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Postliberalism is a multi-faceted current of ideas that aims to correct the errors and excesses of liberalism both in theory and practice. Having emerged in the UK and the US over the past decade or so, this heterogeneous movement composed of public intellectuals and politicians encompasses a number of shared ideas, including society as a covenant rather than contract, liberty as freedom of care for oneself and others, individual fulfilment combined with mutual flourishing, and individual rights balancing reciprocal obligations. This chapter explores three faces of postliberalism: National Conservatism, Catholic integralism, communitarian pluralism. The argument is that the first is both antiliberal and ultraliberal and therefore ultimately not postliberal, while the second combines a postliberal political economy with a cultural vision that privileges the nation-state and confessional religion. The third face is more truly postliberal in offering constructive alternatives to contemporary liberalism that are anchored in a personalist outlook. A postliberal politics needs to build a pluralist democracy, decentralize the state, and promote mutualist markets embedded in the everyday economy. Only a postliberalism which thus fuses economic justice with social solidarity and ecological balance can overcome deep divisions and avert an authoritarian backlash.

Postliberalism is a multi-faceted current of ideas that aims to correct the errors and excesses of liberalism both in theory and practice. Having emerged in the UK and the US over the past decade or so, this heterogeneous movement composed of public intellectuals and politicians encompasses a number of shared ideas, including society as a covenant rather than contract, liberty as freedom of care for oneself and others, individual fulfilment combined with mutual flourishing, and individual rights balancing reciprocal obligations. This chapter explores three faces of postliberalism: National Conservatism, Catholic integralism, communitarian pluralism. The argument is that the first is both antiliberal and ultraliberal and therefore ultimately not postliberal, while the second combines a postliberal political economy with a cultural vision that privileges the nation-state and confessional religion. The third face is more truly postliberal in offering constructive alternatives to contemporary liberalism that are anchored in a personalist outlook. A postliberal politics needs to build a pluralist democracy, decentralize the state, and promote mutualist markets embedded in the everyday economy. Only a postliberalism which thus fuses economic justice with social solidarity and ecological balance can overcome deep divisions and avert an authoritarian backlash.

The heterogeneous spatial and individual impacts of the Great Recession, Brexit and Covid-19 have generated an important challenge for macroeconomic and regional/spatial modellers to consider greater integration of their approaches. Focusing on agent heterogeneity at the NUTS-1 level, we propose NiReMS – a synthesis of dynamic microsimulation with a spatial regional macroeconometric model. The model gives regional macro projections while allowing for household level inference. To showcase the model, we explore the impact of terminating enhanced Universal Credit (UC) early and show that it led to more households consuming less. Importantly, the proposed framework shows that the impact is not equal across the regions of the UK: low asset households in the North East, Wales, and Northern Ireland were hit particularly hard.

Le mouvement des « gilets jaunes » s’inscrit dans une politique du paradoxe qui dépasse les clivages binaires. Du paysan et petit commerçant historiquement de droite à l’ouvrier, le fonctionnaire et l’employé historiquement de gauche, ce mouvement est le symbole d’une révolte populaire contre le moment de vérité macronien, qui a jeté une lumière crue sur la fusion du libéralisme sociétal de gauche et du libéralisme économique de droite. Il ne s’agit pas d’une insurrection des «pauvres» contre les «riches» mais bien plus largement d’une rébellion des classes moyennes et ouvrières qui sont fragilisées économiquement et culturellement. L’ensemble des couches sociales dites modestes se sent ignoré et humilié. Elle sent aussi confusément que l’autorité est à reconquérir par les gens simples. Le gilet jaune, paradoxalement impératif issu de la technocratie, est devenu le moyen des invisibles de se rendre visible dans la nuit… Ces catégories majoritaires ont du mal à boucler leurs fins de mois et leurs modes de vie sont méconnus, voire méprisés, par la classe politico-médiatique, principalement concentrées dans les villes mondialisées.

Paul Keating once remarked, “We at least in the Labor Party know that we are part of a big story, which is also the story of our country”. Story of Our Country unpacks that big story and Labor’s place in Australia’s narrative. It explains why the ALP’s purpose and character make it unique among centre-left parties in America, Britain, and Europe. Central to Labor’s purpose is its promise to offer people a “share in those things that make life worth living” – the common good. Labor’s vision of the good life is anchored in the everyday experience of working people. This gives Labor its distinctive strength – a paradoxical character that is at once progressive and conservative. Adrian Pabst argues that to gain and retain power, Labor needs to build coalitions between its traditional working-class base and middle-class voters. Labor can achieve this by deploying its distinctive strength to tackle the most critical issues facing Australia: inequality, precarious jobs, the care crisis, climate change, and emerging foreign powers.

Liberals blame the global retreat of liberal democracy on globalisation and authoritarian leaders. Only liberalism, so they assume, can defend democratic rule against multinationals or populists at home and abroad. In this provocative book, Adrian Pabst contends that liberal democracy is illiberal and undemocratic – intolerant about the values of ordinary people while concentrating power and wealth in the hands of unaccountable elites. Under the influence of contemporary liberalism, democracy is sliding into oligarchy, demagogy and anarchy. Liberals, far from defending open markets and free speech, promote monopolies like the new tech giants that undermine competition and democratic debate. Liberal individualism has eroded the social bonds and civic duties on which democracy depends for trust and cooperation. To banish liberal democracy’s demons, Pabst proposes radical ideas for economic democracy, a politics of persuasion and a better balance of personal freedom with social solidarity. This book’s defence of democratic politics against both liberals and populists will speak to all readers trying to understand our age of upheaval.

Dans notre époque troublée, un sentiment de colère et d'abandon se répand parmi de nombreux citoyens qui se sentent humiliés, incapables de mener la vie qu'ils espèrent et impuissants à agir sur les forces impersonnelles qui les dominent. Ces forces sont le capitalisme effréné, l'étatisme, la mondialisation marchande et l'idéologie libérale qui les sous-tend. La gauche et la droite ont convergé autour d'un libéralisme socioculturel et d'un libéralisme économique. Ces libéralismes ne sont que deux moitiés d'un même credo ultra-moderne qui oscille entre l'individualisme du marché et le collectivisme d'État. Dans ce livre, John Milbank et Adrian Pabst proposent, comme alternative au libéralisme totalisant, une politique de la vertu que l'Occident a héritée de la synthèse chrétienne du logos gréco-romain avec la foi biblique. Inspirée par le sens de réciprocité fraternelle, une telle politique vise à promouvoir la justice économique, la solidarité sociale, l'appartenance culturelle et l'internationalisme personnaliste. L'Europe ne pourra se maintenir et influencer le cours du monde que si elle renouvelle son héritage antique et chrétien, et parvient à inculquer la pratique de la vertu dans la recherche du bien commun. John Milbank est professeur de religion, politique et éthique à l'université de Nottingham et directeur du centre de théologie et philosophie. Adrian Pabst est lecteur en politique à l'université de Kent et professeur à l'IEP de Lille.

