What is Liberalism?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Bell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Subsequent Transformation ◽  
Liberal Tradition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
Anglo American

This chapter attempts to reframe the way in which the liberal tradition is understood. It opens with a critique of some existing interpretive protocols used to delimit political traditions. It then introduces a new way of conceptualizing liberalism, suggesting that it can be seen as the sum of the arguments that have been classified as liberal, and recognized as such by other self-proclaimed liberals, across time and space. The second half of the chapter analyzes the emergence and subsequent transformation of the category of liberalism in Anglo-American political thought between 1850 and 1950. It traces the evolution of the language of liberalism in nineteenth-century Britain, and explores how the scope of the liberal tradition was massively expanded during the middle decades of the century, chiefly in the United States, such that it came to be seen by many as the constitutive ideology of the West. It argues that this broad understanding of liberalism was produced by a conjunction of the ideological wars fought against “totalitarianism” and assorted developments in the social sciences.

"Fondest Hopes of the West"

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Gordon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Suez Canal ◽  
Military Rule ◽  
The West ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
Canal Zone ◽  
Alliance Politics ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the Free Officers' relations with Britain and the United States, particularly in light of the Anglo-Egyptian negotiations regarding the withdrawal of British troops from the Suez Canal Zone. In the aftermath of the March crisis, the Command Council of the Revolution (CCR) trained its sights on an evacuation agreement with the British. Both Washington and London felt that the officers shared common strategic and objective aims with the West. The chapter first considers the extent and nature of U.S. and British roles in the consolidation of military rule in Egypt before discussing the Anglo-Egyptian relations in the context of Anglo-American alliance politics. It also explores the question of the presence of British troops in the Suez Canal Zone, along with the U.S. and British response to the Free Officers' coup d'etat of 1952. Finally, it looks at the signing of the Suez accord between Egypt and Britain in October 1954.

Applied Comparative Law: Researching Foreign Law in an Imperfect World

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Clark
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
English Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Foreign Law ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Legal System ◽  
Anglo American

I admit that I am an addict, a compulsive user of libraries and especially law libraries. As a comparative lawyer I need to investigate foreign law, which for me is the law of jurisdictions outside the United States. Since I believe the social and cultural context in which law operates is important to its understanding, I must leave the relative comfort of United States libraries and venture abroad to learn about the features of legal systems not adequately described in books. Beyond common law countries, as the IALL 20th Annual Course illustrates, the language of law is something other than English: yet another hill to climb to understand foreign law. For most of you, United States law is foreign law, which is the other side of the same issue. In addition, public international law lawyers could benefit from the comparative approach. This is particularly true for those from the Anglo-American world who rely almost exclusively on English language materials in their research. This narrow perspective undercuts the fundamental premise of universality behind a truly international legal system.

Consensus and Crisis in American Classical Music Historiography from 1890 to 1950

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-231
Author(s):  
David C. Paul
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gustav Mahler ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Shed Light

In the late nineteenth century American publishers began to answer a burgeoning demand for histories of classical music. Although some of the authors they contracted are well-known to scholars of music in the United States—most notably Edward MacDowell and John Knowles Paine—the books themselves have been neglected. The reason is that these histories are almost exclusively concerned with the European musical past; the United States is a marginal presence in their narratives. But much can be learned about American musical culture by looking more closely at the historiographical practices employed in these histories and the changes that took place in the books that succeeded them in the first half of the twentieth century. In particular, they shed light on the shifting transatlantic connections that shaped American attitudes toward classical music. Marked at first by an Anglo-American consensus bolstered by the social evolutionary theory of prominent Victorians, American classical music histories came to be variegated, a result of the influence of Central European émigrés who fled Hitler’s Germany and settled in North America. The most dramatic part of this transformation pertains to American attitudes toward the link between music and modernity. A case study, the American reception of Gustav Mahler, reveals why Americans began to see signs of cultural decline in classical music only in the 1930s, despite the precedent set by many pessimistic fin-de-siècle European writers.

Utopia and Reality: An Image of the United States in Russian Liberal and Radical Publications (End of the 19th to the Beginning of the 20th Century)

Prospects ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 491-520
Author(s):  
Dmitry Shlapentokh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Modern Russian

In the 19th century, some Russian intellectuals concluded that democracy was the country's probable future. By the middle of the century, this eventually led to the West and its democratic traditions being directly linked to images of Utopia. From that date forward, this approach to the West has had a central role in modern Russian political thought.

