bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Kollontai, Aleksandra (1872–1952)
Authors: Masing‐Delic Irene 
Published: August 2023

Abstract

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

Abstract
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

Abstract
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

Abstract
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

AbstractA 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

Abstract
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

AbstractCrawford 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

Abstract

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

AbstractMansfield 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

AbstractWhatismarriage – 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.
Medieval Political Theory
Authors: Sullivan Mary Elizabeth 
Published: August 2023

Abstract
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

AbstractBest 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

AbstractAs 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

Abstract“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.
Natural Man
Authors: Ward Ann 
Published: August 2023

Abstract
“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

Abstract
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

AbstractReinhold 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

AbstractFriedrich 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

AbstractImagine 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

Abstract
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

Abstract
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

Abstract
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

AbstractOrientalism 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.
Participatory Democracy
Authors: Barber Benjamin R. 
Published: August 2023

Abstract
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

AbstractPluralism 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

AbstractWith 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

AbstractDespite 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

Abstract
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

AbstractThere 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

AbstractPragmatism 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.