bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Feminism and Islam
Authors: Deylami Shirin S.
Published: August 2023

Historically, feminism and Islam have had a complex and sometimes antagonistic relationship. Feminism is a social, political, and philosophical movement that examines the production of gender and refutes inequalities predicated on gendered difference and power relations. Islam is the religious tradition of the followers of the Prophet Muhammad; and in the case of politics, Islamism is the belief that Islam offers both a religious orientation and a political program. When looking at the relationship between feminism and Islam we must look at how feminism, as a philosophical tradition, and feminists, as a political group, have grappled with the Islamic religion. In turn, we must also examine how Islam and the followers of Islam, Muslims, have accepted, rejected, or modified feminist ideas. Consequently, there are two broad and complicated ways of understanding the relationship between feminism and Islam.
Follett, Mary Parker (1868–1933)
Authors: Elías María Verónica
Published: August 2023

A prominent American political thinker and practitioner of the Progressive Era, Mary Parker Follett was a pioneer in the study of self‐governance and grassroots democracy. Critical of representative democracy and in line with other main exponents of the 1920s American philosophical pragmatism movement – such as Jane Addams, John Dewey, and William James – Follett advanced democratic theory by deeply rooting its meaning and validity in people's daily collaborative experiences.
Founding
Authors: Bernal Angélica M.
Published: August 2023

Foundings are said to refer to the creation and establishment of a new political community. Yet, this core conception does not fully capture the range of meanings attached to the notion. This range is reflected by the term's usage in western political thought: to describe a celebrated historical event of political origin and beginning, as a category of extraordinary inaugurating political practice, as a privileged site of core political principles and values, and as a source of higher law authority, collective identity, and historical continuity. Founding's multiplicity of meanings highlights its structure as a descriptive and normative idea and can be best understood in relation to the type of problems it addresses: problems of innovation, legitimacy, and authority. Changing representations of founding reflect changes in how these problems have been understood.
Franchise
Authors: López‐Guerra Claudio
Published: August 2023

The allocation of the elective franchise, or right to vote, was one of the most prominent political problems of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When the vote was finally extended to all sane adult citizens residing in the state, it seemed that the problem of enfranchisement had been solved. However, the political inclusion of several classes of persons, such as noncitizen residents, nonresident citizens, children, the mentally ill, and criminals continues to be a matter of controversy around the world.
Gellner, Ernest (1925–95)
Authors: Skovajsa Marek
Published: August 2023

Although trained in philosophy and social anthropology, Ernest Gellner made important contributions also to political theory. His theory of nationalism remains hugely influential, and his ideas on the emergence of modernity, civil society and the state, religion and politics in Muslim societies, and the epistemology of social sciences, as well as his sharp criticism of Marxism, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, and relativism still resonate today. Gellner grew up in the multicultural environment of interwar Prague, but his family fled from Nazism to England in 1939. Gellner studied at Oxford and in 1949 he began teaching philosophy at the London School of Economics. Between 1984 and 1993 he was professor of social anthropology at the University of Cambridge and from 1990 to 1995 he taught at the Central European University in Prague.
Gentile, Giovanni (1875–1944)
Authors: Martin James
Published: August 2023

Gentile was an Italian social and political philosopher, politician, and supporter of Italy's Fascist regime, to which he offered a degree of philosophical legitimacy. Viewing philosophy as a discipline with an inescapably civic function, he also wrote on the theme of pedagogy and served for a short period as minister of education in Mussolini's first government. A conservative liberal with strong nationalist leanings, Gentile promoted a political theory along broadly Hegelian lines according to which the individual was only fully realized through the overarching embrace of the state. He subsequently helped define fascism as a distinctive political doctrine and was appointed by the regime to direct the
Italian Encyclopedia
. For his unwavering defense of the dictatorship, antifascist partisans assassinated him.
Gobineau, Joseph‐Arthur, Comte de (1816–82)
Authors: Muhs Rudolf
Published: August 2023

Comte Joseph‐Arthur de Gobineau (1816–82), has been called the “father of racist ideology,” and while this is a somewhat reductionist description for a man of many facets and talents, it neatly encapsulates his main contribution to the history of political thought. An early and easy familiarity with German was later complemented by a passion for the languages and cultures of the Orient. A devoted Catholic and demonstrative Legitimist (a supporter of the Bourbon dynasty's claim to the French throne) who forever remained embarrassed that he had been born on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, Gobineau quickly established his credentials as a reactionary after settling in Paris in 1835. Supplementing his income as a lowly clerk with political journalism and a stream of eclectic literary output, his mind was preoccupied with a sense of what he perceived as the decadence of the present and especially the decline of true aristocracy.
Green, Thomas Hill (1836–82)
Authors: Simhony Avital
Published: August 2023

