This study in political theory explores the challenges and potentialities of modern politics as envisaged within the work of Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, and Alasdair MacIntyre. It begins by confronting Max Weber’s seminal diagnosis of the crisis era of late modernity. According to this diagnosis the world-historic process of rationalization is deeply paradoxical in promising freedom and yet threatening servitude under an “iron cage” of deadening specialism and senseless hedonism. Weber responds to this paradox by conceding that all endeavour will henceforth take the form of a specialism but that it can be rendered meaningful by a fundamentally inscrutable decision to devote oneself to a cause or vocation. For those called to politics this means accepting three ineluctable facts: that politics is a contest over the means of violence in which the “ethics of brotherhood” has no place; that freedom endures only when organizational machines are dominated by charismatic leaders; and that there are no criteria to determine political legitimacy except the subjective decision to act responsibly and not otherwise. With Weber as both foil and problem, this study then explores the profound impact his pessimistic diagnosis of modernity, elitist account of politics, and subjectivist theory of ethics have had on Habermas, Arendt and MacIntyre. Although very different in terms of philosophic background and commitment, these three are united by a critical urge to think beyond his dark prescriptions. Each begins with and largely accepts Weber’s narrative of modernity, seeing in his account of rationalization and disenchantment an apposite description of the age. Each nonetheless rejects his understanding of the grounds and possibilities of politics, accusing him of complicity in the very realities he sought to resist. The central argument of this study, however, is that these thinkers simultaneously aid and hinder the attempt to think beyond the “iron cage,” their thought both a critique of and yet an abutment to Weber’s.

The parlements of France appear regularly in the background of studies on Voltaire, whether as a conservative censoring authority, a self-interested opponent of a reforming monarchy, or, intolerant dispensers of inadequate justice. They appear constantly as enemies of Enlightenment. This study aims to bring Voltaire’s relationship with the courts to the foreground, examining his reaction to them during the reign of Louis XV and showing that this reaction is continually evolving, as opposed to the fixed image mentioned above. Part I explains Voltaire’s youthful admiration for the parlements and shows that, before the 1750s, his reaction to them was not particularly hostile (Chapter 1). His attitude wavers between disinterest and mild frustration before the attack of Damiens on the king in 1757, which awakened him to the dangerous influence of certain magistrates’ religious zeal (Chapter 2). Part II examines the effect of certain miscarriages of justice perpetrated by the parlements of Paris and Toulouse on Voltaire’s view of the courts and how this changing view influenced his decision to write a history of the principal parlement in the capital (Chapter 3). This is followed by a close examination of Voltaire’s anti-<i>parlementaire</i> rhetoric in the <i>Histoire du parlement de Paris</i> (Chapter 4). Part III questions the established interpretation of Voltaire’s political thought through a comparison of the <i>Histoire du parlement de Paris</i> and the <i>Précis du siècle de Louis XV </i>(Chapter 5) and supports this analysis with an examination of Voltaire’s support for the suppression of the parlements by chancellor Maupeou in 1771, showing an alternative understanding of Volaire’s aims in supporting royal authority (Chapter 6).

Does modern democracy require social cohesion? Is the nation-state the answer to this need? Is the constitutional protection of republican values enough? In Europe, the template of the national state bounded by a liberal constitution has provided the answer to these questions. However, authors like Habermas and Tully argue that the idea of a substantive relation between a homogeneous national-population and the constitutional state is stretched to its limits by pluralism and globalisation. On the one hand, pluralism pushes the template of the nation-state, which assumes the ethnic uniformity of the population under the umbrella of a republican constitution, to its limits. On the other hand, international organisations like the United Nations and the European Union have taken on the role of guarantor of republican values. Habermas proposes a new solution to the problematic relation between republican values and democracy. He asserts that a new model of social cohesion is needed: a democratic society should be founded exclusively on the acceptance of a system of constitutionally established rules which are the logical result of the historical evolution of constitution making. In contrast to Habermas, Tully argues that a democratic process based on the acceptance of liberal values will provide the template for a modem multinational society. In this thesis, I will point out the democratic incoherence and the internal shortcomings of these proposals, and I shall argue that a theoretical alternative of the national state should radically re-consider the role of national identities in a modem pluralistic society. Constitutional law can be more than formally legal only if two normative conditions are satisfied: public discourse in the public sphere and an extension of the later includes the recognition of multiculturalism. Thus, certain demands originating from more general claims to the legal protection for national particularities will not pass the rationality test of a democratic debate. The point is, however, that this can be considered as normative presuppositions in the public sphere only after discussion and it would not exclude the possibility of a constitutional system which promotes and defends national identity/ies.

