essays on political theory

Understanding Liberal Democracy: Essays in Political Philosophy

• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

This book collects Nicholas Wolterstorff's papers in political philosophy. While this collection includes some of Wolterstorff's earlier and influential work on the intersection between liberal democracy and religion, it also contains nine new essays in which Wolterstorff stakes out novel positions regarding the nature of liberal democracy, human rights, and political authority. The overall position is one that is intended to be an attractive alternative to so-called public reason liberalism defended by thinkers such as John Rawls. Of interest to philosophers, political theorists, and theologians, the book should engage a wide audience of those interested in how best to understand the nature of liberal democracy and its relation to religion.

Signed in as

Institutional accounts.

• Google Scholar Indexing
• GoogleCrawler [DO NOT DELETE]

Personal account

• Sign in with email/username & password
• Get email alerts
• Save searches
• Purchase content
• Activate your purchase/trial code

Institutional access

• Sign in with a library card Sign in with username/password Recommend to your librarian
• Institutional account management
• Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Sign in through your institution

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.

• Click Sign in through your institution.
• Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
• When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
• Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Sign in with a library card

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:

• Click Sign in through society site.
• When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

• View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
• View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Rights and permissions
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

• Politics & Social Sciences
• Politics & Government

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: $43.28 $43.28 FREE delivery: Wednesday, April 10 Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select the return method

Buy used: $2.94

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Thinking Politically: Essays in Political Theory Paperback – February 24, 2009

Purchase options and add-ons.

A collection of the most important writings of Michael Walzer, one of the world’s most influential political thinkers Michael Walzer is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading political theorists. In a career spanning more than fifty years, he has wrestled with some of the most crucial political ideas and questions of the day, developing original conceptions of democracy, social justice, liberalism, civil society, nationalism, multiculturalism, and terrorism. 

Thinking Politically brings together some of Walzer’s most important work to provide a wide-ranging survey of his thinking and the vision that underlies his responses to contemporary political debates. The book also includes a previously unpublished essay on human rights. David Miller’s substantial introduction presents a detailed analysis of the development of Walzer’s ideas and connects them to wider currents of political thought. In addition, the book includes a recent interview with Walzer on a range of topical issues, and a detailed bibliography of his works.

This collection will be welcomed by scholars in politics and philosophy, as well as anyone keen to engage in discussion on some of the key issues of our times.

• Print length 368 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Yale University Press
• Publication date February 24, 2009
• Dimensions 6.14 x 0.89 x 9.21 inches
• ISBN-10 0300143222
• ISBN-13 978-0274746972
• See all details

Popular titles by this author

Editorial Reviews

About the author.

Michael Walzer is UPS Foundation Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has published extensively in political philosophy and is equally well known for his contributions to contemporary political debates. He lives in Princeton, NJ. David Miller is professor of political theory and official fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford. He is a fellow of the British Academy and the author or editor of fifteen books, including On Nationality and Principles of Social Justice .

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yale University Press (February 24, 2009)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0300143222
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0274746972
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.15 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.14 x 0.89 x 9.21 inches
• #3,359 in Political Commentary & Opinion
• #5,722 in Political Philosophy (Books)
• #8,256 in History & Theory of Politics

About the author

Michael walzer.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top review from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Start Selling with Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Your browser does not support HTML5 or CSS3

To best view this site, you need to update your browser to the latest version, or download a HTML5 friendly browser. Download: Firefox // Download: Chrome

Pages may display incorrectly.

How to Study Political Theory

Download PDF Study Guide

A Student Companion to Graham and Hoffman, Introduction to Political Theory

Intended learning outcomes – developing your transferable skills.

University courses have what are called ‘intended learning outcomes’ (ILOs). An intended learning outcome is what a student should be able to achieve on the completion of a course and can be tested through, for example, tutorial/seminar participation, unseen written exams, seen exams (‘takeaway papers’), multiple choice questions, and course essays. There are at least four different kinds of ILO: transferable skills; generic academic skills; cognate academic skills; and, subject-specific skills. This guide concentrates on the last of these: the skills specific to the understanding of political theory (the ‘10 rules’). However, it is worth saying something about the other three kinds of ILO:

Transferable skills

These are skills useful in employment situations. Specifically, the study of political theory should strengthen the following:

• General reasoning abilities – recognising valid and invalid arguments.
• Capacity to make valid conceptual distinctions – the consistent use of concepts.
• Writing skills.
• Oral skills – the ability to argue a case through, for example: (a) defending your own position; or (b) playing ‘devil’s advocate’.
• A deeper understanding of social relations, including the ability to abstract from everyday situations – reflection on ‘case studies’ is particularly important here.
• Ethical reasoning.
• Empathy – the ability to recognise other people’s points of view.

Generic academic skills

These are skills which can be ‘transferred’ to other university subjects, especially in the arts (or humanities) and social sciences. They include the skills listed above under ‘transferable skills’, but additionally:

• The ability to write grammatically and syntactically correct and properly referenced academic essays.
• The capacity to construct arguments under examination conditions – that is, in a specified time and without notes.
• The framing of an oral argument and ability to defend it in group discussion.

Cognate - subject academic skills

Political theory ‘interfaces’ with a number of other disciplines, or sub-disciplines, and skills gained in the study of political theory are ‘transferable’ to these other sub-disciplines. Cognate disciplines and sub-disciplines include:

• History, especially the history of ideas.
• Economics – e.g., welfare economics and rational choice.
• Law – e.g., legal philosophy and legal theory.
• Sociology and anthropology.
• Social and public policy.
• Literature – e.g., textual analysis.
• Biology – e.g., sociobiology.

It is important to recognise that different disciplines pose different questions and these should not be confused. However, it is also important to avoid arbitrary distinctions between disciplines – knowledge, understanding, and skills acquired in one discipline can be transferred to another.

Ten rules for studying political theory

Rule 1: think for yourself.

So long as you acknowledge alternative positions, it is better to present your own arguments rather than a boring list of alternative claims. Have confidence in your own position! There is, however, a difference between presenting your own argument and engaging in a polemic: you must provide a reasoned defence of a particular position. Furthermore, while political theorists disagree, it does not follow that political values are ‘subjective’ – you are giving other people reasons for accepting a certain claim and not simply banging the table and saying (in effect) I feel strongly about something (you can, of course, communicate reasons and feel strongly, but the reasons are crucial).

Rule 2: Use concepts with precision

Concepts are central to all academic disciplines, but especially the humanities and social sciences. Some political theorists claim we can agree on the meaning of concepts, such as (say) freedom or democracy while disagreeing about the value attached to each, or how we settle conflicts between values. Other political theorists argue that disagreement pertains to the meaning, as well as the value, of concepts. Whichever view you take, it is important to define your concepts, even if other people may disagree with your definition. You must also be consistent in your definition and application of concepts.