The most prominent of the British Idealists, T. H. Green challenged the old laissez‐faire liberalism transforming it into the “new liberalism,” social liberalism. Grounded in negative freedom as the absence of coercion, laissez‐faire liberalism restricted the role of the state to enforcing contracts and mutual noninterference in a free market, thereby hindering the free development of the worse‐off members of society. Green's social liberalism, by contrast, curbed laissez‐faire capitalism by an enabling state that provided the resources necessary forallmembers of society to realize their human potential (positive freedom). As an Idealist concerned with working out the appropriate normative relationship between subject and object, Green anchored his social liberalism in the mutual interdependence of the human subject and social‐political institutions.
Grotius, Hugo (1583–1645)
Authors: Zuckert Michael
Published: August 2023

Hugo Grotius, also known as Huig de Groot in his native Holland, is most remembered as one of the “fathers of international law,” largely on account of his masterwork,
De iure belli ac pacis
(
The Law of War and Peace
). However, while his impact and continuing significance for international law are undeniable, he was also important as a political philosopher who developed a novel theory of the natural law, in the context of which he set his doctrine of international law.
Gutmann, Amy (1949–)
Authors: Thompson Simon
Published: August 2023

Amy Gutmann is President of the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science. Previously she was Professor of Politics at Princeton University, where she was also Founding Director of the University Center for Human Values.
Hamilton, Alexander (1755–1804)
Authors: Federici Michael P.
Published: August 2023

Alexander Hamilton was born in the West Indies on the island of Nevis and survived a tumultuous childhood that began with his illegitimate birth and included abandonment by his father at the age of 10 and his mother's death when he was 12 years of age. Once orphaned and disinherited, he worked as a clerk for two New York merchants until he moved to America. Although Hamilton was an avid reader as a child and received some tutoring, his lack of formal education meant that he was insufficiently prepared to pass rigorous college entrance exams. Consequently, he spent about a year studying Greek and Latin, the classics, the Bible, history, and geography, among other subjects at Elizabethtown Academy in New Jersey before enrolling in King's College (today's Columbia University). While at King's, he emerged as an articulate advocate of the Patriot cause. He wrote essays (
A Full Vindication
1774 and
The Farmer Refuted
1775) that gained the notice of prominent Patriot leaders. He left college before finishing his degree to serve as an artillery captain in the Continental militia. He subsequently served as George Washington's aide‐de‐camp and was present at several important Revolutionary War battles. He resigned his position on Washington's staff but was later awarded a military post as a field commander during which he distinguished himself at the Battle of Yorktown.
Heraclitus (ca. 500 BCE)
Authors: Zuckert Catherine
Published: August 2023

Heraclitus was a Presocratic philosopher in Ephesus, a Greek city in Ionia, ruled at the time by Persia. Little is known about his life. He reputedly wrote a treatise entitled “On Nature” and deposited it in the temple of Artemis, but no part of that text has survived. All we have are “fragments,” quotations from Heraclitus found in other ancient texts. It is difficult, therefore, to determine exactly what he thought. Like modern natural scientists Heraclitus appears to have thought that everything is constantly in motion, but that there is an underlying intelligible order. Like modern social scientists Heraclitus also raised questions about the grounds and validity of human judgments of right and wrong: “To God, all things are beautiful, good and just; but men have assumed some things to be unjust, others just.”
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, Baron d' (1723–89)
Authors: LeBuffe Michael
Published: August 2023

Holbach was a philosopher and prominent social figure of the French Enlightenment, who contributed to the Enlightenment through his translations of German scientific works and English works on religion and politics, his entries in Denis Diderot's encyclopedia, and his philosophical writings, which show the influence of Hobbes and Locke.
Holocaust
Authors: Fred Alford C.
Published: August 2023

The term “Holocaust” came into use in the mid‐1950s; some attribute it to Elie Wiesel. It is the term most frequently employed to refer to the mass murder of about 6 million European Jews by the German Reich between 1933 and 1945. Some regret the name “Holocaust.” From the ancient Greek, the term refers to a burnt sacrificial offering. To some this suggests that the Jews themselves were the sacrifice, though this is rarely the intent of anyone employing the term today. Some scholars and others prefer the Hebrew term “Shoah,” meaning disaster or calamity.
Honor
Authors: Dow Douglas C.
Published: August 2023

