INTRODUCTION
Huge industrial and social changes took place in the years that followed the end of World War II. The scale and industrialization of warfare, the decline of the great colonial powers, and the ideological battles between communism and free-market capitalism all had a profound effect on political thought. A world recovering from human tragedy on such a scale urgently needed to be reinterpreted, and new prescriptions for human development and organization were required.
Across western Europe, a new political consensus emerged, and mixed economies of private and public businesses were developed. At the same time, new demands for civil and human rights emerged across the world in the immediate postwar period, and independence movements gathered support in Europe’s colonies.
War and the state
There were many questions for political thinkers that plainly stemmed from the experience of global conflict. World War II had seen an unprecedented expansion of military capacity, with a dramatic impact on the industrial base of the major powers. This new environment provided the platform for a collision of ideas between East and West, and the Korean and Vietnam wars, alongside countless smaller dramas, were in many ways proxies for conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States.
The nuclear bombs that had brought World War II to an end also signaled an era of technological developments in warfare that threatened humanity on a terrifying scale. These developments led many writers to reconsider the ethics of warfare. Theorists such as Michael Walzer explored the moral ramifications of battle, developing the ideas put forward by Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo.
Other writers, such as Noam Chomsky and Smedley D. Butler, explored the configurations of power at play behind the new military-industrial complex. In recent years, the emergence of global terrorism, and the subsequent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, have thrown these debates into sharp relief.
The period immediately after the war also raised serious questions about the appropriate role of the state. In the postwar period, European democracies established the foundations of the welfare state, and across Eastern Europe communism took hold. In response, political thinkers began to consider the implications of these developments, particularly in relation to individual liberty. New understandings of freedom and justice were developed by writers such as Friedrich Hayek, John Rawls, and Robert Nozick, and the position of individuals in relation to the state began to be reconsidered.
Feminism and civil rights
From the 1960s onward, a new, overtly political strand of feminism emerged, inspired by writers such as Simone de Beauvoir, who questioned the position of women in politics and society. Around the same time, the battle for civil rights gathered pace—with the decline of colonialism in Africa and the popular movement against racial discrimination in the United States—driven by thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and inspirational activists including Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. Once more, questions of power, and particularly civil and political rights, formed the main preoccupation of political thinkers.
Global concerns
During the 1970s, concern for the environment grew into a political force, boosted by the ideas about “deep ecology” of Arne Naess and coalescing into the green movement. As issues such as climate change and the end of cheap oil increasingly enter the mainstream, green political thinkers look set to become increasingly influential.
In the Islamic world, politicians and thinkers have struggled to agree on the place of Islam in politics. From Maududi’s vision of an Islamic state to Shirin Ebadi’s consideration of the role of women in Islam, and through the rise of al-Qaeda to the hope offered by the “Arab Spring,” this is a dynamic and contested political arena.
The challenges of a globalized world—with industries, cultures, and communication technologies that transcend national boundaries—bring with them fresh sets of political problems. In particular, the financial crisis that erupted in 2007 has led political thinkers to reconsider their positions, seeking new solutions to the new problems.