After the parliamentary elections in Germany in September 2017, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU), The Greens (Bündnis90/Die Grünen) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) started to negotiate about forming a coalition government. But, surprising to many, the FDP decided to let these coalition talks collapse, and many commentators in Germany found it highly problematic for a political party to refuse to take responsibility in government. Interestingly, the question whether (or: when) democratic parties may (...) legitimately refuse to govern has so far been neglected in political theory and political philosophy. The article develops a general answer by discussing several possible reasons for thinking that it is sometimes wrong to refuse to govern and thereby engages both democratic theory and the recent literature on compromise. The resulting view is that parties have an ‘integrity prerogative’ that allows them to refuse to govern, except when there is no reasonable and stable alternative government coalition available. (shrink)

The contrast between the normative functions of political parties in representative democracies and their empirical working is stark and rapidly increasing. This article starts from a sober, realist account of the empirical state of affairs and from structural problems of democracy and participations – in terms of limits of time, information, qualification and relevant expertise – that have to be acknowledged by any realist–utopian proposal of alternatives beyond the exclusive alternative of ‘thin, realist democracy’ or emphatic ‘strong, participatory, (...) direct, or mass democracy’. We can do better. My search for institutional alternatives looks not for the replacement of political parties but for their relief. Many, not all, of their normative tasks can be shared with other functional networks, associations and organizations. In exploring such a new division of political labour I draw on older debates and designs of associative democracy and on recent discussions to democratize expertise and to expertise democracy in order to address urgent societal problems of high-risk decisions under conditions of extreme complexity, contingency, unpredictability and uncertainty and deep contestedness of our knowledge, problems that turn out to be unmanagable by party politics and representative democracy. (shrink)

In this paper, I do several things. First, I present a definition of ‘corruption’ as ‘abuse of power that builds or maintains the abuser’s power’, arguing that this definition is more generally applicable than other definitions offered in the literature and that it highlights a crucial property of corruption, namely its tendency to metastasise, presenting a more and more serious danger to society. To defend the emphasis I place on this tendency, I then argue that corruption (as commonly understood) frequently (...) produces three mechanisms pushing it to reproduce: self-perpetuation by the corrupt actors to protect themselves, formation of networks between corrupt actors which ensnare new participants, and normalisation of specific kinds of abuse of power in the corrupt actors’ social environments. From here, I turn to political parties, arguing that they present fertile soil for the mechanisms just described. In their stead, I argue for sortition—a system whereby legislators are randomly selected from the population at large. I make the case that each of the three metastatic mechanisms I have described would have much more difficulty taking root in a sortitional-democratic system than in an electoral-democratic one, before concluding by responding to a major potential objection to such a proposal’s feasibility—namely, that sortitional juries would be less competent than elected legislatures—and presenting a sketch of a sortitional-democratic system setting out how it could discharge the government’s executive functions, in addition to the legislative functions already covered. The paper as a whole, in addition to its explicit arguments, may be considered to make an implicit case for non-ideal over ideal theory, in that it attempts to show the importance of that quintessentially non-ideal factor, corruption, to the nature of any political order. (shrink)

The interaction between philosophy and political parties is one of the most lively questions in the discipline of the history of philosophy and in the battle of ideas today. It affects both specialists in philosophy and representatives of other professions, particularly in the broad realm of creative intellectuals. It excites people of different generations living under different social systems and belonging to different and often opposed classes.

Slavoj Zizek ist einer der prominentesten linken Intellektuellen. Der Sammelband lädt ein, Zizeks Ideen kritisch zu diskutieren, insbesondere sein Verständnis von Politik, politischen Organisationen und dem (vergangenen, gegenwärtigen und zukünftigen) Staat.

A survey of various approaches and positions that leading Humanists have taken towards the question of how Humanism can be put to work in 'the real world'.

This paper explores how political parties should be regulated in jurisdictions with anti-defection laws, which constitutionalise parties’ control over the legislative process. It begins by arguing that parties in such jurisdictions should be understood as neither private organisations nor quasi-public bodies but as legislative entities. Next, it argues that recognising the legislative status of the party should affect how we think about the legal regulation of its internal affairs. In particular, the law may justifiably demand that (...) decision-making power within the extra-parliamentary party be dispersed across multiple persons and not concentrated in the hands of a few. Finally, I examine the implications of this argument for India and Pakistan, two jurisdictions with anti-defection laws in place. (shrink)

