Politics and the Public in Rawls' Political Liberalism

This paper is a critical discussion of a number of related themes in John Rawls' Political Liberalism. First, it considers whether Rawls' recent statement of his position proceeds from an adequate methodology for political theory. In particular, it questions whether Rawls has succeeded in accommodating both universalist, analytic and particularist, interpretive aspects of the political theoretical enterprise. Second, it engages in critical analysis of the conceptions of the political and the public which lie at the core of Rawls' theory. In this part of the paper, an important though not exclusive focus will be certain questions raised by Susan Moller Okin and other feminist critics of Rawls about the internal consistency of his conception of justice. It is argued that Political Liberalism neither addresses these questions explicitly nor, contrary to Okin's view, provides implicit conceptual tools which could allow a sympathetic interpreter of Rawls to do so. The direction of the argument will suggest certain preconditions for the development of a more substantively and methodologically adequate approach to political theory.     

The Political Thought of Scottish Nationalism

This article examines the key arguments and intellectual influences that have come together over recent decades to produce the case for Scottish independence. In particular, the article draws attention to three crucial, but discordant, ideological themes that have become recurrent features of Scottish nationalist discourse: an analysis of the British state indebted to the New Left; a surprising enthusiasm for the politics of the British labour movement; and a belief that we are witnessing the end of the era of absolute state sovereignty.     

孙中山政治和谐思想研究

孙中山所构建的和谐政治是基于"天下为公"和"五族共和"的全民政治,人民当家做主,人人平等的和谐社会;"天下为公"实现的是政治和谐的深度,"五族共和"实现的是政治和谐的广度。从深度和广度两个维度来全面深入地阐述孙中山的政治和谐思想,为弘扬"依法治国",实现各民族的团结、友爱、平等奠定基础,为当今社会主义和谐社会的建设提供借鉴。     

马克思政治文明思想论析

马克思提出了“政治文明”的概念,揭示了政治文明的核心是民主政治,展现了政治文明的基本结构,阐述了建立无产阶级“文明国家政府”的基本特征。     

Pluralism and Liberalism

Meta-ethical pluralism, as developed in the work of writers like Isaiah Berlin, is the idea that ethical values cannot be reduced to a single hierarchy or system but are irreducibly multiple. It has often been argued that simply to recognize this fact is to have a reason to favour liberal institutions. On the contrary, the plurality of values in itself gives us no reason to support liberalism, indeed no reason to prefer any particular political arrangement to any other. If pluralism is true, the liberal's best defence may lie in appealing, in the manner of writers like Walzer and Rorty, to the de facro limitations on moral commitments imposed by the existing political culture.     

Liberalism and Culture

Will Kymlicka's new book makes important conceptual, methodological, and substantive contributions to contemporary discussions of multiculturalism. Nevertheless, Kymlicka's attempt to construct a defense of special rights for minority cultural groups on the basis of his conception of "societal culture" entails implications that are both too radical and too restrictive with regard to the kinds of minority claims they support. In particular, Kymlicka's account undermines the claims of immigrant minorities to the sorts of special rights that Kymlicka thinks they are entitled to demand.     

马克思主义与自由主义

自由主义在西方至今仍是占主导地位的意识形态。它的历史虽然可以追溯到古希腊，但作为一种思想流派和理论体系，则是近代以来的事情，实质上是资产阶级的一种自由观和民主观，与马克思主义的自由观民主现有着本质的区别。本文围绕马克思主义与自由主义在自由民主问题上的基本分歧作一筒要评述。     

Politics Without Borders: Internationalist Political Thought

This article examines the place of internationalism in the theory and practice of social revolutionaries from the middle of the 19th century to the end of the 20th in order to shed light on the nature and meaning of national boundaries and their transcendence. Theories of ideology are brought to bear on the legacy of internationalist political thought, revealing the preconditions of its existence and viability. Finally, questions are posed as to the relevance of internationalist thought for contemporary politics in the context of so-called globalization. The author concludes that economic and technological trends will not result in the automatic revitalization of transnational forms of political identity outside of the context of transnational political organizations.     

Human Branding in Political Marketing: Applying Contemporary Branding Thought to Political Parties and Their Leaders

Political marketing advances by engaging with new and advanced concepts from both of its parent disciplines. One of the most recent fields of brand research—the study of the human brand—is taken into the political marketing arena in this essay. Human branding is an emergent topic in mainstream marketing. The value as a brand of a person who is well-known and subject to explicit marketing communications efforts is being investigated in many fields. The concept has clear prima facie value in political marketing, where the role of a political leader as part of the political marketing offer has been recognized extensively. Politics is also a unique context given the relationship between leaders and parties, each of which has some unique brand associations. The process of exploring the application of human branding in politics also provides a context in which some of the interactions among party and leader, human brand, and organizational brand can be explored and further developed. Among the conclusions are that political party leaders require brand authenticity as an advocate of the party policy platform and brand authority to command the organization and deliver on the policies being advocated. Implications for party and campaign management are outlined.     

The Concept of the State in British and French Political Thought

The importance of the concept of state in British political thought has recently been re-assessed, and Dyson's contrast between a continental 'state tradition' and an Anglo-American 'stateless tradition' has been put into question. Yet this paper argues that there remain crucial differences in the way in which French and British political thinkers have understood the concept of state. Focusing on a critical moment in the crystallization of the meaning of 'state', the turn of the twentieth century, and in particular on the anti-statist pluralist school, it analyses how state critics were influenced by national intellectual traditions. French thought has been permeated by the idea of the autonomy of the state vis-à-vis society at large, while British thought has remained committed to an ideal of fluidity between state and society.     

A Retrospective of Northern Green Political Thought and Practice

Timothy Silver: A New Face on the Countryside: Indians, Colonists, and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests, 1500–1800. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 1990.

William Cronon: Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. Hill and Wang, New York, 1983.     

Anti-perfectionism and Rawlsian Liberalism

This article examines the justifications of anti-perfectionism given by John Rawls in his recent work Political Liberalism. Rawls, I argue, gives one major argument in defence of anti-perfectionism (what I shall call the 'reasonableness among free and equal persons' argument) and two subsidiary arguments (what I shall call the 'social unity' argument and the 'stability' argument). None of these arguments, I claim, are persuasive. Rawls's most recent justification of anti-perfectionism is therefore unsuccessful.     

"三个代表"与中国的政治发展

我国已经进入全面建设小康社会的新的发展阶段.发展社会主义民主,建设社会主义政治文明,是我们在新阶段的政治发展目标."三个代表"重要思想,及时地回应了全球化和社会转型两大语境对当代中国政治发展提出的新要求,为推进中国的政治发展提供了强大的思想武器.