Political philosophers, theorists and historians address what are the core values of liberalism and how can they best be promoted?

This bookexamines liberty’s Constitutional meaning through the jurisprudence of Justice Stephen Field, one of the late-Nineteenth Century’s most influential Supreme Court Justices. A Lincoln appointee who served on the Court from 1863-1897, Field articulated a view of Constitutional liberty that speaks to contemporary disputes. Today, some see liberty as protection through government regulation against private oppression. Others see liberty as protection from government through limits on governmental power. Justice Field is often viewed as siding against government power to regulate, acting as a pre-cursor to the infamous “Lochner”Era of the Court. This work explains how Field instead saw both these competing conceptions of liberty as legitimate. In fact, the two cooperated toward a common end. In his opinions, Field argued that protections through and from government worked in tandem to guard fundamental individual rights. In describing this view of liberty, Field addressed key Constitutional provisions that remain a source of debate, including some of the earliest interpretations of the Due Process Clause, its relationship to state police power and civil rights, and some of the earliest assertions of a national police power through the Commerce Clause. This work furthermore addresses the underpinnings of Field’s views, namely that he grounded his reading of the Constitution in the context of the common law and the Declaration of Independence. In his principles as well as his approach, this book argues, Justice Field presents a helpful discussant in ongoing debates regarding the meaning of liberty and of the Constitution.

A major question for liberal politics and liberal political theory concerns the proper scope of government. Liberalism has always favored limited government, but there has been wide-ranging dispute among liberals about just how extensive the scope of government should be. Included in this dispute are questions about the extent of state ownership of the means of production, redistribution of wealth and income through the tax code and transfer programs, and the extent of government regulation. One of N. Scott Arnold's goals is to give an accurate characterization of both modern liberalism and classical liberalism, explaining along the way why libertarianism is not the only form that classical liberalism can take. The main focus of Arnold's book, however, concerns regulation--specifically, the modern liberal regulatory agenda as it has taken shape in contemporary American society. This is the set of regulatory regimes favored by all modern liberals and opposed by all classical liberals. It includes contemporary employment law in all its manifestations, health and safety regulation, and land use regulation. The heart of the book consists of a systematic evaluation of arguments for and against all the items on this agenda. It turns out that there are good arguments on both sides for most of these regulatory regimes. Because of this, and because someone's vision of the proper scope of government will ultimately prevail, some procedural requirements that all liberals could agree to must be satisfied for one side to impose legitimately its values on the polity at large. These procedural requirements are identified, argued for, and then applied to the elements of the modern liberal regulatory agenda. Arnold argues that many, though not all, of these elements have been illegitimately imposed on American society.

Few discussions in modern social science have occupied as much attention as the changing nature of welfare states in western societies. Gosta Esping-Andersen, one of the most distinguished contributors to current debates on this issue, here provides a new analysis of the character and role of welfare states in the functioning of contemporary advanced western societies. Esping-Andersen distinguishes several major types of welfare state, connecting these with variations in the historical development of different western countries. Current economic processes, the author argues, such as those moving towards a post-industrial order, are not shaped by autonomous market forces but by the nature of states and state differences. Fully informed by comparative materials, this book will have great appeal to everyone working on issues of economic development and post-industrialism. Its audience will include students and academics in sociology, economics and politics.

Capitalism in the western world is currently facing a crisis of legitimacy in the face of growing inequality. But many forget that the global, capitalist world as we know it today emerged largely during the industrial revolution. Four remarkable thinkers of the long nineteenth century, the Lockean radicals--Thomas Hodgskin, Lysander Spooner, John Bray, and Henry George--responded to the horrid and rampant economic injustices at the time by picking up the loose ends of Locke's property theory and weaving them into two competing strands. Each strand addressed problems of liberty and equality then emerging from industrial capitalism, but each did so in a different way. As Daniel Layman argues, in one camp, Hodgskin and Spooner, libertarian radicals, argued that the world of resources is common to all people only in the negative sense of being originally "unowned" by anyone. According to them, there are no just grounds for state redistribution except to correct past injustices, and governments are typically little more than thieving and oppressive gangs. In the other camp, Bray and George, egalitarian radicals, held that all people have a positive claim to share equally in the world's resources. According to them, states should ensure, through redistributive taxation and other progressive policies, that our institutions respect this common right. Locke Among the Radicals tells the forgotten story of the Lockean radicals and the crucial role they played in addressing problems latent in Locke's theory. Layman argues persuasively that some of the radicals' insights provide a blueprint for a form of liberal distributive justice possible to achieve today.

An insightful and passionately written book explaining why a return to Enlightenment ideals is good for the world "Beginning with the simple but fertile idea that people should not push other people around, Deirdre McCloskey presents an elegant defense of 'true liberalism' as opposed to its well-meaning rivals on the left and the right. Erudite, but marvelously accessible and written in a style that is at once colloquial and astringent."--Stanley Fish The greatest challenges facing humankind, according to Deirdre McCloskey, are poverty and tyranny, both of which hold people back. Arguing for a return to true liberal values, this engaging and accessible book develops, defends, and demonstrates how embracing the ideas first espoused by eighteenth-century philosophers like Locke, Smith, Voltaire, and Wollstonecraft is good for everyone. With her trademark wit and deep understanding, McCloskey shows how the adoption of Enlightenment ideals of liberalism has propelled the freedom and prosperity that define the quality of a full life. In her view, liberalism leads to equality, but equality does not necessarily lead to liberalism. Liberalism is an optimistic philosophy that depends on the power of rhetoric rather than coercion, and on ethics, free speech, and facts in order to thrive.

Applying the new economics of organisation and relational theories of the firm to the problem of understanding cross-national variation in the political economy, this volume elaborates a new understanding of the institutional differences that characterise the 'varieties of capitalism' worldwide.