Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2019 -

With the increased scholarly attention devoted to comparative political theory, this volume serves as a much- needed refinement of Confucian political thought. Confucian political theory is defined as a type of democratic thought that is most suitable for East Asian social and political contexts. It may also serve as an alternative to Western, liberal democratic theory. According to Kim (City University of Hong King), Confucian political thought contains two traditional sources of tension. One emphasizes moral perfectionism and the pursuit of the common good. The other, Confucian meritocratic political theory, articulates an approach that affirms the participatory elements of politics as the normative measures of success. The first part of the book presents an overview of the author's own interpretation of the most vital version of this stream of political thought, which is described as pragmatic Confucian democracy. Chapters 2 and 3 evaluate the importance of democracy theory to Asian political thought, compare Schumpeter to Dewey, and examine the necessary balance between procedure and values. The second part of the book offers a study of pragmatic Confucian democracy in relation to specific policy concerns, including criminal justice challenges, economics, and humanitarian intervention.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

In this dense but informative and valuable primer, Berger (Counter-Terrorism Strategic Communications Project and a nonresident fellow with the Alliance for Securing Democracy) systematically dissects the somewhat elusive--or at least ill-defined--concept of extremism in order to demonstrate that an objective definition can serve as a foundation for deeper understanding. Drawing on social identity theory, Berger posits an in-group and out-group dichotomy, wherein discursive narratives create and reinforce an "us-versus-them" ideology that reifies threats and gives rise to action. Rooted in a Manichean worldview, extremism relies on hostility: the out-group represents an existential threat, thus creating a crisis situation that serves as an accelerant in the process of mobilization, polarization, and finally radicalization. The author is careful to note that violence is not always coterminous with extremism--either can exist without the other, although success cannot be separated from hostile action against the out-group (Berger offers harassment, discrimination, and segregation as examples of nonviolent hostile actions). Ultimately, Berger points to social and political uncertainty as his primary hypothesis for why extremism persists, and he calls on social psychologists to fill gaps in existing knowledge about the phenomenon. This is a compelling book.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

This book is part of an ongoing and extremely valuable project aiming to publish transcripts of courses taught by Strauss. This case is an edited transcript of a 1965 course titled "Introduction to Political Philosophy," open to graduate and undergraduate students. What makes this book especially exciting is that here we find Strauss involved in extensive discussion of thinkers that he is not popularly thought of as engaged with--figures such as Auguste Comte, Georg Simmel, Max Weber, and RG Collingwood. It is through the engagement with these thinkers (as well as figures such as Heidegger) that Strauss outlines the contours of positivism and historicism. Strauss proceeds to the questions of political philosophy, history, and the history of political philosophy. He responds to Collingwood's claim that political philosophers are, historically, asking different questions by showing that they are, in fact, concerned with the same fundamental questions, but that they are answering them differently on the basis of how they answer other, more foundational inquiries. Like other volumes in the transcript series, this volume shows what a warm, generous, and inspiring teacher Strauss must have been.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Governments around the world are losing their appetite for capital punishment. Rapidly taking its place is life imprisonment. Life-sentenced prisoners worldwide grew from an estimated 261,000 in 2000 to an estimated 479,000 in 2014; 183 countries now allow its imposition. (Significantly, 80 percent of the world's lifetime incarceration population is in the US.) Yet what life imprisonment signifies is not clear-cut. It can mean life without parole ("whole life") or it can mean release within just a few years. Legal scholars Van Zyl Smit and Appleton (both, Univ. of Nottingham, UK) provide extraordinary insights into this pervasive development in criminal justice practice. Their three years of data collection have resulted in a study that will inspire and influence scholars and public policy advocates everywhere. They offer insights on diverse albeit related topics, among them the psychological effects of solitary confinement and prison itself, different recidivism patterns, unending civil confinement of sexual offenders, and the impact of religion and spirituality as a coping mechanism for the incarcerated. The underlying theme of this readable book is the authors' bias against life imprisonment without parole. They term it a violation of civil rights, of an individual's need to hope. This excellent book is in a class by itself.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

McCormick (Chicago) argues that Machiavelli remains a seminal thinker for the development of modern political thought, and that contrary to many interpretations he consistently supported popularly based democracy. In the three chapters in part 1, McCormick outlines the Christian influence in Machiavelli's thought, examines in detail the role of the people in the Roman Republic, and asserts that throughout his works Machiavelli maintained the continuing importance of this role. Part 2 contains three chapters analyzing the interpretations of Rousseau, Leo Strauss, and the Cambridge School (J.G.A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner). Rousseau's misinterpretation of the Roman Republic led him erroneously to depict Machiavelli as a political elitist. Leo Strauss in turn allowed his unarticulated elitist assumptions to color his presentation of Machiavelli's thought. In the final chapter, McCormick portrays the philosophical interpretations of Pocock and Skinner as slighting the practical, or realpolitik, thrust of what Machiavelli was saying. In conclusion, McCormick reasserts that these previous thinkers have been oblivious to the "radically democratic" nature of Machiavelli's thought, and then summarizes each chapter. This analysis should be essential to any comprehensive treatment of the Florentine's thought.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

In this pathbreaking and original study, Emerson (UCLA) proposes an understanding of administrative law that would achieve "emancipatory alterations" in American society. Through the writings of five American progressive intellectuals, Emerson traces the Hegelian origins of their administrative reform ideals. They "Americanized" German state theory, however, by stressing "a constitutive relationship between administrative agencies and the people at large ... extending individual and collective freedom in a material rather than merely formal sense," thereby causing "deep transformations in the social order." Drawing on the experience of New Deal and later civil rights and anti-poverty administrative structures and practices as promising attempts "to enact democratic discourse in their procedures, to foster an egalitarian civil society, and to combine deliberative and bureaucratic forms of social provision," Emerson provides a normative justification for future reform: "administrative power is legitimate to the extent that it enables us to be free" by redressing the unequal distribution of social, economic, and even "argumentative" resources that dominate our judicial and electoral-political system. A powerful counter to Emerson's progressive democratic/bureaucratic vision is Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek's The Policy State: An American Predicament (CH, Mar'18, 55-2680).Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.