Columbia Studies in Political Thought / Political History (2024)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7312/rena17430

ISBN:

9780231547147

Subject:

Social Sciences

Subject:

Political Science

Subject:

Political Science, other

Publisher:

Columbia University Press

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7312/beni17186

ISBN:

9780231171878

Subject:

Philosophy

Subject:

Political Philosophy and Social Philosophy

Publisher:

Columbia University Press

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7312/palt17992

ISBN:

9780231542470

Subject:

Philosophy

Subject:

Political Philosophy and Social Philosophy

Publisher:

Columbia University Press

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7312/tell18226

ISBN:

9780231544078

Subject:

Social Sciences

Subject:

Political Science

Subject:

Political Science, other

Publisher:

Columbia University Press

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7312/palm17516

ISBN:

9780231541282

Subject:

Philosophy

Subject:

Political Philosophy and Social Philosophy

Publisher:

Columbia University Press

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7312/grim16424

ISBN:

9780231164245

ISBN:

9780231539302

Subject:

Philosophy

Subject:

Political Philosophy and Social Philosophy

Publisher:

Columbia University Press

How do people excluded from political life achieve political agency? Through a series of historical events that have been mostly overlooked by political theorists, Martin Breaugh identifies fleeting yet decisive instances of emancipation in which people took it upon themselves to become political subjects. Emerging during the Roman plebs's first secession in 494 BCE, the plebeian experience consists of an underground or unexplored configuration of political strategies to obtain political freedom. The people reject domination through political praxis and concerted action, therefore establishing an alternative form of power.

Breaugh's study concludes in the nineteenth century and integrates ideas from sociology, philosophy, history, and political science. Organized around diverse case studies, his work undertakes exercises in political theory to show how concepts provide a different understanding of the meaning of historical events and our political present. The Plebeian Experience describes a recurring phenomenon that clarifies struggles for emancipation throughout history, expanding research into the political agency of the many and shedding light on the richness of radical democratic struggles from ancient Rome to Occupy Wall Street and beyond.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7312/brea15618

ISBN:

9780231156196

ISBN:

9780231520812

Subject:

Philosophy

Subject:

Political Philosophy and Social Philosophy

Publisher:

Columbia University Press

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7312/brec14394

ISBN:

9780231143950

ISBN:

9780231512893

Subject:

Philosophy

Subject:

Political Philosophy and Social Philosophy

Publisher:

Columbia University Press

Published more than twenty years ago, Stephen Eric Bronner's bold defense of socialism remains a seminal text for our time. Treating socialism as an ethic, reinterpreting its core categories, and critically confronting its early foundations, Bronner's work offers a reinvigorated "class ideal" and a new perspective for progressive politics in the twentieth century.

Socialism Unbound is an extraordinary work of political history that revisits the pivotal figures of the labor movement: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Karl Kautsky, Vladimir Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg. Examining their contributions as well as their flaws, Bronner shows how critical innovation gave way to dogma. New practical problems have arisen, and this volume engages with the relationship between class and social movements, institutional accountability and democratic participation, economic justice and market imperatives, and internationalism and identity. With a foreword by Dick Howard and a new introduction by the author, Bronner's classic study remains indispensable for scholars and activists alike.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7312/bron15382

ISBN:

9780231153836

ISBN:

9780231527354

Subject:

Social Sciences

Subject:

Political Science

Subject:

Political Science, other

Publisher:

Columbia University Press

We fear that the growing threat of violent attack has upset the balance between existential concepts of political power, which emphasize security, and traditional notions of constitutional limits meant to protect civil liberties. We worry that constitutional states cannot, during a time of war, terror, and extreme crisis, maintain legality and preserve civil rights and freedoms. David Williams Bates allays these concerns by revisiting the theoretical origins of the modern constitutional state, which, he argues, recognized and made room for tensions among law, war, and the social order.

