bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Emergency
Authors: Fatovic Clement
Published: August 2023

An emergency is an extraordinary occurrence or state of affairs that poses a significant danger to public health or safety. There is no precise definition, but political thinkers and legal systems have generally treated an emergency as an extreme event that strains the limits of the established legal and political order and requires the exercise of expansive and perhaps unprecedented governmental powers, especially by the executive. Prior to the twentieth century, the term was usually reserved for violent threats, such as foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and civil wars. By the beginning of the twentieth century, it had been expanded to include economic crises, such as labor unrest, financial collapses, and depressions. In contemporary law and political thought, emergency has been broadened even further to include natural disasters, epidemic outbreaks, environmental catastrophes, and terrorist attacks. As the category has been enlarged to include new (or newly recognized) dangers, the range of powers that the government uses to address these dangers has also been expanded. Questions about the legitimacy and the legality of responses to emergency have generally dominated political and legal thought on this subject.
Enlightenment, Scottish
Authors: Skowronski Sarah
Published: August 2023

The Scottish Enlightenment was a period of intense intellectual activity in Scotland during the eighteenth century. Its major figures include Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782), Thomas Reid (1710–96), David Hume (1711–76), Adam Smith (1723–90), Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), and John Millar (1735–1802). The Scottish Enlightenment thinkers have proven hugely influential in the history of ideas, both in their own age and in subsequent generations. Hume gained popularity in France, where he associated with French Enlightenment thinkers such as Denis Diderot. The French
philosophes
came to think so highly of the Scots that Voltaire even proclaimed, “it is to Scotland that we look for our idea of civilization.” The Scots also influenced the US founders: Hutcheson's work was admired by Thomas Jefferson and Reid's work by James Wilson. Benjamin Franklin traveled to Scotland and befriended Kames, whose legal writings he recommended to American judges. The Scots continue to exert their influence today. They have been identified as the founders of the social sciences, such as sociology and economics. Many of their intellectual insights in these fields still stand – for instance, much of Smith's writing on economics forms the foundation of economic thinking today.
Environmental Political Theory
Authors: Luke Timothy W.
Published: August 2023

Environmental political theory is one of today's most dynamic fields in contemporary political thought, and it has only become more vibrant since the 1992 global environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro. The interests of environmental political theory are quite diverse, ranging from analyses of global governance to rapid climate change to environmental justice to name only a few prominent concerns. Some have aspired to grant a salience and significance to “the field of environmental theory” that it basically does not yet truly have, but this emerging field is nonetheless quite significant.
Epicurus (341–270 BCE)
Authors: Roskam Geert
Published: August 2023

Epicurus was born on Samos as the child of Athenian colonists. In 323/2 he came to Athens to serve in the military for two years as an ephebe (together with Menander, the comic poet). During these years, Perdiccas forced the Athenian colonists to leave Samos, and Epicurus rejoined his parents in Colophon, where he received his philosophical instruction. After short stays in Mytilene on Lesbos (the home town of Hermarchus, his successor) and in Lampsacus (where he met his best friend, Metrodorus, and several others including Idomeneus, Leonteus, and Polyaenus), he finally arrived in Athens (in 307/6), where he acquired a large garden and a house and founded a philosophical community. In his garden, he enjoyed life together with like‐minded friends. Epicurus himself claimed to have lived unnoticed in Athens, together with Metrodorus, and he adds that they were not harmed at all by being unknown and almost unheard of. Yet several references to Epicurus in contemporary comic poets show that he had attracted at least a limited attention.
Epistemology
Authors: Hamati‐Ataya Inanna
Published: August 2023

Epistemology (from the Greek
epistēmē
meaning
knowledge
), also known as the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy that has traditionally concerned itself with the nature, sources, and limits of human knowledge. In this narrow sense, epistemology is a specific disciplinary specialty that does not relate directly to political thought. Political thinkers have, however, been concerned with the theory of knowledge, and epistemic questions have often taken center stage in the history of our discipline. Recent developments in epistemology, sociopolitical theory, and the sociology of knowledge have also highlighted the intimate connections between the nature, production, and meaning of knowledge on the one hand, and the structures and relations of interests and power that constitute the material and ideational context wherein knowledge is produced, on the other. To this extent, epistemology can be viewed as both a central
component
and
object
of political thought itself.
Equality
Authors: Illuzzi Michael J.
Published: August 2023

American and French revolutionaries in 1776 and 1789 used equality as a justification in the struggle to create democratic republics and contemporary social movements have used equality as a rallying cry in struggles against various forms of discrimination. Yet, despite its ubiquitous use and almost unanimous approval, the term “equality” is often ambiguous. To clarify the different uses of the concept, this entry explicates the debates over three central questions. (1) Who is included in membership and who is left outside? (2) Do people have equal human worth? (3) If all individual humans are equal in some fundamental ways, in what ways ought the just political or social community recognize this basic equality?
Equilibrium
Authors: Femia Joseph V.
Published: August 2023

