bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Averroes (Abu al‐Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmed ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd) (1126–98)
Authors: DiPasquale David
Published: August 2023

Averroes was arguably the last great Muslim representative of the main tradition of political philosophy that was founded by Abu Naṣr Alfarabi in Baghdad sometime during the tenth century of the Common Era. This tradition, which emphasized the place of the philosopher in the political community and therefore also the questionable status of philosophy or science in any city or nation, moved in two separate although inter‐related directions following the death of Alfarabi in 950. Ibn SĪnā (Lat. Avicenna; d. 1098) adapted Alfarabi's somewhat neutral philosophical blueprint to fit a more strictly Islamic context and spoke forcefully and persuasively in the eastern part of the Muslim empire about the central importance of political science and its ability to comprehend the meaning of prophetic inspiration. In particular, he stressed the manner in which the books of Plato and Aristotle on the subject of prophecy and the divine law best explain the phenomenon of law more generally and Islamic law in particular. In Muslim‐ruled western or
maghrebĪ
lands during the twelfth century, Averroes renewed the Farabian approach by refocusing philosophy on political concerns and in particular on the ability of philosophy to justify itself before the tribunal of the law and its interpreters.
Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–86)
Authors: Kruks Sonia
Published: August 2023

Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris, where she lived for almost her entire life. She came from a downwardly mobile middle‐class family, and her father allowed her to pursue a higher education only because he could not provide her with a dowry. She was one of the few women in France in the 1920s to receive the
agrégation
(the highest teaching qualification) in philosophy. Beauvoir was the author of an array of philosophical and philosophically informed essays, as well as novels and volumes of autobiography, most of which either directly or indirectly address political matters. She is best known as the author of
The Second Sex
, a book often described as the “Bible” of the late twentieth‐century, “second wave,” feminist movement.
The Second Sex
was published in 1949, at a time when women had only just received the vote and there was no significant feminist movement in France. Many of the main theoretical debates within Anglophone feminist theory since the 1970s have been fought out in critical engagement with Beauvoir's book.
Beccaria, Cesare Bonesana (1738–94)
Authors: McLendon Michael Locke
Published: August 2023

Cesare Beccaria is the most famous member of the Milanese Enlightenment and is commonly regarded as the father of the eighteenth‐century prison reform movement. The foundations of his thought are social contract theory and utilitarianism, two rival strands of liberalism. From these two commitments, he attempts to remake society based on rationality, rule of law, equality, individual freedom, and humaneness.
Bellamy, Edward (1850–98)
Authors: S. Jendrysik Mark
Published: August 2023

American utopian author, journalist, and political activist, Bellamy is most noted for his novel
Looking Backward
:
2000–1887
(1888). In this work Bellamy presents an alternative to capitalist society, grounded in the “religion of solidarity.” Bellamy's utopia is based upon the militarized organization of society into a single “industrial army” combined with a state monopoly on the means of production and distribution. Incentives in the new society are not monetary but instead based on the esteem and gratitude of the community toward the productive individual. In stark contrast to many utopian authors, Bellamy projects a future in which consumerism is natural and necessary. Bellamy would publish a sequel to
Looking Backward
,
Equality
(1897), which elaborated on his ideas.
Black Political Thought
Authors: Deardorff Michelle D.
Published: August 2023

Originating from the institution of slavery, black political thought has been framed by the historical and social experiences of the African American freedom struggle in the USA. The desire for liberty from enslavement provided initial parameters for the earliest political thinkers. In the years after the Constitution was amended and slavery abolished, black theorists wrestled to define the meanings of liberty and equality for newly freed peoples. Political philosophers and activists struggled against white supremacy and its tools of slavery, state‐sanctioned kidnappings, lynchings, peonage, and segregation all designed to deny the black community property rights, full citizenship, and personal liberty. These attempts to control black bodies and black identities provide the backdrop for the queries and values that drive Afro‐American political thought. The necessity of challenging social and governmental oppression founded on racial characteristics ensures that this intellectual tradition bridges both political theory and activism through a proclivity for social change.
Bloom, Allan (1930–92)
Authors: Cantor Paul A.
Published: August 2023

Allan Bloom was a political theorist, who developed many of his ideas in the course of commentary on the history of political philosophy, from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle to Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. He was educated at the University of Chicago, where he was chiefly influenced by Leo Strauss. He taught at Yale, Cornell, the University of Toronto, and, finally, the University of Chicago, where he became the first John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor. Throughout his career, he worked to revive the ancient understanding of political phenomena as a legitimate alternative to modern thinking, while offering a critical analysis of contemporary movements such as historicism, relativism, and nihilism.
Bodin, Jean (1530–96)
Authors: Beaulac Stéphane
Published: August 2023

