bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Indian Political Thought
Authors: Chakrabarty Bidyut
Published: August 2023

Even before nationalism emerged as a decisive ideology in India, there was a long, rich, and diverse tradition of political thought. Broadly speaking, Kautilya, Barani, and Abul Fazal who respectively represent the ancient and medieval periods of Indian sociopolitical life, are recognized as major thinkers who not only expressed their views most systematically but also set the ideological tone for the period in which they articulated their lived experience. This entry focuses on their thinking, as exemplary of the premodern period, before commenting on some of the distinctive aspects of modern Indian political thought.
Indigenous Peoples' Rights
Authors: Ivison Duncan
Published: August 2023

Indigenous peoples’ rights are those moral, legal, and political rights claimed by Indigenous peoples. But who counts as an Indigenous people? This is a complex and politically sensitive question. There are two basic approaches to the question of Indigeneity. First, one can link Indigeneity to actual first residency or occupation of a particular territory. Contemporary Indigenous peoples in this case would be descendants of the earliest populations living on that territory. Second, one can tie Indigeneity to those peoples who lived in the territory before settlers arrived and the process of colonization began. This relativizes the definition toprioroccupation rather than first occupation.
Institutionalism
Authors: Schmidt Vivien A.
Published: August 2023

Institutionalism encompasses a range of methodological approaches in political science that have at their core an emphasis on institutions, understood as the rules, regularities, structures, and the context more generally which influence political outcomes and shape political conduct. Otherwise, such approaches differ greatly in terms of their definition of institutions, in their objects and logics of explanation, and in the ways in which they deal with change. The institutionalisms considered herein are all “new” institutionalisms, in contrast to the “old” institutionalism that had formed the core of early political science studies of the formal institutions of government. Among the many neo‐institutionalisms that have been identified by scholars, four stand out. Three of these were identified as of the early 1990s and include rational choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism, and sociological institutionalism. The fourth, discursive institutionalism, has only been given a name since the early 2000s, although many of the specific approaches that fit under this rubric developed earlier, as in the “ideational turn.”
Internal Colonialism
Authors: Dey Dipankar
Published: August 2023

Internal colonialism is a broadly defined term which captures the complexities of structural, political, and economic inequalities between regions within a nation‐state. It also depicts intranational exploitation of distinct cultural groups.
International Human Rights
Authors: Rensmann Lars
Published: August 2023

Human rights claims are, by definition, universal in scope. They are rights supposed to be granted by virtue of the recipient's being human, and thus they extend to all of humanity. Insofar as they are grounded in one's “naked” human existence, they are often construed as categorical – that is, unconditional, non‐negotiable, and inalienable. Inherently universalistic human rights claims can be traced back to moral universalism in ancient thought and religious sources.
International Law
Authors: Gould Harry D.
Published: August 2023

Because the ancient and classical worlds lacked an understanding of the state (or any other form of polity) as asui generisentity in possession of rights and subject to obligations, a fully developed system comprehensively regulating the behavior of polities was neither possible nor conceivable for them. There were a great number of treaties in the ancient world which addressed a wide range of political and economic issues, but they differed from modern international legal instruments in two important respects: they were viewed as personal pledges by one ruler to another, that perforce did not survive those rulers, and there were no system‐wide rules regulating treaties themselves other than the (unarticulated) principlepacta sunt servandainsisting that agreements are binding upon the parties.
Iqbal, Muhammad (1877–1938)
Authors: Majeed Javed
Published: August 2023

Muhammad Iqbal was a pre‐eminent Urdu and Persian poet, a spokesman for Muslim separatism in India, and an advocate for the primacy of transnational Islam over nationalism. He gave the presidential addresses in 1930 and 1932 at the annual sessions of the All‐India Muslim League, the party which spearheaded the movement for Pakistan. He was one of the delegates at the Round Table Conferences of 1930 and 1932 convened by the British government to discuss India's constitutional future. Iqbal's influence is not confined to South Asia alone. In a speech in Tehran on the occasion of the First International Conference on Iqbal, March 10–12, 1986, the then president of Iran, Sayyid Ali Khamenei, argued that the Islamic Republic of Iran embodied Iqbal's ideas. By virtue of his earlier Indian nationalist poems, Iqbal has also been claimed by postindependent India as one of its own poets while in Pakistan today he is seen as one of its founders alongside Muhammad Ali Jinnah. These diverse appropriations of Iqbal point to the complexity of his work and its legacy.
Iron Law of Wages
Authors: Wolf Jeremy
Published: August 2023

The iron law of wages is the idea that wages will always tend toward the lowest amount necessary to sustain the workers that is required by a given society. While the phrase “iron law of wages” is usually credited to the German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle, the idea itself may be found much earlier, in the work of David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. Reference to consistent rules as “iron laws” can be found as early as 1783, in Goethe's “Das Göttliche”.
James, William (1842–1910)
Authors: Ferguson Kennan
Published: August 2023

