Richard Bourke

Languages of Conflict and the Northern Ireland Troubles

Accounts of civil breakdown and the emergence of political violence in modern societies are widely subject to theories of conflict that fail to represent reality. The frameworks for depicting extreme upheaval employed by both the media and politicians, and likewise within much historical and political analysis, frequently distort the object they are seeking to understand. The interpretation of conflict is determined, in short, by “languages of conflict” that are poorly designed to represent the phenomenon they hope to explain; understanding is framed by explanatory schemes without any genuine purchase on their subject of study. The result is often bafflement in the face of the violence that accompanies such conflicts, commonly reckoned to be “savage” or “senseless” and beyond all rational accounting.1 Deforming languages of conflict are legion, but they reduce to two fundamental types: theories of primitive regression, on the one hand, and theories of cultural solidarity, on the other. Attempts to depict modern conflicts in terms of “tribalism,” “atavism,” “mysticism,” and the like are examples of the former explanatory model; theories of clashing “civilizations,” “cultural” collision, and “ethnic” conflict exemplify the latter mode of thought.2 The history of these approaches

POCOCK AND THE PRESUPPOSITIONS OF THE NEW BRITISH HISTORY

This article recovers the rationale behind the project to found a ‘new’ British history undertaken by J. G. A. Pocock in the early 1970s, and contrasts this with the approach adopted in the subsequent historiography. The article argues that British history as conceived by Pocock was intended to transcend the parochialism of national history whilst also rehabilitating the writing of imperial history without succumbing to the temptations of metropolitan whiggism. Pococks perspective was constructed against the backdrop of a British withdrawal from empire and led him to a neo-Seeleyan interest in the dynamics of imperial expansion and retrenchment. While this process is best understood through the comparative study of empires, any such undertaking raises complex questions about the ultimate subject of historical inquiry and the nature of historical explanation. In addressing these questions, this article distinguishes the ambition to write the history of a polity from the aim of writing histories of ‘party’ as originally formulated by the historians of the Scottish enlightenment whose work has been among Pococks abiding subjects of investigation.

EDMUND BURKE AND THE POLITICS OF CONQUEST

This article restores the context of political action to Burkes thinking about politics. It begins with the specific case of his interventions in the parliamentary debate over the Quebec Bill in 1774, and proceeds from this focal point to establish the centrality of the theme of conquest to his political motivation and understanding in general. Burkes preoccupation with conquest drove him to examine eighteenth-century British politics within a set of comparative historical frameworks. These frameworks encompassed the trajectories of both modern European and imperial politics and ancient historical development. The objective of Burkes politics of conquest was to overcome the destructive influence of the spirit of conquest. That objective involved deciding upon and justifying courses of action with reference to these comparative historical frameworks of understanding. Careful investigation shows that while Burkes approach to this task was powerfully influenced by Montesquieu, his arguments invariably entailed serious criticism of Montesquieus conclusions. Properly understood, these criticisms show that Burke himself did not endorse the political principles that were later taken to constitute “Burkian conservatism”. The article draws the conclusion that a thorough grasp of the politics of conquest in Burkes thinking will force us to reposition him in the history of political theory.

Burke, Enlightenment and Romanticism

In a letter sent to his Quaker school-friend, Richard Shackleton, at the start of his third year as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin, Burke identified a mania for syllogistic reasoning with the dark days of Scholastic philosophy, contrasting its procedures with those of ‘these enlightened times’. He had encountered neo-Aristotelian logic through the textbooks of Franciscus Burgersdicius and Martinus Smiglecius during his first year at university; at the same time, he was exposed to the Logica of Jean Le Clerc. By the mid-1740s he was associating the former with the kind of pre-enlightened ‘ignorance’ that modern philosophy had helped to overcome (C, I: 89). A decade later, in the Account of the European Settlements in America, which Burke composed with his close friend, William Burke, the passage from ignorance to enlightenment is set within a conventional, Protestant historiographical framework. Technological and scientific progress, along with humanism and the Reformation, are presented as having created the conditions for material and intellectual improvement. These developments, moreover, are shown to have occurred in tandem with the consolidation of modern monarchies, the revival of politeness, and the establishment of a ‘rational’ – meaning prudently oriented – politics. Altogether, learning prospered, manners improved, and policy became enlightened. In a fragmentary ‘Essay towards an History of the Laws of England’, which Burke undertook around the same time, the slow, faltering march towards a government of laws is taken to have been ‘softened and mellowed by peace and Religion; improved and exalted by commerce, by social intercourse, and that great opener of the mind, ingenuous science’ (WS, I: 322). What these diverse observations illustrate is that enlightenment for Burke encompassed the progress of society through the expansion of commerce under the protection of law, the improvement of morals under the government of Providence, and the liberalisation of religion under the influence of science.