Generally considered the father of “sovereignty,” French theorist and jurist Jean Bodin was born in Angers, ca. 1530, and died of the plague in 1596, during the last phase of the sixteenth‐century European wars of religion. He read law at the University of Toulouse, became anavocatat the Parliament of Paris and entered the royal inner circle with the Duke of Alençon. In his masterpiece,Les Six Livres de la République(first published in 1576), he proposed what became, and still is, the contemporary articulation of the meta‐concept of sovereignty, at least in its internal manifestations. Indeed, he provided for a highly influential definition of sovereignty, which shaped the modern understanding of politics and governance all over the world.
Body Politic
Authors: Schneck Stephen F.
Published: August 2023

Likely coined by John of Salisbury in his 1159
Policraticus
, the term body politic refers both to an ancient understanding of political order as a natural, corporate whole and to more recent analyses of human bodies as subject to political order.
Bolshevism
Authors: Lindsey Jason Royce
Published: August 2023

Bolshevism is a political doctrine associated with the Bolshevik party led by Vladimir Lenin. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Lenin was a leading member of the Marxist‐oriented Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). However, his theoretical work and reflection on political developments in Russia led him and his supporters to break with the party during the RSDLP's congress of 1903. Although the Bolsheviks were a breakaway faction from the larger RSDLP, their name means “majority” or “of the majority” in the Russian language. The Bolsheviks appropriated this name after winning a critical procedural vote at the party congress. This name also reflected the party's desire to be seen as the representatives of the vast working class or proletariat.
Brown, Wendy (1955–)
Authors: Anker Elisabeth
Published: August 2023

Wendy Brown is a political theorist best known for her critiques of power in contemporary political orders. Her research examines how various forms of power obstruct democratic politics, entrench economic inequality, and inhibit desires for freedom and democracy. Her work integrates three main vectors of political theory: Frankfurt School critical theorists, who combine the work of Marx and Freud to examine the cultural, structural, and psychological reasons why people do not revolt against domination; Michel Foucault's analysis of power, via Nietzsche, in which power does not only repress but produces ideas, institutions, and political subjects; and Sheldon Wolin's pressing of canonical political thought to examine the difficulties of democratic politics under capitalism. Brown reworks their insights to argue both that unfreedom is often the effect of the very political formations supposed to enable freedom.
Buber, Martin (1878–1965)
Authors: Biemann Asher D.
Published: August 2023

Martin Buber, born in Vienna, 1878, is best known for his dialogical thought (I and Thou, 1922), editions of Chassidic lore, and translation of the Hebrew Bible into German (together with Franz Rosenzweig). He also emerged as a significant figure in social and political thought of his time. He studied at the universities of Vienna, Leipzig, and Berlin, most notably under Wilhelm Dilthey and Georg Simmel, who had a lasting influence on Buber's social thought. Buber's earliest political writings reflect his brief involvement in the nascent Zionist movement under Theodor Herzl before withdrawing from the movement in 1902. Buber understood Zionist politics as “cultural politics,” whereby “culture,” as he wrote in 1903, could not be conceived as merely “spiritual” but meant the synthetic and organized striving of productivity for freedom.
Cambridge School
Authors: Boyd Richard
Published: August 2023

The “Cambridge School” refers to one of the most influential methodological approaches to the study of the history of political thought. Although there are now adherents of this methodology in many universities around the world, the Cambridge School owes its name to the fact that some of its original and most influential theoreticians – most notably, Peter Laslett, John Dunn, Quentin Skinner, and J. G. A. Pocock – were affiliated with Cambridge University in England in the 1950s and 1960s. There are significant differences among practitioners of the Cambridge approach, but several commonalities distinguish this methodology from other familiar ways in which scholars attempt to understand historical political thinkers.
Cavell, Stanley (1926–)
Authors: Norris Andrew
Published: August 2023

Stanley Cavell is more commonly considered a philosopher of aesthetics, ethics, and knowledge than of politics, and it is only recently that the political aspects of his work have received sustained scholarly attention. Cavell began his career working on the ordinary language philosophy of his teacher, J. L. Austin, before writing, among other things: an influential book on Thoreau'sWalden; the first major philosophical consideration of film; a strikingly original collection of essays on Shakespeare; a study of what Cavell terms the Hollywood “comedy of remarriage” and another of what he names “the melodrama of the unknown woman”; a large number of important essays on Ralph Waldo Emerson; and, his magnum opus,The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy(1979).
Checks and Balances
Authors: Dry Murray
Published: August 2023

Checks and balances are institutional devices intended to prevent government from abusing its power. Though the notion is commonly associated with the doctrine of separation of powers, scholars disagree over the precise relationship between the two terms. This account reflects the position that the separation of powers describes a single doctrine, whose purpose is to provide adequate checks on any government branch or department.
Christian Democracy
Authors: ten Napel Hans‐Martien
Published: August 2023

