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This pioneering book delivers a systematic account of agonistic democracy, and a much-needed analysis of the core components of agonism: pluralism, tragedy, and the value of conflict. It also traces the history of these ideas, identifying the connections with republicanism and with Greek antiquity. Mark Wenman presents a critical appraisal of the leading contemporary proponents of agonism and, in a series of well-crafted and comprehensive discussions, brings these thinkers into debate with one another, as well as with the post-structuralist and continental theorists who influence them. Wenman draws extensively on Hannah Arendt, and stresses the creative power of human action as augmentation and revolution. He also reworks Arendt's discussion of reflective judgement to present an alternative style of agonism, one where the democratic contest is linked to the emergence of a militant form of cosmopolitanism, and to prospects for historical change in the context of neoliberal globalisation.

Donald Trump, Silvio Berlusconi, Marine Le Pen, Hugo Chávez—populists are on the rise across the globe. But what exactly is populism? Should everyone who criticizes Wall Street or Washington be called a populist? What precisely is the difference between right-wing and left-wing populism? Does populism bring government closer to the people or is it a threat to democracy? Who are \"the people\" anyway and who can speak in their name? These questions have never been more pressing.In this groundbreaking volume, Jan-Werner Müller argues that at populism's core is a rejection of pluralism. Populists will always claim that they and they alone represent the people and their true interests. Müller also shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, populists can govern on the basis of their claim to exclusive moral representation of the people: if populists have enough power, they will end up creating an authoritarian state that excludes all those not considered part of the proper \"people.\" The book proposes a number of concrete strategies for how liberal democrats should best deal with populists and, in particular, how to counter their claims to speak exclusively for \"the silent majority\" or \"the real people.\"Analytical, accessible, and provocative, What Is Populism? is grounded in history and draws on examples from Latin America, Europe, and the United States to define the characteristics of populism and the deeper causes of its electoral successes in our time.

First developed by Michel Foucault more than thirty years ago, \"governmentality\" has become an essential set of tools for many researchers in the social and political sciences today. What is \"governmentality\"? How does this perspective challenge the way we understand political power and its contestation? This new introduction offers advanced undergraduate and graduate students both a highly accessible guide and an original contribution to debates about power and governmentality. The book aims to serve four main functions: To situate governmentality as an intellectual development within Foucault's thinking about the microphysics of power and his genealogical methods; To reveal how research in governmentality has changed as the idea encounters new academic fields, political contexts and regional settings; To examine one of the more recent encounters between governmentality and the social sciences - its interaction with international relations and global politics; To offer researchers some methodological suggestions for undertaking studies in governmentality, stressing that its critical edge becomes blunted if it is detached from historical/genealogical modes of inquiry. This book offers a set of conceptual and methodological observations intended to keep research in governmentality a living, critical thought project. Above all, it argues that the challenge of understanding the world calls for the addition of new thinking equipment to the governmentality toolbox. Governmentality: Critical Encounters will prove useful for students of social and political theory, international relations, political sociology, anthropology and geography.

This book is the first to systematically reconstruct Michel Foucault’s political and philosophical thought across his career. It argues, in the areas of epistemology, power, subjectivity, resistance, politics, and ethics, that Foucault’s work represents the articulation of a consistent and progressive philosophical and political viewpoint. The work is thus an important intervention into the field of Foucault studies, where many continue to claim that Foucault’s work is contradictory, nonsensical, or nihilistic. Introduction 1. Epistemology 2. Power I 3. Power II 4. Subjectivity 5. Resistance 6. Critique 7. Ethics Mark G.E. Kelly is Lecturer in Philosophy at Middlesex University. 'This book is the one scholars and students should turn to for the much needed analysis of the key theoretical concepts in Foucault’s work--concepts such as power, subjectivity, resistance and critique. It also provides a sustained defense of the consistency of Foucault’s views over time. Kelly has succeeded in grasping Foucault from the inside out.' – David Weberman, Central European University, Hungary

Sophocles' Antigone is a touchstone in democratic, feminist and legal theory, and possibly the most commented upon play in the history of philosophy and political theory. Bonnie Honig's rereading of it therefore involves intervening in a host of literatures and unsettling many of their governing assumptions. Exploring the power of Antigone in a variety of political, cultural, and theoretical settings, Honig identifies the 'Antigone-effect' - which moves those who enlist Antigone for their politics from activism into lamentation. She argues that Antigone's own lamentations can be seen not just as signs of dissidence but rather as markers of a rival world view with its own sovereignty and vitality. Honig argues that the play does not offer simply a model for resistance politics or 'equal dignity in death', but a more positive politics of counter-sovereignty and solidarity which emphasizes equality in life.

