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States and Power as Ur-Force: Domestic Traditions and Embedded Actors in World Politics

Peter J. Katzenstein

in Back to Basics: State Power in a Contemporary World

This chapter inquires first into the domestic foundations of power. For Krasner the Hartzian view of liberalism is coherent and unitary. This is at odds with much of Louis Hartz’s own writings, which ... More

This chapter inquires first into the domestic foundations of power. For Krasner the Hartzian view of liberalism is coherent and unitary. This is at odds with much of Louis Hartz’s own writings, which historicized the liberal tradition of the United States through a careful examination of its manifestations in subnational, international-comparative, and global contexts. Krasner’s coherence perspective overlooks the creativity of productive power that exploits the structural, racial, and institutional political divisions of America. The chapter also engages Krasner’s argument that rulers, not states, are the basic unit of international politics. For Krasner, actor preferences are uniform at all times and in all places, and rulers are intent on maximizing their individual power. Rather than stipulating the existence of a Homo politicus in a world of rational and autonomous rulers, we should stretch our conceptual categories to conceive of a world of rulers constituted by structures, embedded in institutions and seeking to exercise productive power. The chapter’s final section draws out the implications of these two arguments about contested and multiple traditions and constituted and embedded rulers. We are better served by capacious rather than sparse concepts. Intellectual capaciousness gives us purchase to formulate interesting and novel questions that encompass both actor-centric and relational perspectives. Capacious concepts allow us to escape the strong clutches of paradigmatic thinking and the comfortable cocoon of the like-minded. Working at the interstices of paradigms, with luck and hard work, we can reimagine the world in novel ways.Less

Conservatism in America? A Response to Sidorsky

Patrick J. Deneen

in American Conservatism: NOMOS LVI

This chapter comments on the previous chapter, arguing that Sidorsky’s analysis of conservatism leaves a sense that American conservatism is not conservatism at all, but rather a part of Louis ... More

This chapter comments on the previous chapter, arguing that Sidorsky’s analysis of conservatism leaves a sense that American conservatism is not conservatism at all, but rather a part of Louis Hartz’s American liberalism. Liberalism as a political philosophy is definitionally anti-conservative. Liberalism views society as voluntarist, and hence regards with suspicion any claims to political legitimacy based upon tradition, religion, hierarchy, or custom. Indeed, it could be argued that liberalism seeks to eliminate “givenness,” or what it regards as arbitrariness, as a constitutive feature of human life, both politically and personally. By contrast, conservatism understands that certain fundamental aspects of life are given, and counsels a degree of acceptance, gratitude, duty, and obligation.Less

Old and New Liberalism

George Klosko

in The Transformation of American Liberalism

Lockean political ideas, including problems with negative and positive rights, and correlativity in regard to the latter. Comparison with new liberalism of T. H. Green and L. T. Hobhouse.