bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hume, David (1711–76)
Authors: Danford John W.
Published: August 2023

David Hume was an eighteenth‐century philosopher and the leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, that remarkable efflorescence of genius in a backward corner of Europe which had a profound influence on all European thought. Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, including Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Francis Hutcheson, and others, made important contributions to the disciplines of philosophy and history. They virtually invented political economy, ancestor of the modern discipline called economics. Although Hume is today studied mostly in philosophy departments, he was known to his contemporaries primarily as a historian and essayist, author of the six‐volumeHistory of England. Hume's writings were influential on the American founders, although Thomas Jefferson found what he called Hume's “toryism” so offensive that he sought to have Hume'sHistorybanned from the library at his University of Virginia.
Ideology
Authors: Eidlin Fred
Published: August 2023

Ideologies in the most general sense are systems of ideas and beliefs that shape people's thoughts and behavior. The term ideology is used in many different ways. Some differing usages are entirely consistent, while others are controversial and contested. One species of usages refers to belief and belief systems in general. Another species refers to the concrete traditions of political philosophy for mass consumption that emerged and have evolved since the mid‐eighteenth century, such as liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, and socialism. The word
idéologie
(ideology) appeared at the time of the French Revolution. The Enlightenment
philosophe
Antoine Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836) coined the term as the name for his new “science of ideas.” Yet it was Karl Marx who gave “ideology” the sense that has evolved into modern usages of the word. For Destutt de Tracy, ideology was a science, a search for truth through the study of ideas. Marx transformed the meaning of the term into one quite opposite, ideology meaning false belief and distortion of reality. Since Marx, the meaning of ideology has evolved in different directions and the term has been used in many different senses.
Individualism
Authors: Zakaras Alex
Published: August 2023

The term “individualism” is notoriously difficult to define, partly because it has been so widely applied. This entry treats individualism as a normative idea; it focuses, specifically, on the claim that the individual personoughtto be given priority, in some way, over the collective entity or agent. It delineates six different versions of this claim, each of which helped shape the development of political thought in the west, and briefly explores their conceptual and historical relationship to one another.
Interests
Authors: Mathiowetz Dean
Published: August 2023

Interests are a central feature of modern political life. Their centrality is attested by the way in which people's motivations, their rights, and their other institutional prerogatives are so commonly articulated in terms of interest. Very broadly speaking, an interest is whatever is good for someone or something. Most often, in political discourse, interest is considered a practical good, in the sense of being related to concrete objectives and achievable through action.
International Political Economy
Authors: Solomon M. Scott
Published: August 2023

International political economy (IPE) is a field of social science inquiry that investigates how states (or power) and economics (or wealth) condition and impact each other. The field is often described as the study of “states vs. markets,” “authority vs. exchange,” and/or “power vs. wealth.” These formulations all demonstrate that IPE, as a field of inquiry distinct from political economy, is largely informed by two disciplines – international relations (IR) and economics. IR, usually found within political science departments, has historically focused on questions of state interaction and power. Just as political science could be described as a discipline with “power” as its primary object of inquiry, IR could be described as a discipline with “state power” as its object of inquiry. Economics could be described as a discipline with “wealth” as its object of inquiry. The competing logic of politics, centered on conflict, and of (market) economics, centered on mutually beneficial exchange and cooperation, animates IPE and debates with the field.
Investiture Controversy
Authors: Goodwin Iris J.
Published: August 2023

The Investiture Controversy (also known as “Investiture Contest”) was a 75‐year struggle that took place in Europe, largely within Germany, France, and northern Italy, in the Middle Ages (from the second half of the eleventh century into the beginning quarter of the twelfth). In its narrowest aspect, the controversy centered on an established practice whereby lay princes effectively chose clergy (including bishops) to minister in their domains, but the struggle focused in particular on the appropriateness of the ceremony by which the prince established these clergy in their ecclesiastical offices. Typically, the monarch handed over to the new bishop a ring and crozier, visible signs of episcopal authority, and in return received an act of homage (usually the swearing of an oath). Episcopal consecration by the diocesan bishop ordinarily followed investiture by the monarch. The driving question of the Investiture Controversy was whether this longstanding practice was consistent with the central tenets of Catholic Christianity. In the course of the controversy the practice was recast as a species of simony.
Irigaray, Luce (1932–)
Authors: Zakin Emily
Published: August 2023

Luce Irigaray is a Paris‐based philosopher, psychoanalyst, and feminist. Much of her work develops through critical readings of key philosophical and psychoanalytic texts, readings in which she defiantly mimes and subtly undermines the reasoning and rhetoric of her interlocutors. Her work analyzes the formation and foundation of patriarchal culture and confronts the privileging of masculine subjectivity in lineages from fathers to sons and in exchanges between brothers.
Jeffersonian Democracy
Authors: Matthews Richard
Published: August 2023

