Search results

Jean-Baptiste Say is remembered as the father of French economic liberalism and as the origin of a long line of French writers who opposed colonization on the basis of free-trade arguments. This article argues that because Say's commentators have primarily focused on his economic writings, they have misinterpreted his overall thought on colonies and on the extra-European world. Far from always defending the political independence of extra-European societies, Say put forward the same sort of argument in favor of European domination as his friend James Mill. By investigating Say's early writings and lesser-known texts, this article suggests that Say's colonial writings need to be reassessed in light of the specific intellectual and political context of the late eighteenth century. In doing so it also offers new insights into the intellectual origins of so-called French imperial liberalism.

Abstract
Many of those critical of traditional liberalism have focused on the notion of freedom at the center of that approach, namely the (negative) idea of liberty as the absence of interferences with action. Building a plausible and normatively acceptable positive alternative, however, has faced numerous criticisms and challenges. In this paper I discuss what such critics of liberalism sec; as the; limitations of the traditional negative notion and sketch the core components of a positive alternative. Specifically I suggest that the dimensions of liberty should contain the positive elements of capabilities and agent authenticity. After laying out the core of these ideas I briefly defend them against standard objections. In doing so, I argue that such a positive notion is necessary to capture the dominance of the language of freedom in contexts of resistance and struggle in the actual, non-ideal, world.

AbstractThis article focuses on the implications of understanding 'Europeanization' as a complex, dynamic and troubled translation process. It discusses post‐communist welfare in the context of variegated forms of austerity capitalism in the EU. In particular, the complex relationships between modalities of welfare, the uneven development of neo‐liberalisms and the multi‐scalar restructuring of welfare assemblages, are discussed in the context of the reframing of relationships between the economic, the political and the social in a period of deep crisis and austerity. Post‐communist Europe cannot be conceived as a flattened map or a singular regime type. Rather, diverse and often contradictory restructurings operate in different places at different times, and political agency continues to matter. Comparing and contrasting the changing relationships between neo‐liberalism, authoritarian populism and ethnicized nationalism in Hungary and Croatia provides a more nuanced understanding of the variable geometries of transnational translations.

AbstractBerlin is often taken to have exaggerated his case against positive liberty, since contrary to what he seems to argue, several versions of it do not logically justify coercion. A more historical interpretation of his warnings may save him from this accusation, yet on the other hand suggests his message is of little relevance for contemporary liberalism. In contrast to both these approaches, this essay considers a third and largely neglected aspect of "Two Concepts of Liberty," that speaks more directly to the challenges facing liberalism today: Berlin's warning that positive liberty invites the specific kind of coercion that parades as liberation, and that it does so according to a psychologically predictable pattern. After reconstructing this undercurrent in Berlin's critique of positive liberty, this essay also considers the relevance of Berlin's warnings to contemporary European debates on banning the Muslim veil in the name of liberation.