Popular sovereignty in historical perspective

Introduction Richard Bourke 1. Athenian democracy and popular tyranny Kinch Hoekstra 2. Popular sovereignty as control of officeholders: Aristotle on Greek democracy Melissa Lane 3. Popular sovereignty in the late Roman republic: Cicero and the will of the people Valentina Arena 4. Popolo and law: late medieval sovereignty in Marsilius and the jurists Serena Ferente 5. Democratic sovereignty and democratic government: the sleeping sovereign Richard Tuck 6. Parliamentary sovereignty, popular sovereignty, and Henry Parkers adjudicative standpoint Alan Cromartie 7. Popular sovereignty and representation in the English Civil War Lorenzo Sabbadini 8. Prerogative, popular sovereignty, and the American founding Eric Nelson 9. Popular sovereignty and political representation: Edmund Burke in the context of eighteenth-century thought Richard Bourke 10. From popular sovereignty to civil society in post-revolutionary France Bryan Garsten 11. Popular sovereignty as state theory in the nineteenth century Duncan Kelly 12. Popular sovereignty and anticolonialism Karuna Mantena 13. Popular sovereignty in an age of mass democracy: politics, parliament, and parties in Weber, Kelsen, Schmitt and beyond Timothy Stanton Bibliography Index.

Edmund Burke and International Conflict

A significant body of scholarly literature habitually presents the writings of Edmund Burke as constituting a contribution to international relations theory. This perspective derives in large part from an examination of Burke’s later writings, especially those concerned with the outbreak of the French Revolution and the pattern of its subsequent development.1 Some of this literature claims Burke as the inaugural representative of a specific “English school” of international thought.2 This idea is not completely without foundation because Burke did indeed champion the cause of the British constitution as an exemplary model of political engineering, favorably contrasting it with the organization of France. But this fact is hardly sufficient to qualify him as a British theorist of international relations—or as the creator of any kind of “school” for that matter. Burke was above all else a publicist and a politician, although it is clear that he was preoccupied with international affairs, particularly as these unfolded after 1789.

PARTY, PARLIAMENT, AND CONQUEST IN NEWLY ASCRIBED BURKE MANUSCRIPTS *

This article presents four manuscript essays from the mid-1750s, three of which are attributed to Edmund Burke for the first time. In doing so, the article aims to reconstruct Burkes earliest political thought during a period often described as the ‘missing years’ of his biography. These essays cover themes that would later occupy places of central importance in Burkes thinking, and so form a bridge between his early intellectual development and his subsequent political career. After presenting the grounds for ascribing these writings to Burke, the article then sketches their main lines of argument and situates them in their political context. It also briefly establishes their significance with reference to their enlightenment intellectual milieu. Covering such themes as the nature of party, the functioning of the mixed constitution, and the terms on which Ireland was subjected to the English crown, these early essays address a set of political and constitutional issues that were major areas of controversy in British politics in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Material incentives and Kantian optimisation: John E. Roemer on ‘left-right’ economics

Abstract John Roemer has argued in favour of rehabilitating Kanitanism as an antidote to the kind of utilitarian incentivisation theories associated with neoliberal economics. This article asks whether the ethical thought of Kant is in fact fit for purpose. Placing Kant in dialogue with other contemporary enlightenment thinkers, it also questions whether ‘solidarist’ social theories solve the problems Roemer associates with their ‘selfish’ competitors, and indeed whether the two approaches can be so neatly distinguished.

What is conservatism? History, ideology and party:

Is there a political philosophy of conservatism? A history of the phenomenon written along sceptical lines casts doubt on the existence of a transhistorical doctrine, or even an enduring conservative outlook. The main typologies of conservatism uniformly trace its origins to opposition to the French Revolution. Accordingly, Edmund Burke is standardly singled out as the ‘father’ of this style of politics. Yet Burke was de facto an opposition Whig who devoted his career to assorted programmes of reform. In restoring Burke to his original milieu, the argument presented here takes issue with 20th-century accounts of conservative ideology developed by such figures as Karl Mannheim, Klaus Epstein and Samuel Huntington. It argues that the idea of a conservative tradition is best seen as a belated construction, and that the notion of a univocal philosophy of conservatism is basically misconceived.

Reflections on the Political Thought of the Irish Revolution

Examining the political thought of the Irish Revolution poses two distinct problems. First, we need to establish how we should date the Revolution for the purposes of intellectual history. There is no doubting that the 1916 Easter Rising was an event in British and Irish politics, but it was also an event in the world of ideas. Any serious consideration of this episode and its aftermath therefore needs to trace its origins to patterns of thought as well as shifts in affairs, and the two processes do not necessarily coincide. The second requirement for understanding the role of political thought in the Revolution is to reconstruct carefully the actual doctrines articulated and deployed. Irish historians have been reluctant to engage in this process of interpretation. Yet a more searching account of political ideas in the period has the potential to change our approach to the Revolution as a whole.