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This book offers the first authoritative guide to assumptions about time in theories of contemporary world politics. It demonstrates how predominant theories of the international or global ‘present’ are affected by temporal assumptions, grounded in western political thought, which fundamentally shape what we can and cannot know about world politics today. In so doing, the book puts into question the ways in which social scientists and normative theorists diagnose ‘our’ post-Cold War times. The first part of the book traces the philosophical roots of assumptions about time in contemporary political and international theory. The second part examines contemporary theories of world politics, including liberal and realist International Relations theories and the work of Habermas, Hardt and Negri, Virilio and Agamben. In each case, it is argued, assumptions about political time ensure the identification of the particular temporality of western experience with the political temporality of the world as such and put the theorist in the unsustainable position of holding the key to the direction of world history. In the final chapter, the book draws on postcolonial and feminist thinking, and the philosophical accounts of political time in the work of Derrida and Deleuze, to develop a new ‘untimely’ way of thinking about time in world politics.
This book considers the underlying causes of the end of social democracy's golden age. It argues that the cross-national trend in social democratic parties since the 1970s has been towards an accommodation with neo-liberalism and a corresponding dilution of traditional social democratic commitments. The book looks at the impact of the change in economic conditions on social democracy in general, before examining the specific cases of Germany, Sweden and Australia. It examines the ideological crisis that engulfed social democracy. The book also looks at the post-1970 development of social policy, its fiscal implications and economic consequences in three European countries. It considers the evolution of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) from its re-emergence as a significant political force during the 1970s until the present day under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The book also examines the evolution of the Swedish model in conjunction with social democratic reformism and the party's relations to the union movement. It explores the latest debate about what the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) stands for. The SPD became the role model for programmatic modernisation for the European centre-left. The book considers how British socialist and social democratic thought from the late nineteenth century to the present has treated the objective of helping people to fulfil their potential, talents and ambitions. It aims to contribute to a broader conversation about the future of social democracy by considering ways in which the political thought of 'third way' social democracy might be radicalised for the twenty-first century.
This book is an analysis of the political thought of the Conservative Party. Academic discussions of the Conservative Party have tended to neglect ideology, focusing instead on the 'pragmatic' nature of the Party and its electoral and governmental record. The book traces the ideology of the Conservative Party through its most prominent thinkers. These are Harold Macmillan; R. A. Butler; Quintin Hogg (Lord Hailsham); Enoch Powell; Angus Maude; Keith Joseph; the traditionalists; the 'wets' (most notably Ian Gilmour); John Redwood; and David Willetts. These are the individuals considered by the authors to have made the most important contributions to the political thought of the Conservative Party. Some of them did so through the publication of a major book or even in some cases a series of books. The book provokes two theoretical issues and it is the purpose of the introduction to deal with these head-on. The first relates to the nature of the Conservative Party, which many commentators argue is not an ideological entity. The most widely cited academic perspective of this sort is the 'statecraft' thesis first outlined by James Bulpitt, who argued that the Conservative Party is in fact a pragmatic movement committed above all to winning elections and maintaining power. The second issue raised here is that of why and how the authors have selected the individual thinkers and overlooked others with plausible claims to influence.
Recent scholarship in political thought has closely examined the relationship between European political ideas and colonialism, particularly the ways in which canonical thinkers supported or opposed colonial practices. However, little attention has been given to the engagement of colonized political and intellectual actors with European ideas. This book demonstrates that a full reckoning of colonialism's effects requires attention to the ways in which colonized intellectuals reacted to, adopted, and transformed these ideas, and to the political projects that their reactions helped to shape. It presents acts of hybrid theorization from across the world, from figures within societies colonized by the British, French, and Spanish empires who sought an end to their colonial status or important modifications to it. The book examines John Stuart Mill's neglect of the Bengali reformer, Rammohun Roy. Exploring what transpired with this potential for intellectual influence across cultural borders during the course of Mill's intellectual career is an unfinished project. The Indian Sociologist is a radical anti- colonial journal created, edited and published by Shyamji Krishnavarma, was an important mouthpiece of the early (pre- Gandhian) Indian nationalist movement's extremist faction at the international level. Jotirao Govindrao Phule fought for Sudratisudras who were abased, maltreated, and reviled as slaves proportionally to the fierceness with which their native warrior ancestors had resisted outside invasion. The book also talks about the French revolutionary ideology in Saint- Domingue, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, liberal universalism, and Pedro Paterno's Filipino deployment of French Lamarckianism.
43 2 Rethinking resistance: Spencer, Krishnavarma, and The Indian Sociologist Inder S. Marwah In recent years, political theorists and intellectual historians have begun to examine the impacts of empire in shaping the conceptual frameworks of late modern political thought, and more particularly, the ways that ideas were absorbed, integrated, synthesized and refracted in colonial contexts situated at the intersection of local and global knowledge systems.1 This chapter aims to contribute to these efforts by excavating a philosophically distinctive line of anti
readers. But it is possible to imagine a range of other sources that could be equally valuable. Third, the study has placed emphasis on the way in which narratives of historical change informed ideological contestation. For several decades, social scientists have been drawing attention to the way in which history mediates political thought and behaviour. 5 This tradition of scholarship has done much to aid the study of political ideas. It has been attentive, for instance, to the way in which an actor’s location in a sequence of events may determine their receptivity
’l-Hayʾa al-Qawmiyya li’l-Bahth al-ʿIlmi, 1990), pp. 17–35. See also Samer Frangie, “Historicism, Socialism and Liberalism after the Defeat: On the Political Thought of Yasin al-Hafiz,” Modern Intellectual History 12.2 (2015), pp. 325–352. 154 See especially Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm, al-Naqd al-Dhati bʿada al-Hazima (Beirut: Dar al-Taliʿa, 1969), and Munif, al-Dimuqratiyya . In his foreword to the English edition of the book published in 2014, al-ʿAzm highlighted the works of such liberal thinkers as Egypt’s Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and Syria’s Muhammad Shahrur, “[who] share
7 The traditionalists1 So how should Conservatives talk? What is the mood they should be seeking to promote? Authority should be the by-word, not freedom. Peregrine Worsthorne, 19782 What the Conservative Party, then, should concern itself with … is the strength of the nation. T. E. Utley, 19783 T he purpose of this chapter is to outline the political thought of the traditionalists associated with the Conservative Party. The core ideas of the traditionalists can be summarised as a strong sense of patriotism, defence of the established social order and respect
Introduction T his book is an analysis of the political thought of the Conservative Party. Academic discussions of the Conservative Party have tended to neglect ideology, focusing instead on the ‘pragmatic’ nature of the Party and its electoral and governmental record. We believe that this view is mistaken, and that the Party’s development since the Second World War cannot be understood without a detailed consideration of ideas. The chapters trace the ideology of the Conservative Party through its most prominent thinkers. These are Harold Macmillan; R. A
libertarian socialism, a drastically modified form of idealism, critical theory and legal theory. The four sources are synthesised in order to articulate four theories intended to project thinking about political legitimacy beyond the restatements of Kant and the sociologically reconstructed versions of Aristotle which in various combinations continue to dominate mainstream social and political thought. What emerges is (1) a theory