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911 results in Political theory

Page 1 of 46

Montesquieu and His World
  • Selected Correspondence
  • Translated by David Carrithers, Phillip Stewart
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    31 August 2026
  • Montesquieu is among the most important figures in the history of political thought, yet his published writings reveal next to nothing regarding his personal life. This volume provides the first English translations of letters revealing the character, lifestyle, and ambitions of this titled aristocrat, landowner, feudal lord, wine producer, and influential author. The letters chosen include intimate details regarding his marriage, family life, dalliances, and literary ambitions alongside frank assessments of French and European politics, warfare, and religion that would have aroused government censors if made public. We learn how eagerly Montesquieu sought entry into Parisian social circles after publishing his Persian Letters (1721), and we see how greatly he valued friendships with Parisian women whose influence at court could protect writers criticizing the existing order. In sum, the letters translated for this volume provide crucial context for his published work, illuminating how his life experiences shaped his worldview.

Game-Theoretic Models of International Crisis Bargaining
  • Ahmer Tarar
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026

Understanding Humanity with Isaiah Berlin
  • Edited by Johnny Lyons
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2026
    Print publication:
    31 August 2026
  • The central ideas of Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) remain as alive for our century as they did for his, and his enduring importance as a thinker is matched by his reputation as an essayist of the first rank. This in-depth exploration of a selection of Berlin's most important essays, by a rich variety of distinguished scholars, offers a critical appraisal of Berlin's wide-ranging intellectual preoccupations and their relation to the deep, persistent questions of human life. Each of the contributors examines Berlin's understanding of humanity through one of his essays, including 'The Hedgehog and the Fox', 'Two Concepts of Liberty' and 'Winston Churchill in 1940', together with less famous ones such as 'The Divorce between the Sciences and the Humanities' and 'The Purpose of Philosophy'. The result is a fresh, insightful portrait of a fascinating mind.

Developing Theories in the Social Sciences
  • Methods and Applications
  • Jane Sell, Murray Webster Jr.
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026
  • Progress in the social sciences entails developing and improving theoretical understanding of social phenomena and improving methods for collecting and analyzing data. Theories organize what we know or expect to learn about phenomena and methods provide the evidential basis for the theories. While we have witnessed great strides in the development of statistical methods, there is less information for developing theories. In Developing Theories in the Social Sciences, Jane Sell and Murray Webster Jr. describe an approach for logical, consistent, and useful explanatory theories for social scientists. They emphasize properly defining concepts to embed in theoretical propositions, while providing guidelines for avoiding missteps that can occur, including imprecise definitions, incomplete assumptions, and missing scope conditions. Offering examples from different disciplines, the authors propose a structured method vital for building and refining theories about social phenomena.

Teaching America
  • Reflective Patriotism in Schools, College, and Culture
  • Paul O. Carrese
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2026
    Print publication:
    31 May 2026
  • In Teaching America, Paul Carrese offers an intellectual justification for reviving a reflective and discursive approach to civic education. He explores why civic education is crucial for sustaining our democratic republic and explains how a sober, yet hopeful, civics is vital to both civic learning and perpetuating the American experiment. Blending gratitude for America with civil argument about what America means, Carrese implores educators to explore civics informed by rational patriotism. In this Tocquevillean approach, civil disagreement is a feature, not a failing, of our constitutional democracy. He argues that schools, colleges, and culture must develop citizens with the knowledge and virtues to operate our civic order, seeing self-government as crucial for pursuit of happiness. Using a portrait of jazz as an American e pluribus unum this compelling case provides a hopeful renewal of civics and civic friendship needed across formal learning and civic culture.

