemplte the state of the discipline more broadly.

The idea of the State is crucial to our understanding of 20th century political thought and practice, and there are now signs of a growing awareness of the interest and intrinsic importance of the State in political theory, international politics and jurisprudence. This book provides an overview of certain key problems and theories of the State, presenting them in a structured and systematic manner, and in doing so it aims to make the ideas and value of the State more comprehensible to the student of politics.

An introductory discussion on the nature of the State is followed by...

British Idealism - influenced by the character of German Idealist thought at the end of the eighteenth century, developed by Kant, Fichte and Hegel - began to establish its roots during the middle of the nineteenth century and rapidly became the dominant British philosophy. It began to be challenged at the turn of the century by philosophers including Bertrand Russell and by the end of the First World War it was on the retreat, although its philosophical reverberations are still evident. Testimony to this fact is the considerable renaissance in all aspects of Idealist studies, and...

Examining nationalism in two ways, this study first draws out the ideological connections and associations of nationalism by analyzing its relationship to a series of key political concepts, theories and practices: sovereignty, the nation state, citizenship, liberal theory, patriotism, communitarianism, multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism. Secondly, it looks at the drift to particularity in political debates by assessing nationalism as a key example of particularity.

The Politics of Human Rights provides a systematic introductory overview of the nature and development of human rights. At the same time it offers an engaging argument about human rights and their relationship with politics. The author argues that human rights have only a slight relation to natural rights and they are historically novel: In large part they are a post-1945 reaction to genocide which is, in turn, linked directly to the lethal potentialities of the nation-state. He suggests that an understanding of human rights should nonetheless focus primarily on politics and that...

This edited book introduces students and scholars to comparative political thought. Featuring contributions from an international line-up of scholars, it examines what can we learn from non-Western traditions of political thought, how we compare different strands of national and regional political thought, and much more.