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Which kind of methodology should political philosophy endorse to jointly meet its theoretical and practical commitments? Virtuous Imbalance: Political Philosophy between Desirability and Feasibility assesses three paradigmatic cases to explore and explain political philosophy's attempts to answer this important question. Rawls's realistic utopianism, Machiavelli's realism, and Plato's utopianism are examined and explored as Francesca Pasquali presents the proper methodology political philosophy should endorse when attempting to attain equilibrium between the practical and the theoretical. These models are investigated with reference to desirability and feasibility; the former concerning the ...
This book offers a comprehensive overview of the key concepts and issues of contemporary political philosophy, providing an essential reference work for scholars and advanced students. It is structured in three parts, covering methodological issues; tools and argumentative strategies employed by political philosophy; and concepts and topics key to the discipline. Expert authors from around the world have written twenty chapters in a consistent and engaging style. Each chapter is thoroughly cross-referenced allowing students to appreciate how methodological issues relate to each other, and how methodology and argumentative tools affect the way substantial issues are addressed. The chapters ar...
The concept of the audience is changing. In the twenty-first century there are novel configurations of user practices and technological capabilities that are altering the way we understand and trust media organizations and representations, how we participate in society, and how we construct our social relations. This book embeds these transformations in a societal, cultural, technological, ideological, economic and historical context, avoiding a naive privileging of technology as the main societal driving force, but also avoiding the media-centric reduction of society to the audiences that are situated within. Audience Transformations provides a platform for a nuanced and careful analysis of the main changes in European communicational practices, and their social, cultural and technological affordances.
The transformations of people’s relations to media content, technologies and institutions raise new methodological challenges and opportunities for audience research. This edited volume aims at contributing to the development of the repertoire of methods and methodologies for audience research by reviewing and exemplifying approaches that have been stimulated by the changing conditions and practices of audiences. The contributions address a range of issues and approaches related to the diversification, integration and triangulation of methods for audience research, to the gap between the researched and the researchers, to the study of online social networks, and to the opportunities brought about by Web 2.0 technologies as research tools.
The emergence of citizenship, some 4,000 years ago, was a hinge moment in human history. Instead of the reign of blood descent, questions regarding who rules and who belongs were opened up. Yet purportedly primordial categories, such as sex and race, have constrained the emergence of a truly civic polity ever since. Untying this paradox is essential to overcoming the crisis afflicting contemporary democracies. Why does citizenship emerge, historically, and why does it maintain traction, even if in compromised forms? How can citizenship and democracy be revived? Learning from history and building on emerging social and political developments, David Jacobson and Manlio Cinalli provide the foun...
This volume examines the rising role that alternative media play in contemporary mainstream political communication. The book focuses on three primary sites where such media have established growing influence in recent years: political parties, mainstream political news, and participatory media that allow for engagement.
When political parties make policy decisions they are influenced by the competition they face from other parties. This book examines how party competition and party systems affect reforms of social protection. Featuring a historical comparison of Italy and Germany post-1945, the book shows how a high number of parties and ideological polarisation lead to fragmented and unequal social benefits. Utilising a comparative approach, the author brings together two important issues in welfare state research that have been insufficiently investigated. Firstly, the complex influence of party competition on social policy-making, and second, how some social groups enjoy better social protection than oth...
This book investigates the unresolved issue of democratic legitimacy in contexts of pervasive disagreement and contributes to this debate by defending a relational version of political liberalism that rests on the ideal of co-authorship. According to this proposal, democratic legitimacy depends upon establishing appropriate interactions among citizens who ought to ascribe to one another the status of putative practical and epistemic authorities. To support this relational reading of political liberalism, the book proposes a revised account of the civic virtue of reasonableness along with an investigation of the epistemic-specific dimension of political equality. By engaging with political ep...
As democracy encounters difficulties, many citizens are turning to the domain of alternative politics and, in so doing, making considerable use of the new communication technologies. This volume analyses the various factors that shape such participation, and addresses such key topics as civic subjectivity, web intellectuals, and cosmopolitanism.
Michael Oakeshott on Authority, Governance, and the State presents contributions on one of the most important British philosophers of the 20th century. These essays address unique and under-analyzed areas in the literature on Oakeshott: authority, governance, and the state. They draw on some of the earliest and least-explored works of Oakeshott, including his lectures at Cambridge and the London School of Economics and difficult-to-access essays and manuscripts. The essays are authored by a diverse set of emerging and established scholars from Europe, North America, and India. This authorial diversity is not only a testimony to the growing international interest in Oakeshott, but also to a plurality of perspectives and important new insights into the thought of Michael Oakeshott.