The concept of honor describes a system of belief about the inner value and worth that persons may hold of themselves, as well as the cultural system in which the demands for recognition and their responses are made. Unlike many other terms for evaluating personal worth, such as virtue or dignity, honor is dependent on the recognition by others. Honor may represent simultaneously an attribute of the individual and the expressions and rituals of esteem performed by others. To publically assert one's honor and have this assertion rebuffed or ignored invites the possibility of shame and disgrace, the social opposites of honor. The irreducibly dual character of honor, depicting both inner worth and outward respect, has generated unresolved tensions that run throughout the philosophical reflections upon honor, as well as the performance of honor's rituals in different historical cultures. One crucial set of problems surrounds the ethical dimensions of honor. Is honor best understood as a close cousin of virtue, a conception of personal integrity and nobility of character? Or is honor best understood as an amoral or immoral category of behaviors based in relationships of power?
Immigration
Authors: Yong Caleb
Published: August 2023

Approaches to justice in immigration mainly differ according to the background conception of global justice accepted. The main division can be described in terms of the contrast between cosmopolitan liberals and social liberals. Cosmopolitan liberals typically hold that immigration restrictions must be compatible with principles of global freedom of movement, global equality of opportunity, and global egalitarian distribution if they are to be just. These latter principles are justified, so cosmopolitan liberals argue, by noting their acceptance by liberals for the domestic case and the arbitrariness of failing to extend their reach to the global domain.
Indigenous Political Thought
Authors: Grande Sandy , Nichols Robert
Published: August 2023

For the purposes of this entry, “Indigenous peoples” refers to those societies which exercised powers of self‐governance prior to colonization by and incorporation into the modern nation‐state and who continue to experience and resist this as unjust. Such peoples are, thus, distinct from ethnic or other minority groups in that the primary issue framing Indigenous–settler state relations is “not racist exclusion … but forced incorporation into the state.” The continued structure of imposed rule expresses itself as settler colonialism; distinguished from other forms of colonialism by the intended permanent settlement of foreign peoples and, thus, access to Indigenous land in perpetuity. Consequently, it has been argued, settler colonialism is “first and foremost a territorial project” where land (as opposed to natural or human resources) is the precondition.
Information Society
Authors: Anstead Nick
Published: August 2023

The
information society
refers to a stage of historical development where the production, sharing, or manipulation of information plays an increased or even central role in political, commercial, and cultural life. In this sense, it represents a break from previous models of organization, such as modernity or the industrial era.
International Boundaries
Authors: Amir Merav
Published: August 2023

International boundaries are a basic building block of the modern international state system. The international system dictates a clear spatial distinction between states. International boundaries are the agreed‐upon delineation of the spatial allocation of one sovereign territory in relation to that of all others. From a formal perspective, the boundaries of a state delimit the area of applicability of a particular state's sovereignty and pose the only general limitation on the autonomy of sovereignties. Clear and defined boundaries are considered a precondition to the establishment of a state, and control over its boundaries is a sovereign prerogative, whereas an unauthorized breaching of state boundaries by other sovereign powers is considered a declaration of war.
International Justice
Authors: Pavel Carmen E.
Published: August 2023

Those who think about international justice use one of two strategies. The first strategy is to identify some practice among states that requires normative guidance. The second strategy is to start with a general theory about how states should treat each other and what they owe to citizens and noncitizens. The first strategy corresponds roughly to what philosophers have identified variously as practice‐dependent, nonideal, or comparative theory, while the second one corresponds to practice‐independent, ideal, or transcendental theory. These different strategies are not mutually exclusive, such that employing one does not preclude borrowing from the other's assumptions, mode of theorizing, and aspirations. Indeed the ideal and nonideal approaches often amalgamate insidiously. Yet they represent distinct views about the purpose of theorizing about justice and about the tools and methods for making judgments about justice or injustice at the international level.
Internationalism
Authors: Taylor Jeff
Published: August 2023

Internationalismadvocates an active, interventionist foreign policy by a nation‐state, with a reliance on geopolitical alliances and military might to achieve the government's aims. It may also include the desire to meld nation‐states into a world government. It is also known asglobalismorneo‐imperialism.
Jefferson, Thomas (1743–1826)
Authors: Onuf Peter S.
Published: August 2023

Thomas Jefferson is most famous for his authorship of the American Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. Forever associated with the Declaration's memorable language – “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” and that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed” – Jefferson has been celebrated as an iconic figure in the history of the first great modern democracy. Yet his success as a patriot penman has compromised his reputation as a serious and original thinker. Scholars have identified various sources for key ideas and turns of phrase in the Declaration – from John Locke'sSecond Treatise of Governmentto George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, demonstrating Jefferson's indebtedness to the natural rights tradition, social contract theory, Scottish moral philosophy, common law constitutionalism, and Whig Party–Republican Party opposition thought. Jefferson's identity as an author is lost in the authority of his sources and of the “people” whose sentiments he so eloquently articulated. He is famous fornotbeing an original thinker.
John of Paris (1240/1–1306)
Authors: Moreno‐Riano Gerson
Published: August 2023