Democracy and the Limits of Community
  • Christian J. Emden
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2026
    Print publication:
    31 May 2026
  • At a historical moment when democracy experiences a legitimation crisis, demands for 'community' and for a 'democracy of the common' have become central themes in political theory and philosophy on both sides of the Atlantic. Such appeals entail a critique, even a rejection, of liberal constitutional democracy as alienating and inauthentic, as not representing the interests of citizens. This book fundamentally questions the democratic potential of appeals to 'community' and 'the common.' The language of 'community' can be observed especially among conservative and neofascist public intellectuals of the New Right, but it also features surprisingly prominently among post-Marxist philosophers and political theorists of the New Left. Tracing 'community' and 'the common' in contemporary political thought and philosophy, this book argues that they represent a dangerous political romanticism and authoritarian drift incompatible with the normative demands and the emancipatory dimension of liberal constitutional democracy.

Empirical Legal Studies in EU Law
  • Edited by Daniel Naurin, Urška Šadl, Jan Zglinski
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    30 April 2026
  • Empirical Legal Studies has arrived in EU law. The past decade has seen the publication of pathbreaking quantitative and qualitative studies, the creation of relevant thematic networks, and the realisation of large-scale empirical research projects. This volume explores the new movement. It features contributions penned by legal and political science scholars working or interested in the field. It is part handbook, for which scholars – experts and novices alike – can reach to get an overview of the state of the art. It is part manifesto, showcasing the need for and potential of this fast-growing area of academic inquiry. Finally, it is a critical reflection, assessing the challenges and limitations of Empirical Legal Studies in the EU context, as well as its interaction with adjacent disciplinary and interdisciplinary endeavours. The book captures the significant contribution which empirical legal research has made to the study of EU law, while facilitating an exchange about the way forward.

Vulnerability and Relational Equality
  • Edited by Costanza Porro, Christine Straehle
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    March 2026
    Print publication:
    31 March 2026
  • How should we conceive of the vulnerability which we all experience, and what import does it have for how we think of equality as a political ideal? How should the state express equal respect for its citizens in light of our common vulnerability, and the heightened vulnerability experienced by some citizens? What does it mean for us to treat each other as equals in light of the inevitable dependencies and vulnerabilities which colour our relationship with each other? This volume offers the first systematic exploration of the relationship between two increasingly central concepts in political and moral philosophy and theory, namely vulnerability and relational equality, with essays presenting a range of current philosophical perspectives on the pressing practical question of how to conceive of equality within society in light of vulnerability. It will be valuable for readers interested in political philosophy and theory, ethics, public policy and philosophy of law.

A Practical Guide to Time Series Analysis
  • Suzanna Linn, Matthew J. Lebo, Clayton Webb
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    March 2026
    Print publication:
    31 March 2026
  • Understanding change over time is a critical component of social science. However, data measured over time – time series – requires their own set of statistical and inferential tools. In this book, Suzanna Linn, Matthew Lebo, and Clayton Webb explain the most commonly used time series models and demonstrate their applications using examples. The guide outlines the steps taken to identify a series, make determinations about exogeneity/endogeneity, and make appropriate modelling decisions and inferences. Detailing challenges and explanations of key techniques not covered in most time series textbooks, the authors show how navigating between data and models, deliberately and transparently, allows researchers to clearly  explain their statistical analyses to a broad audience.

Passages
  • On geo-analysis and the aesthetics of precarity
  • Sam Okoth Opondo, Michael J. Shapiro
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    03 March 2026
  • Passages: On Geo-analysis and the aesthetics of precarity assembles a series of political interventions and ruminations that are as much about ethics as they are about aesthetics. It consists of a series of interconnected essays and images that intervene to create an image–text montage that reveals the shadow worlds that intensify precarity as well as the complex event and discursive spaces that offer alternative approaches to knowledge, politics, and encounters. In our dialogically created composition, the chapters treat themes such as colonialism, apocalyptic imaginaries, nuclear zones of abandonment, migration control regimes, transnational domestic work, the biocolonial hostilities of the hospitality industry, legal precarities behind the international criminal justice regime, the shadow worlds of the African soccerscape, and various immunity regimes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through an aesthetically attuned form of geo-analysis that offers aesthetic breaks from capitalist exploitation and the nation-statist regime, this book invites inquiry into today’s apocalyptic narratives, humanitarian reason, immunitary apparatuses, and international criminal justice regimes.