William James was the most important American philosopher at the turn of the twentieth century. His contributions to epistemology, psychology, and political issues affected the course of each of these disciplines throughout the twentieth century and into the contemporary world. Acting both as a public figure and as an academic philosopher, he helped transform Harvard from a small college to a pre‐eminent university of the United States. Both in academia and in his enthusiastic public engagements with political activists, anarchists, mystics, paranormalists, and educators, he explored and transformed relationships between autonomy, science, probability, and truth.
Jaspers, Karl (1883–1969)
Authors: Thornhill Christopher
Published: August 2023

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) was an existentialist philosopher, deeply influenced by Kant, Kierkegaard, and Max Weber, whose philosophy formed a subjectivist counterpart, within the existentialist movement, to the fundamental ontology of Martin Heidegger. His works exercised great influence in a number of theoretical fields in Germany in the middle years of the twentieth century. He began his career as a psychiatrist, and published enduringly influential works in this field: notably his
General Psychopathology
(1913). The major philosophical publication of his philosophical career was the three‐volume work
Philosophy
(1932), which attempted to fuse Kantian and Hegelian ideas to provide an account of the experiential formation of human consciousness. In this work, he analyzed consciousness as proceeding from the level of immediate knowledge and progressing through a sequence of antinomies toward a level of truthfully unified reflection and self‐knowledge. Also of philosophical importance are Jaspers's interventions in religious debate. The central idea in Jaspers's philosophy of religion is the concept of
philosophical faith
, in which he promoted a critical‐recuperative attitude toward religious inquiry and attempted to convert elements of religious doctrine into a (secularist) account of human possibilities and freedoms. The ambition behind his work on religion and myth was to liberate transcendent knowledge from theology, and to permit an interpretive transformation of religiously conceived essences into aspects of human self‐interpretation.
Just War
Authors: Benbaji Yitzhak
Published: August 2023

Contrary to realists and pacifists, early jurists and contemporary theorists of justice answer the question “Can there be a just war?” positively. H. Grotius, E. de Vattel, F. de Vitoria, and F. Suárez on the one hand, and Michael Walzer and John Rawls on the other, insist that some wars are just while others are unjust. One task of a just war theory is to formulate the conditions which a war should meet in order to be just and to deduce these conditions from true moral principles. Another task is to formulate the moral rules that govern fighting and to relate them to general moral principles.
Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804)
Authors: Ellis Elisabeth
Published: August 2023

Immanuel Kant founded modern philosophy, freed morality from religion, laid down principles of human rights recognized everywhere today, and contributed insights that are still important to the fields of physics, astronomy, geoscience, anthropology, and aesthetics. Political theory is considered one of Kant's minor areas of interest; though there is important material for political thought in each of the three greatCritiques, Kant's main political work, theMetaphysics of Morals, is central neither to Kant's oeuvre nor to the canon of political thought. Nevertheless, Kant achieves original insights in his political philosophy and in his philosophy's political implications; both prove vitally important for present‐day students of politics.
Kateb, George (1931–)
Authors: Dienstag Joshua Foa
Published: August 2023

George Kateb is an American political theorist whose great subject is democratic political culture. Born in New York City, he was educated at Columbia University, receiving his PhD in 1960. He was a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard and then joined the faculty at Amherst College, where he became a full professor. In 1987 he moved to Princeton University, where he taught until his retirement in 2002. He is currently the William Nelson Cromwell Professor, Emeritus, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science.
Keynesianism
Authors: Waligorski Conrad P.
Published: August 2023

Keynesianism developed from John Maynard Keynes's (England, 1883–1946) analysis and theory. Keynes stressed macroeconomics and the impact and interrelation of economics with social and political reality. He developed the first, credible liberal‐based, economic theory to address instability and unemployment he considered endemic to capitalism, justifying a permanent government role in the economy. Keynes's theories and proposals evolved in the depressed conditions of 1920s Britain, the Great Depression, and international economic dislocation, seeking to explain economic failure and provide workable policies to ameliorate it. “Keynesianism” is not identical to Keynes's theories and policies: many Keynesians embrace classical economics and elide his emphasis on uncertainty, instability, and political, social, and moral concerns; there are several versions of “Keynesianism.”
Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406)
Authors: Swiney Chrystie
Published: August 2023

‘Abd al‐Rahman Ibn Khaldun (generally known as “Ibn Khaldun,” or son of Khaldun), born in North Africa in the fourteenth century, is renowned for being one of the leading political theorists and historians produced by Islam. His masterpiece,
Muqaddimah
(
Introduction
), which contains a theory of universal history that is still respected today, is thought to be the first work of historiography and a precursor to the modern disciplines of anthropology, sociology, economics, and political science. As a historian, scholar, lawyer, theologian, mathematician, military strategist, philosopher, and social scientist, Ibn Khaldun had a deep and enduring influence on the development of Islamic political ideology, and indeed on the development of historical and political thought more generally.
Kirchheimer, Otto (1905–65)
Authors: Mapes‐Martins Brad
Published: August 2023

