Oxford Readings in Politics and Government – serie

The analysis of party systems in Western Europe has long constituted a major focus of concern in comparative political science. Many of the classic writings in this field have here been collected into a single volume. "The West European Party System" contains seminal writings by Weber, Neuman, Duverger, Kirchheimer, Daalder, Rookan and Sartori, as well as a selection from the more recent debates on changes in European party systems, including the contributions of Pedersen, Wolinetz and Inglehart. The collection as a whole covers the development, stabilization and transformation of party systems and includes some of the key analyses which have sought to distinguish between different types of party system. The essays are among the most widely-cited in the contemporary literature on comparative West European politics.

In the last decade much contemporary political and moral thought has been devoted to the debate between communitarianism and individualism. While individualists advocate the notions of rights, neutrality, and impartiality, and see society as a voluntary association for mutual advantage, communitarians argue that individuals are never detached from their society, culture, and history and that if they are to be properly understood they must first be examined in these contexts. Moreover communitarians claim that individualism makes it impossible to achieve a genuine community which can offer its members a just distribution of goods and morally meaningful life. The essays collected in this volume reflect the many facets of this debate and examine its implications for the political arena. They cover a wide spectrum of thought and opinion and include work by Ronald Dworkin, Marilyn Friedman, David Gauthier, Amy Gutmann, Will Kymlicka, Alasdair MacIntyre, David Miller, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer.

This collection of extracts from works by philosophers, political theorists, and social critics ranges over two millennia, from the ideas of Plato and Aristotle to those of contemporary thinkers such as John Rawls and Robert Nozick, and examines the nature of justice, its importance in human life, and its place among the other virtues. The scope of the collection gives a clear picture of the differences and continuities that have marked the debate: Plato's emphasis on the ideal of `sticking to one's task' contrasts with the modern emphasis on individual rights, while the account of justice as part of the law of nature offered by Aristotle and Cicero contrasts with Hume's analysis of justice as an artificial virtue. Alan Ryan's introductory essay emphasizes the stringency of justice, showing how its demands can conflict with considerations of the general welfare. The book concludes with a discussion of Marx's view that justice is perhaps merely a concession to a world of scarcity and selfishness created by capitalist necessities. This is an essential guide to interpretations of one of the central values of political life and thought.

Parliamentary and presidential government, exemplified by the United Kingdom and most continental European countries on the one hand and the United States and Latin America on the other, are the two principal forms of democracy in the modern world. Their respective advantages and disadvantages have long been debated, at first mainly by British and American political observers, but with increasing frequency in other parts of the world too, especially in Latin America and Asia. The recent world-wide wave of democratization has intensified both the debate and its significance. This volume brings together the most important statements on the subject, by advocates and analysts from Montesquieu and Madison to Lipset and Linz. It also treats the merits of less frequently used democratic types, such as French-style semi-presidentialism, that may be regarded as intermediate forms between parliamentarism and presidentialism.