Political Deference In A Democratic Age

This book explores the concept of deference as used by historians and political scientists. Often confused and judged to be outdated, it shows how deference remains central to understanding British politics to the present day. This study aims to make sense of how political deference has functioned in different periods and how it has played a crucial role in legitimising British politics. It shows how deference sustained what are essentially English institutions, those which dominated the Union well into the second half of the twentieth century until the post-1997 constitutional transformations under New Labour. While many dismiss political and institutional deference as having died out, this book argues that a number of recent political decisions - including the vote in favour of Brexit in June 2016 - are the result of a deferential way of thinking that has persisted through the democratic changes of the twentieth century. Combining close readings of theoretical texts with analyses of specific legal changes and historical events, the book charts the development of deference from the eighteenth century through to the present day. Rather than offering a comprehensive history of deference, it picks out key moments that show the changing nature of deference, both as a concept and as a political force. Catherine Marshall is Professor of British Studies at CY Cergy Paris Université, France. Her research focuses mainly on the history of ideas in mid-Victorian England and the legacy of some of those ideas on twentieth and twenty-first century Britain. She teaches British history and the history of political ideas.

This book explores the concept of deference as used by historians and political scientists. Often confused and judged to be outdated, it shows how deference remains central to understanding British politics to the present day. This study aims to make sense of how political deference has functioned in different periods and how it has played a crucial role in legitimising British politics. It shows how deference sustained what are essentially English institutions, those which dominated the Union well into the second half of the twentieth century until the post-1997 constitutional transformations under New Labour. While many dismiss political and institutional deference as having died out, this book argues that a number of recent political decisions – including the vote in favour of Brexit in June 2016 – are the result of a deferential way of thinking that has persisted through the democratic changes of the twentieth century. Combining close readings of theoretical texts with analyses of specific legal changes and historical events, the book charts the development of deference from the eighteenth century through to the present day. Rather than offering a comprehensive history of deference, it picks out key moments that show the changing nature of deference, both as a concept and as a political force.

Examines the long-term developments for communication systems and the media industry Shows the structural changes of the media economy Authors are international renowned experts in the field

"A new history of liberalism which argues that liberalism has been predicated on definite morality and should be viewed as an attempt to encompass both fear and hope. Liberalism, argues Alan Kahan, is the search for a society in which people need not be afraid. Freedom from fear is the most basic freedom. If we are afraid, we are not free. These insights, found in Montesquieu and Judith Shklar, are the foundation of liberalism. What liberals fear has changed over time (revolution, reaction, totalitarianism, religious fanaticism, poverty, and now populism) but the great majority of liberal thinkers have relied on three pillars to ward off their fears and to limit the concentrated power that causes fear: freedom, markets, and morals, or, to put it another way, politics, economics, and religion or morality. Most liberal thinkers emphasize one or two pillars more than another, but it is typical of liberalism down to the Second World War to rely on all three, although there were always minority voices who preferred to stand on only one leg. After WWII, "thin" procedural/market liberals, who wanted to strip any moral or religious basis or purpose from liberalism, dominated "thick" liberal moralists, who thought liberalism needed a moral basis and/or goal. It is the political contention of this book that liberalism is most convincing as program, language, and social analysis when it relies on all three pillars, and that the relative weakness of liberalism at the end of the twentieth century had much to do with neglect of the moral pillar of liberalism. Its historical contention is that for much of the past two centuries it did rely on all three pillars. But Kahan also argues that liberalism is not only a party of fear. It is also a party of hope, or the party of progress. Many of the contradictions typical of liberalism derive from the seemingly contradictory effort to encompass both hope and fear. If in case of conflict fear often trumps hope for liberals (loss aversion applies in politics as much as in economics), and utopia is subject to indefinite postponement, progress in personal autonomy and development has always been at the heart of liberalism. Liberals typically support their hopes on the same three pillars of freedom, markets, and morals which they use to ward off their fears. Nevertheless, in one respect those historians and political theorists who identify liberalism with laissez-faire economics are not wrong. It is characteristic of liberalism then that it bases its hopes not on the state but on civil society, which for liberals is the common source of a free politics, a free market, and of morals. Alan S. Kahan is Professor of History at the Université de Versailles. His previous books include Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion: Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls (Oxford 2015), Alexis de Tocqueville (Continuum Books) and Mind vs Money: The War Between Intellectuals and Capitalism (Transaction Publishing, 2010)"--

