Contemporary Political Theory: A Reader provides an accessible introduction to the key works of major contemporary political theorists. Key theorists and writers include John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Michael Walzer, Michael Sandel, Susan Okin, Will Kymlicka, Iris Marion Young, Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser and John Dryzek.

Introducing the major theories, issues and concepts in contemporary political theory, this text is a comprehensive and engaging introduction to the field. The book examines a range of topics to explore questions such as: What kinds of political community best support democracy? Do members of wealthy societies have duties to eradicate global poverty? Who or what should be the authority on human rights? Chapters are carefully organized to enhance learning by first setting out rival perspectives on (...) key political issues which are then compared and analysed through a series of key debates. Discussion boxes are used throughout the book to consider the policy implications of different theoretical perspectives from thinkers including John Rawls, Susan Okin, Isaiah Berlin, Jane Mansbridge and Will Kymlicka. Offering an in-depth survey of the landscape of contemporary political theory and written in an engaging and lively style, this book will equip students with the tools to think through the complex questions whose answers determine our collective political lives. (shrink)

This article surveys recent work in pragmatism and political theory. In doing so, it shows both how recent work on pragmatism has secured the view that at its core is a set of arguments about the character of democracy – although the character of those arguments is open to debate and reimagination – and how pragmatist arguments have been reinterpreted and deployed to address contemporary concerns and approaches. This charts a terrain of live disagreements rather than settled (...) opinion. (shrink)

Explores the actual and possible roles of evil in contemporary political theory.

While political economic perspectives of urban globalization tend to generalize the economic pressures upon socio-political transformations of cities, recent European research has stressed the institutional context of urban collective action. However, the structural bias of the European city model merely complements the criticized economization by a culturalist essentialization of urbanity, and thus fails to conceptualize political agency. In order to elaborate the theoretical foundations of a political counterhypothesis to urban globalization, this article clarifies the different historical (...) and normative conceptions of institutional structure and agency in the urban context. Most research of cities implies — more or less implicitly — a common urban ideal which associates centrality with a local integration potential of plural societies. However, distinguishing between a historically embedded empirical category, a normative model of public space, and an analytical ideal-type of political agency helps to overcome the static structural conception of an essentially European urban culture and problematizes the role of knowledge models in reflectively constructing urban realities. Therefore, a dynamic and contextual relation between political economic functions, historic heritage, and normative frames might contribute to an open-ended comparative framework of urban collective action that can be applied to any ordinary city across and beyond Europe. (shrink)

ABSTRACTProviding an introduction to this special issue on the ancient notions of liberty and its modern perspectives, this essay contains, first, some reflections about the relation between the fields of ancient history and contemporary political theory. Building on the comments of the final roundtable with Kinch Hoekstra and Quentin Skinner, it then makes an attempt at extrapolating some theoretical understandings of liberty from a wide range of geographical and historical contexts covered in the contributions. Moving away from (...) a strictly classical Graeco-Roman focus, these include investigations from the second millennium BCE polities in the Levant to the Byzantine empire in the fifth-century CE. (shrink)

Colin Farrelly's central objective in writing this introductory text is to demonstrate to students the practical relevance of contemporary theoretical debates to everyday issues in policy creation and implementation and politics.

Approaching Simone de Beauvoir's feminism and social commentary as a toolkit to understand our current crises, Simone de Beauvoir: Toolkit for the 21st Century brings together established and emerging scholars to apply her insights to gender studies, political philosophy, decolonisation, intellectual history, age theory, and critical phenomenology. The essays in this collection start from key concepts in Beauvoir's oeuvre and relate them to contemporary debates, asking how her notion of ambiguity speaks to decolonial freedom struggles; how myths (...) inform our notions of collective, national identities; how masculinity and its violence has reached new levels with the emergence of 'Incels'. These and other issues are central to this critical appraisal of Beauvoir's legacy, demonstrating the contemporary relevance of her thought as it diagnoses the present and looks toward change for a better future. This book will be of great interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students looking to engage with the political content of Simone de Beauvoir's work and the timely application of her ideas. (shrink)

How may progressive political theorists advance the Enlightenment after Darwin shifted the conversation about human nature in the nineteenth century, the Holocaust displayed barbarity at the historical center of the Enlightenment, and 9/11 showed the need to modify the ideals and strategies of the Enlightenment? Kantian Courage considers how several figures in contemporary political theory--including John Rawls, Gilles Deleuze, and Tariq Ramadan--do just this as they continue Immanuel Kant's legacy.