The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy is a comprehensive, definitive reference work, providing an up-to-date survey of the field, charting its history and key figures and movements, and addressing enduring questions as well as contemporary research. Features unique to the Companion are: an extensive coverage of the history of social and political thought, including separate chapters on the development of political thought in the Islamic world, India, and China as well in modern Germany, France, and Britain a focus on the core concepts and the normative foundations of social and political theory a seven-chapter section devoted exclusively to distributive justice, the central issue of political philosophy since Rawls' Theory of Justice extensive coverage of global justice and international issues, which recently have emerged as vital topics an eight-chapter section on issues in social and political philosophy. The Companion is divided into eight thematic sections: The History of Social and Political Theory; Political Theories and Ideologies; Normative Foundations; The National State and Beyond; Distributive Justice; Political Concepts; Concepts and Methods in Social Philosophy; Issues in Social and Political Philosophy. Comprised of sixty-nine newly commissioned essays by leading scholars from throughout the world, The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy is the most comprehensive and authoritative resource in social and political philosophy for students and scholars.

How our shifting sense of \"what's normal\" defines the character of democracy \"A provocative examination of social constructs and those who would alternately undo or improve them.\"- Kirkus Reviews This sharp and engaging collection of essays by leading governmental scholar Cass R. Sunstein examines shifting understandings of what's normal, and how those shifts account for the feminist movement, the civil rights movement, the rise of Adolf Hitler, the founding itself, the rise of gun rights, the response to COVID-19, and changing understandings of liberty. Prevailing norms include the principle of equal dignity, the idea of not treating the press as an enemy of the people, and the social unacceptability of open expressions of racial discrimination. But norms are very different from laws. They arise and change in response to individual and collective action. Exploring Nazism, #MeToo, the work of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, constitutional amendments, pandemics, and the influence of Ayn Rand, Sunstein reveals how norms ultimately determine the shape of government in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.

Since the very beginning, Confucianism has been troubled by a serious gap between its political ideals and the reality of societal circumstances. Contemporary Confucians must develop a viable method of governance that can retain the spirit of the Confucian ideal while tackling problems arising from nonideal modern situations. The best way to meet this challenge, Joseph Chan argues, is to adopt liberal democratic institutions that are shaped by the Confucian conception of the good rather than the liberal conception of the right. Confucian Perfectionismexamines and reconstructs both Confucian political thought and liberal democratic institutions, blending them to form a new Confucian political philosophy. Chan decouples liberal democratic institutions from their popular liberal philosophical foundations in fundamental moral rights, such as popular sovereignty, political equality, and individual sovereignty. Instead, he grounds them on Confucian principles and redefines their roles and functions, thus mixing Confucianism with liberal democratic institutions in a way that strengthens both. Then he explores the implications of this new yet traditional political philosophy for fundamental issues in modern politics, including authority, democracy, human rights, civil liberties, and social justice. Confucian Perfectionismcritically reconfigures the Confucian political philosophy of the classical period for the contemporary era.

In the contemporary world of neoliberalism, efficiency is treated as the vehicle of political and economic health .State bureaucracy, but not corporate bureaucracy, is seen as inefficient, and privatization is seen as a magic cure for social ills. In Public Things: Democracy in Disrepair, Bonnie Honig asks whether democracy is possible in the absence of public services, spaces, and utilities. In other words, if neoliberalism leaves to democracy merely electoral majoritarianism and procedures of deliberation while divesting democratic states of their ownership of public things, what will the impact be? Following Tocqueville, who extolled the virtues of “pursuing in common the objects of common desires,” Honig focuses not on the demos but on the objects of democratic life. Democracy, as she points out, postulates public things—infrastructure, monuments, libraries—that citizens use, care for, repair, and are gathered up by. To be “gathered up” refers to the work of D. W. Winnicott, the object relations psychoanalyst who popularized the idea of “transitional objects”—the toys, teddy bears, or favorite blankets by way of which infants come to understand themselves as unified selves with an inside and an outside in relation to others. The wager of Public Things is that the work transitional objects do for infants is analogously performed for democratic citizens by public things, which press us into object relations with others and with ourselves. Public Things attends also to the historically racial character of public things: public lands taken from indigenous peoples, access to public goods restricted to white majorities. Drawing on Hannah Arendt, who saw how things fabricated by humans lend stability to the human world, Honig shows how Arendt and Winnicott—both theorists of livenesss—underline the material and psychological conditions necessary for object permanence and the reparative work needed for a more egalitarian democracy.

When is political compromise acceptable--and when is it fundamentally rotten, something we should never accept, come what may? What if a rotten compromise is politically necessary? Compromise is a great political virtue, especially for the sake of peace. But, as Avishai Margalit argues, there are moral limits to acceptable compromise even for peace. But just what are those limits? At what point does peace secured with compromise become unjust? Focusing attention on vitally important questions that have received surprisingly little attention, Margalit argues that we should be concerned not only with what makes a just war, but also with what kind of compromise allows for a just peace.