Political Ideologies

This page gives the syllabus for a course I am teaching at Haverford College in the spring term of 2020, "Political Ideologies in a World of Identities."

Traditionalist Conservatism

Denijs van Alsloot, Ommegang in Brussels, 31 May 1615 (1616; Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge))

Authoritarian Nationalist Populism?

(Redbubble.net; fair use)

How libertarians might have written "Star Wars" (Reason TV; fair use)

POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES IN A WORLD OF IDENTITIES

Thomas J. Donahue

POLSH312/PEACH312

Spring 2020

Th 1:30pm-4pm

Office hours: W 2-4, Hall 01B, or by apptmt

Mailbox: Hall Building faculty mailroom

tjdonahueAThaverford.edu

Millions have sacrificed their lives, or been killed, for political ideologies like liberalism, conservatism, socialism, populism, or liberationism; millions more have sacrificed or otherwise died for identities, like worker or capitalist, Muslim or Christian, African or European, female or male, trans- or cisgender. Why? What do identities and ideologies offer to people? What are the leading political ideologies’ key concepts and doctrines? What key norms govern attributing the leading identities to self and others? Do some ideologies favor certain identities, or vice versa? We develop tools for judging the merits of any ideology, or any interpretation of an identity

Course Requirements. To earn full credit, you must:

(1) Participate in class discussion and class activities. Emphasis on think-pair-share, small group discussions.

(2) Submit 6 response papers. On alternating weeks from Week 3 on, you submit a response, of not more than 350 words, that examines some thesis that that week’s reading has argued. The paper should state the thesis and then argue for or against it. If you argue for it, you should provide your own reasons for it--not the author's reasons. Here's an example: "Judith Shklar argues that it was better to proceed with the Tokyo and Nuremberg Trials than to summarily punish the accused, as Winston Churchill had proposed. I shall argue instead that it would have been better to follow Churchill's proposal and summarily punish the accused. My main reason will be that summarily punishing the top leaders while avoiding trials would have given the world the punishment it wanted to see, while ensuring that no one could argue that the Allies were using corrupt and unjust legal procedures to obtain predetermined political results. By contrast, the trials muddied the distinction between normal times and extraordinary times, and thus encouraged people to think that the Allies valued neither legality nor justice." Click here for guidelines on writing response papers.

(3) Submit 6 drafts of a final paper: topic and various questions about it, add your question and existing answers to it, add your answer (thesis) and two other answers, add sketch of your argument for your answer, add arguments for and against the other answers, write intro and conclusion.

(4) Reading check-ins: Did you do the reading?

(5) Submit final paper last day of exams (4,000 words).

Course Assessment. Course marks will be computed on the following distribution: Class Participation: 20%; Response Papers: 24% (4% each); Drafts 24% (4% each): Reading Check-ins 14%; Final Paper: 18%.

Course format. The course will be discussion oriented. I will usually begin sessions by presenting a thesis advanced in the week’s reading. I will discuss its implications. I will then ask one or many of you whether you think the thesis true or false, and why. We shall then examine the reasons you offer for your view. We shall then turn to the reasons the text offers in defense of the thesis. I will ask you what you think of those reasons, and so forth. The course in part aims to improve your skill in reasoned argument.

Course Objectives. By the end of the course, students should

(1) Have become familiar with the key concepts of the theories and arguments of each ideology covered in the course;

(2) Have strengthened their skills in applying these concepts to current debate about the problems of political morality;

(3) Have honed their ability to specify how and why specific values clash when dealing with those problems;

(4) Have improved their skills in specifying the disagreement over the relevant facts involved in disagreement between ideologies.

(5) Have learned how to accurately describe the structure of a theory, specifying its key concepts, its main claims, the basic model underlying it, and the question to which it is an answer;

(6) Have honed their skills in specifying the structures of arguments, breaking them into premises-axioms, middle premises-lemmas, and conclusions-theorems;

(7) Have improved their ability in distinguishing between similar concepts denoted by the same word and spotting equivocations;

(8) Have honed their skills in evaluating and challenging the premises of an argument with rational and well-ordered arguments of their own;

(9) Have improved their ability to evaluate the deductive validity or inductive strength of an argument’s progress from premises to conclusions;

(10) Have worked out for themselves a detailed and developed argument arguing a thesis about one of the questions covered in the course.