Dans notre époque troublée, un sentiment de colère et d'abandon se répand parmi de nombreux citoyens qui se sentent humiliés, incapables de mener la vie qu'ils espèrent et impuissants à agir sur les forces impersonnelles qui les dominent. Ces forces sont le capitalisme effréné, l'étatisme, la mondialisation marchande et l'idéologie libérale qui les sous-tend. La gauche et la droite ont convergé autour d'un libéralisme socioculturel et d'un libéralisme économique. Ces libéralismes ne sont que deux moitiés d'un même credo ultra-moderne qui oscille entre l'individualisme du marché et le collectivisme d'État. Dans ce livre, John Milbank et Adrian Pabst proposent, comme alternative au libéralisme totalisant, une politique de la vertu que l'Occident a héritée de la synthèse chrétienne du logos gréco-romain avec la foi biblique. Inspirée par le sens de réciprocité fraternelle, une telle politique vise à promouvoir la justice économique, la solidarité sociale, l'appartenance culturelle et l'internationalisme personnaliste. L'Europe ne pourra se maintenir et influencer le cours du monde que si elle renouvelle son héritage antique et chrétien, et parvient à inculquer la pratique de la vertu dans la recherche du bien commun. John Milbank est professeur de religion, politique et éthique à l'université de Nottingham et directeur du centre de théologie et philosophie. Adrian Pabst est lecteur en politique à l'université de Kent et professeur à l'IEP de Lille.

Dans notre époque troublée, un sentiment de colère et d'abandon se répand parmi de nombreux citoyens qui se sentent humiliés, incapables de mener la vie qu'ils espèrent et impuissants à agir sur les forces impersonnelles qui les dominent. Ces forces sont le capitalisme effréné, l'étatisme, la mondialisation marchande et l'idéologie libérale qui les sous-tend. La gauche et la droite ont convergé autour d'un libéralisme socioculturel et d'un libéralisme économique. Ces libéralismes ne sont que deux moitiés d'un même credo ultra-moderne qui oscille entre l'individualisme du marché et le collectivisme d'État. Dans ce livre, John Milbank et Adrian Pabst proposent, comme alternative au libéralisme totalisant, une politique de la vertu que l'Occident a héritée de la synthèse chrétienne du logos gréco-romain avec la foi biblique. Inspirée par le sens de réciprocité fraternelle, une telle politique vise à promouvoir la justice économique, la solidarité sociale, l'appartenance culturelle et l'internationalisme personnaliste. L'Europe ne pourra se maintenir et influencer le cours du monde que si elle renouvelle son héritage antique et chrétien, et parvient à inculquer la pratique de la vertu dans la recherche du bien commun. John Milbank est professeur de religion, politique et éthique à l'université de Nottingham et directeur du centre de théologie et philosophie. Adrian Pabst est lecteur en politique à l'université de Kent et professeur à l'IEP de Lille.

Dans notre époque troublée, un sentiment de colère et d'abandon se répand parmi de nombreux citoyens qui se sentent humiliés, incapables de mener la vie qu'ils espèrent et impuissants à agir sur les forces impersonnelles qui les dominent. Ces forces sont le capitalisme effréné, l'étatisme, la mondialisation marchande et l'idéologie libérale qui les sous-tend. La gauche et la droite ont convergé autour d'un libéralisme socioculturel et d'un libéralisme économique. Ces libéralismes ne sont que deux moitiés d'un même credo ultra-moderne qui oscille entre l'individualisme du marché et le collectivisme d'État. Dans ce livre, John Milbank et Adrian Pabst proposent, comme alternative au libéralisme totalisant, une politique de la vertu que l'Occident a héritée de la synthèse chrétienne du logos gréco-romain avec la foi biblique. Inspirée par le sens de réciprocité fraternelle, une telle politique vise à promouvoir la justice économique, la solidarité sociale, l'appartenance culturelle et l'internationalisme personnaliste. L'Europe ne pourra se maintenir et influencer le cours du monde que si elle renouvelle son héritage antique et chrétien, et parvient à inculquer la pratique de la vertu dans la recherche du bien commun. John Milbank est professeur de religion, politique et éthique à l'université de Nottingham et directeur du centre de théologie et philosophie. Adrian Pabst est lecteur en politique à l'université de Kent et professeur à l'IEP de Lille.

Dans notre époque troublée, un sentiment de colère et d'abandon se répand parmi de nombreux citoyens qui se sentent humiliés, incapables de mener la vie qu'ils espèrent et impuissants à agir sur les forces impersonnelles qui les dominent. Ces forces sont le capitalisme effréné, l'étatisme, la mondialisation marchande et l'idéologie libérale qui les sous-tend. La gauche et la droite ont convergé autour d'un libéralisme socioculturel et d'un libéralisme économique. Ces libéralismes ne sont que deux moitiés d'un même credo ultra-moderne qui oscille entre l'individualisme du marché et le collectivisme d'État. Dans ce livre, John Milbank et Adrian Pabst proposent, comme alternative au libéralisme totalisant, une politique de la vertu que l'Occident a héritée de la synthèse chrétienne du logos gréco-romain avec la foi biblique. Inspirée par le sens de réciprocité fraternelle, une telle politique vise à promouvoir la justice économique, la solidarité sociale, l'appartenance culturelle et l'internationalisme personnaliste. L'Europe ne pourra se maintenir et influencer le cours du monde que si elle renouvelle son héritage antique et chrétien, et parvient à inculquer la pratique de la vertu dans la recherche du bien commun. John Milbank est professeur de religion, politique et éthique à l'université de Nottingham et directeur du centre de théologie et philosophie. Adrian Pabst est lecteur en politique à l'université de Kent et professeur à l'IEP de Lille.

Dans notre époque troublée, un sentiment de colère et d'abandon se répand parmi de nombreux citoyens qui se sentent humiliés, incapables de mener la vie qu'ils espèrent et impuissants à agir sur les forces impersonnelles qui les dominent. Ces forces sont le capitalisme effréné, l'étatisme, la mondialisation marchande et l'idéologie libérale qui les sous-tend. La gauche et la droite ont convergé autour d'un libéralisme socioculturel et d'un libéralisme économique. Ces libéralismes ne sont que deux moitiés d'un même credo ultra-moderne qui oscille entre l'individualisme du marché et le collectivisme d'État. Dans ce livre, John Milbank et Adrian Pabst proposent, comme alternative au libéralisme totalisant, une politique de la vertu que l'Occident a héritée de la synthèse chrétienne du logos gréco-romain avec la foi biblique. Inspirée par le sens de réciprocité fraternelle, une telle politique vise à promouvoir la justice économique, la solidarité sociale, l'appartenance culturelle et l'internationalisme personnaliste. L'Europe ne pourra se maintenir et influencer le cours du monde que si elle renouvelle son héritage antique et chrétien, et parvient à inculquer la pratique de la vertu dans la recherche du bien commun. John Milbank est professeur de religion, politique et éthique à l'université de Nottingham et directeur du centre de théologie et philosophie. Adrian Pabst est lecteur en politique à l'université de Kent et professeur à l'IEP de Lille.

