An examination of theoretical and practical aspects of governance, published in 1891 by one of Britain's leading political philosophers.

In Elementary Aspects of the Political Prathama Banerjee moves beyond postcolonial and decolonial critiques of European political philosophy to rethink modern conceptions of "the political" from the perspective of the global South. Drawing on Indian and Bengali practices and philosophies from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Banerjee identifies four elements of the political: the self, action, the idea, and the people. She examines selfhood in light of precolonial Indic traditions of renunciation and realpolitik; action in the constitutive tension between traditional conceptions of karma and modern ideas of labor; the idea of equality as it emerges in the dialectic between spirituality and economics; and people in the friction between the structure of the political party and the atmospherics of fiction and theater. Throughout, Banerjee reasserts the historical specificity of political thought and challenges modern assumptions about the universality, primacy, and self-evidence of the political. In formulating a new theory of the political, Banerjee gestures toward a globally salient political philosophy that displaces prevailing Western notions of the political masquerading as universal.

This introductory textbook provides the ideal basis for students coming to politics for the first time. Elements in Political Science has been divided into five easy-to-use sections. Each chapter ends with two essay questions to aid revision.

Nations are not trapped by their pasts, but events that happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago continue to exert huge influence on present-day politics. If we are to understand the politics that we now take for granted, we need to understand its origins. Francis Fukuyama examines the paths that different societies have taken to reach their current forms of political order. This book starts with the very beginning of mankind and comes right up to the eve of the French and American revolutions, spanning such diverse disciplines as economics, anthropology and geography. The Origins of Political Order is a magisterial study on the emergence of mankind as a political animal, by one of the most eminent political thinkers writing today.

This theoretically innovative book shows how democratic social movements can use the welfare state to challenge domination in society.

This book demonstrates five approaches to the theory of world politics and shows how these lead to distinct attitudes on critical issues. Portraying five imaginary spokesmen--a Natural Law theorist, a Realist, a Fideist, a Rationalist, and an Historicist--Donelan outlines various perspectives on world affairs and then debates the positions. The discussion covers fine main aspects of world politics: conflict, alliances, intervention, war, and commerce. Using a classical philosophical approach to engage the reader in this lively debate, Elements of International Political Theory provides a basic understanding of the philosophical ideas that underlie opinions and decisions on world problems.