E-mail policy. You are welcome to e-mail me with questions about the course. I try to answer e-mails within 48 hours of receipt. Don’t expect an answer before then. Fast generally means shoddy.

Academic Dishonesty: Don’t do it! Here is Haverford College's official language on the subject:

"A Note from Your Professor on Academic Integrity at Haverford:

"In a community that thrives on relationships between students and faculty that are based on trust and respect, it is crucial that students understand a professor’s expectations and what it means to do academic work with integrity. Plagiarism and cheating, even if unintentional, undermine the values of the Honor Code and the ability of all students to benefit from the academic freedom and relationships of trust the Code facilitates. Plagiarism is using someone else's work or ideas and presenting them as your own without attribution. Plagiarism can also occur in more subtle forms, such as inadequate paraphrasing, failure to cite another person’s idea even if not directly quoted, failure to attribute the synthesis of various sources in a review article to that author, or accidental incorporation of another’s words into your own paper as a result of careless note-taking. Cheating is another form of academic dishonesty, and it includes not only copying, but also inappropriate collaboration, exceeding the time allowed, and discussion of the form, content, or degree of difficulty of an exam. Please be conscientious about your work, and check with me if anything is unclear."

I may, at any time, use tools like turnitin.com to detect plagiarism.

Students with Disabilities, Special Needs, or Having Difficulties: Here is the Haverford Office of Access and Disability Services' Statement, which I affirm:

"Haverford College is committed to supporting the learning process for all students. Please contact me as soon as possible if you are having difficulties in the course. There are also many resources on campus available to you as a student, including the Office of Academic Resources (https://www.haverford.edu/oar/) and the Office of Access and Disability Services (https://www.haverford.edu/access-and-disability-services/). If you think you may need accommodations because of a disability, you should contact Access and Disability Services at hc-ads@haverford.edu. If you have already been approved to receive academic accommodations and would like to request accommodations in this course because of a disability, please meet with me privately at the beginning of the semester (ideally within the first two weeks) with your verification letter."

Writing response papers: Here are guidelines on what I’m looking for, and what I’m not looking for, but other teachers might be: https://sites.google.com/site/tjdonahu/home/writing-response-papers

How to understand and use theories: Puzzled? You're not alone! Even the professionals find this difficult. Click here for some tips on how to do it: https://sites.google.com/site/tjdonahu/home/using-theories

How to do political philosophy: The approach used in this course is political philosophy. For some tips on how to do it, click here:

https://sites.google.com/site/tjdonahu/home/political-philosophy-why-and-how

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

[1] Andrew Heywood, Political Ideologies: An Introduction, 5th edition (Palgrave, 2012)

[2] Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism (St. Augustine's Press, 2002)

[3] Carl Cohen, Four Systems: Individualist Democracy, Socialist Democracy, Communism, Fascism (University of Michigan Library, 2014)

[4] Michael C. Dawson, Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Ideologies (UChicago Press, 2001)

[5] L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism (Oxford UP, 1964)

[6] Tony Wright, Socialisms: Old and New (Routledge, 1996)

[7] Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, ed. Michael Freeden and Marc Stears (Oxford UP, 2013)

[8] Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford UP, 1996)

[9] Barbara Goodwin, Using Political Ideas (Wiley Blackwell, 2009)

GUIDES TO WRITING GOOD PAPERS: THE PROSE, THE PROBLEM, AND THE ARGUMENT

[1] Richard Lanham's Paramedic Method.

It transforms slow-starting sentences with obscure subjects into sentences with clear actors and actions.

[2] The Bennett rules for writing decent prose in theoretical papers.

Jonathan Bennett says: Prefer verbs to nouns. Prefer adverbs to adjectives. Avoid intensifiers ( like "very" or "extremely"). Use sparingly the abstract nouns--big words from Latin and Greek ending with "--ation," "--ity," "-ism," "-ology," "-nomy," etc.--; don't cram a sentence full of them.

[3] Joseph M. Williams and Gregory G. Colomb, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (Longman, 2010).

Explains why and when to use Lanham's Method and Strunk and White's rules; and when to break them. Explains how to organize information in a sentence: put the familiar at the front, and the new at the end. Also explains how to make paragraphs coherent: each paragraph should have a point sentence articulating its main point, and this should come either at the end of the paragraph's introductory sentence, or at the paragraph's end.

[4] "From Questions to Problems," Section 4.2 of Wayne Booth et al., The Craft of Research.