Contemporary political theories have made significant progress toward identifying the principles for an egalitarian society. From this perspective, Edward Bellamy's radical and pluralistic egalitarianism can be read not only as a relevant precedent but as a source of sophisticated arguments capable of enriching current debates. Although unfairly overlooked as theoretical works, Bellamy's utopias can be read today as offering insights that bring together and combine key modern ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Therefore, this article argues that Bellamy's (...) conception of equality involves several dimensions and functions as a background condition for effective freedoms; that these liberties are not at odds with voluntary equality; and that fraternity—understood in Rawlsian terms—makes sense in a free and equal soci- ety, as it is guaranteed both by institutional means and by personal decisions. (shrink)

In _Cynical Suspicions and Platonist Pretentions_, John McGuire conducts a critical analysis of contemporary political theory with a view to facilitating a less reductive understanding of political disaffection.

Postmodernism has evoked great controversy and it continues to do so today, as it disseminates into general discourse. Some see its principles, such as its fundamental resistance to metanarratives, as frighteningly disruptive, while a growing number are reaping the benefits of its innovative perspective. In Political Theory and Postmodernism, Stephen K. White outlines a path through the postmodern problematic by distinguishing two distinct ways of thinking about the meaning of responsibility, one prevalent in modern and the other in (...) postmodern perspectives. Using this as a guide, White explores the work of Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, and Habermas, as well as 'difference' feminists, with the goal of showing how postmodernism can inform contemporary ethical-political reflection. In his concluding chapter, White examines how this revisioned postmodern perspective might bear on our thinking about justice. (shrink)

This paper sheds light on the main issue of this book by affording a side look at a discipline other than economics, namely political theory. It is argued that the contemporary debate in political theory hinges on the question of 'realism'. Through a discussion of Raymond Geuss's work, the paper seeks to show that political theory remains caught between the conflicting requirements of deep contextual analysis and radically critical engagement with the world 'as (...) it is'. Finally, the idea of a 'division of labour' between contextualist and critical approaches to political theory is introduced. (shrink)

This book explores and critically reflects on the theory and practice of political agency in contemporary global politics. In light of the changing relationship between the state, the market and the society, it seeks to map both theoretically and empirically contemporary forms of global political agency. This book reflects on the theory and practice of political agency in contemporary global politics. More specifically, it empirically analyses a range of different forms of (...) class='Hi'>political agency and explores their significance for understanding and enacting global politics. Reflecting the efforts of scholars from a variety of disciplines from political theory and Sociology to Geography and International Relations, it brings into conversation a wide spectrum of theoretical approaches including Marxism, feminism, post-structuralism and historical institutionalism. The contributors compare a range of forms of political agency; exploring their significance for the theory and practice of global politics; and reflect on the tensions and synergies generated by recent efforts to conceptualise them.Demonstrating an innovative and interdisciplinary approach Contemporary Political Agency will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, sociology, political economy and political theory. (shrink)

This paper operates on the premise that a systematic formulation of ‘radicality’ is a worthwhile and potentially productive exercise within political theory. However, I argue that one continues to find a latent ‘purism’ within contemporary understandings of ‘radicality’, primarily in relation to feminism, but also elsewhere. This manifests itself in the tendency to think ‘radicality’ as a function of the inherent properties of particular types of political spaces and political practices. Within feminism, for example, I (...) argue that the ‘radicality’ of a feminist politics is thought in terms of the extent to which it adheres to a specifically ‘1970s’ feminist model of autonomous mobilization. This perspective suffers from a number of conceptual problems, necessitating a formulation of a more dynamic view of radicality with which to evaluate contemporary political practices. To this end, I seek to cast radicality as a function of equivalence and imagination drawn from Linda Zerilli's Arendtian-inflected feminist theory. Thinking radicality in these terms, I argue, avoids the latent purism of many existing approaches while enabling a critical engagement sensitive to the context of the practice under investigation. (shrink)