John of Paris (1240/1–1306) was a master of theology at the University of Paris, a member of the Order of Preachers, and a Dominican at the convent of Saint‐Jacques in Paris. Sometimes called John Quidort or John Quidort de Paris, he wrote
Tractatus de potestate regia et papali
(1302–3) in which he articulated a highly influential and comprehensive Dominican position on the nature of
dominium
, a stance which was in favor of royal power and was thus beneficial to King Philip IV the Fair (1285–1314) in his struggle against Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303).
King, Jr., Martin Luther (1929–68)
Authors: Threadcraft Shatema A.
Published: August 2023

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was an American minister and theologian, and arguably the brightest light among the stars of modern oratory. He served as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization that sustained – after Jo Ann Robinson and the Women's Political Council called – the 13‐month‐long Montgomery Bus Boycott in response to Rosa Parks's arrest for refusing to comply with the city's segregation laws on the National City Lines’ Montgomery Bus Line. The boycott is recognized as a seminal event in what Bayard Rustin named the “classical phase” of the modern civil rights movement.
Kingship
Authors: Caro Jason
Published: August 2023

Kingship is the ideal of political rule by one man. It is the type of monarchy that “one would pray for.” Its ideal character is clarified by contrasting it, as Aristotle does, against tyranny. For Aristotle, the difference between tyranny and kingship is that between a monarch ruling for himself and ruling in the interest of others. Plato had a similar definition but with the intrepid caveat that kings be philosophers.
Kollontai, Aleksandra (1872–1952)
Authors: Masing‐Delic Irene
Published: August 2023

A tireless champion of gender equality, Kollontai endorsed “free love” but urged women
not
to make romance the “main substance” of their lives. Like men, women should seek self‐fulfillment. Kollontai herself subordinated her emotions to the demands of several careers – political journalist and fiction writer, revolutionary activist and oppositionist, agitator for women's and children's rights, commissar, and ambassador.
Laissez‐Faire
Authors: Burgin Angus
Published: August 2023

The term laissez‐faire refers to a social system that endeavors to assign responsibility for economic outcomes to markets rather than to politics. Beyond this generalization, its specific meaning has remained vague and inconsistent. Some insist that it applies to a government that provides little other than rudimentary protections against criminal activity; others argue that the term can encompass a far more expansive range of activities.
Laitin, David H. (1945–)
Authors: Sanborn Howard B.
Published: August 2023

David Laitin is a noted political scientist and scholar of political culture, ethnicity, linguistics, and African politics. He is currently the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007.
Lefort, Claude (1924–2010)
Authors: Accetti Carlo Invernizzi
Published: August 2023

Claude Lefort was a French philosopher and political theorist, known particularly for his conceptions of totalitarianism and democracy. He introduced two key ideas that would prove very influential for twentieth‐century political theory. First, a distinction between “the political” and “politics,” whereby the former is assumed to correspond to the basic organizational structure of society as a whole, while the latter to a specific sphere of activity within society, defined by the quest for the exercise of state power. Second, the notion of a “constitutive division of the social,” according to which divisions among social spheres are reflexive of a more fundamental division between society and its own symbolic representation of itself, which is in turn assumed to define the identity of society as a whole.
Lipset, Seymour Martin (1922–96)
Authors: LaPierre Patrick
Published: August 2023

A political sociologist with transnational and interdisciplinary interests, Seymour Martin Lipset thought deeply about some of the largest questions that have occupied American political theorists. Lipset's soundings on the lack of socialism in the United States, the nature of American democracy, and American exceptionalism were carried out in an explanatory vein and expressed with clarity. Accordingly he was highly cited among fellow scholars and a sought‐after analyst for journalists who sought comment on our political culture; and all this earned him the rare title of public intellectual.
Luther, Martin (1483–1546)
Authors: M. Höpfl Harro
Published: August 2023

Martin Luther, the initiator of the Reformation, is the only reformer to have a worldwide church named after him. Theologian and polemicist, biblical commentator, church organizer, pastor and composer of ever popular hymns, he was also an outstanding (though not the first) translator of the Bible into German. His education was conventionally Scholastic. He came to public prominence throughout the Holy Roman Empire and beyond in 1517, for denouncing the practice of selling “indulgences,” which to him and his multitude of followers came to symbolize all that was wrong with the church. His highly public and abrasive articulation of a doctrine of salvation that he regarded as authentically Scriptural led to his being anathematized by Pope Leo X and outlawed by Emperor Charles V in 1521.
Macpherson, C. B. (1911–87)
Authors: Meynell Robert
Published: August 2023

