Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader

Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader is a comprehensive compilation of classic and contemporary readings representing all major “isms.” It offers students a generous sampling of key thinkers in different ideological traditions and places them in their historical and political contexts. Used on its own or with Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal, the anthology accounts for the different ways people use ideology and conveys the continuing importance of ideas to politics.

New to this edition

The twelfth edition includes the following additions:

• Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, “How Democracies Die” (two distinguished political scientists delineate the sources of democratic demise).
• Ayn Rand, “Collectivized Ethics” (a well-known libertarian thinker argues that it is illegitimate for governments to legally mandate behavior that benefits other people).
• Patrick Deneen, “Aristopopulism” (an influential conservative professor makes the case for a new kind of governing alliance between masses and elites).
• Herbert Marcuse, “One-Dimensional Man” (a renowned twentieth-century Marxist argues that capitalism creates a set of false needs and beliefs that prevent workers from resisting it)
• “Patriot Front Manifesto” (an Alt-Right white nationalist group attempts to link their ideology to American history and values)
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations” (a prominent author argues that Americans should seriously consider what it would take to make amends to Black people for the ongoing effects of slavery, Jim Crow, and other forms of discrimination)
• Kate Manne, “Ameliorating Misogyny” (a contemporary feminist philosopher redefines misogyny as the central mechanism for governing women’s behavior and upholding patriarchy)
• Lorna Bracewell, “A Story of Queer Survival” (a lesbian feminist scholar links her personal coming-of-age experiences to the central beliefs of the gay liberation movement)
• Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, “Waking up from the American Dream” (a Harvard graduate and author who came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant describes the challenges faced by people who do not have the rights and privileges of full citizenship)
• Pope Francis, “Laudate Deum” (the leader of 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide describes how he believes they, and other people of goodwill, should respond to the increasingly urgent climate crisis)
• Dave Foreman, “In Defense of Monkeywrenching” (a leading radical environmentalist defends non-violent ecological sabotage as morally and politically legitimate)
• Sayyid Abu’l-A‘la Mawdudi, “The Islamic Law” (a highly influential South Asian Islamist thinker defines and defends the necessity of shari-‘a for Muslim societies)
• Hamas, “Charter of the Islamic Resistance Movement of Palestine” (a leading radical Islamist group spells out its core tenets and basic aims at its founding)

Terence Ball received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and is now Emeritus Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Arizona State University. He taught previously at the University of Minnesota and has held visiting professorships at Oxford University, Cambridge University, and the University of California, San Diego. He is author of over one hundred scholarly articles, essays, and monographs. His books include Transforming Political Discourse (Blackwell, 1988); Reappraising Political Theory (Oxford University Press, 1995); and a mystery novel, Rousseau’s Ghost (SUNY Press, 1998). He has also edited The Federalist (Cambridge University Press, 2003); James Madison (Ashgate, 2008); and Abraham Lincoln: Political Writings and Speeches (Cambridge University Press, 2013); and co-edited The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and six other volumes.

Richard Dagger earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and has taught at Arizona State University, Rhodes College, and the University of Richmond, where he is currently the E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Chair in the Liberal Arts. He is the author of many publications in political and legal philosophy, including Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism (Oxford University Press, 1997); and Playing Fair: Political Obligation and the Problem of Punishment (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Daniel I. O’Neill received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is currently Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida. He is the author of The Burke-Wollstonecraft Debate: Savagery, Civilization, and Democracy (Penn State University Press, 2007), and Edmund Burke and the Conservative Logic of Empire (University of California Press, 2016). From 2017 to 2023, he was one of two editors of the flagship American Political Science Association journal Perspectives on Politics.

Jennet Kirkpatrick earned her Ph.D. from Rutgers University and has taught at the University of Michigan and Arizona State University, where she is currently Professor of Political Science. She is an award-winning teacher, and the author of Uncivil Disobedience: Studies in Violence and Democratic Politics (Princeton University Press, 2008) and The Virtues of Exit: On Resistance and Quitting Politics (University of North Carolina Press, 2017).