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Politcs 2020 Princeton Politics 2020 POLITICAL THEORY & PHILOSOPHY “Open Democracy envisions what true government by mass leadership could look like.” —Nathan Heller, New Yorker Open Democracy To the ancient Greeks, democracy meant gathering in public and debating laws set by a randomly selected assembly of several hundred citizens. To the Icelandic Vikings, democracy meant meeting every summer in a field to discuss issues until consensus was reached. Our contemporary representative democracies are very different. Modern parliaments are gat- ed and guarded, and it seems as if only certain people—with the right suit, accent, wealth, and connections—are welcome. Diagnosing what is wrong with representative government and aiming to recover some of the lost openness of ancient democracies, Open Democracy presents a new paradigm of democracy in which power is genuinely accessible to ordinary citizens. Hélène Landemore favors the ideal of “representing and be- ing represented in turn” over direct-democracy approaches. Supporting a fresh nonelectoral understanding of democratic representation, Landemore recommends centering political institutions around the “open mini-public”—a large, jury-like body of randomly selected citizens gathered to define laws and policies for the polity, in connection with the larger public. She also defends five institutional principles as the foundations of an open democracy: participatory rights, deliberation, the majoritarian principle, democratic represen- tation, and transparency. Open Democracy demonstrates that placing ordinary citizens, rather than elites, at the heart of democratic power is not only the true meaning of a government of, by, and for the people, but also feasible and, today more than ever, urgently needed. Hélène Landemore is associate professor of political science at Yale University. She is the author of Democratic Reason (Princeton) and Hume. October 2020. 272 pages. 1 b/w illus. 1 table Hardback 9780691181998 $35.00 | £30.00 ebook 9780691208725 POLITICAL THEORY & PHILOSOPHY “A forceful, encyclopedic study.” —Michael Eric Dyson, New York Times In the Shadow of Justice In the Shadow of Justice tells the story of how liberal political philosophy was transformed in the second half of the twentieth century under the influence of John Rawls. In this first-ever history of contemporary liberal theory, Katrina Forrester shows how liberal egalitarianism—a set of ideas about justice, equality, obligation, and the state—became dominant, and traces its emergence from the political and ideological context of postwar United States and Britain. Katrina Forrester is assistant professor of government and social studies at Harvard University. She is the coeditor of Nature, Action, and the Future. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, the Nation, the Guardian, Dissent, the New Statesman, n+1, and Harper’s. 2019. 432 pages. Hardback 9780691163086 $35.00 | £30.00 ebook 9780691189420 Why government outsourcing of public powers is making us less free The Privatized State Many governmental functions today—from the management of prisons and welfare offices to warfare and financial regulation—are outsourced to private entities. Education and health care are funded in part through private philanthropy rather than taxation. Can a privatized government rule legitimately? The Privatized State argues that it cannot. Chiara Cordelli shows how privatization undermines the very reason political institutions exist in the first place, and advocates for a new way of administering public affairs that is more democratic and just. Chiara Cordelli is associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago. She is the coeditor of Philanthropy in Democratic Societies. November 2020. 352 pages. 3 b/w illus. Hardback 9780691205755 $39.95 | £34.00 ebook 9780691211732 1 POLITICAL THEORY & PHILOSOPHY The racist legacy behind the Western idea of freedom White Freedom The era of the Enlightenment, which gave rise to our modern conceptions of freedom and democracy, was also the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. America, a nation founded on the principle of liberty, is also a nation built on African slavery, Native American genocide, and systematic racial discrimination. White Freedom traces the complex relation- ship between freedom and race from the eighteenth century to today, revealing how being free has meant being white. Tyler Stovall is professor of history and dean of the Gradu- ate School of Arts and Sciences at Fordham University. His books include Transnational France: The Modern History of a Universal Nation, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light, and The Rise of the Paris Red Belt. January 2021. 336 pages. 