- The Anatomy of Antiliberalism
- Stephen Holmes
- How has liberalism, the grand democratic ideal, come to be a dirty word? This book shows us what antiliberalism means in the modern world--where it comes from, whom it serves, and why it speaks with such a forceful, if ever changing, voice.
- Hardcover 1993 / Paperback
- Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918-1945
- Barbara Miller Lane
- In a close analysis of intellectual, political, social, and economic developments, Lane shows that Nazi views on architecture were generated by a complex of historical factors. Far from being cohesive, Nazi cultural policy was largely the product of the conflicting ideas about art held by the Nazi leaders and their efforts to advance these ideas during internal power struggles.
- Paperback
- Capitalism as Religion? A Study of Paul Tillich's Interpretation of Modernity
- Francis Ching-Wah Yip
- The relationship between religion and modern culture remains a controversial issue within Christian theology. This book focuses on Paul Tillich's interpretation of modern culture and the influence of capitalism. Using the concept of "cultural modernity," Francis Ching-Wah Yip reconstructs Tillich's interpretation of modernity and shows that Tillich's notion of theonomy served to underscore the problems of modernity and to develop a response.
- Paperback
- The Charismatic Bond
- Douglas Madsen
- Peter Snow
- Here is a book that takes up where Max Weber left off in his study of charisma and extends the theory with insights from other disciplines and new empirical data. Madsen and Snow demonstrate that magnetic personalities must have willing followers, finding support for their argument in the rise of Juan Perón and the Peronistas in Argentina.
- Hardcover 1991 / Paperback 1996
- Citizens and Citoyens
- Mark Hulliung
- Hulliung argues that the standard American account of a continuous Jacobin republican tradition--"illiberal to the core"--is fatally misleading. In reality it was the nineteenth-century French liberals who undermined the cause of liberalism, and it was French republicans who eventually saved liberal ideals.
- Hardcover 2002
- The Conservative Ascendancy
- Donald T. Critchlow
- In this provocative history of the Right in modern America, Critchlow finds a deep dilemma inherent in how conservative Republicans expressed their anti-statist ideology in an age of mass democracy and Cold War hostilities. As the Right moved forward with its political program, partisanship intensified and ideological division widened--both between the parties and across the electorate. This intensified partisanship reflects the vibrancy of a mature democracy, Critchlow argues, and a new level of political engagement despite its disquieting effect on American political debate.
- Hardcover 2007
- Democratic Accountability
- Leif Lewin
- Political leaders often claim they have no control over negative outcomes, citing that history rushes onward oblivious of human will. Lewin examines this reasoning and finds it unconvincing. In a staunch defense of the possibility for meaningful and profound democratic decision making, Lewin finds that, not only do political leaders exert enough control to be assigned responsibility, but also that the meaning of a functioning democracy requires the people to hold their leaders accountable.
- Hardcover 2007
- Disciplining the State
- Patricia M. Thornton
- Scholars of European history assert that war makes states, just as states make war. This study finds that in China, the challenges of governing produced a trajectory of state-building in which the processes of moral and social control were at least as central to state-making as the exercise of coercive power. Thornton maps these complex processes during three critical reform periods, and offers a historical reading of state-making as a contest between central and local regimes.
- Hardcover 2007
- The Disorder of Political Inquiry
- Keith Topper
- Engaging the work of thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, Pierre Bourdieu, Roy Bhaskar, and Hannah Arendt, as well as recent literature in political science and the history and philosophy of science, Topper proposes a pluralist, normative, and broadly pragmatist conception of political inquiry, one that is analytically rigorous yet alive to the notorious vagaries, idiosyncrasies, and messy uncertainties of political life.
- Hardcover 2005
- Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers?
- Zygmunt Bauman
- Bauman urges us to think in new ways about a newly flexible, newly challenging modern world. In an era of routine travel, where most people circulate widely, the inherited beliefs that aid our thinking about the world have become an obstacle. He challenges members of the “knowledge class” to overcome their estrangement from the rest of society.
- Hardcover 2008
- The End of Ideology
- Daniel Bell
- The End of Ideology has been a landmark in American social thought, regarded as a classic since its first publication in 1962. Daniel Bell postulated that the older humanistic ideologies derived from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were exhausted, and that new parochial ideologies would arise.
