Classical Liberalism Research Articles

Flexible economic regulation under a liberal worldview: the case of the proposal for a Digital Markets Act

Classical liberalism emphasizes the sovereignty of the legislator, based on the social contract. However, even in liberal politics, discretionary powers need to be granted to the judiciary and the executive in order to apply general rules to individual cases, including cases which could not be foreseen. This implies that rules need to be flexible, in particular when regulating areas marked by great uncertainty, such as fast-moving technology markets. The European Commission’s proposal for a Digital Markets Act builds in certain flexibilities, but could have gone further in this respect, also in light of the Commission’s own Better Regulation Toolbox.

ІДЕЯ ДЕРЖАВНОЇ ВЛАДИ У ТЕОРІЯХ ФУНДАТОРІВ ДИСКУРСУ КЛАСИЧНОГО ЛІБЕРАЛІЗМУ

The purpose of the article is to identify the specifics of the coverage of state power issues in the basic theories of the classical liberalism founders (J. Locke, Ch.-L. de Montesquieu, A. Smith and others). Methods. In methodological terms, the article focuses on the use of research in various areas of political and ideological knowledge. The set of general and special methods of political science became the methodological basis of the article, which provided a comprehensive approach to the problem of identifying the specifics of coverage of state power in the basic theories of the classical liberalism founders. The methodological approach used to analyze the state power idea in the basic theories of the classical liberalism discourse founders, was the internalist version of the historical approach (St. Toulmin). Results. It is stated that the issue of natural human rights (to life, liberty and property) became the basis of the classical liberalism discourse: the equality of all people from birth was postulated, the inalienability of natural rights was substantiated (no one can deprive people of these rights or dispose of them). In the conceptions of the classical liberalism discourse founders, the emphasis was mainly on the idea of the importance of the state power, on the idea of the need for the existence of such an institution as the state. The existence of the state was justified by the need to protect and preserve natural human rights. However, the state is called to protect the privacy and freedom of action (within the law), it was also considered that the scope and sphere of its activities should be restricted by setting limits on the spread of state power (the credo of non-interference «laissez faire»). The establishment of such boundaries presupposes the contractual nature of the relationship between state power and the individual, which excludes all forms of paternalism.

Liberalism and Modern Law of Information Age

The article is dedicated to the relevant issues of modern legal regulation of the social relations in the light of correlation of main ideas of liberalism and modern sociocultural realia. Liberalism as a concept is not unambiguous in its content, and therefore the use of this concept in each case depends on the context. It is proved that within several centuries the mankind has been establishing its legal life in the framework of liberal and legal doctrine. Liberalism determines freedom, equality, democracy and human rights as the major law-making values. It is traced how the ideas of classical liberalism (system of basic, interconnected principles of personal freedoms, inalienability of the natural rights, limited control, private ownership, distribution of power, rule of law, etc.) are reconsidered under the impact of the objective social factors and through the transformation are adjusted to the new conditions and are overhauled in the modern discourse. Modern period is characterized by the inconsistency between the fundamental provisions of liberalism, its values, and social life realia. Such inconsistency is determined by the specificity of information society, which is evident in the fact that the legal and juristic institutes of guaranteeing, insurance and protection of the mentioned values are not adjusted enough to the new realia. It is shown that the central dichotomy for modern European legal philosophy is the relationship between freedom as a liberal value and the phenomenon of total control over man, and because human rights are necessary to protect individual freedom in classical liberalism, while modern liberalism stands for guarantees and freedoms of individuals. The author underlines that in contrast to the doctrines of communism and fascism, liberalism preserves its vital force due to this flexibility, ability to adjust to the new social conditions which is testified to by various modifications of liberalism (classical, non-classical, neoliberalism). The article also addresses the issue of the «new human rights» in the information age and its correlation with the major liberal values of freedom and equality. The author also emphasizes the updating of the classical legal institutes in the 20th-21st centuries, i.e., the e-democracy phenomenon.

