Abstract
This collection is intended as an example of political theory with an empirical focus, considering as it does two related proposals for achieving ‘a more egalitarian capitalism’. Specifically, the collection addresses the relative merits and demerits of two much-debated schemes: the Stakeholder Grant (SG) and the Basic Income (BI). An SG, on the version defended by Ackerman and Alstott, would award individuals reaching adulthood a one-off capital sum to invest or spend as they see fit. A BI, as defended by Van Parijs, would award individuals an unconditional, non-work-related income for life. The collection comprises a brief description and justification by each scheme's advocates, a series of critical (though generally supportive) essays and a response by each camp.
While each defends their scheme vigorously, the normative commitments and political goals on both sides are broadly held in common. The authors share a concern with the inegalitarianism of current distributions of wealth and income, with the limited opportunities afforded to the poor in market societies, and with how individual decisions about careers, voluntary and caring work and the decision simply not to work are influenced by economic conditions which are in themselves of limited justice. Much of the debate herein therefore focuses on questions of practicability, and the effects of implementing one scheme rather than another. On the surface of it, the two schemes are similar (especially since one could either invest an SG thereby to secure a constant return equivalent to a BI, or mortgage one's BI to generate an SG equivalent). Van Parijs pulls no punches in ruling this latter option out of court, however, and this refusal marks out a genuine difference of perspective. The real problem of ‘stake-blowing’ – the possibility that individuals receiving an SG might squander it in ill-considered ways – makes BI, Van Parijs asserts, preferable. This claim opens a controversial set of issues concerning paternal-ism, discussed ably by Stuart White in his illuminating chapter. Other chapters concentrate on the priority of SG or BI vis-à-vis erstwhile commitments to the welfare state, and the effects of both schemes on democratic citizenship, as well as on poverty and class-based exploitation. Finally, some of the more empirically-minded chapters attempt to track the likely expense, and effectiveness, of both schemes. Overall, the collection represents a valuable attempt to think through some of the practical implications of a normative commitment to economic freedom and security for all.
Chris Armstrong
(University of Southampton)
Political theory is perpetually plagued with the issue of reconciling theory with practice. Just how do theorists balance often abstract intangible debates about concepts and meaning with practical issues surrounding the way we live our lives? In this edited collection by Andrews and Saward, the authors add their own contributions to this debate by ‘show[ing] that theories, ideology and ideas “live”’ (p. 1), highlighting the centrality of ideas to politics by juxtaposing theoretical perspectives with practical examples. This book is part of a five-book series developed by The Open University, ‘designed for students and others who have not studied politics before, and can stand alone as a short introduction to key areas of debate within political science’ (p. vii). Because of this, the five chapters follow a distinct thematic structure common to the series and each topic fits into a specific conceptual framework. In summary, these are legitimacy (power and structure); national self-determination (centre and periphery); dissent (participation and dissent); justice (equality and difference); and using theory (evidence and argument).
While each chapter presents a discrete argument about its particular topic, making it difficult to form any overall conclusions, several factors do relate the chapters to each other. The first is the emphasis on explaining and evaluating the theory with reference to key thinkers in the field. The second is the overall theme of the book, ‘living political ideas’, which develops the theories presented by showing them in the context of contemporary or ‘living’ examples. Thirdly, there is an overall distinction made between ideology and theory that is initiated in the introduction and then developed in successive chapters. This culminates in Smith's chapter 5 discussion of theory as a ‘toolbox’ that can clarify meanings, and political ideologies as a ‘workbench’ on which the tools of political theory can help explain the nature of ideology (p. 150). This makes a crucial comparison and link between theory and practice showing not only how they are related but also how they can be distinguished from one another. Overall, this book is an easy-to-read collection of chapters covering a diverse range of topics. It is an introductory-type text, complete with summaries at the end of each section, that provides basic facts about theories and theorists, making this a valuable read for students who may be new to political theory but also teachers looking for a concise way to present some complex concepts.
Melanie Beacroft
(University of Canberra)
In this book Badiou articulates an approach to thinking about politics that steadfastly rejects the claims of political philosophy, at least as it is usually understood in the normative mainstream of the Anglo-American academy. As the bluntly titled first chapter puts it, Badiou is ‘Against Political Philosophy’, by which he means that he is against the idea that philosophy can provide the tools for transforming opinionated discussion into justifiable norms that ought to govern our understanding of political actions and the legitimacy or not of political institutions. Although the targets of Badiou's polemic against political philosophy are not drawn from the mainstream of Anglo-American debates, one can, without too much difficulty, read his work as a tirade against the contemporary dominance of notions of conversation and communication within this tradition. The ideas of Rawlsian ‘reflective equilibrium’ or ‘overlapping consensus’, Habermas's ‘communicative ethics’, communitarian ‘webs of articulation’ or Rorty's evocation of a ‘conversation of mankind’ are all well within the scope of Badiou's critique. According to Badiou, privileging conceptions of communication, discussion and debate reduces philosophical thinking about politics to the mere management of opinion and, moreover, the end result of such approaches will be to create ‘prescriptions which sustain the parliamentary state’ (p. 24). This result, for Badiou, reveals that the rhetoric of pluralism which sustains these discourses of political philosophy never pertains to the real plurality of politics, a plurality that he locates within the intrinsic multiplicity of the political event. The presupposition of consensus that drives normative theorising about politics, for Badiou, amounts to the erasure of the immanent singularity of every genuine political event.
The idea that all genuine political events are singular derives from Badiou's major ontological treatise, Being and Event (London: Continuum, forthcoming). In this work he argues that philosophy does not produce truths itself; rather, philosophy is conditioned by four truth procedures of which politics is one (love, science and art being the others). In this light, philosophy constitutes itself ‘as an experimentation of a new concept of truth’ (Metapolitics, p. xxxii), but an experimentation that is internally multiple as it is governed by the four truth procedures. A genuine political event, therefore, is one that produces a new truth which philosophy must have as both its inspiration (to begin thinking at all) and as its target (to grasp the truth that is produced). Political philosophy tries to create truth (in the name of a consensus of opinion) whereas metapolitics has as its subject not opinion but the truth produced in a political event and its ‘consequences’. In this context, Metapolitics is to politics what other works of Badiou are to love (‘La scène du deux’, in Badiou et al., De L'amour, Paris: Flammarion, 1999), science (Court traité d'ontologie transitoire, Paris: Seuil, 1998) and art (Handbook of Inaesthetics, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
Badiou's philosophy of political truths leads him to scathing attacks on the manipulation of opinion that he sees at the heart of French, British and particularly American domestic and international policies. But it is readers interested in the tradition of ‘radical’ political thought coming out of post-Second World War France that will find the most immediate points of contact. The current surge of interest in the work of Jacques Ranciere, for example, is tackled by Badiou in two important essays that highlight significant points of contact between the two thinkers but which also reveal Badiou's concerns that Ranciere's approach to the singularity of politics relies upon phantoms and illusions that reveal a deeper inconsistency about the nature of the relationship between philosophy and politics (Ranciere is criticised for separating these two domains rather than analysing their connection in a radical way). Althusser's theoretical Marxism is similarly invoked both as a source for Badiou's own ideas and yet one from which he wishes to maintain a critical distance. The lesser known (in Anglo-American circles) Sylvain Lazarus, in particular his book The Anthropology of the Name (Paris: Seuil, 1996) is the topic of the second essay and it is clear that Lazarus is one of the few thinkers with whom Badiou feels a real affinity. Lazarus is applauded by Badiou for projecting how we may think about politics (without falling into the traps of a philosophy of political life) by rendering the political itself ‘unnameable’.
On its own, this book can be read as an outlandish and naïvely provocative series of polemics, written as it is without the usual apparatuses of detailed argument and discussion. But, taken as part of a much larger project, it expresses a sustained and rigorous critique of the complacent presuppositions of political philosophy in the normative tradition.
Iain MacKenzie
(University of Kent)
Professor Kenneth Binmore's Natural Justice is a most curious book by an accomplished economist. It is a book full of controversial claims about justice while lacking in much, if any, scholarly support in the effort of trying ‘to get on with telling my story with as few apologies as possible’ (p. 2). This story is essentially ‘a sustained line of speculation on the evolutionary origins of … human fairness norms’ behind our ‘notions of justice’ (p. 2), a story largely indebted to Binmore's controversial interpretation of Hume. However, the problem is that he says that ‘[m]y claims aren't proved, but illustrated with examples’: the book may well fail to convince those who question its many question-begging assumptions and, indeed, anyone looking for greater substantiated proof of his claims.
While I entirely disagree with Binmore that Kant fails to provide ‘any genuine defense’ of his moral philosophy (p. vii) or that ‘Plato was a fascist’ (p. viii), the most startling worries of all with scholarship are his alleged embracing of Humean philosophy while adhering to a social contractarian model (pp. 3–5). This was something Hume quite forcefully (and famously) rejected in his ‘On the Original Contract’. Binmore gives no acknowledgement of this work or its compelling criticisms. This is a curiosity for someone who often argues Hume's acceptance of a claim as adequate evidence.
Hume once wrote that what convinces us in our study or lecture hall often loses its persuasive power over us once we go outside into the world. Binmore may have provided us with a coherent picture, but it is not convincing, perhaps in part because he fails to provide a genuine defence of his arguments. Perhaps game theory assumptions ‘demonstrate’ that we cannot provide ‘an absolute justification for the fairness norms … in our society’, but this is hardly convincing to those not sold on game theory as an appropriate method of moral theorising.
