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In Civil Society, Lawrence Cahoone stages a critical engagement between the social-political viewpoints of liberalism, communitarianism, and conservatism in order to effect a balanced relation that will bypass or overcome the inadequacies of each position. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Gone: Liberal 'Neutrality.' Now What?
Three books now on conservatism: Roger Scruton, "Meaning of Conservatism," John Kekes, "Case for Conservatism," and Lawrence E. Cahoone, "Civil Society: The Conservative Meaning of Liberal Politics." I can state without reservation that whichever variant of "conservatism" one adopts, the landscape is not attractive. I'll grant conservatives two critical observations and claims: (1) Ideological Utopianism, i.e., "progressivism," which insists it can remake society according to some rationalist scheme into an improved model, is surely tenuous at best, and often is accompanied by unintended deleterious consequences. (2) The "problem" of human actions we commonly label "evil" cannot be ignored, reprogrammed, or overcome by improving social structures.

While often two-sides of the same coin, the entire notion that some ideological utilitarian calculus will make all our lives better, or that if we "educate, indoctrinate, or inculcate" our citizens, that they'll achieve perfection, are both empirically nonsense, but based on our biological human natures, not on any conservative conceptual scheme that claims these insights from logic (which is, of course, barred by the first claim).

But Cahoone's work is most valuable not for the conservatism it adopts and extols, but for demonstrating through persuasion the impossibility of the liberal principle of "neutrality." By virtue of demonstrating the impossibly of this "neutral" principle, conservatives believe they can introduce their conservative "values" as the preferred values of a pluralistic republican society. And, since the vacuum left by abandoning the liberal principle of "neutrality" requires some values to fill its void, arguably many conservative values may be better than other values. But these values have to be shown or demonstrated to be valuable first, and then as values that society should prefer as conservative values over others; mere assertion of conservative principles is insufficient. That is Cahoone's objective in the second-half of the book.

Since the principle of neutrality is widely misunderstood, it is important to understand it before we agree to bury it. As it pertains to liberal governance and to its mechanics in our civil society, neutrality is understood to be the government's stance toward any particular individual's choice of morals, modes of life, interests, pursuits, which are, according to this principle, to be left to the individual, not to the state, to adopt in the manner of his/her own choosing. While one may remain sentimentally attached this idea, Cahoone, to his credit, demonstrates this is impossible, and if possible, would be undesirable, to attain. While the capitulation to this realization does force us to adopt non-neutral stances, it does not follow that the conservative stances are the ones to adopt.

Cahoone has apparently been tainted, if not absorbed, by the arguments of social constructionists. Their claim is that individuals are socially embedded, and thus individuals are constructed from this embeddedness as the basis of their existence. Whether Cahoone adopts social constructionism as an `empirical' or an `ontological' claim is left unaddressed, and for his purposes probably not important. As an empirical claim, social constructionism offers insights as to how society molds individuals, from which they arise, dwell, and interact. As an ontological claim, social constructionism is either tautological or vacuous, but neither is inadequate to any subsequent task. So, we'll assume Cahoone invokes its empirical claims.

As an empirical claim, it is self-evident, if not circular, but it does offer insights in how society molds us individuals according to time, place, and space through the generations. And, yes, we all come to `this' point embedded in our social histories that are uniquely ours collectively. To cut to the chase, I'll use a less nuanced example to obtain the same result. As we Americans observed during the Multiculturalist Movement of the 1980s, the central tenet of which is that all cultures (political institutions, religions, artistic tastes, mores, technologies, etc.) are no better/worse than any other (cf., pluralism, which does evaluate the differences). Depending on one's context and personal perspective, including one's own cultural and social inheritances, the world's cultures may be radically different, but in no sense can one claim that one culture/society is superior/inferior to any other. The "great equalizer" of Multiculturalism leveled Modern Western Liberal Democracies along with Medieval Arab Societies along with Aboriginal Societies along with Hebraic Tribal Societies, etc. Even the most egalitarian spirit cannot embrace the "parity" of these divergent societies. This extreme form of relativism was finally slain by our acquaintance with Modern Arab Cultures in the Middle East.