- Paperback 2000
- Failing to Win
- Dominic D. P. Johnson
- Dominic Tierney
- How do people decide which country came out ahead in a war or a crisis? In Failing to Win, Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney dissect the psychological factors that predispose leaders, media, and the public to perceive outcomes as victories or defeats--often creating wide gaps between perceptions and reality.
- Hardcover 2006
- Fanon's Dialectic of Experience
- Ato Sekyi-Otu
- A Caribbean psychiatrist trained in France after World War II and an eloquent observer of the effects of French colonialism on its subjects, Frantz Fanon was a controversial figure. By recognizing the centrality of experience to Fanon's work, Sekyi-Otu enables readers to comprehend this much misunderstood figure within the tradition of political philosophy.
- Paperback 1997 / Hardcover 1997
- The Gift of Science
- Roger Berkowitz
- Moving from the scientific revolution to the nineteenth-century rise of legal codes, Berkowitz tells the story of how lawyers and philosophers invented legal science to preserve law's claim to moral authority. The "gift" of science, however, proved bittersweet. Instead of strengthening the bond between law and justice, the subordination of law to science transformed law from an ethical order into a tool for social and economic ends.
- Hardcover 2005
- Inhuman Conditions
- Pheng Cheah
- Through an examination of debates about cosmopolitanism and human rights, Inhuman Conditions questions key ideas about what it means to be human. Cheah links influential arguments about the new cosmopolitanism to a perceptive examination of the older cosmopolitanism of Kant and Marx, and juxtaposes them with proliferating formations of collective culture to reveal the flaws in claims about the imminent decline of the nation-state and the obsolescence of popular nationalism.
- Paperback 2007 / Hardcover 2007
- Judging Under Uncertainty
- Adrian Vermeule
- In this book, Adrian Vermeule shows that any approach to legal interpretation rests on institutional and empirical premises about the capacities of judges and the systemic effects of their rulings. He argues that legal interpretation is above all an exercise in decisionmaking under severe empirical uncertainty. In view of their limited information and competence, judges should adopt a restrictive, unambitious set of tools for interpreting statutory and constitutional provisions.
- Hardcover 2006
- Lenin Lives!
- Nina Tumarkin
- Was the deification of Lenin a show of spontaneous affection--or a planned political operation designed to solidify the revolution with the masses? This book provides a startling answer. Exploring the cult's mystical, historical, and political aspects, Tumarkin demonstrates the galvanizing power of ritual in the establishment of the post-revolutionary regime. In a new Preface and Postscript, she brings the story up to date, considering the fall of the Soviet Union and Russia's new democracy.
- Paperback 1997
- Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination
- Joyce Appleby
- Paperback 1992 / Hardcover 1992
- Liberalism with Honor
- Sharon R. Krause
- Hardcover 2002
- The Modern Self in the Labyrinth
- Eyal Chowers
- This book explores the distinct historical-political imagination of the self in the twentieth century and advances two arguments. First, it suggests that we should read the history of modern political philosophy afresh in light of a theme that emerges in the late eighteenth century: the rift between self and social institutions. Second, it argues that this rift was reformulated in the twentieth century in a manner that contrasts with the optimism of nineteenth-century thinkers regarding its resolution. It proposes a new political imagination of the twentieth century found in the works of Weber, Freud, and Foucault, and characterizes it as one of "entrapment."
- Hardcover 2004
- A Nation of Agents
- James E. Block
- In this sweeping reinterpretation of American political culture, James Block offers a new perspective on the formation of the modern American self and society. Block roots both self and society in the concept of agency, rather than liberty, and dispenses with the national myth of the "sacred cause of liberty"--with the Declaration of Independence as its "American scripture."
- Hardcover 2002
- Nature and History in American Political Development
- James W. Ceaser
- Foreword by Theda Skocpol
- In this inaugural volume of the Alexis de Tocqueville Lectures, James Ceaser traces the way certain "foundational" ideas--including nature, history, and religion--have been understood and used over the course of American history. Ceaser treats these ideas as elements of political discourse that provide the ground for other political ideas, such as liberty or equality. Three critical commentators challenge Ceaser's arguments, and a spirited debate about large and enduring questions in American politics ensues.
- Hardcover 2006 / Paperback 2008
- On Voluntary Servitude
- Michael Rosen
- Michael Rosen diagnoses the underlying question to which the theory of ideology was meant to provide the answer: "Why do people accept forms of political domination which it is against their interests to accept?" This book provides a historical and critical analysis of that answer.
