Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> History & Theory - General

The bonds among republican citizens are created, in part, through the stories told and retold as the foundational myths of the republic. In this book, Melissa Matthes takes advantage of the way in which republican theorists in different eras--Livy, Machiavelli, and Rousseau--retell the story of the rape of Lucretia to support their own conceptions of republicanism.

The recurring presentation of this story as theater by these different theorists reveals not only the performative elements of republicanism but, as Matthes argues, adds to Hannah Arendt's emphasis on the oral dimensions...

The "comprehensive liberalism" defended in this book offers an alternative to the narrower "political liberalism" associated with the writings of John Rawls. By arguing against making tolerance as fundamental a value as individual autonomy, and extending the reach of liberalism to global society, it opens the way for dealing more adequately with problems of human rights and economic inequality in a world of cultural pluralism.

The minimum of violence accompanying the success of the American Revolution resulted in large part, argues this book, from the conditions of law the British allowed in the American colonies. By contrast, Ireland's struggle for independence was prolonged, bloody, and bitter largely because of the repressive conditions of law imposed by Britain.

Examining the most rebellious American colony, Massachusetts Bay, Professor Reid finds that law was locally controlled while imperial law was almost nonexistent as an influence on the daily lives of individuals. In Ireland the same English...

Grounded in the history of political thought, and illuminated by legal studies and feminist theory, this book offers a challenging new approach to thinking about liberty in the wake of decades of criticism of liberalism from feminists, communitarians, and conservatives alike. Fundamental to this approach is the author's argument that liberty and equality are not inconsistent values and that political theory would do well to abandon the dichotomy between "negative" and "positive" liberty.

The principles of liberty Jamieson proposes--identity, privacy, and agency--are not meant to be...

Do Third World countries benefit from having large militaries, or does this impede their development? Kirk Bowman uses statistical analysis to demonstrate that militarization has had a particularly malignant impact in this region. For his quantitative comparison he draws on longitudinal data for a sample of 76 developing countries and for 18 Latin American nations.

To illuminate the causal mechanisms at work, Bowman offers a detailed comparison of Costa Rica and Honduras between 1948 and 1998. The case studies not only serve to bolster his general argument about the harmful effects...

Usually viewed as the premier apologist for laissez-faire capitalism, Smith is seen in this new interpretation within the context of an earlier tradition that condemned the British aristocracy for relinquishing its moral obligation to promote the public good in favor of an unceasing pursuit of private gain.

Through separate chapters on Mandeville, Bolingbroke, and Hume, Gallagher shows that Smith echoed civic humanist sermons against the avaricious inclinations of the nobles who profited most from commercial expansion. Unlike earlier critics, however, Smith concluded that the most...

How can we establish a political/legal order that in principle does not require the human flourishing of any person or group to be given structured preference over that of any other? Addressing this question as the central problem of political philosophy, Norms of Liberty offers a new conceptual foundation for political liberalism that takes protecting liberty, understood in terms of individual negative rights, as the primary aim of the political/legal order.

Rasmussen and Den Uyl argue for construing individual rights as metanormative principles, directly tied to...

The bonds among republican citizens are created, in part, through the stories told and retold as the foundational myths of the republic. In this book, Melissa Matthes takes advantage of the way in which republican theorists in different eras--Livy, Machiavelli, and Rousseau--retell the story of the rape of Lucretia to support their own conceptions of republicanism.

The recurring presentation of this story as theater by these different theorists reveals not only the performative elements of republicanism but, as Matthes argues, adds to Hannah Arendt's emphasis on the oral dimensions...

Many modern conservatives and feminists trace the roots of their ideologies, respectively, to Edmund Burke (1729-1797) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), and a proper understanding of these two thinkers is therefore important as a framework for political debates today.

According to Daniel O'Neill, Burke is misconstrued if viewed as mainly providing a warning about the dangers of attempting to turn utopian visions into political reality, while Wollstonecraft is far more than just a proponent of extending the public sphere rights of man to include women. Rather, at the heart of their...