This paper examines the legal conception of political parties. It does so by unearthing the history and ontology of the common law relating to political parties in international perspective. The flexibility of the unincorporated association, in which parties are understood through the private law of contract as networks of internal rules or agreements, rather than as legal entities, has proven to be a mask. In the common laws imagination, the ideal party is a ground-up organization (...) animated by its membership. But the law mandates no such thing, and in its statutory and constitutional conception intra-party democracy may be sublimated as parties need be no more than an electoral persona or brand. (shrink)

Thinkers committed to an ideal of public reason are suspicious of religiously informed political activity as it undermines democratic political legitimacy. This paper considers Jürgen Habermas’s recent shifts on this question in light of the history of Europe’s religious parties in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These parties made a real and lasting contribution to Europe’s democratization and their history suggests ways in which Habermas and other defenders of public reason misunderstand the nature of (...) democratic political legitimacy. (shrink)

The dominant public philosophy of the United States of America has long been some version of liberalism--dedicated to individual liberty, equal rights, religious freedom, government by consent, and established limits on political power. Today, however, we find ourselves in unusual times, when the major political parties have powerful and growing wings that embrace decidedly illiberal public philosophies. On the Left, critical theory eschews Enlightenment rationalism and liberal ideas of toleration and individual liberty as structures that serve (...) to support inequality and oppression. On the Right, conservative scholars excoriate liberalism for privileging an ideal of individual autonomy that eats away at the civilizing bonds of family, tradition, religion, and country. What seems new here is not the critiques themselves, but the power and popularity of political movements that openly and proudly reject the first principles of America's long-dominant public philosophy. Can the center hold? Can the principles of 1776 survive? Or has liberalism run its course? With these questions in the air, this book proposes to return with fresh eyes to the beginning of liberalism and the political philosophy of John Locke. Instead of looking at Lockean liberalism as a simple and timeworn ideological program, the essays reexamine Locke's project by remaining alive to the complexity and nuance with which he addressed his subject. The Locke that emerges is indeed an ambitious and radical thinker, but one not as imprudent or unmindful of custom as his conservative critics would have it, nor as tolerant of oppression as his progressive critics aver. (shrink)

Matt Beech traces the ideological roots of the Labour Party from its nineteenth century origins in the Labour Movement, through the twentieth century, until the years under Tony Blair. He claims that New Labour in power evolved as a revisionist social democratic government and traces its search for new political ideas both to the New Right and Old Labour. Using interviews with former Labour politicians, advisers and academics, he presents an original and comprehensive analysis of Labour's political (...) class='Hi'>philosophy. (shrink)

While most of Gramsci's party work is well known to education scholars of Gramsci, and the educational aspects of his writings have been repeatedly analyzed, what remains a constant in education‐based Gramsci studies is the nearly universal minimization of this work for what it was, namely party work. For Gramsci, it would have been unthinkable to consider this work outside the framework of a revolutionary party. Yet, for contemporary educational scholars it seems unthinkable to consider Gramsci's work within the framework (...) of a revolutionary party. The goals of this article are to outline Gramsci's interrelated conceptualization of the roles of the revolutionary party; the nature of education within and by the revolutionary party; and the aims of party education. For considerations of space, I limit this analysis to Gramsci's pre‐prison praxis, the period of his active militancy in the PSI and the PCI. I conclude the article with what I consider to be lessons with continued relevance from Gramsci's praxis for the socio‐political economic context faced by today's radical educators. (shrink)

The author presents the changing role of women and of the attitudes towards them in the PWP and the PSP in a midsize industrial town in Central Poland in the years 1945-1948. During the war, women of the PWP were promoted to the highest positions in the party structures, however, due to the quick reaffirmation of gender roles in the post-1945 period, they were relegated to lower posts. Their political influence was thereafter limited solely to the care sector which (...) was considered their natural domain. In turn, the PSP gained importance in the post-war period only after A. Tomaszewska, a woman and an influential prewar labour organizer, took charge of it in 1946. Under her leadership, the Socialists renewed their ties with women workers of the town’s main textile factory and challenged the Communist party. (shrink)

