liberalism

In a book that is part history of ideas, part political essay, Camille Dejardin argues that John Stuart Mill’s oeuvre is useful for understanding contemporary issues, notably the ecological crisis and related economic change. Yet she does so while advancing some half-truths.

According to Jean-Fabien Spitz, republicanism’s foundational ideals have been betrayed by the very people who purport to defend them against liberalism. An overemphasis on questions of identity makes it possible to forget that the republic was, from the outset, a principle of social justice.

Cutting the number of civil servants is a topic that is raised at each election in France. Why this anti-civil service attitude, despite public services themselves being constantly praised? Why this hostility, even though as soon as electoral campaigns are over, it is usually left without any practical consequences?

Targeted assassination campaigns seem increasingly well established as a newly prevalent way of war. Through a comparison between the United States and Israel’s practices of assassination, Amélie Férey analyses the discourses which legitimise this practice despite its apparent incompatibility with political liberalism.

The last few decades have been marked by a profound reconfiguration of the dividing line between the state and the market. As the state increasingly ensures that market competition functions without impediments, the field of intermediation and influence is experiencing an unprecedented expansion.

From Mitterrand’s “rigueur” to Hollande’s “mandate,” Bruno Amable charts the transformation of French capitalism and reveals the making of a political crisis.

For a long time, the origin of the term État-providence in French was ascribed to late Second Empire liberals who apparently coined it in a negative sense. In reality, though, the notion reaches further back to the generation of 1848, where it emerged as a response to working-class demands. Understood in this way, the expression regains its legitimacy.

Nowadays, criticism of Europe has become the outlet for democratic disarray. While disintegration threatens the European Union, what are the forces opposing it, and what are they going after exactly?

The most influential doctrines (Liberal, Socialist, Marxist) that have competed since the 19^th century to define the future of industrial society are all designed to support a productivist society. This hegemony has marginalised the ecological alternatives. Is their dominance coming to an end?

The 2008 financial crisis revealed significant frailties within global capitalism. How did the political response shape the ensuing decade? In his book, economic historian Adam Tooze narrates the key events over this period, from financial sector bailouts to geopolitical shifts worldwide.

Using a variety of documents and sources, Louis Pinto traces the genesis of the category of “the consumer” as a central feature of market economy and society. But in doing so, he risks downplaying the insights of critical theory and the opportunities for politicization tied to this distinct form of social participation.

Should democratic states go to war? The first part of this interview with Michael Doyle is devoted to the definition of different intellectual traditions of liberalism, in particular Kant and Mill, in an attempt to examine the necessary conditions of democratic peace.

Resurrecting the life of John Cary’s Essay on the State of England, a book which travelled all over Europe throughout the 18^th century, S.A. Reinert challenges our understanding of Enlightenment economics, while calling for a more nuanced and historically-informed understanding of political economy in general.

Recounting his itinerary from research on Communitarianism to the adoption of Confucian values, political philosopher Daniel A. Bell advocates thinking of cities as representing different social values in the modern world. He also sees meritocracy, which is valued in China nowadays as a potential remedy to the flaws of democratic systems.

A world-famous legal scholar, Bruce Ackerman wants to reinvigorate citizenship in today’s democracies. Here, he reexamines the intellectual foundations of his work, and some of the pragmatic applications he designed with others. His principle is to always consider how the state intervenes in the autobiography of every man.

Who are the enemies of liberal democracy? Daniel Mahoney identifies them as modern totalitarians of the Left and the Right, but also as its immoderate friends: those who unwisely try to undermine modern democracy’s foundations in Western political and cultural traditions, ignoring the fact that these very traditions are the essential foundations of modern democracy.

How did the thought of John Stuart Mill cross the English Channel? Vincent Guillin and Djamel Souafa analyze the reception of Considerations on Representative Government in Second Empire France and show why it is interesting to reconsider Mill’s theory of democratic government today.

There is no small irony in the fact that while many Americans naturally associate “France” with “socialism,” the American right has turned to a French author to denounce what it sees as the immorality and “socialist” tendencies of its own government. His name: Frédéric Bastiat.

In L’Avènement de la démocratie (The Advent of Democracy), Marcel Gauchet claims that our democracies are in crisis as a result of modernity’s difficulty in letting go of the religious order. But this thesis, while challenging, suffers from being over systematic, viewing any desire for unity as nostalgia for the divine. Moreover, it throws the issue of social struggles into the shade.