This introductory chapter provides an overview of the study of political thought. It examines political thought as a specific way of understanding and analysing politics, highlighting some recent debates and developments, including the development of comparative political thought. In doing so, it also reflects on the meaning of ‘politics’ itself. The chapter then looks at why and how one might study the history of political thought, exploring different approaches and discussing a range of methodological and interpretative issues. It considers who should be studied and, in particular, explores calls to decolonize political thought. Ultimately, the chapter demonstrates that political thought can be understood and studied in a variety of ways and shows why it is important to include voices that have been excluded or silenced.
Chapter
1. Introduction
Simon Choat and Manjeet Ramgotra
Chapter
1. Introduction to ideology
Contesting the nature of the ‘good society’
Paul Wetherly
This chapter explains what ideology is, why ideology is seen as a ‘contested concept’, and what roles ideology plays in politics and society. In particular, it analyses the basic conception of ideology as a system of ideas involving a vision of the good society, a critique of existing society, and a notion of political action. It examines the relationship between ideology, politics, and policy; negative perceptions of ideology prevalent in political discourse; the idea that we are all ideologists; the components or building blocks of a basic conception of ideology; and the Marxist understanding of ‘ideology’ as false or misleading ideas. The chapter also considers whether there is an independent vantage point from which to assess the claims of rival ideologies. It concludes by reflecting on the problem of relativism and the link between ideology and globalization.
Book
Edited by Michelle Cini and Nieves Pérez-Solórzano Borragán
European Union Politics is the most complete and issues-led introductory textbook on the European Union. Alongside rigorous coverage of the theory, institutions, and policies of the EU, the book engages with contemporary debates, and current crises. The seventh edition has been substantially updated, with significantly revised chapters on Brexit and the CJEU, as well as two new chapters covering the EU response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the European migration and refugee crisis. The text’s accessible writing style makes it the ideal starting point for anyone wishing to fully understand the workings of this complex and ever-evolving system. Throughout the book, students are supported by helpful learning features, including key points, questions, and examples.
Chapter
1. Introduction
Michelle Cini and Nieves Pérez-Solórzano Borragán
This chapter comprises a very brief introduction to European Union (EU) politics. It aims to help those students who are completely new to the EU by drawing attention to some general background information and context, which should help to make sense of the chapters that follow. To that end this introductory chapter begins by explaining what the EU is, why it was originally set up, and what the EU does. The chapter ends by explaining how the book is organized.
Book
Nicole Scicluna
This book is an introduction to international law for politics and international relations students. It provides a deep understanding of the possibilities and limits of international law as a tool for structuring relations in the world. The case study-driven approach helps students understand the complexities of international law, and illustrates the inextricable interaction between law and politics in the world today. In addition, it encourages students to question assumptions, such as whether international law is fit for purpose, and what that purpose is or ought to be. The book also discusses the potential of rising powers to shift the international system.
Chapter
1. Interconnections between science and politics
This chapter discusses the complex and multifaceted relationship between science and politics. Although science and politics each follow a distinct logic and pursue distinct objectives, they are inextricably connected to one another. On the one hand, science influences political debates, by drawing attention to certain problems and providing necessary justifications for political action. On the other hand, political dynamics, including political values and power relations, structure the conduct of science. The chapter highlights the different aspects of the co-production of science and politics, in the framework of international environmental debates. An increasing number of studies on global environmental governance suggest that science and politics are co-produced. As they shape each other, it is impossible to understand one without considering the other. Political interactions are partly based on available knowledge, and scientific production is a social practice that is conditioned by its political context.
Book
Aggie Hirst, Diego de Merich, Joe Hoover, and Roberto Roccu
Global Politics: Myths and Mysteries provides an introduction to key concepts in international relations, aiming to expose the myths of the discipline. The text starts off with an introduction to the topic asking the question: what exactly is myth-making? The chapters then look at key concepts in turn, starting with politics and power. They move on to examine ethics, violence, and law. Next the text analyses the world of finance with a chapter on money. Empire is the subject of the chapter that follows. The last two chapters cover capitalism and state. Finally, the text concludes and considers the notion of change as it relates to global politics.
Chapter
2. Politics
This chapter discusses the meaning of politics and where it operates at the global level. Using a distinctive approach to theorising global politics, it explores the meaning of politics through everyday uses and understandings, considering ideas of coercion, authority, and legitimacy. The chapter also examines and challenges the myth that only powerful elites engage in politics, showing instead that politics is at work all the time in everyday lives and experience. It then looks at how influential thinkers define politics, studying the theories of political scientist Harold Lasswell and ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Finally, the chapter considers what it means to think theoretically about politics. Thinking critically and theoretically about politics is itself a political act that alters the everyday understanding of the world, and opens up new possibilities for action, challenging the myth that there is a natural way of organising politics.