Historians tend to contrast Jeffersonian democracy with Jacksonian democracy by focusing on the presidency of each person; from the perspective of political theory, however, Jeffersonian democracy is best seen as a collection of ideas and ideals advocated by Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) in his voluminous writings. This later Jefferson of political theory is far more radical and democratic than the one portrayed by presidential historians.
Jeremiad
Authors: Murphy Andrew R.
Published: August 2023

The jeremiad, a form of social and political critique, takes its name from the Hebrew prophetic tradition, in which critics regularly arose to chastise the community for violating God's commands (more specifically, for violating the covenant that the community had sworn with Yahweh at Sinai) and to call the community back to faithfulness and obedience. As an exemplar of that prophetic tradition, and as the prophet whose book gives its name to an entire genre, Jeremiah bitterly laments a wayward community that has betrayed its God and warns about divine wrath in store.
Key, Jr., Valdimir Orlando (1908–63)
Authors: Shafer Byron E.
Published: August 2023

Valdimir Orlando Key, Jr. – known to all and sundry as “V. O.” – was the leading student of American politics during the mid‐twentieth century. This reputation was due in part to the substantive breadth and descriptive richness of his writings. Yet Key also had a set of theoretically distinctive ways of thinking about American politics, some of which endure as analytic influences a half‐century later, others of which are diagnostic of a way of thinking that was destined to go out of fashion. On the one hand, then, he was an important figure in the “behavioral revolution” in postwar political science. On the other, his work was always consciously informed by central questions from political theory.
Laclau, Ernesto (1935–)
Authors: Simons Jon
Published: August 2023

Ernesto Laclau is an Argentinian‐born political theorist whose main contributions are in the fields of discourse theory, radical democracy, and populism. His key insight is that social order is a discourse, meaning a symbolic system structured analogously to language, as understood in poststructuralist terms. Discourse refers to the practices and meanings that constitute social order as an effect of the differences between social elements (classes, groups) that have no positive meaning other than through the differential relations between them. “Society” is a structured totality formed by the discursive relations that articulate social elements, modifying them in the process. Society is never entirely closed or fixed as its discursive formation requires an excluded element, conceived in psychoanalytical terms as a “lack.” Laclau is anti‐essentialist, holding that the identities of social groups and meanings of political terms are all contingent on their articulation in discourse. Yet, there are certain elements of discourse, called empty or floating signifiers, that provisionally fix social meanings in hegemonic relations.
Lasswell, Harold Dwight (1902–78)
Authors: Blatt Jessica
Published: August 2023

Harold D. Lasswell, American political scientist and one the most influential American social scientists of the mid‐twentieth century, was a progenitor of the behavioral movement in political science and a seminal scholar in the fields of political psychology, communications research, policy studies, legal education, and political sociology. His research primarily interrogated the interplay of symbols, language, personality, and culture, utilizing an approach he termed “configurative.” He introduced experimental techniques, statistical analysis, and clinical interviews to political science and, together with colleagues, he is credited with developing quantitative content analysis.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646–1716)
Authors: Nelson Eric S.
Published: August 2023

Leibniz was born near the conclusion of the chaotic period of the Thirty Years War. He studied law and then spent much of his life in the service of nobility and royalty, particularly the House of Hanover that assumed the British Crown a few years before his death. Best known for his works on metaphysics, mathematics, and logic, Leibniz's extensive political correspondence and writings concerned the foundations of law, local and international political affairs and social problems, and moral and political philosophy.
Levellers
Authors: Patterson‐Tutschka Monicka
Published: August 2023

The Levellers fought to protect freeborn Englishmen from arbitrary power. Their Presbyterian and Independent opponents called them “Levellers” because they aimed to “level” property distinctions. The Levellers, however, denied this accusation and claimed they supported private property rights. The “Diggers” who favored property redistribution some years later identified themselves as the “True Levellers.”
Liang Qichao (1873–1929)
Authors: Lee Theresa Man Ling
Published: August 2023

Liang Qichao was easily the most popular, if not the most influential, Chinese intellectual of the twentieth century. As China's first‐generation modern thinker, Liang embodied the transformation of a traditional Confucian literati whose raison d’être could no longer be assumed under the pressure of mounting political crisis in late nineteenth‐century China. Along the way Liang proved himself to be a man of many intellectual and literary talents. In addition to classical Confucian scholarship, Liang's published works cover a wide range of subjects, including Chinese philosophy, Chinese and world history, historiography, Buddhism, and western thought. He was a journalist who was instrumental in introducing the modern press to China. As a prolific essayist and an occasional novelist, Liang wrote for a broad audience, thereby pioneering the modernization of the Chinese language.
Liberal Individualism
Authors: Dow Douglas C.
Published: August 2023