What are the leading forces and ideas that are shaping our age? In the West, a decade of financial disruption, austerity, and stagnant wages has produced a popular rejection of market fundamentalism that prevailed for over forty years. Mass immigration and multiculturalism have contributed to rapid changes in both family and community life that leave many people feeling dispossessed or even humiliated. Unresponsive government is exacerbating people’s sense of powerlessness and anger. The revolt against the status quo is fuelling a political insurgency against the establishment that replaces the old opposition of left versus right with a similarly simplistic dichotomy pitting the people against the elites. We are witnessing the failure of dualistic thinking and this will not be resolved by substituting one binary for another. Our contemporary conjuncture is such a period of interregnum and a war of position between the hitherto hegemonic ideology of liberalism and its populist rivals. The popular revolt against liberalism, which is driving the political insurgency across the West, highlights the collapse of the authority of the professional political class dominated by liberals. In what follows I shall argue that the emergent ideologies which are vying for hegemony are hyper-liberalism, nationalist traditionalism, and tech utopianism. All of them are variously anti-humanist, to which one can oppose updated versions of one-nation conservatism and ethical socialism. Before setting out the unfolding ‘war of position,’ I will first explore the new anti-humanism that underpins the main ideological movements.

This chapter explores the role of civil society in relation to the economy and the polity by focusing on three distinct yet related dimensions: (1) the conceptual history of civil society in relation to political economy; (2) the theory underpinning a political economy of civil society; (3) the implications of a political economy of civil society for policy-making. The main argument is that there is a fundamental difference between ancient and medieval conceptions, which emphasise natural sociability, and modern accounts that accentuate a violent ‘state of nature’. As a result, civil society either reflects the fundamental embeddedness of economic and political processes in social relations or is an artificial construct. The chapter develops a typology of four modern models, provides a theory of the political economy of civil society and outlines a series of policy ideas.

Across much of the world the centre-left is in crisis. In Britain, where the Labour Party has fared better than most, the left still grapples with how to respond to future challenges and is struggling to understand its place in a world where class politics has been turned on its head. In the 2017 and 2018 elections affluent voters turned left, while those hardest hit by years of austerity were increasingly willing to turn right. This fascinating new pamphlet shows how, across the world, decades of neoliberalism have left their mark. It tells a story of a movement that more often than not has lost its way, searching for answers to the new challenges of automation, climate change and identity politics, but lacking a wider sense of purpose. The near total control of corporations, extending beyond business to the economy, politics and society, has left social democrats who traditionally looked to the state for answers searching for new ways to restore power to people who increasingly feel its absence. It’s no surprise then that in the last decade many social democratic parties have found their support squeezed by a new and emerging radical left on the one hand, and liberals and conservatives on the other. While in some countries short-term tactical decisions have helped to stem the tide, none have escaped the waves. This is the age of anger, where the far right is on the ascendency and growing division in society has had major political consequences. In particular the cleavage, laid bare by Brexit, between the urban, young liberals and the older, working-classes in towns and villages, has created severe challenges for the centre-left across the world. Traditionally social democrats have won by uniting those groups. But in trying to pick a side, many have lost large sections of their traditional support base and some have been virtually wiped out altogether. Despite the severity of the age, this pamphlet also contains clues to the future. While most social democratic par

What are the leading forces and ideas that are shaping our age? In the West, a decade of financial disruption, austerity, and stagnant wages has produced a popular rejection of market fundamentalism that prevailed for over forty years. Mass immigration and multiculturalism have contributed to rapid changes in both family and community life that leave many people feeling dispossessed or even humiliated. Unresponsive government is exacerbating people’s sense of powerlessness and anger. The revolt against the status quo is fuelling a political insurgency against the establishment that replaces the old opposition of left versus right with a similarly simplistic dichotomy pitting the people against the elites. We are witnessing the failure of dualistic thinking and this will not be resolved by substituting one binary for another. Our contemporary conjuncture is such a period of interregnum and a war of position between the hitherto hegemonic ideology of liberalism and its populist rivals. The popular revolt against liberalism, which is driving the political insurgency across the West, highlights the collapse of the authority of the professional political class dominated by liberals. In what follows I shall argue that the emergent ideologies which are vying for hegemony are hyper-liberalism, nationalist traditionalism, and tech utopianism. All of them are variously anti-humanist, to which one can oppose updated versions of one-nation conservatism and ethical socialism. Before setting out the unfolding ‘war of position,’ I will first explore the new anti-humanism that underpins the main ideological movements.

The movement of people and capital is fundamental to economic development worldwide. However, particularly in global and regional contexts, it has also engendered widespread feelings of economic and cultural insecurity. Attempts to address this often rely on assumptions about freedom of choice for the individual or economic utility (i.e. the benefits or costs for the majority). By contrast, applying the perspective of the common good involves holding personal fulfilment and community flourishing in balance. This essay seeks to advance an alternative approach to the free movement of people and capital based on the perspective of personal virtue and the common good – one that can help to address existing anxieties and provide a source of fresh policy ideas, adding to the ongoing work being carried on in faith communities and other groups that exist in the space between the individual and the state.

We develop a simple model that motivates fiscal stabilisation policy, in the presence of economic and control uncertainty. An examination of a real-time database of economic variables and forecasts shows that our knowledge of the current and future state of the economy is subject to significant revisions over time. Multi-year government spending plans are also significantly revised over successive fiscal events. We show the risk for any given government expenditure plan by constructing measures of historical expenditure revisions. We also show that the most significant factor in explaining public expenditure revisions are changes to the expected path of GDP growth. We illustrate how to model the components of public expenditure and are thus able to remark on the extent to which expenditure is warranted. Finally we report on findings from interviews with key policymakers in the past 25 years on how fiscal expenditure was managed and uncertainty confronted.

The movement of people and capital is fundamental to economic development worldwide. However, particularly in global and regional contexts, it has also engendered widespread feelings of economic and cultural insecurity. Attempts to address this often rely on assumptions about freedom of choice for the individual or economic utility (i.e. the benefits or costs for the majority). By contrast, applying the perspective of the common good involves holding personal fulfilment and community flourishing in balance. This essay seeks to advance an alternative approach to the free movement of people and capital based on the perspective of personal virtue and the common good – one that can help to address existing anxieties and provide a source of fresh policy ideas, adding to the ongoing work being carried on in faith communities and other groups that exist in the space between the individual and the state.

