Education, Liberal Democracy and Populism: Arguments from Plato, Locke, Rousseau and Mill provides a lucid and critical guide shedding light on the continuing relevance of earlier thinkers to the debates between populists and liberals about the nature of education in democratic societies. The book discusses the relationship Rousseau and Plato posited between education and society, and contrasts their work with the development of liberal thinking about education from John Locke, and John Stuart Mill’s arguments for the importance of education to representative democracy. It explores some of the roots of populism and offer a broader perspective from which to assess the questions which populists pose and the answers which liberals offer. The book makes a substantial contribution to the current debate about democracy, by emphasising the central importance of education to political thought and practice, and suggests that only an education system based on liberal democratic principles can offer the possibility of a genuinely free society. This book is ideal reading for researchers and post-graduate students in education, politics, philosophy and history. It will also be of great interest to Educational practitioners and policy makers.

The recent rise of populist politics represent a major challenge for liberal democracies. This important book explores the psychological reasons for the rise of populism, featuring contributions from leading international researchers in the fields of psychology and political science. Unlike liberal democracy based on the Enlightenment values of individual freedom, autonomy and rationality, both right-wing and left-wing populism offer collectivist, autocratic formulations reminiscent of the evolutionary history and tribal instincts of our species. The book offers a comprehensive overview of the psychology of populism, covering such phenomena as identity seeking, anger and fear, collective narcissism, grievance, norms, perceptions of powerlessness and deprivation, authoritarianism, nationalism, radicalism, propaganda and persuasion, ethnocentrism, xenophobia and the effects of globalization. The book is divided into four parts. Part I deals with the motivational and emotional factors that attract voters to populist causes, and the human needs and values that populist movements satisfy. Part II analyzes the cognitive features of populist appeals, especially their emphasis on simplicity, epistemic certainty and moral absolutism. Part III turns to one of the defining features of populism: its offer of a powerful tribal identity and collectivist ideology that provide meaning and personal significance to its followers. Finally, in Part IV, the propaganda tactics used by populist movements are analysed, including the role of charismatic leadership, authoritarianism, and nationalism and the use of conspiracy narratives and persuasive strategies. This is fascinating reading on a highly topical issue. The book will be of interest to students, researchers, and applied professionals in all areas of psychology and the social sciences as a textbook or reference book, and to anyone interested in the global rise of populism.

This edited volume offers new insights into the populist wave that is affecting democratic politics in a large number of countries. The authoritarian populist turn that has developed in the US and various European countries in recent years both reflects and exacerbates the polarization of public opinion that increasingly characterizes democratic politics. The book seeks to explain how and why authoritarian populist opinion has developed and been mobilised in democratic countries. It also explores the implications of this growth in authoritarian, anti-immigrant sentiment for the operation of democratic politics in the future. It concludes that liberals may need to abandon their big-hearted internationalist instinct for open and unmanaged national borders and tacit indifference to illegal immigration. They should instead fashion a distinctively liberal position on immigration based on the socially progressive traditions of planning, public services, community cohesion and worker protection against exploitation. To do otherwise would be to provide the forces of illiberal authoritarianism with an opportunity to advance unparalleled since the 1930s and to destroy the extraordinary post-war achievements of the liberal democratic order.

Populism and Liberal Democracy is the first book to offer a comprehensive theory about populism during both its emergence and consolidation phases in three geographical regions: Europe, Latin America and the United States. Based on the detailed comparison of all significant cases of populist governments (including Argentina, Greece, Peru, Italy, Venezuela, Ecuador, Hungary, and the U.S.) and two cases of populist failure (Spain and Brazil), each of the book's seven chapters addresses a specific question: What is populism? How to distinguish populists from non-populists? What causes populism? How and where does populism thrive? How do populists govern? Who is the populist voter? How does populism endanger democracy? If rising populism is a threat to liberal democratic politics, as this book clearly shows, it is only by answering the questions it posits that populism may be resisted successfully.

