Despite playing a decisive role in shaping the past two hundred years of American and European politics, liberalism is no longer the dominant force it once was. In this expanded and updated edition of what has become a classic history of liberalism, Edmund Fawcett traces its ideals, successes, and failures through the lives and ideas of exemplary thinkers and politicians from the early nineteenth century to today. Significant revisions--including a new conclusion--reflect recent changes affecting the world political order that many see as presenting new and very potent threats to the survival of liberal democracy as we know it. A richly detailed account of a vulnerable but critically important political creed, this book reminds us that to defend liberalism it is vital to understand its character and history.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Acknowledgments
• INTRODUCTION The Practice of Liberalism
• PART ONE THE CONFIDENCE OF YOUTH (1830–1880)
  • 1 Historical Setting in the 1830s: Thrown into a World of Ceaseless Change
  • 2 Guiding Thoughts from Founding Thinkers: Conflict, Resistance, Progress, and Respect
    • i. Humboldt and Constant: Releasing People’s Capacities and Respecting Their Privacy
    • ii. Guizot: Taming Conflict without Arbitrary Power
    • iii. Tocqueville and Schulze-Delitzsch: The Modern Powers of Mass Democracy and Mass Markets
    • iv. Chadwick and Cobden: Governments and Markets as Engines of Social Progress
    • v. Smiles and Channing: Personal Progress as Self-Reliance or Moral Uplift
    • vi. Spencer: Liberalism Mistaken for Biology
    • vii. J. S. Mill: Holding Liberalism’s Ideas Together
  • 3 Liberalism in Practice: Four Exemplary Politicians
    • i. Lincoln: The Many Uses of “Liberty” in the Land of Liberty
    • ii. Laboulaye and Richter: Tests for Liberals in Semiliberal Regimes
    • iii. Gladstone: Liberalism’s Capaciousness and the Politics of Balance
  • 4 The Nineteenth-Century Legacy: Liberalism without Caricature
    • i. Respect, “the Individual,” and the Lessons of Toleration
    • ii. The Achievements That Gave Liberals Confidence
• PART TWO LIBERALISM IN MATURITY AND THE STRUGGLE WITH DEMOCRACY (1880–1945)
  • 5 Historical Setting in the 1880s: The World Liberals Were Making
  • 6 The Compromises That Gave Us Liberal Democracy
    • i. Political Democracy: Liberal Resistance to Suffrage Extension
    • ii. Economic Democracy: The “New Liberalism” and Novel Tasks for the State
    • iii. Ethical Democracy: Letting Go Ethically and the Persistence of Intolerance
  • 7 The Economic Powers of the Modern State and Modern Market
    • i. Walras, Marshall, and the Business Press: Resisting the State on Behalf of Markets
    • ii. Hobhouse, Naumann, Croly, and Bourgeois: Resisting Markets on Behalf of Society
  • 8 Damaged Ideals and Broken Dreams
    • i. Chamberlain and Bassermann: Liberal Imperialism
    • ii. Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson: Liberal Hawks of 1914–1918
    • iii. Alain, Baldwin, and Brandeis: Liberal Dissent and the Warfare State
    • iv. Stresemann: Liberal Democracy in Peril
    • v. Keynes, Fisher, and Hayek (i): Liberal Economists in the Slump
    • vi. Hoover and Roosevelt: Forgotten Liberal and Foremost Liberal
  • 9 Thinking about Liberalism in the 1930s–1940s
    • i. Lippmann and Hayek (ii): Liberals as Antitotalitarians
    • ii. Popper: Liberalism as Openness and Experiment
• PART THREE SECOND CHANCE AND SUCCESS (1945–1989)
  • 10 Historical Setting after 1945: Liberal Democracy’s New Start
  • 11 New Foundations: Rights, a Democratic Rule of Law, and Welfare
    • i. Drafters of the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights: Liberal Democracy Goes Global
    • ii. German Postwar Liberals: The 1949 Basic Law as Liberal Democracy’s Exemplary Charter
    • iii. Beveridge: Liberalism and Welfare
  • 12 Liberal Thinking after 1945
    • i. Oakeshott and Berlin: Letting Politics Alone and “Negative” Liberty
    • ii. Hayek (iii): Political Antipolitics
    • iii. Orwell, Camus, and Sartre: Liberals in the Cold War
    • iv. Rawls: Justifying Liberalism
    • v. Nozick, Dworkin, and MacIntyre: Responses to Rawls, Rights, and Community
  • 13 The Breadth of Liberal Politics in the 1950s– 1980s
    • i. Mendès- France, Brandt, and Johnson: Left Liberalism in the 1950s–1960s
    • ii. Buchanan and Friedman: Liberal Economists against the State
    • iii. Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, and Kohl: Right Liberalism in the 1970s–1980s
• PART FOUR LIBERAL DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
  • 14 Two Decades That Shook Liberal Democracy
    • i. The Rise of the Hard Right
    • ii. Economic Discontents
    • iii. Geopolitical Loneliness
    • iv. Nationhood, Citizenship, and Identity
    • v. Intellectual Doubts and Disaffection
  • 15 The Primacy of Politics
• Works Consulted
• Name Index
• Subject Index