On the eve of the independence movements in the early nineteenth century, the promulgation of the 1812 Cádiz Constitution transformed economic justice for small-scale debtors and creditors by placing magistrates in Mexico City by election instead of appointment. This change directly affected the mediation of the juicios verbales (small claims hearings for cases under 100 pesos), where tens of thousands of debtors and creditors now pressed their claims before elected local magistrates. Chapter 1 analyses this system of economic justice based on nearly 1,000 small claims records, showing that economic justice was relatively effective for ordinary people from the 1810s to the 1860s. These small claims conflicts might seem a petty world of negligible amounts and narrow-minded disputes, but, analysed together, they revise a long-standing historiographical assumption among scholars that Mexico did not have strong property rights in the early nineteenth century. Instead, this chapter shows that Cádiz liberalism established a judicial institution to protect property rights, especially for creditors, that enjoyed a broad legitimacy well into Mexican independence.

The Munich conference notoriously symbolizes appeasement and its failure. The issue under dispute concerns territory – specifically, the Sudetenland. This territorial dispute was initially internal to Czechoslovakia, a disagreement between the Sudetenland Germans and the central government of Czechoslovakia. Eventually, however, the nationalistic element to the dispute brought in the German government. The major powers avoided war because the French and British prime ministers – Daladier and Chamberlain, respectively – forced the Czechoslovakian president, Benes, to accept the peaceful transfer of the Sudetenland to Germany, based on the norm of nationalism (or self-determination). As this case shows, when actors widely agree on the norms through which territory can change hands, the probability of war declines. Nevertheless, this peace was short-lived. Indeed, the afterword to the chapter describes how Hitler invaded Prague shortly thereafter. The Danzig–Poland crises then followed. By that point, Britain and France had abandoned appeasement and shifted to balancing against Hitler; they allied with Poland and gave Hitler an ultimatum to try to stop his invasion. This conventional deterrence failed, and the Second World War began in Europe.

This case critiques liberalism in an example about best serving a Latinx community. It posits that it is crucial that community programs geared towards a minority group incorporate that group’s culture and priorities into their programming. Accepting the way things have always been does not ensure a culturally competent strategy. CRT tenet critique of liberalism provides us with a foundation for an effective strategy for transformation where race and culture are centered in practice and interventions, specifically in regards to the Latinx community.

This chapter covers 1946–50, when the Democrat Party challenged the ruling Republican People’s Party, looking at some of the young activists whose efforts helped the party achieve victory. These include Samet Ağaoğlu, a well-connected bureaucrat and intellectual, who played a key role in promoting the Democrat Party as a “liberal” party seeking to limit the role of the state. The chapter also looks beyond campaigns in Istanbul and Ankara to consider the ways in which the party took shape in the provinces, specifically Balıkesir and Malatya. The first was a province on the west coast with a majority Sunni/Turkish population; the second was an eastern province with a sizeable Kurdish/Alevi population. In both cases, we see that political parties were closely allied with wealthy landowners, and the difference in affiliation tended to depend on which local faction had established a closer relationship with the state c. 1946. In other words, while intellectuals such as Ağaoğlu promoted the DP as an anti-statist party, in tune with postwar liberalism, we see from early on that, at the provincial level, supporters were more concerned with who controlled the state.

This concluding chapter reflects on the relationship between transitional justice, power, and law at the current global conjuncture of the alleged end or “eclipse” of liberal democracy and human rights and the rise of rightwing authoritarian populism and fascism. It recapitulates the major interventions of the book that critically interrogate the binary of liberalism and authoritarianism and the abstract idealization of the virtues of transparency and the right to know in dominant transitional justice and human rights politics. The chapter organizes the concluding reflections under five headings that draw attention to the making of rightwing authoritarian populist legalism and transitional justice; the problem of Eurocentrism; capitalist and nation-state-centric politics of transitional justice; and reflections on the alternative notions of truth and political responsibility that the book has developed as part of its attempt to envision socially transformative justice beyond moral autopsy and heated political struggles.

In this chapter we explore the central features of liberalism as they relate to issues of international security and how liberalism believes states can work together to achieve security. First, we examine the historical evolution of liberalism generally before going on to dissect the central features of liberalism related to security. For unlike realism, liberalism holds that the world need not be a place of continuous violent conflict; the international system can change, humanity can better itself. That said, realism and liberalism share many of the same assumptions about international relations and international security. This chapter concludes with a look at how liberalism manifests itself in international security policy.