“Equilibrium” is a familiar term in the physicochemical sciences, where it designates any unchanging condition or state of a system, resulting from the balancing or canceling out of the influences or processes to which it is subjected. A system is a complex of interdependent elements and relationships that forms a collective entity in some way separated from its environment. The relations between the different elements or variables in a system are capable of being represented and explained by mathematical functions, but these relations cannot be captured by conventional cause/effect analysis. Rather, a method of analysis involving the simultaneous variations of mutually dependent variables is necessary.
Ethnic Cleansing
Authors: Mulaj Klejda
Published: August 2023

A form of mass expulsion of targeted human groups, ethnic cleansing is a deliberate policy designed by, and pursued under, the leadership of a nation/ethnic community or with its consent, with the view to removing an “undesirable” indigenous population of a given territory on the basis of its ethnic, national, or religious origin, by using systematic force and/or intimidation. Unlike the practice it represents, the term “ethnic cleansing” is of relatively recent origin, deriving from the Yugoslav military vocabulary of the 1990s. Large‐scale ethnic cleansing may come close to genocide. However, in general, ethnic cleansing is not a euphemism for genocide. The former is primarily concerned with dispossession of targeted people whereas the latter is primarily concerned with their extermination.
Exchange Value
Authors: Buck Christopher
Published: August 2023

Exchange value is a concept of political economy that refers to a quantitative relationship which establishes an equivalence between qualitatively different commodities.
Existentialism, Philosophy of
Authors: Reynolds Jack
Published: August 2023

There is little consensus on the question of what existentialism is, and hence on the question of which thinkers should be labeled existentialists. Some see Blaise Pascal as an early existentialist thinker because he emphasizes the centrality of passion to human existence, and what he calls “reasons of the heart.” More commonly, it is thought that the existentialist tradition begins in the nineteenth century with philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, who both gave a lot of attention to the dangers of “herd” morality (and politics), and differently emphasized a philosophy of existence in the face of metaphysical system‐building that was, tacitly or otherwise, oriented around the idea of man as rational. But even G. W. F. Hegel, Kierkegaard's philosophical nemesis of sorts, has also been said to be an existentialist because he was the first to comprehend that “man is a place of unrest,” fundamentally oriented by desire, and hence not having any stable or pregiven identity. Jean‐Paul Sartre famously develops and emphasizes this when he says that existentialism may be best understood through the motto “existence precedes essence.” Sartre takes the human mode of existence to be fundamentally oriented toward that which is “not yet” (i.e., the future), whereas this is not the case for the existence of tables, chairs, pens, for which their essence precedes their existence: for something to be a pen, for example, it needs to be at least potentially able to perform the essential function of writing. And we should not forget that it was the thought of Edmund Husserl, an austere, almost scholastic phenomenologist, that famously turned Sartre “pale with emotion” because it gave him the tools to allow him to describe everyday life and existence in a philosophically rigorous fashion.
Fabianism
Authors: Grigsby Ellen
Published: August 2023

Fabianism is a school of democratic socialism originating in England in the nineteenth century. Organized in London in 1884, the Fabian Society consisted of middle‐class reformers, the most famous of whom included George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Sidney Webb (1859–1947), Beatrice Webb (1858–1943), and Annie Besant (1847–1933). Fabians advocated universal suffrage, the abolition of inherited parliamentary seats, nationalization of basic industries (e.g., railroads), municipal socialism, and progressive taxation of unearned income. Fabians decried the capitalist process of collecting income from “rent,” a broad category describing virtually any income ensuing from “idleness.” Through stringent taxation of rent, Fabians hoped to redistribute wealth and to reconfigure socioeconomic relations, that is, to tax out of existence an idle, exploitative, unproductive class.
Fall of Communism and End of History
Authors: W. Burns Timothy
Published: August 2023

The
end of history
is a concept developed by G. W. F. Hegel, according to whom the unplanned struggles of history have produced a progress of human consciousness that culminates in the final, rational state of humanity. The notion of such a historical progression of consciousness was adopted by Karl Marx, who however attributed progress to the
economic
history of humans. With the fall of the (Marxist) Soviet Union, the Hegelian notion was revived by Francis Fukuyama.
False Consciousness
Authors: Hamati‐Ataya Inanna
Published: August 2023

False consciousness is often used to refer to an individual's or a group's distorted perception of themselves, the world, or their social condition, that conceals from them some important realities they are subjected to. In this general sense, it can be understood as a psychological, cognitive, or sociological phenomenon, depending on the theories within which it is conceptualized. False consciousness as distorted perception can be related to Plato's “noble lie,” or to Francis Bacon's “idols,” and the term is explicitly used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1780
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
.
Federalist Papers
Authors: Hoffert Robert W.
Published: August 2023