Chapter
The Politics of Human Rights
Michael Goodhart
This chapter
explores the politics of human rights. As human rights function as an ethical
standard in international law and political practice, the standard enabled the
naming and shaming strategy that became the mainstay of international human
rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The chapter covers why human rights
as politics generate controversy by referencing the understandings of social
constructs, paradox of institutionalization, and cultural relativism. Indeed,
human rights are inherently political and controversial. The chapter then
discusses the accommodation of inequality through neoliberal conceptions of
human rights. It explains the two important contemporary debates about human
rights: its effectiveness in combatting economic inequality and precarity, and
the evidence of a global backlash against human
rights.
Chapter
Human Rights Claiming as a Performative Practice
Karen Zivi
This chapter
analyses the politics of human rights from a performative perspective. It starts
with identifying rights claiming as one of the most common ways to highlight and
demand redress for injustice across the world. The practice and promise of human
rights have a clear gap as human rights violations remain a global issue despite
the years of political activism, international human rights standards, and human
rights theories. Indeed, several scholars are sceptical about the power of human
rights in bringing an end to injustice and inequality. The chapter then covers
the ideology of performativity correlating to a theory of language, gender, and
politics. It explains that rights claiming may employ non-traditional forms of
political engagement and depend on the state to secure the desired
change.
Chapter
15. Humanitarian Intervention and Peace Operations
Sheena Chestnut Greitens
This chapter analyses the dynamics of humanitarian intervention and peace operations. It begins with a discussion of the changing nature of peacekeeping since the cold war and how peacekeeping expanded in the post-cold war period, creating demand, opportunities, and incentives for intervention that resulted in an unprecedented increase in the number and scale of military interventions by United Nations forces. Today, humanitarian interventions are larger, more complex affairs. The chapter goes on to examine how post-cold war operations shaped peacekeeping debates; peacekeeping since 2000; the benefits and challenges of the regionalization of peacekeeping; and evolving norms in contemporary peacekeeping. It also considers the politics of humanitarian intervention, especially at the UN Security Council, and how public opinion of humanitarian intervention is shaped by media coverage and casualties. Finally, it describes the military character of peace operations as well as problems and prospects surrounding humanitarian intervention and peace operations.
Chapter
17. Geopolitics and Grand Strategy
Stefanie Ortmann and Nick Whittaker
This chapter discusses the concept of geopolitics and its role in formulating and implementing a grand strategy. It first provides an overview of the relationship between grand strategy and geography, before explaining how the meanings of grand strategy and geopolitics evolved in response to changing world historical contexts. It then considers the reasons why geopolitics and grand strategy are linked to the politics of great powers and why these concepts are currently making a comeback. In particular, it examines the revival of geopolitical thinking after the Second World War and how geopolitical reasoning informed containment as a grand strategy during the cold war. The chapter also takes a look at the pitfalls and problems associated with formulating a grand strategy, especially in today’s complex international environment. Finally, it argues that there is a need to rethink geopolitics with the ultimate goal of balancing ends and means.
Chapter
2. The European Union in World Politics: An Historical Overview
Christopher Hill, Michael Smith, and Sophie Vanhoonacker
This chapter provides a structured treatment of the historical context for the mutual entanglement of European integration and the broader development of international relations, bearing in mind the threefold framework set out in the first chapter, namely, European integration as a sub-system of international relations, as part of the general processes of international relations, and as a potential or actual ‘power’ in international relations. The chapter looks at developments up to the end of the 20th century and provides some background to the topics covered in the following chapters. It shows how the European Union’s (EU’s) international role has continuously been shaped by both by the changing international environment and the continuous interaction between politics, economics, and security.
Chapter
1. Introduction
David Boucher and Paul Kelly
This volume introduces a canon of major political thinkers from ancient Greece to the present, including Socrates and the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Hugo Grotius, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Hannah Arendt, John Rawls, and Michel Foucault. The text focuses on the ways that these thinkers have shaped the intellectual architecture of our modern conceptions of the scope of politics and its place in social life. This introductory chapter discusses the origins of the study of political thought as a distinct activity and describes four sets of considerations that shape approaches to the study of political thought and help answer the question of why we should study it. It also analyses the problem of so-called perennial questions and the attempt to explain and defend what it is that makes a book a ‘classic’ text.
