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The ‘Thatcher revolution’ and its continuation by New Labour make Britain a kind of master model for the neo-liberalization or Americanization of European welfare states. This chapter examines Britain’s new political economy and its links with immigration and ethnic diversity. The development of the specific model of state managed race relations and multiculturalism went parallel to the growth of inequality and the restructuring of the labour force according to the criteria of race, gender, human capital, and legal status. Current debates on the alleged threat from disaffected Muslim youth and the need for social cohesion arise from this failure of British multiculturalism to overcome barriers of race and class, and indicate a search for new forms of social control: less state in economic and social issues is matched by a stronger state in matters of identity and order.

The political values involved in liberalism, democracy, socialism have historically been in conflict, but there is no reason why we cannot see them as complementary. A purely market as well as a fully state-coordinated economy never existed in history. The concepts of liberalism and socialism are elusive ones but they have one common origin: the capitalist revolution and modernity. The social-liberal state that is emerging out of the crisis of the social-democratic state is social because it maintains socialist commitments to social rights, while it gives more room for market competition in the coordination of the economy. It is also social-liberal because, in the social-democratic state, civil servants directly provide social and scientific services, whereas in the social-liberal state, competitive non-profit organizations contacted out and financed by the state already are or will be in charge.

A summary of the stages through which the modern state has passed historically. It began as authoritarian and patrimonial in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: it was the absolutist state. In the nineteenth century, it turned liberal and bureaucratic: the liberal state imposed the rule of law and assured civil rights. In the first part of the twentieth century, the transition to democracy was completed: it was the time of the liberal state, of elitist or liberal democracy, and, still, of bureaucratic administration. In the second part of that century, the state becomes social-democratic, and assumes a developmental character; democracy now is social or plural rather than just liberal. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the state is aiming to become social-liberal and republican; democracy is aiming to become participatory or republican; and administration is aiming to become managerial, or inspired by the principles of new public management.

Discusses the relationship between the exercise and development of autonomy and analyses their implications for liberalism and liberal education. Section 2.1 proves that since the liberal state values adults’ exercise of autonomy, it must also value children's development of autonomy. Section 2.2 argues that state paternalism towards children, in particular, state efforts to help children develop the capacity for autonomy even against their parents’ wishes, is consistent with liberal principles. Section 2.3 argues that parents have privileges rather than rights to control their children's upbringing, but that these privileges nonetheless offer ample scope for parents to exert independent paternalistic control. Finally, Section 2.4 argues that the liberal ideal of autonomy not merely permits but requires the intrusion of the state into the child's life, specifically in the form of compulsory, ‘detached’, autonomy‐driven schools.

Recounts the roots of the deliberative turn in democratic theory in liberalism and critical theory. Losing sight of its critical theory origins, deliberative democracy gains an ever‐closer association with the institutions of the liberal state. As an alternative, this chapter lays the foundations for an account of discursive democracy grounded in a critical theory of communicative action.

Citizenship rights are rights that have been won: they are always the outcome of a historical process in which persons, groups, and nations strive to acquire and assert them. The liberal state is the bourgeois state. First rises in the nineteenth century, after the French and the American liberal revolutions, under the principles of the rule of law, and of the civil rights. The nineteenth century was also the century of bureaucratic reform, through which the state apparatus eventually gained a fully modern or capitalist character. Civil service reforms are studies in Prussia, France, England, and the US.

Two related historical facts welcomed liberal democracy or the liberal-democratic state. On one hand, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, social contract theory imposed a major setback to the divine legitimacy of political rulers. On the other hand, the capitalist revolution–embracing the mercantile, the industrial, and the liberal revolutions–changed the basic way of appropriating the economic surplus. This no longer depended on the state’s control but increasingly depended on the realization of profits in the market. For the first time in history, authoritarian regimes ceased to be a necessary condition for the ruling classes’ survival. Democracy turned gradually into synonym of the good state. Eventually, with the acknowledgement of political rights–specifically of universal suffrage––liberal democracy emerged. This process took one century–the time for the bourgeois ruling class to stop fearing expropriation by the poor who democracy entitled to vote.

While the formal welfare states of Australia and New Zealand resembled the British model in the post‐war period, economic policies and industrial‐relations systems differed. As highly competitive exporters of agricultural products and raw materials, both countries had developed highly protected import‐substituting manufacturing industries to ensure full employment as a complement to the minimal protection provided by the ‘liberal’ welfare state. When this configuration ceased to be economically viable in the 1970s, both countries chose to liberalize their industrial sectors, attempting to achieve price competitiveness through government‐controlled wage‐setting procedures. In New Zealand, these efforts failed and its Westminster‐type government opted for radical neo‐liberal reforms in the 1980s that reduced welfare‐state protection and caused a steep rise of unemployment. In Australia, by contrast, unions were better able to cooperate with the government in defending international competitiveness, and federal and bicameral institutions did favour policy compromises that combined liberalization with the maintenance and even expansion of welfare‐state protection.

In the UK, as in Australia and New Zealand, the ‘liberal’ post‐war welfare state was conceived as a minimal safety net under conditions in which full employment was to be ensured by (‘Keynesian’) macroeconomic policies. In the 1950s and 1960s, economic growth was constrained by stop–go policies trying to defend the pound as an international reserve currency in the face of inflationary wage pressures. After the dramatic failure of Labour economic policies in the crises of the 1970s, the (‘monetarist’) Conservative government of the 1980s succeeded in breaking the power of the unions and in stabilizing the currency at the expense of full employment, but did not fundamentally change the structure of the welfare state. After 1997, however, the ‘New Labour’ government set out to adjust the liberal welfare state to conditions in which government economic policies could no longer ensure full employment.

