M. E. Grant Duff, Philosophic Liberalism and the Global Liberal Cause

Notions of empire and imperialism have increasingly returned to the lexicon of mainstream theorisation of the international. Much of this literature identifies a ‘new’ imperialism, distinct from the supposed postand non-imperial global(ising) order of the Westphalian state system. The article contends that such accounts occlude our understanding of the ‘long’ history of imperialism. It argues that the putatively post-imperial institutions and discourses of ‘global governance’ are internally related to ‘post-colonial’ imperialism. In particular the regime of ‘democratisation’ and the curtailing of democratic freedom constitute a principal means through which imperial rule is articulated. Despite a vast literature on ‘democratisation’, there has been a paucity of analysis which interrogates the Great Power-defined agenda of democratisation. Mainstream accounts presuppose what requires explanation, taking for granted the non-imperial character of this global project, the hegemony of a specific and impoverished model of (neo)liberal democracy, highly problematic, de-historicised notions of state, society and self and the categorical separation of the ‘domestic’ and the ‘international’. The article provides detailed substantive analysis of the endeavour by the dominant social agents of the democratisation project to constitute a (neo)liberal procedural notion of democracy in the ‘post-colonial’ world. It identifies the dominant social agents of this project and explores the theoretical underpinnings of the dominant model being propounded. Informed by this, the article examines the democratisation project according to coveted transformations in three domains: the minimal, ‘neutral’ state, the constitution of ‘civil society’ and the promotion of the liberal ‘self’. The article contends that far from an alternative to imperialism, ‘democratisation’ involves the imposition of a Western (neo)liberal procedural form of democracy on imperialised peoples. The character of the ‘informal’ imperial order is such that self-determination does not mean autonomy. Rather it means the ‘freedom’ to embrace the rules, norms and principles of the emerging (neo)liberal global order.

(1993). From Liberalism to liberalism: The British Liberal and Labour Parties. South African Historical Journal: Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 246-256.

Standard historiography states that between 1880 and 1916, Argentina underwent a profound social and economic transformation led by a hegemonic political party, the Partido Autonomista Nacional (PAN). This transformation has been portrayed as the achievement of a generation of public men, the Generation of Eighty, who envisioned a project that would integrate Argentina into the social and economic changes occurring in the transatlantic world. The 1880s — with record levels of immigration, foreign investment, the triumph of the PAN, and the strengthening of the state — have generally been characterized as a crucial decade in consolidating the main hallmarks of “Modern Argentina.”1

“Inter-National” Habermas: Contestation and Understanding under Conditions of Diversity

This conclusion draws together the different arguments of the individual chapters and provides a preliminary agenda for further research on populism and world politics. Specifically, it proposes a three-step model for the analysis of populists’ impact on foreign policy and international politics, consisting of (1) populists’ specific ideologies and foreign policy positions, (2) domestic opportunity structures and (3) the international context. In contrast to widespread claims that populism per se is a danger to world order, democracy or “the West,” we argue that a systematic and careful analysis that differentiates between different populisms is a necessary precondition for any meaningful assessment in regards to their impact. Moreover, the latter not just depends on populists’ foreign policy demands but also on whether populists are in government or exerting pressure from the outside as well as the extent to which they can act in an unconstrained fashion, both in terms of domestic veto players and international context. This chapter argues that any worthwhile analysis of populism’s effect on foreign policy, international cooperation and conflict or regional and world order(s) has to move beyond the all too common mistake to treat populism as a monolith and to ignore both domestic and international contexts.

This article examines the imperial rhetoric of the Liberal Party during the South African War of 1899-1902, charting its use and development across five key controversies spanning the course of the conflict. Moving beyond traditional interpretations of the Liberal split as the product of competing visions of Empire and approaches to imperialism, this article argues for the need to recognize also the continuities within the imperial rhetoric of fin-de-siècle British Liberalism. Building on recent studies of political languages, it identifies how Liberal speakers from across the party operated within a rhetorical framework that emphasized three ideals of imperial governance: good government, self-government, and pluralism. In doing so, this article seeks to advance our understanding of the South African War as an episode in British party politics, demonstrating the complexity and nuance of the Liberal Party's response to the conflict. Furthermore, by undertaking an in-depth exploration of the rhetoric of imperial governance, this article highlights the Liberal response to the South African War as a case study for the reinvention and reiteration of both party and imperial languages in early twentieth-century Britain, with the potential to offer new insights into the political and imperial cultures of the period.