THE SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE INTERPRETATION OF THE SOCIO-POLITICAL DOCTRINE OF LIBERALISM IN THE WESTERN EUROPEAN, AMERICAN AND RUSSIAN TRADITIONS IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURIES: COMMON AND SPECIAL

The article strives to conceptualize the basic ideas of liberalism, free from political sensitivities, emotional judgments and naive simplifications based on different methods and techniques of political and historical science, as well as general scientific approaches - a comparative historical method, a normative approach, an institutional approach, and analytical and synthetic methods. Defects of the interpretation of liberalism in Russia - opposition of “liberals” and “patriots”, domestic perceptions of liberalism as freedom in family, sexual and gender life, reduction of liberalism to the specific historical direction of post-Soviet liberalism are revealed in the paper. Furthermore, the author draws attention to the misunderstanding of liberalism in the United States: one of them refers liberalism to the social democracy, the other equates liberalism with the totalitarian teachings. In the light of the incorrect perception of liberalism in the world, the author formulates the purpose of the work as overcoming the misjudgement of liberalism by overcoming the false appreciation of liberalism by forming a concentrated view of the fundamentals of liberal socio-political teachings based on the views of leading thinkers in Western Europe, the United States of America and Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries. Which contributed significantly to the development of the fundamentals of liberalism. Predicated on the analysis of the ideas of Western European, American, and Russian liberal thinkers of the past, the author identifies common and special features of the interpretation of liberalism in different parts of the world over two centuries. Finally, the author concludes that the main features of the original liberalism are the basic points of the classical liberalism of the past centuries are the following points: 1) intelligent people should have unconditional personal, political and economic rights independent of the state; 2) there must be a system in the state that promotes justice and limits the state itself; 3) all people have the right to form a state and influences it.

Is resilience a unique extension rather than a rejection of neoliberalism? A critical reading of David Chandler’s writings on resilience

Purpose This paper aims to engage with the concept of resilience as theorized by David Chandler in his book Resilience: The Governance of Complexity by drawing from the theory of governmentality presented by Michel Foucault and Jonathan Joseph. Design/methodology/approach Evolving from classical liberalism to neoliberalism and from natural sciences to social sciences, the term “resilience” raises many questions about its sustainability in terms of its meaning and complexity. While most scholars tend to underscore the significance and practicality of the term, a few scholars argue that it is a failed dogma with neoliberal characteristics. As this is a theory-based study, its methodology involves close readings of academic texts produced mainly by David Chandler, Michel Foucault and Jonathan Joseph. Findings The central argument in this paper is though Chandler convincingly explains the paradigm shift of the term resilience from classical to neoliberal, his theorizing lacks the understanding that the type of power and governmentality involved in individual freedom, autonomy and complexity are actually parts of the neoliberal state. Hence, the buzzword resilience today is actually an extension of the same neoliberal thought. Originality/value First, the author attempts to critically engage with the term resilience from a sociological point of view using purposively selected academic literature. Second, the paper attempts to bring Chandler’s conceptualization on resilience into the disaster context and evaluates its practicality within the tenets of neoliberalism by drawing on Joseph’s and Foucault’s theorizations.

Life, Liberty, and M*A*S*H

The American television series M*A*S*H is one of the most popular and beloved series in TV history. One contributor to its success is its consistent promotion of the principles of classical liberalism, principles that were cherished across the American political spectrum in the late 20th century, from ACLU civil libertarians, to Jimmy Carter/Bill Clinton centrists, to Ronald Reagan’s small-government conservatives. This essay discusses M*A*S*H portrayal of several of these principles, from its opposition to war and compulsory service, to its skepticism of government power, to its support of market exchange, to its promotion of other civil liberties.

Ludwig von Mises and Classical Liberalism

In studying the development of western freedoms, perhaps no subject is more worthy of discussion than classical liberalism, which the late historian Ralph Raico wrote was “the signature political philosophy of Western Civilization.” Raico defined classical liberalism as “the ideology advocating private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and international peace based on free trade.” This ideology arose in the Middle Ages, came alive in the 16th and 17th centuries, declined at the end of the 19th century, and was reborn in the 20th century largely at the hands of one remarkable man—the Austrian-born economist and historian Ludwig von Mises. Through a reasoned and investigated reconstruction of primary sources, this paper will catalog the ideas and achievements of Ludwig von Mises to demonstrate that he was the critical intellectual link in the continuation of the classical liberal tradition. This was the case in both a chronological sense (by connecting the ideas of 17th and 18th-century thinkers through its decline in the late 19th and early 20th century to later 20th-century classical liberals such as F.A. Hayek) and in a geographical sense (by transmitting the classical liberal ideas that had primarily been developed in Europe to the United States in the 20th century). Mises was responsible for the renaissance of classical liberalism in the United States and the birth of the modern-day libertarian movement. Mises’s life work was a full-throated defense of classical liberalism, to include free-market economics, private property, and anti-imperialism.