(University of Newcastle)
In the first two sections, the author defines modern solidarity, elucidates its political lineage and considers the tasks it discharges in modern societies. Brunkhorst makes three central claims:
That solidarity is coterminous with a radical conception of democracy, i.e. the simultaneous affirmation of political and socio-economic rights (p. xxiii, pp. 73–6)
That solidarity is a radically modern concept. The emergence of a functionally differentiated society results in the double integrative challenges of domination and social exclusion (chapter 4), which call for the simultaneous achievement of (a) the differentiation of autonomous individuals and (b) the identity between author and subject of legal norms. Modern social integration simply cannot be assured by functional systems, but requires citizens to engage in communicative action and mutually to acknowledge their political and socio-economic rights; thus the strive for solidarity
That the modern concept of solidarity has been forged with materials derived from Roman law, classic republican thought and Jewish and Christian theology, duly emancipated from their communitarian and theological context by the French revolution, which unleashed their social-transformative potential by coupling them to modern positive law (p. 51, p. 53).
The third section dwells on the new challenges posed by international integration. Internationalisation creates the conditions under which the universalistic drive for democracy can be realised beyond the nation state (p. 108). But, while we are subject to international law, supranational democracy has not been established yet; given that international may trump national law, this raises serious doubts about the democratic legitimacy of all laws. Even the affirmation of international human rights is ambiguous, as it tends to be one-sided and to undermine the fulfilment of national duties of solidarity (p. 149). his gives rise to new variants of the modern integration challenges, i.e. fundamentalism (p. 115) and social unrest (p. 118). Brunkhorst affirms that the solution is the establishment of a functional equivalent of the national democratic state at the international level (p. 135), resulting from political mobilisation and the progressive strengthening of weak publics. Brunkhorst considers that the European Union is a source of inspiration, given that its law has been positively constitutionalised, and such constitutional norms render possible radical reformism, even if a political constitutional moment is still missing (p. 175).
The book is bound to be regarded as one of the major contributions to the analysis of law and democracy from a discourse-theoretical perspective. It is only to be regretted that the author has not considered in more detail the relationship between democratic legitimacy and the different layers of the principle of legality, and more specifically, the normative underpinnings of the ‘division of labour’ between constitution, statutes and statutory instruments.
Agustín José Menéndez
(Universidad de León)
Almost 60 years after his death, the political thoughts and activities of Mahatma Gandhi continue to provide a rich source of research and discussion material for those interested in alternative ideological traditions. The sheer volume of work written never ceases to astound (whether biographical, philosophical or relating to his role in the Indian freedom struggle and to which the bibliographical notes and select bibliography here testify), assisted in no small way by Gandhi himself who was a prolific writer, particularly championing his ideas through his newspaper Harijan. However, such extensive articulation has not been without its problems as ‘the language [in which his ideas were articulated] is so simple that it is notoriously open to diverse interpretations’ (p. 1) along with the general impression of an overwhelmingly complex philosophy.
This book attempts to address Gandhi's social and political views in a unique way as it is ‘a contextualized study of the Mahatma with reference to those carefully selected themes central to his social and political thoughts’ (p. 29). It is divided into five core chapters which look at: Gandhi's ideas of swaraj (self-rule), by selectively reviewing the literature that focuses on the pillars of his social and political thought; the praxis of ahimsa (non-violence); major trends in critiques of Gandhi by leading personalities (Roy, Tagore and Ambedkar); and his writings in Harijan. Finally, actual excerpts from Harijan are reproduced to illustrate the distinctive features of Gandhi's social and political thoughts. This is particularly important as Gandhi remarkably ‘interpreted and re-interpreted his ideas sometimes in response to the critiques and sometimes in response to the circumstances’ (p. 131).
This book is number 43 in a series titled ‘Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought’. It ably guides the reader through Gandhi's social and political views in a clear and concise manner and usefully provides an explanatory glossary of the various terms used throughout Gandhi's work. It clearly illustrates that Gandhi's philosophy is neither a political nor a social one but a complex mix of the two. He was primarily a political activist ‘whose writings emerged mainly during the process of social, economic and political actions’ (p. 167). It is a book that would be of use to postgraduate students, seasoned researchers and practitioners alike.
Sandra Buchanan
(University of Ulster)
Antonio Gramsci's analysis of hegemony – as the complete material and ideological domination of a population within the state – has had a significant impact upon scholarly literature on ‘civil society’ and new social movements (NSMs). Indeed, as Richard Day asserts, a ‘genealogy of hegemony’ shows that mainstream analysis in this area has long relied upon an image of ‘total’ (i.e. state-wide) reform or revolution. This genealogy reveals our subjection within what Day calls ‘the hegemony of hegemony’, in which ‘the possibilities of social change without the state form have been marginalised by the dominance of (post-) marxist and (neo) liberal models of social change’ (p. 15). Day argues that many NSMs in fact follow quite a different ‘political logic’, one that can be viewed in terms of localised affinity groups and direct actions rather than total reform or the proverbial revolutionary shift. Moving easily from the anti-WTO protests in Seattle and the LETS barter system to alternative media outlets and the Zapatistas, Day argues that ‘these movements/networks/tactics do not seek totalising effects on any axis at all. Instead, they set out to block, resist, and render redundant both corporate and state powers in local, national, and transnational contexts’ (p. 45). Day buttresses this claim with a wealth of supporting evidence, and it is clear he has experience with and access to many of the relevant actors and actions. Indeed, his reading of the various causes is broadly sympathetic, and his tone indicates an assumption that his audience shares in a general will to dismantle the dominant structures of global capitalism, racism, sexism, etc. While this attitude will no doubt alienate a portion of his audience, this should not detract from the value of this work. Day's ‘genealogy of hegemony’ exposes and challenges the assumption that social change, if it is to happen, is an all-or-nothing affair. In this, Gramsci is Dead stands as a bold and quite convincing statement, one that offers exceptional insight into contemporary political activism.
Shane Mulligan
(Concordia University)
Determining if a war is just, indeed if war can ever be just, has a long historical lineage. In the shadow of 9/11 and the interventions that have followed, supporters of the ‘war on terror’ have put much rhetorical effort into asserting the just nature of their cause. Just War Theory: A Reappraisal is therefore a timely work that engages with many important issues of the day. The editor, Mark Evans, seeks to test the relevance of the tenets of just war theory in contemporary international relations and has collected a series of articles from notable academics engaged in issues related to the ethics of warfare. The book is subdivided into sections dealing with specific aspects of just war theory, namely ‘Just Cause’, ‘Justice in the Conduct of War’ and ‘Justice and the End of War’.
The authors here clearly adhere to the notion that warfare can and should be waged in a just manner, and believe in evaluating the conduct of states on the basis of morality. The theoretical framework throughout is broadly that of cosmopolitanism and the notion of global civil society, described, perhaps wishfully, by Evans as ‘hardly the most controversial of presuppositions’ (p. 75).
In many respects the most salient aspect of this volume is its ability to dissect the moral rhetoric increasingly espoused by the Bush administration. Crawford provides a very nuanced critique of the legitimacy of pre-emptive force suggesting that preventative would better describe the action of the Bush administration. The need to legitimise preventative action requires the construction of an environment of immanent threat which she suggests will ‘create a state of nature more thoroughly than has ever existed’ (p. 47). Lang, using the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq as illustrations, suggests that punitive war is neither legal, nor approximate to just war theory.
This is a volume which adopts an unashamedly moral approach that some, particularly realists, will find both hopelessly idealistic and essentially irrelevant. Orend's examination of whether it is legitimate to act outside the confines of just war theory's rules of engagement when facing supreme emergencies will seem self-evident, concluding as it does with the approval for states ‘to do terrible things in order to survive’ (p. 151). However, those who adhere to the realist conception of international relations, and who consider those who engage in philosophical musings on the morality of warfare to be, as Evans acknowledges, ‘naïvely and unrealistically pretend[ing] to be able to control a phenomenon that in fact always resists morality's demands’ (p. 208), must acknowledge that in an era when international relations is dominated by the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and morality is increasingly called upon to justify interventionism, a re-examination of the original tenets of just war theory is highly relevant. If just war is to be more than simply a rhetorical device employed to legitimise aggression then this exploration of its applicability to current policy is welcome and necessary.
Aidan Hehir
(University of Sheffield)
Pluralism is now one of the most widely used words in the liberal vocabulary, yet what a pluralist commitment involves, and what form of liberalism it implies, remain controversial issues. These are the topics considered by Richard Flathman in a searching study of the relation between pluralism and liberal democracy.
Flathman deliberately defines pluralism so broadly that almost everyone becomes a sub-scriber, willy-nilly. Pluralism is, he writes, ‘the recognition of a multiplicity of persons and groups that, on the one hand, are identifiably related to one another and, on the other, can be usefully distinguished from other individuals and groups’ (p. 1). Although this broad definition takes in thinkers who would reject both the terms pluralist and liberal as descriptions of their position, it permits Flathman to maintain that William James, Hannah Arendt, Stuart Hampshire and Michael Oakeshott, despite their extremely different philosophical positions, all ‘augment’ pluralist theory in one way or another (p. 6). The bulk of the book explores the ways in which Flathman believes they do so.
