Download or read book At the Limits of Political Philosophy written by James V. Schall and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James V. Schall presents, in a convincing and articulate manner, the revelational contribution to political philosophy, particularly that which comes out of the Roman Catholic tradition.
Download or read book At the Limits of the Political written by Inna Viriasova and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-03-16 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a critical introduction to the philosophical debate on the concept of the political, this book explores recent developments in continental philosophy. Inna Viriasova engages with key contemporary thinkers including Agamben, Esposito, Henry and Meillassoux and explores the debate in the context of the Italian concept of the impolitical.
Download or read book Augustine and the Limits of Politics written by Jean Bethke Elshtain and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2018-04-30 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now with a new foreword by Patrick J. Deneen. Jean Bethke Elshtain brings Augustine's thought into the contemporary political arena and presents an Augustine who created a complex moral map that offers space for loyalty, love, and care, as well as a chastened form of civic virtue. The result is a controversial book about one of the world's greatest and most complex thinkers whose thought continues to haunt all of Western political philosophy. What is our business "within this common mortal life?" Augustine asks and bids us to ask ourselves. What can Augustine possibly have to say about the conditions that characterize our contemporary society and appear to put democracy in crisis? Who is Augustine for us now and what do his words have to do with political theory? These are the underlying questions that animate Jean Bethke Elshtain's fascinating engagement with the thought and work of Augustine, the ancient thinker who gave no political theory per se and refused to offer up a positive utopia. In exploring the questions, Why Augustine, why now? Elshtain argues that Augustine's great works display a canny and scrupulous attunement to the here and now and the very real limits therein. She discusses other aspects of Augustine's thought as well, including his insistence that no human city can be modeled on the heavenly city, and further elaborates on Hannah Arendt's deep indebtedness to Augustine's understanding of evil. Elshtain also presents Augustine's arguments against the pridefulness of philosophy, thereby linking him to later currents in modern thought, including Wittgenstein and Freud.
Download or read book The Economic Limits to Modern Politics written by John Dunn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-07-31 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies the impact of the economic dimension on political issues and decision making.
Download or read book The Nature and Limits of Political Science written by Maurice Cowling and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-20 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a fascinating and critical overview of the study of political subjects within English universities in the mid-twentieth-century, and the strengths and weaknesses of certain patterns of thinking.
Download or read book The Limits of Neoliberalism written by William Davies and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2016-11-16 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brilliant...explains how the rhetoric of competition has invaded almost every domain of our existence." —Evgeny Morozov, author of To Save Everything, Click Here" "In this fascinating book Davies inverts the conventional neoliberal practice of treating politics as if it were mere epiphenomenon of market theory, demonstrating that their version of economics is far better understood as the pursuit of politics by other means." —Professor Philip Mirowski, University of Notre Dame "A sparkling, original, and provocative analysis of neoliberalism. It offers a distinctive account of the diverse, sometimes contradictory, conventions and justifications that lend authority to the extension of the spirit of competitiveness to all spheres of social life...This book breaks new ground, offers new modes of critique, and points to post-neoliberal futures." —Professor Bob Jessop, University of Lancaster Since its intellectual inception in the 1930s and its political emergence in the 1970s, neo-liberalism has sought to disenchant politics by replacing it with economics. This agenda-setting text examines the efforts and failures of economic experts to make government and public life amenable to measurement, and to re-model society and state in terms of competition. In particular, it explores the practical use of economic techniques and conventions by policy-makers, politicians, regulators and judges and how these practices are being adapted to the perceived failings of the neoliberal model. By picking apart the defining contradiction that arises from the conflation of economics and politics, this book asks: to what extent can economics provide government legitimacy? Now with a new preface from the author and a foreword by Aditya Chakrabortty.
