After liberalism
Subtitle: mass democracy in the managerial state
By: Paul Edward Gottfried.
Series: New forum books
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Princeton, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 185
Subjects: Welfare state; Public administration; Social engineering; Liberalism; Democracy; Pluralism (Social sciences); Populism
Description: In this trenchant challenge to social engineering, Paul Gottfried analyzes a patricide: the slaying of nineteenth-century liberalism by the managerial state. Paul Gottfried does more than analyze historical facts, however. He builds on them to show why it matters that the managerial state has replaced traditional liberalism: the new regimes of social engineers, he maintains, are elitists, and their rule is consensual only in the sense that it is unopposed by any widespread organized opposition.

How can opponents of administrative elites show the public that those who provide, however ineptly, for their material needs are the enemies of democratic self-rule and of independent decision making in family life? If we do not wake up, Gottfried warns, the political debate may soon be over, despite sporadic and ideologically confused populist rumblings in both Europe and the United States.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 143-176) and index.