Married women pose an acute, but now unacknowledged, problem for liberal theory. The character & magnitude of the problem can only be fully understood if the development of liberal theory is examined in the context of the impact of the consolidation of capitalism on the SE position of married women. Because the concept of 'natural' individual freedom & equality was central to contract theory, Thomas Hobbes & John Locke had to deal with the problem of married women in their argument with the patriarchalists. Their acceptance of patriarchal claims & assertions about women stands at the beginning of the reconciliation of liberal & patriarchal theory, a reconciliation now attacked by certain feminists in terms that echo Hobbes's original attack on patriarchalism. HA.
The relationship between liberalism and democracy is notoriously paradoxical. On the one hand, the justification for democratic procedures most commonly rests on liberal assumptions. Standard liberal arguments for democracy range from the importance of consent due to the moral primacy of the individual, to the role of critical argument and the diversity of opinion for the discovery of truth. On the other hand, liberal institutional arrangements, such as the separation of powers and the rule of law, have frequently been interpreted as constraints upon democracy, albeit necessary ones if democracy is not to undermine itself. The paradox arises from the fact that liberalism provides a philosophical basis for regarding democracy as the only valid source of law whilst apparently appealing to some higher law in order to limit democracy itself. This paradox is embodied in the constitutions of most liberal democratic states. For generally these documents contain provisions – such as a bill of rights guaranteeing the freedoms of speech, assembly and association – designed to secure popular participation in the democratic process, alongside others – such as rights not obviously intrinsic to democratic decision making and mechanisms for judicial review – which seek to limit the power of democratic assemblies.
The development of social policy in Europe is explored in this accessible intellectual history and analysis of the welfare state. From the Industrial Revolution onwards, the book identifies three important concepts behind efforts to address social concerns in Europe: social democracy, Christian democracy and liberalism. With guides to the political and ideological protagonists and the beliefs and values that lie behind reforms, it traces the progress and legacies of each of the three traditions.
The rise of 'New Politics' concerns since the 1970s parallels the rise in popularity of market liberalism. Although often considered to be opposites, both goals have been pursued vigorously and simultaneously by social democratic governments in Australia and New Zealand. This article examines the circumstances of this unlikely marriage and, by applying multivariate analysis to election survey data collected in each country in 1990, examines the implications of these apparently contradictory policies for public opinion and party support. We conclude that value orientations associated with New Politics have mixed associations with party support. Postmaterialist and materialist value orientations are linked to attitudes towards the specifically Australasian old left strategy of 'domestic defence'. The findings suggest that the effects of value change are more far-reaching in New Zealand, where social liberalism may have overtaken collectivism as the dominant value cleavage in the party system.
Abstract Normative individualism appears to be an obvious normative premise underlying a liberal conception of the desirable social order. The shortcomings of some common Interpretations of this premise are discussed and a more consistent as well as a more workable standard for assessing the 'goodness' of alternative socio-institutional arrangements is specified. With such an Interpretation of normative individualism, a contractrarian conception as advocated by J.M. Buchanan can be viewed as a systematic extension of classical liberalism.
AbstractThis essay partakes in the dialogue between history, anthropology, and social theory on the topic of debt as a social relation. Drawing on sources from nineteenth-century Switzerland, it examines everyday routines of debt collection in liberalism by taking the seized collateral object to the center of historical analysis. It is shown how the attached goods in a debtor's household became an object of knowledge for nineteenth-century framers of law as well as for ordinary debtors. I make use of anthropological theory in order to describe the legal techniques of delineating and extracting collateral, and show how these legal techniques implied specific knowledge practices. I then look at two borderline cases of collateralization: the pawning of mobile goods and the imprisonment of insolvent debtors. Further, I discuss how, by the 1880s, the limits of debt collection were debated, when certain goods were exempt for seizure in a projected federal law. Overall, on an epistemological level, debt collection appears as a double movement: it provided basic tools to untangle property relationships, yet all the while it created new, unpredictable complications. Thus debt collection was a distinctive arena in which the uneasy conceptual relationship between people and things in nineteenth-century liberalism unfolded. From this conceptual node I propose a historical epistemology of the collateral object.
In 1998, the north of Ireland emerged from a protracted civil insurgency sustained by a socio-political infrastructure comprising an expanded Keynesian welfare state and a developing neo-liberal economy. This provided the context for significant migration to the North after 2004. While research highlights migrant experiences not dissimilar to those in other parts of the UK and Ireland after 2004 it also suggests that a number of reported experiences result from the reproduction of one aspect of a new sectarian dispensation. Traditional sectarianism, while typically sustaining differential access to labour markets and other resources according to socio-economic advantage, was remade in the 1998 'peace-settlement': a new sectarianism was institutionalized. While not impacting on all migrants, neo-sectarianism now encounters neo-liberalism, the out-workings of which do impact on many. Moreover, experiences of some reveal important and so far unreported features of an accommodation between agent-beneficiaries of the 'peace-settlement' and neo-liberalism.
Marx on a tightrope. the essence of freedom and the movement of becoming -- Kantian transcendence and beyond -- Knowledge and practice in trouble : a reasonable way out of ontological traps -- Liberal detours and their mishaps : negative liberty, Isaiah Berlin, and John Stuart Mill -- Agonic subjectivity and the stirrings of the new -- The social, the imaginary, and the real -- Freedom, agonism, and creative praxis -- Post-critical liberalism and agonistic freedom -- Post-foundational reason and sustainable affirmation -- Conclusion : past agonies and present openings of freedom
The history of an 1837 conservative mestizo uprising against European colonial elites in southern & eastern Guatemala is recounted to explore the economic & social processes of the modern era. Analysis highlights the problems with introducing liberal democracy into populations with high degrees of social inequality, instability of liberalist top-down reforms without empowerment of new civil groups, & a reliance on state power. In light of this analysis, postmodern critiques of development theory are visited, finding postmodern discourse's intellectual stance, humanistic priorities, & aversion to reductionism valuable. 126 References. M. Pflum
For the most part, electoral and party research today is centered on the behavior of voters in two or four major clusters that can be conventionally placed on a scale from left to right. On the same scale, there are smaller groups whose value of separation is often questioned. This paper focuses on one of these groups: we consider a segment of voters united on the basis of their support for right-wing liberal parties and try to identify the most significant determinants of their choice. Based on the existing concepts of voting and data from the European Social Survey, 2016–2018, we generalize possible predictors – party and political selfidentification, ideological stances, social setting and material status – up to three theories ('ideological core', 'defectors' and 'winners'), and test their plausibility using regression tools. Modeling results show that for a number of parameters the separation of new subgroup is justified. First, we reject the hypothesis of a strategic non-voting for right-liberals (on the contrary, respondents often "strategically" vote for them rather than for some personally closer party). Second, we find similar characteristics of the voter profile in different European countries; in particular, people who share the values of non-interference (associated with opposition to income redistribution and cultural restrictions) are more inclined to electorally back the liberal right. On the other hand, for a complete picture it is not enough to indicate ideological or cleavage preferences: the fact of voting is strongly influenced by person's socio-economic background, confirming the earlier remarks about certain "privileges" in this electoral segment.