If the uncivil and deforming partisanship common in contemporary political discourse discredits the appropriately polemical character of political theory, the
Federalist
gives polemics, arguments in opposition to those of others, an honorable form, a noble purpose, and conceptual vitality and depth. Under the name of “Publius” and in the context of concrete political choices and controversies,
The Federalist
engaged practical political alternatives and framed fundamental political principles in ways that are relevant to understanding political life in general and American political life in particular.
Feminist Political Theory
Authors: Tucker Ericka
Published: August 2023

Born out of the struggles of the feminist movements of the twentieth century, feminist political theory is characterized by its commitment to expanding the boundaries of the political. Feminism, as a political movement, works to fight inequality and the social, cultural, economic, and political subordination of women. The goal of feminist politics is to end the domination of women through critiquing and transforming institutions and theories that support women's subordination. Feminist political theory is a field within both feminist theory and within political theory that takes a feminist approach to traditional questions within political philosophy, contemporary and historical. In this entry, the nature of feminist political theory will be explored by asking two questions: what is feminist about feminist political theory, and what is specifically political about feminist political theory.
Filmer, Robert (1588–1653)
Authors: Jendrysik Mark S.
Published: August 2023

Robert Filmer was an English political theorist and pamphleteer. During the English Civil War and its immediate aftermath he published a number of anonymous works defending divine right monarchy and the patriarchal authority of kings and attacking social contract ideas. Notably he critiqued the ideas of Hobbes, Grotius, and Milton on popular sovereignty. Filmer's work represents one of the final expressions of a static and genetic understanding of politics. During the reigns of Charles II and James II his ideas became part of the rhetorical and ideological arsenal of English defenders of royal authority. He is most famous for his posthumously published workPatriarcha(1680), which was attacked by John Locke in the first of hisTwo Treatises of Government.
Fordism
Authors: Buck Christopher
Published: August 2023

Fordism refers to the specific innovations Henry Ford applied to the automobile industry at the beginning of the twentieth century as well as to the more general model of development associated with the postwar period of economic growth in capitalist countries which lasted until the early 1970s.
Foucault, Michel (1926–84)
Authors: Patton Paul
Published: August 2023

Foucault has had an extraordinarily wide‐ranging impact upon the social and political sciences since his untimely death in 1984. In 2007, according tothe Times Higher Education Supplement, he was the most cited author in the humanities. His concepts of knowledge, power, and the constitution of subjectivity have been taken up in disciplines as diverse as accountancy, geography, feminist, gay, and queer theory. In addition to his published works, he wrote many shorter articles and recorded many interviews on political issues of the day. His most important contributions to political theory lie in his discussions of power, especially after his lectures on liberal and neoliberal governmentality in 1978 and 1979.
Fourier, Charles (1772–1837)
Authors: Erreygers Guido
Published: August 2023

Charles Fourier was a largely self‐educated French social philosopher, known for his audacious plans for a better organization of society. Together with Robert Owen and Henri de Saint‐Simon he is considered as a protagonist of early (also called utopian) socialism.
Frankfurt School
Authors: Gandesha Samir
Published: August 2023

The Frankfurt School refers to the Frankfurt‐based Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) founded through a bequest by Marxist political scientist Felix Weil and which included Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Friedrich Pollock, Erich Fromm, and Leo Lowenthal. The Frankfurt School is synonymous with “critical theory,” representing a thoroughgoing reformulation of Marxism starting in the late 1920s and 1930s as articulated in Horkheimer's programmatic and influential essay “Critical and Traditional Theory” which was directed as much against the rising tide of social scientific positivism as it was against dogmatic, reductionist, and economistic forms of Marxism. Horkheimer also originated the systematic idea of a theoretically informed, empirically oriented, and interdisciplinary research program that drew upon the disciplines of political science, sociology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and art and aesthetics, seeking to understand the key social, political, and cultural transformations in the first three decades of the twentieth century.
Franklin, Benjamin (1706–90)
Authors: Billauer Barbara Pfeffer
Published: August 2023

Benjamin Franklin was the most well‐known American publisher, scientist, author, diplomat, political figure and econo‐political theorist of his day. In 1776, he became the first American ambassador to France and he is considered the first American diplomat. As a political theorist, Franklin championed the role of civic and personal virtues. Best known for his innovative community activities (e.g., creation of the Post Office, fire department, lending library) and technological inventions (e.g., bifocals and the lighting rod), Franklin's brilliant statesmanship led to treaties of comity and commerce with France that funded the Revolution. He also negotiated the Treaty of Paris of 1783 resulting in Britain's recognition of the United States as a sovereign power, and collaborated on the Declaration of Independence and the constitution of the United States. Franklin's contributions, however, transcended the merely pragmatic, the amusing (i.e.,Poor Richard's Almanacand satires written under assumed names), the abstractly theoretical (e.g., positing the mechanism of electrical charges), and the diplomatic.
Fraser, Nancy (1947–)
Authors: Olson Kevin
Published: August 2023