The terms “liberalism” and “individualism” were coined at roughly the same time, liberalism entering the languages of western Europe in the 1810s and individualism following approximately a decade later. The meanings of these two neologisms have since been inexorably tied together, each modifying and clarifying the other. Nevertheless, liberal individualism, understood as a single concept, has always been contested, with sharp disagreement over both the definition and value of the individual within liberal thought. Significantly, many of the most important characterizations of liberal individualism have been the product of liberalism's opponents as much as of its supporters. Whether regarded as its highest achievement or as a mark of its pathological impoverishment, the individual and personal liberty have been viewed as the
sine qua non
of liberalism.
Liberty
Authors: Filling John
Published: August 2023

Liberty is a potent ideal. Rousseau called it the “most precious of all [God's] gifts.” But it is also an elusive ideal. MacCallum claims that all theories of liberty conform to a “triadic relation”: “x is (is not) free from y to do (not do, become, not become) z.” This entry examines five conceptions of liberty through the lens of MacCallum's formula: negative, positive, republican, Marxist, and feminist.
Limited Government
Authors: Peterson Paul C.
Published: August 2023

Limited government is a concept that is often linked to and sometimes used interchangeably with any of the following: constitutionalism, republicanism, limited monarchy, the rule of law, and the idea of natural rights. The term suggests that there are or should be limits on what government can do, and stands in contrast to arbitrary government. Depending on the theorist in question, these limits may or may not be derived from nature or God.
Luxury
Authors: Mathiowetz Dean
Published: August 2023

Luxury is typically considered an object of consumption that exceeds what's necessary, usually to a high degree of refinement and/or in ways that signal status. The concept has analogues in cultures and languages around the world; particularly in Mediterranean and European cultures from antiquity to the early modern period, “luxury” (with its cognates) was a fundamental organizing term of political and theological discourse. In those contexts, the concept of luxury was connected to social change, and in particular to myths of historical decline or progress. While the concept retains these associations, it is a striking example of a concept whose importance declined dramatically throughout modernity and into the present day, when it is little more than a term of marketing or light moral reproach.
MacIntyre, Alasdair C. (1929–)
Authors: Young Daniel Edward
Published: August 2023

Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre is a philosopher best known for his 1981 bookAfter Virtue. That book and its sequels develop a critique of liberal modernity for its individualism and its inability to provide political and social structures that facilitate moral enquiry in the light of a common good. MacIntyre has been particularly influential in the development of contemporary virtue ethics. Most of his early career was spent in Marxist intellectual circles, but in the course of the 1960s he became increasingly critical of Marxism for its inability to provide a rational grounding for morality. He eventually arrived in the 1980s at a Thomistic Aristotelian perspective.
Madison, James (1751–1836)
Authors: Kleinerman Benjamin A.
Published: August 2023

Since this is an encyclopedia of political thought, the first question that must be asked is: why include James Madison? After all, James Madison was, in the first place, a political statesman who never authored any work that would be typically called political theory insofar as all of his political writings were directly and intrinsically tied to the political situation in which he found himself. Although James Madison's writings are littered with more abstract reflections on the nature of politics as such, those abstractions are almost always then tied again to a specific political program or policy. In other words, although it is true that James Madison is one of the most theoretical politicians of all time, it is also true that he still remains a politician.
Maistre, Joseph de (1753–1821)
Authors: Armenteros Carolina
Published: August 2023

Sometimes referred to as the French Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre was a Savoyard counter‐revolutionary and a founder of conservatism. His status as a political thinker is paradoxical, since he was at once a key articulator of the early political right and a religious believer who aspired to minimize politics. Understanding his conservatism therefore necessitates recognizing the social, moral, historical, and religious considerations that preceded politics in his thought.
Mansbridge, Jane J. (1939–)
Authors: Scholz Bettina
Published: August 2023

Jane J. Mansbridge is the Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She has served as president of the American Political Science Association and as vice president and president of the Caucus for Women in Political Science. In 1994 she was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her book
Why We Lost the ERA
was corecipient of the American Political Science Association's awards for the best publication in US national policy and the best book on women in politics.
Marxist Feminism
Authors: Stefano Christine Di
Published: August 2023

Marxist feminism is a species of feminist theory and politics that takes its theoretical bearings from Marxism, notably the criticism of capitalism as a set of structures, practices, institutions, incentives, and sensibilities that promote the exploitation of labor, the alienation of human beings, and the debasement of freedom. For Marxist feminists, empowerment and equality for women cannot be achieved within the framework of capitalism. Marxist feminism is reluctant to treat “women” as a stand‐alone group with similar interests and aspirations. Marxist feminism thus distinguishes itself from other modes of feminist thought and politics by attending critically and systematically to the economic organization of societies, including stratification along the lines of class; by refusing to accord the category of “women” separate and special status, without regard to class; by its commitment to the overthrow of capitalism; and by its allegiance to working‐class and impoverished women.
Masculinity
Authors: Banerjee Sikata
Published: August 2023