A pluralist, in contrast to a multiculturalist, will readily admit that individuals value different aspects of various cultures differently and should be free to do so, and moreover that these diverse cultural and social features may pleasantly co-exist within the same society, as long as the prevailing/dominant "social contract" is understood and subscribed to, which then allows, even revels, in this pluralism of expressions. But that already presupposes a value! Yes, a liberal value, but a value nonetheless. A liberal pluralist may indulge other cultures but would not dare equate a modern pluralistic liberal democracy with that of a medieval feudal theocracy with that of an Australian Aboriginal Hunter-Gatherer Tribe, etc., which all muliculturalists insist we do.

Cahoone's more-nuanced arguments are along similar lines, but both reinforce that `some' cultural values must preexist as socially embedded and preexistent anterior to any individual, and no matter how indulgent liberals are of others' values, liberals themselves already demonstrate their tolerance of preexistent values which liberalism insists is supposedly `neutral,' and which it demonstrates, it is obviously not.

So, the `neutrality' principle of liberalism has been slain! So, what "values" should we liberals adopt as socially normative, since remaining "neutral" is not tenable, defensible, or even desirable? Cahoone offers a very sophisticated alternative that he labels "postmodern conservatism." In the final analysis, I am not persuaded by any conservatism, not even Cahoone's conservative principles (which incorporates many liberal principles), which, on the whole are clearly superior to any other "conservative's." Alas, that leaves us liberals nowhere, or worse, vulnerable to some others' values we detest (e.g., neoconservatives, social conservatives, theoconservatives - assuming we/they stay within the `liberal' tradition at all).

To exacerbate the dilemma, we have `progressives' who once identified themselves as `liberals,' but now have an aggressive meliorist agenda to `cure' society of its social ills through grand social engineering (e.g., socialists, Utopians, communitarians, theocrats, etc.), who are the "egalitarians" of the last resort that would flatten everyone and everything to achieve `equality.' Some may prefer universal poverty and impoverishment as the great "equalizer," but after the USSR, Mao's China, Fidel's Cuba, Chavez's Venezuela, surely we can do better than equal impoverishment! What is clearer, is that we cannot bury ourselves in a `neutrality' nostrum any longer.

We liberals, however few of us are still left, must find values that we want as normative for our society and culture. That single point makes Cahoone's book worth its while. We may prefer liberal values, definitely, but liberal `neutrality' no longer (if it ever) works, as globalization makes increasingly clearer. We must adopt some set of values (even if they are Cahoone's), lest we evaporate in the vacuum that `neutrality' bequeaths us only to find some tyrant in its place.

Even within our own liberal society, we have those illiberals who would use liberalism's neutrality for their nefarious purposes to subvert liberalism - from Islam fanatics to Christian fanatics to Hugo Chavez ideologues to neoconservatives - so `neutrality' is no longer even conceptually defensible. Cahoone, to his estimable analysis, has cast the scales off this liberal's eyes, and seeing more clearly, we liberals have adopt some values even if `neutrality' is not one of them. But that requires some moral values be established over others, and as a liberal, I know I must attend, but not very willingly.

Postscript: Even if I cannot agree with Cahoone's conservatism, I certainly understand it far better than his "fellow" conservatives, Kekes, Scruton, Sullivan, included. As always, the conservative is first and foremost a moralist, because that instantiates a particular set of values. Even when a particular religion is excluded as a part of the moral values (Kekes, Cahoone), they have to admit it enters fully through the front door, even if they'd prefer it through side door, even the back doors. But this illustrates their problem. Goldwater (who we all acknowledge was a libertarian, not a conservative), could not keep his conservatism from being overtaken and immersed in Evangelicalism. Once "morals" enters the foray, religion follows, whether or not it is welcomed. As Cahoone demonstrates, some moral values must be accepted as normative, just not the moral values of the religionist moralists. But that remains the central problem for conservatism (in whatever stripe it comes in), once we recognize the need for values (and we all do), I might choose Aristotlean ethics, benevolence ethics, but I do not approve of Kantian morality, much less Judaism, Christian, Catholic, utilitarian calculi (as it is not even "moral"), but where does one draw that line? This explains why liberals shy away from conservatism, because even the best of conservatism gets contaminated by religionists, if not overtaken as well. Behold: The past three decades. Goldwater (and the rest of us) shudder!