Nursing and nurses have become reliant on qualitative methods to understand the meaning of nursing care, and many nurse researchers use Heideggerian Interpretivist phenomenology approaches. Often these nurses are unaware of Martin Heidegger's role in the German National Socialist Party of the 1930s and his allegiance to fascist ideology. We ask: can a bad person have good ideas? In line with pragmatic thinkers such as Richard Rorty, we argue that instead of value judgements on people and their ideas, nurses should (...) consider ideas as a product of a historical/social and political time and space. In urging a critical political engagement, we argue for a Husserlian approach. In opposition to Heidegger's interpretivist phenomenology approach, in which the hegemony of the day is integral to the phenomena being studied, we propose that a more expressive, collaborative engagement using Husserlian descriptive phenomenology approach would serve better in encouraging a more critical engagement with how ideas are used by groups of people, how some groups might be advantaged and others disadvantaged. Our conclusion is that the separation of ideas from political and social context is dangerous, and nurses, including nurse researchers, must understand how their research ideas and methods influence and are influenced by political agendas. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Central Questions of Political Philosophy Making Sense of Human Nature Why One‐Party Rule? Why Socialism? Conclusion.

The text introduces a translation of Ilyenkov’s famous text “On the State of Philosophy,” which was meant as a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU and expressed his exasperation with the development of Soviet philosophy. In our introduction, we describe the historical context of the emergence of the letter, including the main changes in Soviet philosophy in the 1960s (esp. rise in popularity of cybernetics), and the institutional details of Ilyenkov’s biography. We point to the (...) contemporary relevance of the letter by emphasizing how Ilyenkov’s dialectical account of science can enrich contemporary discussions in the sociology of science and STS. (shrink)

This book is conceived as part of a systematic philosophy of values. Neither philosophies of value nor systematic philosophies are in fashion. It is hoped that this work will make a contribution toward their reappraisal. Classically, political philosophy was considered a part of philosophic systems, as the basic ideas of the philosophy applied to politics. Its relative neglect by the predominant school of philosophy in America and Britain has meant that certain ideas and issues in (...) philosophy are in danger of erasure by default. The neglect of political philosophy has meant, however, that ideologies dominate political discussion. The field of political discourse has, in effect, been yielded or ceded to the ideologues. Their views, concepts, statements of the issues, and solutions—in a word, the ultimate legitimacy of their approach—have been tacitly accepted. Many philosophers have never discussed ideology in relation to, and in the context of political philosophy in our time. More importantly, the connection between ideology and contemporary events has not received serious philosophic examination. One basis for this attitude may be the ideal of a "value free" social science. The well known thesis of Daniel Bell's book, "the end of ideology," has diverted attention from its study. Yet ideological politics is still with us in the form of ideologically defined political parties and political conflicts in which the ideology of the conflicting groups define the issues. Part I examines the link between ideology, totalitarianism and Plato’s ideal of the “philosopher-king.” Ideology is articulated by intellectuals seeking power, or attached to a party or faction seeking power. It is applied totalistically through bureaucracy and technology. We will go on in Part II to a critique of political essentialism. Essential models, combined with political motives and ideological formulas are the basis for total politicization. Thus totalitarianism will have been analyzed into root essential models, articulated into totalistic ideologies, by politically minded intellectuals, using a formula which politicizes all categories. Chapter five contrasts the moral values of political philosophy with the politicized standards of ideology. Chapter six contrasts the privacy and freedom requisite to evaluation of personal values, and to genuine happiness, with the total publicity of ideology. An entirely new grounding relation for politics is explicated in this book. (shrink)

Davis demonstrates how Simone Weil's Marxism challenges current neoliberal understandings of the self and of human rights. Explaining her related critiques of colonialism and of political parties, it presents Weil as a twentieth-century political philosopher who anticipated and critically responded to the most contemporary political theory.

In _Elementary Aspects of the Political_ Prathama Banerjee moves beyond postcolonial and decolonial critiques of European political philosophy to rethink modern conceptions of "the political" from the perspective of the global South. Drawing on Indian and Bengali practices and philosophies from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Banerjee identifies four elements of the political: the self, action, the idea, and the people. She examines selfhood in light of precolonial Indic traditions of renunciation and realpolitik; action (...) in the constitutive tension between traditional conceptions of karma and modern ideas of labor; the idea of equality as it emerges in the dialectic between spirituality and economics; and people in the friction between the structure of the political party and the atmospherics of fiction and theater. Throughout, Banerjee reasserts the historical specificity of political thought and challenges modern assumptions about the universality, primacy, and self-evidence of the political. In formulating a new theory of the political, Banerjee gestures toward a globally salient political philosophy that displaces prevailing Western notions of the political masquerading as universal. (shrink)