The origins of Christian democracy as an international political movement go back to the second half of the nineteenth century, when a number of (predominantly) Catholic confessional parties were founded in Europe. Generally speaking, these parties were opposed to liberal democracy as it had developed until then. Later on, in particular the tradition of modern Catholic social teaching, with the encyclicalsRerum Novarum(1891) andQuadragesimo Anno(1931) as milestones, has been an ideological influence. Yet, by organizing themselves into confessional parties, lay Catholics paradoxically also succeeded in achieving increasing independence vis‐à‐vis their church.
Christine de Pizan (1364–1430?)
Authors: Campbell Karlyn Kohrs
Published: August 2023

As a political theorist, Christine de Pizan (1364–1430?) was strategic. Although most avenues for action were closed to her, she found ways to disrupt the political and social realities of her times in two key works, the
Book of the City of Ladies
(1404) and the
Treasury of the City of Ladies
(1405). She became a professional writer in France, daring because for women like Christine, the options were marriage or the nunnery. Christine devoted her efforts to constituting a community, a “Kingdom of Femininity” within which women would be valued and respected. Her “City of Women” was a moral and intellectual edifice of the spirit, a virtual city, in which women would learn to refute attacks and of women who could be models for their lives as mothers, sisters, wives, and widows.
Citizen/Citizenship
Authors: Ron Amit
Published: August 2023

The term citizen is derived from the Greek
polites
and the Latin
civis
. In the most general sense, a citizen is a member of a political unit – it can be a city‐state, a nation state, a supernational organization, or one can be viewed as a citizen of the world – and citizenship refers to the basic terms of this membership. Conceptions of citizenship differ in the way they understand the very purpose of political communities and the terms of membership in them.
City‐State
Authors: Betti Daniel
Published: August 2023

As the Greek Dark Ages lifted in the seventh centurybc, a distinct form of political organization arose: the city‐state. Translated from the Greek work polis, the city‐state became the common form of political organization among the Greeks. Generally, the geography of the polis centered on an urban area while encompassing nearby farmland. Thus the Greek city‐state is distinct in that its membership lived and owned the farmland but met for the purposes of government in the urban center. These political organizations exhibited a fierce autonomy. The Greek city‐states were socio‐economic units that defended their land and sovereignty with the force of arms. Indeed, the city‐state is the smallest unit of political organization. Though varying in size, the city‐state does not reach the territorial extent or population numbers of the nation‐state or empire. In essence, the city‐state is a small, localized organization of people who share a common culture and participate in the decision‐making and war‐making activities of the whole. For its cultural cohesion and participatory form of government, the city‐state still captures the affections of contemporary communitarians and democratic theorists.
Civic Virtue
Authors: Lovett Frank
Published: August 2023

Any discussion of civic virtue must begin with the meaning of virtue in general. A virtue, on the standard view at least since Aristotle, is a settled disposition exhibiting type‐specific excellence. Thus, for example, since the central purpose of a knife is to cut things, it is a virtue in knives to be sharp. Similarly, one might argue, since sociability is an important characteristic of human beings, it is a human virtue to be disposed to form friendships. To be a genuine virtue, of course, this disposition must be firmly settled or resilient: much as it would detract from the virtuosity of an exceptionally sharp knife if its edge dulled after a single use, so too would it detract from the virtue of a human being if he or she were only a fair weather friend. Civic virtues are a species of human virtue – specifically, they are those settled dispositions in human beings that exhibit the excellences relevant to membership in a political community. Put another way, civic virtue is simply the character of a good citizen.
Civil Religion
Authors: Ritter Ted
Published: August 2023

Civil religion is a belief system that draws upon the religious ideologies and common historical experiences of a people. This belief system unifies diverse peoples into one people and interprets and gives meaning to their shared experience by putting that existence into a common frame of reference. It consists of a collection of ideas, symbols, and observances that validate the civil institutions in a society and binds the people together. Various scholars, sociologists, and theologians have used terms such as public religion, civic faith, religion of the republic, common faith, and the American way to analyze and explain this concept.
Civil War
Authors: Melander Erik
Published: August 2023

Civil war is armed fighting between the government of a state and one or more opposition groups concerning the government and/or territory of the state. Civil wars are distinct from interstate wars, that is, wars between two or more states. The criterion that the government of a state is one of the warring sides is necessary to distinguish civil war from other forms of organized violence within states, occurring between nonstate actors. In practice, the government side may be very weak and lack control outside the capital, and which side constitutes the government may shift during the conflict. Civil wars are political conflicts about central elements of the state, which is why the definition requires that there is a clear issue of contention, or incompatibility, concerning the government, that is, the type of political system, the replacement of the government, or the change of its composition; or over territory, that is, the constitutional status of a specified territory within the state (secession or autonomy). That armed fighting is part of the definition of civil war ensures that civil war is different from one‐sided killings of civilians, such as genocides. For political strife to qualify as civil war the level of fighting must be substantial.
Class
Authors: Abbas Asma
Published: August 2023