- Hardcover 1996
- The Origins of Canadian and American Political Differences
- Jason Kaufman
- Hardcover 2009
- Overconfidence and War
- Dominic D. P. Johnson
- Opponents rarely go to war without thinking they can win--and clearly, one side must be wrong. This conundrum lies at the heart of the so-called "war puzzle": rational states should agree on their differences in power and thus not fight. But as Johnson argues, states are no more rational than people, who are susceptible to exaggerated ideas of their own virtue, of their ability to control events, and of the future. By looking at this bias--called "positive illusions"--as it figures in evolutionary biology, psychology, and the politics of international conflict, this book offers compelling insights into why states wage war.
- Hardcover 2004
- Political Competition
- John E. Roemer
- John Roemer presents a unified and rigorous theory of political competition between parties and he models the theory under many specifications, including whether parties are policy oriented or oriented toward winning, whether they are certain or uncertain about voter preferences, and whether the policy space is uni- or multidimensional.
- Hardcover 2001 / Paperback 2006
- Political Conduct
- Mark Philp
- This book explores how the processes and practices of politics shape political values such as liberty, justice, equality, and democracy. Mining the history of political episodes and political thinkers, including Caesar and Machiavelli, Philp argues that it is through political activity that "values are articulated and embraced, and they become powerful motivating forces."
- Hardcover 2007
- The Politics Presidents Make
- Stephen Skowronek
- This wholly innovative study demonstrates that presidents are persistent agents of change, continually disrupting and transforming the political landscape. But each president also inherits a particular type of political context, a regime shaped by his predecessors that he either rejects or affirms.
- Paperback 1997
- Progressive Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Democratic Commitment
- Leon Fink
- The long-standing dilemma for the progressive intellectual, how to bridge the world of educated opinion and that of the working masses, is the focus of Leon Fink's penetrating book, the first social history of the progressive thinker caught in the middle of American political culture.
- Hardcover 1998 / Paperback 1999
- Ruling America
- Edited by Steve Fraser
- Edited by Gary Gerstle
- This book offers a panoramic history of our country's ruling elites from the time of the American Revolution to the present. At its heart is the greatest of American paradoxes: How have tiny minorities of the rich and privileged consistently exercised so much power in a nation built on the notion of rule by the people? In a series of thought-provoking essays, leading scholars of American history examine every epoch in which ruling economic elites have shaped our national experience.
- Paperback 2005 / Hardcover 2005
- Saving Persuasion
- Bryan Garsten
- In Saving Persuasion, Bryan Garsten uncovers the early modern origins of today's suspicious attitude toward rhetoric and seeks to loosen its grip on contemporary political theory. He argues that the artful practice of persuasion ought to be viewed as a crucial part of democratic politics. Against theorists who advocate a rationalized ideal of deliberation aimed at consensus, Garsten argues that a controversial politics of partiality and passion can produce a more engaged and more deliberative kind of democratic discourse.
- Hardcover 2006
- A Short History of Distributive Justice
- Samuel Fleischacker
- Fleischacker argues that guaranteeing aid to the poor is a modern idea, developed only in the last two centuries. To attribute a longer pedigree to distributive justice is to fail to distinguish between justice and charity. By examining major writings in ancient, medieval, and modern political philosophy, Fleischacker shows how we arrived at the contemporary meaning of distributive justice.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2005
- The Southern Tradition
- Eugene Genovese
- In recent years American conservatism has found a new voice. But what seems new, Eugene Genovese shows us, may in fact have very old roots. Tracing a certain strain of conservatism to its sources in a rich southern tradition, his book opens a powerful perspective on the politics of our day. As much a work of political and moral philosophy as one of history, The Southern Tradition reconstitutes the historical canon, re-envisions the strengths and weaknesses of the conservative tradition, and broadens the spectrum of political debate for our own time.
- Hardcover 1994 / Paperback 1996
- When Is Discrimination Wrong?
- Deborah Hellman
- Hellman develops a much-needed general theory of discrimination. She demonstrates that many familiar ideas about when discrimination is wrong—when it is motivated by prejudice, grounded in stereotypes, or simply departs from merit-based decision-making—won’t adequately explain our widely shared intuitions. When Is Discrimination Wrong? explores what it means to treat people as equals and thus takes up a central problem of democracy.
- Hardcover 2008