Bøker av Harold J. Laski

First Published in 1940, The American Presidency is the first full length study of the presidency in action in America to be written by an Englishman. Professor Laski offers a new theory of the place of the presidency in American life.

Laski's Theory of the State This influential study develops aspects of Laski's theory of the state, ideas he introduced in his first important publication, Authority in the Modern State (1919). According to Laski, the state is not a supreme entity; it is one association among many that must compete for the people's loyalty and obedience. Harold J. Laski [1893-1950] was a teacher, political scientist, and leader of the Labour Party. His ideas influenced the work of Felix Frankfurter and Oliver Wendell Holmes, who were two of his closest friends. His work also influenced Jawaharlal Nehru who would go on to become India's first prime minister. xi, [iii], 317 pp.

Prisoners of Want examines the experience of the unemployed and their protests in France in the interwar years. Little has been written on the experience of unemployment in France despite the wealth of material - social and medical investigations, government reports, novels, memoirs and newspapers - that can be used to reconstruct the representation and reality of the experience. Assessing the impact of unemployed protest upon the authorities (in terms of policy and the longer term development of the welfare state) this book places the role of the unemployed in the wider context of European social movements in the 1930s, as well as considering the significance of unemployed protests upon the French collective memory. The part played by the French Communist Party in the creation and leadership of the movements of the unemployed, and the range of activities these movements undertook, is also explored. From self-help to protests, hunger marches, demonstrations, relief work, school strikes, town hall occupations and riots; all were strategies that the unemployed utilised to draw attention to their plight. Crucial to explaining the characteristics of these movements is an understanding of the dynamics of protest and how different tactics were selected during their development, particularly the extent to which tactical shifts were related to the nature of the response of the authorities. By exploring these under-researched facets of political life, a much fuller understanding of French society during the turbulent interwar years is offered.

Beginning with the new worlds of the Renaissance and the Reformation, this book traces the growth of liberal doctrine through the advent of the French Revolution