Contingency, Freedom, and Classical Liberalism

Rosa Calcaterra has written an extremely learned and thoughtful book about Richard Rorty’s controversial neopragmatism. It is a worthy addition to the growing number of works that offer a more generous and balanced assessment of Rorty’s thought, in contrast to the scores of highly critical treatments it received during his career. But, as Calcaterra insists, her book is “not an apology for Rorty” (Calcaterra 2019: ix); she critically approaches what she calls Rorty’s philosophical “provocatio...

Toward a Human-Centered Economy and Politics: The Theory of Justice as Fairness from Rawls to Sen

In this paper, I present the suggestion that a suitable theory of “justice as fairness” could offer a consistent path for solving many issues related to the actual crisis of the classical liberal model of economy and democracy, by substituting the abstract “equality” principle, with the concrete “equity” one in the notion of justice. After a short discussion of some main characters of the present worldwide crisis of the classical liberal model, I present two main theories of justice as fairness. John Rawls’ theory in political philosophy that emphasizes how really equitable judgements must overcome the equalitarianism of the Classical Liberalism, by considering the real possibilities of individuals and groups of accessing and enjoying commodities and utilities, as well as, the “basic liberties” defining the citizen equal dignity in the Modern State. Rawls propose, therefore, a notion of fairness compliant with the Kantian normativism, and a notion of fair distributive justice based on the ethical principle of the maximin, as a criterion for judging the righteousness of the State Institutions. The other theory of justice as fairness I discuss in this paper is an evolution of Rawls’ in the direction of the development of a “comparative distributive justice”, without any normativism. This theory is developed in the context of the newborn discipline of the “social choice theory”, formalizing social decision processes, with applications in economic, social, and political sciences. What characterizes Sen’s theory is its original synthesis between the Aristotelian notion of fairness, based on the “personal flourishing”, and Adam Smith’s ethical principle of the “extended sympathy”, by which making comparable different approaches to pursue the personal flourishing, i.e., for achieving “valued and valuable ways of being and of doing”, compliant with, and respectful of, different value systems.

Консервативная оппозиция либеральному режиму июльской монархии во Франции: идеологическое обоснование и политические практики (Conservative Opposition to the Liberal Regime of the July Monarchy in France: Ideological Rationale and Political Practices)

Russian abstract: ХIХ столетие было ознаменовано поступательным развитием и торжеством либеральных ценностей. В это время не просто оформляются категории классического либерализма, но и происходит реализация либеральных принципов на практике. Во Франции в ходе Июльской революции 1830 г. устанавливается либеральный режим во главе с королем Луи-Филиппом Орлеанским, известным своими либеральными взглядами, а к власти приходят его сторонники — умеренные либералы-орлеанисты. Однако распространение либеральных ценностей наталкивалось на серьезное сопротивление как в самой стране, так и за ее пределами. Изучение консервативного сопротивления либеральным принципам Июльской монархии представляет несомненную научную актуальность. Еще один аспект актуальности темы имеет то обстоятельство, что победа либеральных ценностей во Франции была во многом связана с тем, что французский орлеанизм явился примером либеральноконсервативного синтеза. В условиях современных процессов конвергенции либеральных и консервативных идей и отсутствия «чистого» либерализм и консерватизма, изучение этого опыта является весьма актуальным. English abstract: The XIX century was marked by the progressive development and triumph of liberal values. At this time, not only are the categories of classical liberalism formed, but also the implementation of liberal principles in practice takes place. In France, during the July revolution of 1830, a liberal regime led by king Louis-Philippe d'orleans, known for his liberal views, was established, and his supporters — moderate liberal Orleanists-came to power