Das Paper geht der Frage nach, welche Rolle Verteilungsgerechtigkeit in Völkerrecht und Völkerrechtswissenschaft spielt. Es stellt zunächst zwei Völkerrechtsprojekte der Nachkriegszeit dar, in deren Zentrum Verteilungsfragen standen: erstens den "embedded liberalism" Kompromiss von Bretton Woods und zweitens die von den Entwicklungsländern in den 1970er Jahren geforderte Neue Weltwirtschaftsordnung. Nach kurzer Darstellung des Scheiterns von "embedded liberalism" und Neuer Weltwirtschaftsordnung und der Gründe für ihren Misserfolg, wendet sich das paper der Völkerrechtswissenschaft zu. Zwei zeitgenössische Projekte der Völkerrechtswissenschaft – Konstitutionalisierung des Völkerrechts und Konzeptualisierung des Völkerrechts als öffentliches Recht – werden danach befragt, welche Antworten sie auf die Krise von "welfare state and welfare world" geben. Während sich der völkerrechtliche Konstitutionalismus nur unzureichend mit dem Verhältnis von Wirtschaft und Politik befasst, verliert die Konzeptualisierung des Völkerrechts als öffentliches Recht mit ihrem Fokus auf das Völkerrecht als Instrument der Beschränkung öffentlicher Gewalt zur Sicherung individueller Freiheit viele Verteilungsfragen gänzlich aus dem Blick. Um das Potential von Recht zur Herstellung von Verteilungsgerechtigkeit auszuloten, scheint daher eine Ausweitung der Perspektive auf transnationales Recht von Nöten. Ausgehend von Gunther Teubners gesellschaftlichem Konstitutionalismus skizziert das Paper Versuche der (transnationalen) Rechtswissenschaft, Fragen ungerechter bzw. gerechter Verteilung zu thematisieren. Das Paper schließt mit der Aufforderung, dass sich eine an Verteilungsgerechtigkeit orientierte transnationale Rechtswissenschaft folgenden Aufgaben widmen sollte: erstens der Bestimmung von Verteilungskonflikten mit Hilfe politischer Ökonomie und rechtspluralistischen Ansätzen und zweitens der Identifikation von Institutionen für einen demokratischen Experimentalismus.

This article seeks to analyze the moderate political thinking of those exiled during the postrevolutionary stage, as a conservative solution that many new elites of the Spanish liberalism tried to perform within the difficult context Spain was going through by the first decades of 19th century. A new moderate constitutionalism was common in the 30s in this country, and it was considered a necessary step mean the transition towards liberalism was being completed. The main goal herein is to review some previous assumptions and provide new insights on the role that the exile played during the first half of nineteenth century as a source of moderate political thinking in Spain. This will be an effort to understand the influence of the exile in their new identities paying special attention to their lives overseas. It implies a study about how that experience had a bi g impact in the new Spanish political project.

Research recently published in Political Psychology suggested that political intolerance is more strongly predicted by political conservatism than liberalism. Our findings challenge that conclusion. Participants provided intolerance judgments of several targets and the political objective of these targets (left‐wing vs. right‐wing) was varied between subjects. Across seven judgments, conservatism predicted intolerance of left‐wing targets, while liberalism predicted intolerance of right‐wing targets. These relationships were fully mediated by perceived threat from targets. Moreover, participants were biased against directly opposing political targets: conservatives were more intolerant of a left‐wing target than the opposing right‐wing target (e.g., pro‐gay vs. anti‐gay rights activists), while liberals were more intolerant of a right‐wing target than the opposing left‐wing target. These findings are discussed within the context of the existing political intolerance and motivated reasoning literatures.

Over recent decades a judicialization process of international dispute settlement procedures has taken place. Yet, the judicialization of procedures remains meaningless if the procedures are not used and accepted by disputing states in practice. Prominent theoretical approaches point to different conditions under which this is to be expected. Realism emphasizes the international distribution of power, institutionalism stresses the importance of the institutional design of international dispute settlement procedures, and liberalism points to the domestic institutional setting of the participating states. The article confronts these theoretical expectations with states' actual dispute settlement behavior in the international trade regime, the United Nations Security Council, the European human rights regime and the regime on the protection of endangered species in the 1970s/80s and 1990s/2000s, respectively. Its main finding is that, compared to realism and liberalism, institutionalism fares better in explaining the judicialization of states' dispute settlement behavior.

Since 2001, the United States and Europe have been stuck in the quagmire of the policy of confrontation in the Middle East, without either having reaped the expected benefits. Despite all the difficulties, Syria closed ranks in its internal political life and withstood the pressure, taking advantage of all the opportunities afforded by the changing international system. Damascus does not appear to have yielded much in its. Diplomatic and economic claims; if it did so, it was due to the consequences of the political change that took place in the ruling elite, not because of pressure from the West. In addition to the historical legacy of Arab nationalism in Syrian policies, we can talk of the "domestication" of neo-liberalism. This process occurs in a moment when the main western promoters of neo-liberalism have lost much of their power of coercion. Adapted from the source document.

