The new edition of this classic text provides a comprehensive introduction to the concept of legitimacy as applied to political systems. Now addressing the issue of legitimacy beyond the state, the book also includes a new introduction and two major additional chapters which update the argument in the light of developments and debates.

Max Weber's writings on the politics of Wilhelmine in Germany and the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 are much less well known than his contributions to historical and theoretical sociology, yet they are essential to any overall assessment of his thought. Drawing on these writings, still mostly untranslated, David Beetham offers the most comprehensive account available in English of Weber's political theory.The book explores Weber's central concern with the prospects for liber...

With the ideology of democracy under more global scrutiny than ever in the wake of the war on Iraq and suspicions over election results, David Beetham offers new insights into democracy. He looks at real examples such as the role of the citizen and how large corporations affect democracy as well as contemplating the future of democracy in the developed and developing worlds.

Most of the contemporary debates about the European Union - about its role, its institutional arrangements, its development dynamic, its expansion and possible futures - revolve around the issue of political legitimacy. Legitimacy and the European Union addresses the fundamental issues at the heart of the debates on Europe and examines such key questions as:- -What is the scope of the EU's authority -Is there a legitimacy deficit? If so, how much does it matter -Does political leg...

Democratic Institutions and Practices is the second study carried out under the Democratic Audit of the UK. This volume explores the formal institutions and processes of the liberal democratic state: including the executive, elections, parliament and the civil service.

In the 144 years since Karl Marx's Das Kapital was published, the doctrine that bears his name has been embraced by millions in the name of equality, and just as dramatically has fallen from grace with the retreat of communism from the western world. But as the free market reaches its extreme limits in the economic and environmental fallout, a reassessment of capitalism's most vigorous and eloquent enemy has never been more timely.Eric Hobsbawm provides a fascinating and insightful...

The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek’s 1944 warning against the dangers of government control, continues to influence politics more than seventy years after it was turned down by three American publishers and finally published by the University of Chicago Press. A classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, the definitive edition of The Road to Serfdom included this essay as its Introduction. Here, acclaimed Hayek biographer and gen...

A classic work in political philosophy, intellectual history and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians and scholars for half a century. Originally published in 1944, it was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production. For Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy....

In July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a warrant for his arrest, Lenin fled from Petrograd; later that year, the October Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period he spent in Finland, he wrote his impassioned, never-completed masterwork The State and Revolution. This powerfully argued book offers both the rationale for the new regime and a wealth of insights into Leninist politics. It was here that Lenin justified his personal interpretation of Ma...

The global political environment in the twenty-first century is proving dynamic and challenging for Australian policymakers and political institutions. Australian Politics in the Twenty-first Century contextualises the Australian political landscape through an institutional lens. It examines the legislative and judicial bodies, minor parties, lobby groups, the media and the citizenry, providing historical and contemporary facts, explaining political issues and examining new challenges. The...

China Miéville's brilliant reading of the modern world's most controversial and enduring political document: The Communist Manifesto.'It's thrilling to accompany Miéville... as he wrestles – in critical good faith and incandescent commitment – with a manifesto that still calls on us to build a new world' Naomi Klein'Read this and be dazzled by its contemporaneity' Mike Davis'A rich, luminous reflection of and on a light that...

An illuminating overview of Marx's intellectual influence from a leading historian of socialismWhy was Marx so successful as a thinker? Did he have a system and if so, what does it consist of? How did Marxism develop in the twentieth century and what does it mean today?Karl Marx remains the most influential and controversial political thinker in history. The movements associated with his name have lent hope to many victims of tyranny and aggression but have...