The chapter analyzes the intersection of population control policies, Cold War dynamics, and racial considerations in the post–World War II era. It highlights the challenges faced by Western states in influencing birth control policies in postcolonial countries, with a focus on the perceived link between population growth and the spread of Communism. Key figures like Dudley Kirk and Frank Lorimer advocated for redefining relationships with developing nations to counter Communist expansion, emphasizing economic support and the reduction of fertility rates over military intervention. The chapter also explores the evolution of demographic viewpoints, moving away from racist eugenic traditions toward more democratic and liberal approaches to population control. The chapter provides insights into how intellectuals grappled with the unprecedented scale of population growth and its potential impact on global stability and resources, highlighting the strategic evolution of overpopulation discourse from Western industrialized countries to influence birth rates in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Chapter 1 retraces the history of the critical reception of Hegel’s social and political thought, from the publication of the Philosophy of Right to the present. The chapter discusses the charges of conservatism raised by Hegel’s first critics, the liberal rehabilitation of his work in the second half of the twentieth century and the communitarian interpretation introduced in British and American debates from the 1980s. Finally, the chapter focuses on the ‘middle ground’ approach favoured today by most Hegelian scholars, based on a compromise between the liberal and the communitarian positions. This kind of interpretation is undoubtedly a step forward from the one-sided approach of many previous readings. However, by favouring the practical dimension of Hegel’s arguments over their logical or metaphysical foundations (an attitude referred to as methodological pragmatism) and by regarding the social dimension of freedom as an adjective rather than a substantive component of his position (an attitude referred to as structural individualism), this interpretative trend ends up reiterating the liberal framework Hegel seeks to transcend.

The Introduction reflects on Hegel’s unique approach to social and political philosophy, the distance that separates him from other modern thinkers and the contemporary reception of his ideas. Although the charges of conservatism and intolerance raised by Hegel’s early critics have since been discredited, the current tendency to regard him as a social-minded liberal fails to capture the true depth of his political thought. And this failure follows, it is argued, from the tendency to read the Philosophy of Right in a linear or horizontal manner, as a progression in which each dialectical stage is merely completed or expanded by subsequent ones. Introducing the book’s main thesis, the chapter claims that only a vertical reading, which recognizes the progression’s transformative nature, can do justice to Hegel’s overall argument. Moreover, anticipating the critical reconstruction of the Philosophy of Right undertaken in the book’s second part, it is claimed that such a reading leads beyond Hegel’s own political and economic views, towards a more progressive vision of modern society.

The Conclusion offers a brief recapitulation of the book’s main argument, highlighting its critical and reconstructive components. First, the criticism of the liberal reading that has come to dominate Hegelian scholarship is reiterated. The rational state envisioned in the Philosophy of Right, grounded in a dialectical synthesis of the particular and the universal dimensions of human freedom, is irreducible to the liberal state found today in most democratic nations. Second, the chapter insists on the need to move beyond Hegel’s own political and economic choices in order to bring out the true implications of his views. As argued throughout the book, only a fully democratic state, in which political and economic power are shared among all the citizens, can be deemed rational, in Hegelian terms. Finally, it is suggested that this alternative reading is not only more faithful to Hegel’s philosophical vision, but also more relevant for contemporary critical theory.

Chapter 6 focuses on the political structure of a rational state. In the Philosophy of Right, by handing the bulk of the state’s political power to unelected agents, Hegel is in effect compromising the reconciliation of particular and collective interests he regards as essential to a rational political order. However, his wariness of democracy is more than a mere relapse into some pre-modern, reactionary standpoint. This chapter argues that Hegel is right to denounce the atomism favoured by mass electoral systems, which tend to reduce the citizens’ political identity to that of individual voters, but that he is wrong to dismiss mass democracy altogether. His critique is overly severe because his conception of democracy presupposes the liberal logic of civil society, which he attempts to sublate in a strictly political manner. As this chapter seeks to show, the atomism he argues against is best avoided not by limiting democracy, but by extending it to the economic sphere. In a democracy that is both political and economic, individuals are no longer mere atoms, but part of collective social units organized around commonly held goals.