Associational anarchism
  • Towards a left-libertarian conception of freedom
  • Chris Wyatt
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    28 February 2026
  • This book presents a new left-libertarian conception of liberty, ‘freedom as Marxian-autonomy’, which is explored above all in terms of its organisational contours. The project brings together in theoretical dialogue Karl Marx’s (1818–83) critique of capitalism, certain ideals adapted from the guild socialist writings of G.D.H. Cole (1889–1959) and the sub-schools of social anarchism. In doing so it contributes towards the healing of a major historical schism in socialist theory. The outcome is a newly formed anarchist constitution, ‘associational anarchism’. In offering something important to the recent outpourings in current anarchist discourse, the book contends that liberty can be attained without passing through the mediation of self-interested employers, career politicians or state planners. The foundational claim is that a condition of freedom requires equal and democratic access to the material means of life, where self-mastery is attained in both the productive and consumptive spheres. Negative (non-coercion) and positive (self-direction, self-development) ideals are combined congenially in a conceptual framework that does not frame them in perpetual contradiction. This specific protection of a set of individual liberties, of which the political liberties are of equal value, effectively challenges the ideological belief that only liberalism safeguards negative liberty. As the book unfolds, an argument is developed that hard market forces must lose their ascendancy in much the same way the socialist state must be stripped of its unaccountable authority. The associational anarchist configuration of social planning with a guild-regulated market system is offered as the necessary corrective.

Border abolitionism
  • Migration containment and the genealogies of struggles and rescue
  • Martina Tazzioli
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    25 February 2026
  • This book mobilises an abolitionist approach to border politics, with a focus on Europe. It argues that a critique of bordering mechanisms implies challenging the detractive logics of right, according to which upholding migrants’ rights is to the detriment of citizens’ rights. It uniquely combines carceral abolitionism literature, Black abolitionism and critical migration scholarship in order to question the acceptability and desirability of borders. Drawing on W. E. B. Du Bois’ concept of ‘abolition democracy’, it argues that border abolitionism means much more than calls for abolishing borders; rather, it involves rendering borders obsolete and articulating border struggles with other struggles for social justice. The book first investigates the confinement continuum that migrants are targeted by, drawing attention to hybrid spaces of confinement and to invisible forms of exploitation in refugee camps. Building on archival research and empirical material collected at the French–Italian Alpine border, the book then illustrates that an abolitionist view entails retracing the history of past struggles and how the memory of these have shaped current solidarity movements. Border abolitionism pushes us to rethink the right to mobility beyond an individualistic framework and to conceive it as part of struggles for the commons.

Towards a just Europe
  • A theory of distributive justice for the European Union
  • João Labareda
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    17 February 2026
  • This highly original book constitutes one of the first attempts to examine the problem of distributive justice in the EU in a systematic manner. The author starts by arguing that the set of shared political institutions at EU level, including the European Parliament and the Court of Justice of the EU, generate democratic duties of redistribution amongst EU citizens. Furthermore, he claims that the economic structure of the EU, comprising a common market, a common currency, and a free-movement area, triggers duties of reciprocity amongst member states. He contends that the responsibilities to fulfil these duties should be shared by three levels of government – local, national, and supranational. More specifically, he argues that the EU should act as a safety net to the national welfare systems, applying the principle of subsidiarity. In turn, the common market and the Eurozone should balance efficiency targets with distributive concerns. Concrete policy proposals presented in this book include a threshold of basic goods for all EU citizens, an EU Labour Code, a minimum EU corporate tax rate, and an EU Fund for Global Competitiveness. These proposals are thoroughly examined from the standpoint of feasibility. The author argues that his proposals fit in the political culture of the member states, are economically feasible, can be translated into functioning institutions and policies, and are consistent with the limited degree of social solidarity in Europe. This book is a major contribution to the understanding of how a just Europe would look and what it takes to get us there.