Otto Kirchheimer, born November 11, 1905 in Heilbronn, Germany, was a Jewish scholar of law and politics affiliated with the Institute for Social Research (ISR) during his emigration to the United States. Kirchheimer concluded his studies in 1928 with a dissertation conducted under the supervision of Carl Schmitt and later published in abbreviated form as “The Socialist and Bolshevik Theory of the State.” Until 1930, Kirchheimer published a series of articles in the Social Democratic Party's (SPD) journal synthesizing a Marxism informed by Schmitt's influential conception of “the political” and culminating in his criticism in “Weimar – and What Then?” of the Weimar constitution as susceptible to irreparable change that would codify bourgeois rule. His radical critique of Weimar waned after 1930, at which time he began challenging the views of Schmitt, claiming that legal norms may provide the equality requisite for democracy of which he had previously expressed suspicion.
Koselleck, Reinhart (1923–2006)
Authors: Ingram James D.
Published: August 2023

Reinhart Koselleck was a German intellectual historian. He studied with Karl Löwith, Hans‐Georg Gadamer, and Carl Schmitt, and then taught at the University of Bielefeld from 1968 to 1988. He made major contributions to the history of political ideas, the study of the Enlightenment, and our understanding of the modern experience of time.
Kymlicka, Will (1962–)
Authors: Jones Charles W. B.
Published: August 2023

Will Kymlicka is a Canadian political philosopher and foremost proponent of liberal multiculturalism. Kymlicka's first book,
Liberalism, Community, and Culture
(Kymlicka 1989), carries out two principal tasks. First, against communitarian criticisms that liberals present a false conception of the person, or that liberalism's “atomism” renders it incapable of sustaining freedom‐promoting institutions, Kymlicka argues that liberals defend an attractive picture of individuals reasoning and acting within a shared social context. Second, addressing a missing element in the work of late twentieth‐century liberals like John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, he claims to show that principles of liberal equality require rights for members of cultural minorities. Cultural membership is a specific kind of good, linked to individual freedom and therefore possessing significance within liberal theory.
Labor
Authors: Shippen Nichole M.
Published: August 2023

Beginning with the most general of definitions, labor refers to the physical, mental, and emotional effort geared toward the preservation of self and others through the production and reproduction of material necessity required for sustaining human life. Although labor derives its meaning from the specific historical context in which it is situated, labor is not always properly recognized as a historical concept within political theory. As a result, the concept of labor is often distorted through the lens of modernity and the use of economic concepts that did not exist in premodern times. Labor is shaped by the historical relationship between the production and the consumption of goods and services organized through the division of labor as situated within a given political‐economic context – be it a Greek city‐state, feudalism, or capitalism.
Labor Theory of Value
Authors: Hudis Peter
Published: August 2023

The labor theory of value holds that the value of a commodity depends on the amount of labor needed to produce it. In contrast to neoclassical subjectivist theories of value, it identifies the objective and
intrinsic
value of a commodity, independent of contingent phenomena such as supply and demand or consumer preference. It has been adopted by a wide variety of thinkers, ranging from classical political economists who supported capitalism to socialists, communists, and anarchists who have opposed capitalism.
Laïcité
Authors: Hamati‐Ataya Inanna
Published: August 2023

Laïcité
refers to the separation between the religious and political spheres. It is so intimately tied to the political history of France that the English term
secularism
does not fully convey its meaning. Indeed,
laïcité
results from a long, irregular process of secularization of the French political system that starts with the birth of the Republic (1789) as the expression of the sovereign “will” of the people, and the guarantor of its “general interest.” The republican ideal is at the origin of French
laïcité
, a form of secularism that denies religion any status in public affairs, and imposes the
neutrality
of the state toward religious institutions, doctrines, and practices, which guarantees all citizens’
freedom of conscience
. The word
laïcité
(from the Latin
laicus
and the Greek
laos
, meaning the layman) itself officially appears in the 1870 s under the Third Republic, which launched the two important processes leading to the
laïcisation
of France: the secularization of the public school, and the separation between the church and the state.
Latour, Bruno (1947–)
Authors: Brown Mark B.
Published: August 2023

Bruno Latour is a philosopher, sociologist, and anthropologist who first rose to prominence in science and technology studies. He has since become widely influential across the humanities and social sciences, and his work offers a unique perspective on key questions of political theory. From 1982 to 2006 he taught at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation of the École nationale supérieure des mines in Paris. In 2007 he became Professor and Vice President for Research at the Institut d’Études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). A prolific author and engaging public speaker, Latour's brilliant analyses, playful rhetoric, and penchant for inventive diagrams and neologisms have provoked many stimulating controversies.
Law
Authors: West Robin L.
Published: August 2023