Download or read book Violence and Civility written by Étienne Balibar and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Violence and Civility, Étienne Balibar boldly confronts the insidious causes of violence, racism, nationalism, and ethnic cleansing worldwide, as well as mass poverty and dispossession. Through a novel synthesis of theory and empirical studies of contemporary violence, the acclaimed thinker pushes past the limits of political philosophy to reconceive war, revolution, sovereignty, and class. Through the pathbreaking thought of Derrida, Balibar builds a topography of cruelty converted into extremism by ideology, juxtaposing its subjective forms (identity delusions, the desire for extermination, and the pursuit of vengeance) and its objective manifestations (capitalist exploitation and an institutional disregard for life). Engaging with Marx, Hegel, Hobbes, Clausewitz, Schmitt, and Luxemburg, Balibar introduces a new, productive understanding of politics as antiviolence and a fresh approach to achieving and sustaining civility. Rooted in the principles of transformation and empowerment, this theory brings hope to a world increasingly divided even as it draws closer together.
Download or read book Utopophobia written by David Estlund and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: But what if, the ideal theorist asks, justice is a standard that no society is likely ever to satisfy? Could we somehow even know this is the case before seriously considering what justice requires? And, if social justice were unrealistic, would that mean that understanding justice is without value or importance, and merely idle utopianism? In Utopophobia, David Estlund argues that the best reasons for thinking either that justice must be realistic, or for thinking that there is no point in understanding justice unless it could be realized, are not convincing. No particular theory of justice is offered or presupposed by Estlund in this book, nor is it argued that justice is indeed unrealizable-only that it could be, and that this possibility upsets common ways of proceeding in political thought. .
Download or read book The Healing of Nations written by Mark R. Amstutz and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does one forgive an international political transgression as deep as genocide or apartheid? Forgiveness is often conceived of as an element of personal morality, and even at that it is difficult. This book argues that it is also an essential part of political ethics, especially when dealing with collective wrongdoing by political regimes. In the past, a retributive justice demanding prosecution and punishment of all past offenses has kept the international community away from moving on to the next step in regime change. Here, Mark R. Amstutz takes a restorative justice approach, calling for nations to account for crimes through truth commissions, public apology and repentance, reparations, and ultimately forgiveness and the lifting of deserved penalties. The distinctive feature of forgiveness is the balance it strikes between backward-looking accountability and forward-looking reconciliation. The Healing of Nations combines a theory of the role of forgiveness in public life with four key case studies that test this ethic: Argentina, Chile, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. Amstutz uses the hard cases to illustrate the promise and limits of forgiving without forgetting.
Download or read book The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China written by Joseph Fewsmith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-18 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1990s China embarked on a series of political reforms intended to increase, however modestly, political participation to reduce the abuse of power by local officials. Although there was initial progress, these reforms have largely stalled and, in many cases, gone backward. If there were sufficient incentives to inaugurate reform, why wasn't there enough momentum to continue and deepen them? This book approaches this question by looking at a number of promising reforms, understanding the incentives of officials at different levels, and the way the Chinese Communist Party operates at the local level. The short answer is that the sort of reforms necessary to make local officials more responsible to the citizens they govern cut too deeply into the organizational structure of the party.
Download or read book Democracy Dictatorship and Term Limits written by Alexander Baturo and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2014-02-03 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the factors that lead some presidents to hold on to power beyond their term limits
Download or read book Our Limits Transgressed written by Bob Pepperman Taylor and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is democracy hazardous to the health of the environment?
Download or read book Parchment Barriers written by Zachary Courser and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States has become ever more deeply entrenched in powerful, rival, partisan camps, and its citizens more sharply separated along ideological lines. The authors of this volume, scholars of political science, economics, and law, examine the relation between our present-day polarization and the design of the nation's Constitution. The provisions of our Constitution are like “parchment barriers”—fragile bulwarks intended to preserve liberty and promote self-government. To be effective, these barriers need to be respected and reinforced by government officials and ordinary citizens, both in law and in custom. This book asks whether today’s partisan polarization is threatening these constitutional provisions and thus our constitutional order. The nation's founders, clearly concerned about political division, designed the Constitution with numerous means for controlling factions, restraining majority rule, and preventing concentrations of power. In chapters that span the major institutions of American government, the authors of Parchment Barriers explore how partisans are pushing the limits of these constitutional restraints to achieve their policy goals and how the forces of majority faction are testing the boundaries the Constitution draws around democratic power. What, for instance, are the dangers of power being concentrated in the executive branch, displaced to the judiciary, or assumed by majority party leaders in Congress? How has partisan polarization affected the nature, size, and power of the administrative state? And why do political parties, rather than working to facilitate the constitutional order as envisioned by James Madison, now chafe against its limits on majority rule? Parchment Barriers considers the implications of polarization for policy, governance, and the health of American democracy.