While the term “class” is commonly used to designate any taxonomic grouping that is based on a shared attribute, it becomes part of the vocabulary of politics when it denotes aggregates of people distinguished from others either on the basis of the functions performed by a group (within a society construed as a system of functions), or on the basis of economic or social value or power that belongs to members of different groups (each class corresponding to a different level within a society visualized as a hierarchy). Wealth and power are the most common dividing lines.
Clericalism
Authors: Pogorelc Anthony J.
Published: August 2023

Clericalism is a social phenomenon in which elites exercise domination over members and structures in religious institutions. While many religions define their purposes as the promotion of beliefs, rituals, morality, and community, they are also organizations and the locus of power struggles, which can surmount professed goals. Forms of clericalism are found across world religions. A product of organizational development, clericalism establishes social distinctions between officials and members, constructing the former as superior and the latter as subordinate. The priestly and prophetic elements in religions can legitimate clericalism. In sacramental religions, the powers attributed to priests to mediate between members and the divine, gives them special status. In religions focused on sacred texts the establishment of clerics as official interpreters, because of their higher learning and competence, gives them a position of superiority.
Coercion
Authors: Viehoff Daniel Viehoff and Juri
Published: August 2023

Claims about coercion play a significant role in some of the most important questions in political philosophy: most ordinary citizens as well as philosophers think that the exercise of power by the state and other political institutions is coercive, and as such requires special justification. Political philosophy, it has been assumed, must assess both the truth of that claim and its relevance for whether or not states, in general, can be justified. Whether the state (or its law) isalwaysornecessarilycoercive is a central question in the philosophy of law. Under what conditions a state exercising coercive power can be justified is the question that informs all major works in the social contract tradition since Thomas Hobbes'sLeviathan.
Commercial Society
Authors: Turner Brandon P.
Published: August 2023

The term “commercial society” refers to attempts to theorize systematically the matrix of relationships and behaviors that emerged during the processes of rapidly evolving labor and goods markets, rising standards of living, and shifting class relations which occurred in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These processes occupied many of the pre‐eminent thinkers of the day, roused new lines of social scientific inquiry – in particular, what is today referred to as the study of political economy – and inspired many of the great figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. The most pre‐eminent of these theorists, Adam Smith, argued in book I of
The Wealth of Nations
(1776) that commercial society arises when the division of labor is “thoroughly established,” forcing highly specialized laborers to sell and barter their labor surplus in an increasingly intricate marketplace: “every man thus lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant.” In addition to the division of labor, Smith and others pointed to a system of robust property rights, a rigorous application of the rule of law, relatively broad freedom of movement for economic actors (especially laborers), and expanding domestic and international markets as the hallmarks of commercial society.
Commonwealth
Authors: Steeves Rouven
Published: August 2023

The word commonwealth is a compound of the Old English words “common” and “weal,” which entails a more classic understanding of “wealth” as “well‐being.” A commonwealth in its most general sense therefore involves a conception of common and public well‐being with respect to various forms of human association, without being tied to any particular form of government. There exists no comprehensive and systemic definition, though in both classic and early modern formulations the term never fails to evoke a sense of social, political, or sociopolitical community concerned with public well‐being – the common‐wealth. Only with the political turmoil plaguing seventeenth‐century Europe, especially in England, does the term begin to become a point of controversy with respect to its meaning and implications for sociopolitical order.
Condorcet, Marie‐Jean, Marquis de (1743–94)
Authors: Hendrickson Randal R.
Published: August 2023

A celebrated mathematician and philosopher, Condorcet was permanent secretary of the French Academy of Sciences (from 1776), Inspector General of the Mint under Louis XVI, and, uniquely among the
philosophes
, a politician during the French Revolution. He argued in various works for laissez‐faire policies, for women's rights and the rights of Protestants, for reform of the criminal justice system, for free public education, and for the abolition of slavery. Condorcet was the last important figure of the French Enlightenment.
Confederacy
Authors: Miller Geoffrey
Published: August 2023

Confederacy, as used in political theory, denotes an association of political units joined for specific purposes but otherwise retaining rights of sovereignty. Confederacy is more centralized than military alliances or free‐trade agreements but weaker than federal systems such as the United States of America or the Federal Republic of Germany.
Conservatism
Authors: Coole Diana
Published: August 2023