In spite of strong countervailing forces, legal positivism has unquestionably been the dominant form of jurisprudence in Britain in the last centuries and an important force in the United States at various periods – including in the past couple of decades, during which a form of analytical legal positivism has also gained in strength. Aside from its checkered history, the clarity of its conception of the relation of law and politics makes legal positivism the best logical starting point for a survey of Anglo‐American theoretical perspectives on the relation of law to politics and on the relation between legal and political theory.
Legitimacy
Authors: Bagg Samuel , Knight Jack
Published: August 2023

In its most general form, the question of political legitimacy is a question about why anyone is allowed to tell anyone else what to do. When is it right – or “legitimate” – for one person or social body to rule over another? This is a question that some have deemed the most fundamental in all of political philosophy. If I am an individual with rights over my life, liberty, and property, then why am I subject to the coercive authority of a powerful state? Why should I obey my government rather than rising up in revolt? Are there reasons for obeying the law other than those grounded in a self‐interested desire to avoid punishment? The term “legitimacy” has many meanings and uses, political and nonpolitical. This entry canvasses some of this diversity among the political uses of the term, and asks: How did the discourse of legitimacy arise? What have been its stakes? How should we define it? And how does the use to which it is put affect this process of definition? The entry emphasizes that these questions cannot be answered in isolation from one another, and that there are no “right” answers to questions about the definition of terms. However, analysis of the diversity of definitions is both politically and philosophically productive.
Legitimation
Authors: Modak‐Truran Mark C.
Published: August 2023

Questions of political and legal legitimation have been considerably complicated by the multitude of academic disciplines engaging these questions, by the very different understandings of the process of legitimation and the relevant criteria for measuring legitimacy, by fundamental disagreements about the nature of rationality, existence, and knowledge, and by claims that legitimation is nothing more than a form of ideology masking and perpetuating illegitimate hierarchies based on class, gender, and race. To avoid privileging the parochial assumptions of one of these approaches, three conceptions of legitimation – premodern, modern, and postsecular – are articulated in this entry to capture the depth and breadth of disagreement. Premodern conceptions of legitimation consider governments and rulers legitimate if they are ordained by God or if the political system is ordered in accordance with the normative cosmic order. By contrast, the prevailing modern conception of legitimation in constitutional democracies stems from the “consent of the governed,” which includes two principles of legitimation – the principle of democracy (or popular sovereignty) and the principle of constitutionalism (or the rule of law). Despite the predominance of the modern conception, the dramatic return of religion to public life and the surprising rise of political theology are two prominent developments supporting a shift to a postsecular conception of legitimation, which would transform the prevailing understanding of the principles of democracy and constitutionalism. Nevertheless, the competition among these conceptions continues within and across national boundaries for the coveted prize of informing the social imaginary.
LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) Politics
Authors: Schotten C. Heike
Published: August 2023

LGBT
is an acronym for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender”;
LGBT Politics
refers to the issues, practices, policies, goals, strategies, and tactics deemed relevant, useful, or important to LGBT people within a broader, often non‐LGBT, social and political context.
Levinas, Emmanuel (1906–95)
Authors: Katz Claire Elise
Published: August 2023

Emmanuel Levinas was born in Kovno, Lithuania, on January 12, 1906. In 1923 he left for France and enrolled at the University of Strasbourg, where he studied philosophy under a number of professors, including Charles Blondel and Maurice Halbwachs. There he met Maurice Blanchot, who not only became his lifelong friend but was instrumental in saving his wife and his daughter during the Nazi war years. In 1928–9 Levinas went to Freiburg, intending to study under the German phenomenologist Edmund Husserl; and he also met Martin Heidegger. Shortly after returning to France in 1930, Levinas became a naturalized citizen and took a position at the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU), an organization that focused on disseminating Jewish education in the countries of the Mediterranean and primarily in North Africa, for instance in Morocco and Tunisia. He later stated that he believed his French citizenship saved him from being sent to a concentration camp.
Lévi‐Strauss, Claude (1908–2009)
Authors: Kauppi Niilo
Published: August 2023

A founder of structuralism, the French anthropologist Claude Lévi‐Strauss has had a powerful impact on scholars like Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Julia Kristeva. Born in Brussels, Belgium, to a Jewish family originally from the Strasbourg area in Alsace, he studied law and philosophy at the Sorbonne, receiving his
agrégation
in philosophy in 1931. In 1955 he became an intellectual celebrity through the publication of his most accessible book,
Tristes tropiques
, which fuses autobiography, ethnographic analysis, and philosophical meditation. Lévi‐Strauss was elected to the prestigious Collège de France in 1959, where he taught until 1982. With Émile Benveniste and Pierre Gourou he founded
L'Homme
, the review of the French anthropological society, on the model of the journal
American Anthropologist
. In 1979 he was elected an “immortal,” becoming a member of the famed Académie française. He died of a heart attack in Paris in 2009.
Liberal Democracy
Authors: Spragens Thomas A.
Published: August 2023