Flathman has especial sympathy for James, much of whose thought he regards as being in the service of ‘the most radical of pluralities, that is, a plurality of robust and highly differentiated individualities’ (p. 3). Arendt draws attention to another fundamental pluralism, which is the ‘plurality of [every] self’ (p. 74). A particularly valuable chapter on Hampshire analyses the limits of pluralism set for Hampshire by a combination of procedural justice, political participation, institutions such as the family and friendship, and a reflective and benevolent character. Flathman's inclusion of Oakeshott, however, suggests that a price has to be paid for the flexibility created by his comprehensive concept of pluralism. Although Oakeshott's identification of autonomous modes of experience is indeed a form of pluralism, the trouble is that it has no ethical implications and can therefore hardly be hailed as a contribution to liberal political theory.
Flathman's chief problem is to draw together the different concepts of pluralism he finds in the four thinkers in a coherent liberal synthesis. As he himself confesses, ‘Lame as it may be, the only generalization that can be drawn is that no pluralism can dispense entirely with considerations that they foreground’ (p. 180). Although his conclusion is modest, Flathman nevertheless offers a deeply pondered analysis of what he believes each of the four thinkers on whom he concentrates has contributed to pluralist theory.
Noel O'Sullivan
(University of Hull)
In Empowered Participation, Archon Fung makes an indispensable contribution to deliberative democratic theory, by rigorously analyzing Chicago's devolution of education and policing policy-making powers to neighborhood-level deliberative fora. He calls this devolution ‘accountable autonomy’, and argues that it ‘can spur robust citizen participation and deliberation that contributes to the fairness and effectiveness of governance outcomes’ (p. 26). Beyond simply providing another welcome empirical case study in deliberation, Fung's analysis of the Chicago plan also provides two important innovations: it outlines an ideal procedure for deliberation aimed not at constitutional principles (Rawls), social norms (Habermas) or moral conflict (Gutmann and Thompson) but at pragmatic policy and administrative problems (pp. 56–60); and it examines deliberation under the very non-ideal conditions of inner-city poverty and social conflict (chapters 5 and 6).
In doing so, Fung is able to address five critiques of deliberative theory: rational-choice skeptics, who assume that people are too self-interested to deliberate fairly; strong-egalitarians who fear that deliberation amid inequality will only further harm the already disadvantaged; social-capital theorists who believe effective deliberation presupposes strong civic associations, which are often absent in impoverished inner-city neighborhoods; cultural difference theorists who worry that deliberation favors culturally dominant groups, such as middle-class white males; and critics who see modern societies as too complex for participation by ordinary citizens. Instead, Fung finds participants willing to tame self-interest when confronted with norms of deliberative fairness; civic associations developing as a result of participation in deliberative fora; and citizens able to assist professionals in solving complex policy problems by providing local knowledge and innovative proposals.
Most intriguing are Fung's findings with respect to inequality and cultural difference. While wealthier and culturally advantaged groups do dominate when deliberation is unstructured and haphazard, proactive facilitators can mitigate this problem in three ways: by structuring deliberation to enable dominated participants to express their concerns; by mobilizing members of under-represented communities to participate more often; and by equalizing power differentials among participants by highlighting the needs of the less advantaged (pp. 217–9). Fung is at pains to emphasize that the quality and fairness of deliberation are not subject to the circumstantial emergence of a good discussion facilitator; rather than the idiosyncratic actions of ‘maverick leadership’, such discussion leaders abide by the rules set up by the deliberative reforms in the first place (p. 195). However, the fact that deliberation suffered in the absence of such facilitators, along with the fact that not all deliberative fora enjoyed quality facilitation, reveals that methods for identifying and installing quality facilitators are essential to the success of participatory deliberation under non-ideal circumstances. This leads to a broader, theoretical question: does deliberative theory require a normative model of effective and democratically legitimate discussion leadership, one that retains the egalitarian spirit of democratic deliberation while acknowledging the indispensable role of facilitators?
Michael Rabinder James
(Bucknell University)
Habermas's concept of the public sphere has been of great significance since he first introduced it more than 40 years ago in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. In the intervening years it has been much attacked and sometimes even dismissed as passé but its importance persists, not least in the current debates about democracy and citizenship. Understanding the concept remains essential to students of social and political theory, but there are also obstacles to a clear overview of the topic and its current role. Of these the most important is that during the course of his long and prolific career Habermas has modified and developed the concept in a number of ways, sometimes as a side effect of other concerns, so that a good deal of work needs to be done before a proper critical engagement can be made. Luke Goode has sought to address this need and has written a careful, sympathetic and reliable guide which both analyses the original concept – and the ways in which Habermas has developed and refined it – and also seeks to place it in the context of Habermas's work as a whole. But the book is more than a mere exposition, useful as that alone would be. Goode engages critically with Habermas, reviewing some major criticisms of the public sphere, and also suggesting ways of developing the concept in new directions. His discussions of reflexive democracy, and of the writings of Giddens and Rice in particular, are illuminating and thought provoking, but he is especially interesting when discussing the implications of the new media technologies – about which Habermas himself has been famously dismissive. Goode refers to his own critical developments of the concept of the public sphere in these areas as being no more than tentative steps but in fact they open up fruitful areas of discussion in their own right. If I have one relatively minor caveat it is that, despite being part of a series of introductory texts on major European thinkers, this is not a book to recommend to average first-year undergraduates – the complexity of the argument is mirrored in the style, and readers would benefit from some previous knowledge of social theory. For more advanced undergraduates, though, and for scholars of communication, democracy and citizenship, in particular, who are seeking a clear and critical overview of the Habermasian public sphere, this is a valuable and timely book.
David Sullivan
(University of Wales, Bangor)
Time of Transitions consists of essays by and interviews with Jürgen Habermas from 1998 to 2001. As the title suggests, the essays and interviews deal with transitions: the transition from pre-modern to modern societies (the place of religion in contemporary society and in Habermas's work); the transition we usually refer to as ‘globalisation’; the transition of the European Union (Habermas's argument for the institutionalisation of a legal and political regime at a ‘post-national’ level in order to stem the influence of economic globalisation); and the transitions that pertain to Germany: the post-Second World War development, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 1998 Red-Green victory in the German parliamentary elections, the funding scandal surrounding Kohl and the CDU, the Germans' memory of the Holocaust and the reception of American pragmatism in Germany. Finally, the volume contains an article on the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy, clarifying aspects of Habermas's discourse theory of law and democracy from Between Facts and Norms.
Big parts of the book are available in English elsewhere. Many of the pieces are written for specific occasions and, as such, they will not be of much interest today, especially to an English-speaking audience. Other pieces are of more lasting interest, including that on the military intervention in Kosovo, those on the European Union and the piece on constitutional democracy.
Lasse Thomassen
(University of Limerick)
The Impact of the French Revolution: Texts from Britain in the 1790s, edited by Iain Hampsher-Monk, is a well-edited and comprehensive collection of political writings by British authors which appeared in response to the revolutionary events and ideas in France in the late eighteenth century. This volume brings together texts composed by, among others, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Tom Paine, William Godwin and Thomas Spence. A thorough introduction to this anthology sets the historical, political and ideational context within which these texts originated. Each text is preceded by a biographical note on the author and an editorial note on the text, as well as suggestions for further reading. This makes the texts accessible to a contemporary reader in spite of the possible terminological or discursive complexities of the original writings. The texts are accompanied by reprints of popular cartoons from that period, which indicate how particular texts and ideas were received in British society.
The primary readership of this book is likely to include undergraduate and postgraduate students, who will find Hampsher-Monk's edition to be a highly informative guide to one of the most fascinating periods in the history of British political thought. It will also be of interest to tutors and researchers dealing with the issues of Britain's intellectual history, the development of modern political thought and the intellectual impact of the French revolution on European conceptual history.
An obvious advantage of this edition is its comprehensive approach in the presentation of individual texts, as well as the dialogical dynamic that it introduces between the texts. The texts are structured chronologically, most of them being provoked by Burke's critique of French ideas, which was itself inspired by the progressive view of Richard Price and the radical intellectual milieus of the Revolution Society or the London Corresponding Society. The dialogical aspect of this anthology allows the reader to study the discursive interconnectedness and mutual referentiality of the texts. This book gives the reader an opportunity to gain an overall perspective into the broad political spectrum of opinions represented in Britain at that time and to appreciate the inspirational powers of the claims for political equality, liberty and fraternity in the Enlightenment era. Not least, this anthology provides an insight into the conceptual history of those political notions which remain central in today's politics, such as natural rights, the private/public dichotomy, citizenship, legitimisation of social institutions, secularism, class politics, and so on.
Magdalena Zolkos
(University of Alberta)
In Defence of Multinational Citizenship explicitly defines its scope as a possible alternative political solution to the question of self-government. The authors question the established understandings of state stability which have rested on the belief that there can only be one legitimate political authority in a given territory with a single nationality and a single citizenship regime.
The justification of multinational citizenship is anchored on a twofold assumption: first, it is held that loyalty to territorial identity trumps any nonterritorial one; and second, it is argued that the emergence of new loci of rule-making at the supra-state level simply reconfigures the distribution of power in the international system in such a way that the state is one among several important actors that exercise influence in the decision-making process.
The multinational model of citizenship and self-determination is characterised by the domestic redistribution of state sovereignty to satisfy demands for democratic reform at the sub-state level. This process can be combined with democratised systems of regional or global multi-level governance where sovereignty is shared among sub-state, state and supra-state actors to help meet the normative and empirical challenges of cross-border interdependence. There are five dimensions of multinational citizenship, namely democracy and equality, recognition, identity, trust and security and finally territory. These are applied to the cases of Belgium, Canada and Spain, demonstrating that justice is achieved only when all five dimensions are working together.