But, for better or worse, at least Cahoone gets us liberals off our 'neutrality,' as if we were ever there to begin with. That is the greatness of this work. Cahoone is not a partisan ideologue (in fact, just the opposite), but he lays out the landscape of the current political climate admirably, honestly, and accurately, and then clears the underbrush and the Overbush to get to some values that we can all accept and trust, except for the fact that the clearings introduced the most toxic "conservatism" in recent memory (a year after this book was published). It only begs the question: How does conservatism get hijacked by such nefarious characters? Therein, is no answer, and therein is the problem. ... Read more

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Examines the experiences of women activists of the Islamist Refah (Welfare) party in Turkey. ... Read more

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not good at all
really bad book although the thesis is an interesting topic another ivy league big shot who uses big words and sucks at writing all though is great at grammar. ... Read more

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An acclaimed journalist and novelist explores the legacy and future of American liberalism through the history of his family's politically active history

George Packer's maternal grandfather, George Huddleston, was a populist congressman from Alabama in the early part of the century--an agrarian liberal in the Jacksonian mold who opposed the New Deal. Packer's father was a Kennedy-era liberal, a law professor and dean at Stanford whose convictions were sorely--and ultimately fatally--tested in the campus upheavals of the 1960s. The inheritor of two sometimes conflicting strains of the great American liberal tradition, Packer discusses the testing of ideals in the lives of his father and grandfather and his own struggle to understand the place of the progressive tradition in our currently polarized political climate. Searching, engrossing, and persuasive, this is an original, intimate examination of the meaning of politics in American lives.
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Am I the Only One? A Colored Man's Review
I admire the liberalism of Franklin Roosevelt and company as much as the next person. I admire politicians who speak up for the common man. But am I the only one who notices how complacent and dishonest George Packer really is on the subject of race?

While Packer seems sincere in his goodwill towards blacks, the southern history in this book is seriously distorted. In what appears to be a misguided effort to make liberalism more palatable to "ordinary" white Americans, George Packer tries to whitewash the racism of his own grandfather, a mediocre congressman from the depths of the Jim Crow era.

Packer claims that his grandfather Huddleston spoke for the "common man." But he fails to examine the real ugliness of his grandfather's position. The vicious, lynching white men of Alabama sent him to Congress back in 1908. They allowed him to make his little chirping noises about "common men" and "Jeffersonian democracy." But all the old man was doing was providing long-winded camouflage for pure evil, for a reign of terror against black people. We don't need to revive the weak-willed cowardice of Packer's grandfather. We need to remember what his lying words really stood for, and who paid the real price for his success.

While we're reviving dead American heroes, why can't we bring back all the black men who got lynched while Grandpa Huddleston was in Congress? Come to think about it, what about all the black American soldiers who were killed in combat in the Spanish American War? Georgie Packer doesn't care about their sacrifice. Like most modern liberals, he regards all military personnel with contempt. In fact, Packer tells us with evident pride that his sniveling Grandpa couldn't even make the grade in combat -- he played sick, and sat out the Cuban war, stateside. (At least Hitler won the Iron Cross.)

George Packer, the modern liberal, doesn't bother to draw the comparison between his grandfather's shirking and the courage of black men. But there is a striking contrast between Grandpa Gutless Liar and the black heroes who served honorably under Pershing. That's General "Black Jack" Pershing, by the way. As in, he commanded black troops in Cuba. But you won't learn about that from lying little Georgie, who loves his Alabama grandpa but has no use for black men with guns.