This chapter develops an account of the moral foundations of minority cultural rights that revolves around two main claims. The first holds that the liberal state has a responsibility to be neutral toward the various conceptions of the good that are affirmed by its citizens. The second claims that, in certain domains, the most promising way for the state to discharge its responsibility of neutrality is by extending and protecting specific minority cultural rights. Although various qualifications and provisos are introduced along the way, and the rights that are justified are constrained in certain important respects, the argument will demonstrate why, in some contexts, specific cultural rights are indeed a requirement of liberal justice. The chapter is devoted to the first of the claims, exploring the meaning of neutrality and explaining why it is an important component of liberal justice.

The modern state is a historic phenomenon that has been under constant transformation since its birth in the period of absolutism. In this chapter, a framework is presented for analysing changes of the state and changes are mapped out that have occurred in Western Europe since the 1980s. Since the completion of the state’s democratization, the most interesting question has traditionally been what it is doing. Answers to this question have led to a number of labels such as ‘welfare state’ or ‘night–watchman state’ (i.e. the liberal non–interventionist state). The chapter first suggests six dimensions (levels of state activities; state responsibilities; production modes; resources employed (laws, personnel, money); finance (generation of resources); steering of state activities) that together capture the essence of the state, and then provides an overview of changes in Western Europe since the 1980s along these six dimensions.

The extraordinary power available to international authorities raises questions about the effectiveness and appropriateness of seeking to impose outcomes and the implications of these actions for the development of local political culture and institutions. Examines the opportunities and limitations of rule by decree—with special reference to Bosnia and Herzegovina—and discusses the considerations that ought to govern the exercise of international authority. Observes that the heavy-handed approach to governance may not always be successful: it can generate a popular backlash against transitional administrators and inhibit the development of autonomous political capacity. However, without broad authority international administrators maybe frustrated in their efforts to achieve the aims of their mandates.

Is a reconciliation theory of atonement, as defended in earlier chapters, acceptable as a theory of criminal justice? According to restorative justice theory, the criminal justice system should encourage the restoration of relationships among offenders, victims, and communities. Restorative justice advocates call for significant procedural reforms, including a smaller role for legal professionals and negotiated restitution agreements rather than punishment. One major objection to restorative justice is that it violates the principle of liberal neutrality inasmuch as an ethic of atonement is not the sort of thing the state should enforce. This objection can be answered satisfactorily. However, restorative justice theory is weakened by a tendency to undervalue the distinction between moral and criminal wrongdoing. This problem threatens the procedural reforms associated with the restorative justice.

For nearly half a century after the repeal of the Combination Acts, the liberty to combine in Britain continued to be restricted, at least in theory. Governments and the courts admitted the impolicy of an outright ban on combination. However, they were unwilling to recognize trade unions or to remove the penalties for strikes, or threats of strikes, in all instances. Empirical evidence indicated that the position which favoured legal restriction conceptualized labour market relations in ways that bore little relation to the actual practice of collective bargaining and its outcomes. The legislation of the 1870s brought about the unrestricted legalisation of unions and the decriminalization of labour law, which for practical purposes protected the freedom to strike. The attack against the persistence of ‘class’ legislation was directed against labour and sought to establish the freedom to combine, in its broadest extent, as one of the foundations of the liberal state in Britain.

This chapter examines the concept of state in Imperial Germany. It attempts to determine what kind of a state the Imperial state was if it was neither a liberal state nor a straightforwardly aristocratic one. It suggests that most of the existing definitions of the Imperial state maintain a discrepancy between the state as a system of political domination and its role in the economy. It highlights the need for an alternative perspective in order to better understand the Imperial period.

This chapter surveys the various types of interaction between religion and government by considering which model or models best advance religious freedom in a liberal state. The goal is to determine whether some models are simply incompatible with freedom of religion. Two important preliminary points require mention: one’s view of the appropriate relationship between religion and state cannot be ‘neutral’; criticism or defence of a particular model will reflect one’s largely unarticulated premises concerning the purpose of the Church (or other organised religious community), the role of the state, and so on. The following models are examined from a non-neutral vantage point: theocracy, Erastianism, pluralism, neutrality, separationism, and competitive market model.

This chapter examines the difficulties faced by liberal states in responding appropriately to the challenges of weak and failed states and suggests that such difficulties are connected to the tension between the notions of Liberalism of Restraint and Liberalism of Imposition. It first considers liberal states' emphasis on the principle of Restraint within the context of decolonization and explains why this emphasis held no solution to the problem of weak and failed states. It then explores how the policy of Imposition has been much strengthened since the Cold War in that humanitarian and/or security concerns may lead to intervention, including intervention by force, in weak states. It also discusses the empowerment that sovereignty provides to the elites controlling weak states and concludes with an assessment of the liberal dilemma: neither Restraint nor Imposition is effective in addressing the severe problems in weak states.

This chapter examines the economic dimension of the liberal world order, with particular emphasis on the difficulties of maintaining a stable liberal world economy. It first considers the relationship between liberal states and free markets. It then discusses the meaning of Liberalism of Imposition and Liberalism of Restraint in the economic sphere. More specifically, it explores the Bretton Woods system of embedded liberalism as a Liberalism of Restraint system and argues that, while it was a successful system for the Western countries, it cannot be restored under the current conditions in the globalized economy. It also analyzes economic liberal imposition in the developing world, along with rhetoric versus reality in the promotion of neoliberal principles in developing and transition economies. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on advanced liberal states' rhetorical support of neoliberal imposition economics and their actual deeds.