This article analyses the changing political significance of UK balance of payments assessment in the post-war era, seeking to explain its disappearance as a policy issue today. We demonstrate the historically contingent nature of balance of payments performance assessment by comparing its shifting, conjunctural, constructions, rooted in underlying political economic assumptions, across four periods in the 20th and 21st centuries. We argue that the political salience of UK balance of payments assessment is contingent upon structural changes (both ideational and material) within the global political economy and domestic politics. Changes in the prevailing policy paradigm through which balance of payments was interpreted (for example from 'embedded liberalism' to neo-liberalism), and redefinitions of balance of payments assessment techniques, both of which happened on numerous occasions in the post-war world, had the effect of reshaping the nature of the external international political economic constraints to which UK governments were subjected.

AbstractNear the end of his career, Raymond Aron explained that he had never ceased to 'think or dream or hope – in the light of the idea of Reason – for a humanized society', a hope that extended to the conduct of international affairs as well. The purpose of this essay is to examine how Aron's liberalism manifested itself in his theorising about international relations and in some of his less abstract diplomatic recommendations. In tracing the effects of Aron's fundamental theoretical commitments on his more concrete policy analyses, we examine how Aron's liberalism affected his approach to two of the most contentious issues in French foreign policy, namely, the decolonisation of Algeria and the creation of the force de frappe, France's nuclear weapons programme. We argue that the tensions and contradictions in Aron's foreign policy prescriptions have their origins in his ambivalence over the source and character of human reason.

Este artículo analiza la política simbólica del liberalismo progresista entre los años treinta y cincuenta del siglo XIX y, en particular, la construcción de monumentos. Estudia la relación de tal política con el discurso nacional elaborado por este liberalismo. Por último, traza las líneas de continuidad de la tradición liberal después de 1868. A lo largo del texto se otorga importancia al conflicto cultural como parte significativa de la lucha por el poder. ; This article analyses the symbolic politics of progressive liberalism between the nineteen-thirties and the nineteen-fifties, and in particular, the construction of monuments. It studies the relationship between liberal politics and the nation-wide discourse of liberalism. Finally, it draws some lines of continuity with the liberal tradition after 1868. Throughout, cultural conflict is recognised as a significant part of the struggle for power.

This article deals with Donald Davidson's concept of metaphor and Richard Rorty's use of it for his version of political liberalism. Rorty assumes that metaphor is a linguistic element that is impossible to understand. Metaphor is an unintelligible "call" that, from within the private sphere, provokes in individuals the desire to create alternative forms of life. Once metaphor has become literal, it –and the new form of life that it entails– can form part of public life. Metaphor is the guarantee of the constant renewal of political liberalism. As against Rorty, yet also relying on Davidson, I argue that both metaphor and literal meaning are comprehensible, and must therefore be said to exist in a relationship of mutuality. This allows me to subject to a thorough re-elaboration Rorty's strict internal division of the political along the lines of the public and the private. ; Peer reviewed

Este artículo analiza la política simbólica del liberalismo progresista entre los años treinta y cincuenta del siglo XIX y, en particular, la construcción de monumentos. Estudia la relación de tal política con el discurso nacional elaborado por este liberalismo. Por último, traza las líneas de continuidad de la tradición liberal después de 1868. A lo largo del texto se otorga importancia al conflicto cultural como parte significativa de la lucha por el poder. This article analyses the symbolic politics of progressive liberalism between the nineteen-thirties and the nineteen-fifties, and in particular, the construction of monuments. It studies the relationship between liberal politics and the nation-wide discourse of liberalism. Finally, it draws some lines of continuity with the liberal tradition after 1868. Throughout, cultural conflict is recognised as a significant part of the struggle for power.