This study seeks to explore the British response to the French Revolution through an investigation of the debate between Burke and his critics on the subject. The dissertation is divided into two major parts: first, a comprehensive analysis of Burke's critique of the French Revolution and, secondly, an extensive examination of the reaction of his critics to his arguments. Edmund Burke approached the French Revolution with a shrewd discernment. He took up his pen against France because he was aware that her Revolution, since, in his opinion, it was of a universal nature, would prove dangerous to the old order of the whole of Europe. But how did the Revolution happen? What had made it so formidable? Burke traced the origins of the French Revolution to the economic, social and intellectual changes that had previously taken place in French society. It was a revolution led by the militant middle class and propelled by Jacobinism. To prevent Jaobinism from undermining European civilisation, Burke devoted himself to a long crusade against the French Revolution. At the same time, Burke, who had previously been regarded as a reformer, was obliged to defend his own political consistency which was challenged because of his attack on the French Revolution. He endeavoured to relate his politics to the tradition of the 1688 Revolution and he defended the integrity of his present action on the principles of the old Whigs whose politics, in his opinion, had always been to assert Britain's mixed and balanced constitution. Burke's critics, on the other hand, generally welcomed the Revolution in France as a great triumph of liberty over despotism. Most of those who opposed Burke were ideologically inclined to embrace the doctrine of popular sovereignty based on the radical theory of the natural rights of man; and their acceptance of this doctrine had rendered them politically hostile to the old order. From such an intellectual framework, these radicals ventured, from various aspects, to vindicate the French Revolution. This dissertation undertakes to explore their perception of its universal implication, their interpretation of its origins, their justification of its necessity, their apologia for its defects, their defence of its leaders, and their conviction of its ability to achieve perfection in the future. The whole seems to form both a vigorous answer to Burke and an active justification of the French Revolution. The critics of Burke, in vindicating the French Revolution, were also defending their own radical politics at home. The establishment of freedom in France encouraged them to press for change in Britain. Parliament and the established church formed the main objects in their programme of reform. The British reformers, generally speaking, did not argue in support of a violent revolution at home. It was their opinion, however, that without a timely reform, Britain could be heading in that direction.

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The thesis investigates the implications flowing from the adoption of certain conceptions of language within contemporary political and social theory. It also examines the impact which this has had upon some of the influential accounts given of concrete political phenomena such as Thatcherism. A chief aim of the study is to re-establish the irreducibly social nature of language, a crucial dimension which, it is argued, has been lost in contemporary poststructuralist and postmodernist formulations of the language/politics relationship. Section 1 places the central topic of the thesis in context by examining the role which certain dominant generative metaphors from the field of linguistics have played in undermining the notion of language as a truly social and political phenomenon. This involves an examination of the political implications which stem from the poststructuralist and postmodernist appropriations of Saussure's theoretical legacy; in particular, the insistence upon the notion of a language 'system' and upon the 'arbitrary' nature of the relation between the signifier and signified. In contrast to the poststructuralist and postmodernist views, a Wittgensteinian conception of language is set out in section II which views the latter not in purely semiotic terms as an autonomous and radically indeterminate structure, but as a socially-embedded network of rule-governed linguistic and practical activities; a conception which is encapsulated in Wittgenstein's notion of a 'form of life'. In the course of this, an immanent critique of the poststructuralist/postmodernist conception of language is developed through a focus upon the writings of Lyotard and Rorty, both of whom claim allegiance to a Wittgensteinian perspective, but whose chief failings, it is argued, stem from an unwarranted universalisation of such notion as 'difference', the 'arbitrary' nature of the signifier/signified relation, and the 'contingency' of language. In contrast, a line of argument is developed via the later writings of Wittgenstein that re-establishes the varied and socially embedded uses of language, one of which is to represent states of affairs in the socio-political world. All of this, it is argued, reveals a number of important parallels between a Wittgensteinian perspective on the language/politics relationship and the views of other writers on the topic such as Aristotle, Marx, and Bourdieu.