The volume is clearly written with an insightful and engaging discussion on several aspects of self-government and citizenship. It is a contribution to the literature that seeks a post-sovereign basis for citizenship and self-determination in the twenty-first century. However, the benefit of putting forward a model of multinational citizenship would have been greater had the authors not focused only on case studies from Europe and North America, especially when they allude to a possible relation between secession and development (p. 16).
Overall, the book is a useful and a thought-provoking suggestion in the fields of citizenship theory, globalisation, nationalism and international relations theory. It is essential reading for anyone studying the structure and organisation of contemporary societies either at a theoretical or practical level.
Costas Laoutides
(University of Wales)
David Harvey's new book charts the history of neoliberalism from the 1970s and looks at its transforming impact on state powers such as privatisation, finance and the market order from a Marxist-geographical perspective. For Harvey, the years 1978–80 marked a ‘revolutionary’ turning point in the economic structure of both national economies and the global economic order. He sees neoliberalism's hegemony, in various guises, sweeping across the globe in countries such as Britain, the United States, New Zealand and Sweden to Chile, South Africa and China. Harvey argues that neoliberalism in these countries has infiltrated think tanks, universities, the media and business corporations as well as the key institutions of the state. Furthermore, it has manifested itself at the global level regulating international finance and trade through institutions such as the WTO and IMF. Harvey goes on to emphasise the ‘creative destruction’ that has been wrought by neoliberalism on old institutional frameworks, the division of labour, technology, social relations and the provision of welfare.
Harvey tends to overlook the complexity of neoliberalism as both a discourse and a political movement and rather simplistically equates it with the hegemonic forces of globalisation, and the ‘market-liberalising’ activities of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. Neoliberalism is more refined than he gives it credit for. Such reductionist accounts underplay its internal complexity, in particular its commitment to a sophisticated Hayekian constitutional order governed by the rule of law, which is simply not present in the global economic arena. Moreover, Harvey's book, which he states is a ‘history’, pays very little attention to the origins of neoliberalism as an anti-collectivist movement in the immediate years after the Second World War, in particular its intellectual genesis in the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947. These criticisms aside, the book presents a detailed spatial analysis of the ‘condition of neoliberalism’ and makes a valuable contribution to existing Marxist critiques. It will be of interest to advanced undergraduate students, postgraduates and academics.
Rachel Turner
(University of Sheffield)
In this important book, Philip Howard looks at the use of the internet and of digital retrieval systems in contemporary political campaigning: what he calls the ‘hypermedia campaign’. He contends that not only have new technologies altered the means of communicating politics, but ‘the new system of producing political campaigns has immense implications for the meaning of citizenship and the basis of representation’ (p. 75). Howard's book is divided into five neatly conceived chapters. It begins by explaining something of the software codes, the emergence of a new form of political strategy and the formation of an industrial complex. Beginning in chapter two, and referring to what he calls ‘the digital leviathan’, Howard then explores what he sees as the surrender of the production of ideas into the hands of those competent in the dominant technologies. What then follows is a compelling exploration of how technology has come to be used to survey and pass judgement upon the electorate, giving rise to such practices as ‘redlining’ out those seen to be beyond persuasion. The form of democracy that emerges is said to be based on a ‘thin citizenship’, where large sectors of the polity are left to make do with a form of conditional enfranchisement in which their political intelligence is regulated from the centre. Howard's examples of these trends are furnished throughout by quotes from industry insiders. Pleasingly, these are sufficiently self-reflexive to add something more to the analysis than mere witness statements.
One misgiving I have about Howard's approach is the determination of his focus on the United States. While it is true that the majority of innovations on this use of new media have come from there, the influence of these developments has spread worldwide – with the Labour party in the UK using digital retrieval techniques pioneered by the Democrats to execute rebuttal tactics – and Howard's thoughts on the cultural transferability of the hypermedia campaign would have been worth reading. Also, it is worth our bearing in mind that practices such as redlining are honed versions of older political practices, around the targeting of marginal constituencies and states with subsequent abandonment of both safe and hopeless electoral regions. But these are more points of conversation than they are substantial criticisms. I, for one, am extremely grateful to Howard for writing this excellent book, and I will be recommending it to students and colleagues.
Michael Higgins
(University of Sunderland)
This book is the end product of the author's work in critical and alternative modes of political analysis. Jef Huysmans, a well-known constructivist, structures an innovative textbook that presents the nature of modern political affairs in a challenging fashion. By simply focusing on a case study dealing with migration and by posing five central questions – each addressed under a separate heading – he organises the underlying argument: that the study of the political can be broadened. In other words, he tests politics in the context of migration to reach a conclusion as to what politics is/could be. While he suggests broadening the agenda of politics, the author does not compel his reader to move immediately away from the established definitions and institutions of politics. Given this acknowledgement, however, Huysmans endeavours to highlight the areas whereby a bare concentration on traditional institutions and a top-down allocation of values can lead to missing crucial points. The poverty of such means in studying a wide range of newly emerging issues and their global implications, i.e. migration, becomes evident when he demonstrates the flourishing conduct of politics via alternative methods of participation. His criteria qualify politics as ‘a contest of power and values’ and ‘the contest bears upon values and policies that apply to a wider community’ (p. 43). Therefore, he provokes readers to dwell on how politics and its shifting modes of significance, space and membership can be publicly constructed and vary across a large spectrum. In the concluding two chapters (4 and 5), Huysmans aims at stressing the novel areas of confrontation between the state and people. The selected case of migration here provides readers with perfect examples of such state–society tensions. He covers intersecting spheres between authority and ‘authoritees’ as new sites of contestation; hence, politics. With particular reference to ‘queuing’ and the social utilisation of ‘free vouchers’, ‘passports’, ‘border controls’, ‘visas’, ‘special registration systems’ and ‘forms’, Huysmans assures readers that everyday life becomes both a starting and ending process of political inclusion, exclusion, participation and contestation. All in all, this book forges a new interpretation of teaching ‘new politics. The case-led approach strengthens Huymans’ overall argument empirically rather than hindering it. The outcome is a clear, concise and humorous (when needed) account of ‘what is politics?’ instead of ‘what is politics?’. Whether or not the general reader guided by the dominant establishment of political studies is ready for such a change in teaching mentality is beyond the scope of the present review. Nevertheless, What is Politics? is not only recommended to current and prospective students of politics but also to those who want to revise their stances and re-educate themselves.
Gökhan Yücel
(Oxford University)
This book offers a revised theory of modernisation seen as a process of human development that demonstrates a close relationship between socio-economic development, value changes and democratic institutions. Drawing on empirical data from the World Value Surveys, which have been conducted for twenty years worldwide, the authors prove that the main factor in the above sequence of change is the development of self-expression values such as freedom of choice, individualism and tolerance, driven by economic conditions, which are responsible for the rise of effective democracy, gender equality and elite integrity. The three components of the modernisation process play an important role in developing society's human potential understood in terms of the expansion of human autonomy, free choice and political freedom, as well as democratic values and institutions.
One of the most important parts of the authors' argument concerns the link between the development of self-expression values and democracy. The findings of the World Value Surveys prove that people who, because of socio-economic development, value civic and political liberties, demand democratic political institutions, which means that self-expression values are conducive to successful democratisation. Consequently, there is empirical evidence that supports the cultural approach to democratisation which, contrary to the institutional approach, puts emphasis on cultural change and the rise of values that push for democratic institutions as necessary for the emergence of a flourishing democracy. Moreover, effective democracy arises not because of ‘Westernisation’ or ‘Americanisation’, but solely from favourable socio-economic conditions and values rooted in a society.
The authors focus on positive aspects of the modernisation process and avoid engaging in a discussion of the negative aspects of individualism associated with self-expression values, such as the erosion of democratic communities and sources of authority that have been noticed by political theorists, especially communitarians. Instead Inglehart and Welzel present arguments for a humanistic reading of the modernisation sequence, focusing on the civic dimension of self-expression values that ‘create civic social capital because they direct its use toward antidiscriminatory, humanistic goals’ (p. 295). The decline of traditional values, however, brings not only positive effects associated with effective democracy, but also negative effects, i.e. a growing divorce rate and the erosion of family and authority, as well as ethical problems such as the question of euthanasia which cannot be solved simply in terms of freedom of choice.
The book is a major contribution to the research on value changes and democratisation and will be of much interest to both students and researchers who study human development and democratic change.
Dorota Pietrzyk-Reeves
(Jagiellonian University)
Professor Johnson-Cartee's book is part of Rowman & Littlefield's ‘Communication, Media and Politics’ series. The series explores the role of communication within US politics through a broad, cross-disciplinary lens. Taking a social constructionist perspective, the present volume discusses the ways in which news is put together and shaped by the media, and how this influences political, social and economic realities.
The first two chapters map the field and firmly establish the book's ideas by discussing social constructionism, the increasingly powerful role of the media and the relationship between public opinion and the public policy process. The focus then shifts towards reporting practices and the various aspects that impact on a social construction of news. Journalistic traditions, roles and philosophies that influence the writing and reporting of news are the focus of chapter 3, while chapter 4 draws attention to various rituals and mythologies that guide the selection of news. Moving away from the details of journalistic culture to the broader links between journalism and politics, the next two chapters discuss the concept of ‘news as narrative’ (chapter 5) and the various groups of people involved in the social construction of news (chapter 6). The last two chapters focus on news framing, with standardisation the topic of chapter 7, and personalised and confrontational framing that of chapter 8.