Origins of Catholic Social Reform in the United States: Ideological Aspects

1949 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-309
Author(s):  
Aaron I. Abell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Catholic Faith ◽  
The Social ◽  
Anglo American

Represented by a small, pioneering religious group in the Anglo-American colonies, the Catholic faith was not transplanted in conspicuous degree to the United States until the nineteenth century. Mainly through immigration the Catholic population in the United States rose from a mere 50,000 in 1800 to more than twelve millions a century later. Though many believed that countless Catholics were lost in the transition process—the question has been endlessly debated—few denied the preeminent success of the Catholic Church in handling immigrants. Its swelling membership steadily augmented its influence on most phases of American life, including the social movements which played so large and significant a part in the nation's development during the nineteenth century.

Anglo-American Secular Government

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Perry
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Anglo American

What has been called secular government in the United Kingdom and North America emerged from a series of debates about religious freedom and toleration, which reached their climax in seventeenth-century England. John Locke is often considered the hero of that climax, and his resolution to religion–politics conflict is now taken for granted as the basis of secular government in the United States, England, and Canada. It continues to influence Anglo-American political thought for both good and ill. Despite its success, the solution is imperfect. Subsequent modifications—including minor tweaks by various American Founders and a more recent re-appropriation by John Rawls—have failed to perfect it. Its most notable imperfection is a naïve hope that all imaginable future theopolitical disputes will be solved by abstract, neutral principles, specifiable-in advance of the disputes themselves. This leads to animosity and accusations of bias and call for ad hoc compromises.

scholarly journals Political Science and American Political Thought

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (03) ◽  
pp. 784-788
Author(s):  
Justin Buckley Dyer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Personal Reflection ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
The Public ◽  
Professional Discipline

ABSTRACT Written as a short personal reflection, this article explores the development of political science as an organized professional discipline in the United States. At its inception, political science in the United States was principally concerned with political thought and constitutionalism, and it was taught with the public-spirited purpose of educating for citizenship in a constitutional democracy. Twentieth-century methodological trends at one time threatened to remove political thought and constitutionalism from the curriculum of political science, but recent disciplinary trends suggest that American political thought does have a place in twenty-first-century political science.

Conclusion: The American welfare state in comparative perspective

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Daguerre
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Social Democrat ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Liberalism ◽  
Equality Of Opportunities ◽  
Anglo American

To conclude, the fundamental American social contract remains ‘mean and lean’ in comparative terms, despite the real efforts assigned to antipoverty policy under Obama. The conclusion also identifies areas of divergence and convergence between Europe and the United States in terms of legal and political support for socio-economic rights. European and American policymakers have placed a renewed emphasis on equality of opportunities as opposed to equality of outcomes. There’s been a blending of some elements of Anglo-American liberalism and the social-democrat tradition. By and large, convergence between European and U.S. social policies occurs mostly along "regressive" lines.

Mafias on the Move

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Varese
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Market Expansion ◽  
The North ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
At Will

Organized crime is spreading like a global virus as mobs take advantage of open borders to establish local franchises at will. That at least is the fear, inspired by stories of Russian mobsters in New York, Chinese triads in London, and Italian mafias throughout the West. As this book explains, the truth is more complicated. The author has spent years researching mafia groups in Italy, Russia, the United States, and China, and argues that mafiosi often find themselves abroad against their will, rather than through a strategic plan to colonize new territories. Once there, they do not always succeed in establishing themselves. The book spells out the conditions that lead to their long-term success, namely sudden market expansion that is neither exploited by local rivals nor blocked by authorities. Ultimately the inability of the state to govern economic transformations gives mafias their opportunity. In a series of matched comparisons, the book charts the attempts of the Calabrese 'Ndrangheta to move to the north of Italy, and shows how the Sicilian mafia expanded to early twentieth-century New York, but failed around the same time to find a niche in Argentina. The book explains why the Russian mafia failed to penetrate Rome but succeeded in Hungary. A pioneering chapter on China examines the challenges that triads from Taiwan and Hong Kong find in branching out to the mainland. This book is both a compelling read and a sober assessment of the risks posed by globalization and immigration for the spread of mafias.

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