Nancy Fraser is an American philosopher and political theorist known for her pivotal role in second‐wave feminism, widely followed engagements with well‐known European and American thinkers, and important contributions to theories of justice, critical theory, and the critique of capitalism. She received a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Bryn Mawr College and completed her PhD in philosophy at the City University of New York. She has held academic positions in philosophy at the University of Georgia and Northwestern University, and in political science at the New School for Social Research, as well as a wide range of distinguished visiting appointments in the United States and Europe. Her influence has been felt well beyond the bounds of these fields, however, in the broad interdisciplinary currents that connect many of the humanities and social sciences.
Friendship
Authors: Digeser Paige
Published: August 2023

Friendship is ordinarily understood as a close interpersonal relationship based on feelings of mutual affection, care, concern, or respect. It tends to be associated with such values as loyalty, trust, honesty, sincerity, openness, good will, intimacy, and a desire to benefit the other for the other's sake. It is generally thought to be a chosen relationship, requiring a mutual recognition of the appropriate feelings, and consequently it is distinguishable from merely friendly actions in which persons do things together or for one another. Like the notion of love, friendship has inspired soaring, diverse, and sometimes conflicting ideals. As a brief sample of such accounts we can begin with Aristotle, for whom friendship emerges out of our nature as social beings and is most fully expressed between virtuous individuals. The first half of this entry focuses on philosophical issues raised by the concept of friendship and then it turns to various connections drawn between friendship and politics.
Fundamentalism, Religious
Authors: Goodine Bradley
Published: August 2023

Religious fundamentalism is a countercultural response to changes in society, especially with respect to the “secular modern world.” Fundamentalists call for a return to what they consider the core ideas of their religious system. They typically focus on the authority of sacred texts, as understood by strict, narrow interpretations, and are often known for their active involvement in the public sphere. While the term first applied to certain Protestant movements at the beginning of the twentieth century in the USA, the term has since been applied to religious movements in most of the world's major religious traditions.
Galbraith, John Kenneth (1908–2006)
Authors: Waligorski Conrad P.
Published: August 2023

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) was a reform liberal activist, economist, and public intellectual who identified with John Maynard Keynes's economics and public policy goals, but criticized neoclassical economics and Keynesian accommodation with neoclassical economics. He claimed conventional economics ignores interconnections between politics and economics, affluence, large corporations, power, poverty, inequality, and government's necessary role in a modern economy. In more than 30 books, scores of articles, and decades of congressional testimony, Galbraith expressed general propositions and principles while trying to influence public opinion and policy. Born in Canada, in 1931 he received a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and spent most of his academic career at Harvard University. Public positions included ambassador to India, 1961–63, advising presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and influencing Johnson's “war on poverty.”
Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand (1869–1948)
Authors: Dalton Dennis
Published: August 2023

Gandhi was best known as “Mahatma,” an honorific title meaning “Great Soul,” bestowed on him by people of India because of his reputation for self‐sacrifice and saintly conduct. The term is not usually given to politicians, but Gandhi earned it even before 1919 when he assumed leadership of the Indian struggle for independence from British colonial rule. Born on October 2, 1869 in the city of Porbandar on the western coast of India, his family was relatively affluent but of the vaisya caste which ranks third in the hierarchical order of Hindu society. He graduated from an anglicized high school in 1887 at the nearby town of Rajkot, having married four years earlier to Kasturbai Makanji (1869–1944) when they were both only 13. They eventually had four sons: Harilal (1888), Manilal (1892), Ramdas (1897), and Devadas (1900). As Gandhi makes clear in his autobiography, his personal life remained intimately interwoven with his career as a social and political reformer. His immediate family not only joined in his causes, but went to jail with him.
Gender and Sex
Authors: Hancock Ange‐Marie
Published: August 2023

The questions surrounding sex, gender, and their perceived or ideal roles in politics can be traced as far back as the origins of western political thought. Perceived differences between men and women have been attributed to a variety of origins as a justification for certain kinds of political relations between men, women, and their government. Moreover, the sphere of influence traditionally associated with men and the sphere of influence traditionally associated with women have been afforded differential material value based on two claims: first, the conventional contemporary wisdom regarding the origins of the differences, and, second, the extant role sex and later gender is expected to play in all aspects of human political life. This entry examines the evolution of conceptualizations of gender, explications of sex and gender differences and their origins, and the implications of both for classic questions of political theory, including conceptions of justice and equality, citizen–state relationship, and the “nature” of humanity and citizenship.
General Will
Authors: Williams David Lay
Published: August 2023