The book comes with an extensive list of references, as well as a case study of the events and media coverage that surrounded the 1986 ‘cocaine summer’ (p. 302) as an appendix. The latter not only illustrates but also draws together various aspects mentioned throughout the book. As a textbook, the book could do with further editing to simplify navigation and quick consultation: both contents and index are rather short and a list of diagrams/boxes is missing altogether. Additionally, most of the lists provided throughout the text would benefit from further tabularisation.
While the focus is firmly on the American news system, public policy process and conceptualisation of public opinion – there is only occasional mention of other news systems, such as the British or the German, in order to put that of the United States in context – the discussed principles are often of a general nature and merit general consideration in a globalised media world. Aimed at political science students, the book in general provides an easily accessible and well-written introduction to the topic and benefits from Professor Johnson-Cartee's extensive experience as a political consultant.
Tobias Jung
(University of St Andrews)
This book provides a concise overview of Marxist social theory. Joseph makes clear at the beginning that he aims to introduce, summarise and critically assess the contributions of the main Marxist schools. He also declares that this is a study from within the Marxist framework. Consistent with Marxism's purpose of challenging the social world and its associated ideas in order to realise necessary change, he takes a critical approach to theories within that framework.
The early chapters introduce readers to Marx and Engels; the classical Marxists including Kautsky, Plekhanov, Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky; the praxis Marxism of Gramsci, Lukács, Korsch and Sartre; the structuralism of Althusser, Balibar and Poulantzas; and the critical theory of Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Habermas. He moves on in a chapter entitled ‘Applications’ to examine critically Marxist contributions to debates regarding feminism, nationalism, history and economy and society.
Joseph's penultimate chapter assesses attempts from post-modernist deconstruction, post-Marxist discourse analysis and critical realist philosophy to salvage and build upon what is of value in Marxism. Joseph is impressed by critical realism, which distinguishes between our knowledge of the world and the world that exists independently of that knowledge. He adopts ‘a critical realist form of structural Marxism’ (p. 128). For him, there are structures at work, but those structures are reproduced by human activity. In the right circumstances, if false conceptions can be identified, human activity can transform those structures, thus removing the source of the false conceptions. In a conclusion that summarises the positions discussed in the book, he once again applauds critical realism.
To cover such a range of writings and applications in 156 pages is an ambitious project that Joseph accomplishes impressively. The chapters on Marx and Engels and major Marxist schools will serve as excellent introductions for newcomers to Marxism. However, the brief discussions on the founders and schools may not be sufficiently substantial and detailed to enable many newcomers to benefit fully from the later chapter on applications. The ‘Applications’ chapter will, nevertheless, be a useful source for those who have already studied the writings of the major schools.
A longer book would have enabled Joseph to divide ‘Applications’ into individual chapters. Each such chapter might have eased those with little prior experience of reading Marxist debates into the more difficult material. As this interesting and informative book stands, the early and later chapters will be valuable for students at different levels.
Peter Lamb
(Keele University)
Among so many similar collections of classic writings that are available nowadays, this reader on social theory could be most useful for undergraduate students in political science, sociology and media studies and would even fit perfectly for courses in cultural studies since it explains many notions related to power and hegemony. Each of the six parts bring forward five essential essays from an author: Marx, Gramsci, Durkheim, Weber, the Frankfurt School (Part V) and finally Michel Foucault (Part VI). All contributions are, of course, fundamental and timely, especially for political scientists: from ‘The Fetishism of the Commodity’ (Marx), Gramsci's notes about the relations of force and hegemony in ‘The Modern Prince’ to Durkheim's reflections on the abnormal forces taken from ‘The Division of Labour in Society’. Part V on the Frankfurt school includes two texts by Adorno and Horkheimer, plus Marcuse's discussion on ‘The New Forms of Control’ and a few pages from Habermas's ‘Theory of Communicative Action’. Even Foucault's discussion on ‘Method’ (taken from his History of Sexuality) is centred on power (p. 261).
I will not dare to comment on these familiar texts written by founders of social sciences (who am I?); I would rather focus on three lesser-known contributions. An article from 1977 by Bob Jessop gives an analysis of what came after Marx in the understanding of the capitalist state. Ending Part IV on rationalism, Derek Sayer's piece is taken from his book Capitalism and Modernity (1990); it is a useful update that compares Marx and Weber's respective theories on economic life, bureaucracy and alienation. The final piece from 1995 draws on Foucault and focuses on the making of history. Excerpts are not too long, often less than ten pages, and Jonathan Joseph's introductions to each of the six parts are always good mappings. My only complaint about the editing process is that I would have liked to find the exact moment when each text was written; this crucial information is not indicated anywhere in this book, and we only have here in the bibliography some recent references to new translations for these older books by Marx (1987) and Foucault (2001). None of the references has the accurate original publishing year, which should usually be stated in brackets. It seems as if these writings of Durkheim, Weber and Foucault are almost brand new. I, too, wish these major authors were still alive and active.
Yves Laberge
(Institut québécois des hautes études internationales, Québec City)
As its name suggests, this edited book attempts to develop the scientific study of bureaucracy by means of bureaucentric and neo-organizational theory. By new organizations, the authors mean ‘a study of public bureaucracy focused on administrative organizations, whether at the macro-(organizational) or microlevel (individual) that generates empirically testable deductive and non-deductive theories of how bureaucratic agencies function to guide research inquiries’ (p. 293). The book uses strict logical and empirical analyses ranging from computer simulation methods to verbal conceptualizations on the role of administrative agencies.
It begins with an overview of the previous theories and ends with a road map for the scientific study of bureaucracies. For the scholars who contributed to this volume, former theories have explained many important dimensions of the operation of bureaucratic organizations. However, they did not analyze administrative agencies as their focal point. They could not develop a separate and complete theory for administrative agencies. The book searches for answers to challenging questions regarding public bureaucracies via the terms delay, discretion, autonomy, coercion, adaptation, etc. Furthermore, empirical studies on consensual rule making, control of bureaucracy, state manipulation of programs via administrative powers, lack of clarity of ends and the implications for structure take their place in the book.
Altogether the book presents a sound methodological stance and a good starting point that gives priority to public bureaucracies, with mathematical formulations addressed to mathematics-oriented specialists of public administration, political science and economics.
Hasan Engin Şener
(Middle East Technical University)
One thousand odd pages, five hundred plus illustrations, over a hundred contributions and contributors, a multitude of themes and issues covered … This book catalogue and the art exhibition it accompanies are a huge collective undertaking in regenerating democracy. Yet, the individual contributions are small scale, pragmatic and experimental, focused on democracy in action, not abstract political evaluation. The purpose is to enact and elaborate numerous devices of political assembly and representation that might demonstrate something new about democracy. This takes us beyond formal political institutions to some rather unlikely sites: laboratories, churches, supermarkets, medical establishments, financial institutions and catwalks. All of these and more are offered as potential places to reassemble the ever-elusive figure of the ‘public’.
The notion ‘Thing’, introduced by Bruno Latour (philosopher-cum-ethnographer of science), is one theme that unifies the otherwise diverse contributions. The etymology of ‘Thing’ in English and other languages refers not only to independent and inanimate objects, but also to a type of assembly (the latter meaning persists in the use of Storting for Norway's national assembly). Latour exploits this dual meaning to draw parallels between political, scientific and artistic re-presentation (with the ‘re-’ of re-presentation underscored in each case). Standard accounts of political representation pose the question: who is to be concerned? But crucial too is how to represent the issues and ‘matters of concern’ around which the public assemble and about which they agree and disagree: what is to be considered? Usually we think of a political assembly as an arena where people deliberate and make decisions (subjects), not one where the ‘facts’ of the matter are also publicly represented and demonstrated (objects). Latour's plea to get ‘back to Things’ is a call to bring analogous practices of political, scientific and artistic representation under the same assembly roof.
Making Things Public proposes not only to analyse the connections between politics, science and art, but to make and demonstrate new public assemblies. Innovative examples include Steve Dietz's participatory web-based project, ‘Fair Assembly’ (pp. 910–6), and Andrew Barry and Lucy Kimbell's experiment with badges as political indicators or ‘Pindices’ (pp. 872–6), illustrated on the catalogue's frontispiece. While the catalogue gives a sense of these experiments, it is not the same as having experienced and participated in the exhibition. Absentees (like me) are left wondering: What did the experiments demonstrate? How did they compare? How did they relate to one another? Given that this catalogue was intended as an adjunct to an exhibition, we cannot expect answers to these questions. But we might hope that the attendees and participants will return to reflect on the issues raised by this unusual and ambitious project.
Giles Moss
(Oxford University)
Julia Kristeva: Live Theory is another fine contribution to Continuum's ‘Live Theory’ series, a series geared towards (re)presenting the key themes of theorists of contemporary culture. As the title suggests this particular volume has as its focus the oeuvre of cultural theorist Julia Kristeva. The authors, John Lechte and Maria Margaroni, both Kristevan scholars, point to the relevance of Kristeva's psychoanalytically inflected work to wide-ranging issues, many of which are deeply political. Lechte and Margaroni build on concepts germane to Kristeva's earlier – central – works, for the most part Revolution in Poetic Language, to ‘understand [and establish, no doubt] the new directions in her thought’ (p. 1), which blend together the psychoanalytical with the social and the political. What is at issue is the central role of a broad psychoanalytic framing in the space of politics, particularly the necessity of the psychoanalytical in bracketing the context of the ethicopolitical. Apart from introducing the reader to Kristeva's better known ideas and concepts, the book also sheds light on new ideas that emerge in Kristeva's later works on ethics, revolt and the society of the spectacle.