For a century at least, parties have been central to the study of politics. Yet their typical conceptual reduction to a network of power-seeking elites has left many to wonder why parties were ever thought crucial to democracy. This book seeks to retrieve a richer conception of partisanship, drawing on modern political thought and extending it in the light of contemporary democratic theory and practice. Looking beyond the party as organization, the book develops an original account of (...) what it is to be a partisan. It examines the ideas, orientations, obligations, and practices constitutive of partisanship properly understood, and how these intersect with the core features of democratic life. Such an account serves to underline in distinctive fashion why democracy needs its partisans, and puts in relief some of the key trends of contemporary politics. (shrink)

This article examines a case study of international Communist propaganda during the Cold War. The Institute of Historical and Socio-Political Research, a historical propaganda organization affiliated to the Romanian Communist Party, succeeded in penetrating the Iron Curtain by distributing its works through a social network provided by the Italian Liberation Movement Institute, and in publishing its works in Italy, with the help of the Gramsci Institute, as well as publishers like Editori Riuniti and Nicola Teti. The ISISP established a (...) mutually beneficial partnership with various Italian actors: ISISP and the regime succeeded in publishing international propaganda; the Italian publishing houses were paid by ISISP to print and distribute their edited volumes, with the double advantage of keeping political ties with the RCP while also protecting their own limited finances. (shrink)

English summary: The freedom potential of modern societies, above all the justification of political authority, is today linked to a democratically constituted order. What is meant by the idea of being democratic seems, however, to be anything but clear. Is it only a question of representing the people through elections, ballots, and political parties, or does it include institutional culture, the division of powers, and the legal regime within a community? A "philosophy of the republic," as (...) developed in this volume's contributions, shows that the current "dominance of the democratic" falls short of accounting for the independent significance to the republican self-organisation of state and society. German description: Das Freiheitspotential moderner Gesellschaften, vor allem die Rechtfertigung politischer Herrschaft, wird heute mit einer demokratisch verfassten Ordnung verknupft. Was eine demokratische Ordnung ausmacht, was also die Idee des Demokratischen meint, scheint aber alles andere als klar zu sein. Soll es nur um Fragen der Reprasentation des Volkes durch Wahlen, Abstimmungen und Parteien oder daruber hinaus auch um die institutionelle Kultur, die Gewaltenteilung und das Rechtsregime innerhalb eines Gemeinwesens gehen? Eine "Philosophie der Republik," wie sie in den Beitragen dieses Bandes entwickelt wird, kann zeigen, dass die aktuelle "Dominanz des Demokratischen" keine eigenstandige Bedeutung der republikanischen Selbstorganisation von Staat und Gesellschaft beimisst. Mit Beitragen von: David Abraham, Andreas Anter, Susanne Beck, Jochen Bung, Daniela Demko, Horst Dreier, Andrea Marlen Esser, Helmut Goerlich, Bernd Grzeszick, Klaus Gunther, Matthias Kaufmann, Jean-Francois Kervegan, Thomas Khurana, Stephan Kirste, Oliver Lembcke, Rochus Leonhardt, Georg Lohmann, Wolfgang Schild, Christian Schmidt, Thomas Schmidt-Lux, Kurt Seelmann, Hannes Siegrist, Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Trevor Wedman, Marc Andre Wiegand, Benno Zabel, Sabrina Zucca-Soest. (shrink)

The relationship between great statesmen and political parties and what this means for political science and theories of the state; studies of Otto von Bismarck, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi and Nikola Pasic and their struggles for the public good and the national interest.

Most research in political philosophy focuses on issues related to states and governments. Only rarely do political philosophers focus on the ethical actions of individuals—voters, lobbyists, politicians, party members—acting within large-scale political systems. _Political Ethics _works against the dominant paradigm, offering twenty-one, never before-published essays on the ethics of non-statist political agents. The chapters cover three major areas of political ethics: The Rights and Obligations of Politicians; The Rights and Obligations of Citizens; and (...) class='Hi'>Political Parties. The volume is a ground-breaking collection, aiming to alter future direction of political philosophy. (shrink)