Crawford Brough Macpherson (1911–1987), Canadian political philosopher, was born in Toronto on November 18, 1911 and spent most of his life in his home city. Macpherson gained international recognition for his bookThe Political Theory of Possessive Individualism(1962), which is a study of seventeenth century English political philosophers, most importantly of Hobbes and Locke, of whom he argues that they developed a concept of human nature that has prevailed and currently underpins the economic and political inequality that plagues capitalist societies.
Maimonides (1138–1204)
Authors: Kreisel Haim Howard
Published: August 2023

Moses Maimonides (b. 1138, Cordoba; d. 1204, Cairo) – Jewish theologian and legal authority – was head of the Jewish community in Egypt and physician at the royal court. Maimonides's fame rests primarily on his having composed the first complete code of Jewish law,
Mishneh Torah
, and on having subsequently written the most significant Jewish philosophical‐theological treatise of the Middle Ages,
The Guide of the Perplexed
. Both of these works exerted a profound influence on Jewish law and thought from the time of their appearance to the present.
Mansfield, Jr., Harvey C. (1932–)
Authors: Goren Lilly
Published: August 2023

Mansfield is seen by many as a prominent leader of the Straussian school of political theory within the North American academe. In this context, a significant amount of Mansfield's work has consisted of close study of canonical texts in political philosophy. The thrust of his work has been to examine and interpret the works of Edmund Burke, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Alexis de Tocqueville.
Marriage
Authors: Metz Tamara
Published: August 2023

Whatismarriage – an institution, a status, a contract, a discipline, a love affair? What functions, positive and pernicious, does it serve for the individuals who inhabit it and the community that defines and regulates it? Who should it include, and who exclude? What role should which public authority play in marriage? These questions and answers to them are central themes of western political thought. In fact, the history of that tradition can be told as a history of views on marriage. Although it is rarely the sole focus of any single text, marriage has been, since Plato, an organizing concern of the canon. This prominence is understandable: whatever else marriage is – and definitions vary widely across time and place, and are often contested – it connects public authority and the world of the family. This entry surveys the treatment of marriage by canonical figures, ancient and modern. It then turns to scholarship of the twentieth century, and concludes with a brief look at contemporary political theory and prominent political debates, including same‐sex marriage.
Mass Society
Authors: Cotter Bridget
Published: August 2023

“Mass society” is a twentieth‐century concept denoting large‐scale, bureaucratic, industrially advanced societies in which unprecedented numbers participate politically and culturally and where citizens are described as a “mass” rather than a “public” or a “class” due to a perceived breakdown in traditional groupings.
Medieval Political Theory
Authors: Sullivan Mary Elizabeth
Published: August 2023

Although an often neglected aspect of the western political tradition, medieval political theory contains a rich variety of viewpoints. The student of modern politics may be surprised to find medieval authors addressing such salient topics as the scope of and limitations on governmental power, the proper relationship between religious and political authority, and the benefits of popular participation in the policy‐making process. That is not to say that the medieval worldview is akin to our own. Medieval political thinkers had a fundamentally different conception of history, a different view on the purpose of political life, and a different understanding of the nature of the universe and their place within it. In this way, medieval political theory can provide a useful contrast to modern thought.
Mendelssohn, Moses (1729–86)
Authors: Levenson Alan T.
Published: August 2023

Best known as a philosopher, belletrist, Bible translator‐commentator, and a Jew of European‐wide fame who mastered western culture and the German language, Mendelssohn also possessed a coherent set of political beliefs. Mendelssohn, following Spinoza, held that the Hebrew Commonwealth constituted a unique, nonrepeatable theocracy applicable only to one nation, one place, and one time. Like Spinoza, Mendelssohn ardently opposed clerical intrusions into the liberty of conscience. Unlike Spinoza, who willingly cut his ties with the Jewish community following his excommunication, and who had no interest in defending Jewish observances, Mendelssohn remained a practicing Jew.
Metis (Amerindian)
Authors: Hancock Robert L. A.
Published: August 2023

As an Indigenous people the Metis emerged from the complex social, cultural, and political context of the Great Plains region of northern North America through kinship ties with neighboring Cree, Anishinaabe, Assiniboine, and Saulteaux groups (Innes 2012). The Metis share with their relatives a form of political thinking that emphasizes the maintenance of balance through reciprocity and relational thinking, focusing on relationships between people, families, and groups of families along with those between humans and land, and the other beings on the land.
Modernity
Authors: Poe Andrew
Published: August 2023

“Modernity” is a word often used to characterize the historical period wherein “modern” social, economic, and political institutions took shape. Such an accounting looks toward effects, be they social – in the end of the aristocracy, the rise of mass society, or the ever‐expanding bourgeoisie – economic – in capitalism, industrialization, and globalization – or political – in the advent of the nation‐state, of human rights and freedoms, and of democratic liberalism. The advantage of using such a concept here lies in a clear delineation from those institutions in antiquity: either one finds modern institutions in one's world or one does not; either one sees progress or one does not.
More, Thomas (1478–1535)
Authors: Breen Sheryl D.
Published: August 2023