The general will is simultaneously one of the most celebrated and vilified concepts in modern political thought. As Patrick Riley has revealed, it had its origins as a theological concept in response to early modern questions surrounding soteriology, yet it was pregnant with political implications. Those political implications would have their greatest expression in the writings of Jean‐Jacques Rousseau. Through Rousseau's influence, the general will would find its way into the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, whereby it acquired infamous associations that made it the subject of spirited critiques in the nineteenth century, even as it remained in fashion in German political thought. Although it is less expressly the foundation of twentieth‐ and twenty‐first‐century political theories, its substantive values continue to inform and inspire both political criticism and political construction.
Genocide
Authors: Macleod Christopher
Published: August 2023

Genocide is the “denial of the right of existence of entire human groups.” In its archetypal form, it is an act of mass murder, committed with the aim of destroying a population on the grounds of their nationality, ethnicity, race, or religion. Genocide is outlawed under Article 6 of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, and “is generally taken to be amongst the most heinous of all acts, the “crime of crimes.”
Gleichschaltung
Authors: King Martha A. , King Jonathan S.
Published: August 2023

Gleichschaltung
, often rendered roughly as “coordination,” refers to an evolving legal, institutional, and cultural policy of the National Socialist regime of Germany (1933–1945) aimed at coordinating all aspects of German life with National Socialist ideology. Originally the term has a technical connotation (
Gleich
: same, equal;
Schaltung
: circuit, switch, wiring), as in the coordination of electrical devices to a uniform current or central switch. Like many terms adapted into the Nazi lexicon, it therefore had a euphemistic quality (the sense here being the coordination of subsidiary governments and German life in general to the ordering frequency of the regime).
Globalization
Authors: Steger Manfred B.
Published: August 2023

The English‐language origins of “globalization” can be traced back to the late 1920s but the term does not make its formal appearance until the 1951 edition of Webster's dictionary. Picked up by sociologist Roland Robertson in the early 1980s, “globalization” emerged in the early 1990s as a pivotal signifier in public debates relating to the expansion and intensification of social relations across world‐time and world‐space – the latest phase of a long historical process some thinkers like to characterize as “time–space compression.” “Globalization” surfaced as a buzzword because the tangibility and visibility of globally interrelated life called for a single word naming this interconnectedness. An analysis of some 8,000 newspapers, magazines, and reports worldwide attests to the tremendous acceleration of the frequency with which “globalization” was used. From a mere 2 in 1981, the number of items mentioning the term grew to 57,235 in 2001 and remained close to this level for the rest of the 2000s.
Gnosticism
Authors: Byrne William F.
Published: August 2023

The term “Gnosticism” originally described or classified certain religious movements or sects, primarily of late antiquity. In contemporary political theory the term is more frequently encountered as a characterization of certain political, social, or ideological phenomena, primarily of the modern and late‐modern world. No uniform practice exists regarding capitalization of the word or its forms.
Government
Authors: Donald Moon J.
Published: August 2023

Broadly speaking, to govern is to rule – to direct the actions of a body of people and to regulate their practices and forms of interaction– and the government is the institutions or system, through which a collectivity is ruled. In a broad sense, government is not political at least in a narrow sense of the term “political.” Thus, we speak of the government of a corporation (though nowadays a more common locution would be corporate governance) or ecclesiastical government. Often we use “government” to refer to the system of rule or type of regime, for example monarchical or republican government, and sometimes to refer to the individuals who occupy the most powerful decision‐making roles or offices. The idea of government is at the heart of political theory and the study of politics.
Governmentality
Authors: Sabadoz Cameron
Published: August 2023

Governmentality is a concept, developed by French theorist Michel Foucault, which refers to the “ensemble(s) formed by institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, calculations, and tactics,” that shape and enable the practices of power in a given context. Governmentality highlights the ways in which power relations are influenced by our underlying expectations of what causes society's various problems, as well as by our understandings of how best to secure the ends of government. The neologism's linking of government (
gouvernement
) and mentalities (
mentalités
), serves to underline how studying practices of power demands an investigation of the rationalities supporting them. According to Foucault, his objective with governmentality was “to determine the way in which the domain of the practice of government, with its different objects, general roles, and overall objectives, was established so as to govern in the best possible way.” Drawing upon this approach, Foucault explored how a specific “art of government,” operating according to certain assumptions, has become standard since the eighteenth century in most of the west.
Gramsci, Antonio (1891–1937)
Authors: Howarth David
Published: August 2023