Crucial for writing research papers. You need more than a topic. You need more than a research question. You need more than a thesis. You need a research problem, which tells a definite audience what is the bigger question they can't fully answer until they've followed your answering of your research question.

[5] Anthony Weston, A Rulebook for Arguments (Hackett, 2008).

SCHEDULE

Week 1. Introduction to the Course

Optional reading:

Terence Ball and Richard Dagger, “Ideology and Ideologies,” Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal (Pearson 2009):

L. T. Hobhouse, “Before Liberalism,” “The Elements of Liberalism,” Liberalism (Oxford UP, 1964): 9-29

Norberto Bobbio, Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction (Polity, 1996)

Week 2. Liberalism: The Dominant Ideology of the Modern World?

Andrew Heywood, “Liberalism,” Political Ideologies: An Introduction, pp. 23-42, 43-60

The Declaration of Independence (of the United States of America (get it from anywhere)

So you'd like to see a 21st-century liberal outlook on the world...

Check out The New York Times (here sounding characteristic liberal themes) or The Economist or listen to NPR (formerly National Public Radio).

So you'd like to see a statement of principles that almost all liberals (classical, social, and neo-) support...

1947 Oxford Manifesto of the Liberal International

So you'd like to see a famous argument that the United States has always been a liberal polity...

Check out Gordon Wood, The Liberal Tradition in America (1955)

So you'd like to learn about the history--good and bad--of liberalism, and how it was adopted in non-European cultures, as well as liberal political parties...

Click here for audio and texts.

Week 3. (1) Populism: Liberalism's Current Challenger? (2) Internal Nationalism, National Solidarity, and Patriotism. (3) Liberation Ideologies and the Politics of Identity.

Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, "Populism," Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, pp. 493-512

Andrew Heywood, “Nationalism,” Political Ideologies, pp. 143-174

Terence Ball, Richard Dagger, and Daniel O’Neill, “Liberation Ideologies and the Politics of Identity,” Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal, pp. 257-281 ONLY

So you'd like to know more about nationalism and populism as ideologies...

Click here for images and materials.

Week 4. (1) (Traditionalist) Conservatism: Dissident from Liberalism, Foe of Modernity: The Challenge to Individualism and Free-Market Capitalism in the Name of a Traditional Community. (2) Libertarianism, Right and Left: Free Choice for All!

Andrew Heywood, “Conservatism,” Political Ideologies, READ pp. 65-88 ONLY

Andrew Gamble, “Economic Libertarianism,” Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, pp. 405-422

David Boaz, "What Is Libertarianism?" (the introductory essay)

Sheldon Richman, "Libertarian Left" The American Conservative (3 February 2011)

So you'd like to see traditionalist conservative outlooks on the world, traditionalist organizations, videos on why traditionalism is so marginal to the politics of North

America and Europe, and socialist traditionalist conservatism (yes, it exists)...

Click here for materials.

Week 5. (1) Conservative Identities. (2) Feminist Libertarianism?

Roger Scruton, "[Green] Conservatism," in Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge, ed. Andrew Dobson and Robyn Eckersley (Cambridge UP, 2006): 7-19

Angela Dillard, "Malcolm X's Words in Clarence Thomas's Mouth: Black Conservatives and the Making of an Intellectual Tradition," Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Now? Multicultural Conservatism in America (NYU Press, 2001): 24-55, JUST READ TO P. 48

Clare Chambers, “Feminism,” Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, pp. 562-578

Wendy McElroy, "Individualism: A New View of Feminism"

Week 6. Identities and Liberal Identities.

Anthony Appiah, "Introduction," "Classification," The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity (Liveright, 2018): xi-xvi, 3-32

Charles Kurzman, "Liberal Islam and Its Islamic Context," Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook (Oxford UP, 1998): 3-18

Michael C. Dawson, "A Vision of Freedom Larger than America Is Prepared to Accept? The Diverse Shades of Black Liberalism," Black Visions: The Roots of contemporary African-American Political Ideologies (UChicago Press, 2001): 238-280

Africa Liberal Network

Week 7. Socialism: The Challenge to Individualism and Capitalism in the Name of a Cooperative and Solidary Humanity: (1) An Overview of Socialism: Foe, Conscience, or Culmination of Liberalism? (2) Communism and Marx’s Socialism.