Rule 3: Recognise the importance of everyday experience

Even before you began studying political theory you had engaged in ‘political theory’: reflections on the fairness or unfairness of wealth distribution, or the legitimacy or illegitimacy of restrictions on freedom, involve theorising about politics and morality. Although few politicians read works of political theory (or philosophy), they often (implicitly) make moral judgements about ‘political issues’. Case studies are a particularly good way of drawing out the moral implications of everyday experience. These contrast with artificial thought experiments, where the aim is quite deliberately to remove contingent elements or to force you to think in a certain way – both case studies and thought-experiments can be useful.

Rule 4: Be critical of everyday assumptions

While everyday experience is valuable – because it demonstrates the relevance of political theory – it is also important to be critical of everyday assumptions. The ‘person in the street’ might say ‘it’s just common sense that such and such is (ought to be) the case’. It may be that after critical reflection you come to endorse the ‘common sense’ view, but then in defending the view you would not be appealing to common sense.

Rule 5: Read texts critically

There is a great deal of published work in political theory, some good and some bad. Even the work of the greatest and most respected political theorists are open to challenge. In studying political theory think of a building. Buildings have ‘stress points’ and ‘loadbearing’ elements, and so do theories – but the precise location of these will vary from one theory to another. When you read a work of a great theorist, such as Hobbes or Locke or Marx, you need to identify the stress points, because these are the points that are most open to attack.

Rule 6: Learn to analyse texts

Continuing with the building analogy, just as a building can be deconstructed so can texts. While it is important to respect the text as a whole rather than pick out the supposedly ‘good bits’ from what may appear to be a great deal of ‘padding’, nonetheless, some sentences carry greater weight than others, and the more you engage with texts the better will be your ability to identify the central arguments.

Rule 7: Engage with the argument

Some theories will appeal to you, others will not – indeed, you may even find some arguments obnoxious. While there is nothing wrong with disliking a theory (see rule 1), it is important to engage with it, which means trying to put the most credible interpretation on it. It is also important to avoid ‘naming’ an argument as a substitute to criticising it: for example, some people might regard the term ‘classical liberal’ as derogatory. They then identify a particular thinker’s work as ‘classical liberal’ as if that were a sufficient ground for rejection. Genuine criticism involves drawing out the truth of an argument – it is not simple rejection

Rule 8: Employ lateral thinking

It may be quite challenging to employ lateral thinking at an introductory level, but some moral problems in politics look intractable because we make false assumptions, or because there are considerations at play which are not obvious from the way the problem is explained (a ‘problem’ is here defined as a puzzle). Lateral thinking involves looking at a problem from new and possibly strange angles. In political theory, the term is rarely used, but nonetheless, there is much lateral thinking, and it often takes the form of analogical thinking – using something from outside politics to explain a political problem. The Prisoner's Dilemma is a classic example, for it helps elucidate the problem of why people who are in profound conflict with one another might cooperate.

Rule 9: Argue cogently and coherently

Arguments in political theory do not always depend on ‘logic’ in the strict sense of the word – that is, conclusions do not follow in a linear manner from a set of premises. There is reliance on empirical claims about the nature of human beings and society, which can reasonably be challenged. Nonetheless, there are standards of cogency and coherence, and while an argument will always be open to challenge, it is usually obvious when a person has advanced obviously contradictory claims.

Rule 10: Form matters

Writing grammatically and syntactically correct sentences is not only an important transferable skill, but can be indicative of cogent and coherent argumentation – form (good writing) and substance (good arguments) are not independent of one another. Writing comes more easily to some students than others, but it is important to take pride in what you write.

Using the Graham & Hoffman resources

This part of the guide explains the various features of the textbook and the Companion Website and how to use them most effectively.

Case studies

Each chapter begins with a case study. Your tutor/instructor will provide further guidance on how to approach them, but there are some general points to be made about the case studies:

• Tackle the case study before you read the rest of the chapter.
• Engage in a ‘brainstorming’ exercise: write down anything relevant to the case under consideration, then:
• Go through the list, deleting what, on reflection, you think is unimportant, and put the remaining points in categories according to the type of argument or claim being made (e.g., factual versus normative, or ‘evaluative’), and then rank the points in order of importance.
• When you have read the chapter, return to the case study and consider whether your views have changed (it may be that your conclusion has not changed, but that you have revised the arguments which lead you to that conclusion).

There are further case studies on this website.

Web resources

Web resources can be found on this website. Obviously the idea of the web is that one website leads to another and your journey through the web may take you to some weird and wacky places. Some academics are quite dismissive of websites, and although this may be partly a reflection of age and generation, there are some dangers with web resources:

• Although a great deal of rubbish appears in print, there is greater ‘quality control’ on books and journal articles than on web-based material. After all, it takes no more than ten minutes to start a blog. On the other hand, there are many intelligent blogs, often with links to interesting articles and websites. Be discerning in your use of web-based materials.
• Arguments should be assessed on their merits rather than ad hominem from their source, but given limited time, there are some tests which can help you discriminate useful and useless websites:
• How well-established is a website? The longer, the better. How many ‘hits’ has it got? The more, the better. How many other websites link to it? The more the better.
• What is the quality of the backlinks (that is, links from the website)? High status web extensions are .edu and .ac.uk.
• Is the material available in published form? Some websites, such as www.jstor.org are, in effect, online libraries, where everything on the website is available in hard copy in university libraries. Other websites contain legal documents, which, likewise, are available published in hard copy.
• You should avoid excessive reliance on websites in writing course essays (see section on writing essays).
• You should not break any laws or regulations in your web search. Some of the topics discussed in the Graham & Hoffman textbooks are controversial, and using certain keywords, such as ‘pornography’, will produce web pages which contravene your college or university regulations, if not laws. The same issue may apply to ‘guns’. If you have any concerns, you should contact your course tutors/instructors.

Further Reading

At the end of each chapter is a guide to further reading. Practices vary between countries, but in Britain lecturers tend to put more items on their reading lists than they expect students to read, with the intention being that students can choose what to read. Items may be more or less relevant depending upon what essay question you are answering. (Furthermore, there can be intense pressure on libraries, so that having a fairly long reading list to some extent reduces that pressure).

In other countries, students assume that everything on a reading list must be read. We have followed the British practice.

Finally: note-taking

Note-taking in lectures and from books is an important skill. Lecturers’ styles and approaches vary greatly – some lecture without notes and/or PowerPoint, while others have detailed notes and overheads which are made available to students. Do not be obsessed with overheads – many lecturers use them simply to give some visual structure to the lecture and it is not intended that students write everything down. It is important to listen to lectures. If you do take notes then consider whether or not a ‘linear’ technique is the best – sometimes ‘trees’ with branches leading from one point to another is better than writing sentences.