Of the two terms, democracy is by far the older. The name was used to identify those city‐states in ancient Greece where the ruling class was the
demos
: the people, or the many, in contrast with regimes ruled by one (monarchy or tyranny) or by the few (aristocracy or oligarchy). Its central elements are popular sovereignty, political equality, and some form of majority rule. The term “liberal” descends to us from the Latin
liber
, meaning “free.” Its use to designate a form of political life or persuasion came only in the early nineteenth century, although the central tenets of the concept itself were developed and articulated in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Liberalism's principal elements include a dedication to individual freedom, limited government, and toleration.
Liberalism
Authors: Galston William A.
Published: August 2023

It is hard to find a survey of liberalism that does not begin by noting the multiple and diverse doctrines that have sailed under the liberal flag. This gives rise to the suspicion that nothing unites them other than a shared name, handed down from one epoch to the next and appropriated by thinkers and movements hoping to profit from their association with it. This suspicion is part of a broader hypothesis, famously advanced by W. B. Gallie, that all political concepts are essentially contested.
Libertarianism, Political
Authors: Grigsby Ellen
Published: August 2023

Libertarianism is a school of liberalism that emphasizes individual liberty and minimal government. Libertarians have attempted to theorize the conditions under which individual liberty would be achievable in the most thoroughgoing manner possible without the imposition of harm on others.
Lipsius, Justus (1547–1606)
Authors: Papy Jan
Published: August 2023

The sixteenth‐century humanist Justus Lipsius, renowned above all as a gifted philologist and antiquarian scholar, promoted Taciteanism and is considered the founding father of Neostoicism. His political program, envisaging a centrally governed state in which religious and civil peace would flourish, was mainly based on the views propagated by the Roman historian Tacitus.
Love
Authors: Abbas Asma
Published: August 2023

An intense feeling that serves as an adhesive for individuals and groups, love entails both desire – understood as a movement towards what one deems beautiful or wants to be near – and attachment. It is a transformative human power, capacity, and practice that takes many forms. With its role in organizing relations within and across bounded collectivities and its function in human judgment, love is significant in determining the nature and possibility of politics.
Lukes, Steven (1941–)
Authors: Sypnowich Christine
Published: August 2023

Steven Lukes is an internationally renowned political theorist and sociologist at New York University and has a significant presence as a left‐wing intellectual. His work on Émile Durkheim, concepts of power, and Marxism constitute important contributions to political thought. Lukes combines a radical sociological sensibility, a commitment to Enlightenment reason and moral individualism, and good humour and wit.
Luxemburg, Rosa (1871–1919)
Authors: Cornell Drucilla
Published: August 2023

Rosa Luxemburg was born in the year of the Paris Commune, 1871, in the small Polish city of Zamość; in 1873 her father, who was a timber merchant, moved the family to Warsaw. She grew up in a family of “enlightened” and assimilated Jews, spoke German, and was introduced to the cosmopolitan ideas of the Enlightenment. She went her own way politically from a very early age.
Lyotard, Jean‐François (1924–98)
Authors: Browning Gary
Published: August 2023

Lyotard's
The Postmodern Condition
(1979) is a classic statement of postmodernism. It critiques modernity, in particular modern theory and modern politics, and in anticipating a condition of postmodernity it projects a new way of operating, in which differences and pluralities are embraced. If Lyotard's name is often associated with postmodernism, his career can be seen as a continuous probing and challenging of the rationalism of modernity. He rejects Enlightenment notions of reason and progress and deconstructs the affiliated politics of modernity in its liberal and socialist guises.
Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469–1527)
Authors: McCormick John P.
Published: August 2023

Niccolò Machiavelli would have undoubtedly secured enduring fame for any one of the roles he mastered during his life in and out of Renaissance Florence: historian, diplomat, military strategist, civil servant, poet, playwright. However, it was in his capacity as political philosopher that Machiavelli earned eternal renown, by sparking some of the most intense scholarly controversies in western intellectual history. Not without reason, many commentators consider Machiavelli the father of modern political thought or modern political science – some even ordain him the founder of “modernity” itself. Yet the specific content and the precise objectives of his political writings remain elusive. Was Machiavelli an advisor of tyranny or a partisan of liberty? A neutral technician of power politics or an Italian patriot? An anticlerical reviver of pagan virtue or a devious initiator of modern nihilism? Put simply, to what extent was Machiavelli a “Machiavellian”? These questions, among numerous others concerning the essence of Machiavelli's thought, will continue to generate contentious debates for as long as people will reflect seriously on political affairs.
MacKinnon, Catharine (1946–)
Authors: Heike Schotten C.
Published: August 2023

