Conceptualizing the state
Subtitle: innovation and dispute in British political thought 1880-1914
By: James Meadowcroft.
Series: Oxford historical monographs
Publisher: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 251
Subjects: Political science -- Great Britain -- History.; State, The.
Description: This book is concerned with the way in which the concept of the state was invoked in British political argument between 1880 and 1914. Its central claim is that the decades bracketing the turn of the century witnessed a significant change in the prevailing terms of British political discourse, that the concept of the state, hitherto a relative stranger to British debate, emerged as a key component of the idiom in which critical reflection on politics was cast.

James Meadowcroft surveys the ways in which the state was understood in this period, and also presents a detailed analysis of the conceptions of the state in the work of six prominent theorists: Herbert Spencer, Hugh Cecil, Bernard Bosanquet, L. T. Hobhouse, J. A. Hobson, and Ramsay MacDonald.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [237]-246) and index.
Table of contents: title: The state and political argument; title: Herbert Spencer, Hugh Cecil, and the state; title: Bernard Bosanquet, Leonard Hobhouse, and the state; title: John Hobson, Ramsay MacDonald, and the state; title: The movement of theory.