Conservatism may variously be defined as a political attitude or ethos that is marked by antipathy toward radical change and a pragmatic orientation to political practice; as a doctrine predicated on a set of principles in which tradition and authority figure prominently; as an ideology that is mobilized against competitors, most notably socialism, and as a political label that has been adopted by political parties on the right of the political spectrum. While this fourfold summary provides a serviceable overview of conservatism it inevitably glosses over the diversity of conservative positions that emerged historically in different countries, especially with regard to some new directions taken politically since the 1970s. It nonetheless provides a useful way to approach this significant political concept.
Constant, Benjamin (1767–1830)
Authors: Neidleman Jason
Published: August 2023

Born in Switzerland in 1767, Benjamin Constant's inauguration into the political and literary world began in earnest in 1794 after he entered into a personal and intellectual relationship with Germaine de Staël, the widely published author and daughter of French minister of finance Jacques Necker. With de Stael's encouragement and the patronage of the great revolutionary political theorist, Joseph Emmanuel Sieyès, Constant set out to craft a defense of liberal principles that could accommodate the new republican impulse while avoiding the usurpations of a Robespierre or a Bonaparte.
Constitutionalism
Authors: Lieberman Jethro K.
Published: August 2023

Constitutionalism is a central and protean political concept that for more than two millennia has never surrendered to a formal, fixed definition. In its earliest incarnation, constitutionalism was taken merely as descriptive fact. To the ancient Greeks, the constitution meant “the state as it actually is.” Today the idea of constitutionalism comprises a cluster of particular jurisprudential and sociological attributes, summed up as “limited government under a higher law.” Manifestly, not every state claiming independent sovereignty can lay claim to the constitutional mantle.
Contestation
Authors: Maxwell Lida
Published: August 2023

Contestation became a prominent term in political theory in the 1970s and 1980s. Arising primarily in the thought of poststructuralists and Anglo‐American agonistic theorists and inspired by new appropriations of Nietzsche and Anglo linguistic philosophy, contestation is a term used by theorists to refer to activities that resist political and theoretical claims to final, universal, or absolute solutions to political dilemmas.
Cornell, Drucilla (1950–)
Authors: Archer Crina
Published: August 2023

Drucilla Cornell is professor of political science, women's studies, and comparative literature at Rutgers University and National Research Foundation Professor in Customary Law, Indigenous Ideals and the Dignity Jurisprudence at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Cornell was an organizer of the series of conferences on deconstruction and justice with Jacques Derrida, held at Cardozo Law School in 1989, 1990, and 1993, that are often cited as influential on Derrida's philosophical turn to ethics. Within and across the disciplinary boundaries of gender studies, political theory, law, and philosophy, Cornell's feminist legal theory has altered the terrain of contemporary intellectual debates that valorize or dismiss deconstructive critical theory for its corrosive effects on the rights and values of the tradition of political liberalism. By contrast, Cornell proposes that deconstruction is an ethical project, capable of supporting the promotion of liberal ideals that she deems necessary for the advancement of feminist legal and political reforms.
Counter‐Reformation
Authors: Bireley Robert
Published: August 2023

The term Counter‐Reformation, Catholic Reform, or, now, early modern Catholicism, designates the period in the history of Catholicism from roughly 1500 to 1700. Three principal features of this period stand out to which the political thought of the Counter‐Reformation responded: the emergence of the modern state, especially in France, England, and Spain; the expansion of Europe into Asia and America with the beginnings of the Portuguese and Spanish colonial empires; and the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation with Luther's posting of the
Ninety‐Five Theses
in Wittenberg in 1517.
Coup d'État
Authors: Pathmanand Ukrist
Published: August 2023

A coup d’état is different from a revolution in that it is not aimed at effecting change in the social or political structure but simply seeks to replace one group of leaders with another group. A coup can be successful when those people loyal to the legitimate government are removed and subsequently replaced.
Critical Realism
Authors: Joseph Jonathan
Published: August 2023

Critical realism is a branch of realist philosophy closely associated with Roy Bhaskar. It follows realist and scientific realist arguments in favor of a mind‐independent reality developing a distinctive position insofar as it connects its arguments to a particular view of the world as multilayered or stratified combined with a critical understanding of human knowledge and practice.
Customary Law
Authors: Mot Jef De , Parisi Francesco
Published: August 2023

The process of formation of customary law is quite unique and different from the process of formation of other sources of law. According to traditional theories, an enforceable custom emerges from two formative elements: (1) a quantitative element consisting of a general practice; and (2) a qualitative element reflected in the belief that the practice reflects a legal obligation. Unlike mere social norms, customary laws are treated by some legal systems as proper sources of law and enjoy the centralized enforcement and adjudication generally reserved to legislation, judge‐made law, or binding international treaties. Parisi and Fon have described the process of customary law formation as a form of “direct legislation through action,” which differs from traditional lawmaking processes in that the resulting rules emerge gradually through the actions of the subjects of the law rather than through political deliberation or adjudication.
Cynicism
Authors: Bilakovics Steven
Published: August 2023