Born in Ales in the province of Cagliari in Sardinia in 1891, Antonio Gramsci was a Marxist theorist and militant, who made a lasting theoretical contribution to Marxist and non‐Marxist political thought. Having completed his education at Turin University in 1915, Gramsci joined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and turned his hand to journalism. In the spring of 1919, along with Palmiro Togliatti and others, Gramsci helped found the New Order (L'Ordine Nuovo), which gave expression to the Council Movement that had taken root in the industrial cities of northern Italy. Two years later he and others broke with the PSI to found the Italian Communist Party (PCI), with Gramsci becoming its general secretary in 1924. As a result of his continuing political activities, Gramsci was arrested in Rome in November 1926. In accordance with a series of “exceptional laws” enacted by the fascist‐dominated Italian legislature, he was committed to solitary confinement at the Regina Coeli prison. Suffering almost continuous physical pain and psychic torment, he endured a ten‐year term of imprisonment. He died in April 1937 from a cerebral hemorrhage, only a few days after he was released from prison.
Grote, John (1813–66)
Authors: Sweet William
Published: August 2023

John Grote was born in Beckenham, Kent, England, on 5 May 1813. He was the brother of the historian and “philosophical radical” George Grote. In 1831, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, receiving a first‐class degree in mathematics and in classics (1835). A fellow of Trinity from 1837, he was ordained a priest (1844) in the Anglican church, and served as vicar at Trumpington, Cambridgeshire (1847–66). Grote succeeded William Whewell as Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge (1855–66), influencing a generation of students including Henry Sidgwick and John Venn. His health, however, was fragile and he died at the age of 53 on 21 August 1866 at Trumpington, leaving a large number of manuscripts which were edited and published posthumously.
Guattari, Félix (1930–92)
Authors: MacKenzie Iain
Published: August 2023

French psychoanalyst, philosopher, and activist who came to international prominence through his collaborative work with Gilles Deleuze: L'
Anti‐Oedipe: Capitalisme et Schizophrénie
(1972),
Kafka: Pour une Littérature Mineure
(1975),
Mille Plateaux: Capitalisme et Schizophrénie 2
(1980), and
Qu'est‐ce que le Philosophie?
(1991). He also wrote several important sole‐authored texts including:
Psychanalyse et Transversalité
(1972),
L'Inconscient machinique
(1979),
Révolution Moléculaire
(1980),
Cartographies Schizoanalytiques
(1989),
Les trois écologies
(1989), and
Chaosmose
(1992). During his life he was central to the radical psychiatric clinic La Borde, numerous political associations of the French left, the Italian Autonomia group, and from the 1980s he was heavily involved in ecological politics.
Habit
Authors: Livingston Alexander
Published: August 2023

In his famous essay on laughter Henri Bergson describes habit as “something mechanical encrusted upon the living.” What this “something” is and how it relates to living, and to political living in particular, have been contested topics in the history of political thought. Defined in the broadest terms, habit is the acquired predisposition to act in certain ways as a result of past experience. The force of habit is the compulsion to repeat and re‐enact past behavior. It invokes both positive associations with memory, time, and custom, as well as negative connotations of determinism, conformity, and confinement. The latter are the result of a philosophical suspicion of habit invited by modern political theory's project of establishing a strictly rational moral and political order. And yet, as Bergson and many others have demonstrated, including prominent Enlightenment figures like John Locke and David Hume, while concepts like rationality, autonomy, and will seem to be opposed to the mechanical nature of habit, it is impossible to imagine a distinctively human example of them without giving a central role to habit.
Happiness
Authors: Soni Vivasvan
Published: August 2023

Should happiness be an aim of public policy or legislation? Is it permissible for a state to take account of happiness when formulating its laws and policies? Is happiness the purpose or one of the purposes for constituting a polity? Indeed, is happiness even a political concept, or does it concern matters that are so private that they should remain beyond the reach of politics? This entry addresses these questions as simultaneously historical (on what principles has a state been constituted?) and normative (by what right can happiness be an aim of politics?).
Haraway, Donna J. (1944–)
Authors: Hsueh Vicki
Published: August 2023

Donna J. Haraway is an influential feminist theorist and philosopher of politics, gender, science, and technology. Her works have challenged longstanding assumptions about the nature of power, gender, and knowledge in scientific and industrial development, and have provoked new thinking on the role of technology, genetics, and evolution in contemporary political and social life.
Harrington, James (1611–77)
Authors: Sullivan Vickie B.
Published: August 2023

