Liberal Paradox Research Articles

“If the subaltern could speak”: a response

In their truly constructive contributions, the preceding responses have dealt above all with two issues: first, the usefulness and relevance of the liberal paradox for understanding the gap between...

The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions. By Michael Walzer. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015. 172p. $26.00.

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Respect for experts vs. respect for unanimity: The liberal paradox in probabilistic opinion pooling

Amartya Sen (1970) has shown that three natural desiderata for social choice rules are inconsistent: universal domain, respect for unanimity, and respect for some minimal rights—which can be interpreted as either “expert rights” (an expert’s right to have her competence respected) or liberal rights. Dietrich and List (2008) have generalised this result to the setting of binary judgement aggregation. This paper proves that the paradox of a Paretian liberal holds even in the framework of probabilistic opinion pooling and discusses options to circumvent this impossibility result: (i) restricting the aggregator domain to profiles with no potential for conflicting rights; (ii) avoiding agendas where all issues are pairwise entangled (interdependent).

Review Article: International Political Theory Today

The four books under review offer very different takes on the nature of International Political Theory, but still display certain, cross-cutting, similarities. The books under review are: Jack L. Amoureux, A Practice of Ethics for Global Politics: Ethical Reflexivity (London: Routledge, 2016, 268pp. £90). Michael W. Doyle, The Question of Intervention: John Stuart Mill & the Responsibility to Protect (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015, 272pp. £58.99). Renée Jeffery, Reason and Emotion in International Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, 252pp. £69.99). Michael Walzer, The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015, 172pp. £16.99).

The paradox of liberation: Secular revolutions and religious counterrevolutions

The paradox of liberation: Secular revolutions and religious counterrevolutions

The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions by Michael Walzer

Reviewed by: Dubi Kanengisser (), University of TorontoPeoples under prolonged foreign rule will tend to develop submissive traditions, most likely mediated through religious institutions. To negate this submissiveness, those elements of people who strive for liberation are likely to negate religion altogether, and they might do this by adopting an ideology from very foreigners they oppose. These secular liberation movements are engaged in a double struggle: opposing foreigners in name of primordial peoplehood; and opposing religious tradition through ideologies of foreign rulers. Yet while fight against foreigners may be successful, fight against tradition rarely is. This failure to truly replace traditionalism with secularism enables traditionalists themselves to undergo a transformation into a radical form. Radical religion sheds its former submissiveness while maintaining its illiberal faults. The result of religious counterrevolution is a threat to very secular revolution that enabled it to hatch. This, in brief, is what political theorist Michael Walzer terms the paradox of liberation: in order to succeed in project of liberation, people must be liberated from very ways and values that they cherish. His recent thought-provoking book discusses this paradox, rejects those explanations that deny it, and strives to understand its underlying logic. This is achieved through an examination of three cases: Algeria, India, and Israel, which, Walzer argues, have gone through similar processes to that described above.It is difficult to critique Walzer's argument since book is replete with caveats and disclaimers. First and foremost, he states that his goal is understanding, not scientific explanation (xi), that he does not claim to describe laws but merely offer a beginning for a necessary inquiry (ibid.). He further concedes that three cases differ in many ways, and that each can be described in ways that would greatly complicate my schematic account (ibid.). And yet, other than occasionally recognizing these differences, little is done to reconcile them with broad argument.Thus, with any argument about historical veracity of descriptions and validity of comparisons fully pre-empted, one is left with almost no perch for an analytical debate of argument presented. For example, with regard to Israel, one may point out that despite substantial impact that religious settler movement has had and continues to have on Israeli politics, it is still far from anything resembling hegemony in what remains very much a secular state; that far from touting anti-modernist values, leader of National Religious Party today is a high-tech entrepreneur who has placed STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education as a top priority for education ministry under his guidance; that while it is true that ultra-orthodox community is fastest growing community in Israel, this is true not because of the willingness of many women to return to Orthodoxy and accept a version of old subordination (130), but primarily because of natural growth of a population with a much higher birth rate than secular one. …

A Man for All Seasons: Monroe Sweetland and the Liberal Paradox. By William G. Robbins.