In this study in political theory I develop a political conception of reconciliation. In the late twentieth century, the notion of reconciliation became prominent in the political discourse of many polities divided by grave state wrongs. Reconciliation is an inherently political aspiration since it is oriented to the constitution of a “we” to underwrite the legitimacy of shared public institutions. Yet the logic of reconciliation, which tends toward harmony and closure, also seems at odds with politics, which invariably entails plurality and conflict. The work of Carl Schmitt provides a point of departure for considering the political nature of reconciliation and defining the problem of how a relation of enmity might be transformed into one of civic friendship. In the first half of the thesis I examine the liberal ideal of <i>toleration </i>(articulated by John Locke) and the communitarian ideal of <i>recognition</i> (articulated by Charles Taylor) as political ethics that might animate reconciliation. Against toleration and recognition, I turn to Hannah Arendt’s ethic of <i>worldliness</i> to develop a theory of political reconciliation. Reconciliation, on this account, entails a difficult mode of interaction between former enemies that seeks to enclose both within a common horizon of understanding while affirming the possibility of calling any such shared horizon into question. In the second half of the thesis, I draw on an interdisciplinary literature concerning transitional justice to develop this theory of political reconciliation. Here I examine the implications of an Arendtian account of the political for how we should think about four key issues confronting societies divided by past wrongs: the <i>constitution </i>of a political association that might accommodate former enemies; political grounds for <i>forgiveness</i>; the collective <i>responsibility </i>of those implicated in state wrongs and; coming to terms with the past through <i>remembrance</i> of past wrongs. Two central arguments recur throughout the thesis. First, we should affirm reconciliation as a project that opens a space for politics by framing an encounter between enemies in which they might debate the possibility and terms of their association. Yet, we must also invoke politics to resist the tendency inherent in the logic of reconciliation to bring to a close what should remain open, incomplete, contestable. Second, and following from this, in conceiving reconciliation politically we must reverse the order of our moral thinking. It is a political mistake to presuppose a moral community that must be restored between those alienated by past wrongs. Political reconciliation would never get off the ground if it required agreement on shared norms and the facts of wrongdoing in order to initiate the return of the wrongdoers to community with those wronged. Rather, it must begin with the constitution of space for politics and the invocation of a “we” that is not-yet and proceed from this faith in community toward the possibility of a shared understanding of what went before.

The aim of this dissertation is to explore the connection between Carl Schmitt, popularly recognized as 'Crown Jurist of the Third Reich', and Walter Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence'. The dissertation responds, in part, to a series of secondary commentaries that read one thinker as an influence on the other. In arguing for the necessarily implicit dialogue between these two thinkers, the dissertation brings into question the emphasis, in these secondary commentaries, on Benjamin's reference to Schmitt in The Origin of German Tragic Drama. The introduction establishes the obscure beginnings of Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence', staging the problem, and the method, for reading the essay in the context of Benjamin's understanding of the specifications of pure violence and the significance of Schmitt to these constructs. Part one (chapters one and two) examines Benjamin's interest in the moment of Schmitt's conversion from Catholic conservative principles to Nazism. Chapter one sets the framework for reading Benjamin's refusal to engage with the terms of Schmitt's discourse, and offers detailed expositions of Schmitt's principle of sovereignty. Chapter two seeks to establish the difficulty in asserting and substantiating a conceptual difference between Schmitt's concept of sovereignty, and Benjamin's critique of that concept. Part two (chapters three and four) extends the incommensurability of Benjamin's position with respect to Schmitt. Its starting point is a conceptualisation of pure violence as that which exists from within the legal order, and refuses conscious willing. This analysis works, firstly, against the interpretative direction set by Derrida in his essay on the 'Force of Law', which reads pure violence as open to a 'reversal' and appropriation by the anti-revolutionary cause. Against Derrida's claim that Benjamin separates pure violence from the legal order, I argue that Benjamin's account of pure means brings to light a series of contradictions within critique as a method of legal analysis. Secondly, this analysis seeks to articulate the general underestimation in the secondary commentaries informed by Derrida of the strategic irony Benjamin deploys in his determination of the conditions of reading pure violence. Chapter three clarifies how, for Benjamin, the problem of the destruction and liberation of any given form of representation, dramatic or otherwise, is a political problem. The radical potential of Benjamin's work is argued in terms of his situation of his account of the deficiencies of the legal order within the same sphere of legal ends against which he seeks to deploy the revolutionary violence of a pure means; and in his location of pure means within the sphere of legal violence, so that it is at once the force that binds the authority of the law and the singular entity that unbinds that authority. This potential is exemplified through Benjamin's analysis of divine and sovereign violence, in which I argue that guilt is neither determined exclusively by, nor belongs exclusively to, Schmitt's concept of the juridical. Chapter four considers the emergence of 'pure language' and the proletarian general strike as states of exception. Here, an analysis of Sorel's attempt to map the 'creative consciousness' of the general strike serves two purposes: it lends context to a shared refusal on the part of both Benjamin and Schmitt to posit catharsis as the driving force of general strike, and it marks the point at which Benjamin takes his departure from Schmitt. Through the detailed analyses of the points of common reference between Benjamin and Schmitt, I develop and substantiate a stronger and richer account of the 'Critique of Violence' as a space of future potential within which an explicit dialogue between disparate schools of thought might be able to unfold.