From Machiavelli via Hobbes, Locke and Grotius to J.S. Mill and John Rawls, the liberal (and republican) tradition pivots about the primacy of the individual over all forms of human association and allied to this primacy is the replacing of notions of substan¬tive goodness or truth with the ultimate foundation of society upon subjective rights secured by the power of the central state. Those rights are grounded in the human will and the artifice of the social contract that has supplanted older ideas of covenantal relationships governed by a logic of reciprocity or gift-exchange. Liberalism is therefore inherently atomistic and oscillates between the isolated individual and some collective unity either objectively compounded or artificially supposed – ‘Leviathan’ was both. By positing an asocial ‘state of nature’, liberal contractualism purports to invent the artificial order of politics. By contrast, Romanticism – in the works of Novalis, Schlegel, Carlyle, Coleridge, de Biran and Bulgakov – develops develop in novel ways the ancient and Christian idea that human beings as social, political creatures have a natural desire for objective, substantive values by which to orientate their lives and give them that coherent shape which alone engenders a sense of real fulfilment. This teleological space cannot be equated with the impersonal, absolute sovereignty of national states and transnational markets but requires interpersonal relations within a mediated polity that has a transcendent outlook. So whereas liberalism merely regulates the evil and violence which it views as primary (and which therefore it perpetuates and even reinforces), Romanticism offers a vision of partial redemption in this life just because the Fall and original sin never fully destroyed the fundamentally peaceful, ontological ordering of the world. Rather, as fallen creatures equally capable of vice and virtue, human beings can discover their own particular purpose and place in society that is orde

The Eurozone crisis has been variously described in financial or in fiscal terms, caused either by an over-leveraged banking system or by unsustainable budget deficits and national debt – or indeed both at once. But perhaps with the exception of Greece, neither holds true for individual euro-members or for the common currency area as a whole. The combined banking and sovereign debt crisis is symptomatic of a more fundamental set of structural problems such as trade imbalances, productivity differentials and the disconnection between financial flows and investment in productive activities that require a systemic analysis. By contrast with much of modern economics and political science that rest on rational choice and methodological individualism, this chapter seeks to develop an alternative political economy that can conceptualise the constitution of Europe’s polity – the complex economic, political and social space in which the Eurozone is inscribed. From this political economy perspective, I argue that the euro-area is characterised by the primacy of harmonisation over mutualisation – a legacy of the neo-functional model of integration and the ordo-liberal model of coordination, which privilege joint procedures and common rules rather than the sharing of risks, rewards and resources. Mutualisation – the search for cooperative arrangements based on a balance of interests – offers an as yet unrealised potential to transform the Eurozone in line with the constitution of Europe’s polity. The chapter charts a path beyond the current debate that portrays the European Monetary Union (EMU) either as a misconceived experiment which should be abandoned in favour of national currencies (e.g. Pissarides 2013; Flassbeck and Lapavitsas 2015a and 2015b), or as a project beset by design failures which require centralisation (e.g. Marsh 2013; Sinn 2014), or as an arrangement which can work better with a different policy mix (e.g. Sandbu 2015). My chapter runs as follows. First of a

The distinction between constitution, as the set of fundamental normative premises ensuring the cohesion of any given polity, and contract, as the formal covenant agreed upon by the relevant stakeholders in that polity, is central to political economy. This paper outlines a conceptual framework for the political economy of constitution based on the above distinction. Our argument is that constitution in the material sense, that is, as a relatively stable configuration of interests prior to formal arrangements, determines the way in which formal rules and procedures operate within a specific historical context. The paper develops the constitutionalist tradition towards a ‘constitutional heuristic’ that helps to detect feasible organisations of political-economic interests in society. Stratified social systems are rooted in multi-layered connectivity and provide a structure for organising partially overlapping interests beyond purely contractual covenants. This conception of constitution has far-reaching implications for economic policy because it charts a course beyond the dichotomy between consensus and conflict. The political economy of constitution focuses on the multiple interdependencies within the social domain, which give rise to substantive arrangements among stakeholders. This approach enables the identification of policy domains, thresholds and measures congruent with the material constitution of any given society.

Brexit is part of a tectonic shift in Western politics. An alliance of socialists and conservatives rejected the status quo of remote bureaucracy, mass immigration, and multiculturalism in favor of more self-government and the protection of settled ways of life. A similar realignment is underway in Western countries where the establishment is threatened either by old nationalist parties or by new, insurgent movements that are often far-right on questions of identity and social cohesion and far-left on welfare and the economy – such as Front National in France or Trump in the U.S.A. This paradoxical convergence marks a reordering of politics that cannot be mapped according to the old categories of left versus right because they are part of the same liberal logic that is now in question. Indeed, from the 1990s onwards both the center-left and the center-right tended to fuse economic with social liberalism, notably financial and trade liberalization coupled with equality legislation in support of abstract ideals such as diversity and inclusivity. In neither case did mainstream parties consider how the privileging of minority interests might affect the rest of the economy or the majority of society. Amid the backlash against the effects of globalization such as economic injustice and the impact of mass migration on communities, the centrist consensus is breaking. While many reactions are illiberal and even anti-liberal, there are also signs that the debate is shifting in a direction that can be described as ‘post-liberal’ – committed to greater economic egalitarianism and an updated version of social (small ‘c’) conservatism.

The thesis that the secular system of modern international relations has medieval, religious roots is not new. Various accounts have documented how the Protestant Reformation and its late medieval antecedents represented a ‘revolution in ideas’ that broke away from the hierarchical arrangement of fragmented feudal polities, which was apparently characteristic of the Middle Ages, to the egalitarian society of sovereign states, which is seemingly synonymous with modernity. Linked to this is the standard story in International Relations that views the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Discovery of the New World as a radical rupture, which replaced the ‘Dark Ages’ with a new era of enlightenment progress. Such a supercessionist structuring of historical narrative reinforces the secularist bias that has dominated the discipline since the late 1950s and 1960s. As a result of the secularisation of international relations, the role of religion in international affairs has not so much been neglected and overlooked, as misrepresented and under-theorised. Most contemporary international relations scholarship lacks an account of both the historical influence and the contemporary relevance of rival theological approaches in relation to the modern international order. Recent scholarship in political thought and in the history of ideas has highlighted some of the profound continuities between the medieval and the modern period. Building on these and other accounts, this essay explores the role of theological concepts in the genesis of modern international relations. The focus is on the contrast between the Franciscan legacy and the Dominican heritage. My argument is that the modern states system and transnational markets rest on late medieval ideas, notably Franciscan conceptions of inalienable individual rights, centrally vested sovereign power, and a natural state of anarchy that requires an artificial social contract. Against secular hegemony, which, paradoxically, can be tr