Taking notes from books is quite different to note-taking in lectures. Try to avoid writing very long notes – try to condense the argument. If you photocopy from books then avoid underlining or highlighting large chunks – when you come back to the text you want to be able quickly to identify key arguments (do not write in or mark library books!).

Writing essays (papers) in political theory

In this section, we provide guidance specific to writing essays (papers) in political theory.

Some important general points:

• There are no ‘model answers’ to essay questions – two students can answer the same essay question and both get A grades, but their essays may be very different in style and argument.
• Answer the question asked and not a question you would like to have been asked – be relevant!
• You should express your own reasoned views.
• You should develop your own style of writing, but pay attention to grammar, syntax and spelling.
• Think about the structure of the essay.
• Read carefully and with discrimination – develop note-taking skills. Do not read too much.
• Organise your time – there may be many students on your course and a great deal of pressure on library and computing services.
• Be aware that plagiarism is a serious offence.

Essays should have a beginning, middle, and end. Very roughly speaking, the beginning, or opening part, should constitute about 10-15% of the essay and tell the reader what the essay is going to say. The middle part, or ‘core’, should be about 70% of the essay and contain the central arguments and discussion, while the end, or concluding part, should provide a strong conclusion, and may be slightly longer than the opening part (say, about 20% of the essay).

Here is an example, but please note this is not presented as a ‘model answer’, but rather is intended to be an illustration of a well-structured essay:

Question: Should the state prevent people harming themselves?

• Introduction and Core:

• Define the concepts in the question: state (= coercive); prevention (= interference); harm to self.
• Introduce the concept of paternalism.
• Discuss ‘extreme cases’ of harm to self. Pose the question: could anyone reasonably argue that the state should not intervene?
• Is there a danger of a ‘slippery slope’ from extreme to ‘moderate’ cases of harm to self? Discuss the ‘moderate’ cases.
• Could we consent to paternalism?

• Closing part: tell the reader what you think – but the conclusion must follow from the arguments set out in the 'core'.

Referencing – house style

Different academic departments recommend different forms of referencing (‘house styles’). A relatively easy one to use is the Harvard System, which is the one adopted in the Graham & Hoffman textbooks.

Whatever style you adopt, you should:

• Use a house correctly and consistently – if you are unsure look at a book on the Further Reading lists and follow its style of referencing.
• Always reference – failure to reference may open you to the charge of plagiarism.

Other style issues include:

• Margins and spacing – always give the marker space to write comments. There should be reasonably sized margins and at least 1.5 spacing, if not double spacing.
• Font – use a clear and attractive font. Arial, Calibri and Times New Roman are good fonts.
• Use a reasonable font size – the size will depend on the font used, but anything smaller than 11 point is probably too small.
• Avoid excessive use of bullet points.
• Depending on the length of the essay, it may be appropriate to divide the essay into sections with section headings. A section should run for at least a couple of pages.

Grammar, syntax and spelling

Do not assume spelling and grammar checks are infallible – there are many mistakes which they will not identify. There is no alternative to checking the essay yourself. Below are listed some common errors made in politics and political theory essays:

• English, like any other language, has different ‘registers’: using English in an academic essay is quite different to using it in a bar. This is obvious. However, sometimes there is a slippage between levels. For example, in lower registers, such as conversation, we contract: I am becomes I’m ; they are becomes they’re . In higher registers, such as essay writing, we avoid such contractions. Likewise, colloquialisms should be avoided.
• Use of the ‘first person’: I and we . There is a division of opinion here – in political theory it is common to write in the first person (single or plural), whereas in political science it is not regarded as good practice. So long as the use of the first person does not lead to a lazy spouting of unjustified claims it is acceptable.
• Confusion of possessive and plural – this arises because both use the s. The possessive uses apostrophe + s: Mill's argument not Mills argument . The plural does not use an apostrophe: workers of the world unite not worker’s of the world unite. Regular plural + possessive is expressed with an apostrophe after the s: workers’ rights (but not with irregular plurals: women’s rights not womens’ rights ).
• Its and it’s : its is a possessive pronoun – the government’s policies = its policies. An apostrophe is not necessary because there can be no plural of it and hence no confusion of plural and possessive. It’s is simply a contraction of it is .
• Latin and Greek endings: the standard ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ending is with s but as well as Anglo-Saxon irregulars, such as women, children, mice, geese, there are also Latin and Greek endings: criter ion > criter ia ; strat um > strat a ; spectr um > spectr a . However, there is a tendency to standardise: referend um > either referend a or referend ums (both are now acceptable, although the Oxford English Dictionary argues that referendums is the correct plural). If unsure, check the plural in the dictionary.
• Principle and principal are often confused.
• Some people write loose , when they mean lose .
• There and their are sometimes confused.
• A normal sentence should have a verb (in the indicative): Mill attempts to reconcile utilitarianism and individual rights.
• Number agreement. A subject in the singular should correspond to ('govern') other elements (verbs, pronouns) in the sentence – so a singular subject should be complemented by a verb and pronoun in the singular.
• Subjunctive: this is a mood of the verb which expresses an unreal condition. It has virtually disappeared from the English language but is retained in the verb to be: if I were a woman not if I was a woman.

Paul Graham

Revised July 2022

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

• Home ›
• Reviews ›

Understanding Liberal Democracy: Essays in Political Philosophy

Nicholas Wolterstorff, Understanding Liberal Democracy: Essays in Political Philosophy , Terence Cuneo (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2012, 385pp., $65.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780199558957.

Reviewed by Kelly Sorensen, Ursinus College

Public reason liberalism -- the form of liberalism defended by Rawls, Larmore, Audi, Gaus, Rorty, Nussbaum, and to some degree Habermas -- usually requires citizens to publicly discuss and vote based on only those reasons that pass some sort of test that sifts away religious and comprehensive non-religious reasons. In the public sphere, those with such views are required by the role of citizenship to shape up or shut up -- "shape up" in the sense of offering instead reasons that can or could be shared by all other citizens. Nicholas Wolterstorff argues that public reason liberalism is a dead end, and defends instead what he takes to be a more defensible form of liberalism ("equal political voice liberalism"). His book is fresh and compelling, and an important contribution to political philosophy.

This is a collection of mostly new essays: nine appear for the first time. The remaining six are lightly edited for coherence with the new material. Ten concern public reason liberalism. The rest take up the nature of rights (extending the account that Wolterstorff has been developing in his recent books  Justice: Rights and Wrongs  and  Justice in Love ), the nature and source of citizens' political obligations to the state, and other issues in political philosophy.