A Man for All Seasons: Monroe Sweetland and the Liberal Paradox . By William G. Robbins. (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2015. xii + 300 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $24.95, paper.) Professor William G. Robbins has written a well-documented biography of Monroe Sweetland, whose public life illustrates how a gadfly with a commitment to social justice navigated the tumultuous mid-twentieth century. Born in 1910 in Salem, Oregon, where his father was both a young medical doctor and a football coach at Willamette University, Sweetland grew up in small-town locales in Oregon and Michigan. Family connections led him to law school at Cornell University in the depression-ravaged 1930s, where he was drawn to the activism of Norman Thomas and the League for Industrial Democracy (LID), whose focus on racial justice permanently affected him. Robbins draws on Sweetland’s private papers … bill_toll{at}yahoo.com

A Man for All Seasons: Monroe Sweetland and the Liberal Paradox by William G. Robbins

105 Reviews A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS: MONROE SWEETLAND AND THE LIBERAL PARADOX by William G. Robbins Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2015. Illustrations, notes, index. 312 pages. $24.95 paper. Beginning in the 1880s, the Republican Party overwhelmingly dominated elections in Oregon for seven decades, often holding all but a handful of seats in the legislature and every statewide office. There were a few exceptions. In the 1930s, the Democratic Party gained control of the House of Representatives for four years. It was also able to capture the governor’s office on rare occasions when divisions in the Republic Party enabled a Democrat to triumph. But these victories were few and far between. In the 1950s, however, the Democratic Party’s fortunes changed. The pivotal year was 1954. Richard Neuberger was elected to the U.S. Senate. Edith Green defeated newcomer Tom McCall to win the third congressional district race. The number of Democrats in the state house grew from nine to twenty-five and in the state senate from four to six. A large part of the party’s newfound success reflected postwar demographic changes in the state, which boosted Democratic Party registration. Yet two men were also vital in rebuilding the party: Howard Morgan, chair of the Oregon Democratic Party, and Monroe Sweetland, one of two Oregon representatives to the Democratic National Committee. William G. Robbins, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History at Oregon State University , tells Sweetland’s story. Robbins follows Sweetland from his birth in Salem, Oregon, in 1910, to his death in Milwaukie in 2006. Along the way, Sweetland was reared in Constantine, Michigan; attended Cornell and Syracuse law schools without graduating from either; worked for the progressive League for Industrial Democracy, organizing students on college campuses in the 1930s; married Lillie Megrath; was hired by the American Red Cross to be a field director in the central Pacific during the Second World War; published the Milwaukie Review, Molalla Pioneer, Newport News, and the Oregon Democrat; served in the Oregon Legislature for a decade; and ran twice unsuccessfully for secretary of state. Robbins provides a fine overview of Sweetland’s importance in Oregon politics from the mid 1930s to the early 1960s, explaining his critical role in organizing the left, rebuilding the Democratic Party, and working with other Oregon leaders throughout this period. Yet he also shines light on Sweetland’s later career as a legislative consultant for the National Education Association . In this position, Sweetland played a key role in the passage of the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 and the adoption of the Twentysixth amendment, granting eighteen-year-olds the right to vote. One can find a few faults in the book. The epilogue is a bit unfocused. An occasional adjective is ill-advised. The index could be better organized, especially the three-page entry for Sweetland. The sub-title of the book seems to be a bit of an afterthought. While the author discusses what he labels a paradox in Sweetland ’s beliefs and actions, the observation is not particularly profound. Sweetland’s switch from being a pacifist and civil libertarian in the 1930s to becoming a strong supporter of President Lyndon Johnson despite the war in Vietnam may seem surprising, but political attitudes do change, as they did for many on the left after both the onset of World War II and the growing revelations about Stalin. Fortunately, Robbins does not belabor this point. These are minor quibbles. Over the years, there have been several good biographies written on different political leaders in Oregon, but a lot of the state’s political history remains unexplored . This book fills a critical gap, providing a valuable understanding of a central political figure during an important transitional period in the state. Overall, this is a well-researched and written book by one of Oregon’s foremost historians. It should be of interest to anyone who wants to better understand Oregon’s history and politics. Richard A. Clucas Portland State University ...

