Schools of Thought in Politics series – serie

A just society guarantees its members rights to basic civil liberties protecting the political liberties associated with democratic governance, while ensuring state accountability and responsiveness to citizens. Despite broad agreement on these abstract requirements, the conditions that foster justice, thus understood, are a matter of long-standing controversy in political theory.This important collection addresses these controversies with over fifty articles on basic political institutions such as the rule of law, judicial review, federalism, separation of powers, freedom of speech, elections and parties, direct democracy, organized social groups, and administrative agencies.

This major two volume reference work focuses on the works of contemporary Marxism which take as their inspiration the classical Marxian political economy, especially that of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg and Gramsci. The authors reprinted here are engaged in the common enterprise of attempting to understand the world in a manner that might facilitate its transformation for the better, or at least help prevent the worst outcomes from predictable and inevitable changes. Committed to the critical, scientific and explanatory project of Marxism, the authors represented in these volumes tend to be structuralist and determinist but they also acknowledge the role of voluntarism, chance or untheorized circumstance. All have borrowed from the philosophical, political, and most importantly, political economic strands of the classical Marxist legacy to create a new and contemporary Marxian political economy. These authoritative volumes will be an essential reference point for an analysis of one of the most influential political ideologies of the 20th century.

The State and its Critics is an authoritative selection of recent essays in normative political philosophy on the state as a form of political institution, focusing on its role with respect to such values as freedom, justice, well-being, economic efficiency, community, democracy and peace. These essays represent a variety of views about the state, from anarchist to statist and a variety of philosophical orientations, conservative, libertarian, Marxian and liberal.

This two volume set presents the key literature on the contending schools of justice which have dominated contemporary political philosophy. Justice in Political Philosophy focuses in particular on the wide range of positions and debates which have emerged since the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971. Each view is presented through a representative selection of the major articles by both its proponents and critics. The schools covered include utilitarianism, liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism and their Marxist, communitarian and feminist critics. The authors represented include such influential figures as Rawls, Nozick, Dworkin, Cohen, Gauthier, Harsanyi, Barry, Sandel, MacIntyre, Gilligan and Mackinnon. The editor's introduction explores the interrelations between these diverse theories and shows how there are considerable convergences as well as disagreements in the contemporary debates over justice.

This important reference collection focuses on central issues in contemporary feminist debate. It includes sections on the critique of mainstream political theories, the feminist reconstruction of political concepts, the impact on moral theory of the 'different voice' ethic of care, and the equality/difference debate. Feminism includes the most important literature on the central themes of domination and subordination, essentialism, race and class.