This paper operates on the premise that a systematic formulation of ‘radicality’ is a worthwhile and potentially productive exercise within political theory. However, I argue that one continues to find a latent ‘purism’ within contemporary understandings of ‘radicality’, primarily in relation to feminism, but also elsewhere. This manifests itself in the tendency to think ‘radicality’ as a function of the inherent properties of particular types of political spaces and political practices. Within feminism, for example, I (...) argue that the ‘radicality’ of a feminist politics is thought in terms of the extent to which it adheres to a specifically ‘1970s’ feminist model of autonomous mobilization. This perspective suffers from a number of conceptual problems, necessitating a formulation of a more dynamic view of radicality with which to evaluate contemporary political practices. To this end, I seek to cast radicality as a function of equivalence (drawn from Ernesto Laclau) and (especially) imagination drawn from Linda Zerilli's Arendtian-inflected feminist theory. Thinking radicality in these terms, I argue, avoids the latent purism of many existing approaches while enabling a critical engagement sensitive to the context of the practice under investigation. (shrink)

The touchstone of these seven original essays is the relationship between polis and praxis - the public-political space and the political action that maintains and is conditioned by that space. The argument flows from Martin Heidegger's lament in his Letter on Humanism that modern philosophers have failed to understand that the essence of "action" is "accomplishment." Dallmayr's lucid essays are a step toward achieving that understanding.Dallmayr assesses and puts into perspective the work of many of the seminal thinkers (...) of the 20th century - Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, Michael Oakeshott - as he takes up such topics as the plausibility of friendship as a model for political relations, the relationship between political praxis and "experience," Heidegger's ontology of freedom, Foucault's treatment of power, and the merits and disadvantages of Habermasian critical theory. The result is a stimulating and original contribution to current political discourse that explores and advocates the manifold possible levels of active political life below and above the level of the State.Fred Dallmayr has established a reputation as a theorist and critic who is equally well attuned to European and American currents of philosophical and political thought. Like Hannah Arendt, he sees the essay as an ideal form for exercises in theorizing en route while venturing beyond traditional categories and philosophical benchmarks. His aim in this book is not a close-knit propositional framework but a set of tentative and partially continuous explorations that are provocative and inviting, like the movements of a musical suite.Fred R. Dallmayr is Packey Dee Professor of Government, University of Notre Dame. (shrink)

Of late, resistance has become a central notion in political theory, standing at the heart of attempts to respond to the dilemmas of contemporary times. However, many accounts tend to ascribe to an idealised, heroic view. In this view, resistance represents a clearcut action against injustice and stems from individuals’ conscious choice and their unwavering ethical commitment to the cause. Some liberal scholars, most notably Candice Delmas and Jason Brennan, have argued that citizens of democratic societies have (...) a moral duty to resist state-sanctioned injustice. This resistance occurs either through ‘principled – civil or uncivil – disobedience’ or through ‘defensive actions’. While acknowledging that pervasive injustice can compromise our cognitive and moral capacities, however, their articulation of our political obligation to resist refrains from a sustained examination of the moral dilemmas, uncertainties and risks that arise when fighting systemic oppression. (shrink)

Solidarity is crucial for realizing justice, securing public goods, and reducing domination. Yet there have been few theoretical studies of its threats and vulnerabilities. In this paper I fill this lacuna, outlining four approaches to what undermines solidarity and considering their implications for contemporary political theory. I begin by reviewing the empirical literature on solidarity, noting that its focus on diversity and individuation has yielded inconclusive results. I then develop four alternative threats to solidarity by drawing from (...) the history of political thought, social theory, and religious studies: interpersonal dependence (Jean-Jacques Rousseau); radical evil (Immanuel Kant); self-dissolution (Émile Durkheim); and moral spectatorship (Emmanuel Levinas). Taking these threats into account, I conclude, should significantly impact our normative theorizing about solidarity. In particular, it should encourage a research agenda that attends to solidarity’s affective, esthetic, and non-rational sources. (shrink)

