The Department of Government's staff are responsible for a number of publications. Our most recent published research can be found on the publications| page.
Global justice and avant-garde political agency
Why should states matter and how do relations between fellow-citizens affect what is owed to distant strangers? How, if at all, can demanding egalitarian principles inform political action in the real world? This book proposes a novel solution through the concept of avant-garde political agency. Ypi grounds egalitarian principles on claims arising from conflicts over the distribution of global positional goods, and illustrates the role of avant-garde agents in shaping these conflicts and promoting democratic political transformations in response to them. Against statists, she defends the global scope of equality, and derives remedial cosmopolitan principles from global responsibilities to relieve absolute deprivation. Against cosmopolitans, she shows that associative political relations play an essential role and that blanket condemnation of the state is unnecessary and ill-directed. Advocating an approach to global justice whereby domestic avant-garde agents intervene politically so as to constrain and motivate fellow-citizens to support cosmopolitan transformations, this book offers a fresh and nuanced example of political theory in an activist mode. Setting the contemporary debate on global justice in the context of recent methodological disputes on the relationship between ideal and nonideal theorizing, Ypi's dialectical account illustrates how principles and agency can genuinely interact.
Author: Ypi, Lea
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 22 December 2011
ISBN 9780199593873
Further Information|
Bottom-Up Politics: An Agency-Centred Approach to Globalization
The writing out of agency from the study of globalization resulted in its portrayal as an uncontrollable, unstoppable and unchangeable force. Ordinary people have been conceptualized as victims or beneficiaries. Alternatively, grassroots activism has been romantically portrayed as an unproblematic force for good. Inspired by the work of Mary Kaldor on global civil society and new wars, the authors explore complex, counterintuitive and even unintended forms and consequences of bottom-up politics as the state loses its dominance as a political actor in the global era. Leading theorists such as Albrow, Falk, Held, Rothschild and Sassen, together with young scholars demonstrate the importance of agency to our understanding of globalization.
Edited by: Denisa Kostovicova and Marlies Glasius
Publication date: 22 Nov 2011
ISBN-10: 0230280323
ISBN-13: 978-0230280328
Further Information|
Global Democracy: Normative and Empirical Perspectives
Democracy is increasingly seen as the only legitimate form of government, but few people would regard international relations as governed according to democratic principles. Can this lack of global democracy be justified? Which models of global politics should contemporary democrats endorse and which should they reject? What are the most promising pathways to global democratic change? To what extent does the extension of democracy from the national to the international level require a radical rethinking of what democratic institutions should be? This book answers these questions by providing a sustained dialogue between scholars of political theory, international law and empirical social science. By presenting a broad range of views by prominent scholars, it offers an in-depth analysis of one of the key challenges of our century: globalizing democracy and democratizing globalization.
Editors: Daniele Archibugi, Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, and Raffaele Marchetti
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: October 2011
ISBN: 9780521174985
Further information|
The Triumph of Politics
The Return of the Left in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador
The Triumph of Politics offers a comparative and historical interpretation of Venezuela's Chavez, Bolivia's Morales and Ecuador's Correa - South America's most prominent ‘21st century socialists'. It argues that the claims of these 21st century socialists should be taken seriously even though not necessarily at face value.
The authors show how the consensual market oriented policymaking that characterized almost all of South America in the 1990s has now given way to something quite different. Polarization and intense political conflict have returned to much of the region. Although the Left has not always been the beneficiary of this changed pattern, the ‘21st century' governments of Chavez, Morales and Correa have been agenda setters. The questions raised by their emergence, style of governance and policy orientations resonate across Latin America and beyond. It is likely that the kind of politics with which they have been associated will be influential in the region for quite some time to come.
Author: George Philip and Francisco Panizza
Publication date: Sep 2011
ISBN: 9780745647487
ISBN-10: 0745647480
Further Information|
Nationalism and Globalisation
Nationalism and globalisation are two central phenomena of the modern world, that have both shaped and been shaped by each other, yet few connections have been made systematically between the two.
This book brings together leading international scholars to examine the effect of globalisation on nationalism, and how the persistence of the nation affects globalisation. With a range of case studies from Europe, the US and Asia, the authors focus on the interaction between globalisation, national identity, national sovereignty, state-formation and the economy.