While Packer condemns the social policies of the conservatives, and blames them for black poverty and crime, it is nevertheless regrettable that the only blacks in this book are either helpless "victims" or rude, ill mannered nationalists. Packer claims to have hated the Sixties, and condemns black campus radicals who were "violent." Apparently any black who raises his voice to George Packer is a public menace. He doesn't mention the thousands of black men who served in Vietnam. And he never acknowledges the lynchings his Grandpa allowed to happen with his blessing.

While he absolutely refuses to discuss the countless daily hate crimes his grandfather countenanced as a legislator, Packer makes a big thing out of Grandpa Huddleston "opposing" the war against Kaiser Bill. I can see why a lynching autocrat like Huddleston would identify with Prussian brutality and the rule of blood and iron! But I don't understand why George Packer has more respect for his yellow, gutless grandpa (who ended up voting for the war, by the way) then for the black heroes of the 369th Infantry, a.k.a. "Harlem Hellfighters." They weren't sullen, spoiled campus radicals, George. They were men. Soldiers. And I don't propose for our race to be cheated of its place of honor in this country because of fools like you -- or Grandpa Lynching Leghorn Huddleston.

So many real American heroes are trivialized or ignored in this hateful, stupid book. What about me, George Packer? I graduated from Columbia in 1985, and I joined the Marines -- as an enlisted man -- in 1986. You're my age. But you say you would never have joined the military because it was "beneath" you. Don't you see that your hypocrisy and elitism is precisely what's poisoning the liberal movement?

If you want to understand why liberals lose elections, read Packer
Blood of the Liberals is a near-perfect blend of the personal and the political. Packer's grandfather was George Huddleston, a Congressman from Birmingham, Alabama who represents for Packer a lot of the contradictions in modern liberalism: desegregation versus states' rights, support for the common man against bigness (whether corporate, governmental, or otherwise), and at the same time a belief that government is sometimes necessary.

Packer's father, by contrast, was a pointy-headed academic. He grew up as a shy Jewish boy and moved into the ivory-tower life after some time spent in World War II; Packer paints the war years as rather uneventful for the senior Packer -- indeed little more than a pause from his books. I felt a lot of empathy with the dad; I was the same way when I was a kid, and I'm sure that if I went off to fight a war I'd be mailing home to ask for books and magazines just as much as Packer Sr. was.

I also drew a lot from Packer's portrait of his father, because in that portrait Packer seems to have discovered why liberals keep losing elections. Packer Sr. was an Adlai Stevenson man -- Stevenson, the charismatic, brilliant loser. In a better world, Stevenson would have been our president, but in this world he lost the race twice. The term egghead became popular because one of the Alsops tagged Stevenson with it.

And ever since Stevenson, says Packer, liberalism has been dominated by rather bloodless intellectuals who can't argue persuasively against the bread-and-butter issues that let Republicans win. The common thread among these intellectuals, says Packer, is a love of abstract debate, and the belief that human problems can be solved by the judicious application of reason -- that we can all get along and solve our issues without yelling or fighting. That's fine and good, and as far as it goes it's no more modern than Jefferson. The Jeffersonian strain is one of the key strands that Packer identifies in liberal thought.

Where it starts losing elections, he says, is when the intellectuals start to take it over. Discussions shift from individual people -- this man lost his land, this man's family is starving because of government policies -- to larger universal themes like freedom, equality, justice, and the rule of law.

This adherence to principles loses us elections. It lost Stevenson the election against Eisenhower when he stood up for fairness and impartiality in the anti-Communist witchhunts; he himself was a strong anti-Communist, but he framed his beliefs in terms that Nixon could tear apart.

This doesn't play with the public. The public is more concerned with outcomes than with processes. If the public doesn't feel safe, it will not vote for abstract principles that seem to help their enemies. We could argue for civil liberties all we want, but Republicans will always come back with the argument that they're helping protect us from terrorists. When it comes to a battle between safety and our Constitutional freedoms, safety will always win.