Sir Thomas More was a leading English humanist, statesman, and writer who was executed by Henry VIII for treason and canonized by the Roman Catholic church as a defender of the faith. More's book
Utopia
is his most significant and controversial contribution to political thought, and the divergent interpretations of this account of a fictional commonwealth in the New World continue to bedevil readers and political scholars nearly 500 years after its publication.
Natural Man
Authors: Ward Ann
Published: August 2023

“Natural man” is understood by early modern social contract theorists as the ground from which and the end for which the modern liberal state is instituted. Prior to the construction of the liberal state, natural man is that person who inhabits the “state of nature.” The state of nature lacks society and government and is peopled by isolated individuals – the only existing natural entities. Although several thinkers of the Enlightenment contributed to the European understanding of natural man, the most important social contract theorists to philosophize about natural man are Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean‐Jacques Rousseau.
Neoconservatism
Authors: Baumann Fred
Published: August 2023

According to its founder, Irving Kristol, neoconservatism is a “tendency” rather than a movement. Since 1973 individuals, groups, publications, and doctrines have been identified as neoconservative, sometimes by themselves and sometimes by their critics. Hence the first difficulty in describing neoconservatism is definitional.
Niebuhr, Reinhold (1892–1971)
Authors: Scheuerman William E.
Published: August 2023

Reinhold Niebuhr was a twentieth‐century Protestant theologian and political thinker widely credited with developing Christian realism, a political philosophy that has played a significant role in political and intellectual debates in the United States. Especially during the 1940s and 1950s, Niebuhr became a household name, a leading public intellectual associated with many left liberal causes and groups (including the anticommunist Americans for Democratic Action), whose ideas were widely discussed by the press and whose advice was regularly solicited by major political figures. In recent years, Barack Obama has paid public homage to Niebuhr and his legacy, as have many earlier left‐of‐center politicians and intellectuals – including Jimmy Carter, Hubert Humphrey, and Arthur Schlesinger. Not surprisingly, they have drawn inspiration primarily from his relatively cautious postwar political writings, and not from his more radical and intellectually creative contributions from the 1930s and early 1940s. Niebuhr also helped shaped the realist theory of international relations, and particularly the views of its foremost postwar US theorist, the German Jewish émigré Hans J. Morgenthau.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1844–1900)
Authors: Strong Tracy B.
Published: August 2023

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche – he was named after the emperor – was born on October 15, 1844 in Röcken, a small town in Saxony. His father was the local pastor; both of his grandfathers had been pastors. He attended first the University of Bonn and then that of Leipzig, where he trained to become a classical philologist. His work as a graduate student was deemed so good that in 1869, at the age of 24, he was awarded the chair of classical philology at the University of Basel. By 1870, despite having been promoted to full professorship, he had developed increasing doubts about his chosen academic career as a philologist. In late December 1888 he suffered what appears to be a mental breakdown while in Turin. He spent the next few years in a mental institution in Basel, most often heavily drugged. In 1890 he was released to the care of his mother in Naumberg, and in 1892 to that of his sister in Weimar. He died there on August 25, 1900.
Normative Theory
Authors: Baiasu Sorin
Published: August 2023

Imagine a group of persons that form a society or a political community. It is most likely these persons relate to each other in their everyday dealings on the basis of certain common standards. Adescriptive, as opposed to a normative, theory of the political organization of a society has the task of identifying and presenting these standards. By contrast, anormativetheory tries to determine whether these are indeed the standards that members of the political communityoughtto follow. This entry will examine the history of normative theory, the main debates within the filed, and the most important aspects on which debates focus (the nature, object, purpose, and criteria of normativity). The entry will conclude with a brief presentation of the relation between ethical and political normative theory.
North, Douglass (1920–)
Authors: Baird Ryan G.
Published: August 2023

Douglass North is a pre‐eminent American economist who, along with Robert W. Fogel, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1993 for their contributions to the understanding of economic history. The Nobel Committee described their motivation for bestowing the award on North as follows: “for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change.”
Oakeshott, Michael Joseph (1901–90)
Authors: Fuller Timothy
Published: August 2023

Michael Oakeshott was born on December 11, 1901 in Chelsfield, Kent, England. He studied history and the great works of philosophy, especially political philosophy. He was never a political activist. He insisted on the special vocation of the philosopher to examine critically and disinterestedly the assumptions or postulates underlying the various distinctive modes of human activity. To examine politics philosophically was of central interest to him. Oakeshott thought of philosophy as a commitment to the open‐endedness of thought, to radically subversive questioning.
Oligarchy
Authors: Winters Jeffrey A.
Published: August 2023