What motivates public reason liberalism's restrictions on the reasons citizens can express and vote on? One factor is fairness, a second pluralism, and a third a certain kind of realism about pluralism's persistence. Rawls says that we can expect "a pluralism of comprehensive doctrines, including both religious and nonreligious doctrines . . . as the natural outcome of the activities of human reason under enduring free institutions". This pluralism is "not seen as a disaster" (Political Liberalism (​PL), xxiv), but it does raise concerns regarding a fourth factor, the stability of a liberal polity over time. Public reason liberalism sees religious comprehensive views in particular as "not admitting of compromise" and "expansionist" (Rawls), and even "conversation-stopping" and "dangerous" (Rorty). Because of these factors, public reason liberalism says, when it comes to publicly advocating for coercive legislation and voting, a citizen should restrict herself to reasons that she believes all capable adult fellow citizens do endorse or would endorse if they were (variously) better informed, more rational, drawing on a shared fund of premises that are freestanding and neutral with respect to controversial elements of comprehensive views, and so on.

Among Wolterstorff's arguments against public reason liberalism are the following. First, public reason liberalism actually is not realistic enough. One's capable adult fellow citizens clearly do not universally endorse the same reasons. So public reason liberalism has to idealize -- it has to imagine what reasons capable adult fellow citizens  would  endorse if they met certain hypothetical conditions, with the presumption that a consensus or convergence about these reasons would emerge. The hypothetical conditions vary from one brand of public reason liberalism to another. Suppose the conditions are full information and full rationality. Realistically, why think public reason liberalism is in a position to confidently say what reasons emerge from that idealization, and to say that there would be a consensus about them? Why think disagreement about these reasons will disappear under idealization? We can ask the same of Rawlsian idealization, which is laxer but still unrealistically strong: why think there would be consensus about what processes -- processes of rationally arriving at a set of judgments -- are themselves reasonable? So public reason liberalism is not realistic enough: we are stuck with pluralism, and we cannot idealize our way out of it.

Second, public reason liberalism is paternalistic and patronizing, despite its lip service to respect. Suppose Jones favors some policy on religious reasons that do not qualify as public reasons. Smith, a fan of public reason liberalism, is stuck with telling Jones, "You shouldn't express your reasons in public discussion, and you shouldn't vote on them. Here instead are the kinds of reasons that count -- reasons you would endorse if you were not under-informed and rationally impaired." Jones will of course find this condescending and patronizing. Even if Smith chooses more diplomatic words, public reason liberalism still entails a paternalistic and patronizing view of Jones. It's no surprise if Jones resents such an entailment about his reasons and whether he should express them and vote on them, and that resentment is a problem for the stability that Smith and public reason liberals ostensibly treasure.

A third argument from Wolterstorff is that public reason liberalism cannot consistently get what it wants anyway. Suppose Jones has a religious conviction that he should base his political views  on  his religious convictions. Jones listens to the arguments and objections of others with different views, but is unconvinced. He is like a Kantian listening to consequentialist arguments: he refuses to think that way. On the one hand, public reason liberals might seem to tell Jones to refrain from public discussion and voting. But on the other hand, that is "not what they should say, given their position as a whole" (100). Public reason liberalism gives citizens a  prima facie  duty to restrict themselves to public reasons, but in Jones's case that duty is outweighed by what he takes to be an " ultima  facie " duty to appeal to his religious reasons. Public reason liberals will have to accept that Jones should reject their "public reason imperative." So public reason liberalism seems to leave Jones free to publicly debate and to vote based on his religious convictions after all  -- the very result that most public reason liberals were attempting to avoid! So it is not possible for public reason liberals, on their own terms, to declare religious reasons inappropriate for public political discourse. There is a tension internal to the theory here.

A related fourth argument concludes that public reason liberalism asks too much of some religious believers. It entails that a piece of coercive legislation's legitimacy depends on Jones having, or counterfactually having, reasons in favor of the legislation that are good and  decisive for  Jones, the coerced subject. For at least some public reason liberals, it is not enough that Jones  knows of  public reasons that support the same legislation as his religious reasons; rather, the public reasons must be those  on the basis of which  Jones actually speaks and votes (36, 80, and 282). But this asks too much, Wolterstorff says. It asks Jones to let non-religious reasons trump his religious reasons when he speaks publicly and goes to the polls.

Fifth, public reason liberalism may caricature religious believers, insofar as it implies that believers are unwilling to go beyond the claim that "God told me that it's wrong so it's wrong." Interestingly, Wolterstorff turns here to qualitative empirical data. In the public discussion in Oregon in the 1990s about a physician-assisted suicide initiative, a leading account reports no such appeals by religious believers. Instead, public discussion in Oregon was characterized by a plurality of more substantive and contentful religious reasons, and also importantly, a plurality of secular reasons (not the supposed universal counterfactual shared premises that public reason liberalism inevitably resorts to).

Sixth, public reason liberalism may also caricature other varieties of liberal democratic engagement. Suppose we turn for a moment from policy deliberation and decision, the favored turf of public reason liberalism, to real-world grassroots organizing. In Maywood, California, city council members instituted an unusually onerous penalty for car drivers without a license: $1200 and a 30-day impound for the car. Towing companies were large donors to the city councilors' campaign funds. The law hit undocumented workers especially hard. Community members and community organizers attempted to use reasons -- public reasons -- to persuade the city council to change the law. That failed. Public reason liberalism seems stuck with the view that people in Maywood at that point should have backed off and shut up. Instead, acting under a plurality of reasons and emotions, including moral outrage, they ran a media campaign to call attention to the city council's corruption, and they registered more voters, until finally the city council members were voted out of office. Public reason liberalism is ill-equipped to theorize about real, non-well-ordered societies like, usually, our own.

These are only brief samples of Wolterstorff's arguments. He offers more sophisticated and detailed versions of these and other arguments when he engages with the specifics of individual theories of Rawls, Rorty, Gaus, Audi, Habermas, and others.

Wolterstorff calls his alternative form of liberal democracy "equal political voice liberalism," and he thinks it better accounts for the "governing idea" found in the longer historical tradition of liberalism, before public reason liberalism seized the spotlight in recent decades. There are two key aspects of equal political voice liberalism. First, citizens speak and vote within a constitutional context -- a context of classic civil liberties, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religious exercise, and freedom of association. Certain fundamental changes in law are appropriately "off the table" in this context of constitutional limits. Second, citizens are to speak and vote with an equal political voice. Intimidation and bullying are out; but otherwise, Wolterstorff's view puts no restrictions on the kinds of reasons to which citizens can appeal in public discussion and voting. That's it: we talk, using whatever reasons we want, religious and non-religious, comprehensive or otherwise, and then we vote. Anyone who wants to persuade others will, as a practical matter, find herself quoting reasons that will appeal to her opponents; but there is no requirement that she restrict herself to some special set of reasons. After the vote, there will be winners and losers. The losers will experience the winners' legislation as coercive. But to have expected otherwise is utopian. And Wolterstorff claims to have uncovered a variety of ways that public reason liberalism leans toward the utopian, despite its putative acceptance of pluralism, realism, and worries about stability.