In 2000 Christina Hoff Sommers lamented male suffering inThe War against Boyslocating its roots in the feminization process unfolding in public schools which disparaged the value of manhood and male roles in society. In the following year, Jane Fonda donated $12.5 million of her personal fortune toward the establishment of a Center for Gender and Education at Harvard University hoping to begin the academic process of helping America's boys to resist the cultural dissonance they were experiencing because they could not cope with or live up to the expectations of the traditional male role. Whether or not one agrees with the ideology underlying these examples, it is clear that these are popular expressions of what is known as “sex role” theory commonly used by sociologists and psychologists to explain gender differences between men and women. Furthermore, the focus on men implies that masculinity long conflated with the abstract individual is coming to the fore as a category needing analysis. Masculinity as a problem to be studied has energized a field of scholarship variously referred to as the critical studies and/or new sociology of masculinity.
Merleau‐Ponty, Maurice (1908–61)
Authors: Coole Diana
Published: August 2023

Born in provincial France, Merleau‐Ponty established his reputation as a philosopher during the 1940s and 50s. For the last decade or so of his life he held the prestigious chair in philosophy at the Collège de France. His interests were extremely broad, ranging from politics, sociology, and child psychology to aesthetics, religion, and postclassical physics. He was applauded as France's leading phenomenologist, and his participation in the existentialist movement alongside Jean‐Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir also marked him as a leading light in the postwar construction of humanist Marxism.
Milton, John (1608–74)
Authors: Alvis John E.
Published: August 2023

Best known for his epic poems
Paradise Lost
and
Paradise Regained
, Milton was also a writer of polemical tracts upon political subjects. Despite their topicality and the polemical intent evident in these writings, Milton's breadth of learning and philosophical argumentation have continued to engage readers interested in the study of principles of republicanism, civil and religious liberty, censorship, education, and constitutional theory.
Montaigne, Michel de (1533–92)
Authors: Storey Benjamin
Published: August 2023

Montaigne's
Essays
, though not a conventional book of political theory, nonetheless helped lay the foundations of modern political thought and of the modern outlook in general. The seminal moderns who came after him – Bacon, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and many others – were all steeped in Montaigne's work; the
Essays
are thought to have been the most widely read book in Europe during the eighteenth century.
Mosca, Gaetano (1858–1941)
Authors: LaVenia Peter A.
Published: August 2023

Born in Palermo, Sicily, Mosca is best known for having developed along with fellow Italian Vilfredo Pareto a theory of permanent elite control over politics, now called the “Italian School of Elitism.”
Nationalism
Authors: Kane John
Published: August 2023

Nationalism is an ideology that stresses allegiance to one's nation as a major political virtue and national preservation and self‐determination as prime political imperatives. In its varied forms, nationalism has proved an immensely powerful force for popular mobilization over two centuries in almost every part of the world.
Natural Law
Authors: Gibbons Michael T.
Published: August 2023

There are a variety of meanings attached to the concept of natural law. Natural law ethics, natural law jurisprudence, and natural law as it relates to politics are three such meanings. Not surprisingly, these terms often overlap or complement one another. Moreover, the exact meaning of each of these phrases will vary depending on what one means by the term “natural.” Here we will focus on natural law as it relates to politics.
Negri, Antonio (1933–)
Authors: Çıdam Çiğdem
Published: August 2023

Antonio Negri is an Italian Marxist philosopher, political activist, and revolutionary theorist. His intellectual and political career dates back to the 1960s when he became one of the most prominent and productive thinkers of the Italian extra‐parliamentary left. He continued to be an influential figure in European neo‐Marxist circles in the following decades. He captured the attention of a worldwide audience in 2000 with the publication of
Empire
, which was cowritten with Michael Hardt. The innovative and groundbreaking analysis of globalization developed in
Empire
constitutes the framework for Negri's ongoing critical engagement with global capitalism today.
Neoclassical Economics
Authors: Amadae Sonja M.
Published: August 2023

Neoclassical economics was a school of economic thought actively practiced as a new research frontier between the 1880s and 1940s. Its leading theorists were William Stanley Jevons, Leon Walras, Alfred Marshall, Vilfredo Pareto, Francis Ysidro Edgeware, and Lionel Robbins. It followed the classical economic period dominated by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and Karl Marx. The neoclassical economists pioneered the marginalist approach to economic analysis, which gained popular attention by describingHomo economicus– the rational economic man, who calculates every purchase to gain the most satisfaction.
Nozick, Robert (1938–2002)
Authors: Schmidtz David
Published: August 2023