Oligarchy is a form of concentrated minority power. Even in democratic societies with free participation and universal suffrage, small segments of a population or community can be disproportionately empowered in a variety of ways and with different effects. Concentrated wealth, both as the foundation of oligarchic power and as a constant source of social tension, provides a basis of political cohesion for oligarchs, whether or not they are networked. The power and interests of oligarchs are an intrinsic element of their position at the top of materially stratified social formations.
Orientalism
Authors: Thomas Megan C.
Published: August 2023

Orientalism can refer to any of three related phenomena. Political theorists usually use the term to refer to Edward Said's theorization that negative western images of and ideas about the east both produced, and were products of, forces of political and economic domination. However there are two more specific, and related, referents of the term. First, Orientalism was a movement of eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century European scholarship about the languages, literatures, religions, laws, and traditions of “the Orient.” Second, Orientalism may refer to an artistic movement and related trend in material culture, predominantly of the nineteenth century, in which “Oriental” subjects, themes, and artifacts predominated. Most significant for political theory, and so treated in this entry, are Said's theorization of Orientalism and the Orientalist scholarly movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the related artistic movement, less important for the purposes of this entry, will not be further discussed.
Ortega y Gasset, José (1883–1955)
Authors: Plot Martín
Published: August 2023

Spanish philosopher, cultural critic, and essayist, José Ortega y Gasset was probably one of the most important and prolific twentieth‐century Spanish‐language political and social thinkers.
Participatory Democracy
Authors: Barber Benjamin R.
Published: August 2023

Participatory democracy is a generic – and perhaps the original – form of democracy in the western world. It can be compared and contrasted with representative democracy as well as with forms expressed by correlative terms such as direct, deliberative, and strong democracy. Because democracy originated in small towns, principalities, city‐states, and rural republics, it was a form of small‐scale self‐government that was predicated on a mono‐cultural community, ethnically and religiously uniform, where differences were minor and consensus well developed.
Pluralism
Authors: Yumatle Carla
Published: August 2023

Pluralism is an interpretation of social diversity. It can be rendered as a cultural, political, or philosophical stance. In any of these versions, pluralism offers an account of social interaction understood as an interplay of conflicting and competing positions that cannot be seamlessly reduced to one another, ranked in one single order permanently, or reduced to a single institutional arrangement. Any kind of pluralism (cultural, political, or philosophical) presupposes at the very least an empirical thesis about irreducible diversity. Social diversity, from the pluralist perspective, does not go away. Yet each of these kinds of pluralism pivots around different types of conflict – including ethical values, social or cultural practices, epistemological worldviews and/or political interests – and each accounts for these clashes from a different angle and with different implications. Whereas cultural and political pluralisms articulate the social difference that stems from habits, beliefs, or interests, philosophical pluralism goes further and adds an interpretation of the origin, character, and experience of value heterogeneity. It offers a full account of the anatomy of normative difference, of its awareness, and of its impact on social agency. These three kinds of pluralism are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Philosophical pluralism always entails the acknowledgment of empirical diversity at the heart of cultural and political pluralism. Cultural and political pluralism, in turn, may or may not sprawl into a philosophical thesis.
Political Party
Authors: West Chris
Published: August 2023

With few exceptions, the term “political party” refers to a group of persons seeking to elect their candidates of choice to political office, and, when successful, to control the institutions of government according to their principles or interests. Organizationally, the term may refer, alternatively, to a number of people in the electorate who identify with the aims of the party, the professional, organizational apparatus of the party, or the officers of government who identify with the party. Functionally, political parties facilitate both the choice by the electorate of candidates who may best represent them, and collective action among legislators and executives.
Political Philosophy
Authors: Mosher Michael
Published: August 2023

Despite its concern with the far horizon, there is no uncontested definition of political philosophy from the point of view of eternity. The question of what is political philosophy is very nearly coterminous with every effort to give it a new form and content. To be sure, the far horizon offers the prospect of questions regarding “the deepest, most intractable, and most enduring problems of political life.” These questions raise issues abouthuman nature, its permanence or plasticity, its bearing upon good and bad lives; and abouthuman actionand its modes of cooperation. The foregoing either leads to or is wholly irrelevant topolitical order, its modalities of self‐comprehension in authority, power, sovereignty, and religion; its bearing upon variable definitions of representation, justice, law, freedom, toleration, rights, and equality. There is the recurring theme ofpeopleswhose identities – internally diverse or not – are confirmed or threatened by tradition or by novelty, whose futures are bound to eschatological, techno‐scientific, or economic expectations. Often left unaccounted for, especially if one is primarily interested in stating theideal human prospect, areinterstate relations, which include possibilities for international order, but which cannot exclude economic or environmental disaster, political instability, and war.
Polybius (ca. 200–118
BCE
)
Authors: Lane Joseph H.
Published: August 2023

