This is a study of the ideology of monarchy in late medieval Europe. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, European monarchies faced a series of crises and conflicts, which gave rise to inte
This book is a highly original and provocative contribution to democratic theory. Zolo argues that the increasing complexity of modern societies represents a fundamental challenge to the basic assumpt
James Harrington's brief career as a political and historical theorist spans the last years of the Cromwellian Protectorate and the Restoration of 1660. This 1992 volume comprises the first and last of Harrington's writings. Harrington was the first theorist to interpret the English Civil Wars as a revolution, the result of a long-term process of social change which led to the decay of the old political order. The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) is a fictionalised presentation of English history up to the victory of the New Model Army, explaining the fall of the monarchy and proposing a republic to replace it. A System of Politics, written after the Restoration, is a scheme of history and political philosophy erected on the foundations of his previous works. Professor Pocock's introduction emphasises Harrington's place as a pivotal figure in the history of English political thought. This edition also contains a chronology of events in Harrington's life and a guide to further reading.
Seymour Martin Lipset is one of the best known and most prolific social scientists this century. These comprehensive essays pay tribute to his scholarship by exploring his core theme: the conditions,
Analyses of bureaucratic power and privilege have an academic pedigree but have also long preoccupied socialists. The collapse of communist rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe puts to a new te
The themes of citizenship and community are today at the center of a fierce debate as both left and right try to mobilize them for their cause. For the left such notions are crucial in all the current
Addresses the longstanding debate between traditional reformers who advocate consolidating urban governments to achieve an economy of scale, and public-choice theorists who say people want smaller, mo
This book concentrates on the century and a half between the American and French Revolutions and the end of the First World War. This was the key period for public debate on the issue of democratizat
Constitutional principles at the core of the United States government divide authority between market and state and within the structure of the state itself. This diffusion of authority is valuable be
Long regarded as the most accurate rendering of Plato’s Republic that has yet been published, this widely acclaimed work is the first strictly literal translation of a timeless classic. This se
In seventeenth-century England, patriarchalist thinking shaped English ideas not only about the family but also about society and the state. Many thinkers argued that the state should be seen as a family, and that the king held the powers of a father over his subjects. The classic texts of patriarchal political thinking were written by Sir Robert Filmer (1588–1653), one of the most acute defenders of absolute monarchy. In addition to presenting his own patriarchalist theory, Filmer's works contain incisive attacks on democratic thinking and on the notion that political obligation stems from a contract between ruler and ruled. His political works are here edited from the original manuscript and printed sources, with an introduction which locates Filmer's ideas in their historical and ideological contexts. These texts - to which John Locke replied in his influential Two Treatises of Government - provide highly important documents for the understanding of political and social ideas at a d
John Milton was not only the greatest English Renaissance poet but also devoted twenty years to prose writing in the advancement of religious, civil and political liberties. The height of his public c
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)Toward the end of the astonishing period of Athenian creativity that furnished Western civilization with the greater part of its intellectual, artistic, and political wea
New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time continues the innovative exploration of major issues concerning democracy and socialism which was staked out in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Examining
In this classic book, one of the world's most distinguished political scientists discussed the problems, strengths, and weaknesses of democracy as a method of decision making for modern governments. R