This, at least, is the message that Packer seems to be sending so far. His diagnosis does seem spot on. And his delivery is just right: he cuts back and forth between an impersonal political tale -- how liberals have ended up in the mess we're in -- and a personal story about discovering his father's and grandfather's role in it all. It is at once autobiography and political cautionary tale. I'm amazed that he could pull it off.

A voice in the wilderness
How did such a basic, rational notion as liberalism turn into the favorite epithet of talk-show hosts? What happened to social justice? Where is the freewheeling spirit of the Sixties? These, and other questions, have haunted me for years. Not being well versed in American history, the seemingly abrupt annhiliation of everything "liberal" has caused me great puzzlement and distress.

Packer, in a beautiful amalgam of memoir and history, has written a book that has almost singlehandedly restored my relationship with the past and pointed my way to the future. While as a historical account it is spotty, and as a memoir it is sometimes dry, the heartfelt combination of these two styles has a vitality and immediacy I've never seen anywhere else.

His conclusions, while expansive, are also poignant, with a touch of desperation. In his consideration of the prospects of liberalism in this country, I am reminded of the Monty Python sketch about the parrot - "It's just resting!" - while at the same time I'm stirred by its undercurrent of optimism. His last few words ring in my ears: "We will have a more just society as soon as we want one."

If you sense that, like myself, you are a lost liberal that is trying to find your way in the world, this book is for you.

If you are a Rush Limbaugh dittohead who needs a clue as to what "liberal" really means, this book is for you as well.

George Packer is a literary and historical genius!
Words can simply not do justice to the rapturous "Eureka! I have found it" feeling I experienced when I found, read and re-read this timely, vivid and insanely insightful book.(Perhaps I should mention that I have been searching in vain for nearly two years to find material on George Huddleston Sr. written in the literary style of eminent historians Richard Hofstadter and Christopher Lasch which also serves as both a caustic critique and a dynamic defense of the very concept of American liberalism).Packer is a great writer!He surveys the modern history of the American reform movement from 1869 to 2000 in a penetrative yet highly readable style and the word pictures he creates both engage and enlighten the reader immediately and throughout.His highly personal depictions of his family lineage - including triumphs and more than a few tragedies - make the story so poignant and touching that your heart will simply melt even if you don't agree with all of his premises or conclusions.And his understanding of the broad sweep of history is astounding - anyone who reads this book will come away with a much more enlightened view of 20th century American reform efforts than they would ever get from a more traditional historical author.There are only a few flaws (which I will not detail here), but those should be arrived at only after thoroughly studying this absolutely amazing book.Blood of the Liberals is simply one of the very best books I have ever read and I recommend it highly!

A rallying cry for modern liberalism
I really enjoyed Packer's book. I'm roughly a contemporary of his, and experienced the same wrenching events that occurred in modern liberalism during the late 1960s and early 1970s.I'd just finished reading Roth's "American Pastoral", and it was great to follow it up by reading Packer's book.

Like Packer, my father was an academic at an elite university, and as a traditional liberal who voted for Adlai, he was shocked by what he saw during the late 1960s. On a personal level, I liked reading a book by a writer who likes the same authors I like - Saul Bellow (Humboldt's Gift), Christopher Lasch, Irving Howe et al. There is a passage in which Packer perfectly summarizes the thesis of Lasch's "Revolt of the Elites" - gated communities like the ones that dot my hometown in Southern California.

The only area where I would fault Packer's book is that he does not criticize the dogmatic, politically correct tone that liberalism took on during the late 1980s and early 1990s and which still haunts liberalism. What alarmed Packer's father was exactly that, and I'm afraid Packer only devotes one paragraph to it. Left liberalism has, I'm afraid, taken on a neo-Stalinist quality on some college campuses, viz, stealing copies of conservative campus newspapers which take politically incorrect stands on such issues as affirmative action. Liberals should decry that just as much as the depredations of the Right. David Horowitz shouldn't be the only one who claims the moral high ground on that issue. I don't know if Packer's father would be a neoconservative today, but he might have been, if he'd lived.