Polybius was a Greek historian who was born and educated in Megalopolis in Arcadia. In 167 bce, he was sent as a political hostage to Rome, and he lived most of his subsequent life there working as a tutor, political functionary, military adviser, and historian. As a close friend of Scipio Africanus, he traveled with the Roman legions to North Africa and Spain, where he witnessed the destructions of Carthage in 146 bce and Numantia in 134 bce. His vivid account of Scipio's apparent despair at the destruction of Rome's greatest enemy has often been cited to indicate the transience of all political glory: “I have a dread foreboding that some day the same doom will be pronounced upon my own country.”
Postpositivist Political Theory
Authors: Wullweber Joscha
Published: August 2023

There is no such thing as a coherent, unified postpositivist political theory. Postpositivist political theory is rather an umbrella description, which is loosely used to group together a variety of different theories and approaches that critically engage with different forms of essentialism in the political and social sciences – assumptions reflected in conventional, traditional, and especially positivist thoughts. Among other paradigms, the termpostpositivismencompasses poststructuralism, most feminist theories, critical theory (in the sense imposed by the Frankfurt School), critical realism, the interpretative tradition, and neo‐Gramscian approaches, notwithstanding the tendency, on the part of many scholars representing these currents of thought, to reject the label of postpositivism.
Pragmatism
Authors: Goldman Loren
Published: August 2023

Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that emphasizes the primacy of practice in human knowledge. Although many streams of philosophy fit this description, the moniker usually refers to the approach originated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Charles S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, with important antecedents in Darwin, Emerson, Hegel, and Kant, among others. Pragmatism was an influential movement from its inception down to the World Wars. Its appeal waned with the rise of behaviorism, pluralism, and critical theory. Recently pragmatism has enjoyed a renaissance thanks to the efforts of neopragmatists like Richard Rorty and Cornel West along with fellow travelers like Richard Bernstein, Jürgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, and Axel Honneth, and now pragmatic perspectives are well established in numerous domains of political thought.
Prerogative
Authors: Fatovic Clement
Published: August 2023

Prerogative refers to the discretionary power of the executive to act outside the law, especially in times of emergency. Prior to Locke's formulation, it had referred to exclusive powers, privileges, and immunities that monarchs enjoyed under the English constitution. Royal prerogatives were used to dismiss parliament, establish monopolies, suspend the law, and carry out other controversial practices in both ordinary and extraordinary circumstances. Following Locke's redefinition, the term “prerogative” has generally been limited to the exercise of extra‐legal power by the executive in extraordinary circumstances.
Reification
Authors: Dabrowski Tomash
Published: August 2023

Reification is the transformation of human activity and relations into properties of human‐produced things, which subsequently are imagined as independent relations which govern the actions of individuals. It is a central concept in Marxist sociological criticism.
Reproductive Technology
Authors: Parks Jennifer A.
Published: August 2023

Reproductive technology is the application of current and future technology to human reproduction. It involves practices such as assisted reproductive technology (ART, which includes in vitro fertilization [IVF], commercial surrogacy, egg and sperm vending, embryo cryopreservation, and sex selection) as well as contraception, abortion, and assisted birthing technologies. As these technologies have surfaced, they have raised difficult social, political, and legal questions about who is (or what makes one) a parent, the rights of the embryo/fetus, women's reproductive freedom, concerns about the instrumentalization of women and children, the state's role in governing and legislating reproduction, reproductive tourism, and other reproductive‐related concerns. Reproductive technology has also raised more general questions about the privacy rights of individuals to form their families using whatever methods they see fit versus the impact those private choices have on society in general.
Republics
Authors: Cullen Daniel
Published: August 2023

“Republic” denotes a political form, conceptually and historically distinct from democracy, as well as from aristocracy and monarchy, and also a normative ideal that continues to shape (and confound) contemporary notions of the good polity. While the historical record of republican politics has been unstable and brief, the republican vision has retained a powerful hold on the western political imagination. Republicanism conjures up, variously, ancient political practice (Greece and Rome), the Italian city‐states of the twelfth century, seventeenth‐century English commonwealth ideology, and the modern or natural rights orientation of the American Founders. Each element of this complex republican tradition remains the object of lively scholarly disagreement, and republican thought might be characterized as a series of dueling arguments over the primacy in political life of virtue and freedom, or duty and rights. At stake in the historiographical and ideological arguments over the meaning of republicanism is nothing less than the proper understanding of selfhood in its public and private dimensions. The republic has thus remained a contested concept, grounded here in the self‐forgetting virtue of the heroic citizen, and there in the cooler acquisitive spirit of self‐interest rightly understood.