The euro crisis is changing the foundations and finalities of the European Union. Amidst the combined banking and sovereign debt crisis, eurozone members have begun to put in place a banking and a fiscal union that will increasingly fuse centralised state power with an increasingly interdependent single market. In their current configuration, the single market and single currency undermine the principles of solidarity (providing mutual assistance to the most needy among Europe’s peoples and nations) and subsidiarity (self-government at the most appropriate level in accordance with the dignity of the person and human flourishing). Connected with this priority of the economic over the social is a tendency to subordinate interpersonal relationships to the central state and the global market that converge at the expense of intermediary institutions such as professional associations, trade unions, universities, free hospitals, friendly societies, artisanal producers, manufacturing and trading guilds, and religious communities. Thus the European integration and enlargement processes are part of a wider logic of disembedding the economy from society and re-embedding social relations in economic transactions, as Karl Polanyi showed. This chapter argues that the European project blends bureaucratic collectivisation with commercial commodification that Catholic Social Teaching and cognate traditions in Anglicanism and Eastern Orthodoxy reject as false alternatives. The European ‘market-state’ undermines Europe’s shared cultural identity and hollows out the universal values derived from the Christian synthesis of ancient with biblical virtues on which vibrant democracies and market economies depend. The chapter also argues the, to some, surprising thesis that Europe’s Christian heritage is a source of both social solidarity and religious pluralism that offers key resources to shape the future of the European polity across the wider Europe and the whole world. Section 1 traces

Contemporary politics is dominated by a liberal creed that champions ‘negative liberty’ and individual happiness. This creed undergirds positions on both the right and the left – free-market capitalism, state bureaucracy and individualism in social life. The triumph of liberalism has had the effect of subordinating human association and the common good to narrow self-interest and short-term utility. By contrast, post-liberalism promotes individual fulfilment and mutual flourishing based on shared goals that have more substantive content than the formal abstractions of liberal law and contract, and yet are also adaptable to different cultural and local traditions. The book apply this analysis to the economy, politics, culture, and international affairs. In each case, having diagnosed the crisis of liberalism, it proposes post-liberal alternatives, notably new concepts and fresh policy ideas. The book demonstrates that, amid the current crisis, post-liberalism is a programme that could define a new politics of virtue and the common good.

The current global economic crisis concerns the way in which contemporary capitalism has turned to financialisation as a double cure for both a falling rate of profit and a deficiency of demand. Although this turning is by no means unprecedented, policies of financialisation have depressed demand (in part as a result of the long-term stagnation of average wages) while at the same time not proving adequate to restore profits and growth. This paper argues that the current crisis is less the ‘normal’ one that has to do with a constitutive need to balance growth of abstract wealth with demand for concrete commodities. Rather, it marks a meta-crisis of capitalism that is to do with the difficulties of sustaining abstract growth as such. This meta-crisis is the tendency at once to abstract from the real economy of productive activities and to reduce everything to its bare materiality. By contrast with a market economy that binds material value to symbolic meaning, a capitalist economy tends to separate matter from symbol and reduce materiality to calculable numbers representing ‘wealth’. Such a conception of wealth rests on the aggregation of abstract numbers that cuts out all the relational goods and the ‘commons’ on which shared prosperity depends.

The current global economic crisis concerns the way in which contemporary capitalism has turned to financialisation as a double cure for both a falling rate of profit and a deficiency of demand. Although this turning is by no means unprecedented, policies of financialisation have depressed demand (in part as a result of the long-term stagnation of average wages) while at the same time not proving adequate to restore profits and growth. This paper argues that the current crisis is less the ‘normal’ one that has to do with a constitutive need to balance growth of abstract wealth with demand for concrete commodities. Rather, it marks a meta-crisis of capitalism that is to do with the difficulties of sustaining abstract growth as such. This meta-crisis is the tendency at once to abstract from the real economy of productive activities and to reduce everything to its bare materiality. By contrast with a market economy that binds material value to symbolic meaning, a capitalist economy tends to separate matter from symbol and reduce materiality to calculable numbers representing ‘wealth’. Such a conception of wealth rests on the aggregation of abstract numbers that cuts out all the relational goods and the ‘commons’ on which shared prosperity depends.

The professions of law, medicine and teaching provide a vital link between public service and the wider common good. Yet this understanding of their purpose has already broken or is close to breaking. Despite the heroic efforts of many practitioners, the professions are losing their civic moorings and too often have come to be seen as self-serving interest groups. Moreover, even the conception of professionalism founded on the performance of duties has been eroded, with transactional activity and the meeting of imposed targets coming to characterise practice. The resultant loss of trust has been detrimental to both practitioners and users of services. In Professions We Trust: Fostering virtuous practitioners in teaching, law and medicine the argument is made that members of the professions need to serve the common good in order to return law, medicine, and teaching to their proper status as vocations. This entails not just asking practitioners to reassert their sense of professional purpose that is no longer enough. What they must do is make their own values manifest and get the public to validate and see them as what they indeed want from professionals. Creating this new relational good between professions and those who call upon them is the precondition of any progress at all. Private virtues are no longer enough, what is needed is the establishment once more of the public virtues that the professions uphold and the shaping and endorsement of these by the general public.

Faced with the ‘economy of exclusion’ that brackets fraternity out of the picture, the only genuine alternative is to bind higher purposes such as individual virtue and public honour to institutions and practices that can provide prosperity and flourishing for the many. In this essay, I argue that solidarity is key to an economy that is both more ethical and more productive. Both solidarity and fraternity rest on the idea of social reciprocity: for example, balancing individual rights with mutual obligations; brokering collaboration out of conflicts of interest by appealing to the common good that serves both personal interest and social benefit. In this manner, fraternity and solidarity can foster the interpersonal trust and cooperation on which a vibrant economy and flourishing society depend. The prevailing system is based upon a double impersonalism of commercial contract between strangers, and individual entitlement in relation to the bureaucratic machine. By making social reciprocity the ultimate principle that governs both the economic and the political realm, solidarity can avoid the two extremes characterising contemporary capitalism: contract without gift, plus the unilateral and poisoned gift from nowhere that is rationalised state welfare. The alternative, which this essay defends, seeks to fuse contract with gift. In theory and practice, binding contract to gift means mutualising the market, pluralising the state and re-embedding both in the relations that constitute society. Far from being utopian, solidarity so defined is indispensable to an economy that promotes greater innovation, higher productivity and more stable growth, which in turn can sustain rising employment and superior pay. Section one explores how the meaning of solidarity and fraternity has evolved since the French Revolution elevated ‘fraternity’ alongside ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’ into a foundational value of modern politics. Section two focuses on Catholic social teaching and the ways

Adrian Pabst and John Milbank argue against the social and economic liberalism that has dominated post-war Britain, in favour of a more mutualist vision. The welfare settlement, they argue, has tended to function as a substitute for high employment, decent jobs, and widespread asset ownership – the statist model effectively (and ironically) propping up the free market one. In its place, they call for “responsible reciprocity”, a mutualised welfare settlement that is personal, local and participatory. This would demand a renewal and extension of Attlee’s original idea of a unified insurance-based social security system alongside a ‘preferential option for the poor’, moving away from means-testing, putting in place what they call a Mutual Jobs Fund, and developing locally-based welfare schemes that embed people in meaningful relationships of reciprocity.

