The Edinburgh Companion To Contemporary Liberalism

A major new reference volume - The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Liberalism is the premier collection of material on a comprehensive range of topics in contemporary liberalism. Liberal theory has been caricatured by its critics as an abstract, unworldly, trivial philosophical navel-gazing pursuit. The Companion counters this view by showing how liberalism can tackle wide-ranging practical concerns that urgently demand attention in twenty-first century politics. Rather than presenting contemporary liberalism simply and narrowly as a survey of what its main academic protagonists have said over the past 30 years, the guiding principle of the volume is to conceptualise it primarily as a set of themes and approaches informed by the challenges to the practice of liberal politics.Issues such as human rights, citizenship, nationalism, feminism, international communities, supranational orders, post-communism and ecocentrism take their place alongside the more familiar and well-worked themes of justice and justification as topics for liberal theorising. The reader is vividly shown the ways in which liberalism engages directly with the problems of practical political life today.This wide-ranging account of contemporary liberal thinking places the emphasis on agenda-setting, showing that contemporary liberalism is live - relevant, proactive, continuously engaged and adaptable - and that the problems faced by the liberal order are sufficiently complex and perplexing to demand the serious, rigorous philosophical reflection offered by contemporary liberal political theory.The Companion allows the reader to explore liberalism's contemporary relevance and to look to its likely future developments. With contributors including Will Kymlicka, Michael Freeden, Richard Bellamy, Rex Martin, Margaret Canovan, Diana T. Meyers, and Kate Soper, this large, definitive edition will be a must-buy for all libraries and a key reference tool for

An expert survey of liberal approaches and liberal responses to diverse topics and controversies in contemporary political thought and practice.

Liberalism is the dominant ideology of our time, yet its character remains the subject of intense scholarly and political controversy. Inspired by the work of Michael Freeden, this book brings together an internationally-respected cast of scholars to debate liberalism and to redefine the very essence of what it is to be a liberal.

This book critically examines the significance of gender, race and sexuality to wars waged by liberal states. Drawing on original field-research with British soldiers, it offers insights into how their everyday experiences are shaped by, and shape, a politics of gender, race and sexuality that not only underpins power relations in the military, but the geopolitics of wars waged by liberal states. Linking the politics of daily life to the international is an intervention into international relations (IR) and security studies because instead of overlooking the politics of the everyday, this book insists that it is vital to explore how geopolitical events and practices are co-constituted, reinforced and contested by it. By utilising insights from Michel Foucault, the book explores how shared and collectively mediated knowledge on gender, race and sexuality facilitates certain claims about the nature of governing in liberal states and about why and how such states wage war against ‘illiberal’ ones in pursuit of global peace and security. The book also develops post-structural work in international relations by urging scholars interested in the linguistic construction of geopolitics to consider the ways in which bodies, objects and architectures also reinforce particular ideas about war, identity and statehood.

Takes a fresh look at the history of democracy, broadening the traditional view with previously unexplored examples. This substantial reference work critically re-examines the history of democracy, from ancient history to possible directions it may take in the future. 44 chapters explore the origins of democracy and explore new - and sometimes surprising - examples from around the world. Each of the 9 parts introduces the period, followed by 3 to 7 case studies.

This book deals with the role and place of the general will in modern and contemporary political thought. This project is carried out at the crossroads of the history of ideas and political philosophy. It extensively develops historical and philosophical themes, showing modifications to the idea of the general will in the writings of thinkers who sometimes represent very distant epochs. The author tracks down the birth and the development of the idea of the general will in ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary times, devoting most of the book to the thoughts of Jean Jacques Rousseau and nineteenth and twentieth century British idealists.

Liberal Languages reinterprets twentieth-century liberalism as a complex set of discourses relating not only to liberty but also to welfare and community. Written by one of the world's leading experts on liberalism and ideological theory, it uses new methods of analyzing ideologies, as well as historical case studies, to present liberalism as a flexible and rich tradition whose influence has extended beyond its conventional boundaries. Michael Freeden argues that liberalism's collectivist and holistic aspirations, and its sense of change, its self-defined mission as an agent of developing civilization--and not only its deep appreciation of liberty--are central to understanding its arguments. He examines the profound political impact liberalism has made on welfare theory, on conceptions of poverty, on standards of legitimacy, and on democratic practices in the twentieth century. Through a combination of essays, historical case studies, and more theoretical chapters, Freeden investigates the transformations of liberal thought as well as the ideological boundaries they have traversed. He employs the complex theory of ideological analysis that he developed in previous works to explore in considerable detail the experimental interfaces created between liberalism and neighboring ideologies on the left and the right. The nature of liberal thought allows us to gain a better perspective on the ways ideologies present themselves, Freeden argues, not necessarily as dogmatic and alienated structures, but as that which emanates from the continuous creativity that open societies display.