Product Description: Este libro, aparecido en inglés en 2004, es, sin la menor duda, la mejor monografía hoy disponible sobre la obra de Carl Schmitt, el más inteligente e imaginativo de todos los constitucionalistas que construyeron su obra en el Tempus histórico-político de la República de Weimar...read more

Product Description: Poetry. Ellen Kennedy's debut full-length poetry collection. "When I finished reading SOMETIMES MY HEART PUSHES MY RIBS I had to go to lunch with people in a restaurant with enormous beverages and misnamed sandwiches. I kept tapping my hand on the table and I didn't listen to anything anybody said...read more

Constitutional Failure is a major contribution to studies of the German political philosopher Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), the Weimar Republic, and the relationship of constitutionalism, political economy, and democracy. An internationally renowned scholar of Weimar legal theory, Ellen Kennedy brought Schmitt’s neglected work to the attention of English-speaking readers with her highly regarded translations of his work and studies of its place in twentieth-century political theory. In this eagerly awaited book, she tracks Schmitt’s contribution to the canon of Western political philosophy during its most difficult and dangerous moment—the time of Weimar Germany and the Third Reich—demonstrating the centrality of his thought to understandings of the modern constitutional state and its precarious economic and social foundations. Kennedy reveals how Schmitt’s argument for a strong but neutral state supported the maximization of market freedom at the cost of the political constitution. She argues that the major fault lines of Weimar liberalism—emergency powers, the courts as “defenders of the constitution,” mass mobilization of anti-liberal politics, ethnic-identity politics, a culture of resentment and contested legitimacy—are not exceptions within the liberal-democratic orders of the West, but central to them. Contending that Schmitt’s thought remains vital today because liberal norms are inadequate to the political challenges facing constitutional systems as diverse as those of Eastern Europe and the United States, Kennedy develops a compelling, rigorous argument that unsettles many assumptions about liberalism, democracy, and dictatorship.

This is a paper for anyone wanting to make sense of the new Europe. The Bundesbank is crucial for the processes of both German and European Economic and Monetary Union. It may provide the model for any future European Central Bank or "Euro-Fed". To understand the implications of this for the future of European monetary integration one must also understand the history and structure of the Bundesbank, its ethos and objectives. This book examines these issues and in particular how the Bundesbank has reacted to international pressure.

THIS IMPORTANT NEW book analyzes the position of women in the writings of the major political philosophers. The authors argue that the moral status of women both affects and is affected by the conception of their political status. Women have only recently been given the rights of citizens. Hitherto they were thought not to be eligible for citizenship and have been considered members of the political community only through the mediation of their husbands and fathers. These issues are placed in a broad philosophical framework. Moral and political beliefs about women are often found to be consequent upon deeper metaphysical, or even biological, beliefs. This book successfully presents a feminist perspective on questions central to political philosophy and raises issues about the philosophical underpinning of political theory. ---ELLEN KENNEDY is Lecturer in Politics at the University of York and Visiting Lecturer in the University of Freiburg. During 1984-6 she was a Fellow of the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foun¬dation. SUSAN MENDUS is Lecturer in Philosophy and Morrell Fellow in Toleration at the University of York. She is the co-editor, with John Horton, of Aspects of Toleration (1985). She is the author of Freedom and the Open Society: Henri Bergson's Contribution to Political Philosophy (1986) and the editor and translator of Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parhamentary Democracy (1985).

Described both as the "Hobbes of our age" and as "the philosophical godfather of Nazism," Carl Schmitt was a brilliant and controversial political theorist whose doctrine of political leadership and critique of liberal democratic ideals and institutions distinguish him as one of the most original contributors to the theory of modern politics. Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, first published in 1923 and revised in 1926, has had a persistently controversial place in German thought. The introduction to this new translation places the book in proper historical context and provides a useful guide to several aspects of Weimar political culture. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy offers a powerful criticism of the inconsistencies of representative democracy. It argues that the original, liberal underpinnings of parliamentarism have been lost and have been increasingly perceived to be so. In this situation democratic institutions have become relics that continue to exist more from inertia than from conviction. Schmitt argues that the will that determines the outcome in democratic societies is a particular rather than a general will, and parliamentary openness functions only as an antechamber for special interests. With the bourgeoisie morally enfeebled and the socialist labor movement devoid of any genuine democratic theory, there was a clear shift toward more authoritarian forms of government. Accordingly, Schmitt concludes his essay by analyzing the roles of myth, irrationality, and violence in politics. Richard Thoma, a leading exponent of parliamentary government, reviewed Schmitt's book in 1925, portraying it as a direct attack on the Weimar Republic's democratic institutions. Increasingly, however, the problems Schmitt identified in the balance of liberal institutions and democratic principles have been recognized as fundamental. Because Schmitt's ruthlessly systematic attack on liberal democracy has remained unanswered and largely ignored, his perceptive analysis remains an intellectual force to be reckoned with. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (view table of contents)