Think Spiral: the Divided Brain and Classical Liberalism

Iain McGilchrist richly explains the right and left hemispheres of the brain, how each functions and what each tends to do. This paper serves, firstly, as a primer to McGilchrist’s fascinating exposition. Second, it offers a formulation that uses a spiral to structure the iterative and layered relationship. Third, it presents McGilchrist’s concerns about how modernity has enfeebled the right hemisphere, and how the left hemisphere is, at it were, running amok. Fourth, it considers some of McGilchrist’s political overtones. Sharing McGilchrist’s concerns, finally, I elaborate why they might lead us to look to classical liberalism as the best way to avoid the traps of the left hemisphere, to invigorate the health of the right hemisphere, and to cope with modernity.

The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism by Kenneth D. Wald (review)

Reviewed by: The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism by Kenneth D. Wald Gil Troy Kenneth D. Wald. The Foundations of American Jewish Liberalism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 255 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000136 Everyone knows that Jews are liberal. Everyone knows that good American Jews fast on Yom Kippur, eat Chinese food on Christmas, and vote Democratic on election day. And everyone knows this liberalism springs straight from the Bible to the pages of the New York Times—or does it? Kenneth Wald is one of those annoying academics who questions our defining clichés. He confirms that Jews are two to three times more likely than other Americans to vote Democratic. But he challenges this commonplace, self-congratulatory, "Judaic" explanation for American Jewish liberalism. Claims that Jewish liberalism reflects Jewish values, historical experiences of emancipation, the natural reaction to being a persecuted minority, or an ongoing sense of "social insecurity" do not apply over time or over space to other polities. Orthodox American Jews and Israelis are passionately Jewish, but often less liberal. Perhaps, Wald suggests, the story of American Jewish liberalism is an American one. Wald is also a rare modern academic who sees methodology as a tool, not as handcuffs. A veteran political scientist at the University of Florida, the author of the now-standard textbook Religion and Politics in the United States, Wald mixes sophisticated data analysis with good political history. The result is an illuminating explanation of American Jewish liberalism. Wald offers ten chapters organized in three parts. Part I, "The Problem(s) of American Jewish Liberalism," explains "Why American Jewish Politics Is Puzzling," while starting to develop the argument, in chapter 3, by asking "How Is America Different?" Having framed an intriguing question, Wald offers his fascinating history of American Jewish politics in part II, "Development of the American Jewish Political Culture." Rather than starting with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, or mass eastern European migration in the 1880s, Wald begins at the very beginning. This broader perspective traces "How Jews Fell in Love with the American Regime," from 1776 onward in chapter 4. The next three chapters offer a nice capsule history of Jewish politics, American style, from George Washington's day to the mid-twentieth century. [End Page 462] Wald draws three important conclusions. First, America was different. America did not persecute its Jews. No American prince protected "his" Jews. The Constitution did not merely "tolerate" Jews. Instead, America's "inclusive understanding of citizenship"—for non-Blacks—integrated Jews into the polity as Americans, as equal citizens. This welcome allowed Jews to flourish individually, then communally, while shaping American Jewry's agenda. Having "attributed their success" to this "political climate steeped in classic liberalism," American Jews prioritized "defending the political system that made it possible. They developed a political cultural that reinforced their interpretation of the American Jewish experience, emphasizing above all else the importance of maintaining the principle of equal citizenship in a secular society" (4). This liberal world view preceded the Jews' alliance with the Democratic Party and explains the great American Jewish political anomaly: unlike most groups, Jews do not vote their pocketbooks. The NPR humorist Peter Sagal quips: "What is it about being rich and white that American Jews don't understand?" Jews vote against their class interests because they are voting for something more profound: their equal billing. Jews are acting on "rational self-interest" (31), Wald shows, but a political, existential one, not an economic one. With this inclusivity baked into the Constitution, consecrated by George Washington, American Jews worshiped the Constitution. They protected this political regime—and their expansive version of it—because it respected, accepted, and validated them. "By 1868," Wald writes, "the American Jewish community had come to consider the Constitution as part of the underpinning of Judaism in the United States…. Beyond religious freedom, the Constitution gave Jews equal citizenship and an ownership share in the country" (4). Here, Wald makes another subversive move. Frustrated that most scholars treat American Jews as passive consumers, merely purchasing America's goodies, Wald treats Jews as manufacturers of their destiny—and America's. "The Jewish political culture was the operational link between the...

