Edmund Burke, Volume II

Edmund Burke, Volume II
Author: F. P. Lock
Publisher: Writings & Speeches of Edmund
Total Pages: 645
Release: 1998
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0198206798

This volume explores the years from 1784 to 1797, and covers the most interesting years of Burke's life; the leading themes being India and the French Revolution. Burke was a key figure in shaping long-term British attitudes to both.

Agents of the People

Agents of the People
Author: Pasi Ihalainen
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2010-03-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004183949

This book on the pre-history of democratization shows how and why more modern attitudes to democracy started to emerge in the late eighteenth century. Focusing on the language of parliamentarians, the author reconstructs and compares debates on the political role and representation of the people in Britain and Sweden. His analysis demonstrates not only the persistence of the classical, pejorative, conception of democracy but also the gradual re-evaluation of the notion prior to the French Revolution. The author analyses the clash between British and French conceptions of democracy as well as the first definitions of the sovereignty of Parliament as the sovereignty of the people. Furthermore, by placing parliamentary discourse in the context of public debates, he reveals the previously ignored role that parliaments played in redefining the most crucial concepts in Western political theory.