'A witty, lucid investigation into one of the great mysteries of our time' JONATHAN COE ‘Should be read and enjoyed by readers on the left, right and centre’ David Edgerton, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT ________________________________________________ Why do British politics so often play out on the Tories’ terms? What does this say about our democracy? In his revelatory book, Samuel Earle explores the roots of the current crisis and the real reasons for the Conservatives’ unsettling success, from their ruling-class origins in the eighteenth century and their disproportionate influence of the British press to their stranglehold over national identity. He sheds light on the Conservatives’ historic appeal among the working classes and why the Labour Party so often disappoints. Tory Nation describes the making of Britain through one party’s astonishing power over us. It’s only by reaching into our history, Earle argues, that we can understand how we got here – and how we can find a way out. ________________________________________________ 'Written with historical depth and literary flair' NEW STATESMAN ‘Earle has set out clearly and eloquently why our democracy is incapable of solving our political problems’ ROBERT VERKAIK, author of Posh Boys ‘Gripping and indispensable’ NESRINE MALIK, author of We Need New Stories

In this work of historically informed political theory, Kimberly Smith sets out to understand how nineteenth-century Americans answered the question of how the people should participate in politics. Did rational public debate, the ideal that most democratic theorists now venerate, transcend all other forms of political expression? How and why did passion disappear from the ideology (if not the practice) of American democracy? To answer these questions, she focuses on the political culture of the urban North during the turbulent Jacksonian Age, roughly 1830-50, when the shape and character of the democratic public were still fluid. Smith's method is to interpret, in light of such popular discourse as newspapers and novels, several key texts in nineteenth-century American political thought: Frederick Douglass's Fourth of July speech and Narrative, Angelina Grimke's debate with Catharine Beecher, Frances Wright's lectures, and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Such texts, Smith finds, highlight many of the then-current ideas about the extremes of political expression. Her readings support the conclusions that the value of rational argument itself was contested, that the emergent Enlightenment rationalism may have helped to sterilize political debate, and that storytelling or testimony posed an important challenge to the norm of political rationality. Smith explores facets of the political culture in ways that make sense of traditions from Whiggish resistance to Protestant narrative testimony. She helps us to understand such puzzles as the point of mob action and other ritualistic disruptions of the political process, our simultaneous attraction to and suspicion of political debates, and the appeal of stories by and about victims of injustice. Also found in her book are keen analyses of the antebellum press and the importance of oratory and public speaking. Smith shows that alternatives to reasoned deliberation—like protest, resistance, and storytelling—have a place in politics. Such alternatives underscore the positive role that interest, passion, compassion, and even violence might play in the political life of America. Her book, therefore, is a cautionary analysis of how rationality came to dominate our thinking about politics and why its hegemony should concern us. Ultimately Smith reminds the reader that democracy and reasoned public debate are not synonymous and that the linkage is not necessarily a good thing.

In this extraordinarily wide-ranging book, Neil Nevitte demonstrates that the changing patterns of Canadian values are connected.

How and why should hope play a key role in a twenty-first century democratic politics? Alan Mittleman offers a philosophical exploration of the theme, contending that a modern construction of hope as an emotion is deficient. He revives the medieval understanding of hope as a virtue, reconstructing this in a contemporary philosophical idiom. In this framework, hope is less a spontaneous reaction than it is a choice against despair; a decision to live with confidence and expectation, based on a rational assessment of possibility and a faith in the underlying goodness of life. In cultures shaped by biblical teaching, hope is thought praiseworthy. Mittleman explores the religious origins of the concept of hope in the Hebrew Scriptures, New Testament, rabbinic literature and Augustine. He traces the roots of both the praise of hope, in Jewish and Christian thought, and the criticism of hope in Greco-Roman thought and in the tradition of philosophical pessimism. Arguing on behalf of a straightened, sober form of hope, he relates hope-as-a-virtue to the tasks of democratic citizenship. Without diminishing the wisdom found in tragedy, a strong argument emerges in favour of hope as a way of taking responsibility for the world. Drawing on insights from scriptural and classical texts, philosophers, and theologians - ancient and modern, Mittleman builds a compelling case for placing hope at the centre of democratic political systems.