The essays in this book reflect on the paradoxical relationship of liberal education and liberal democracy. Liberal education emphasizes knowledge for its own sake, detached from all instrumental purposes. It also aims at liberation from the manifold sources of unfreedom, including political sources. In this sense, liberal education is negative, questioning any and all constraints on the activity of mind. Liberal democracy, devoted to securing individual natural rights, purports to be the regime of liberty par excellence. Since both liberal education and liberal democracy aim to set individuals free, they would seem to be harmonious and mutually reinforcing. But there are reasons to doubt that liberal education can be the civic education liberal democracy needs. If liberal education is in tension with all instrumental purposes, how does it stand toward the goal of preparing the kind of citizens liberal democracy needs? The book’s contributors are critical of the way higher education typically interprets its responsibility for educating citizens, and they link those failures to academia’s neglect of certain founding principles of the American political tradition and of the traditional liberal arts ideal.

Liberal democracy is in trouble. This volume considers the crosscutting causes and manifestations of the current crisis facing the liberal order. Over the last decade, liberal democracy has come under mounting pressure in many unanticipated ways. In response to seemingly endless crisis conditions, governments have turned with alarming frequency to extraordinary emergency powers derogating the rule of law and democratic processes. The shifting interconnections between new technologies and public power have raised questions about threats posed to democratic values and norms. Finally, the liberal order has been challenged by authoritarian and populist forces promoting anti- pluralist agendas. Adopting a synoptic perspective that puts liberal disorder at the center of its investigation, this book uses multiple sources to build a common historical and conceptual framework for understanding major contemporary political currents. The contributions weave together historical studies and conceptual analyses of states of exception, emergency powers, and their links with technological innovations, as well as the tension-ridden relationship between populism and democracy and its theoretical, ideological, and practical implications. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of a number of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences: history, political science, philosophy, constitutional and international law, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, and economics.

Any liberal democratic state must honour religious and cultural pluralism in its educational policies. To fail to honour them would betray ideals of freedom and toleration fundamental to liberal democracy. Yet if such ideals are to flourish from one generation to the next, allegiance to the distinctive values of liberal democracy is a necessary educational end, whose pursuit will constrain pluralism. The problem of political education is therefore to ensure the continuity across generations of the constitutive ideals of liberal democracy, while remaining hospitable to a diversity of conduct and belief that sometimes threatens those very ideals. Creating Citizens addresses this crucial problem. In lucid and elegant prose, Professor Callan, one of the world's foremost philosophers of education, identifies both the principal ends of civic education, and the rights that limit their political pursuit. This timely new study sheds light on some of the most divisive educational controversies, such as state sponsorship and regulation of denominational schooling, as well as the role of non-denominational schools in the moral and political development of children. Oxford Political Theory presents the best new work in contemporary political theory. It is intended to be broad in scope, including original contributions to political philosophy, and also work in applied political theory. The series will contain works of outstanding quality with no restriction as to approach or subject matter. The series editors are David Miller and Alan Ryan.

The populist wave which has submerged Europe and the United States in recent years seems unstoppable. But is it? The end of populism offers answers and proposes concrete solutions to confront the rise of “illiberal democracy.” Drawing on extensive original sources, this book refutes the populist claim that democracy is a “demand side” phenomenon, and demonstrates that it is rather a “supply side” phenomenon. Marcel H. Van Herpen argues that one can have "too much democracy” and shows how methods of direct democracy, such as popular initiatives, referendums, and open primaries, which pretend “to give the power back to the people,” have led to manipulation by populists and moneyed interests. Populist attacks on the judiciary, central banks, the media, and other independent agencies, instead of strengthening democracy, have rather undermined liberal democracy. The author formulates twenty original and bold proposals to bridge the gap between the people and the elites, fight corruption, improve political party funding, and initiate societal, educational, and macro-economic reforms to increase economic equality and alleviate the insecurity of the citizens. Elegantly written and clearly argued, this is an essential book for understanding the populist phenomenon.

Populism and Liberal Democracy is the first book to offer a comprehensive theory about populism during both its emergence and consolidation phases in three geographical regions: Europe, Latin America and the United States. Based on the detailed comparison of all significant cases of populist governments (including Argentina, Greece, Peru, Italy, Venezuela, Ecuador, Hungary, and the U.S.) and two cases of populist failure (Spain and Brazil), each of the book's seven chapters addresses a specific question: What is populism? How to distinguish populists from non-populists? What causes populism? How and where does populism thrive? How do populists govern? Who is the populist voter? How does populism endanger democracy? If rising populism is a threat to liberal democratic politics, as this book clearly shows, it is only by answering the questions it posits that populism may be resisted successfully.