As to the six issues above, Wolterstorff claims that equal political voice liberalism comes off better. First, it makes no unrealistic claim that, counterfactually, citizens' views on legislation would match some imagined consensus or convergence. Second, it is more respectful and less patronizing to citizens, because it does not tell them that their own reasons are epistemically inadequate. Third, it lets citizens speak and act on their own reasons without internal tension in the theory; and fourth, it does not demand that alien reasons be substituted and decisive. Fifth, the view does not caricature the reasons that people with comprehensive views tend to offer. Sixth, it is not myopic about varieties of democratic engagement -- there is policy deliberation and decision, but there is also broad-based organizing, movement organizing, and protest. Equal political voice liberalism better accounts for what happened in Oregon and in Maywood.

Wolterstorff's equal political voice liberalism does issue some "shape up" talk of its own. While designed to make broader room for religious reasons in the public square, it is not compatible with  every  religious perspective. Wolterstorff's liberalism does ask thinkers like Egyptian scholar Sayyid Qutb to endorse the constitutional context of liberal democracy and its commitment to not favoring any particular religious tradition. For Wolterstorff, "to affirm the liberal democratic polity is to put the shape of our life together at the mercy of votes in which the infidel has an equal voice with the believer" (295).

A mood of non-utopianism hangs over the book, but Wolterstorff is neither resigned nor pessimistic. Unlike dour critics such as MacIntyre, he loves liberal democracy. He agrees with public reason liberals that pluralism is ineradicable, but claims that there is more respect, more stability, and more positive endorsement of the system, when citizens speak and vote with an equal voice in a context of fundamental constitutional limits.

Equal political voice liberalism seems straightforward and simple, and it certainly has many attractions. Wolterstorff not only puts public reason liberals on the hot seat, but also sketches an alternative that captures important planks of the liberal democratic tradition. But consider a few concerns.

First, equal political voice liberalism seems to assume that after discussing and voting and grassroots organizing, there will be winners and losers, but that often enough the winners will be losers on other matters and the losers will in turn be winners (294). I take it this claim is supposed to address familiar concerns about stability. But it would be utopian to think that this happens often enough. It is easy to imagine places where the losers are very often  repeat  losers, because a majority persists there that sees little need to engage minority interlocutors. Depending on the place, the repeat losers could either be secular minorities or religious minorities. Wolterstorff will claim otherwise, but the best form of public reason liberalism might have more resources to address this worry than equal political voice liberalism.

Second, the book does not make clear whether Wolterstorff would consider an issue like state-authorized gay marriage to be part of the constitutional context, properly understood, and so part of the basic civil liberties that are "off the table" for democratic alteration by vote, or instead to be up for public discussion and a vote. From his discussion of the Oregon physician-assisted suicide case, we might think Wolterstorff would go for the latter, but personal correspondence indicates that he believes the former. In any case, even more specificity about what is off the table and what is on would be good.

Third, maybe things are not so bleak for public reason liberals, if they up their game and amend certain claims. Consider what we might call  aspirational  public reason liberalism. This theory is "aspirational" in three distinct ways. First, aspirational public reason liberalism asks citizens to aspire to offer reasons that are more general and broadly held than their own particular comprehensive-view-based reasons. But unlike the forms of liberalism that Wolterstorff's first argument addresses, it does not rely on the idea of a universal consensus or convergence about public reasons. Second, aspirational public reason liberalism does not require or demand  that citizens restrict themselves to these more general public reasons, but it does ask them to aspire to offer them. Citizens do nothing forbidden or wrongful if they articulate religious or other comprehensive view reasons, but they fulfill the role of citizen well if they also offer more general reasons -- reasons that speak to a broader swath of fellow citizens. A third aspiration concerns the place of these more general reasons among the citizen's individual motives: aspirational public reason liberalism says that these more general reasons need not be  decisive for the citizen  when she speaks and votes. We might also add a Rawlsian scope restriction: these aspirations apply to "most cases of constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice" (PL, xxi), not necessarily to all matters of public discussion.

I believe this form of public reason liberalism survives most of Wolterstorff's objections. It leaves room for many of his key points, including realism about the nature of lived citizenship and public activism, and also openness to religious comprehensive views as historically a fecund source of generalizable moral insight. It preserves many of the attractions of public reason liberalism as well, including an ideal of the role of citizen and the role's coercive power that encourages robust respect for other members of the polity. Consider Rawls's claim that "Public reason sees the office of citizen with its duty of civility as analogous to that of judgeship with its duty of deciding cases" (PL, liii). The citizen who fulfills her office well will aspire to articulate reasons that go beyond her personal reasons -- a good citizen will do this not, as Wolterstorff's equal political voice liberalism says, on a mere practical and rhetorical basis; and a good citizen will do this even when she is part of a repeat-winner majority, when on Wolterstorff's view there is no practical reason for her to do so. [1]  The judge/citizen analogy may not be as tight as Rawls seems to think: the role of judge comes with heavy demands of neutrality, while citizens face less onerous aspirations. In any case, it's worth noting, as Wolterstorff does, that in the 1995 introduction to the paperback edition of PL, Rawls does begin to soften. He says there that he now believes that reasons based on comprehensive doctrines "may be introduced in public reason at any time, provided that in due course public reasons, given by a reasonable political conception, are presented sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines are introduced to support" (PL, xlix). This isn't yet aspirational public reason liberalism, but it begins to point in that direction.

Whether or not public reason liberalism can be patched up in this or other ways, Wolterstorff's essays certainly reveal important undigested entailments in the standard view. This really is an excellent book.

Nearly half the book takes up other topics, and I regret that I have not managed to discuss them. For instance, Wolterstorff's discussion of privacy rights is particularly important. Take the case of J. Edgar Hoover's spying on Martin Luther King, Jr. Hoover secretly taped King's personal conversations and sex life. Suppose for a moment that King never knew of the privacy invasions, and so made no decisions in light them; suppose Hoover made the recordings for his own prurient enjoyment. (In fact, the FBI did try to blackmail King with these materials, as David Garrow's biography of King indicates. Wolterstorff notes this in one place (223), but not in another (326).) Standard accounts usually try to explain rights violations in terms of constriction of the rights holder's normative agency, or of his freedom of opinion and action. But in the imagined case, King's normative agency was not so affected. Still, his rights clearly were violated. Standard accounts of rights cannot adequately explain the wrongfulness of privacy violation, or the depth of the wrongness of rape, and are accordingly deficient.

