Waltz and the world: neorealism as international political theory?

The recent recovery of an empirically and ethically richer realist tradition involves an explicit contrast with neorealism's more scientistic explanatory aspirations. This contrast is, however, incomplete. Although Waltz's theoretical work is shaped by his understanding of the requirements of scientific adequacy, his empirical essays are normatively quite rich: he defends bipolarity, and criticizes US adventurism overseas, because he believes bipolarity to be conducive to effective great power management of the international system, and hence to the avoidance of nuclear war. He is, in this sense, a theorist divided against himself: much of his oeuvre exhibits precisely the kind of pragmatic sensibility that is typically identified as distinguishing realism from neorealism. His legacy for a reoriented realism is therefore more complex than is usually realized. Indeed, the nature of Waltz's own analytical endeavour points towards a kind of international political theory in which explanatory and normative questions are intertwined.

A history of mediaeval political theory in the West,

Vol.1, 1927 (2d ed.)

Healthcare and the Common Good: Restructuring the Economy of Medical Knowledge through Communitarian Political Theory

The pharmaceutical industry wields disproportionate power and control within the medical economy of knowledge where the desire for profit considerably outweighs health for its own sake. Utilizing the theoretical tools of political philosophy, this project restructures the economy of medical knowledge in order to lessen the oligarchical control possessed by the pharmaceutical industry. Ultimately, this project argues that an economy of medical knowledge structured around communitarian political theory lessens the current power dynamic without taking an anti-capitalist stance. Arising from the core commitments of communitarian-liberalism, the production, distribution, and consumption of medical knowledge all become guided processes seeking to realize the common good of quality healthcare. This project also considers two other theoretical approaches: liberalism and egalitarianism. A Medical knowledge economy structured around liberal political theory is ultimately rejected as it empowers the oligarchical status quo. Egalitarian political theory is able to significantly reduce the power imbalance problem but simultaneously renders inconsequential medical knowledge; therefore, it is also rejected.

Select Document: Sir George Radcliffe’s “Original of Government” (1639) and Absolutist Political Theory in Stuart Ireland

A seventeenth-century manuscript miscellany, which once belonged to Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh, contains a short treatise on the origins of government by Sir George Radcliffe. Radcliffe was legal assistant to Sir Thomas Wentworth, lord deputy of Ireland (from January 1640 earl of Strafford and lord lieutenant). The treatise insisted on the divine origin of all human political power and implied that the best form of government was absolute monarchy, in which the monarch was free of all human law and subject to divine restraint alone. It will be suggested below that the composition of this treatise can be dated to the summer of 1639. This introduction will offer an outline of Radcliffe’s education and political career, explain the genesis of his treatise on government, point out some pertinent aspects of its argument, and finally assess the document’s significance.