Napoleon III's 1860s intervention in Mexico mystified some British observers. For many others, however, it raised urgent questions about the duties of European civilization and the future of global order. This article argues that the affair forced attitudes toward other European countries' overseas imperial projects into sharp political focus, and that in doing so it revealed incipient shifts in the center of gravity of Victorian liberalism. France's Second Mexican Empire split opinion in the Liberal Party and press, throwing light on wider disputes about the parameters of legitimate imperial intervention, the reach of the principles of nationality and self-determination, the political needs of disordered multiracial polities in less-developed parts of the world, and Europe's proper relations with Spanish America. But most Liberals who engaged with the enterprise condemned it, a fact that lays bare a changing balance of power between what historians have called “liberal imperial” and noninterventionist arguments in the 1860s. The failure of the intervention, moreover, did much to affirm powerful partisan narratives about French politics, which helped to buttress the electoral ascendancy of the Liberal Party.

This book provides an introduction to the analysis of global political order — how patterns of governance and institutionalization in world politics have already changed; what the most important challenges are; and what the way forward might look like. The first section develops three analytical frameworks: a world of sovereign states capable of only limited cooperation; a world of ever-denser international institutions embodying the idea of an international community; and a world in which global governance moves beyond the state and into the realms of markets, civil society, and networks. Part II examines five of the most important issues facing contemporary international society: nationalism and the politics of identity; human rights and democracy; war, violence, and collective security; the ecological challenge; and the management of economic globalization in a highly unequal world. Part III considers the idea of an emerging multi-regional system; and the picture of global order built around US empire. The conclusion looks at the normative implications. If international society has indeed been changing in the ways discussed in this book, what ought we to do? And, still more crucially, who is the ‘we’ that is to be at the centre of this drive to create a morally better world? This book is concerned with the fate of international society in an era of globalization and the ability of the inherited society of sovereign states to provide a practically viable and normatively acceptable framework for global political order. It lays particular emphasis on the different forms of global inequality and the problems of legitimacy that these create, and on the challenges posed by cultural diversity and value conflict.

The British Liberal party has not independently held the reins of government since 1915. For most of the three-quarters of a century which have elapsed since then it has been recognized to be in a state of decline. Nonetheless its continued viability as a force in British politics has not usually been in question. Despite its often derisory position in the House of Commons — the victim of a first-past-the-post electoral system — it has maintained a significant level of support at the ballot box. This article argues, however, that in the years immediately after World War Two the political extinction of the Liberal party was a distinct possibility. While the party struggled to establish its own distinctive identity in a changed political environment, it was the object of a succession of attempts by the Conservatives to destroy its independent existence. The latter increasingly saw the capturing of remaining Liberal votes as their only means of overcoming the new Labour majority in the country which had emerged in 1945. As the postwar consensus developed, Liberalism found it ever more difficult to find an appropriate niche within the political spectrum. The problem was not helped by a marked difference of opinion within the rump of the parliamentary party. Some were clear that only a pact with the Conservatives could save the party from oblivion, while others argued that such a course would snuff out the essential radicalism of the Liberal tradition. The article concludes that the decisive moment came with the refusal of the party leader, Clement Davies, to accept cabinet office under Churchill in 1951. Thereafter, with a majority Conservative government in power, the earlier need to subsume Liberalism disappeared and the party’s survival was assured, even though it would be some time before its popular support and parliamentary strength showed significant signs of revival.

The result of the 1929 general election opened the theoretical possibility of joint action between the Liberal and Labour parties which might result in their eventual fusion into a single progressive party. The election demonstrated to Labour the need to appeal to an electorate beyond that of the working class1 which an alliance with the Liberal party might facilitate in future contests. The third-party status of the Liberal party was confirmed at this election, which suggested the only route back to power lay through cooperation with another political party. However, there were serious reservations in both parties to prevent such a course of action being pursued at that time. Some in the Liberal party could not contemplate merger with Labour on the grounds that the latter was a socialist party which was ‘dominated, financed, and in effect controlled, by the trade unions’ and acted as a corrupting force in British political life by abusing power in local government and by making lavish promises which were incapable of fulfilment at general election campaigns.2 Labour similarly saw no need to fuse with the Liberal party which it viewed as a rival on the left of the political spectrum. Consequently, the nature of the problem facing the Liberal party after 1929 was tactical rather than strategic — whether to support a Conservative or Labour administration. When Baldwin resigned from Office the Liberal party was not required (as it had been in 1924) to ‘put Labour in’, but this did not prevent internal divisions and defections to both of the other parties.KeywordsFree TradeProportional RepresentationLabour GovernmentLabour PartyLiberal PartyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The Liberal Democrats are the UK's third party at Westminster: they currently have fifty-seven MPs, less than 10 percent of the House of Commons. Despite the fact that they are currently in coalition government with the Conservatives, their third party status is reflected in the relative lack of attention paid to the party, hence less is known about the party's organisation, policies and personnel compared to the Labour and the Conservative parties. This introductory chapter establishes both the national and international context within which the themes of this book — the descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation of women by the Liberal Democrats — are examined. As such, it addresses five key areas: it provides a brief overview of the Liberal Democrats in respect of contemporary electoral politics in the UK; considers inter-party comparisons of women's representation; situates this research within an international context by comparing the number and percentage of Liberal Democrat women MPs with other liberal parties from Europe; outlines the main contentions of the research; and explores the various approaches to the concept of representation that underpin this study.