Another chapter concerns the nature and source of the political authority of the state -- the state's authority to issue binding directives to its citizens. This issue, long a mainstay in political philosophy, largely dropped out of discussion a few decades ago. Wolterstorff resurrects it and offers an interesting new account.

Wolterstorff's prose and thinking are clear. The book would work well in an upper-level undergraduate or graduate course on liberalism . [2]

[1]  In personal correspondence, Wolterstorff says that he does believe that citizens are under a moral demand to engage others, although a failure to so engage is not a violation of the governing idea of liberal democracy.

[2]  My thanks to Nick Wolterstorff and Apryl Martin for their feedback on an earlier version of this review.

• Homework Help
• Essay Examples
• Citation Generator
• Writing Guides
• Essay Title Generator
• Essay Outline Generator
• Flashcard Generator
• Plagiarism Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Conclusion Generator
• Thesis Statement Generator
• Introduction Generator
• Literature Review Generator
• Hypothesis Generator
• Political Theory Essays

Political Theory Essays (Examples)

1000+ documents containing “political theory” .

Filter by Keywords:(add comma between each)

Political theory if nothing else.

For example, one can consider the following quote from Hobbes: "The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life." (Harrison, 2003, p. 67). In other words, Hobbes is saying that every person has within them certain rights, yearnings and liberties; as such, the individual is entitled, and indeed should, pursue their own interests and not be oppressed by rulers. Likewise, rulers should not attempt to force subjects into submission or to rule by intimidation or fear- for Hobbes, power must be earned and maintained through a level of fairness (ogers, et al., 2000). Within this scope, the ruler should be motivated, in Hobbes' opinion, by serving the interests of the people over whom they govern. Likewise, the citizens would be involved in the political….

Harrison, R. (2003). Hobbes, Locke, and Confusion's Masterpiece: An Examination of Seventeenth-Century Political Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rogers, G.A. & Sorell, T. (Eds.). (2000). Hobbes and History. London: Routledge.

Viroli, M. (1998). Machiavelli. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sociology-Theories

Political Theory

Thomas Hobbes' Philosophy in the Leviathan The subject area concerning political theories is both vast and complex. Political theories come in the form of ancient philosophies and new age rhetoric. This discussion will focus on the philosophy of The Leviathan. The Leviathan written by Thomas Hobbes, explores the matter, form, and power of a commonwealth. In the Leviathan Hobbes discusses the responsibility of the sovereign and the subjects. Hobbes philosophy contended that men must give up their right to govern themselves to a sovereign that would in turn govern the entire commonwealth and maintain peace and order. The purpose of this discussion is to determine why Hobbes insisted that men had to surrender both their wills and their judgments to their sovereign. We will also discuss the social contract theory and the condition of men. The Social Contract and the condition of men Thomas Hobbes was a controversial social contract theorist who believed that….

Bibliography

Green, Michael. The Social Contract.  http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mgreen/HobbesW01/Notes/Class/jSocCon.html 

Hobbes, Thomas," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2002

http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Hobbes, Thomas. The Leviathan taken from the book Social and Political Philosophy. ed. Sommerville, J. And Santoni E. 1963

Materialism: What does it mean in Marx? Marx's writings and philosophies extend through various disciplines of history, economics, political science, literature, philosophy, political economy, sociology and even - arguably - mathematics. There are several common strings throughout his writings, many of which we have explored this semester, but a constant beacon, a constant guideline, is Marx's concept of historical materialism. In historical materialism, economics is key. Economics has always motivated people through history, and can be isolated as an independent force, separate from the religious or ideological. For Marx, social necessity is uniform: What differs among men is economic power, ability and desire. One gets what one deserves, and in the ideological or religious, this is not necessarily the case, but in the economic, it certainly is, or at least should be. In "Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx" by Benedetto Croce, Croce writes, "Historical materialism is what is called a….

Justice, Gender, And the Family Much of what needs to be done to end the inequalities of gender, and to work in the direction of ending gender itself, will also help equalize opportunity from one family to another" (Okin, 17). Therein lies the central message that Okin attempts to convey within her book, Justice, Gender, and the Family. Through her analysis of contemporary theories of justice, and a discussion of the inequalities that are inherent to gender-based marriage and family, Okin claims that socially constructed, and maintained, injustice within the private sphere results in American women being equally repressed within the public sphere. However laudable these intentions and claims may be, Okin ultimately fails to provide the necessary empirical evidence to support and validate her claims. Justice, Gender, and the Family, therefore, emerges as a valuable commentary on present social institutions and a work of commendable moral sentiment, but contributes little….

Works Cited

Okin, Susan Moller. Justice, Gender, and the Family. Basic Books: New York, 1989.

debates in political theory module

The 'Debates in Political Theory' module serves as an essential component in the study of political science, inviting students to explore the rich variety of arguments that have shaped political thought throughout history. Political theory is not a fixed body of knowledge, but a dynamic field of competing ideas and perspectives. This essay will explore some of the central debates within the module, examining how they contribute to our understanding of political life. One of the core debates within political theory revolves around the nature and justification of the state. The question of why states should exist and what legitimate power they should possess has been a point of contention among political theorists for centuries. Social contract theorists, such as Thomas Hobbes (1651), argued that the state arises from a contract where individuals consent to surrender some of their freedoms in exchange for security and order. Conversely, anarchist theorists, such as….

Hobbes, T. (1651). Leviathan.

Proudhon, P.-J. (1840). What is property?

Plato. (1992). The Republic.

Mill, J. S. (1859). On Liberty.

Gorgias, Plato addresses the Sophists and shows Socrates facing off against several of them in a discussion of justice. As can be seen from this dialogue, different Sophists taught somewhat different doctrines. In general, though, the Sophists considered the nature of law and whether law could be viewed as something objective, a scientific certainty to be applied to the world. Essentially, the Sophists found that there was no way to know whether there could be such a law or not and that therefore there was no reason to seek it. Later Sophists argued that there is no real "justice" or "right" and that these are only names applied to local and changing conventions. They further argued that the only real authority in the world is force. Thus the law is what can be imposed by force in a given society, which is the position Callicles takes in this dialogue.….

Plato (1987). Gorgias (tr. D.J. Zeyl). Indianapolis: Hackett.

Social and Political Theory

Social and Political History How do the functionalist and conflict theories relate to the conceptualizations of government and sovereignty presented by Heywood? How much is enough government? What level of government do we need to get our collective business done? How much sovereignty is appropriate for the American government to have, particularly in view of terrorist threats in the post 9/11 environment? When does government and sovereignty interfere with the full functioning of individuals in a free society? When and how might government be used to favor particular groups within the social order at the expense of others? How might this kind of favoritism be covered up? How does politics reflect, magnify and sometimes even hid social conflict? Answer: The social or "conflict" theory is one that is based on "how society motivates people and places in their proper position in the stratification process. The political or "functionalist" theory focuses on individuals need….

