Introduction to Political Theory

once! To avoid (b) you either abolish capital punishment or try to ensure that it is consistently practised – but that is extrem ...

Lethal injection involves a cocktail of drugs, administered in three stages, with the first intended to induce unconsciousness, ...

Conclusion We have presented the two dominant justifications for punishment – retributivism and consequentialism – and a number ...

Further reading Useful general works on punishment (collections, readers and overviews) include: R.A. Duff and David Garland (ed ...

Part 2 Classical ideologies What is ideology? The term ideology has acquired a fairly unsavoury meaning. Politicians regularly c ...

However, the term soon became pejorative: Napoleon denounced ideology as an idea that was radical, sinister, doctrinaire and abs ...

Isms as ideologies Liberals often argue that their values are too coherent and rational to be called ideological. Here is a beli ...

‘natural’ institution that is necessary to keep ‘fallen’ men and women in order. This makes conservatism ideological. It is true ...

view, is ideological in a general sense: all nationalists use beliefs to galvanise their followers into action around a state bu ...

lead us to the position in which we note the ideology of the Nazi and the (rather different) ideology of his victim, and lamely ...

can be non-evaluative or purely factual in character; second, it fails to see that ideology can be transcended, not by avoiding ...

This page intentionally left blank ...

Chapter 8 Liberalism Introduction Liberalism has emerged as the world’s dominant ideology, and much of the political debate of ‘ ...

Prostitution laws in Sweden I n 1998 the Swedish Parliament passed the Prohibition of the Purchase of Sexual Services Act. The A ...

The meaning of liberalism Liberalism has emerged as the world’s dominant ideology. Europe provides a good example of the spread ...

institutions. Understanding such attitudes is primarily the focus of empirical political science, using quantitative methods suc ...

not only that the priesthood played a special part in interpreting scripture, but that the Church, because it was founded by Chr ...

see, some theorists attribute the rise of national consciousness to the translation of the Bible into the vernacular languages o ...

Toleration The settlement of the Wars of Religion is credited with making toleration a central concept of political life, and in ...

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the ‘circle of toleration’ is extended to include previously untolerated groups, and ...