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Justification and Limits of State Coercion in Liberal Democracies: Reconciling Binding Welfare State Policies and a Reformed Classical Liberalism
Wedekind, Peter ; Salamon, Janusz (advisor) ; Fiorctos, Karl Orfeo (referee) ; Simon, Stephen A. (referee)
CHARLES UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Institute of Political Studies Department of Political Science Peter Wedekind Justification and Limits of State Coercion in Liberal Democracies: Reconciling Binding Welfare State Policies and a Reformed Classical Liberalism Dissertation Thesis Abstract - English Prague 2022 Abstract In this thesis I defend the claim that classical liberalism has the capacity to justify meritocratic state policies that promote greater equality of opportunity. Correspondingly, I adopt an approach uncommon among scholars following the tradition of classical liberalism, given that I conclude with a position that is more frequently associated with the postulates of social welfare egalitarians, such as publicly funded higher education. This strategy serves as a reply to contemporary critiques of liberal democracies and implies that liberalism is endowed with the tools to address the flaws its own (neoliberal) manifestation has brought about. Skyrocketing socio-economic inequalities as well as the marketization trend which, among other things, crowds-out the traditional values of higher education and corrupts a public institution crucial for social mobility into a privilege of plutocratic elites, are just two examples. To support this argument, I discuss several consecutive claims:...
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The meritocratic division: a restructuration of cleavages in the West? - Insight from the Yellow Vests movement.
Forel, Alexis ; Galent, Marcin (advisor) ; Stepanovic, Vera (referee)
The attempts to understand discontent and populist surges in the West, especially in recent years, led to an abundance of research, comments, and speculations. Some thinkers asserted that such events are the symptoms of a cleavage restructuration in liberal democratic societies that would be centered around the question of merit. Research generally links higher education and general success in life to satisfaction and relative support of the established order. On the contrary, lesser educated and successful individuals tend to question this state of affairs. A cleavage revolving around success and education would consequently replace previous divisions, such as the usual right-left opposition, but also come on top of other schisms, mainly spatial ones. This thesis offers to verify the existence of such a cleavage with a case study of the Yellow Vests movement, in France. Analyzing the discourse of the representants of the meritocracy, Emmanuel Macron and his government, it finds trends that support the existence of such an underlying conflict.
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Social time and its representation in the performance-oriented society of the 19th century: liberalization - monetization - pluralization
Řezníková, Lenka
One of the symptoms of the transition from the premodern society of estates to a modern civil society, as realized during the 19th century (at least at the ideological level) was the highlighting of time and its transformation into a secular instrument of liberal ideology. The monetization of time, expressed in Benjamin Franklin’s famous formulation „time is money“ (translated into Czech in 1838) allowed time to be conceived as a factor in social ascent. In contrast to the estates privileges that quarantees social status on given a priori selective principles, time was given to everybody and its appropriate utilization could ensure social ascent even for individuals from the lowest social strata. Hence time becomes a key component in the new liberal biographical project of social ascent, not only in the biological sense, but also with regard to the structure of social behaviour. Numerous instructions are given (even in fiction) on how to utilize time properly and transform it into material profit. As time in increasingly highlighted, so the importance of time periods and deadlines grows and need also incerases for synchronization and correct timing, because each actor noe disposes of his own time, which is not always compatible with the time of others actors. This study attempts to show how the new secularized time was represented in the emerging performance-oriented society and what consequences were in store for the monetization of time beyond this optimistic liberal discourse within the modernist generation at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
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