New Political Theory

Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington Huntington wrote a paper in 1992 that set the stage for a new era in political discourse. In this article, Huntington makes the argument that the end of the cold war has entered in a new period in which ideological or economic clashes will not be the focus rather cultural conflict will set the stage for later generations. Huntington points specifically eight civilizations that are potentially at the risk of clashing; they are the estern, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin America, Islamic, African, Hindus, Buddhist, Confucians and Japanese civilizations. He states (Huntington, 1993) orld politics is entering a new phase, and intellectuals have not hesitated to proliferate visions of what it will be -- the end of history, the return of traditional rivalries between nation states, and the decline of the nation state from the conflicting pulls of tribalism and globalism, among others. Each of these visions catches aspects….

Huntington, S. (1993). The Clash of Civilizations? Retrieved from Foreign Affairs:  http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/48950/samuel-p-huntington/the-clash-of-civilizations

Political Theories the Ancient Athenian

For John Locke, government "…should be limited to securing the life and property of it citizens"; and government should allow freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. He was opposed to "hereditary monarchy" and supported human rights (especially in his more mature years). As to how these political theories connect with environmental policy in the U.S.: first, the environmental policies in the U.S. are under attack by the Republicans in the House of Representatives. Their recent bill, H.R. 1, passed in February 2011, contained 19 anti-environmental riders that would "negatively affect air, water, and environmental quality," the Sustainable Energy & Environmental Coalition explained. The right wing in Congress wants to take power away from the Environmental Protection Agency as well. Hume would likely approve of the Tea Party and GOP as to their disavowal of global climate change; he would agree that the U.S. federal government is too big and powerful.….

Bartleby.com. (2009). Athenian Ephebic Oath. Retrieved April 5, 2011, from  http://www.bartleby.com/73/100.html .

Bohn, Henry G. (1854). The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Volume I (London:

Henry G. Bohn), pp. 446-8.

Hume, David. (2007). David Hume, That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science. The Founders

Comparison of Plato and Aristotle's Political Theories

Plato and Aristotle's political theories The most capacious account of Plato's established philosophical views has been published in "The epublic" as a comprehensive handling of the most basic values for the behavior of human life. As it deals with a large number of matters, The epublic can be interpreted in a lot of diverse manner: as a discourse on political conjecture and observation, as an academic manual, or the manner in which to protect moral behavior for instance. (Plato: The State and the Soul) Politics written by Aristotle gives a substantial assessment of the beginning and configuration of the nation. (Theme Analysis: The Politics) A significant matter to keep in mind while taking into account the opinion and involvement of Aristotle in Philosophy is the fact that he was there 2000 years back. One of the early foundations done by him was Lykeion that was involved solely with pure sciences,….

Boeding, Ron. Ideals of Aristotle and Hayek: A Synthesis. Retrieved from  http://nb.vse.cz/kfil/elogos/history/boeding.htm  Accessed on 8 November, 2004

Conceptions of Equality/Plato, Aristotle and additions. Retrieved from http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~stanlick/equality1.html Accessed on 8 November, 2004

Irbe, George. Aristotle's Spurned Legacy. 23 October, 2000. Retrieved from http://www.interlog.com/~girbe/Aristotle's%20legacy.html Accessed on 8 November, 2004

Kemerling, Garth. Aristotle: Politics and Art. 27 October 2001. Retrieved from  http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2t.htm  Accessed on 8 November, 2004

Political Philosophies When We Talk

Marx further included that finally the biased behavior of the working class will end this dictatorship period, and a class less society will establish. He believed that for the formation of this society people need to launch an organized movement against the dictatorship and only a successful revolution would lead to the formation of society of "Communism" (Skoble, 2007). When we talk about the political philosophy, we can observe that both John Locke and Karl Marx are in favor of the idea that when there is a need of change then an organized revolution is compulsory. People cannot get their rights until they demand for it because it's natural thing that you need to raise your voice in order to get your right otherwise other will keep it as their own possession. The point of differ come when we talk about the scenario in which both of them forwarded their theories. Karl….

Riemer, N., & Simon, D. (1997). The New World of Politics: An Introduction to Political Science. San Diego: Collegiate Press.

Skoble. (2007). Political Philosophy: Essential Selections. London: Pearson Education India.

Tully, J. (1993). An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Political Systems and Congress

United States Congress, and the lens used in this case study analysis includes political theories. Viewed through this lens, the organization will be analyzed in terms of who has what power in the organization, who has access to agendas and control over information, what power coalitions or alliances exist, and how the unit attempts to influence other units and create upward influence in the organization. As Morgan (2006) points out, all organizations can be perceived as political systems concerned with and dependent on political activity. The United States Congress happens to take that concept of political systems a step further because the precise and overt purpose of the organization is political activity. To achieve its goals, Congress does exhibit the universal political traits of organizations that hinge on the relations among "interests, conflict, and power," (Morgan, 2006, p. 152). It is how the stakeholders in the organization pursue their….

Donges, P.& Jarren, O. (2014). Mediatization of political organizations. Chapter 10 in Mediatization of Politics. Esser & Stromback (Eds.): 181-199.

Hirsch, A.V. (2016). Experimentation and persuasion in political organizations. American Political Science Review 110(01): 68-84.

Merchant, P. (n.d.). 5 sources of power in organizations. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved online:  http://smallbusiness.chron.com/5-sources-power-organizations-14467.html 

Morgan, G. (2006). Images of Organization. Sage.

Political Science History

conservative intellectual movement, but also the role of William uckley and William Rusher in the blossoming of the youth conservative movement Talk about structure of paper, who not strictly chronologically placed (ie hayek before the rest) - in this order for thematic purposes, to enhance the genuiness of the paper (branches of the movement brought up in order of importance to youth conservative revolt) For instance, Hayek had perhaps the greatest impact on the effects of the movement - uckley and Rusher. These individuals, their beliefs, their principles were extremely influential in better understanding the origins, history, and leaders of American conservatism. Momentous events shape the psyche of an individual as the person matures. A child grows up in poverty vows to never be like his parents, and keeps this inner vow to become a millionaire. A young woman experiences sexual trauma as a teen, and chooses a career that builds….

George Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945  http://www.nationalreview.com/22dec97/mcginnis122297.html . National review online The Origins of Conservatism George Mc Ginnis

Volume Library #2, p. 2146

Schneider, Cadres for Conservatism

McGinnis, National Review Online

Political Thought in Medieval Times

Medieval Political Thought How did Augustine of Hippo's and Thomas Aquinas' views of the role of human free will in the process of salvation shape their different views of political theory? For Augustine, there could be two cities -- the City of Man, which would essentially be a society without grace or goodness -- and the City of God, which would be a society that conformed to the will of God, participated with grace, and worked to perfect itself in accordance with the Commandments of God. One would be an imperfect society (the former) and the other would be a perfect society. Essentially, the City of Man is a system in which all endeavors are geared towards earthly happiness whereas in the City of God, endeavors are geared towards a spiritual happiness with God, enjoyed fully in the next life if one is good and dies in the state of grace with….

