A textual introduction to social and political theory

This text offers a fresh approach to studying social and political theory. It combines specially selected extracts from political classics with essays offering a commentary upon them. The reader is drawn into a dialogue with the Western political tradition’s principal thinkers, whose ideas provide a common currency in which to debate the problems facing modern societies. Each of the 12 chapters combines extracts for two (or in one case three) political philosophers on a key political concept with a commentary essay. Each chapter explains the key concepts of political debate, and the historical contexts which led the thinkers to their different understandings of the nature of society.