Born in Northamptonshire, England during the reign of King James I, James Harrington lived through the English civil wars to become a political thinker who wrote of both the desirability and the necessity of a republic to govern his homeland. In making his case, Harrington draws and comments on a large array of prior political thinkers, both ancient – such as Cicero, Aristotle, Livy, Polybius, and Plutarch – and modern – such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Francis Bacon; as well as on republics, both ancient – such as the commonwealth of Israel, Sparta, Rome – and modern – such as Venice, Holland, and Switzerland. Harrington's republican thought exerted a wide influence in England, France, and America. It had long garnered scholarly attention because of Harrington's distinctive materialist interpretation of political history: he declares that the manner in which the possession of land is distributed within a state dictates the type of government that a state can support.
Hart, H. L. A. (1907–92)
Authors: Gardner John
Published: August 2023

H. L. A. Hart was Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford from 1952 to 1969. Influenced in his early work by the “ordinary language” philosophy of J. L. Austin, Hart is widely credited with having revitalized Anglophone philosophy of law. In
The Concept of Law
(1961), he argues that a legal system is a system of rules which belong to that system because they meet conditions set by the system's “ultimate rule of recognition.” This rule is always customary, never legislated. It is made by the accumulated acts of officials (mainly judges) who think they are applying the rule of recognition but in the process gradually and accidentally develop it. This is sometimes said, not least by Hart himself, to be a “legal positivist” view. However, the label can mislead. “Legal positivism” is often associated with the idea that all law is legislated, that is, deliberately and explicitly made. Hart attacks this idea. Yet he agrees that all law is made. His point is that some law is made accidentally and/or implicitly.
Herodotus (5th century BCE)
Authors: Thompson Norma
Published: August 2023

Herodotus (5th centurybce), known as the “father of history” in the western world, was born in Halicarnassus (modern‐day Bodrum, Turkey).The Historyis his account of the Greco‐Persian wars which occurred in 490 and 480–479bceand which saw the city‐states of Athens and Sparta defeat the imperial armies under great kings Darius and Xerxes of Persia. Herodotus demonstrates that it is the compelling stories that people tell about themselves that become the core of their political community. He attends to questions of political regimes through his patterning of life stories rather than through abstract analysis. He accepts hearsay – stories true and untrue, myths, opinions – as vital evidence for explaining what happened in the past. His narrative not only captures the cultures and personalities of those living around the Mediterranean and Black Sea, but also serves as a direct cautionary message to Athens about its own imperial longings.
Hirschman, Albert O. (1915–2012)
Authors: Lawrence Andrew G.
Published: August 2023

Eclectic and original, Hirschman's writings – traversing economic history, development, political economy, and ideology – are pithy, jargon‐free, playfully antisectarian, and open to “self‐subversion” (the author's subsequent critique and modification).
Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679)
Authors: Schulman Alex
Published: August 2023

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes was born into the middling sector of provincial Malmesbury, the son of a minor clergyman (an alcoholic who left his family) and a farmer's daughter. “My mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear,” he wrote, locating his birth pangs in the panic that gripped England in 1588 as the Spanish Armada approached. Indeed, the political experience of fear, its causes and consequences, would be a central concern of his masterpieceLeviathan(1651). Hobbes's basic project, as he outlines it in bothDe civeandLeviathan, is to make the study of collective human affairs more like a science – “science” not only in the sense of a coherent body of knowledge but in the (then) more contested sense of a methodical study that could produce infallibly demonstrable results.
Hobhouse, Leonard Trelawny (1864–1929)
Authors: Freeden Michael
Published: August 2023

L. T. Hobhouse was a social philosopher and journalist and one of the most important liberal theorists of the early twentieth century. He was the first professor of sociology at the London School of Economics as well as for many years a prodigious leader writer and book reviewer for the important liberal newspaper, the
Manchester Guardian
. This typified the ease with which Hobhouse moved between high theory and concrete involvement in the social and political issues of the day, reflecting his belief in the unity of thought and action and the interconnectedness of social phenomena.
Holism
Authors: Ralston Shane J.
Published: August 2023

Holismis the notion that all of the elements in a system, whether physical, biological, social, or political, are interconnected and therefore should be appreciated as a whole. Consequently, the meaning or function of the total system is irreducible to the meaning or function of one or more of the system's constituent elements. The termholismwas coined by South African statesman and scholar Jan Smuts. Etymologically, it comes from a Greek root meaning “total,” “whole,” “entire,” or “everything.” In political thought, the idea is commonly associated with organicism, the view that the state is a living whole (the so‐called “body politic”) and therefore studies of its structure and functions should be treated systematically rather than piecemeal. While there are many varieties of holism, holists generally believe that the whole or system has priority to the parts or elements. As will be seen, holism has methodological, explanatory, multiculturalist, monist, antifoundationalist, and antirepresentationalist modes, and plays a prominent role in postmodernist, American pragmatist, modernization, and systems theories.
Holmes, Jr., Oliver Wendell (1841–1935)
Authors: Carrese Paul
Published: August 2023