Robert Nozick was born in Brooklyn, graduated from Columbia in 1959, and received a PhD from Princeton in 1963. After stints at Princeton and Rockefeller, he went to Harvard in 1969, at age 30, as full professor. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and served as president of the American Philosophical Association's Eastern Division.
Pareto, Vilfredo (1848–1923)
Authors: Femia Joseph V.
Published: August 2023

Pareto was one of the most versatile and influential thinkers of the twentieth century, leaving an imprint in the fields of microeconomics, political sociology, social psychology, and political theory. Born in Paris of a French mother and an aristocratic Italian father, he was educated in Italy, where he took a university degree in civil engineering. Initially, it seemed that he would follow the path of a typical Italian industrialist. After graduating, he worked in business for more than two decades. Throughout this period, however, Pareto was an outspoken advocate of democratic reform and free trade. His attachment to English radicalism, as expressed in speeches and pamphlets, earned him many enemies in Italy, where the free market was an alien concept. Through his political activities, he became acquainted with neoclassical economics and especially the ideas of Leon Walras, a pioneer of marginal analysis, which attacked the labor theory of value in all its forms. Neoclassical economics used mathematical equations to explain prices and quantities in terms of market transactions between self‐seeking individuals. Because of his quantitative skills, Pareto found that he could make serious technical contributions to this body of thought, publishing a number of articles in academic journals. Such was his growing reputation as a mathematical economist that in 1893, he was offered, and accepted, Walras's chair at the University of Lausanne. His main contribution to microeconomics was probably his idea of “Pareto optimality,” which posits that a society enjoys the optimum allocation of its resources at the equilibrium point where no one can be made better off (in the sense of want satisfaction) without making someone else worse off.
Paternalism
Authors: Ben‐Ishai Elizabeth
Published: August 2023

Paternalism refers to interventions in individuals’ lives, often against their wills, that are justified on the grounds that they promote the individuals’ welfare. Paternalists suggest that in some cases welfare benefits outweigh the costs of constraints on freedom.
Patriarchy
Authors: Richards David A. J.
Published: August 2023

Patriarchy marks the hierarchical authority of priest‐fathers over other men and boys and all women and girls. It is a mistake to think of patriarchy as an exclusively contemporary term of criticism arising from and within feminism. John Locke, the father of liberal constitutionalism, begins the great argument of theSecond Treatiseonly after he has refuted in theFirst TreatiseRobert Filmer's patriarchal defense of absolute monarchy, based on a divine right theory that Filmer traces lineally to Adam, the first patriarch. It is Locke's criticism of the unreasonableness of Filmer's version of theologically rooted patriarchal absolutism that is foundational to modern liberal political theory. This theory arises from an ideal of political ethics, treating persons as equal bearers of basic human rights, that condemns political absolutism and calls for some form of constitutional democracy that both better respects basic human rights (like the right to conscience and speech) and renders politics democratically accountable through regular elections. It is a tribute to the power and influence of Locke's argument for liberal democracy in theSecond Treatisethat almost no one, except a few feminists, even reads let alone remembers theFirst Treatise. But the few feminists, like Carole Pateman, who have taken theFirst Treatiseseriously may be on to something, namely that Locke's version of egalitarian contractualism does not take seriously the degree to which, for example, patriarchal marriage, based on the alleged naturalness of gender hierarchy, violates his moral egalitarianism (women are not treated as equals).
Phronesis
Authors: Steinberger Peter J.
Published: August 2023

A Greek term, typically translated as “practical wisdom,” “prudence,” or “judgment,” phronesis describes a virtue often thought to be characteristic of or essential to appropriate and effective engagement in political life. It is widely regarded as a feature of political leadership – statesmanship – properly understood, and it is sometimes also included in conceptions of the good citizen.
Plutarch (ca. 45–120)
Authors: Van Hoof Lieve
Published: August 2023

Plutarch of Chaeronea was a Greek philosopher living under the early Roman Empire. He held various offices in local politics, traveled to Rome as an ambassador, and befriended many powerful Romans. According to Byzantine sources, the emperors Trajan and Hadrian conferred honorary political insignia and offices on him. In his large oeuvre, two groups of texts deal with politics.
Political Obligation
Authors: Hirschmann Nancy J.
Published: August 2023

Political obligation refers to the requirement of citizens to obey the authority of their state, a requirement sometimes referred to as “the duty to obey the law.” However, while both legal and political obligation pertain to such a duty, legal obligation is based in the law itself; we must do X because the law tells us to. But that begs the prior question: Why should we obey the law? The answer to that pertains to political obligation, which grounds the legitimacy of a state's law‐creating capacity.
Political Psychology
Authors: Rosenberg Shawn
Published: August 2023

