What Was Liberalism?

What Was Liberalism?
Author :
Publisher : Basic Books
Total Pages : 320
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781541616844
ISBN-13 : 1541616847
Rating : 4/5 (44 Downloads)

Synopsis What Was Liberalism? by : James Traub

A sweeping history of liberalism, from its earliest origins to its imperiled present and uncertain future Donald Trump is the first American president to regard liberal values with open contempt. He has company: the leaders of Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, among others, are also avowed illiberals. What happened? Why did liberalism lose the support it once enjoyed? In What Was Liberalism?, James Traub returns to the origins of liberalism, in the aftermath of the American and French revolutions and in the works of such great thinkers as John Stuart Mill and Isaiah Berlin. Although the first liberals were deeply skeptical of majority rule, the liberal faith adapted, coming to encompass belief in not only individual rights and free markets, but also state action to provide basic goods. By the second half of the twentieth century, liberalism had become the national creed of the most powerful country in the world. But this consensus did not last. Liberalism is now widely regarded as an antiquated doctrine. What Was LIberalism? reviews the evolution of the liberal idea over more than two centuries for lessons on how it can rebuild its majoritarian foundations.

Transformations and Crisis of Liberalism in Argentina, 1930–1955

Transformations and Crisis of Liberalism in Argentina, 1930–1955
Author :
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages : 289
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780822978008
ISBN-13 : 0822978008
Rating : 4/5 (08 Downloads)

Synopsis Transformations and Crisis of Liberalism in Argentina, 1930–1955 by : Jorge A. Nállim

Nállim chronicles the decline of liberalism in Argentina during the volatile period between two military coups—the 1930 overthrow of Hipólito Yrigoyen and the deposing of Juan Perón in 1955. While historians have primarily focused on liberalism in economic or political contexts, Nállim instead documents a wide range of locations where liberalism was claimed and ultimately marginalized in the pursuit of individual agendas. Nállim shows how concepts of liberalism were espoused by various groups who “invented traditions” to legitimatize their methods of political, religious, class, intellectual, or cultural hegemony. In these deeply fractured and corrupt processes, liberalism lost political favor and alienated the public. These events also set the table for Peronism and stifled the future of progressive liberalism in Argentina. Nállim describes the main political parties of the period and deconstructs their liberal discourses. He also examines major cultural institutions and shows how each attached liberalism to their cause. Nállim compares and contrasts the events in Argentina to those in other Latin American nations and reveals their links to international developments. While critics have positioned the rhetoric of liberalism during this period as one of decadence or irrelevance, Nállim instead shows it to be a vital and complex factor in the metamorphosis of modern history in Argentina and Latin America as well.

The Crisis of Liberalism

The Crisis of Liberalism
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages :
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0914386778
ISBN-13 : 9780914386773
Rating : 4/5 (78 Downloads)

Synopsis The Crisis of Liberalism by : Fred Siegel

In The Crisis of Liberalism: Prelude to Trump, Fred Siegel leverages New York City to uncover the key political conflicts and social contradictions in American liberalism over the last century. This wide-ranging collection of essays critically recounts how passionate intellectual debates and then heated cultural struggles over how to realize "the good life" in the modern city emerged from the writings of early progressive "thought leaders." Herbert Croly and H. G. Wells once envisioned college graduates as a new elite that could pick up the project of enlightened democratic governance where the European aristocracy had failed. Yet, as Eric Hoffer observed, these graduates left top-notch schools as liberal technocrats wanting "power, lordship, and opportunities for imposing action." The flaws in this approach expressed themselves most floridly in John Lindsay's New York, as his activist top-level experts and their many bottom-tier clients aligned themselves against the material aspirations and cultural values of the five boroughs' middle social strata. Lindsay's flashy limousine liberals were a preview of today's politically correct gentry liberalism. Its cultural programs over the past half-century, as Siegel shows, ultimately failed the downtrodden underclass and alienated middle-class New Yorkers trapped in economic stagnation after 9/11. While Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sparred over policy minutiae in the heated 2008 Democratic Party primaries, both candidates neglected voters' worries, like illegal immigrants or China's emerging threats. This misdirection of the nation's and the city's politics by globalist technocratic liberals became the prelude to Donald Trump's angry nationalist reaction to put "America First."

A Liberal World Order in Crisis

A Liberal World Order in Crisis
Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Total Pages : 231
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780801463303
ISBN-13 : 0801463300
Rating : 4/5 (03 Downloads)

Synopsis A Liberal World Order in Crisis by : Georg Sørensen

The collapse of the bipolar international system near the end of the twentieth century changed political liberalism from a regional system with aspirations of universality to global ideological dominance as the basic vision of how international life should be organized. Yet in the last two decades liberal democracies have not been able to create an effective and legitimate liberal world order. In A Liberal World Order in Crisis, Georg Sorensen suggests that this is connected to major tensions between two strains of liberalism: a "liberalism of imposition" affirms the universal validity of liberal values and is ready to use any means to secure the worldwide expansion of liberal principles. A "liberalism of restraint" emphasizes nonintervention, moderation, and respect for others. This book is the first comprehensive discussion of how tensions in liberalism create problems for the establishment of a liberal world order. The book is also the first skeptical liberal statement to appear since the era of liberal optimism—based in anticipation of the end of history—in the 1990s. Sorensen identifies major competing analyses of world order and explains why their focus on balance-of-power competition, civilizational conflict, international terrorism, and fragile states is insufficient.

