POL SCI 4 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Liberal Democracy, Political Philosophy, Consumer Choice
18 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Increasingly, political freedom is equated with free markets and personal choice. Spread of markets to all corners of the world. This was brought about by the collapse of state communism and the truimph of liberal democracy. We have lost the sense of what freedom means as a political term instead of a personal term, framed as personal choice. Freedom has vanished from the vocabulary of the left and increasingly characterizes the right. Exceptions for the right: reproductive freedom, civil rights etc. Left aligned with equality (achieved through regulation and restriction) Political theory: domain of political science drawing upon literature, history, philosophy, critical analysis of text. 2 objectives of the course (1) political freedom (2) introduction to political theory as mode of inquiry. At the heart of social movements - women fighting against sexual harassment, african americans battling racial profiling in various contexts. The second meaning of freedom has dominated and itself narrowed to a market sense.