Political psychology is a hybrid enterprise that integrates two disciplines, political science and psychology. It is an uneasy coupling. Both disciplines have a common interest in explaining human thought and behavior, but diverge significantly in their characterization of these phenomena. Political science tends to adopt a collectivist approach. The focus is on structures of power and how they are realized in political institutions and culture. In contrast, psychology takes a more individualist approach. It focuses on qualities of cognition, emotion, and motivation.
Political Satire
Authors: McHugh Mary A.
Published: August 2023

Throughout history there have been many forms of political satire (metaphor, allusion, hyperbole, pun, analogy, and deadpan). Political satire is a device that allows political opinions to be expressed through intentional and humorous distortions of reality. Plays, novels, cartoons, movies, and television programs are all forms of political satire that have been used to critique and analyze politics, politicians, government, and human life in ways that provide entertainment to the observer.
Politics of Identity
Authors: Shabani Omid Payrow
Published: August 2023

In order to understand the “politics of identity,” it is useful, first, to get a good grasp of what the concept of “identity” means. Identity is a complex and multivalent concept. We have an abstract or universal identity as human beings. Our humanity is our human identity, not just biologically, but also morally. This abstract identity gets filled in and becomes concrete in a particular identity. There are two major approaches to the study of identity: essentialism, which takes identity as constituted by some inherent and immutable features; and constructivism, which takes identity as constituted through life experiences and interaction with others in various spheres.
Popper, Karl Raimund (1902–94)
Authors: Stokes Geoffrey
Published: August 2023

Popper articulated a distinctive political theory of freedom and reason that combined insights from normative epistemology, studies of scientific method, and the history of political thought. Popper was an influential critic of fascism and communism. He opposed intellectual dogmatism, which he saw as likely to sanction political authoritarianism and physical violence. In place of dogmatism he proposed fallibilism, an epistemological doctrine based on the assumption that human beings always have imperfect knowledge.
Populism
Authors: Grattan Laura
Published: August 2023

Populism is a style of political discourse and practice that calls for the return of power to the people. The term populism derives from the Latin
populus
, referring both to a people, as in a political community, and to the common people, as in the masses. The populist tradition thus recalls the popular assemblies of ancient Athens and the plebeian councils of the Roman Republic. In modern politics, populism draws its force from the ideal of popular sovereignty, which holds that citizens are the fundamental source of power and authority in a legitimate political order. Populist actors and leaders claim to embody or represent the voice of the sovereign people, often dramatizing a conflict that pits the common people against elite concentrations of economic, cultural, or governmental power. Because it promises to return power to the people, and exposes fault lines in established orders, populism raises ongoing questions about the meanings, limits, and prospects of democracy.
Positivism
Authors: Eidlin Fred
Published: August 2023

“Positivism” refers to a family of views about knowledge that take the natural sciences in the tradition of Galileo and Newton as the exemplar for all knowledge. There is no single, unambiguous definition of positivism since the term is used in many different ways – usually vaguely and imprecisely. Some usages, notably “Comtian positivism,” the “logical positivism” of the Vienna Circle, “positive economics,” and its political science relative “positive political theory,” are clearly definable. Yet it would be misleading to assume that these definable senses of positivism capture its meaning. In its broadest sense, positivism can be identified with the scientific worldview that has come to pervade almost all of modern thought, including common sense. In this sense, almost everyone is a positivist.
Protestant Political Thought
Authors: Brink Paul A.
Published: August 2023

The various traditions of Protestant political thought – Lutheran, Calvinist, Anabaptist – can be distinguished according to their characteristic strategies of cultural engagement, as well as their distinctive theological emphases, particularly concerning the relationship between nature and grace. A general openness to democratic or republican political systems, an emphasis on freedom of conscience, a limited state, and the development of a right to resistance against tyranny are all reviewed. In the contemporary era, “family resemblances” of each tradition can still be determined in representative thinkers (Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr, Barth, Kuyper, Yoder). Other Protestant movements receive special mention: the African American prophetic tradition, Pentecostalism, and American evangelicalism.
Public Reason
Authors: Jörke Dirk
Published: August 2023

The concept of public reason is a contemporary invention, reacting to what John Rawls called the “fact of reasonable pluralism” of religious and other comprehensive doctrines. The main idea is that in public debates only those arguments should prevail that can be justified in a political way, without relying on a particular comprehensive doctrine. Nevertheless, the aim of freeing the political world from religious dominance in order to prevent civil war or a religiously motivated suppression of minorities goes back to Thomas Hobbes. For Hobbes, public reason is the reason of the king, “God's supreme lieutenant.” His function is to end public conflicts about the true nature of God or, as Hobbes writes inLeviathan, whether stories about miracles are true or not. The king authoritatively decides what is fact and what are lies, particularly with regard to religious disputes, and thereby pacifies religious conflicts. His word counts as public reason. It must be strictly separated from the private beliefs of his subjects. In their private life, subjects are free to believe whatever they want, but not in the public sphere. Here the king has to care for peace and stability and therefore must end religious disputes through his public and binding decision. Thus, “when it comes to confession of that faith, the private reason must submit to the public; that is to say, to God's lieutenant.” In other words, for Hobbes, public reason is first and foremost an authoritative and political reason.
Queer Theory
Authors: Schotten C. Heike
Published: August 2023