Contestations of Liberal Order

Contestations of Liberal Order
Author :
Publisher : Springer
Total Pages : 386
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9783030220594
ISBN-13 : 3030220591
Rating : 4/5 (94 Downloads)

Synopsis Contestations of Liberal Order by : Marko Lehti

This volume explores the Western-led liberal order that is claimed to be in crisis. Currently, the West appears less as a modernizing or civilizing entity leading the way and more as being engulfed in a deep crisis. Simultaneously, the West still appears to be needed in order to imagine the global order by promoters of liberal peace as well as its opponents. This book asks how and why “crisis” is needed for constituting “the West,” liberal, and global order and how these three are conjoined and reinvented. The book encompasses narratives endorsing and rejecting the West and the liberal international order, as well as alternative visions for a post-Western world conceived within the rising and challenging powers. The study is of interest to scholars and students of international relations, critical security studies, peace and conflict research, and social sciences in general.

The Crisis of Liberal Internationalism

The Crisis of Liberal Internationalism
Author :
Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages : 417
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780815737681
ISBN-13 : 0815737688
Rating : 4/5 (81 Downloads)

Synopsis The Crisis of Liberal Internationalism by : Yoichi Funabashi

A 2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Japan's challenges and opportunities in a new era of uncertainty Henry Kissinger wrote a few years ago that Japan has been for seven decades “an important anchor of Asian stability and global peace and prosperity.” However, Japan has only played this anchoring role within an American-led liberal international order built from the ashes of World War II. Now that order itself is under siege, not just from illiberal forces such as China and Russia but from its very core, the United States under Donald Trump. The already evident damage to that order, and even its possible collapse, pose particular challenges for Japan, as explored in this book. Noted experts survey the difficult position that Japan finds itself in, both abroad and at home. The weakening of the rules-based order threatens the very basis of Japan's trade-based prosperity, with the unreliability of U.S. protection leaving Japan vulnerable to an economic and technological superpower in China and at heightened risk from a nuclear North Korea. Japan's response to such challenges are complicated by controversies over constitutional revision and the dark aspects of its history that remain a source of tension with its neighbors. The absence of virulent strains of populism have helped to provide Japan with a stable platform from which to pursue its international agenda. Yet with a rapidly aging population, widening intergenerational inequality, and high levels of public debt, the sources of Japan's stability—its welfare state and immigration policies—are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. Each of the book's chapters is written by a specialist in the field, and the book benefits from interviews with more than 40 Japanese policymakers and experts, as well as a public opinion survey. The book outlines today's challenges to the liberal international order, proposes a role for Japan to uphold, reform and shape the order, and examines Japan's assets as well as constraints as it seeks to play the role of a proactive stabilizer in the Asia-Pacific.

The Crisis of Liberalism

The Crisis of Liberalism
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 314
Release :
ISBN-10 : UOM:39015008859657
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (57 Downloads)

Synopsis The Crisis of Liberalism by : John Atkinson Hobson

Liberal Leviathan

Liberal Leviathan
Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Total Pages : 392
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780691156170
ISBN-13 : 0691156174
Rating : 4/5 (70 Downloads)

Synopsis Liberal Leviathan by : G. John Ikenberry

In the second half of the twentieth century, the United States engaged in the most ambitious and far-reaching liberal order building the world had yet seen. This liberal international order has been one of the most successful in providing security and prosperity to more people, but in the last decade the American-led order has been troubled. Some argue that the Bush administration undermined it. Others argue that we are witnessing he end of the American era. In Liberal Leviathan G. John Ikenberry argues that the crisis that besets the American-led order is a crisis of authority. The forces that have triggered this crisis have resulted from the successful functioning and expansion of the postwar liberal order, not its breakdown.

A World Safe for Democracy

A World Safe for Democracy
Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
Total Pages : 429
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780300256093
ISBN-13 : 0300256094
Rating : 4/5 (93 Downloads)

Synopsis A World Safe for Democracy by : G. John Ikenberry

A sweeping account of the rise and evolution of liberal internationalism in the modern era For two hundred years, the grand project of liberal internationalism has been to build a world order that is open, loosely rules-based, and oriented toward progressive ideas. Today this project is in crisis, threatened from the outside by illiberal challengers and from the inside by nationalist-populist movements. This timely book offers the first full account of liberal internationalism’s long journey from its nineteenth-century roots to today’s fractured political moment. Creating an international “space” for liberal democracy, preserving rights and protections within and between countries, and balancing conflicting values such as liberty and equality, openness and social solidarity, and sovereignty and interdependence—these are the guiding aims that have propelled liberal internationalism through the upheavals of the past two centuries. G. John Ikenberry argues that in a twenty-first century marked by rising economic and security interdependence, liberal internationalism—reformed and reimagined—remains the most viable project to protect liberal democracy.

Hermann Cohen and the Crisis of Liberalism

Hermann Cohen and the Crisis of Liberalism
Author :
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Total Pages : 342
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780253039767
ISBN-13 : 0253039762
Rating : 4/5 (67 Downloads)

Synopsis Hermann Cohen and the Crisis of Liberalism by : Paul Egan Nahme

Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) is often held to be one of the most important Jewish philosophers of the nineteenth century. Paul E. Nahme, in this new consideration of Cohen, liberalism, and religion, emphasizes the idea of enchantment, or the faith in and commitment to ideas, reason, and critique—the animating spirits that move society forward. Nahme views Cohen through the lenses of the crises of Imperial Germany—the rise of antisemitism, nationalism, and secularization—to come to a greater understanding of liberalism, its Protestant and Jewish roots, and the spirits of modernity and tradition that form its foundation. Nahme's philosophical and historical retelling of the story of Cohen and his spiritual investment in liberal theology present a strong argument for religious pluralism and public reason in a world rife with populism, identity politics, and conspiracy theories.