Cynicism denotes a posture of disrespect toward the leading persons, practices, institutions, and values of society. Originating in the fifth centurybce, the term is often analyzed by distinguishing between ancient Cynicism and modern cynicism, which paradoxically signify two very different, even contradictory, viewpoints. However certain continuities enable one to examine cynicism as a coherent concept. Ancient Cynicism was a way of life guided by the authority of nature (phusis) over the human animal and an attendant irreverence regarding the authority of social conventions (nomos). Predominantly Socratic in lineage and exemplified by Diogenes of Sinope, Cynicism held that virtue (aretê) is necessary and sufficient for human flourishing (eudaimonia) and that the virtuous life is inscribed in the simple truths and freedoms of physical nature. Modern cynicism is the opinion that certain facts of human nature and modern reality dominate social values. Associated above all with Machiavelli and Hobbes, cynicism maintains the harsh truth that the human animal is ultimately motivated by the desire for power and the freedoms it affords, regardless of any naive idealism or sentimentalism to the contrary. Ancient Cynics thus disrespect social norms because they are ethically deficient, and modern cynics because they are materially inefficacious, lacking real power. Both strands nonetheless proceed in parallel by collapsing the distinctions between public and private life and radicalizing the distinctions between speech and action.
Dante (Durante degli Alighieri) (1265–1321)
Authors: Macfarland Joseph C.
Published: August 2023

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) is author of
The Divine Comedy
, an epic poem describing a journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven. In this work, as well as in his principal political work, the
Monarchia
, Dante acutely analyzes the political figures of his age and articulates a political vision which advocates a strict separation of church and state and the vigorous rule of a cosmopolitan empire. This political vision anticipates modern teachings regarding church and state and the cosmopolitan organization of humankind, although it articulates these doctrines on Aristotelian grounds, and perhaps on tacit theological grounds, that are foreign to analogous modern political doctrines.
Debord, Guy (1931–94)
Authors: Jappe Anselm
Published: August 2023

French revolutionary theoretician Guy Debord cofounded the Situationist International (SI) in 1957, a politico‐artistic vanguard that went from its original, surrealism‐inspired project of revolutionizing art and life to the search for new ways of totally overcoming capitalist society. Among Debord's early interlocutors were Henri Lefebvre, with whom he exchanged ideas on everyday life and the city as theatres of social change, and the Socialisme ou Barbarie group where the focus was on the critique of the bureaucratic degeneration afflicting the workers’ movement. Through their practical and theoretical activity the SI fomented the May 1968 uprising in Paris, leaving their radical imprint on it in terms of language, style, and content. After dissolving the SI in 1972, Debord, who had always led an “antispectacular” life distant from mass media and institutions, devoted himself to writing and filmmaking. His work has gained wider recognition posthumously.
Decisionism
Authors: Cristi Renato
Published: August 2023

“Decisionism,” a term of art coined by Carl Schmitt in his
Political Theology
, refers to the rule of a personal will as opposed to the rule of impersonal norms. Decisionism highlights Schmitt's disagreement with Hans Kelsen's pure theory of the juridical. For Kelsen supposedly every case of judicial interpretation may be mechanically derived from a positive juridical norm, pushing aside the notion of sovereignty and its decisionist disposition. According to Schmitt, this is consistent with an intellectualist theology according to which “God enunciates only general and not particular declarations of the will”. Schmitt assumes theological voluntarism and asserts that pure norms “can never become reality” on their own. The circumstance that a decision is required for its normative realization (
Rechtsverwirklichung
) means that an extra‐normative judicial decision “remains an independently determining moment”. There is more to the juridical than pure norms. Norms together with arbitrary decisions or commands are seen by Schmitt as the two essential elements of a juridical order.
Decolonization
Authors: Kohn Margaret , McBride Keally
Published: August 2023

The term “decolonization” refers to the process whereby a people becomes self‐governing. Often it describes the struggles to end European domination over Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Scholars have also used the phrase “internal colonialism” to understand the way in which settler societies continue to exercise formal and informal political control over indigenous communities. From this perspective, decolonization is an ongoing process of dismantling the barriers to self‐determination.
Deleuze, Gilles (1925–95)
Authors: Connolly William E.
Published: August 2023