Catharine MacKinnon is an attorney, a feminist theorist, and a legal critic. She is a longtime activist and campaigner for legal reform to redress women's subordination and is most well known for her antipornography work, although she has also agitated against sexual harassment, rape, prostitution, and war.
Market Socialism
Authors: Roberts Aaron B.
Published: August 2023

As the name implies, market socialism – one of the main contending variants of socialist thought today – seeks to fuse elements of a free market system with elements of socialism. On the face of it, however, it appears to be a contradiction in terms or at best a paradox, especially in that the predominant form of socialism today, orthodox Marxism, holds that the future socialist society would fully supersede market relations as one of its constitutive, dialectical movements.
Marsilius of Padua (ca. 1275–1343)
Authors: Sullivan Mary Elizabeth
Published: August 2023

Marsilius is most famous for his substantial political treatise,
Defensor pacis
(The defender of the peace).
Defensor pacis
is primarily concerned with the maintenance of peace in the civil realm. He addresses key political concerns, including the relationship between church and state, democratic political processes, and the value of diversity in the political community.
Marx, Karl (1818–83)
Authors: Browning Gary
Published: August 2023

Karl Marx has exerted a profound influence upon modern social and political theory and practice. Revolutions have been conducted in his name, states have purported to be governed according to his doctrines, and some of the most sophisticated and subtle theorists of the twentieth century, such as Adorno, Lukács, Gramsci, Althusser, and Negri, have self‐consciously theorized in a Marxist tradition. Marx combines intricate analysis of social and economic structures with revolutionary political rhetoric to develop and inspire mass support. He relates politics to the structures of social and economic power and offers a sweeping but penetrating analysis and critique of political economy, in which he focuses upon the production process, attending to the experience of work, control over its resources, and the distribution of rewards underlying it.
Marxism–Leninism
Authors: Oittinen Vesa
Published: August 2023

The concept of Marxism–Leninism was born in the internal discussions of the Bolsheviks soon after the death of Lenin in 1924. Until then, the distinctive traits of Bolshevism had developed more or less inadvertently, in the almost daily struggle against political opponents and rivals. Decisive moments in the formation of Lenin's distinctive theoretical views were, first, his party theory formulated in the booklet
What Is to Be Done?
(1903), where he stood up for an elite organization for professional revolutionaries, and, secondly, his struggle against the leftist views of Aleksandr Bogdanov.
Menshevism
Authors: Lindsey Jason Royce
Published: August 2023

Menshevism is a communist political ideology that was influential in the Russian Empire during the early twentieth century. The Mensheviks of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Party opposed Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks. During the party congress of 1903, the two groups openly split and became known by their positions during a critical vote, “Menshevik” and “Bolshevik” being derived from the Russian words for “minority” and “majority” respectively.
Mercenaries
Authors: Sullivan Benjamin M.
Published: August 2023

As a topic, mercenaries in political thought has been neglected, even though the best workers in the tradition have often made mercenaries essential to their projects. Since the Greeks, the consensus has been negative, but treatments have varied in their elaboration. An account must be diachronic, for more than most areas of political thought mercenary theory has flourished when stimulated by historical process. In most periods before the French Revolution, mercenaries were widely used in Europe. They fell into disuse only in the age of nationalism, the same period that saw an international norm against mercenaries crystallize. An unusual abeyance in theorizing accompanied this equally uncharacteristic dormancy.
Metaphysics and Postmetaphysics
Authors: Tampio Nicholas
Published: August 2023

Political scientists often study things that can be examined, measured, and compared, such as human beings, political regimes, or international organizations. Political philosophers often think about things that cannot, as such, be empirically observed, such as human nature, moral codes, and theories of justice. The most profound activity of philosophy is metaphysics. Metaphysics, according to Aristotle, is first philosophy, the study of beingquabeing. In general, a metaphysics grounds and delimits what a philosopher thinks that political affairs are and can be. In other words, a metaphysics helps a philosopher explain actual political affairs and envision new political possibilities. This entry considers how several of the most important figures in the history of Euro‐American political theory conceptualize being, the privileged interpreters of being, and the political principles that accord with being.
Metics
Authors: Buckinx Barbara
Published: August 2023

The word “metic” comes from the Greekmetoikos(μέτοικος), which denotes a person who changes residence. In classical Greece (fifth–fourth centuriesbce), metics ormetoikoiwere free foreigners who had the status of permanent resident aliens.
Michels, Robert (1876–1936)
Authors: Rye Danny
Published: August 2023

Robert Michels was a man of contradictions: a Marxist and syndicalist from a bourgeois background; a German academic and pacifist who became an apologist for Italian nationalism and fascism. As such, he embodied the great political dilemma of his time between democracy and autocracy, which is reflected in his most important contribution to social and political science: the “iron law of oligarchy.” This theory elaborated concerns about the nature of elites and democratic organizations that remain salient today.
Mill, James (1773–1836)
Authors: Turner Brandon P.
Published: August 2023