Aside from all that, I commend Packer's book. It is a decent, humane and intelligent work that says that there's still a place at the political table for liberalism, even for disheartened liberals like me! ... Read more

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With just over 18% of the vote in the 1992 Election, the Liberal Democrats failed to secure a balance of power but demonstrated, nonetheless, the persistence of the third party as a force in British politics. In this study of the parties and personalities of the centre, John Stevenson traces the fortunes of the third party in all its forms, from 1945 to the present. Beginning with a brief pre-history of the post-war Liberal Party, and its steady electoral eclipse by Labour, John Stevenson then charts the near demise of the third party in the 1940s and 1950s under Clement Davies. He next examines the slow but steady revival of the Liberals in the years of Jo Grimond, from 1956 through to 1967, and beyond, to the dramatic series of by-election victories in 1972-3, as a renewed Liberal Party under Jeremy Thorpe once again exerted an influence on the politics of Britain. Thorpe's resignation and the 1977 Lib-Lab pact take the story up to the formation of the Social Democratic Party and the subsequent Alliance, in 1981. Following the fate of the Alliance from 1981 to 1987, the author then traces the emergence of a new third force: the Social and Liberal Democrats.In a conclusion, he assesses the prospects for the future of the third party in the light of the 1992 General Election. ... Read more

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The Liberal Party has governed Canada for much of the country's history. Yet over the past two decades, the 'natural governing party' has seen a decrease in traditional support, finding itself in opposition for nearly half of that time. In Divided Loyalties, Brooke Jeffrey draws on her own experience as a party insider and on interviews with more than sixty senior Liberals to follow the trajectory of the party from 1984 to the leadership of Stéphane Dion in 2008.

Riven by internal strife, leadership disputes, and financial woes, the Liberal Party today faces unprecedented challenges that threaten its very future. Conventional wisdom attributes the origins of the disarray to personal conflict between Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. However, Jeffrey argues that this divisiveness is actually the continuation of a dispute over Canadian federalism and national unity which began decades earlier between John Turner and Pierre Trudeau. This dispute, as evidenced by recent leadership crises, remains unresolved to this day. An insightful examination of the federal Liberal Party, Divided Loyalties sheds much-needed light on an increasingly fissured party. ... Read more

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This work is concerned with the realignment of progressive political forces in Britain. It focuses on the relationship between the Liberal, and then Liberal Democrats and the Labour parties, and seeks to provide an understanding of the factors which have created the potential for the realignment of the centre-left of the political spectrum and the forces which have historically impeded its attainment. This authoritative account of the British left and centre since the nineteenth century offers useful background for late 20th-century politics. ... Read more

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This book analyzes the political ideologies of the several highly influential liberal, socialist and communist thinkers, groups and movements which sought to modernize Egypt after World War II. Most of the representatives of these currents intended to transform Egyptian society completely through rapid industrialization, land reforms and economic planning, which would eliminate the peasantry, rationalize the economy and create a new Egyptian citizen who would live 'in accordance with the spirit of the age'. This book gives new insights into intellectual life during one of the most optimistic periods in Egyptian history, a time when Egypt was at the height of its power and believed a whole new future lay before it, uniting the Arab world and joining Asia and Africa in the common struggle for independence and dignity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

little discussion of the White Australia policy
Hancock offers a retrospective on postwar Australia and the Liberal Party's role during a period when the Liberals held power at the federal level. Those were tumultuous times for Australia. With the rise of the Cold War, and Australia moving steadily away from Britain and towards the US. We see how the Liberals adopted policies that gave significant changes. The biggest was the admission of many migrants from southern and eastern Europe. As an uninvaded nation, with intact cities, Australia must have seemed like paradise to many Europeans. This influx gave Australia significant contingents of Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs and Poles. It moved away from a sole Anglo-Celtic makeup.