Gilles Deleuze was one among several French philosophers who came to exert a powerful effect on political theory in the United States, the UK, and Australia, starting perhaps in the late 1970s and accelerating from that date. His influence was preceded by that of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. But the untimely death of the former, whose work had several affinities with that of Deleuze, and growing concerns in several circles that deconstruction provided insufficient metaphysical support and political energy soon propelled Deleuze's work into wider circulation. Translations by Paul Patton and Brian Massumi in the 1990s of key texts by Deleuze helped that process considerably.
Democracy
Authors: Schwartzberg Melissa
Published: August 2023

The term democracy is ancient Greek: it is a compound word,demokratia, linkingdemos(“people”) withkratos(“rule” or “power”). But even the translation ofdemokratiaas “rule of the people” is controversial. Scholars debate whether “people” refers to the collective body of adult male citizens, or if it had class significance from inception, in the sense of the “many” rather than the “few.” Nor is the meaning ofkratosself‐evident: whereas some scholars translatekratosto mean “power” in the sense of “agency” (the etymology ofkratosis linked to “grasp” or “grip”), one might believe that “rule” better captures the authoritative nature of popular decisions. We remain uncertain about which institutionsdemokratiaoriginally referred to, in part because the date of the term's coinage is unknown.Demokratia's connection with other Greek concepts, such asisonomia(equality before the law) andisegoria(equality of public speech), is no less contentious. Given the ambiguous and contested nature of the term from antiquity – and its pejorative connotations for many centuries – it is remarkable that 2500 years later, “democracy” is the most important concept of modern political life.
Dewey, John (1859–1952)
Authors: Festenstein Matthew
Published: August 2023

John Dewey is probably best known as an American philosopher and as a philosopher of democracy. However, Dewey never assumed that these surroundings were, or had been, wholly democratic: his democratic faith was for him a critical yardstick that showed up the extent to which his society was failing to live up to its own ideals. Their implications were far more radical than their proponents tended to believe. At the core of his thought is the effort to offer an interpretation of rapidly changing modern industrial societies, with which, he believed, traditional philosophical, moral, and political standards were not fitted to cope. Dewey optimistically insists that we have available a method for improving moral and political judgments, which is grounded in his distinctive conception of empirical inquiry.
Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Authors: Kaya Yasin
Published: August 2023

Dictatorship of the proletariat is a phrase used by Karl Marx to refer to the assumption of state power by the working class. For Marx, it is a transitional period of permanent revolution between the overthrow of bourgeois political rule and a classless society. The locution acquired currency after World War I because of its use by the Bolshevik government of the Soviet Union to describe its revolutionary stage.
Difference
Authors: Widder Nathan
Published: August 2023

The concept of difference arguably presents the most fundamental problem of political thought: how can diverse individuals and groups be brought together in such a way that political principles such as equality, freedom, justice, sovereignty, and recognition can be realized? While one might imagine such principles being achieved in a homogeneous community, in a society without differences these would not be
political
principles. The political problem of difference would thus seem to be a problem of human plurality and the possibilities for bringing it into harmony and unity. But recent political theory has also pushed the concept of difference beyond the notion of a distinction between already existing types. Today difference is often conceived as a
constitutive
relation, one that, on the one hand, establishes individual and collective identities and distinguishes them from one another, thus making politics possible by delineating both the constituencies to be represented in political processes and those deemed to fall outside the political field, but that also, on the other hand, problematizes the way these differences are often taken to be natural or fixed, thereby exposing their contingency and malleability.
Direct Democracy
Authors: Smith Daniel A.
Published: August 2023

Direct democracy – which includes the plebiscitary devices of initiative, popular referendum, and recall – is the political process whereby citizens participate directly in the political process by casting their votes on measures placed on the ballot. The initiative is the most participatory and widely used form of direct democracy. With the initiative, proponents circulate petitions, collecting a specified number of valid signatures, in order to place either a statutory measure or a constitutional amendment on the ballot for “citizen lawmakers” to adopt or reject. In addition to the initiative, the popular referendum allows citizens to petition their legislatures to place a disputed legislative action on the ballot for the voters to “veto,” and the recall enables citizens to collect signatures to force a retention vote of an elected official.
Divine Right of Kings
Authors: Murphy Andrew R.
Published: August 2023

The divine right of kings was a widespread and influential early modern doctrine of political authority, legitimacy, obligation, and sovereignty. It achieved its most sophisticated elaboration and exposition during the seventeenth century, and was especially important in the French and English political traditions. Scholars often draw connections between divine right theory and theories of royal absolutism, since the argument that kings were granted authority by, and accountable to, God alone implied that they ruled their realms absolutely, answerable to no other earthly authorities (Sommerville 1986; but cf. Burgess 1992). Likewise, scholars also relate divine right theory to theories of nonresistance: since kings draw their authority from God and not from the people, the people are never justified in actively rebelling against a harsh king. More broadly, divine right theories are predicated on a hierarchical view of the social and political world: indeed, David Wootton views the idea of the Great Chain of Being – that God arranged the cosmos in a series of ordered hierarchies, with God Himself settled comfortably at the top – as central to divine right theory (1986: 29–30).
Division of Labor
Authors: Kaya Yasin
Published: August 2023