Chapter
10. Machiavelli
Joseph V. Femia
This chapter examines Niccolò Machiavelli's contribution to political thought. It first provides a short biography of Machiavelli before discussing the main perspectives on Machiavelli and the reasons for their divergence. It then considers the historical and intellectual context that helped to shape Machiavelli's thinking, asking how the Renaissance differed from the Middle Ages, the extent to which Machiavelli was a man of the Renaissance, and why the Italian scene stimulated creative thought about politics. The chapter also explores Machiavelli's most innovative ideas: his rejection of metaphysics and teleology, whether of the Christian or aristotelian variety; his empirical and historical approach to the study of political affairs; and his anti-utopianism and belief in ‘reason of state’.
Chapter
2. The Sophists
Peter Nicholson
This chapter deals with the Sophists, a new kind of professional intellectual and teacher in ancient Greece who debated fundamental questions concerning human life, and particularly morality and politics. The Sophists were an important element in the major intellectual awakening, or enlightenment, in roughly the second half of the fifth century BCE. The chapter first provides a biographical background on three Sophists — Protagoras, Thrasymachus, and Antiphon — before analysing their political ideas on justice, noting the range of diffrent opinions and how they all differ from Plato. The discussion focuses on Protagoras' notion of the politics of the community, Thrasymachus' emphasis on the politics of the individual, and Antiphon's claim that justice is a convention opposed to nature. The chapter also explains how Plato sought to reconcile the conflicts of interest between the community and the individual which the Sophists highlighted.
Chapter
30. Oakeshott
David Boucher
This chapter examines Michael Oakeshott's political thought, beginning with a discussion of his scepticism and its relation to the background theory of British idealism that informs all aspects of his philosophy. It then considers Oakeshott's belief that philosophy is the uncovering and questioning of the postulates upon which all our forms of understanding rest. Oakeshott has been characterized as a conservative, a liberal, and an ideologist, but this chapter argues that he was neither conservative nor liberal in any party-political sense. It goes on to analyse Oakeshott's views on the rationalist in politics, civil association and the rule of law, and politics and law as well as his characterization of the modern European state. The chapter concludes by assessing the importance Oakeshott attached to myth and legend in the self-consciousness of a society.
Chapter
12. Religion, politics, and fundamentalism
Paul Wetherly
This chapter examines the nature of religion and fundamentalism and their relationship to politics. It first defines religion before discussing the nature and extent of religiosity worldwide. It then considers whether religion can be regarded as an ideology and goes on to assess its relationship with secular ideologies. It also explores arguments about the role of religion in politics, focusing on the secular state and ‘religious talk’ in the political sphere. Finally, it reviews the concept of fundamentalism as a form of political belief, the nature of religious fundamentalism, and the impact of movements based on religious fundamentalism in the modern world. These issues are illustrated with case studies relating to Christian (Protestant) fundamentalism, religious identity in the United Kingdom, the relationship between politics and religion in the United Kingdom vs. the United States, whether the faithful have a religious duty to get involved in politics, and Islamism.
Chapter
13. Beyond ideology?
Paul Wetherly
This chapter examines conceptions of human nature and ideological responses to globalization. It begins with a discussion of the two reasons for the persistence of ideological dispute regarding human nature. First, ideologies differ in their views of human nature, and these differences continue to generate competing visions of the good society consistent with this nature. Second, disagreement about the good society might be built into human nature. The chapter considers the different ideological conceptions of human nature and the implications of globalization for existing political ideologies such as liberalism, conservatism, feminism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, and religious fundamentalism. It also explores a range of arguments that suggest the possibility of resolving or ending ideological debate, asking whether it is possible to show the failure of a particular ideology, whether there can be a non-ideological way of doing politics, or whether there could there be an end of ideology.
Chapter
6. Nationalism
Mark Langan
This chapter examines the key ideas and concepts of nationalism as ideology. It first defines nationalism and considers how the nation is socially constructed as an imagined community. It then analyses the practical implications of nationalist ideology in terms of the functioning of the nation-state (and of nationalist political parties). It also looks at the ‘rational’ form of nationalism (that is, the civic variety) and its ‘sticky’ connections to liberalism and socialism; the link between nationalism and politics; and the relationship between nationalism and globalization. The rational and somewhat pragmatic nationalism is compared with the ‘irrational’ and emotional variant found within both conservatism and fascism. The chapter concludes by highlighting key lessons regarding nationalism as ideology. Case studies relating to Scottish national identity, Brexit, Chinese nationalism, and ethnic nationalism in Russia are presented.
