Anarchy As Order

This original and impressively researched book explores the concept of anarchy—"unimposed order"—as the most humane and stable form of order in a chaotic world. Mohammed A. Bamyeh traces the historical foundations of anarchy and convincingly presents it as an alternative to both tyranny and democracy. He shows how anarchy is the best manifestation of civic order, of a healthy civil society, and of humanity's noblest attributes. A cogent and compelling critique of the modern state, this provocative book clarifies how anarchy may be both a guide for rational social order and a science of humanity.

This book provides a contextual account of the first anarchist theory of war and peace, and sheds new light on our contemporary understandings of anarchy in International Relations. Although anarchy is arguably the core concept of the discipline of international relations, scholarship has largely ignored the insights of the first anarchist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon's anarchism was a critique of the projects of national unification, universal dominion, republican statism and the providentialism at the heart of enlightenment social theory. While his break with the key tropes of modernity pushed him to the margins of political theory, Prichard links Proudhon back into the republican tradition of political thought from which his ideas emerged, and shows how his defence of anarchy was a critique of the totalising modernist projects of his contemporaries. Given that we are today moving beyond the very statist processes Proudhon objected to, his writings present an original take on how to institutionalise justice and order in our radically pluralised, anarchic international order. Rethinking the concept and understanding of anarchy, Justice, Order and Anarchy will be of interest to students and scholars of political philosophy, anarchism and international relations theory.

This book elaborates and defends law without the state. It explains why the state is illegitimate, dangerous and unnecessary.

Anthony de Jasay's work has been enormously influential, describing both a theoretical philosophical model for a stateless, liberal, free market order and offering analysis of and solutions to many of the technical economic problems associated with such a vision of society - most notably his work on the free rider and his return. In this book ten significant scholars in philosophy and political economy, including Nobel laureate in economics James Buchanan, pay tribute to the man and his work in a series of essays at once both respectful and critical. Ordered Anarchy focuses on three fundamental questions of libertarian thinking. Which are the basic libertarian principles and how do rights and liberties relate to each other? Is order possible and durable in an anarchic or quasi-anarchic society, and if so, under which preconditions? How and to what extent are the pillars of politics, such as the constitution, institutions and government, detrimental or beneficial to an enduring free society? While Narveson, Palmer and Bouillon focus on the first of these questions, the late Radnitzky and van Dun address the second. Benson, Holcombe and Kliemt provide answers to question number three, while Buchanan and Little highlight the role of Anthony de Jasay in this debate and the inspiration that his thinking has given to the authors of this volume.

This is a study of the political parameters of international law and, conversely, the law's relevance and reach in international politics. At the theoretical level, it bridges the competing dominant paradigms - neorealism and neoliberalism - in the contemporary IR literature.

Is the state a necessity, a convenience, or neither? It enforces collective choices in which some override the preferences and dispose of the resources of others. Moreover, collective choice serves as its own source of authority and preempts the space it wishes to occupy. The morality and efficacy of the result are perennial questions central to political philosophy. In Against Politics Jasay takes a closely reasoned stand, based on modern rational choice arguments, for rejecting much of mainstream thought about these matters. In the first part of the book, Excuses, he assesses the standard justification of government based consent, the power of constitutions to achieve limited government, and ideas for reforming politics. In the second part, Emergent Solutions , he explores the force of first principles to secure liberties and rights and some of the potential of spontaneous conventions for generating ordered anarchy. Written with clarity and simplicity, this powerful volume represents the central part of Jasay's recent work. Fully accessible to the general reader, it should stimulate the specialist reader to fresh thought.

1. The realist tradition

The end of the Cold War has released some hitherto suppressed trends in international society that are reshaping international order, such as globalization and its nemesis - fragmentation. This volume analyzes the current transformation of the character of the state as the principal actor of international society and related changes in the structure of international society. International law, especially its fundamental principles, such as sovereign equality of states, non-use of force, non-interference, respect for human rights, and self-determination of peoples, reflect some basic characteristics of the state and the structure of international society. Because of significant changes going on in the latter, many crucial principles of international law have ceased to reflect the reality. Moreover, fundamental principles often come into conflict with each other since they reflect main characteristics of different international societies -- Westphalian and post-Westphalian.