The first aim of this thesis is to comprehend the political thought of al-Farabi (d.950) as fully as possible. Special attention is given to his views on types of non-virtuous states and international relations. It goes on to assess whether there is any possibility that his theory of state can be extended to a world state. Lastly, the thesis is concluded by setting out al-Farabi's position in Islamic mediaeval political philosophy and in the world history of political thought. The thesis consists of an introduction, five main chapters, and a conclusion. The introduction deals with the character of al-Farabi as a political thinker in general and examines previous studies of al-Farabi's political thought. The first chapter discusses al-Farabi's concept of 'political science' and his basic philosophical views. The second chapter examines his doctrines of happiness, society and political education. The third chapter is concerned with al-Farabi's framework of the virtuous state. The fourth chapter focuses on the types of the non-virtuous state. The fifth chapter centres on al-Farabi's view of international relations. The conclusion presents al-Farabi's contribution to Islamic political thought and the results of this analysis of his political works.

The political economies of the oil rich GCC countries are generally contextualized within the framework of rentier state theory. The picture the theory portrays is that of an autonomous state with abundant revenues generated from oil which are in turn distributed to the larger population to gain political legitimacy within prevailing non-democratic cultures. Albeit having a democratically elected parliament with a vibrant political environment for a comparatively long time, rentierism is also applied to the political economy of Kuwait. This study, hence, aims to explore the development of Kuwait into a rentier constitutional state beyond the generally accepted notions put forward by rentier state theory. Its focus is to understand the perceptions and ideas behind the economic and political policy decisions in the context of the oil boom of the 1950s and early 1960s. Economically, therefore, the main aim is to explore and critically analyze why distributive policies, which constitute a main feature characterizing the country’s economy, were initiated in the post-oil era. The study also critically analyzes the diverse influences oil had on the concurrent rise in political activity and direction towards democratization, crowned by the framing of the constitution in 1962. In examining these developments, the study stresses the importance of looking not only at internal factors, but also at foreign and international influences that are brought about by oil booms. In the case of Kuwait, these include the primary role Britain played, in light of its oil interests, in the country’s internal affairs, and the ways in which oil sparked, for a small and newly rich Arab state, international dynamics that shaped the thinking of policymakers as to the importance of undertaking certain crucial reforms. An examination of the relevant archival record makes it is clear that the framework provided by rentier state theory is insufficient in capturing the complex factors that influence the economic and political decisions of policymakers in countries experiencing oil booms. The findings, therefore, challenge rentier state theory’s core assumptions, such as its stress on ‘political utility’ as the main, if not sole, driver of socioeconomic policy, and the ‘materialistic approach’ in which political activity is contextualized. The study shows that much of the socioeconomic policies that created what is referred to as a ‘distributive state’ stemmed from much deeper influences than those postulated by the theory, such as certain perceptions of tradition and culture; views of citizen ‘rights’ and social justice in a specific historical context; and influences of social currents overtaking the region at the time. Furthermore, the study demonstrates how, in the period concerned, contrary to the position of the rentier state literature, oil played a significant role in the democratization of Kuwait, transforming it from a primitive patriarchal autocracy to a modern ‘rentier constitutional state’. The latter embodies, as the study argues, the concept of a rentier state combined with a constitutional form of government in which citizens are directly involved in the economic and political decision-making process. The study concludes that Eurocentric theoretical frameworks as expressed in rentier state theory may not always be sufficient in explaining the complex realities of countries such as Kuwait. There is a need, therefore, for a new approach that engages directly with the internal and external dynamics of individual countries in order to understand their respective political economies beyond assumptions imported largely from foreign experiences.