The article reveals ideological-theoretical, methodological, and politico-ideological basic principles for an adequate analysis of the specifics of modern Chinese (Sinicized) Marxism. The attributive features of modern Chinese Marxism (Marxism with Chinese specifics (the adaptation of Marxism to the Chinese Context, Sinicized Marxism), as the most effective version in world history for correcting and modernizing the axiomatics of the Marxist-Leninist theoretical model of social development, as well as improving the ideology of the ruling Communist Party in order to increase the effectiveness (...) of its domestic and foreign state policies, have been characterized by means of concrete-historical and systematic comparative analysis of the ideational grounds and basic socio-philosophical postulates, political and ideological prescriptions of the program documents of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of China. Within the framework of this study, special attention has been paid to highlighting the essence and features of the Soviet and Chinese strategy of socialist construction, created to implement Marxist socialist and communist projects, as well as revealing the scientific evaluation of the differences between the political doctrines of the CPSU and the CPC in the interpretation of objective logic (the duration of stages, goals, and objectives of fundamental economic, social, political, and cultural transformations) of the process of constructing high-level development socialism ("developed socialism") and the further progressive movement of such a society to the phase of communism. (shrink)

It hardly needs saying that the Left in the advanced capitalist economies is in a state of severe disarray. Inspired, or perhaps more accurately, dis-inspired, by the dull conflation of globalisation and welfare retrenchment that marks the neoliberal orthodoxy of the times, the former social-democratic Left has abandoned all socialist advocacy. It marches instead towards a ‘Centre’ that itself continues to drift rightwards. Meanwhile, at least in the industrially developed world, serious movements and parties to the left of social (...) democracy have become harder and harder to find. (shrink)

Conventional narratives hold that parties are “the orphans of political philosophy” and that systematic normative justifications of parties and partisanship have emerged only in recent years in the West. This article aims to show that when antiparty sentiments were prevalent in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western societies, a systematic justification of party politics existed in China. Western antipartyism in that time shifted from an older accusation that parties were divisive and subversive to a “progressive (...) antipartyism” that portrayed parties as elitist and antidemocratic “machines.” In China, however, although proparty intellectuals faced the first type of antipartyism, the “progressive” type was relatively absent, as there weren’t any mature party machines in the first place. Far from being a hindrance to democracy, parties comprised of public-spirited elites were justified as an instrument for political founding: transforming passive subjects under an imperial despotism into modern active citizens in a constitutional democracy. (shrink)

Chantal Mouffe is one of the most influential political theorists at work today. Her work has influenced political parties across Europe and continues to inform the direction of left politics. In this work, Mouffe argues that liberal democracy misunderstands the problems of ethnic, religious and nationalist conflicts because of its inadequate conception of politics.

Henry Longueville Mansel (1820-1871), Anglican theologian and philosopher, has wrongly been remembered as a Kantian agnostic whose ideas led to those of Herbert Spencer. Francesca Norman's book provides a thorough revisioning of Mansel's theology in context and reveals the personal basis of Spencer's animus towards Mansel. Mansel is revealed as an orthodox Anglican theistic personalist whose ideas inspired Newman to write his Grammar of Assent. Located in context, Mansel's personal connections with leading Tory figures such as Lord Carnarvon and Benjamin (...) Disraeli are explored. Key controversies with Frederick Denison Maurice and John Stuart Mill are interpreted with reference to the party political elections of 1859 and 1865. Norman offers a vital vision of nineteenth-century theology, philosophy, and politics. (shrink)

This book explores the implications of agonistic democratic theory for political practice. Fuat Gürsözlü argues that at a time when political parties exacerbate political division, political protesters are characterized as looters and terrorists, and extreme partisanship and authoritarian tendencies are on the rise, the agonistic approach offers a much-needed rethinking of political practice to critically understand challenges to democracy and envision more democratic, inclusive, and peaceful alternatives. Inspired by Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic theory and drawing (...) on insights of other prominent agonistic scholars, Gürsözlü offers a distinctive approach that develops the connections between the agonistic approach and political practice. His main claim is that approaching democratic politics from an agonistic perspective changes the way we understand the nature of democratic society, the place of political protest in democracy, the nature of adversarial engagement, and the democratic function of political parties. The book also advances an account of agonistic peace that is best fitted to the pluralistic and inherently conflictual nature of democratic societies. This book should be of interest to anyone working in the field of contemporary political theory, political philosophy, peace studies, and philosophy of peace. (shrink)