31 b/w illus. Hardback 9780691179469 $29.95 | £25.00 ebook 9780691205366 Audiobook 9780691215273 A fresh and sharp-eyed history of political conservatism from its nineteenth-century origins to today’s hard Right Conservatism For two hundred years, conservatism has defied its rep- utation as a backward-looking creed by confronting and adapting to liberal modernity. By doing so, the Right has won long periods of power and effectively become the dominant tradition in politics. Yet, despite their success, conservatives have continued to fight with each other about how far to compromise with liberalism and democracy—or which values to defend and how. In Conservatism, Edmund Fawcett provides a gripping account of this conflicted history, clari- fies key ideas, and illuminates quarrels within the Right today. Edmund Fawcett worked at The Economist for more than three decades. He is the author of Liberalism: The Life of an Idea (Princeton). October 2020. 544 pages. Hardback 9780691174105 $35.00 | £30.00 ebook 9780691207773 Audiobook 9780691213637 2 POLITICAL THEORY & PHILOSOPHY How referendums can diffuse populist tensions by putting power back into the hands of the people Let the People Rule Propelled by the belief that government has slipped out of the hands of ordinary citizens, a surging wave of populism is destabilizing democracies around the world. As John Matsusaka reveals in Let the People Rule, this belief is based in fact. Over the past century, while democratic governments have become more efficient, they have also become more disconnected from the people they purport to represent. The solution Matsusaka advances is familiar but surprisingly underused: direct democracy, in the form of referendums. John G. Matsusaka is the Charles F. Sexton Chair in American Enterprise at the Marshall School of Business and the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California, where he also serves as executive director of the Initiative and Referendum Institute. 2020. 312 pages. 29 b/w illus. 9 tables. Hardback 9780691199726 $29.95 | £25.00 ebook 9780691199757 A new understanding of political philosophy from one of its leading thinkers What Is Political Philosophy? What is political philosophy? What are its fundamental problems? And how should it be distinguished from moral philosophy? Forceful and thorough yet concise, What Is Political Philosophy? proposes a new definition of political philosophy and demonstrates the profound implications of that definition. The result is a compelling and distinctive intervention from a major political philosopher. Charles Larmore is professor of philosophy and the W. Duncan MacMillan Family Professor in the Humanities at Brown University. His previous works include The Auton- omy of Morality and The Practices of the Self. 2020. 200 pages. Hardback 9780691179148 $29.95 | £25.00 ebook 9780691200873 3 POLITICAL THEORY & PHILOSOPHY How transatlantic thinkers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries promoted the unification of Britain and the United States Dreamworlds of Race Between the late nineteenth century and the First World War an ocean-spanning network of prominent individuals advo- cated the unification of Britain and the United States. They dreamt of the final consolidation of the Angloworld. Scholars, journalists, politicians, businessmen, and science fiction writers invested the “Anglo-Saxons” with extraordinary power. The most ambitious hailed them as a people destined to bring peace and justice to the earth. Dreamworlds of Race explores this remarkable moment in the intellectual history of racial domination, political utopianism, and world order. Duncan Bell is Professor of Political Thought and Interna- tional Relations at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Christ’s College. December 2020. 440 pages. Hardback 9780691194011 $39.95 | £34.00 ebook 9780691208671 From one of our finest writers and leading environmental thinkers, a powerful book about how the land we share divides us—and how it could unite us This Land Is Our Land Today, we are at a turning point as we face ecological and political crises that are rooted in conflicts over the land itself. But these problems can be solved if we draw on elements of our tradition that move us toward a new commonwealth—a community founded on the well-being of all people and the natural world. In this brief, powerful, timely, and hopeful book, Jedediah Purdy explores how we might begin to heal our fractured and contentious relationship with the land and with each other. Jedediah Purdy is professor of law at Columbia Law School. He contributes to the New Yorker, the Nation, the New Republic, the Atlantic, n+1, and other publications. 2019. 200 pages. Hardback 9780691195643 $19.95 | £16.99 ebook 9780691198729 4 POLITICAL THEORY & PHILOSOPHY An original
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