The book's biggest flaw is when it does not discuss much how the Liberals deliberately kept the White Australia Policy intact. This excluded many Asians (and some Africans). The book's narrative ends in 1965. A few years later, that policy was finally abandoned. ... Read more

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This book is a comparative study of liberal parties in Western Europe, examining the role and development of liberal parties within individual countries; their internal party structure and organization; electoral audience; coalitions and government participation; party programs and strategies; and international and cross-national links. ... Read more

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Party and Government is an eleven-country study of the relationship between the governments of liberal democracies, mainly from Western Europe, but also including the United States and India, and the parties which support these governments. It examines this relationship at the three levels at which governments and parties connect: appointments, policy-making, and patronage. The emphasis is on a two-way relationship: parties influence governments but governments also influence parties. The extent and the direction of this influence varies from country to country. In some cases, governments and parties are almost autonomous from each other, as in the United States; in other cases, on the contrary, there is considerable power of one over the other: sometimes the party dominates, sometimes the government. ... Read more

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This work shows the importance of analysing the "low" politics of areas that have traditionally been dominated by "high" politics. The role of bodies such as the Liberal Summer School and the Women's Liberal Federation are examined, along with the work of thinkers such as JM Keynes. ... Read more

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No one likes to compromise, but we almost always do. Our politics and associations are built upon negotiation, respect for diversity, bargaining and elections. Compromise seems an awkward stepchild of morality and even dictionaries reflect its moral ambiguity. Most first definitions suggest that compromise involves "mutual concessions" or "negotiations". Many of our most vital liberties depend upon practices of tolerance and learning to "live with", "tolerate", "deal with" and even compromise with those with whom we mightily disagree. Today moral rhetoric and stridency threaten to engulf large segments of political life. Leaders of the left and especially the righ seek to extend pervasive moral visions of personal and social life through political power. This book examines the nature of political morality and the role of compromise in political life, especially the life of a liberal and democratic society. In it the author maps the nature of moral-political justification by free and responsible individuals through charting the nature of political compromise. ... Read more

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How did liberal movements reshape the modern world? Origins of Liberal Dominance offers a revealing account of how states, churches, and parties joined together in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany to produce fundamentally new forms of organization that have shaped contemporary politics.
Modern political life emerged when liberal movements sought to establish elections, constitutions, free markets, and religious liberty. Yet liberalism even at its height faced strong and often successful opposition from conservatives. What explains why liberals overcame their opponents in some countries but not in others? This book compares successful and unsuccessful attempts to build liberal political parties and establish liberal regimes in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany from 1815 to World War I.
Andrew Gould argues that relations between states and churches set powerful conditions on any attempt at liberalization. Liberal movements that enhanced religious authority while reforming the state won clerical support and successfully built liberal institutions of government. Furthermore, liberal movements that organized peasant backing around religious issues founded or sustained mass movements to support liberal regimes.
Origins of Liberal Dominance offers striking new insights into the emergence of modern states and regimes. It will be of interest to political scientists, sociologists, comparative historians, and those interested in comparative politics, regime change and state-building, democratization, religion and politics, and European politics.
Andrew C. Gould is Assistant Professor of Government and Kellogg Institute Fellow, University of Notre Dame.
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Paul Adelman seeks to explain the Liberal Party's dramatic transformation in political fortune. This clear, objective up-to-date account of the history of the Liberal Party covers the key period, 1910- - 1931. Focusing on liberal decline and drawing upon the different views forwarded by historians to account for this phenomenon, it discusses liberal decline before World War 1, the impact of the war on the liberals and the divisions that grew in the party after December 1916 between followers of Asquith and Lloyd George. A number of general factors are also covered, the impact of social and economic change, the effects of the Reform Act of 1918 and the rise of the Labour party. An ideal text for A-level and undergraduate students of history and politics. ... Read more

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Aiming to restore "Whiggery" to a position of significance in Liberal politics of the period, T.A. Jenkins reassesses the role of the aristocratic Whigs in the Liberal Party of the 1870s and 1880s.The leadership of Granville and Hartington is examined, as well as the leadership crisis of 1879-80, and the Whig strategies following Gladstone's return to power in 1880. Presenting an entirely new picture of the nature of Liberal politics, Jenkins asserts that the Irish Question was of central importance in the split of the Liberal Party. ... Read more

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