Andrew Heywood, “Socialism,” Political Ideologies, pp. 99-118, 129-141

Barbara Goodwin, “Socialism,” Using Political Ideas, pp. 101-118 ONLY

Terence Ball and Richard Dagger, “The Socialism of Karl Marx,” Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal (Pearson, 2009): 132-147

So you'd like to see a 21st-century socialist outlook on the world...

Check out Jacobin magazine, Le monde diplomatique (English edition.), or L'Humanite, formerly the newspaper of the French Communist Party

So you'd like to see 21st-century Marxist socialist outlooks...

Check out The Socialist Standard (non-Leninist Marxism), The Socialist Worker (Trotskyist), a lecture by Alex Callinicos on the history of Trotskyism/International Socialism

So you'd like to see a 21st-century Christian socialist outlook, or a 21st century conservative socialist outlook...

Click here for links to video and texts.

So you'd like to see a documentary on Marx's life and ideas, learn about black Marxism, or watch a biopic of Rosa Luxemburg, leading Belle Epoque Marxist...

Click here for links to video and texts.

Week 8. (1) Anarchism. (2) Socialist and Communist Identities, including Anarcho-Communism

Andrew Heywood, “Anarchism,” Political Ideologies, pp. 137-162

Emma Goldman, "Anarchism: What It Really Stands For", pp. 334-338 ONLY

Optional:

From Alan Wilkinson, Christian Socialism

Check out the principles of the Catholic Worker Movement, or watch Cornel West speaking on Dorothy Day and the Catholic Workers, or check out the website of Christians on the Left, the UK's renamed Christian Socialist movement.

Week 9. (1) Bosses' Identity: Meritocracy? (2) Bosses' Socialism.

Anthony Appiah, "The Myth of Meritorcracy," The Guardian

About James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution (1941): Julius Krein, "James Burnham's Managerial Elite," American Affairs 1 (Spring 2017)

LIBRARY RESEARCH CHAT DUE 3/27

Week 10. (1) Working-Class Anarcho-Libertarianism. (2) Localist Populisms Around the World: India, France

"Introduction", Gary Chartier (ed), Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty, READ pp. 1-9 ONLY

Isaac Chotiner [and Pratap Bhanu Mehta], "An Indian Political Theorist on the Triumph of Narendra Modi's [Populist] Hindu Nationalism," The New Yorker 24 May 2019

Mark Lilla, "Two Roads for the French New Right," New York Review of Books 65 (20; December 20 2018) [Haverford Library Subscription] [Bryn Mawr Library Subscription] BEGIN AT DISCUSSION OF THE CATHOLIC RIGHT

Optional:

Guy Martin, "African Populism," African Political Thought

Danielle Resnick, "Populism in Africa," Oxford Handbook of Populism

4TH RESPONSE PAPER DUE 4/4

Skipping: (Week 11. (1) Non-populist Conservatism in India. (2) White Identity Politics

H. Erdman, "Conservatism in India," Jnl Contemp History

Ashley Jardina, "Introduction," White Identity Politics

Alain de Benoist, Manifesto for a European Renaissance)

Week 12. (4/16-4/22) Fascism

Carl Cohen, “Fascism,” Four Systems, pp. 115-169

(Skipping: Andrew Heywood, "Fundamentalism," Political Ideologies, pp. 281-309)

Weeks 13-14. (4/23-4/30) Conspiracy Theories, COVID, Black Anarchism

David Coady, "In defense of conspiracy theories (and why the term is a misnomer)," The Conversation (2018)

"Misinformation, Distrust May Contribute to Black Americans' COVID-19 Deaths," Morning Edition on NPR 10 April 2020

Daryl Michael Scott, "Malcolm X, Revolutionary Black Nationalism, and the Consolidation of Stateless Black Nationalism," pp. 28-44 ONLY of Scott's "How Black Nationalism Became Sui Generis," Fire!!! (2012): 6-63

SKIPPING:

Andrew Heywood, “Multiculturalism,” Political Ideologies, pp. 310-333

So you'd like to know more about multiculturalist magazines, or about how multiculturalism arose out of the New Left, how it broke with the labor movement, how it won the battles over school curricula, and multiculturalist policy groups...

Click here for links to video and texts.

Week 14. Attachment to Ideologies. Conspiracy Theories

Terence Ball, Richard Dagger, Daniel O'Neill, "Ideology and Ideologies," Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal (Routledge, 2017): 1-15