Aquinas, Commentary on Nichomachean Ethics. Dumb Ox Books, 1993.

Aquinas. Commentary on the Politics. IN: Hackett, 2007.

Aquinas, Notes

Augustine. City of God, transl. Marcus Dods. Hendrickston, 2009.

Political and Religious Boundaries

Political and eligious Boundaries Byzantium historically was the eastern side of the oman Empire that was the result of the religious, political and cultural schism that occurred between East and West in the 2nd Century AD. The city of Byzantium, or Constantinople, was located in a major strategic trading area between the Adriatic, Black and Mediterranean Seas. As the Western oman Empire declined, the "New ome," or Constantinople, became a blend of cultures and viable for about a millennium. Most scholars agree that it was the only long-term stable state in Europe that protected most of Western Europe from the emerging Islamic Empire. It was the most advanced economy in the Mediterranean area until the enaissance, with trading networks that extended through most of Eurasia and North Africa, as well as the beginning of the Silk oad. Without this economic power, it is unlikely that there would have been funding for….

Dursteler, E. (2006). Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity, and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Jacoby, D. (2007). Review of Venetians in Constantinople. The Sixteenth Century Journal. 38 (4): 1156-7.

King, M. (2007). Review of Venetians in Constantinople. Renaissance Quarterly. 60 (1): 155-6.

See: Diamond, J. (2011). Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised. New York: Penguin Books; Huntington, S. (2011). Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster.

I\'m looking for a unique and fresh essay topic on debates in political theory module. Any ideas that stand out?

1. The Role of Emotions in Political Decision Making: Exploring how emotions influence political beliefs and actions, and whether they should be considered in political theory. 2. The Impact of Technology on Political Communication: Analyzing how social media and other digital platforms have changed political discourse and debate in the modern age. 3. Intersectionality in Political Theory: Examining how issues of race, gender, and class intersect in political theory and shape debates on social justice and equality. 4. The Ethics of Political Violence: Discussing the moral implications of using violence as a political tool and when it may be justified. 5. Post-Colonial Perspectives in....

Title: Navigating the Crossroads of Authority: Exploring the Legitimacy and Limits of Power in Political Theory Introduction: At the crux of political theory lies the intricate interplay between authority and power, a dynamic relationship that has sparked debates and shaped paradigms for centuries. This essay delves into the multifaceted concept of legitimacy, interrogating the foundations of authority and the boundaries of power. Through a comprehensive analysis of historical and contemporary perspectives, we will explore the challenges and complexities of legitimizing power, the tensions between various sources of authority, and the implications for political practice and social justice. 1. The Sources and Foundations of....

Can you provide essay topic ideas related to political theory?

1. The role of governance in promoting social justice and equality 2. The impact of partisan politics on government efficiency and effectiveness 3. The concept of power and its implications for political theory 4. The role of political ideology in shaping policy decisions 5. The relationship between democracy and human rights in political theory 6. The influence of globalism on the future of political theory 7. The changing role of the state in a globalized world 8. The intersection of politics and ethics in political theory 9. The challenges of implementing political theory in practice 10. The role of political institutions in promoting stability and democracy 11. The concept of....

1. The Concept of Justice in Rawls and Nozick's Political Theory: - Analyze and compare John Rawls' and Robert Nozick's theories of justice. - Discuss the implications of their views on social and economic equality. - Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their respective arguments. 2. Utilitarianism vs. Deontology: A Comparative Analysis: - Compare and contrast the ethical theories of utilitarianism and deontology. - Explore the strengths and weaknesses of each theory in terms of their application to political decision-making. - Discuss the relevance of these theories in contemporary political debates. 3. The Legitimacy of Political Authority: - Examine different theories of....

Black Studies - Philosophy

For example, one can consider the following quote from Hobbes: "The right of nature... is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will…

Thomas Hobbes' Philosophy in the Leviathan The subject area concerning political theories is both vast and complex. Political theories come in the form of ancient philosophies and new age rhetoric.…

Materialism: What does it mean in Marx? Marx's writings and philosophies extend through various disciplines of history, economics, political science, literature, philosophy, political economy, sociology and even - arguably…

Women's Issues - Sexuality

Justice, Gender, And the Family Much of what needs to be done to end the inequalities of gender, and to work in the direction of ending gender itself, will also…

The 'Debates in Political Theory' module serves as an essential component in the study of political science, inviting students to explore the rich variety of arguments that have shaped…

Gorgias, Plato addresses the Sophists and shows Socrates facing off against several of them in a discussion of justice. As can be seen from this dialogue, different Sophists…

Social and Political History How do the functionalist and conflict theories relate to the conceptualizations of government and sovereignty presented by Heywood? How much is enough government? What level of…

Article Review

Drama - World

Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington Huntington wrote a paper in 1992 that set the stage for a new era in political discourse. In this article, Huntington makes the argument…

Discussion Chapter

For John Locke, government "…should be limited to securing the life and property of it citizens"; and government should allow freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. He was…

Plato and Aristotle's political theories The most capacious account of Plato's established philosophical views has been published in "The epublic" as a comprehensive handling of the most basic values…

Marx further included that finally the biased behavior of the working class will end this dictatorship period, and a class less society will establish. He believed that for the…

Political Science

United States Congress, and the lens used in this case study analysis includes political theories. Viewed through this lens, the organization will be analyzed in terms of who…

conservative intellectual movement, but also the role of William uckley and William Rusher in the blossoming of the youth conservative movement Talk about structure of paper, who not strictly…

Medieval Political Thought How did Augustine of Hippo's and Thomas Aquinas' views of the role of human free will in the process of salvation shape their different views of political…

Political and eligious Boundaries Byzantium historically was the eastern side of the oman Empire that was the result of the religious, political and cultural schism that occurred between East and…

History of Political Theory: Foundations of Modern Political Thought

This course will study the foundational texts of modern political thought, including Machiavelli’s Prince, Bodin’s On the State, Grotius’ War and Peace, Hobbes’ Leviathan, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, and Rousseau’s Social Contract.  Topics for study and examination will include the theory of the modern sovereign state; the origin of the state (especially the theory of the social contract); the concept of natural rights; theories of political liberty and equality; the permissibility of political resistance and revolution; early modern ideas of democratic and non-democratic forms of rule; religion and politics. 

Please note that this course description is from 2018.