Metamorphoses of Political Neoliberalism.

The phenomenon of political liberalism and its genesis and evolution are explored. This phenomenon is studied using interrelated methodological principles at the crossroad of political philosophy, political theory, and international relations theory. The author analyzes the discourse of the “decline of Europe” and, more broadly, of the Western-centric world through the prism of changes in the forms of classical liberalism that have become part of political ideology. Special attention is paid to political neoliberalism, which from a once dynamic system of principles and values has turned into a dogma and is associated with the least popular aspects of the hyperphase of globalization. The elements of the weakening of Westcentrism are described, including the strategic decoupling of the United States and its European allies. The topic of the militarization of thinking and foreign policy of some countries is discussed. The author holds that the degradation of political neoliberalism clears the way to the search for a new balance between the ideological traditions of liberalism, conservatism, and collectivism.

Beyond Liberal Democracy: Diverse Educational Relations

This essay offers a critical analysis of Locke's and Rousseau's basic assumptions upon which classical liberalism is built: rationalism, universalism, and individualism. I then describe an alternative starting place for democracy with a transactional view of individuals-in-relation-to-others. I then offer specific educational examples to help me sketch two themes that illustrate problems with classical liberalism and how a transactional democracy-always-in-the-making can help to solve these problems.

The unwitting corruption of broadening of marketing into neoliberalism: a beast unleashed?

PurposeThis paper aims to uncover links, overlaps and influence flows across two seemingly unrelated historical processes – the broadening of the marketing concept and the rapid rise of neoliberal ideology, and associated economic and social policies.Design/methodology/approachHistorical examination of the pivotal points in marketing thought, especially since 1960s and 1970s, is juxtaposed with the historical rise of neoliberalism to uncover linkages between marketing and neoliberalism, with a particular reference to Foucault’s analysis of the neoliberal transgression of classical liberalism.FindingsWhile noble intentions were behind the broadening of the concept of marketing, the implicit assumptions reinforced neoliberal ideology and policies that led to rapid rise in inequality and to disastrous financial and economic crises.Research limitations/implicationsThis study, relying on extensive interdisciplinary theorizing, could benefit from empirical and practical extensions.Practical implicationsGlobally pervasive marketing practices – based on the broadening of the marketing concept – have become imbricated in contemporary spiraling crises. To escape such spirals, radical rethinking of marketing theories and practices is required.Social implicationsTo reorient away from serving only the interests of centralized capital and to serve the needs of people the world over, marketing thought and practice need to reorient to innovative ideas that transcend the broadened and generic marketing concepts.Originality/valueThe paper develops the linkages between marketing theory and practices since the late 1960s and the neoliberal ideology politics and policies, with roots in the 1920s, that rose to prominence in the 1970s. A key contribution is an exploration of, in a marketing context, Foucault’s analysis of the neoliberal eclipsing of classical liberalism.

An Introduction to “Overlapping Resources and Mismatched Property Rights”

Property scholars have long explored how rights to land and resources influences their use and conservation. Over time, inquiry has turned towards the governance of competing claims. Simplistic models of rights are yielding to the social, political, and ecological realities of managing ecosystems amidst increased resource demands fueled by human population growth. Prior dichotomies between “human” and “natural” uses are dissolving. Bold new conceptions of socio-environmental models are emerging. Political scientists, ecologists, scientists, and legal scholars are working on the front lines of increasingly urgent resource conditions to update the theoretical and normative terrain of landscape governance. In 2019, the New York University School of Law Classical Liberal Institute and the Indiana University at Bloomington Ostrom Workshop Program on Natural Resource Governance invited us to co-host a conference about emerging understandings of property rights as overlapping and nested. The organizing institutions asked us to use as a starting point Contracting for Control of Landscape-Level Resources, a 2015 article co-authored by Karen Bradshaw and Dean Lueck (Bradshaw & Lueck, 2015). We hosted the conference, “Mismatched Property Rights to Landscape-Level Resources: Legal and Customary Solutions,”1 in New York over two days in March 2019. We were honored to host notable scholars, from a variety of academic disciplines and phases of their careers presenting papers, moderating panels, and acting as discussants. Billy Christmas coordinated the peer review process for this volume. This symposium volume of the International Journal of the Commons reflects the proceedings of the March 2019 conference. Like the conference, this volume brings together an interdisciplinary group of international scholars to explore new areas of the role of property in addressing socio-environmental questions, and the diverse solutions to them. As guest editors, we are grateful to the authors, peer reviewers, symposium participants, discussants, and audience who jointly created this project. The contributions of this group have transformed the initial, modest set of observations about resource governance from Contracting for Control of Landscapes into a budding new conception of property—a vision more aligned with a modern understanding of ecological and economic realities.