Oliver Wendell Holmes was an American jurist, justice of the US Supreme Court (1902–32), and a founder of “legal realism” – defining law as a strictly historical construct buffeted by politics, without grounding in natural law or impartial logic. Holmes led a transformation of both American common law and judicial power; his writings and judicial opinions thus inform contemporary debates in America (and beyond) about judicial activism and constitutional interpretation. Holmes and his supporters redefined common law, by the mid‐twentieth century, as “case law” and “judge‐made law,” thus as more relevant for social reform and progress.
Human Rights
Authors: James Stephen
Published: August 2023

Human rights – strong, universal moral claims for a dignified life, possessed by people simply on the basis that they are human beings – emerged, developed, and evolved in different ways, at different paces, and in different parts of the world through struggle, contemplation, and critique over the last eight centuries. Human rights have a significant place in political thought for a number of reasons: since the eighteenth century they have been models for bills of rights and for the limitation of government in the liberal constitutional tradition; they have been part of progressive social movements against racism and sexism, especially since the twentieth century; they have been pivotal to debates in political and moral philosophy (for example, over whether torture is objectively and universally wrong or simply relative to culture); and they have contributed to the development of international law's modest restraint – for example, through international humanitarian and criminal law – of state sovereignty. Human rights are also crucial matters for debate between international relations theorists such as realists (who tend to consider them disguises for national self‐interest), liberals (who seek to protect them through interstate agreements), and cosmopolitans (who use them to try to loosen the bonds of national sovereignty and humanize global politics).
Humanitarianism
Authors: James Stephen
Published: August 2023

“Humanitarianism,” a word that came into common use in England in the nineteenth century, describes a family of concepts, principles, convictions, beliefs, emotions, practices, and organizations associated with saving human lives and reducing human suffering in contexts as diverse as war, genocide, famine, and natural disaster. Classically, humanitarianism is about the provision of life‐saving relief to anyone in need regardless of politics, religion, and ideology. When assisting those in need – at home, or more often abroad – humanitarians have generally aimed to be non‐partisan (if not apolitical), as well as egalitarian and cosmopolitan.
Hutcheson, Francis (1694–1746)
Authors: Hill Lisa
Published: August 2023

Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) was Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1729 to 1746. He is generally acknowledged as the “father” of the Scottish Enlightenment but his influence was not limited to Scotland. His thought informed the political thinking of the American Revolution partly because he endorsed the radical argument that, should government abuse its entrusted power, the people have the right of resistance. Hutcheson was also an early critic of slavery: in the original state of nature all are equal and since the desire for “liberty … property and … safety” is universal, there is “no right to assume power over others, without their consent.” These ideas made their way into American abolitionist discourses and underline that Hutcheson's political philosophy was more radical than that of his Scottish “moral sense” successors.
Ideal Types
Authors: Marcelino Daniel
Published: August 2023

The ideal types constitute one of the most important methodological legacies from Max Weber (1864–1920). As Weber made clear, ideal types are essentially schemes of conceptualization that serve as methodological instruments for comparing, classifying, and measuring social and historical phenomena. The word itself (Idealtypus) was borrowed from Georg Jellinek – a historian and Weber's compatriot. Nonetheless, Weber equipped the term with further constraints in order to avoid its normative sense. Hence, the word “ideal” in Weber's writings has nothing to do with the contemporary usage of the adjective “ideal” itself; rather it refers to the idea, or an analytical construct that does not express evaluations of any sort about the reality.
Identity and the Self
Authors: Lebow Richard Ned
Published: August 2023

The search for identities and efforts to instantiate and preserve them have always been an important motivation for individual and collective behavior. In the postwar era, the question of identity has become much more prominent in popular as well as academic discourses. Despite some theoretical analogies and overlaps, theories of personal identity are nonetheless distinct from more recent concerns over group identity as this has played out in the politics of identity and recognition. Most westerners do appear to believe that they are unique selves and find fulfillment by discovering and developing their inner selves. Identity and its study have many facets that cut across disciplines and subfields within them.
Imperialism
Authors: Smits Katherine
Published: August 2023

Imperialism refers to the extension by states of their domination and control beyond their borders, over other societies and peoples. This has primarily been achieved in history by acquiring territory through military force, and forcibly maintaining control over subjugated populations. The term empire comes from the Latinimperium: supreme military and executive power. However imperial control has also been maintained by the inculcation in both ruling and subordinated peoples of beliefs about the legitimacy, justice, and value of that rule. Imperialism is related to, and is sometimes understood to be synonymous with, colonialism. This latter term, however, usually refers more specifically to the practice of establishing colonies or outposts in imperially acquired territories, composed of civilian settlers and military forces. In recent times the terms neo‐imperialism or neocolonialism are used to mean the exertion of political, economic, and cultural influence (“cultural imperialism”) beyond state borders, over other cultures and societies.