Depuis l’Antiquité greco-romaine, la démocratie a été souvent considérée comme le régime politique le plus juste parce qu’elle conjugue l’égalité devant la loi avec la liberté de conscience et d’expression. Grâce à ce double principe les citoyens participent à la gouvernance de la cité et, en tant que gouvernés, ils ont la possibilité de critiquer les gouvernants. En revanche, la participation civique et la critique permettent au système démocratique de fonctionner et de s’améliorer en corrigeant ses propres dérives, notamment la tendance de dégénérer en oligarchie, en démagogie, en anarchie ou en tyrannie en raison de l’indifférence à la vérité et au bien transcendant. La démocratie libérale contemporaine n’est plus en mesure d’offrir une synthèse de l’égalité et de la liberté. Le libéralisme politique subordonne la participation à la représentation, ce qui renforce le pouvoir des gouvernants aux dépens des gouvernés et limite la possibilité de critique. Le libéralisme socio-culturel des années 60 et le libéralisme économique des années 80 promeuvent la liberté sans mesure et l’égalité niveleuse. Par conséquent, la double révolution libérale (voire libertine) conduit à une quadruple dérive démocratique : une convergence peut-être sans précédent entre (a) le pouvoir de la ploutocratie (dérive oligarchique), (b) le despotisme de l’opinion de masse (dérive démagogique), (c) la logique de conflits entre individus et nations (dérive anarchique) et (d) la dictature du relativisme (dérive tyrannique). Dans cette perspective il faut reconnaître que la démocratie libérale contemporaine est en train de se transformer en post-démocratie illibérale. Étant donné que les principes pérennes de liberté, d’égalité et de justice nous proviennent de l’Antiquité et du christianisme, le libéralisme ne détient aucun monopole que ce soit sur les principes de libéralité, y compris l’idée de souveraineté populaire et le droit des nations à l’auto-détermination. Par contre, la tradition chr

Adrian Pabst and John Milbank argue against the social and economic liberalism that has dominated post-war Britain, in favour of a more mutualist vision. The welfare settlement, they argue, has tended to function as a substitute for high employment, decent jobs, and widespread asset ownership – the statist model effectively (and ironically) propping up the free market one. In its place, they call for “responsible reciprocity”, a mutualised welfare settlement that is personal, local and participatory. This would demand a renewal and extension of Attlee’s original idea of a unified insurance-based social security system alongside a ‘preferential option for the poor’, moving away from means-testing, putting in place what they call a Mutual Jobs Fund, and developing locally-based welfare schemes that embed people in meaningful relationships of reciprocity.

The United States remains the only global superpower but domestic division linked to partisan politics and the ‘culture wars’ opposing secular liberals to religious conservatives is undermining the strength upon which US supremacy ultimately rests. Recent decades have witnessed the failure of mainstream political traditions to craft a common vision around which the country can rally in order to flourish at home and act as a force for good abroad. The neo-conservative dream of turning the Religious Right from a ‘moral majority’ into a permanent political hegemony failed amid the ruins of military adventures and the worst economic crisis since 1929-32. But neither Clinton nor Obama managed to offer a genuine alternative to the Republican-inspired settlement that was first ushered in by Nixon and then developed by Reagan, i.e. foreign military intervention and the complicit convergence of ‘big government’ with ‘big business’ – whose twin failure is now manifest for all to see. In the US and the rest of the world, there is a still a common misperception that Democrats are progressive while Republicans are conservative. While there might be some truth to this, it is arguably the case that both are fundamentally liberal. Beginning with the 1960s, they have progressively embraced social-cultural and economic-political liberalism. Neo-cons, Tea Party militants, and conservative Democrats will strenuously deny this characterization and profess their traditionalist credentials. But both the Republican and the Democrat establishment have implemented policies of liberalization, notably the extension of commercial contracts into hitherto non-monetized areas of human activity and an increasingly aggressive individual rights culture that have left US society simultaneously more atomized and interdependent. Instead of contesting the liberal consensus that has defined US politics for the past forty years or so, Democrats and Republicans use the ‘culture wars’ to deflect from the gro

Both modern political economy and capitalism rest on the separation of economics from ethics, which in turn can be traced to a number of shifts within philosophy and theology – notably the move away from practices of reciprocity and the common good towards the sole pursuit of individual freedom and self-interest. In his latest book, Luigino Bruni provides a compelling critique of capitalist markets and an alternative vision that fuses Aristotelian-Thomist virtue ethics with the Renaissance and Neapolitan Enlightenment tradition of ‘civil economy’. The book develops three broad yet closely intertwined theses. First, that Greco-Roman Antiquity and the Christian Middle Ages invented models of civil life that transcended tribalism and political absolutism but produced sacral communities wherein the power and privilege of the ‘few’ denied freedom and equality to the ‘many’. Second, that modernity inaugurated the primacy of free and equal individuals over communities but that it undermined and destroyed the social bonds on which societies ultimately depend. Just as in Antiquity and the Middle Ages we had communities without individuals, so in the modern era we have individuals without communities. Beyond these two similarly undesirable conditions, Bruni proposes the ‘civil economy’ model as the most radical alternative – the book’s third and most important thesis. Accordingly, the ‘civil economy’ alternative combines the relationality and sociability of all human beings with the flourishing of each and everyone by fusing self-interest with wider social benefit. Crucially, the ties of public faith (fides) and friendship (philia) can overcome the false divide between egoism and altruism in the direction of a moral market that is governed not just by the pursuit of profit but also by the practice of virtue.

Manuel Montes brings a wealth of academic knowledge and a long list of credentials at various international and intergovernmental organizations to bear on the current economic crisis in his discussion with Adrian Pabst. He argues that the Asian Crisis of 1997 was in many ways a “dress rehearsal” for the current one, and was barely confined to the developing world. In the case of both crises, he suggests, the problem was both a massive deferral on matters political and economic to the financial sector and the foisting of excessively large loans on creditors by rapacious financiers. The current model has led de facto to the public sector bearing the costs for private sector missteps and the risks of investment being socialized while, paradoxically, the financial sector remains central to economic recovery. He concedes, however, that change will be difficult to enact and that we should avoid seeking easy answers in old economic models; he suggests provocatively that the talk of the so-called “Asian model” is overblown and we should not necessarily look to Asia, despite its successes, for lessons. Montes advocates more stringent regulation of the financial sector that would not so much curtail the total of its activities as decrease the emphasis on financial products while aligning finance with real economic productivity and addressing social concerns.