Queer theory is a field of study that critically examines sex, gender, sexuality, and sexual desire from a dissident and “gay affirmative” perspective. Its primary aims are the denaturalization of (hetero)sexuality and (hetero)normative gender categories, identities, and expressions.
Realism and Neorealism in International Relations Theory
Authors: Joseph Jonathan
Published: August 2023

Realism is the dominant school in the study of international relations and covers a broad range of positions which share certain family resemblances but also contain significant differences. The most significant difference is between classical realism, which places emphasis on human and domestic factors, and neorealism, which emphasizes how the structure of the international system determines state behavior. Neoclassical realism attempts something of a synthesis of the two positions.
Reconciliation
Authors: Verdeja Ernesto
Published: August 2023

The concept of reconciliation has received renewed attention from political theorists following the democratic transitions of the past thirty years and engagements with historical injustices in established democracies. Nevertheless, “reconciliation” is still a highly contested term, with disagreements over its substance, scope and proper relationship to politics. In its most general sense reconciliation refers to a condition of nonviolent, mutually acceptable coexistence where former enemies come to re‐envision one another as fellow citizens. Reconciliation debates often center on the appropriateness of trials and accountability, truth commissions, lustration (purges), official apologies, memorials, reparations, amnesties, and other institutions and policies to address the past. Where violence was between nations, reconciliation normally refers to re‐establishing social, political and economic relations among erstwhile adversaries. In some instances, it is incorrect to speak ofreconciliation, since there is no prior morally acceptable state to which to return.
Reformation
Authors: Eisenach Eldon J.
Published: August 2023

The Protestant Reformation set in motion a series of largely unintended revolutions, running from the sudden transformation of European geopolitics and political thought, through the formation of the modern nation‐state, and down to the reshaping of families and the ideals of individuality. Martin Luther (1483–1546), a German, and Jean Calvin (1509–64), a Frenchman, were the leading figures around which Reformation political thought, Reformation churches, and Protestant states and societies took their bearings.
Regicide
Authors: Idris Murad
Published: August 2023

Regicide is the killing of a monarch. Michael Walzer distinguishes between two kinds of regicide, which map onto private assassination and public execution. The first kind is when a monarch is killed but monarchy remains; indeed, the killer may even be a would‐be king. The second kind is the destruction of monarchy itself, symbolically “cutting off the king's head.” Coded as among the worst crimes in Europe, regicide's punishment “had to constitute thesummumof all possible tortures,” much like Robert‐François Damiens's public torture for his attempted regicide of King Louis XV.
Religion and Politics
Authors: Blackford Russell
Published: August 2023

Religious traditions, organizations, and communities make claims to authority that can easily bring them into conflict with each other, with individuals who reject their claims, and with worldly political institutions. In many cases, religious leaders and expositors argue that political authority is ultimately grounded in religious truths, and that the latter ought to prevail in cases of apparent disagreement. Over the past three or four centuries, however, claims of this sort have encountered searching, and sometimes passionate, critiques. In the upshot, the relationship between political and religious authority is complex and controversial.
Risk
Authors: Wolff Jonathan
Published: August 2023

Life is full of risks, understood as the possibility of actual harm. (Risk can also be positive: the possibility of gain, but it is the negative that will be the focus here.) Risk gives rise to many puzzles. One is metaphysical: is risk an objective fact about the world, or is it “socially constructed”? Another is moral: many risks could be reduced, if not completely eliminated, while at the same time we often find ourselves facing new risks. When is it morally permissible for individuals to be subjected to risks that could be reduced or eliminated?
Rowbotham, Sheila (1943–)
Authors: Randall Vicky
Published: August 2023

Sheila Rowbotham has been a central figure within British socialist feminism from the 1960s. Her 1969 pamphlet, “Women's Liberation and the New Politics,” played an influential role in setting the emerging Women's Liberation agenda. Her output since then has included no less than 19 books, all in different ways contributing to the development and application of socialist feminist thought.
Sabine, George H. (1880–1961)
Authors: Gibbons Michael T.
Published: August 2023

George Sabine was a professor of philosophy at Cornell University and an American political theorist widely known for
A History of Political Theory
, which is considered his seminal work and was a staple of graduate education in political science for the best part of over three decades.
Samizdat
Authors: Lindsey Jason Royce
Published: August 2023