American Immigration Politics: An Unending Controversy

Immigration has been a controversial issue throughout American political history from the colonial period to the present. In this article I argue that we must understand how the issue of immigration is framed whether in terms of economics (markets), rights, security or culture, and we must be attentive always to place the controversy in historical context. In the period since 1945 until the 2001 terrorist attacks, immigration policy was driven by a rights-markets dynamic. But in the first decades of the 21st century the immigration debate is framed primarily in terms of culture (religion and race) as well as national security. This framing has heightened the “liberal paradox” making immigration policy reform more difficult.

The paradox of liberation: secular revolutions and religious counterrevolutions. By Michael Walzer

The paradox of liberation lies in the way national liberation movements imbued with modernist secular ambition become undermined by the power of religious or ethnic identity. Michael Walzer, the eminent political theorist, examines three cases of this phenomenon: Algeria, India and Israel. In each case liberation, from both external oppressors and the submissive habits of traditional culture, is spearheaded by an educated elite infused with western and principally leftist ideas. All three states are no longer as foreseen by their founders. The latter assumed that religious sentiment would wither in the face of modernity, and the traditional patriarchal leadership would be eclipsed. No such luck. In each case there are, of course, particularities not shared by the others. In the case of Algeria what emerged was authoritarian; the women who played a significant role in liberation were returned to subordination in a conservative society. Only lip service was paid by the new state to Islam. In India and Israel, the founding idea of physical commitment, embodied in the Gandhian cooperative and kibbutz movements, was soon crumbling.

The paradox of racial liberation: W. E. B. Du Bois and Pan-Asianism in wartime Japan, 1931–1945

Racism in the Second World War has often been confined by Western historians to atrocities on the European continent, the Holocaust in particular. However, it is also important to note that from the very beginning the US government viewed the Asia-Pacific War as a racial conflict between Asians and the white race. Under such explicit racial prejudice and policies against the Japanese, many non-white intellectuals and activists in the United States, African-American intellectuals in particular, first showed academic interest in and then explicitly supported Japan's Pan-Asianism. This article focuses on W. E. B. Du Bois's writings on Imperial Japan in the wartime period. Du Bois portrayed white supremacy as colonialism but endorsed Japan's presence as a colonizer in East Asia and supported Japan's invasion of China in 1931. Du Bois also endorsed Japan's vision of a Pan-Asian empire during the Asia-Pacific War as he developed harsh critiques of American racism against ethnic minorities. By revisiting Du Bois's writings on Japan and Asia, this article sheds new light on the paradox of racial politics in Japan and the United States in the early 20th century.

Is There a Paradox of Liberation and Religion? Muslim Environmentalists, Activism, and Religious Practice

Social movement theorists have often posited that religion and political activism are inherently opposed—that religion cannot liberate people from situations of social or political discontent in the same manner as activism. Through a study of Muslim environmental activists in the United Kingdom and United States of America, this article directly challenges this belief—not only by charting the theoretical problems of this belief within the social movement theory corpus, but also by demonstrating that Muslim environmentalists in the US and UK are both religious and politically active simultaneously. Environmental activism is drawn into Islamic practice in such a way that activism becomes religious practice in the lives of these Muslim activists.

The paradox of liberation: secular revolutions and religious counterrevolutions

Many of the successful campaigns for national liberation in the years following World War II were initially based on democratic and secular ideals. Once established, however, the newly independent nations had to deal with entirely unexpected religious fierceness. Michael Walzer, one of America's foremost political thinkers, examines this perplexing trend by studying India, Israel, and Algeria, three nations whose founding principles and institutions have been sharply attacked by three completely different groups of religious revivalists: Hindu militants, ultra-Orthodox Jews and messianic Zionists, and Islamic radicals. In his provocative, well-reasoned discussion, Walzer asks, Why have these secular democratic movements been unable to reproduce their political culture beyond one or two generations? In a postscript, he compares the difficulties of contemporary secularism to the successful establishment of secular politics in the early American republic-thereby making an argument for American exceptionalism but gravely noting that we may be less exceptional today.

