bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Aron, Raymond (1905–83)
Authors: Mahoney Daniel J. 
Published: August 2023

Abstract

Raymond Aron was a distinguished French philosopher, political thinker, social scientist, and journalist. He wrote influential columns for
Le Figaro
(1947–77) and
L'Express
(1978–83) and played a major role in shaping moderate and conservative opinion in France in the years after World War II. Today he is widely acknowledged to be one of the most prominent twentieth‐century representatives of the French tradition of political liberalism. He was profoundly shaped by his experience witnessing the rise of National Socialism in Germany as a student in that country in the early 1930s. As he put it in his 1970 “inaugural address” at the Collège de France, the experience of a civilized country descending into barbarism permanently cured him of “facile progressivism,” the illusion that “history automatically obeys the dictates of reason.” It was during this period that Aron discovered the sociological and historical reflection of the German sociologist Max Weber, whose thought he admired and did so much to introduce into French intellectual circles. But the mature Aron expressed grave doubts about the excessive pathos and “Nietzschean nihilism” that he came to see just beneath the surface of Weber's austere methodological reflections. Aron increasingly turned to an array of thinkers – the political Aristotle, Tocqueville, and Montesquieu among them, who provided a firmer foundation for his own choice of political moderation over fanaticism in its various forms.
Arrow's Impossibility Theorem
Authors: Johnson James 
Published: August 2023

Abstract

Kenneth Arrow (1921–) is an American economist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Economics primarily for work published as
Social Choice and Individual Values
. In that work Arrow explored the procedures for reaching collective decisions characteristic of “a capitalist democracy” in contrast to modern authoritarian or traditional theocratic regimes. He reached what – to quote the Nobel committee – is a seemingly “discouraging” conclusion. Specifically, Arrow established that no procedure for aggregating individual values into social decisions can generate a consistent collective choice while simultaneously complying with several minimal normative conditions.
Art and Politics
Authors: Bellhouse Mary 
Published: August 2023

Abstract
Visual art, like power, is productive, not merely reflective or imitative. Art contributes to the production of politically salient subjectivities, affects, and actions. A site of power and struggle, art often functions to support and sustain political regimes. Consider, for example, the Nazi regime's spectacular attempts to use and control art, film, and architecture to support its values. Yet art can also be disruptive, a site of resistance, an outcry of protest.
Assimilation
Authors: Zimmermann Klaus F. 
Published: August 2023

Abstract
Assimilation means striving to become alike. It is a process of convergence of social structures to one dominant structure involving individuals or groups of diverse ethnic or cultural heritages. The concept is typically applied to immigrants adapting to the culture of the host country. In this process, the individuals’ ethnic identity adjusts and they become absorbed into the dominant culture, taking on its characteristics, behaviors, values, and norms. Rooted in American sociology (Simons 1901) assimilation has often been equated with Americanization and the myth of the melting pot.
Astell, Mary (1666–1731)
Authors: Springborg Patricia 
Published: August 2023

Abstract

Mary Astell is famous for her rhetorical question in the 1706 “Preface” to
Reflections upon Marriage
: “If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?” – words that have earned her a place in the feminist canon. An early advocate of women's causes, Astell's
A Serious Proposal to the Ladies
, advocating a Platonist academy for women, briefly attracted the attention of Queen Anne, and caused her to be satirized by Swift/Steele in the
Tatler
, and by Susanna Centlivre and later Gilbert and Sullivan, as
Princess Ida
, on the stage.
Athenian Democracy
Authors: Gish Dustin A. 
Published: August 2023

AbstractHuman beings living in the ancient Greek polis constituted a body politic, a community bound together by a common regime or way of life (politeia). When domestic and foreign affairs were debated, treaties ratified, coins struck, decrees proclaimed, or laws passed, it was always in the name of “the Athenians” or “the Lakedaimonians” – never in terms of “Athens” or “Sparta.” Active citizens by direct participation formed the free polis. From the end of the sixth century to the last quarter of the fourth century, the regime of the Athenians, with a few brief exceptions, was democracy – the world's first.
Averroes (Abu al‐Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmed ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd) (1126–98)
Authors: DiPasquale David 
Published: August 2023

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

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

Abstract

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

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

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

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

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

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

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