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Rethinking Liberalism

(Paperback)


Publishing Details

Full Title:

Rethinking Liberalism

Contributors:

By (Author) Richard Bellamy

ISBN:

9780826477415

Publisher:

Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Imprint:

Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.

Publication Date:

15th January 2005

Country:

United Kingdom

Classifications

Readership:

Professional and Scholarly

Fiction/Non-fiction:

Non Fiction

Dewey:

324.2

Physical Properties

Physical Format:

Paperback

Number of Pages:

264

Weight:

400g

Description

This book explores liberalism's past and present transformations and proposes a prospective future as a neo-republican democratic liberalism. Bellamy engages with theorists of liberalism from J. S. Mill, through T. H. Green, Guido De Ruggiero, Carl Schmitt and Joseph Schumpeter, to F. A. Hayek, John Rawls and Michael Walzer. He contends that the pluralism and complexity of modern societies have undermined liberalism's communitarian and ethical assumptions. Studies of the Poll Tax fiasco in Britain, and of the constitutional dilemmas posed by the European Union confirm the contemporary inadequacies of traditional conceptions of liberal democracy. Drawing on Max Weber, Bellamy advocates a return to a Machiavellian approach to politics to resolve the clashes resulting from competing values within complex situations. Unlike Weber however, he concentrates on the republican and democratic aspects of Machiavelli's thought. He proposes a republican strategy whereby the political dispersal of power constrains any ideal or interest from dominating another. Instead, everyone must seek mutually acceptable compromises. The essays in "Rethinking Liberalism" map a passage from the liberal democratic norms and forms characteristic of nineteenth-century nation states, to an agnostic, democratic liberal politics suitable for the transnational and plural societies of the new millennium.

Reviews

"'It will engage anyone interested in the debate between liberalism and its critics.' - Professor James Tully, University of Victoria, Canada"

Author Bio

Richard Bellamy is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Reading. His many publications include Liberalism and Pluralism: Towards a Politics of Compromise (Routledge 1999) and Rethinking Liberalism Continuum 2000)

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