Samizdat is a Russian term that means self‐published. Within the context of the Soviet Union in the twentieth century, this seemingly innocuous designation carried great political significance. It indicated that a work was not officially approved and likely to be censored by the regime. Thus, samizdat is historically associated with the resistance activity of political dissidents during the Cold War. Since the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, samizdat has become a broader label. Today it is frequently applied to independent literature, journalism, or art that challenges: the politics of a repressive government, the restrictive customs of a society, or the constraining dogma of other cultural authorities.
Sandinismo
Authors: Beede Benjamin R.
Published: August 2023

Sandinismo can be best characterized as a millennial movement that combined political, economic, social, philosophical, and spiritual elements in an effort to achieve a new world order. This ideology, developed by Nicaraguan Augusto Sandino, is so complex that only a summary can be given in a short space. Long after Sandino's murder by Somoza forces in 1934, Carlos Fonseca Amador further elaborated Sandino's views, making them an important part of the Sandinista movement that overthrew Nicaragua's Somoza government and battled covert United States intervention for years.
Sartre, Jean‐Paul (1905–80)
Authors: Gordon Lewis R.
Published: August 2023

Sartre's political thought could be characterized by three elements: (1) his life as a political project and performance, (2) freedom as a challenge of the relationship of ethics to political life, and (3) the historical weight of history and an imposing social world on the task of creating institutions that do not inhibit the development of human potential and relationships. In all, these boil down to the question of political life as an effort to bring the human being to the fore in the human world.
Saxonhouse, Arlene W. (1944–)
Authors: Gabrielson Teena
Published: August 2023

Arlene W. Saxonhouse is the Caroline Robbins Collegiate Professor of Political Science and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan where she has been a faculty member since 1972. During 1990–3 Saxonhouse served as chair of the department of political science and during 1993–6 she held the James Orin Murfin Professorship of Political Science.
Shapiro, Ian (1956–)
Authors: Switzer David , Ellis Elisabeth
Published: August 2023

Ian Shapiro is Sterling Professor of political science and Henry R. Luce Director of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. Born in South Africa, he received his BSc with honors from Bristol University in the UK. Shapiro holds PhD and JD degrees from Yale University, and served as the chair of the Department of Political Science at Yale from 1999–2004. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Sieyès, Emmanuel Joseph (1748–1836)
Authors: Fauré Christine
Published: August 2023

Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836) was a key figure in the promotion of representative government during the French Revolution and one of the most original thinkers of his time, especially regarding constitutional theory. He was vicar‐general under the protection of the bishop of Chartres, and he participated, in 1787, in the Assembly of theOrléanais, which reformed tax administration. He publishedlibelles, including the famousEssay on Privileges(1788) andWhat Is the Third‐Estate?(1789), the latter being the most widely read text of the French Revolution.
Social Capital
Authors: Coole Diana
Published: August 2023

The concept of social capital emerged from within the civil society literature, where social capital is sometimes referred to as the glue that holds society together. Two principal components are commonly identified: social networks and civic norms.
Spengler, Oswald (1880–1936)
Authors: Farrenkopf John
Published: August 2023

Oswald Spengler is one of the twentieth century's leading philosophers of world history. His
Decline of the West
, published in two volumes in 1918 and 1922, presents a sweeping vision of world history in which autonomous high cultures cyclicly rise and decline. It is noteworthy for its criticism of the Eurocentricity of pre‐World War I historical thought and the optimism of Enlightenment thinkers and their heirs.
The One and the Many
Authors: Goodfield Eric
Published: August 2023

Despite common contemporary usage, the phrase “the one and the many” does not actually originate from consideration of political matters. In fact, Plato's famed borrowing from the historical Parmenides and Heraclitus originates in metaphysical debates rather than those explicitly political. While the term may nowadays have become shorthand for referencing issues of power and its concentration or distribution in a given political community, say in a democratic or authoritarian system, the intellectual origins of the problem of the one and the many have a conceptual basis that preceded and anticipated the political metaphor in ancient political thought. Plato converted the conceptual dilemma to a political one in asking whether abstract political collectives (nations, states, institutions, etc.) on the one hand or their numerous concrete members on the other should be given political priority. Plato's political balancing of the one and the many in the polis provides a foundation for considering its impact on modern political thinkers who worked through the problem in formulating their own conceptions of political belonging and freedom in response.
Tradition
Authors: Polet Jeffrey
Published: August 2023

“Tradition” refers to a handing over or a passing down of what one possesses. These possessions, broadly speaking, can include cultural forms such as language, social institutions, practices, mores, and so forth. The word found its earliest usage in the legal realm, where it referred to the handing over or transfer of legal papers or property from one person to another.