We traditionally associate the Enlightenment with the taming of absolutist sovereign power through the establishment of a legal state based on the rights of individuals. In his critical rereading, Bates shows instead that Enlightenment thinkers conceived of political autonomy in a systematic, theoretical way. Focusing on the nature of foundational violence, war, and existential crises, eighteenth-century thinkers understood law and constitutional order not as constraints on political power but as the logical implication of that primordial force. Returning to the origin stories that informed the beginnings of political community, Bates reclaims the idea of law, warfare, and the social order as intertwining elements subject to complex historical development. Following an analysis of seminal works by seventeenth-century natural-law theorists, Bates reviews the major canonical thinkers of constitutional theory (Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau) from the perspective of existential security and sovereign power. Countering Carl Schmitt's influential notion of the autonomy of the political, Bates demonstrates that Enlightenment thinkers understood the autonomous political sphere as a space of law protecting individuals according to their political status, not as mere members of a historically contingent social order.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7312/bate15804

ISBN:

9780231158053

ISBN:

9780231528665

Subject:

Social Sciences

Subject:

Political Science

Subject:

Political Science, other

Publisher:

Columbia University Press

The conflict between politics and antipolitics has replayed throughout Western history and philosophical thought. From the beginning, Plato's quest for absolute certainty led him to denounce democracy, an anti-political position challenged by Aristotle. In his wide-ranging narrative, Dick Howard puts this dilemma into fresh perspective, proving our contemporary political problems are not as unique as we think.

Howard begins with democracy in ancient Greece and the rise and fall of republican politics in Rome. In the wake of Rome's collapse, political thought searched for a new medium, and the conflict between politics and antipolitics reemerged through the contrasting theories of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas. During the Renaissance and Reformation, the emergence of the modern individual again transformed the terrain of the political. Even so, politics vs. antipolitics dominated the period, frustrating even Machiavelli, who sought to reconceptualize the nature of political thought. Hobbes and Locke, theorists of the social contract, then reenacted the conflict, which Rousseau sought (in vain) to overcome. Adam Smith and the growth of modern economic liberalism, the radicalism of the French revolution, and the conservative reaction of Edmund Burke subsequently marked the triumph of antipolitics, while the American Revolution momentarily offered the potential for a renewal of politics. Taken together, these historical examples, viewed through the prism of philosophy, reveal the roots of today's political climate and the trajectory of battles yet to come.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7312/howa13594

ISBN:

9780231135955

ISBN:

9780231509756

Subject:

Social Sciences

Subject:

Political Science

Subject:

Political Science, other

Publisher:

Columbia University Press

The attempt in 2004 to draft an interim constitution in Iraq and the effort to enact a permanent one in 2005 were unintended outcomes of the American occupation, which first sought to impose a constitution by its agents. This two-stage constitution-making paradigm, implemented in a wholly unplanned move by the Iraqis and their American sponsors, formed a kind of compromise between the populist-democratic project of Shi'ite clerics and America's external interference.

As long as it was used in a coherent and legitimate way, the method held promise. Unfortunately, the logic of external imposition and political exclusion compromised the negotiations. Andrew Arato is the first person to record this historic process and analyze its special problems. He compares the drafting of the Iraqi constitution to similar, externally imposed constitutional revolutions by the United States, especially in Japan and Germany, and identifies the political missteps that contributed to problems of learning and legitimacy.

Instead of claiming that the right model of constitution making would have maintained stability in Iraq, Arato focuses on the fragile opportunity for democratization that was strengthened only slightly by the methods used to draft a constitution. Arato contends that this event would have benefited greatly from an overall framework of internationalization, and he argues that a better set of guidelines (rather than the obsolete Hague and Geneva regulations) should be followed in the future. With access to an extensive body of literature, Arato highlights the difficulty of exporting democracy to a country that opposes all such foreign designs and fundamentally disagrees on matters of political identity.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7312/arat14302

ISBN:

9780231143028

ISBN:

9780231512435

Subject:

History

Subject:

Regional and National History

Subject:

Arab World

Publisher:

Columbia University Press

In 1994 Benjamin R. Barber was invited by President Clinton to participate in a seminar on the future of democratic ideas and ideals. Following their meeting, Barber became an informal consultant to the Clinton White House, working with a president who proved to be an astonishing listener open to a variety of ideas. Barber's experiences were unexpected and enlightening-the most unpredictable being his interactions with the president himself.

Barber's meditation on Bill Clinton's tenure in office offers a balanced and complex portrait of the Clinton administration, especially in its relationship to America's intellectual and scholarly community. Barber also identifies the true faultlines of power that future candidates must negotiate if they are to win an election. For this edition, Barber has written a new afterword reflecting on Clinton's "vision" problem, his controversial role in shaping today's Democratic Party, and his efforts to confront the challenges of interdependence and terrorism. He concludes with a provocative assessment of Hillary Clinton as a Democratic primary candidate in the battle for the presidency.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7312/barb14438

ISBN:

9780231144391

ISBN:

9780231534864

Subject:

History

Subject:

Topics in History

Subject:

Global History

Publisher:

Columbia University Press