How may progressive political theorists advance the Enlightenment after Darwin shifted the conversation about human nature in the 19th century, the Holocaust displayed barbarity at the historical center of the Enlightenment, and 9/11 showed the need to modify the ideals and strategies of the Enlightenment? Kantian Courage considers how several figures in contemporary political theory--including John Rawls, Gilles Deleuze, and Tariq Ramadan--do just this as they continue Immanuel Kant's legacy. Rather than advocate specific Kantian ideas, the (...) book contends that political progressives should embody Kantian courage--a critical and creative disposition to invent new political theories to address the problems of the age. It illuminates Kant's legacy in contemporary intellectual debates; constructs a dialogue among Anglo-American, Continental, and Islamic political theorists; and shows how progressives may forge alliances across political and religious differences by inventing concepts such as the overlapping consensus, the rhizome, and the space of testimony. The book will interest students of the Enlightenment, contemporary political theorists and philosophers, and a general audience concerned about the future of the relationship between Islam and the West. (shrink)

This new edition of Will Kymlicka's best selling critical introduction to contemporary political theory has been fully revised to include many of the most significant developments in Anglo-American political philosophy in the last eleven years, particularly the new debates over issues of democratic citizenship and cultural pluralism. The book now includes two new chapters on citizenship theory and multiculturalism, in addition to updated chapters on utilitarianism, liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism, socialism, communitarianism, and feminism. The many thinkers (...) discussed include G. A. Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, William Galston, Carol Gilligan, R. M. Hare, Chandran Kukathas, Catherine Mackinnon, David Miller, Philippe Van Parijs, Susan Okin, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, John Roemer, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, and Iris Young. Extended guides to further reading have been added at the end of each chapter, listing the most important books and articles on each school of thought, as well as relevant journals and websites. Covering some of the most advanced contemporary thinking, Will Kymlicka writes in an engaging, accessible, and non-technical way to ensure that the book is suitable for students approaching these difficult concepts for the first time. This second edition promises to build on the original edition's success as a key text in the teaching of modern political theory. (shrink)

This book explores, discusses, and assesses the actual and potential sense of subjectivation in a variety of contexts. In particular, it reflects the genealogies, connections, variations, and practical implications of various theories of subjectivity and subjection while providing an up-to-date and authoritative account of how to engage with the 'subject'. Rather than addressing the 'subject' merely in theoretical terms, this book explores subjectivation as a seminal expression of subjective practices in the plural. To the extent that subjectivity and subjection are (...) key terms in a plurality of discourses and for a number of disciplines, Subjectivation in Political Theory and Contemporary Practices advances a trans-disciplinary reading by taking into account relevant debates that stretch from poststructuralism via postfordism to postdemocracy. In this sense, the book introduces readers to current approaches to subjectivation by displacing conventional understandings and suggesting unexpected reformulations. (shrink)

In this book, Stephen Acreman follows the development and reception of a hitherto under-analyzed concept central to modern and postmodern political theory: the Kantian ein erweiterte Denkungsart, or enlarged mentality. -/- While the enlarged mentality plays a major role in a number of key texts underpinning contemporary democratic theory, including works by Arendt, Gadamer, Habermas, and Lyotard, this is the first in-depth study of the concept encompassing and bringing together its full range of expressions. A number (...) of attempts to place the enlarged mentality at the service of particular ideals–the politics of empathy, of consensus, of agonistic contest, or of moral righteousness–are challenged and redirected. In its exploration of the enlarged mentality, the book asks what it means to assume a properly political stance, and, in giving as the answer ‘facing reality together’, it uncovers a political theory attentive to the facts and events that concern us, and uniquely well suited to the ecological politics of our time. (shrink)

This challenging book focuses on the problem of justice for indigenous peoples – in philosophical, legal, cultural and political contexts – and the ways in which this problem poses key questions for political theory. It includes chapters by leading political theorists and indigenous scholars from Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Canada and the United States. One of the strengths of this book is the manner in which it shows how the different historical circumstances of colonisation in these countries (...) raise common problems and questions for contemporary political theory. It examines ways in which political theory has contributed to the past subjugation and continuing disadvantage faced by indigenous peoples, while also seeking to identify resources in contemporary political thought that can assist the ongoing processes of 'decolonisation' of relations between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. (shrink)

Political theory is a field that finds nourishment in others. From economics, history, sociology, psychology, and political science, theorists have drawn a rich repertoire of schemas to parse the social world and make sense of it. With each of these encounters, new subjects are brought into focus as others recede into the background, ushering a change not only in how questions are tackled but also in what questions are thought worth asking.