This chapter outlines a few post-positivist theories of international relations and compares them with positivist theories. At its core, the chapter aims to demonstrate that these two camps are not to be viewed as in constant turmoil, but in terms of complementarity and their objective contribution to the advancement of social science and IR. Thus, rather than critically comparing these two schools of thought, or focusing solely on their contradictions or strengths and weaknesses, it elucidates the complementary strengths of both these camps of thought. In addition, it outlines the relative advantages and disadvantages of both camps. In essence, in light of the standards used during that era, positivist theories seek to organise the early social scientific theories by using similar methods to those used to study the natural sciences. Post-positivist theories are a consortium of theories that are not particularly complimentary or unified in perspective with one another, but allied in their rejection, and critiques of core positivist rationales. Positivism was influenced by the wider political and social context of the time, just like post-positivism was, and still is influenced by contemporary social and international contexts. Both of these theoretical schools were conceived in lieu of (contrasting) social and international contexts. Positivism was devised with the advent of the Enlightenment and Renaissance movements. Post-positivism was devised later, after the World Wars and the Cold War, with the advent of new actors, opinions, values, and in sum a much larger variety of variables impacting the global order. In doing so, it has advanced the debate pertaining to theory and method in social science. With the advent of change in the international system and the global order, both schools have undergone revisions. Despite their differences, this chapter essentially strives to portray that both these schools are to be seen not from a perspective of opposing camps, but as genuine attempts to study the social and international systems as driven by the nuances and structural changes of the social and international systems and the resultant changes in global order.

The article covers a number of social issues in the works of British Liberal theorists of the first half of the 20 th century. The author’s objective is to analyze the peculiarities of the social concepts formation and evolution in British Liberal political thought in the context of the United Kingdom’s socio-economic development in the first half of the 20 th century. The article is based on the philosophical, economic and journalistic works of the dominant political figures and theorists of Liberalism of the first half of the 20 th century — Maynard Keynes, David Lloyd George, Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, etc. The basic principles of New Liberalism in the UK were formulated during the late 19 th — early 20 th century. But new political, social and economic factors (the low rate of economic growth and high levels of unemployment in the 1920s, the Great Depression, the Liberal party being replaced by the Labour party in the two-party system) forced the Liberals to look for new approaches to social issues. When the basic social programmes had been implemented in the UK, the Liberals put forward a concept aimed to rise the living standards of the whole population of the country. The new social programme proposed by the Liberals was based on the elements of economic regulation that meant the renunciation of the traditional Liberal principle, i.e. free economy.

Let us return to the undying fascination of Bradford and Sheffield. Like Wright before him, Temmel misses the point of my using the Bradford and Sheffield examples. Many schoolteachers often take the line that if the slowest children in their classes understand something the rest can be taken to have mastered it. In a somewhat similar way, I argued that if the Liberal party could be shown to be vastly more catholic than Vincent's definition allowed for in two large places where the structure of society was least favourable to a Right and Centre, then his overall contentions would have been brought most seriously into question. 1874 was a fair date to choose and comprehensive Liberalism was easily to be observed. Examination of the two boroughs showed that British Liberalism was much more broadly-faceted than Vincentian theory allowed; that ‘Whiggery’ was not just a family word, divorced in several respects from a doctrinal context; and that the Centre and the Radicals were in fact varied. If the Centre and Radicals flourished in those places, a fortiori they would elsewhere. The ‘slowest’ so to speak had obliged with data and so the Vincent case fell to the ground. Such an approach makes some intellectual demands upon the reader, not only logical but imaginative and factual. Nevertheless, it should not have proved too much for any able person in any serious profession.

British Liberals have a thing about colours, especially yellow and orange. Two publications, separated by over seventy years and known by the colour of their respective covers, mark special periods in the history of British liberalism, times when liberals have appeared to be on the comeback trail. The article sets out to make the case that the authors of The Orange Book (published in 2004) have a great deal to learn from their liberal predecessors. Yellow Book liberalism was more radical, better informed and better matched to the most pressing political concerns of its day. It was also more open to arguments and ideas from those who had no particular allegiance to either the Liberal Party or to its political philosophy. Liberals, it is argued, need to be far more concerned about refashioning and revitalising liberalism than about reclaiming or reasserting their exclusive ownership of the fundament of liberal thought.