Critical theory and international relations
  • Knowledge, power and practice
  • Stephen Hobden
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    14 February 2026
  • Critical theory remains one of the most important and exciting areas within the study of international relations. Its purpose is not only to describe the way in which the world operates but to help us imagine how the world might be different and how we might achieve a more equitable and sustainable way of life. As well as presenting key concepts and thinkers the book also provides an evaluation of the field and suggests how critical thinking can contribute to confronting the challenges of the twenty-first century. The book evaluates the foundations on which critical theory has been built and illustrates how ideas which developed outside of International Relations theory have been adopted and adapted within the discipline. The book is focused on essential questions to the critical project: what can we know; how does power operate; and how should we live? In addition to discussing the foundations of critical thinking in International Relations, the book draws on recent developments in philosophy and posthumanism as an area of study to critique western thought. To overcome recent critiques of critical theory in International Relations, the book argues that it is necessary to engage with thinking outside of the western tradition. As the human species confronts the COVID-19 epidemic and the ongoing climate crisis, the book argues for a new direction for critical theory in International Relations.

The roots of populism
  • Neoliberalism and working-class lives
  • Brian Elliott
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    05 February 2026
  • How are we to understand the recent rise of populism in Britain and beyond? In this book, philosopher Brian Elliott traces the roots of contemporary populism back to the waves of intensified globalization and deindustrialization that began in the 1970s and early 1980s. This period of our political history witnessed a radical transformation of democratic party politics, where the potential for organized labour to influence high-level politics was diminished. The Reagan–Thatcher era brought about a neoliberal reconfiguration of the democratic state that weakened or destroyed traditional sources of working-class social and cultural capital. In the UK, the Labour Party was transformed through a ‘Third Way’ agenda under the leadership of Tony Blair. The long-term consequence of this has been an inexorable undermining of working-class support for the party and a notable drift towards Conservative-led anti-European Union sentiment. Populism, in the UK and elsewhere, should not simply be attributed to increasing nationalism, nativism and xenophobia among the working-class electorate. It also gives voice to a desire to make the political class more directly accountable to the people it is meant to serve. At the same time, the populist wave is a reaction to a decades-long denigration of working-class lives and culture. Charting seminal episodes in the rise of the British working class in light of recent sociological and political analyses of the nature of work, the analysis offered in this book grants to contemporary populism a deeper and more coherent meaning.

Recognition Theory and Contemporary French Moral and Political Philosophy
  • Reopening the dialogue
  • Edited by Miriam Bankovsky, Alice Le Goff
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    31 January 2026
  • Recognition was widely supposed to be a German obsession, derived from Hegel's philosophy. French thinkers insisted on the inescapability of misrecognition in interpersonal relations and asserted the impossibility of authentic recognition. While there are undoubtedly different attitudes towards the 'problem' of recognition on either side of the Rhine, a primary achievement of this book is to show that it is much too simple to suggest that only German thinkers have contributed to the recent development of recognition theory. The book reflects on the impact of contemporary French theory outside of France and on the inverse influence of recognition theory upon the contemporary French scene. In contrast to both the moral philosophy and political philosophy, 'Hegelian approaches' are best described as 'social philosophy' because they focus the analysis on the structural and social conditions which damage human subjectivity and such, require a standard of social normalcy or 'authentic identity' against which to conduct their evaluation. By showing how both the promise and the shortcomings of the concept of recognition are usefully explored by engagement with diverse currents of contemporary French social and political thought, this book contributes to the dissolution of 'nationalitarian' borders and promotes a more cosmopolitan approach to philosophy.