Download or read book The Political and Institutional Effects of Term Limits written by Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson and published by Palgrave MacMillan. This book was released on 2004-09-16 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discontent with politics and politicians has led to calls for term limits in the belief that new faces would bring new perspectives and the influence of monied special interests would decrease. This innovative volume examines the effects of term limits by combining statistical analysis of the effects of terms limits on electoral competition, campaign contributions, and the activities of the Michigan legislature with in-depth interviews with legislators. The book sheds important light on the political, institutional and individual effects of terms limits. The authors find many surprises that neither advocates nor opponents anticipated, included shifts in the balance of power, changes within and between political parties, and new career paths for politicians.
Download or read book The Limits of Rationality written by Karen Schweers Cook and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-10-03 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prevailing economic theory presumes that agents act rationally when they make decisions, striving to maximize the efficient use of their resources. Psychology has repeatedly challenged the rational choice paradigm with persuasive evidence that people do not always make the optimal choice. Yet the paradigm has proven so successful a predictor that its use continues to flourish, fueled by debate across the social sciences over why it works so well. Intended to introduce novices to rational choice theory, this accessible, interdisciplinary book collects writings by leading researchers. The Limits of Rationality illuminates the rational choice paradigm of social and political behavior itself, identifies its limitations, clarifies the nature of current controversies, and offers suggestions for improving current models. In the first section of the book, contributors consider the theoretical foundations of rational choice. Models of rational choice play an important role in providing a standard of human action and the bases for constitutional design, but do they also succeed as explanatory models of behavior? Do empirical failures of these explanatory models constitute a telling condemnation of rational choice theory or do they open new avenues of investigation and theorizing? Emphasizing analyses of norms and institutions, the second and third sections of the book investigate areas in which rational choice theory might be extended in order to provide better models. The contributors evaluate the adequacy of analyses based on neoclassical economics, the potential contributions of game theory and cognitive science, and the consequences for the basic framework when unequal bargaining power and hierarchy are introduced.
Download or read book City Limits written by Paul E. Peterson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This award-winning book “skillfully blends economic and political analysis” to assess the challenges of urban governments (Emmett H. Buell, Jr., American Political Science Review). Winner of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book published in the United States on government, politics, or international affairs Many simply presume that a city’s politics are like a nation’s politics, just on a smaller scale. But the nature of the city is different in many respects—it can’t issue currency, or choose who crosses its borders, make war or make peace. Because of these and other limits, one must view cities in their larger socioeconomic and political contexts. Its place in the nation fundamentally affects the policies a city makes. Rather than focusing exclusively on power structures or competition among diverse groups or urban elites, this book assesses the strengths and shortcomings of how we have previously thought about city politics—and shines new light on how agendas are set, decisions are made, resources are allocated, and power is exercised within cities, as they exist within a federal framework. “Professor Peterson's analysis is imaginatively conceived and skillfully carried through. [City Limits] will lastingly alter our understanding of urban affairs in America.”—from the citation by the selection committee for the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory written by Teena Gabrielson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-07 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set at the intersection of political theory and environmental politics, yet with broad engagement across the environmental social sciences and humanities, The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory, defines, illustrates, and challenges the field of environmental political theory (EPT). Featuring contributions from distinguished political scientists working in this field, this volume addresses canonical theorists and contemporary environmental problems with a diversity of theoretical approaches. The initial volume focuses on EPT as a field of inquiry, engaging both traditions of political thought and the academy. In the second section, the handbook explores conceptualizations of nature and the environment, as well as the nature of political subjects, communities, and boundaries within our environments. A third section addresses the values that motivate environmental theorists—including justice, responsibility, rights, limits, and flourishing—and the potential conflicts that can emerge within, between, and against these ideals. The final section examines the primary structures that constrain or enable the achievement of environmental ends, as well as theorizations of environmental movements, citizenship, and the potential for on-going environmental action and change.