Edited by: Daphne Halikiopoulou, Sofia Vasilopoulou
Publication date: September 28th 2011
ISBN: 978-0-415-58197-4
Further Information|
New Beginnings: Constitutionalism and Democracy in Modern Ireland
"New Beginnings" covers Irish constitutional development from Home Rule to the Good Friday Agreement, focusing on turning points where radical constitutional change was discussed, attempted, or implemented. It asks what Irish constitution-makers were trying to do in drafting constitutional documents, or significantly amending existing constitutions. It deals with the 1919, 1922, and 1937 constitutions, debates over the 1937 constitution since 1969, and the 1998 Belfast peace agreement. Taking the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy as its key issue, it asks why Irish politicians have seen constitutions as ways of making democracy more manageable, rather than of furthering democracy. It is intended for students of politics and constitutional law, as well as the general reader, and written in an accessible style that assumes no prior knowledge of Irish constitutional history or law.
Author Bill Kissane
Publication date: 24 May 2011
ISBN-13: 9781906359515
ISBN-10: 1906359512
Further Information|
Austria, Prussia and the Making of Germany: 1806-1871
It is often argued that the unification of Germany in 1871 was the inevitable result of the convergence of Prussian power and German nationalism. John Breuilly here shows that the true story was much more complex. For most of the nineteenth century Austria was the dominant power in the region. Prussian-led unification was highly unlikely up until the 1860s and even then was only possible because of the many other changes happening in Germany, Europe and the wider world.
Author: John Breuilly
Publication date: 19 May 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4082-7276-3
Further Information|
Group Agency: The Possibility, Design and Status of Corporate Agents
Are companies, churches, and states genuine agents? Or are they just collections of individuals that give a misleading impression of unity? This question is important, since the answer dictates how we should explain the behaviour of these entities and whether we should treat them as responsible and accountable on the model of individual agents. Group Agency offers a new approach to that question and is relevant, therefore, to a range of fields from philosophy to law, politics, and the social sciences. Christian List and Philip Pettit argue that there really are group or corporate agents, over and above the individual agents who compose them, and that a proper approach to the social sciences, law, morality, and politics must take account of this fact. Unlike some earlier defences of group agency, their account is entirely unmysterious in character and, despite not being technically difficult, is grounded in cutting-edge work in social choice theory, economics, and philosophy.
Author: Christian List and Philip Pettit
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2011
ISBN: 978-0-19-959156-5
Further Information|
Patterns of Secularisation: Church, State and Nation in Greece and the Republic of Ireland
Does modernization result in the decline or rise of the social and political significance of religion? This book examines the emergence of different patterns of secularization in societies where religion and nation are linked. In such societies the Church draws its power not only from its relationship with the state but also its relationship with the nation. The redefinition of the Church, state and nation nexus is likely to result in secularization if (a) the church obstructs the modernisation process (church and state), and (b) if external threat perceptions decline (church and nation). The simultaneous presence of these constraints serves to redefine the role of religion in the formation of national identity. Comparing Greece and the Republic of Ireland as two cultural defence cases with a strong variation in the social and political salience of religion, this book identifies two patterns of secularization: (a) co-optation, and (b) confrontation.
Author: Daphne Halikiopoulou
Publisher: Ashgate
Year: January 2011,
ISBN: 978-1-4094-0345-6
Further Information|
Legislatures and the Budget Process: The Myth of Fiscal Control
The legislative 'power of the purse' is an important constitutional principle across contemporary democracies. Yet, national legislatures differ in their approach to fiscal control. What is the role of legislatures in the budget process? Why does this role vary across democratic countries? Are powerful assemblies a threat to the prudent management of public finances? This unprecedented survey of legislative budgeting tackles these questions using quantitative data and case studies.
Author: Joachim Wehner
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2010
ISBN: 978-0230219724
Further Information|
Gender and Culture
This text sees Phillips reject the notion that "culture" justifies the oppression of women, and she questions the stereotypes that represent people from ethno-cultural minorities as being peculiarly resistant to accepting the idea of gender equality.
Author: Anne Phillips
Publisher: Polity
Year: 16 April 2010
ISBN: 9780745648002
Further Information|