On reading this book I could say this: Lechte and Margaroni succeed in challenging the popular view that the only route into a theorist's work is through the theorist her/himself. This is because the volume they offer does an excellent job of simplifying – and consolidating – to a considerable extent many of Kristeva's often obscure and convoluted ideas. I found particularly sharp, cogent and rewarding John Lechte's interview with Julia Kristeva, which constitutes the final chapter of the book. Therein, Kristeva's theoretical ruminations take on more down-to-earth, practice-oriented forms as she does justice to the broad theme of social transformation in a more complex world. Yet, while written in robust, engaging language, the book is at times repetitive. This weakness is however compensated for by carefully spun discussions that succeed for the most part in bridging the thoughts of both authors. The resultant effect, nevertheless, is a remarkably exhilarating book, greater than the sum of its parts, producing an intense conversational space that will easily draw in the perceptive specialist reader but unfortunately will not be easy for the uninitiated. While I applaud the overall initiative, I fear that much of this book, contrary to its stated introductory objectives, will not be fitting for students new to Kristevan scholarship.
Akinbola E. Akinwumi
(University of Ibadan)
It appears that new institutionalism is getting kind of old. As this collection edited by André Lecours shows, new institutionalism is no longer a challenge to the mainstream from the margins. The essays in this book differ from each other in terms of sub-field and empirical focus, but save for a couple of them, they all follow new institutionalist research agendas. The collection shows that from public policy to international relations, most of the assumptions of new institutionalism have been widely internalised into the various sub-fields of political science. It seems that in the last two decades new institutionalism has moved to become the big heterogeneous centre. Perhaps it is time to drop the adjective ‘new’. The Young Turks have become establishment.
André Lecours has done a good job in bringing together authors from different sub-fields in order to show how prevalent institutionalist approaches have become. The empirical focus of the volume is quite diverse, ranging from the US-Canada Migratory Birds Convention and institutional veto points to the Anti-Defection Law in India and its impact on the party system. What seems to unite the essays is a focus on political context as a filter between the various analytic traditions on the one hand, and outcomes on the other. In addition to the traditional institutionalist emphasis on continuity, many of the essays in the volume try to explore how institutionalist perspectives deal with change. Another common element is that these essays are all written by political scientists trained or based in Canada. In fact, the volume is an outgrowth of a special edition of the Canadian French-language journal Politique et sociétés on new institutionalism that was also edited by André Lecours. While most essays seem to share a lowest common denominator on how institutions constrain political options, there are some dissenting voices. In his contribution to the volume, Hudson Meadwell states that the definition of institutions has been stretched to an extent that it has become unreasonably broad; and as a result, ‘it is not clear what institutionalism means’ (p. 84).
Due to its broad scope, the volume would have perhaps benefited from a concluding chapter where certain recurrent patterns in the cases examined and common theoretical questions in the individual chapters were revisited. However, even without such a chapter mapping out a common framework, students of institutionalism are bound to find essays in this volume that are of interest to them.
Jan Erk
(University of Leiden)
The teacher of political theory is nowadays not short of introductions, anthologies, readers and handbooks with which to introduce students to the subject. MacKenzie's reader and guide is distinguished by its contemporary focus, its unusually broad coverage and by its format where each contributor offers a short introductory essay followed by two excerpts from classic – though all fairly contemporary – books. The twenty concepts include not just the usual suspects of rights, justice, freedom and so on, but also human nature, power, difference, discourse and the body politic, themes beyond the narrow preoccupations of most contemporary liberal theorists. In general, this is a compendious, sensible, well-organised volume which gives undergraduate readers a bit of help in getting to grips with some of the central texts in contemporary political thought. Each chapter ends with some questions for discussion which could be used to organise a seminar. There are a few odd choices, however. Stephen de Wijze provides an admirably clear exposition of equality, but surely there are better readings than Kurt Vonnegut? (Perhaps I'm being dull. Others might find this refreshing.) The obligatory excerpt from Kymlicka comes under the rights chapter, not the one on multiculturalism. And, surely, few undergraduates will make much of Deleuze and Guattari's cryptic thoughts on ideology, even with Robert Porter's introduction. My main criticism, however, is that while some of the contributors provide potted summaries of the readings they have chosen, others have elected to write a more general introduction to their concept (and only some of them have suggested further reading). Nathan Widder gives an excellent introduction to ‘difference’, for example, but says very little to introduce the quite difficult extracts from Laclau and Connolly which succeed it. By contrast, David Stevens nicely summarises the extracts from Rawls and Cohen he has chosen to illuminate the idea of justice, but says little about the idea of social justice as such. Some firmer editing might have made for a more coherent volume.
Jonathan Seglow
(Royal Holloway, University of London)
In the 50 years since Alan Gewirth published his English translation of Marsiglio (Marsilius in Latin) of Padua's major treatise, Defensor pacis, its innovative and stimulating ideas have become familiar to a large audience of scholars and students who lacked Latin. Yet the availability of Gewirth's translation of the Defensor, which has remained continuously in print since 1956, represents a somewhat mixed blessing. As a translator, Gewirth had a penchant for supplying language for which there was no direct equivalent in the Latin and an inclination to smooth out Marsiglio's rough edges at the expense of textual fidelity. Thus, we must be grateful to Annabel Brett for undertaking the extraordinary effort of producing a fresh English rendering of the Defensor.
Brett strives for historical accuracy in her translation in ways that sometimes escaped Gewirth's notice. For instance, the Latin vulgaris is Englished as ‘plebian’ (p. 23), not ‘common mass’ (as in Gewirth), and regnum becomes ‘realm’, not the anachronistic ‘state’ (p. xlix). Brett proposes a vigorous historical case for the potentially controversial choice of translating terminology associated with princips as ‘prince’ rather than ‘ruler’ (hence, ‘principate’, not ‘government’, and ‘princely part’, not ‘ruling part’) (pp. xliii–xliv). I congratulate Brett on capturing Marsiglio's distinction between conferens and commodum (‘advantage’ and ‘convenience’ or ‘benefit’, respectively), which Gewirth entirely missed, although I believe she is incorrect to say that ‘commodum has a less technical sense’ (p. xliii). In fact, commodum is used with precision in the Defensor (and in Marsiglio's later Defensor minor) to denote a standard of individual self-interest, contrasted with public conferens.
I also wonder about Brett's decision to base her translation on the Latin text of Previté-Orton (1928), rather than Scholz (1932), since the latter is generally regarded by Marsiglio scholars to be the superior edition. Although she occasionally corrects Previté-Orton in light of Scholz, the choice of edition itself requires justification.
Brett's introduction to the translation is even-handed and balanced, especially so given Marsiglio's highly controversial reputation. I note, however, that some biographical details mentioned by Brett, in particular his activities after completing the Defensor in 1324, repeat scholarly conventions now refuted by archival evidence examined in current scholarship with which she ought to be familiar (mistakes which I also confess to have perpetuated until recently).
Brett's version of the Defensor sufficiently improves on Gewirth's that it promises to become the standard English translation for the foreseeable future.
Cary J. Nederman
(Texas A & M University)
In this innovative book Neocleous focuses on references to the dead, the undead and monsters such as vampires in political theories, rhetoric and propaganda. He is largely concerned with metaphors, especially those that portray entire classes or racial groups as monstrous. Monstrosity represents something non-human and feared that cannot be categorised. A further theme concerns ideas regarding relationships between the living and the dead in ideologies and political theories. Neocleous discusses the usage of metaphors by Edmund Burke, Karl Marx and various fascists to cover up, reveal or accentuate phenomena and processes. Burke portrayed the danger of the working class, sweeping aside centuries of tradition, in terms of a monster. The Nazis depicted Jews as vampires who drew the wealth out of society. Marx used the vampire metaphor to uncover the exploitative nature of capitalism, which sucks the life out of its victims. Neocleous makes the interesting point that, for Marx, capital is dead labour that is in effect undead, reappearing as an alien that dominates the living. The book is not exclusively concerned with metaphors. It also focuses on the belief of some fascists in what they preached regarding the dead and undead, Burke's reverence for the dead and Marx's apparent concern for the redemption of those who died in the class struggle.
Neocleous concedes that there is much speculation in this book, which aims to be provocative and to generate debate. It seems to be written for readers with at least a basic understanding of the political thought of Burke and Marx, and of fascist ideology. Neocleous examines the text and intellectual context of a number of Burke's works. He illustrates the value of some of Burke's less widely read writings in shedding light upon the use of the monster metaphor to express his fear of the multitude in Reflections on the Revolution in France. The chapter on Marx analyses many of his works, paying particularly close attention to Capital, once again exploring the intellectual context. The chapter on fascism is more speculative and less focused than those on Burke and Marx. Neocleous examines a range of fascist books, propaganda, songs, etc., and does not provide the close analysis of important political philosophical texts that give the earlier chapters their main strength. This is unavoidable given the weak philosophical basis of fascism. Neocleous will, nevertheless, succeed in provoking debate among the readers of each chapter of this book.
Peter Lamb
(Keele University)
Spatial voting theory is a familiar and well-established research programme in political science, yet many readers will be more familiar with its output than the design and programming of models. Poole's book explicitly sets out how to estimate and design a spatial model for parliamentary voting. This is done with the purpose of ensuring that those who make the models understand the theory and that users of the theory have a grasp of how the models are built. Those readers who are using this book to design spatial models will no doubt be unfazed by the mathematical difficulty of it, while those who are interested in using spatial theory without necessarily modelling will need to be capable of at least following the workings.