James Mill holds a peculiar place in the history of political thought. Far better known for his personal associations than for his body of work, he forms one third – the least significant third – of the trinity of nineteenth‐century British utilitarianism: he became the close friend and intellectual comrade of Jeremy Bentham, and fathered the greatest British political philosopher of the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill. In Mill's case, however, being known primarily for the company one keeps may have worked in his favor, for the reputation of his written work has suffered substantially since his death. However, Mill's oeuvre is worth studying: his
History of British India
remains an important if neglected work of philosophical history that illustrates in interesting ways the shift from the eighteenth‐century Scottish historiography of David Hume and Adam Ferguson to the more universalist and progressive utilitarian approach of nineteenth‐century liberals. More broadly, his political writings include important arguments concerning representation, democratic education, and the nature of political power, arguments that prefigure the methodology and insights of twentieth‐century social science.
Mills, C. Wright (1916–62)
Authors: Peschek Joseph G.
Published: August 2023

Sociologist and social theorist C. Wright Mills was one of the leading public intellectuals in post‐World War II America. As a scholar he is best known for his studies of the American power elite and the new middle classes and as the champion of a “sociological imagination” that linked individual experience to historical process. His normative vision of radical democracy influenced the New Left and his analysis of politics and society inspired scholars to employ power structure research, class analysis, and political economy in ways that challenged conventional pluralist assumptions about American democracy.
Moderation
Authors: Hintze Hannah
Published: August 2023

Moderation is easy to praise but difficult to define. Sometimes called “temperance,” it is traditionally reckoned among the four so‐called cardinal virtues (along with prudence, justice, and courage) upon which the remainder of the moral virtues are said to depend. Moderation is primarily a personal virtue aimed at rational self‐control of extreme appetites for food, drink, sexual satisfaction, and wealth but various thinkers from Plato to the present have extended it by analogy or directly to political and intellectual spheres.
Modernization
Authors: Choudhury Kushanava
Published: August 2023

Modernization theory is an umbrella term for a series of concepts and ideas of varying political ideologies, which all share a common faith in the progress of all societies to a particular industrial‐capitalist future that resembles contemporary Europe or North America. In the twentieth century it provided poor societies, particularly those forged from former colonies of Europe, a path by which to become less poor. Despite widespread challenges, modernization theory remains powerful in determining state policy and academic thinking across a wide range of political ideologies and nation‐states
Montesquieu, Charles‐Louis de Secondat, Baron de (1689–1757)
Authors: Carrese Paul
Published: August 2023

Montesquieu was a French jurist and philosopher, a leading thinker of the moderate Enlightenment, and foremost influence on the framers of the US Constitution and more generally on the development of liberal constitutionalism and a globalized liberal politics. Montesquieu's chief work,The Spirit of Laws(1748), was praised in the latter eighteenth century as the standard of political science. While eventually eclipsed by the French Revolution and radical Enlightenment thinkers, its influence in Britain and America was enduring. His philosophy shaped thinkers ranging from Rousseau, Burke, and Gibbon to Madison, Hegel, and Tocqueville.
Motherhood
Authors: Schreiber Ronnee
Published: August 2023

Motherhood can be understood in myriad forms – as a practice, a set of values, and/or an experience – all of which are shaped by political norms, public policies, and gender role expectations. Both Locke and Hobbes, liberal political theorists whose ideas were central to the development of US politics and political institutions, conceptualized motherhood to be within the realm of the private and thus apolitical, leaving the specific idea and practice of motherhood essentially unexamined. Others, like Rousseau, assumed that natural or biological differences between the sexes rendered women relatively incapable of political power and participation. Feminist thinkers have challenged these conceptualizations and have urged us to explore the ways in which political, social, and economic factors shape the experiences of, and beliefs about, motherhood. This latter body of work is not without tensions either, as scholars shift between critiquing and recuperating motherhood, arguing over its centrality to feminist politics. This entry examines political thought as conceived by liberal political thinkers as well as critics of their writings. It fast‐forwards to debates about motherhood in feminist theory and between feminists and conservatives from the 1970s to the time of writing, highlighting how scholars negotiate among competing values of individualism, community, gender differences, and equality. Of course, conceptualizations of motherhood are much broader theoretically and geographically, but in the space allotted here, the focus is on political thought that has directly shaped cultural beliefs and institutions that govern US practices and policies.
Multiculturalism
Authors: Thomassen Lasse
Published: August 2023