This in-depth introduction to theoretical topics, such as liberty and democracy, covers basic terminology and summarizes the perspectives of the major political thinkers and philosophers throughout Western history. Examples drawn from current political events illustrate the material.

The presidency, in Theodore Roosevelt's famous words, is a Bully Pulpit. No one has studied the presidency from this vantage point. This book, in a sense, is a study of American political history seen through the prism of selected presidential addresses. It reveals how presidents used major addresses to create a theme for their administrations, to introduce history-making legislation or programs, or to rally successfully a majority of the nation behind their policies. No other book has examined the major presidential addresses--their construction and their impact--as history. No other book...

The first sustained scholarly critique of the New Deal from the conservative perspective, this study argues that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was, himself, the primary obstacle to American recovery from the Great Depression of 1933-38. In developing his arguments, author Gary Dean Best focuses on the fact that the depression continued through eight years of the Roosevelt administration, despite unprecedented intervention by the federal government in the nation's economic life. Challenging conventional explanations that fault Roosevelt for not embracing Keynesian spending on a scale sufficient...

This book challenges generally accepted views by concluding that the critical press, so often characterized by pro-New Deal historians as conservative or reactionary, was in fact a good deal more liberal than Roosevelt and his advisors. Without its opposition to Roosevelt's policies during the years before Congress began to reassert its constitutional responsibilities, the United States might well have deviated considerably from the path of constitutional and democractic government.

From 1933 to 1938 the critical press (both newspapers and journalists) fulfilled much of the function of...

This interdisciplinary study on liberalism explores the history of liberal thought in philosophy, the social sciences, cultural theory, and American political theory. The discussion focuses on an internal conflict between cultural and political values that favor political elitism and doctrines that favor some form of political democracy. Telling the story of the liberal elite and its ambivalent relationship to democracy, Hollingers show why the decline of liberalism does not pave the way for democratic participation. Addressing the current political and cultural climate, Hollinger outlines...

This study established an intellectual profile of Albert Gallatin through his vision of government's role in a democratic republic and the republic's role in the community of nations. Only through a comprehensive analysis of Gallatin's political and diplomatic activities can the student of history learn to see his actions as expressions of clearly formulated principles. Gallatin was much more involved in the shaping of administrative policy than has been recognized. Moreover, he followed his unique Gallatinian approach to domestic policy as well as international diplomacy, always in...

This groundbreaking book examines in detail relations between the states and the roles of United States Congress and Supreme Court in determining the nature of such relations--a distinguishing characteristic of a federal system. The neglect of interstate relations by scholars is surprising in view of the long and ongoing struggle between state power and federal power in the U.S. This new text provides a comprehensive examination of interstate relations, with up-to-date information and analysis relative to interstate suits, full faith and credit, privileges and immunities, tax exportation...

This book traces the life of Francois Mitterrand from his youth as an ardent Catholic and supporter of Marshal Petain, to his career as a centrist politician of the Fourth Republic, through his capture of the leadership of the Socialist Party, leading to his election as President of France in 1981. During these years the Communist Party of France, influenced by such militants as the poet Louis Aragon, was evolving into a national party eager to participate in a joint effort with the Socialist Party to begin a rupture with capitalism through the election of Mitterrand as President. The...

The Reagan Adminstration justified its civil rights enforcement by claiming an electoral mandate to reduce government. The Administration employed an administrative strategy to fulfill this asserted mandate, illustrating the conventional wisdom that the strategy enhances political responsiveness. But responsiveness to popular will is one democratic value, while protection of minority rights another. In the case of the administrative strategy to enforce the law protecting civil rights of the institutionalized, career employees within the Reagan Justice Department reacted forcefully to the...

Does it really matter if a voter decides to vote-or, as a significant number of Americans do each election, not vote? Ron Hirschbein explores this issue and shows why enfranchisement cannot be understood unless it is placed in context and history. Clearly, the meaning of a vote depends upon the situation: a vote cast among the 400 of Athens or in the College of Cardinals has one significance; this is considerably different from pulling a lever every four years in a mass society of spectacles and commodities. Hirschbein also examines how voting was transformed from an expression of the...