This intellectually discomfiting, disturbingly provocative, yet still thoroughly scholarly Handbook reproduces the intellectual ferment that accompanied the Russian Revolution including the wholly polarising effect at that time of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The Palgrave Handbook of Leninist Political Philosophy does not settle for one safe interpretation of the thought of this world-historic figure but rather revels in a clash of viewpoints. Most interestingly it presents a contrast between the Western editors who emphasise pure democracy and Marxian humanism with many (...) of the contributing scholars who take a more sanguine view of the Leninist political project. Perhaps reflecting the current Western political crisis, some of the volume’s other European and North American scholars more closely align with their colleagues from the Global South. Key Features: · Places particular emphasis on the key elements of Lenin’s thought – the dictatorship of the proletariat, the nature of the dialectic and the New Economic Policy · Additional comprehensive coverage includes the theory of the party, Bolshevism, imperialism, and the class struggle in the countryside · Examines the relation of Lenin’s thought to the ideas of his most influential contemporaries as well as the most eminent thinker to interpret Lenin since his death – György Lukács This Handbook is essential reading for scholars, researchers and advanced students in political philosophy, political theory, the history of political ideas, economics, international relations and world history. It is also ideal for the general reader who wishes to understand some of the most powerful ideas that have shaped the modern world and that may yet shake the world again. (shrink)

This volume offers an up-to-date overview of the much-debated issue of how a democracy may defend itself against those who want to subvert it. The justifications, effectiveness and legal implications of militant democracy are discussed by addressing questions as: How can militant democracy measures such as party bans be justified? Why is it that some democracies ban antidemocratic parties? Does militant democracy succeed in combatting right-wing extremism? And is militant democracy evolving into an internationalized legal and political concept? (...) Bringing together experts and perspectives from political science, law and philosophy, this volume advances our understanding of the current threats to democracy, a political system once thought almost invincible. It is especially timely in the light of the rise of illiberal democracy in the EU, the increasingly authoritarian rule in Turkey, the steady shift to autocracy in Russia and the remarkable election of Trump in the US. (shrink)

Before proceeding, I would like to clarify briefly two interpretative premises, one methodological and one normative, which sustain my argument. Understanding the transformations facing constitutional democratic societies is a demanding task. These transformations, whose multiple causes are socio-economic not merely political, reflect on the one hand in the decline of mass party form of organization and on the other in the success of populism as not simply a movement of contestation but as a ruling power. In this article, I (...) will suggest that the successes of populism are connected to the decline of organized parties, the pillar of constitutional democracy as it emerged after 1945. It is impossible to predict whether populism will succeed in becoming the new form of democracy. It is, however, certain that contemporary representative governments are facing astonishing mutations and the decline of the party form of representative unification of claims and ideas is one of them. My argument relies upon a phenomenology of populism as a movement that is strong in proportion as organized parties are weak, which actually capitalizes on a revolt against intermediary bodies such as parties. 1. (shrink)

Philosophizing the indefensible asks what distinctive contributions political philosophers might make when reflecting on blatant moral failures in public policy - the kinds of failures that philosophers usually dismiss as theoretically un-interesting, even if practically important. This book argues that political philosophers can and should craft "strategic" arguments for public policy reforms, showing how morally urgent reforms can be grounded, for the sake of discussion, even in problematic premises associated with their opponents. The book starts by developing the (...) general contours of this approach - defending its general moral value in a democratic society, and examining how far one might go in strategically deploying dubious or even repugnant premises in debating public affairs. The book then applies strategic theorizing to a set of diverse policy issues. These range from the abortion debate and financial regulation in the United States, through controversies surrounding the participation of Arab parties in Israel's political process, to global issues, such as commercial ties with oil-rich dictatorships, and the bearing of such ties on global climate change. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Political or Ethical? Opposition to Hobbes: You Shall Not Commit Murder Opposition to John Locke: Restoration of Paternality Opposition to Hume: Morality Presides over the Work of Truth Freedom and the Priority of Responsibility Justice and the Third Party Pluralism and Peace Endnotes.

Critique and modern philosophy of political thought and political parties.

Concerned to remedy the ‘state of severe disarray’ that immobilises the left in advanced capitalist countries, Howard Chodos and Colin Hay set out to inquire into ‘the organisational conditions that are necessary to the radical transformation of capitalism'. This disarray is expressed in the drift of social-democratic parties in the wake of the neoliberal mainstream, the inability of a fragmented and disappearing radical Left to orient either itself or spontaneous resistance to the global neoliberal agenda, and the failure of (...) the ‘new’ social movements as a vehicle of ‘broader social transformation'. Against this background of fragmentation, dispersal and division, the authors spell out their central contention: the idea that ‘there is a distinctively creative component to politics', as the claim that organisation in general and the political party in particular provide the necessary context for the actualisation of ‘belief-dependent emergent capacities'. Fulfilling a ‘multi-dimensional mediating function', the party provides ‘an indispensable context in which we can define who we are and what we stand for', a locus for the definition of commonalities, and hence it constitutes a basis for strategic action. (shrink)