The term “division of labor” is generally understood to mean (1) the division of labor in the productive process, where the process is subdivided into simpler operations which are performed by different persons; or (2) the division of labor in society, where different occupations or other social roles are performed by distinct persons or social groups. In the field of economic theory, it is identified as a basis for economies of scale. And in social theory, its positive impacts on social cohesion are studied, as well as its negative social ramifications, such as alienation, social stratification, domination, and bureaucratization.
Donoso Cortés, Juan (1809–53)
Authors: Lewis V. Bradley
Published: August 2023

Juan Donoso Cortés (1809–53), Spanish statesman, diplomat, journalist, and political theorist, was one of the most influential counter‐revolutionary Catholic political thinkers of the mid‐nineteenth century.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor (1821–81)
Authors: Berkowitz Roger
Published: August 2023

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian writer best known for his philosophical novels
Notes from the Underground
(1864),
Crime and Punishment
(1866), and
The Brothers Karamazov
(1880). With his contemporary Friedrich Nietzsche, Dostoevsky was one of the first excavators of nihilism. His work explores how utilitarian and rationalist thinking deprived humanity of spiritual enlightenment, an ultimate reason for existence that could justify the fact of human suffering.
Duty
Authors: Garthoff Jon
Published: August 2023

There are two importantly distinct issues concerning the duties of citizens. The first is the nature and extent of their duties to comply with the laws and policies of their societies. The second is the nature and extent of their duties to participate in the political life of their societies through voting and public advocacy. This entry considers each of these issues in turn.
Duverger, Maurice (1917–)
Authors: da Silva Virgílio Afonso
Published: August 2023

Maurice Duverger is a French political scientist and constitutional lawyer. He taught at the University of Bordeaux, until 1955, and the University of Paris, until retiring in 1985. His works, translated into over 20 languages, are often located at the interface between law and political science. In 1951, he published his seminal work,
Les partis politiques
, translated three years later into English. The most influential and long‐lasting contributions of this book were his analysis of the organization of political parties and the establishment of a strong relationship between electoral systems and the number of parties in a given democracy. While the influence of the latter remains strong within the study of electoral systems, the former has gradually lost explanatory strength.
Easton, David (1917–)
Authors: Monroe Kristen
Published: August 2023

A leading figure in the behavioral movement in political science, David Easton restructured the conceptual landscape of the discipline by providing the new language and conceptual framework for a scientific and interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of politics. This agenda was developed and presented most prominently in three books:
The Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science, A Framework for Political Analysis
, and
A Systems Analysis of Political Life
.
Ecclesiology
Authors: Guilfoy Kevin
Published: August 2023

In Christian theology ecclesiology is the study of the church. What is the church? What is the relationship between the various parts of the church? What is the relationship between church and the secular world? There are significant differences in ecclesiology in the different Christian bodies. They each present a different understanding of the political organization of the church. From these different conceptions theologians have developed different theories of the nature of authority, power, freedom, peace, and community.
Elster, Jon (1940–)
Authors: Landemore Hélène
Published: August 2023

Jon Elster is a Norwegian‐born social scientist and political theorist, currently Robert K. Merton Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Columbia in New York. From 2005 to 2011, he was alsoprofesseur titulaireat the Collège de France in Paris, where he held the chair “Rationality and Social Sciences” (formerly held by Pierre Bourdieu). He previously taught at the University of Oslo and the University of Chicago. Elster's work spans a vast array of topics, with a focus on human rationality. He has made important contributions to many fields, including political theory, political science, social science, and political psychology. His work is generally informed by a broad acquaintance with many more disciplines, such as economics, game theory, psychology, philosophy, and literature. This entry gives a sample of some of his main positions on different topics.
Emancipation
Authors: Susen Simon
Published: August 2023

In the most general sense, the concept of emancipation refers to an entity's liberation from control, dependence, restraint, confinement, restriction, repression, slavery, or domination. In modern English, the term “emancipation” commonly describes the transition from heteronomy to autonomy, from dependence to freedom, or from alienation to self‐realization. Rather than establishing a universally applicable definition of the term, however, it is important to bear in mind that the concept of emancipation has been, and continues to be, used in different contexts and given meaning from diverging ideological angles. In order to illustrate the complexity of the term, this entry will consider (1) differentelementsof emancipation, (2) differentconceptionsof emancipation, and (3) differentmovementsof emancipation.