Classical liberals on ‘social justice’

In the summer of 2019, The Independent Review published a symposium on classical liberalism and social justice. We give an overview and commentary on the symposium papers. Rather than adopting the term social justice, we recommend returning to the three senses of justice maintained by Adam Smith and explained by Daniel Klein (2019). We articulate and explore Smith’s tripartite understanding of justice in contrast with an understanding that gives place to the expression social justice. Smith’s tri-layered understanding is in the spirit of addressing the micro-foundations of macrophenomena, the spirit of Thomas Schelling’s Micromotives and Macrobehavior.

A Critical Reflection on Neoliberalism

: In this interview, we first scrutinise the meaning of classical liberalism and its revision by New liberalism in the twenties as social liberalism to demonstrate the conceptual confusion in using the term ‘neoliberalism' as an economic doctrine. We then discuss the emergence of American neoliberalism as developed by the economic and law departments of the University of Chicago in the seventies notably by the Monetarist school. The anti-inflation program of Milton Friedman and Washington consensus provide a particular version of neoliberalism as economic policy. However, neoliberalism also pertains to a transitional, and non viable post-Fordist accumulation regime that has collapsed by 2007-2008 crisis. We also demonstrate the opposition against neoliberal economic policy not only by left critics but also by many right and center economists, politicians and scholars. Finally, we refute the idea of considering the political economy of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) as neoliberal. Borrowing Vahabi’s theoretical framework, we characterise parallel institutions and foundations as political capitalism with the predominance of predatory para-statal sectors. The limits of reformist and transformationalist discourses are revisited in light of political economy of the IRI, and the need for a social and political revolution is concluded.

Kant i Rousseau. Logika prawa a logika uczestnictwa, czyli dwie konieczności

The aim of the article is to compare two concepts of the social contract – formulated by Immanuel Kant and Jean Jacques Rousseau respectively – in the context of their philosophical diagnoses regarding human nature, culture, politics and the historical dynamics of civilization. The author focusses on the essence of the impact Du contrat social has on Kant and the extent to which he manages to overcome the tension between the modern Republican idea – which he develops on this basis – and the tradition of classical liberalism, which he continues to follow. He considers Rousseau’s model with regard to the conflict between the democratic principle of people’s sovereignty and the Republican rule of law in discussions with Hegel, Arendt, Habermas and in reference to the French Revolution. Next, he conducts a critical analysis of the Kantian project of Rechtsstaat in light of its conceptual dependence on Rousseau – the founding of this project on the liberal tradition turns out to be problematic and burdened with ideological symptoms. Since Kant’s thought lies at the root of the modern concept of liberal rule of law, these symptoms show the limitations of Rechtsstaat resulting from its own normative assumptions.

What is a Classical Liberal Constitution?

Classical liberals favor an institutional environment of economic freedom. A society’s institutional environment emerges as a set of political outcomes that take shape within a higher- order framework or constitution. While many scholars have explored the relationship between institutional environments and prosperity, few have considered how the constitutional level influences the institutional environment. We highlight this scholarly neglect and argue that we know very little about the relationship between constitutional design and economic freedom. Focusing on some aspects of constitutional design that classical liberals have favored (a spare, entrenched framework), we empirically examine their correlation with economic freedom. The results are mixed and highlight the need for systematic and serious study of real world constitutional data.