From earliest times Locke's writings have been the subject of controversy. An intellectual caught up in the politics of late 17th century England, his writings on politics reveal a man attempting to combine an analysis of the underlying principles of society with a deep commitment to a specific political stance and party. This study, first published in 1978 explains why Locke's vision of political life has continued to fascinate political thinkers of many different persuasions.

Following the collapse of the former regimes of Eastern and Central Europe and Latin America the choice of all of the democratising countries was to move towards liberal democracy. Likewise in Africa, many authoriatarian regimes seem to be in retreat, perhaps most significantly in South Africa. Democracy seems to be the only valued political system of the late twentieth century, so that even China for example, describes itself as the people's democratic dictatorship. So have we really, as ...

The Yearbook of Consumer Law provides a valuable outlet for high quality scholarly work which tracks developments in the consumer law field with a domestic, regional and international dimension. The 2009 volume presents a range of peer-reviewed scholarly articles, analytical in approach and focusing on specific areas of consumer law such as credit, consumer redress and the impact of the European Union on consumer law. The book also includes a section dedicated to significant developments d...

First published in 2007, The Yearbook of Consumer Law provides a valuable guide to developments in the consumer law field with a domestic, regional and international dimension.The volume presents a range of peer-reviewed scholarly articles, analytical in approach and focusing on specific areas of consumer law such as sales, credit and safety, as well as more general issues, such as consumer law theory. The book also includes a section dedicated to significant developments ...

A Short History of European Law brings to life 2,500 years of legal history, tying current norms to the circumstances of their conception. Tamar Herzog describes how successive legal systems built upon one another, from ancient times through the European Union. Roman law formed the backbone of each configuration, though the way it was used and reshaped varied dramatically from one century and place to the next. Only by considering Continental civil law and English common law toget...

In this provocative but balanced essay, Kenneth Minogue discusses the development of politics from the ancient world to the twentieth century. He prompts us to consider why political systems evolve, how politics offers both power and order in our society, whether democracy is always a good thing, and what future politics may have in the twenty-first century. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subjec...

Thomas Hobbes, the first great English political philosopher, has long had the reputation of being a pessimistic atheist, who saw human nature as inevitably evil and proposed a totalitarian state to subdue human failings. In this illuminating study, Richard Tuck re-evaluates Hobbes's philosophy and dispels these myths, revealing him to have been passionately concerned with the refutation of scepticism, and to have developed a theory of knowledge which rivalled that of Descartes in its impo...

John Locke (1632-1704) one of the greatest English philosophers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, argued in his masterpiece, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, that our knowledge is founded in experience and reaches us principally through our senses; but its message has been curiously misunderstood. In this book John Dunn shows how Locke arrived at his theory of knowledge, and how his exposition of the liberal values of toleration and responsible governme...

The new and updated eighth edition of Political Geography once again shows itself fit to tackle a frequently and rapidly changing geopolitical landscape. It retains the intellectual clarity, rigour, and vision of previous editions based upon its world-systems approach and is complemented by the perspective of feminist geography. The book successfully integrates the complexity of individuals with the complexity of the world-economy by merging the compatible, but different, research...

Foundations of Public Law offers an account of the formation of the discipline of public law with a view to identifying its essential character, explaining its particular modes of operation, and specifying its unique task. Building on the framework first outlined in The Idea of Public Law (OUP, 2003), the book conceives public law broadly as a type of law that comes into existence as a consequence of the secularization, rationalization, and positivization of the medieval idea of fundamenta...

An Introduction to International Relations is a comprehensive introduction to the history, theories, developments and debates that shape the dynamic discipline of international relations and contemporary world politics. Bringing together an expert author team comprising leading academics from Australia and around the world, it allows readers to explore the discipline from both Australian and global perspectives. Known for its clear, easy-to-read style and relevant, real-world examples, the...

Concern with authority is as old as human history itself. Eve's sin was to challenge the authority of God by disobeying his rule. Frank Furedi explores how authority was contested in ancient Greece and given a powerful meaning in Imperial Rome. Debates about religious and secular authority dominated Europe through the Middle Ages and the Reformation. The modern world attempted to develop new foundations for authority – democratic consent, public opinion, science – yet Furedi shows that thi...