The book starts with a brief overview of spatial theory, before examining in detail several different methods devised by the author and others over recent years. There is a clear, non-mathematical explanation at the outset before the technical detail is elaborated upon in each chapter, always relating the developments back to Congressional politics, mainly the 1964 Civil Rights Act. There is also a useful section on the practicalities of building a model, which gives advice on problems often encountered in these models, before going on to some empirical tests of the theory, looking at Congressmen's voting behaviours.
For a reader planning to build a spatial model, this book would be invaluable. As a guide to the ‘engineering side’ of spatial modelling it is clear, useful and well written. For those who are reading spatial theory without an intention to model it, this book is highly technical, and heavily mathematical. The key argument, that theorists and programmers need to understand each other's tasks is a plausible one as far as those modelling are concerned, although it may be a touch overstated for other researchers. This book achieves its aim of explaining how to build a spatial model and will be essential reading for those engaged in that, while still being readable and related well to real politics.
Robert McIlveen
(University of Sheffield)
This book further elaborates some of the arguments that Den Uyl and Rasmussen already developed in Liberty and Nature (1991) and Liberalism Defended (1997), i.e. to present an Aristotelian defence of liberalism. Echoing Rawls' Political Liberalism (1993), they try to answer one of political philosophy's central problems. Liberalism's problem, as they call it, asks how we can establish a political and legal order in which individuals have the opportunity to flourish in different ways. In contrast to Rawls, however, they defend a comprehensive conception of liberalism that defends Lockean negative natural rights and is grounded in a classical teleological eudaemonistic approach to ethics. Their main claim is that the liberal solution to Rawls' problem can only make sense if it is supported by an individualist perfectionist ethics. Our basic individual rights to liberty, life and property should be seen as securing the possibility of human flourishing.
The book consists of three parts. In the first part Den Uyl and Rasmussen argue that the current crisis of liberalism is primarily caused by the fact that both proponents and opponents treat liberalism as an ethical philosophy or doctrine. Liberalism, however, is not an equinormative system. The norms it proposes are not intended to guide our individual conduct in moral activity, but are metanorms. They establish the conditions under which moral action can take place. Liberalism's problem should, therefore, have a metanormative solution. In the second part, they give a more detailed account of the neo-Aristotelian ethics that undergirds their libertarian conception of liberalism and compare it to natural law theory and the liberal theorising of Gray and Raz. They argue that an ethics that sees human flourishing as the ultimate moral standard need not require a perfectionist politics. In the last part, they defend liberalism against communitarian and conservative critics, and objections of a more analytic nature.
The book gives a very interesting and well-articulated defence of liberalism. The authors convincingly argue that liberalism's problem is by its very nature not a moral one. Less convincing, however, is their claim that the metanormative solution to this problem can only consist of the basic, negative natural rights to life, liberty and self-ownership. A more elaborated confrontation with liberal egalitarianism or the capability approach of Sen and Nussbaum is needed to explain why universal generic goods or minimal material and social resources do not suffice as a basis for a metanormative principle.
Ronald Tinnevelt
(University of Leuven)
Darrow Schecter's study Beyond Hegemony can hardly be more ambitious in its goals. Schecter seeks to provide the groundwork for an entirely ‘new philosophy of political legitimacy’. Arguing from a ‘libertarian socialist’ (p. 11) viewpoint, for Schecter the very principles of a critically appropriated idealism – reason and law – point to a form of law that is neither restricted to reified divisions isolating legality from political conflict and social exploitation, nor to being the instrumental means to stability and order. Instead, the idealist inquiry into the conditions of the possibility of humanity, experience and knowledge, which in fact Kant links to Marx, itself points to the realisation of universal reason and freedom as ends in themselves. By unfolding a dialectical critique of self-limiting theoretical discourses of (liberal) legality on one hand and (democratic-humanist) legitimacy on the other, the author philosophically explores the ‘paradoxes of liberal-democratic legitimacy’ (Seyla Benhabib) on various levels. For Schecter, then, law is legitimate only on condition that there is an uncoerced relation between citizens, namely the ‘freedom to overcome what one is and what one needs by producing new forms of non-instrumental objectivity’ (p. 175). In his search for new conceptual foundations of non-oppressive societal and epistemological alternatives, presumably breaking with the limits of liberal democracy and authoritarian socialism, Schecter employs Adorno's concept of ‘mediated non-identity’ and mimetic rationality.
However, while he honours Kant's reluctant anti-metaphysical idealism, Schecter tends to lump together and partially misconceive quite diverse and competing concepts of contemporary political theory, from deliberative democracy to post-modernism. Neither do I find convincing his model of a ‘libertarian socialist revolution of legality’ that may create ‘legitimate law’, namely ‘the liberation of production from commodification and the emancipation of legitimacy from instrumental reason’ (p. 171). The conceptual and material distinctions between totalitarian, authoritarian-socialist and liberal-democratic rule are insufficiently illuminated. New developments such as evolving international human rights regimes and norms are theoretically neglected. None the less, particularly in the first two chapters, Schecter develops relevant critiques of dominant concepts of liberal legality and democratic legitimacy. He points to their inherent dichotomies and partially arbitrary regulatory boundaries. Reiterating critical theory's enlightened materialism, and linking it with legal theorising reminiscent of Franz Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer, Schecter addresses unresolved tensions within liberal democratic thought and rule. Despite its shortcomings, this makes reading the book a worthwhile endeavour for political philosophers and critical theorists alike.
Lars Rensmann
(Free University of Berlin)
The focus of Alan and Marten Shipman's book is the apparent paradox that although society at large has witnessed progressive levels of education and knowledge, developments within academia have led to an increasing intellectual gulf between academia and the wider public, as well as within academia itself. The authors point out that, as a result, obfuscation rather than clarification of reality's defining characteristics can be observed. This, for example, is evident in academic writing and equationing. The authors claim that much of it became unintelligible to well-educated lay audiences long ago and is ‘now incomprehensible even to other academics in apparently related fields’ (p. 61).
Over the course of eight chapters, the authors explore the changing role of universities from ‘moribund, outmoded’ institutions (p. 5) to social-thought-dominating establishments (chapter 1); the objectification and dissemination of knowledge which, along with specialisation and peer reviews, can be seen as having served as ways of obtaining almost unconditional authority (chapters 2 and 3); the role and use of models in mediating between theory and reality (chapter 4); the academisation of the social sciences and their encroachment on all areas of life (chapters 5 and 6); the entering of knowledge into ‘the industrial production system’ (p. 95) along with pressures for external regulations (chapter 7); and, finally, potential ways to address some of the problems arising out of society's academisation so as to re-establish a dialogue between academia's interest in serving society and society's support for it (chapter 8).
While the book deals with an interesting topic and raises important questions about academia's role in modern society, the authors' style of writing is often simplistic in its portrayal and discussion of academic reality, and borders on the polemic: ‘Just as priestly and military rulers have in the past only answered to clerical or martial courts, academics reserve the right to be judged solely by their peers’ (p. 33). This perception is reinforced by the choice of various evocative populistic metaphors, such as naming academics the ‘New Priesthood’ (p. 30), or yet another application of the well-trodden McDonaldisation-analogy when the authors refer to ‘McAdemised universities’ (p. 110). Despite these reservations, the book makes for an interesting read in that it forces the reader to reflect further on academic life and the role academia should play within modern society.
Tobias Jung
(University of St Andrews)
The literature on authoritarianism gains some new dimensions, which will probably be influential in many related academic circles. By re-fleshing Adorno's concept of ‘authoritarian personality’, Stenner traces the roots of intolerance. The author initially introduces a general notion of a predisposition to intolerance of difference. She observes the empirical regularities in human behaviour, and avers that racial, political and moral intolerance, though studied in isolation, are ‘kindred spirits’ (p. 13). They are all functionally similar elements concerned with minimising difference and preserving a normative order.
The author uses a rather simple model called ‘the authoritarian dynamic’, which depends on the interaction of just two explanatory variables: authoritarian predisposition and varying conditions of normative threat. Instead of some static conceptions and universal personality types, Stenner proposes a dynamic model. Manifestations of authoritarianism are explained in relation to the conditions that threaten the oneness and sameness. Intolerance of racial diversity, political dissent and moral deviance are all basically driven by authoritarianism, galvanised by the impulse to enhance unity and conformity and manifested under conditions of normative threat. Although reductionist, the model provides effective tools to analyse the contemporary authoritarian trend in the modern world.
Stenner is most compelling in her observation that authoritarian behaviour is indifferent to cultural context. She challenges the humanist optimism about democracy, which is assumed to transform a society into perfect liberal democratic citizens. Rather than conceptualising intolerance in socio-cultural terms, she states that intolerance can spring up in both tolerant and intolerant cultures alike. In this sense, authoritarianism is not just a matter for the non-democratic ‘underdeveloped’ world, but it potentially exists everywhere and normative threats function as the catalyst for the activation of authoritarian predispositions. Stenner envisages that ‘authoritarianism is not a thing of the past, it is very much a thing of the future’ (p. 137).
The Authoritarian Dynamic indubitably represents a genuine contribution to the endemic problem of structuring a theoretical account of authoritarianism. Although Stenner's functionalist approach underscores the irrational and contingent aspect of authoritarian behaviour, her excellent use of extensive data sets enables her to conclude an empirically valid theory. Academic readers in political science, psychology and sociology should not miss this book. They will be richly rewarded.