Multiculturalism can refer to two things. It can refer to the sociological fact that, in a given society, there is more than one culture, that is, that the society is not mono‐ butmulti‐cultural. In this sense there is nothing new about multiculturalism. Multicultural societies have existed in some form for hundreds of years, even if the experience of this in western societies may have changed over the last decades with the arrival of greater numbers of people from nonwhite and non‐Christian countries. Multiculturalism can also refer to normative responses to the fact of multiculturalism. Here we can talk about multiculturalist policies, for instance public funding for ethnic festivals or exemptions from general laws for cultural minorities. While counteracting assimilation, these policies are aimed at equality. Taken in this sense, multiculturalism is a relatively new phenomenon dating back only to the 1970s, first gaining prominence in countries such as the USA, Canada, and Australia. Even in this sense, multiculturalism is not a distinctive ideology or political theory, but a loose set of ideas about how to respond to the fact that society is multicultural.
Nation and Nation‐State
Authors: Mostov Julie
Published: August 2023

Simply put, a nation is a group of people who recognize one another as sharing a common culture, history, and set of institutions and, according to some, the same language, ethnicity, and religion, and a nation‐state is a political entity with sovereignty over a defined territory. But, there is nothing simple about either the term “nation” or the term “nation‐state.” Indeed, while the term nation is also confusingly used to refer to a particular state or country, its evolution, shifting meanings, and rhetorical uses in political discourse and statebuilding practices are highly contested, dynamic, contingent, and gendered. The term nation‐state appears less controversial as a designation of political space, yet its meaning and status are increasingly questioned today as notions and spaces of national sovereignty are practically and theoretically challenged by contemporary globalizing trends. Ethno‐national conflicts, transnational rights regimes, and crossborder movements of capital, information, pollutants, viruses, and people, call into question national control over territory and the feasibility or desirability of such defined units of political association.
Necessity
Authors: Feldman Leonard C.
Published: August 2023

Necessity is something of a shadowy concept within the history of political thought. It is most explicitly treated within the tradition of reason of state and tends to involve a claim of compulsion or force linked to survival, either individual or collective. Necessity is often invoked to undergird a claim for the suspension of a legal rule – hence the saying “necessity knows no law” and the criticism that necessity is a “lawless” doctrine. Whether invoked by the state or by an individual (as in the necessity defense), necessity places pressure on the rule of law.
New Left
Authors: Mertes Tom
Published: August 2023

The New Left is an intellectual and social movement that began to crystallize in the late 1950s and especially after 1960. As a dynamic movement, it experienced a number of significant ideological and programmatic shifts.
Nussbaum, Martha Craven (1947–)
Authors: Zuckerwise Lena K.
Published: August 2023

Martha Nussbaum is a political philosopher at the University of Chicago who focuses upon the classical period, human rights, education, and social justice. She is a renowned feminist thinker, drawing extensively from the liberal tradition of which she is also critical.
Object Relations Psychology
Authors: Flax Jane
Published: August 2023

Object relations theorists insist on the centrality of interpersonal relationships in the constitution of human subjectivity. Like other psychoanalysts, they call people objects, because they believe our relations with and experiences of others are never unmediated. Rather, they are shaped by many factors including idiosyncratic desires, fantasies, past relations with the object and others, and feelings about ourselves. Hence, everyone's experience of objects is unique, and our constructs of them may have little resemblance to how they or others construct them.
Ochlocracy
Authors: Marquez Xavier
Published: August 2023

In ancient Greek political thought, “ochlocracy” (literally “mob power”) referred to a “bad” or “corrupted” form of democracy (“the power of the people”). The term was apparently coined by the Greek historian of Rome and political thinker Polybius (ca. 200–118 bce) in his
Histories
, though earlier thinkers had also distinguished between good and bad forms of democracy depending on whether the people respected the laws (Plato) or acted in the common interest (Aristotle), and had occasionally referred to the dangers posed by the “mob” (
ochlos
). Polybius extends their analysis, though he only refers unambiguously to Plato, by introducing a term that explicitly distinguishes the bad form of democracy from its good form.
Order
Authors: Riedl Matthias
Published: August 2023

Order is one of the most central concepts in the history of political thought. The English word (just as the French
ordre
, the German
Ordnung
, the Italian
ordine
, or the Spanish
orden
) is derived from the Latin term
ordo
, which can denote any kind of structured or regulated condition, as opposed to disorder and chaos. As such,
ordo
may refer to a variety of more or less politically relevant matters: monastic and clerical organizations, the estates within a society, coronation rituals, the structure of the cosmos, the disposition of the human soul, and so forth. This entry considers the most important and most general meaning of
political
order, which denotes the meaningful dimension of human social existence. It briefly describes five approaches to political order in their particular experiential contexts. The first two – the order of cosmos and the order of history – may be termed classical, while the latter three – the order of existence, the order of consciousness, and the order of discourse – are rather modern approaches. Yet it will become clear that the classical models retain their significance even in the modern era.
Original Intent
Authors: Tauber Steven
Published: August 2023

One method of constitutional interpretation is known as originalism, which requires that constitutional provisions be interpreted according to what they meant when written. Original intent is a form of originalism. This entry explicates the concept of original intent, discusses the debate over its appropriateness, and examines the difference between original intent and other forms of originalism.