The word ‘fraternity’ derives from the Latin word ‘frater’ or brother. Broadly speaking, ‘fraternity’ refers to some group or association that is constituted by a sense of brotherhood, governed by the ties of friendship and bound together by the mutual aid among its members. In contrast with solidarity which is impersonal and refers to an abstract community based on identity, fraternity is inter-personal and emphasises the diversity between equals based on differentiation (Bruni and Zamagni 2004). As such, it depends on the principle of reciprocity linked to mutual obligations. Fraternity so configured is like an ‘artificial family’ that differentiates itself from other social or civic arrangements on account of a distinct ethos that is binding upon its members (Le Bras 1940–41; Michaud-Quantin 1970; Black 2003). Far from being confined to the fellowship of small groups, fraternities are part of a wider set of reciprocal relationships in the realm of civil society that are marked by a shared sense of mutual assistance (Bruni and Sugden 2008). Fraternity – as a communal intentionality and also as set of institutions and practices – can embed the economic and the political in the social. Thus, the practice of fraternity can give rise to a genuine commonwealth whose bonds of reciprocity are not based on blood ties or professional links (e.g. Le Roy Ladurie 1982). Linked to this the Christian idea of a universal body of believers and of charity for all in need, an idea that translates into parishes and guilds organised as ‘confraternities’. In short, the idea and reality of a fraternity blends the civic with the religious, a fusion wherein the secular is not a separate, discrete space that is synonymous with the fallen world of ‘pure nature’, sinfulness, evil and violence. Much rather, the saeculum is a temporality that for catholic orthodox Christianity is ultimately structured by the liturgical cycle of praise and thanksgiving: it mediates the supernatural Good in God

The Byzantine Empire is commonly associated with political absolutism, economic feudalism, and a State Church that simultaneously sacralised power and secularised religion. This, coupled with influence of Islam and oriental cultures, appears to explain how Europe’s East has been backward and reactionary, lacking Western virtues such as the distinction of religion from political authority, constitutionalism, the rule of law, a vibrant market economy and civil society – a free space between the people and the ruler. That is why Byzantium is synonymous with decadence, repression, and the arcane arrangements of an opaque bureaucracy. As such, the Byzantine legacy is thought to be singularly responsible for Eastern authoritarianism and autocracy that contrasts sharply with Western freedom and democracy. In modern times, so this narrative goes, the East was caught in the constricting shackles of imperial and clerical domination, while the West became the harbinger of Enlightenment emancipation. This essay contends that Byzantium is key to understanding the history of pan-Europe and to chart an alternative European project for the future. Far from being simply a decadent empire whose demise heralded the rise of progressive sovereign nation-states, I shall argue that the Byzantine Commonwealth preserved the heritage of Antiquity and represented an association of nations and peoples around a shared polity, culture, and faith. This legacy offers as yet unrealised resources to build a pan-European community that the post-Cold War project of liberal market democracy purported to provide but failed to deliver. Section 1 links the neglect of the Byzantine legacy to the myth of secular Europe and contends that the rise to power of secularism was neither necessary nor normative but instead historically contingent and arbitrary. Section 2 seeks briefly to re-tell the history of Europe in a manner that restores Byzantium to its rightful place, with a particular emphasis on the some o

Until the global economic crisis struck in 2008, liberalism was the dominant ideology of our time and undoubtedly the most influential political philosophy of the last 300 years or so. Its origins, evolution and meaning are deeply contested by liberal and non-liberal thinkers alike. Many contemporary historians and political philosophers claim that liberal thought first emerged in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century and evolved into a distinct philosophical tradition during the Age of Enlightenment (e.g. Mesnard 1969; Kelly 2005, Paul et al 2007). Thus, key liberal figures such as John Locke (1632–1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) opposed what they viewed as the unholy alliance between the Church, absolutist monarchs and the feudal capitalism of the landed gentry. They defended alternative ideas such as freedom of religion, tolerance, constitutional rule, individual property and free trade. These antecedents were important, but – so the dominant narrative goes – liberalism’s evolution as an ideology and political movement only took off following the impact of the American and the French Revolution. Thereafter the liberal tradition was instrumental in the ‘three waves of democratization’ (Huntington 1991). The first wave saw liberal governments triumph in much of Europe and the Americas in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. The second wave after 1945 rolled back some of the authoritarian regimes of the interwar period and also coincided with de-colonisation, while the third wave after 1974 overthrew the military dictatorships of Southern Europe and Latin America and later the Communist regimes of the eastern bloc. Based on the fundamental principles of liberty and the equal rights of all, most advocates of liberalism defend political freedom, economic opportunity, social emancipation and equality before the law (e.g. Gray 1995, 2004). However, recent genealogical accounts suggest that the roots of liberali

How to theorise religion in International Relations (IR)? Does the concept of post-secularity advance the debate on religion beyond the ‘return of religion’ and the crisis of secular reason? This article argues that the post-secular remains trapped in the logic of secularism. First, a new account is provided of the ‘secularist bias’ that characterises mainstream IR theory: (a) defining religion in either essentialist or epiphenomenal terms; (b) positing a series of ‘antagonistic binary opposites’ such as the secular versus the religious; (c) de-sacralising and re-sacralising the public square. The article then analyses post-secularity, showing that it subordinates faith under secular reason and sacralises the ‘other’ by elevating difference into the sole transcendental term. Theorists of the post-secular such as Jürgen Habermas or William Connolly also equate secular modernity with metaphysical universalism, which they seek to replace with post-metaphysical pluralism. In contrast, the alternative that this article outlines is an international theory that develops the Christian realism of the English School in the direction of a metaphysical-political realism. Such a realism binds together reason with faith and envisions a ‘corporate’ association of peoples and nations beyond the secularist settlement of Westphalia that is centred on national states and transnational markets. By linking immanent values to transcendent principles, this approach can rethink religion in international affairs and help revive grand theory in IR.

This book seeks to retrieve metaphysics and reveals its theological nature. It shows how ancient and modern conceptions of being in terms of individual substance fail to account for the irreducible, ontological relations that characterize all things. Those relations bind immanent, finite beings to each other and also to their transcendent, infinite source in God. As such, there is no abstract individuality that is somehow more primary than being in relation. Rather, the ‘individuality’ of a thing is both existentially and essentially its metaphysical positioning in relation to other things. In turn, the relational ordering of all things suggests a priority of relation over substance. That priority intimates a first principle and final end that is itself relational – the triune God of the Christian faith. To develop this argument, the book provides a close reading of the Neo-Platonist theology that we find in the works the Church Fathers and Doctors. The main figures are St. Augustine, Boethius, Dionysius the Areopagite and St. Thomas Aquinas. Common to them is the idea that the creative relationality of the three divine persons brings everything out of nothing into existence. God gives all beings a share of Trinitarian being in which the created order participates. Thus, the argument is that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo and the Trinity provide a better account of individuation than purely philosophical theories. In short, the book combines the theological ‘turn’ of contemporary philosophy with the re-hellenization of theology that Pope Benedict XVI and other theologians have defended. Based on a genealogical account from Plato to ‘postmodernism,’ the essay argues that the Christian Neo-Platonic fusion of biblical revelation with Greco-Roman philosophy produced a theological metaphysic that surpasses ancient and modern ontology.