Hakki Tas
(Bilkent University)
The book focuses on delivering an alternative project to be adopted by the left. The introduction begins with an account of four areas in which the left is disoriented: a missing alternative, a missing idea world, a missing agent of change and a missing crisis. Unger provides a suggestive account of the left's aims: firstly, an alternative project for the left must be to tackle the ‘dirigisme’ which is inadequate to address concerns of social disconnection and personal belittlement. Secondly, it must rethink and enlarge the narrow stock of institutional concepts and propose a new structural alternative. He suggests the necessity of democratising the market economy (via a commitment to forms of early and lifelong education and broadening access to productive resources) and the experimental logic of the market, to renew and to recombine the arrangements and mechanisms that constitute the institutional setting of production and exchange. Thirdly, it must look for an agent, whose interests and aspirations it can claim to represent. Finally, it must devise a programme of political and economic institutional changes that does not rely upon crisis and calamity.
Notwithstanding his success in initiating a much-needed reflection on the programme that the left should advocate, he neglects to consider satisfactorily the agents of change and the mechanisms and arrangements necessary for a high-energy democracy. As the working class and the nation state cannot any longer be identified as the agent of change, he argues that the petit bourgeoisie, despised by the left, must become the social basis of the political movement. He rejects the ideal that the working class represents the privileged agent of change; however, he does not overcome the obstacle of classism, which fixes the meaning of agents on class. He does not offer a political programme that could successfully confront the emergence of a plurality of subjects, whose forms and constitutions cannot be understood if we apply the category of class. Secondly, the call for high-energy democracy defends a compromise between representative and participatory democracy, which should ensure a high level of popular engagement in politics. He leaves unanswered how a high level of political participation can function effectively with institutions designed to quicken the pace of politics (p. 79), how programmatic plebiscites (p. 81) can promote the experience of effective agency and what the formula is for changing contemporary practices and institutions.
Falbo Marina
(University of Bristol)
David Vogel suggests that a widely-made business case for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is flawed. The pressure of consumers does not tend to ensure that virtue benefits its business practitioners. The view that it does is empirically unsubstantiated, and here relevant detail is given. It is also dependent upon implausible assumptions about the effectiveness, informedness and coherence of consumer choice.
Some companies do take the laudable step of issuing non-financial reports (focusing upon environmental impact, working conditions and human rights in the countries they source from). However, such reports are too dense to be readily accessible; they are too much like advertising; and not audited at all or at least not in accordance with any single set of standards which might enable analysts (and after them consumers) to make plausible comparisons.
Here, it might be objected that Vogel is focusing upon teething problems. Non-financial accounting procedures may well improve and auditing may be made more uniform so that consumers and potential employees may become more informed. (Some of these things may happen.) To this objection, Vogel has two rather good replies. Firstly, responsible firms try to spread good practice (e.g. through agreements on standards for the reduction of carbon emissions). But, when they do so they are removing any competitive edge their own virtue might give them over competitors. If corporate practice was transparent then promoting such industry-wide measures would simply make bad business sense. Secondly, it is not the case that all firms are equally dependent upon pursuing a good public image. For Vogel, the market for virtue is a niche market. Virtue makes business sense but only for those firms that have made it part of their corporate image and for those firms that are highly visible and therefore liable to suffer when targeted by activists. ‘Most firms, however, fall into neither category.’ (p. 15)
What the market cannot enforce by its own pressures remains to be done by government regulation. Vogel ultimately claims that corporate responsibility should be redefined in terms of support for the latter. While he makes a good case for such regulation, his redefinition of corporate responsibility does not obviously follow. Localised examples of ethically preferred practices may remain necessary to show that it can be done. They can be a driving force for change. And, without such localised examples of corporate virtue, regulation may be deemed impractical because nobody works that way.
Tony Milligan
(University of Glasgow)
Is There a Duty to Obey the Law? is the latest book in the series ‘For and Against’, which is described as offering ‘a new and exciting approach to the investigation of complex philosophical ideas [in which] two philosophical essays explore a topic of intense public interest from opposing points of view’. In fact, this approach is neither particularly new, nor alas guaranteed to be exciting; and in this case at least it is not clear that the topic is one of intense public interest. Both authors agree that most people in the West probably do believe that we have a general duty to obey the law. Whereas Christopher Heath Wellman is in qualified agreement with them about this, although for reasons that are unlikely to be widely shared, A. John Simmons thinks that people who believe this for whatever reasons are mostly mistaken.
Wellman develops a bold and original version of an argument in favour of each of us having a natural duty to obey the just laws of a broadly legitimate regime. His central contention is that the duty to obey the law can be justified in terms of each of us bearing ‘a fair share of the communal samaritan chore of rescuing all of us from the perils of the state of nature’ (p. 89). This argument draws an analogy between our natural duty of rescue (samaritanism) – the duty we have to rescue those in serious peril when we can do so at no great cost – and our duty to obey the law. Very simply, the argument runs roughly as follows: the state offers the most effective way to save us from the risks we would face in a putative state of nature; because securing us against such risks involves complex issues of co-ordination a state must be able to employ legitimate coercion if it is to be effective; in so far as the state performs this function we are under a general duty to do our fair share to support it; and the most appropriate form of support is obedience to the law. However, political obligations extend only so far as the benefits the state brings really are essential and justified by the samaritan argument; cannot be delivered more effectively in a less coercive way; and do not make unreasonable demands on citizens. The general duty to obey the law does not extend to illegitimate regimes or unjust laws, and even in the case of the just laws of a legitimate government the obligation may sometimes be rightly overridden. Nor does it extend to many routine things that actual states typically do, ‘even things that they can do well. For each potential state function we should ask whether the goods secured are important enough to justify the non-consensual coercion that inevitably accompanies political coordination’ (p. 73). On Wellman's account, therefore, although a general duty to obey the law can be justified, that duty is heavily circumscribed.
A. J. Simmons is best known as one of the most tenacious defenders of ‘philosophical anarchism’. In his essay, he rehearses many of his by now fairly familiar arguments against the various theories that seek to justify political obligation, paying particular attention to natural duty theories. As there are many very different approaches to justifying the general duty to obey the law, it is understandable that Simmons does not limit himself to dealing with Wellman's argument. However, it is only after 86 pages of his 103-page essay that he actually gets round to a serious consideration of it. Although perfectly polite about Wellman's effort, Simmons disposes of it in only a few pages. He rightly observes that it is far from clear that ‘legal obedience constitutes an appropriately easy or low-cost sort of rescue of our fellow citizens’, as in the standard samaritan rescue cases (p. 181). He also points to a number of other disanalogies between a duty to obey the law and the duty to rescue of the samaritan argument, mostly revolving around the latter being concerned with local and occasional events that are not at all similar to the duty to bear one's share in an ongoing collective project. Moreover, even if one is not persuaded by all of Simmons' objections, it is still hard to see why, on Wellman's argument, individuals have a duty specifically to obey the law of the state of which they are members rather than of just any state that offers them protection.
As someone with a long-term interest in political obligation, I should probably be more welcoming of this book. Unfortunately, though, in my view it is doubtful whether it will do much to stimulate further interest in political obligation. For all its ingenuity, Wellman's argument is ultimately unconvincing, and Simmons, for all the trenchancy of his position, adds little to what he has said before. And, neither the authors nor readers are particularly well served by the format: there is comparatively little direct engagement between the authors, and a degree of mismatch in that Wellman pursues one, highly individual, line of argument, although he does so in an engaging and accessible style, whereas Simmons casts his net much more widely, although his writing is denser and more demanding. These differences may also make the book difficult for an undergraduate audience to use effectively.
John Horton
(Keele University)
Richard Winfield's The Just State is the latest volume in a series of fascinating books. Hegel's The Philosophy of Right has often been criticised for its curious relationship with metaphysics. Over the years, Winfield has effectively rewritten The Philosophy of Right in a number of books – not least Overcoming Foundations (Columbia University Press, 1989), The Just Family (SUNY, 1998), Laws in Civil Society (University Press of Kansas, 1995) and many others. His The Just State tackles areas Hegel covers in his analysis of the state in The Philosophy of Right's famous section ‘Sittlichkeit’. Winfield jettisons Hegel's metaphysics, while fleshing out the connections far better from idea to idea.
That said, Winfield's account is truly his own: not only does he reject much of Hegel's methodology, but he adopts several views at odds with what Hegel supports. Thus, while Winfield is in one sense rewriting Hegel's system as it applies to political philosophy, he is equally writing an entirely novel and original contribution. His ability to create this vision in the ambitious systematic picture he provides is truly incredible and exciting to uncover. As Hegel's vision differed in important respects from the Prussia of his times, many readers may be interested in the surprising differences between Winfield's state and existing states, not least America. He argues for a different Kelsan-inspired view of judicial review, a unique view of the legislature, and federalism.
If there is one worry to raise, perhaps it is his reliance on non-foundationalism. Winfield has written about this at length before, particularly in his Overcoming Foundations. However, in The Just State, readers unfamiliar with his earlier work may find his arguments in favour of jettisoning a foundationalist view and adopting his non-foundationalism unconvincing as much of the discussion transpires a bit too quickly to reach the heart of the claims on political philosophy for which Winfield is aiming.
Winfield's The Just State is a highly interesting tour de force that completes his rewriting of Hegel's
The Philosophy of Right. It is generally highly accessible, original and engaging. I recommend it to anyone interested in Hegel's political philosophy or anyone interested in issues of sovereignty more generally.
Thom Brooks
(University of Newcastle)
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