From Republicanism to Liberalism: Corruption and Empire in Enlightenment Political Thought
Debates about the relationship between empire and corruption were prominent in eighteenth century British political thought. Some of these debates were framed within classical Republican or Civic Humanist discourses, of which Charles-Louis Montesquieu and Adam Ferguson were emblematic exemplars. Within the terms of this discourse, corruption represented a collective moral failure, and was closely connected to a supposed cycle of imperial greatness and decline. Yet, similar fears of empire motivated the articulation of more modern, proto-liberal notions of corruption as forms of activity that blurred the boundaries between private interests and public responsibilities. In his analysis of the economic distortions and trading monopolies caused by empire (especially the East India Company), Adam Smith articulated and pioneered this proto-liberal concept of corruption. Between Smith’s proto-liberal and Montesquieu/Ferguson’s Republican concepts of corruption, however, stood the work of Edmund Burke. Motivated in part by concerns about empire, Burke shared Smith’s strong opposition to the EIC, an organisation he considered to be corrupt and corrupting. Emerging from his work, then, was an understanding of corruption that shared the Republican emphasis on moral decay, but also anticipated a proto-liberal concern with keeping distinct the boundaries between public (political) and private (economic) activity. In the work of these four thinkers corruption thus emerges as a central concept in the transition from Republican to Liberal political thought in the late eighteenth century.
Edmund Burke and India : political morality and empire
Convinced of corruption and tyranny in the Indian empire, Burke led a campaign to reform its administration and bring the offenders to account. Relating Burke's views on India to ideas expressed in his other writings, Whelan offers a comprehensive assessment of Burke's political theory as a whole.
PLEASURE, POWER, AND THE PURSUIT OF COMMUNISM: SOVIET YOUTH AND STATE-SPONSORED POPULAR CULTURE DURING THE EARLY COLD WAR, 1945-1968
art, with certain students accused of “showing political immaturity, failing to understand the Party’s positions on art.” This episode constituted part of a broader crackdown on abstract art by the Khrushchev administration from late 1962, precipitated the the Soviet leader’s derision of such art forms in December 1962 at the Manege exhibit. Such instances demonstrate the limitations of the top-level promotion of youth grassroots initiative, as the Khrushchev leadership reigned in youth autonomy when it threatened to go beyond the boundaries of the permissible. The dates cited above have particular resonance, since both 1957-58 and 1962-63 represent two periods when those at the top of the Party hierarchy moved away from pursuing a more pluralistic, tolerant policy course, due to anxiety inspired by both sharpening Cold War hostilities and domestic developments. In these periods, official rhetoric censured what it labeled as 639 TsAOPIM, f. 635, op. 13, d. 546, ll. 56-57. This is likely related to criticism of the Party associated with the fallout from the Secret Speech and the Hungary invasion. For more, see Polly Jones, “From the Secret Speech to the Burial of Stalin: Real and Ideal Responses to De-Stalinization,” in Jones ed., The Dilemmas, 41-63. 640 TsAOPIM, f. 6083, op. 1, d. 52, ll. 166-67. 641 Susan E. Reid, “In the Name of the People: The Manege Affair Revisited,” Kritika 6.4 (Fall 2005): 673716. 642 On these anxieties, see Dobson, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer, 156-88.