This article suggests that humanism is a decisionism in contemporary critical political theory. Despite obvious and multiple differences, leading critical theorists like Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Žižek, Eric Santner, and Jürgen Habermas, among others, share an investment in stabilizing the human being as a ground of the political. This stabilization of the human should concern political theorists, as this article argues, because it uncritically reproduces conceptual affinities between the notion of the human being and sovereign authority. (...) By investing in the stability and centrality of the human being, these theorists perform what will be called, paraphrasing an often neglected argument by Carl Schmitt, a decision to be human. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I argue that Schmitt’s decisionism is not merely circumscribed to sovereignty’s juridico-political dimension, but that it also includes a peculiar commitment to God’s decision to become human in Christ. Against this decisionism as humanism, the article draws on Walter Benjamin, Roberto Esposito, and Jacques Derrida to propose an alternative politics that destabilizes humanity and sovereignty through the emergence of the animal, or what will be called melancholic lycanthropy. (shrink)

Is the critique of modern, liberal subjectivity warranted, and, if so, how do we proceed in its aftermath? This article clarifies the ways in which such a critique is valid, as well as the ways in which it both misses its mark and gives us little in the way of resources for thinking further about subjectivity. I argue that thinking in the aftermath must articulate a weak ontological portrait of subjectivity that vivifies the value of both political generosity (emphasized (...) by critics like William Connolly) and equal respect (as emphasized by the defenders of liberalism like Charles Larmore). (shrink)

Liberalism at the Crossroads provides a fair but lively introduction to key thinkers and schools of thought in the contemporary debate regarding liberal political theory.

How can we best understand the major debates and recent movements in contemporary empirical political theory? Is there a human nature on which we can construct scientific theories of political life? What is the role of culture in shaping any such nature? How objective and value-free can political theories be? These are only a few of the issues addressed by this collection of essays from a disparate group of contributors.

Questo articolo si sforza di ricollocare le teorie del care in seno alla teoria politica contemporanea, in cui si attesta un ritorno al tema della vulner­abi­li­tà corporea e morale come problema politico e morale in sé. Qui si distin­guono tre accezioni della parola vulnerabilità, accezioni che im­plicano ogni volta ragionamenti morali e legittimano ordini politici differenti: il modello del­la disponibilità alla ferita fisica e morale, quello dell’associazione stretta fra l’idea della vul­nerabilità e il concetto di dipendenza , e infine la (...) vulnerabilità come non possesso di sé.The article aims to reframe philosophical theories of care within con­tem­po­rary political theories, with particular respect to the idea of bodily and spi­ritual vulnerability. Here I will distinguish three meanings of the word vul­ne­rability, all connected to different moral reflections and political orders. The first meaning concerns the disposition toward physical and moral wounds; the second one explains the connection between vulnerability and de­pendence ; the third one defines vulnerability as a lack of self-possession. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This article investigates a significant problem in contemporary critical theory, namely its failure to address effectively the possibility that a campaign of political violence may be a legitimate means of fighting grave injustice. Having offered a working definition of 'political violence', I argue that critical theory should be focused on experiences of in justice rather than on ideals of justice. I then explore the reasons as to why, save for some intriguing remarks on retrospective legitimation, (...) J rgen Habermas has not addressed this issue directly. While Axel Honneth's recognition theory may have greater potential here, the absence of explicit consideration of the matter by him leaves considerable work to do. I introduce five questions in the concluding section that provide a starting point in setting out an appropriately stringent, normative test for claims that support violent action against injustice. (shrink)

This article investigates a significant problem in contemporary critical theory, namely its failure to address effectively the possibility that a campaign of political violence may be a legitimate means of fighting grave injustice. Having offered a working definition of ‘political violence’, I argue that critical theory should be focused on experiences of injustice rather than on ideals of justice. I then explore the reasons as to why, save for some intriguing remarks on retrospective legitimation, Jürgen (...) Habermas has not addressed this issue directly. While Axel Honneth's recognition theory may have greater potential here, the absence of explicit consideration of the matter by him leaves considerable work to do. I introduce five questions in the concluding section that provide a starting point in setting out an appropriately stringent, normative test for claims that support violent action against injustice. (shrink)