Neoclassical realism in European politics
  • Bringing power back in
  • Edited by Asle Toje, Barbara Kunz
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    31 January 2026
  • The ambitions of this book are twofold, one fraternal and one methodological. It shows that the realist tradition is alive and well in Europe, by presenting a sample of European scholars working under the realist paradigm - including Russia. Introducing neoclassical realism to a European academic audience poses a particular challenge. For Europeans, the American discourse of 'bringing intervening variables back in' sounds curious. In sum, the American approach privileges neorealism at the expense of classical realism. In the United States, neoclassical realism is essentially a research programme aimed at explaining how states filter systemic factors through domestic structures, thus explaining foreign policy output on the basis of both systemic and domestic variables. Neoclassical realism, as it stands, is thus some sort of 'neorealism + domestic variables'. It is an attempt to respond to the shortfalls of structural realism by (re)incorporating variables located within the famous 'black box'. Domestic factors are yet clearly relegated to second-order status, as they play the role of intervening variables in the so-called missing link between power resources and foreign policy output. American ontological approaches and methodological preferences give neoclassical realist literature a decidedly scientific rationalism, grounded in material factors. In Europe, however, the English school and constructivist approaches have emphasized the non-material aspects of international relations, factors that were taken seriously by classical realist authors but which became a victim to the attempt to 'scientize' the discipline. Neorealist approaches see the structure of the international system as the driving force behind changes in European politics.

Hans Kelsen on Constitutional Democracy
  • Genesis, Theory, Legacies
  • Edited by Sandrine Baume, David Ragazzoni
  • Published online:
    29 January 2026
    Print publication:
    19 February 2026
  • This volume challenges conventional interpretations by demonstrating that Hans Kelsen was far from being a purely formalist thinker. Instead, it highlights his profound and enduring engagement with the threats facing constitutional democracies. The political and institutional upheavals of interwar Europe significantly influenced Kelsen's evolving vision of democracy, as this volume shows. His contributions to twentieth-century democratic theory include groundbreaking insights into multiparty systems, mechanisms of moderation, minority protections, and judicial review. Furthermore, Kelsen's reflections on the crises and collapses of democracies during the 1930s remain strikingly relevant, offering valuable perspectives on contemporary challenges such as polarisation and populism. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Religion, Politics and Society in Modern Turkey
  • 1808-2023
  • Istar Gözaydin
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    24 January 2026
    Print publication:
    31 August 2024
  • This book is a critical reading of Turkey's entanglement and struggle with modernity, Islam, diversity, democracy and human rights/liberties over the last two centuries. Its major argument is that the relationship between religion and state forms an important dimension not only of official state ideology, but also of interrelations between different groups in society and in those groups' relations with the state. The book provides an overarching view of modern Turkey's religion, politics and society over an extended period and examines the complex relations between society, religion, laicité, state identity and their reflections in state power and daily life. This book's originality and novelty stems from its examination of religion, politics and society in modern Turkey over an extended period, from the Ottoman era to current times.

Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince
  • New interdisciplinary essays
  • Edited by Martin Coyle
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    14 January 2026
  • Much of the writing about The Prince is often at a certain distance from the text, not engaging with it in a critical or textual way. One of the features of the chapters in this book is the extent to which they focus on the complex texture of Machiavelli's writing and on the complex reading processes this in turn calls forth. Indeed, the book argues that it is not simply, as modern theorists have it, that the reader creates the meaning of the text but that certain texts in our culture - texts like The Prince - create and demand a more complicated response from readers as well as different kinds of reading. In other words, they demand a plural approach. The book brings together both a variety of critical viewpoints and a variety of disciplines but also a series of arguments which would allow the reader to engage in a debate that was at once broadly based and intensely focused. That debate has to include proper recognition of the particular circumstances of Machiavelli's writing, an awareness of the modern critical approaches now being explored in relation to The Prince, and a sense of the connection between Machiavelli and the twentieth century. What is clear, however, is that The Prince remains an important text in the attempt to understand cultural history and one that reminds us how difficult but rewarding that task is.

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