Does modernisation thrive in conditions of democracy or autocracy? What is the relationship between economic and political liberalisation? How do different types of democratic rule affect the economy and the well-being of citizens and societies? Following the partially failed transformation from state totalitarianism to market democracy and the ‘end of the transition paradigm’, which alternative models of development are available to Russia, other BRIC countries and rising powers such as South Africa or Indonesia? Twenty years after the collapse of Soviet communism, the current crisis of liberal ‘free-market’ capitalism and authoritarian state capitalism provides a unique opportunity for both advanced economies and emerging markets to chart an alternative path – the civil state. This chapter argues that both state-centric and market-driven models of modernisation, which have been dominant since the late nineteenth century, have neither delivered vibrant democracies nor produced prosperous economies. Instead, both models have tended to favour a centralisation of power at the expense of autonomous, self-organising communities, localities or associations and a concentration of wealth in the hands of ‘old elites’ or ‘new classes’ (or both at once). In turn, these developments have led to the progressive ‘disembedding’ (Karl Polanyi) of the economy and politics from the social relations and civic bonds that ultimately bind society together. Linked to this is a growing subordination of civil society and its intermediary institutions to the convergence of states and markets, a constellation that applies in different ways to liberal ‘market monopoly’ and authoritarian ‘state capitalism’. These and other paradoxical notions suggest that the conventional categories of state versus market, left versus right or democratic versus authoritarian no longer provide an adequate analytical framework that can describe and explain the complex interaction of democracy and modernisation.

This paper argues that the transatlantic secularisation debate lacks certain philosophical and theological concepts to make sense of politics and faith in the United States and Europe. The first part suggests that secularisation and de-secularisation theories are wedded to a secular perspective that essentialises religion. The second section links US religiosity to a post-Christian Gnostic spirituality that perpetuates the myth of American exceptionalism. The third section concedes that Europe is the most secularised continent but contends that it remains a vestigially Christian polity. What emerges is a paradox: the United States is more religious but less Christian than Europe.

The dominant mode of globalization has mostly reinforced the disembedding of states and markets from the social practices and civic virtues of civil society writ large. In this process, abstract economic values linked to instrumental reason and procedural fairness have supplanted civic virtues of courage, reasonableness and substantive justice. As such, the global ‘market-state’ reflects the centralization of power and the concentration of wealth that is undermining democratic politics and genuinely competitive economies. However, the growing economic interdependence around the world also offers new opportunities for reciprocity, mutuality and fraternity among communities and nations. To promote an ethos of responsible and virtuous action, what is required is the full breadth of political and economic reason. Christian social teaching offers conceptual and practical resources that are indispensable to the search for broader notions of rationality. Among these resources are non-instrumental conceptions of justice and the common good in the social doctrine of the Catholic Church and cognate traditions in Anglicanism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Closely connected to this is the idea of ‘civil economy’. As Pope Benedict XVI has suggested in his encyclical Caritas in veritate, ‘civil economy’ embeds state-guaranteed rights and market contracts in the social bonds and civic virtues that bind together the intermediary institutions of civil society. In this manner, it binds the ‘logic of contract’ to the ‘logic of gratuitous gift exchange’. The spirit of gift exchange translates into concrete practices of reciprocal trust and mutual assistance that underpin virtues such as reciprocal fraternity and the pursuit of the universal common good in which all can share. As such, ‘civil economy’ reconnects activities that are primarily for state-administrative or economic-commercial purposes to practices that pursue social purposes.

Does modernisation thrive in conditions of democracy or autocracy? What is the relationship between economic and political liberalisation? How do different types of democratic rule affect the economy and the well-being of citizens and societies? Following the partially failed transformation from state totalitarianism to market democracy and the ‘end of the transition paradigm’, which alternative models of development are available to Russia, other BRIC countries and rising powers such as South Africa or Indonesia? Twenty years after the collapse of Soviet communism, the current crisis of liberal ‘free-market’ capitalism and authoritarian state capitalism provides a unique opportunity for both advanced economies and emerging markets to chart an alternative path – the civil state. This chapter argues that both state-centric and market-driven models of modernisation, which have been dominant since the late nineteenth century, have neither delivered vibrant democracies nor produced prosperous economies. Instead, both models have tended to favour a centralisation of power at the expense of autonomous, self-organising communities, localities or associations and a concentration of wealth in the hands of ‘old elites’ or ‘new classes’ (or both at once). In turn, these developments have led to the progressive ‘disembedding’ (Karl Polanyi) of the economy and politics from the social relations and civic bonds that ultimately bind society together. Linked to this is a growing subordination of civil society and its intermediary institutions to the convergence of states and markets, a constellation that applies in different ways to liberal ‘market monopoly’ and authoritarian ‘state capitalism’. These and other paradoxical notions suggest that the conventional categories of state versus market, left versus right or democratic versus authoritarian no longer provide an adequate analytical framework that can describe and explain the complex interaction of democracy and modernisation.

The present essay contends that progressive readings of Smith ignore the influence of theological concepts and religious ideas on his work, notably three distinct strands: first, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural theology; second, Jansenist Augustinianism; third, Stoic arguments of theodicy. Taken together, these theological elements help explain why Smith’s moral philosophy and political economy intensifies the secular early modern and Enlightenment idea that the Fall brought about ‘radical evil’ and a ‘fatherless world’ in need of permanent divine intervention. As such, Smith views the market as divine regulation of human sinfulness and an instrument to serve God’s providential plan. Indeed, the ‘invisible hand of the market’ represents a nominalist realm where human cooperation intersects with divine providence, blending private self-interest with the public commonweal. I will also argue that Smith’s conception of a morally neutral market is ultimately incompatible with creedal Christianity, in particular orthodox catholic Christian ideas of the common good in which all can share and the practice of charity for those most in need who have been abandoned by state bureaucracy and the marketplace. The main reason is that Smith, not unlike Calvin, tends to divorce human contract from divine gift by dividing the theo-logic of gratuitous reciprocal giving from the economic logic of contract – a dualism that bears an uncanny resemblance with Suárez’s Baroque scholasticism of which Smith’s friend David Hume was rightly critical. In particular, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation theology of Calvin, Luther and Suárez sunders ‘pure nature’ from the supernatural and develops a ‘two ends’ account of human nature, according to which human beings have a natural end separate from their supernatural finality. So instead of participating in the divine oikonomia of asymmetrical gift-exchange, human society and the economy operate autonomously and are ordered towards