Rethinking Rethinking the Good

This article discusses many issues raised by Munoz-Dardé, Katz, Ross, and Kagan. In doing this, I accept many of their claims, but reject others. I contend that the Essentially Comparative View can make genuine comparisons, deny that a contractualist approach helps with my book’s puzzles, and grant that my book’s central results are difficult to comprehend. I note important differences between economists’s impossibility results and my own, but accept that they may illuminate each other, using Sen’s Paradox of the Paretian Liberal to illustrate this. I consider my work’s implications for the Sorites Paradox, as well as famous deontological cases. I also significantly reassess the Narrow Person-Affecting View, and some of my responses to Parfit and Broome. Finally, I stress my book’s many arguments challenging the Axioms of Transitivity, the high costs of retaining such axioms, and the importance of not prematurely choosing between highly plausible views that are inconsistent.

The Paradox of Liberation

The Paradox of Liberation

Shklar's Legalism and the Liberal Paradox

ConstellationsVolume 22, Issue 2 p. 188-198 Original Article Shklar's Legalism and the Liberal Paradox Tiphaine Dickson, Tiphaine DicksonSearch for more papers by this author Tiphaine Dickson, Tiphaine DicksonSearch for more papers by this author First published: 27 March 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12152Citations: 5Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume22, Issue2June 2015Pages 188-198 RelatedInformation

Desires, Preferences and Sen's Liberal Paradox

In this paper, Sen’s Liberal Paradox is used to discuss differences between desires and preferences and the relationship between these two concepts. Desires and preferences can mix in real life and in theorizing. In fact, it seems that the mixing of desires and preferences can explain many of the inconsistencies that people show in decision making, especially in experiments that take place in laboratories, but also in theorizing. A power analysis and a game theoretical model of Sen’s example of reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover illustrate the problem of mixing desires and preferences. The paper discusses the question: Are there preferences on desires and are these preferences different from preferences on alternatives?

The Implications of the Liberal Paradox Applied to the First North Korean Nuclear Crisis

The Implications of the Liberal Paradox Applied to the First North Korean Nuclear Crisis

Is trade liberalization conducive to the formation of climate coalitions?

The present paper analyzes the impact of moving from autarky to international trade on the formation of self-enforcing international environmental agreements with Nash coalitions. With and without trade, stable coalitions consist of two countries at most—in contrast to the model that portrays coalitions as Stackelberg leaders (Eichner and Pethig in Public Econ 102:37–50, 2013). Although the coalition steps up its mitigation effort in the transition from autarky to trade, world emissions rise and thus constitute a ‘green paradox of trade liberalization.’ Opening the borders not only increases global pollution, but also reduces the aggregate welfare of all countries.

The Paradox of Agricultural Trade Liberalization in Bangladesh and Tanzania

This paper examines some of the contradictions and theoretical ambiguities of agricultural trade liberalizationon the welfare of smallholder farmers. Using production, consumption and price data for pre-and post-liberalization periods for two main agricultural crops from Bangladesh (rice) and Tanzania (maize) we critically analyse the correlation between domestic and international prices of rice in Bangladesh and maize in Tanzania to estimate impact of agricultural trade liberalization on price stability/volatility and food security to measure economic benefits of trade liberalization on smallholder farmers. Using coefficient of variation of the level of prices (CV) and corrected coefficient of variation (CCV) as measured by Huchet-Bourdon (2011) we found that the values of both CV and CCV for consumer price in the post-liberalisation were quite large suggesting greater volatility of consumer price of rice in Bangladesh and maize in Tanzania in the post-liberalization period. We conclude that price volatility diminishes the potential benefits of agricultural trade liberalization forsmallholder farmers who are net-deficit producers, net-deficit sellers and recommend supplementary policy interventions to achieve enhanced welfare from trade liberalization.