Paul A. Rahe

Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty

Outside the scholarly world, almost no one has any idea who Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu was and what he did. There was a time, however, when his was a name to be conjured with, for the author of The Spirit of Laws bestrode the second half of the eighteenth century like a colossus. In this volume, award-winning historian Paul A. Rahe examines the reasons for Montesquieu's fame and argues that he deserved his reputation and needs to be studied with close attention today. Read more and available at Amazon.com

Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift

Rahe argues that Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Tocqueville all anticipated the modern liberal republic's propensity to drift in the direction of “soft despotism”—a condition that arises within a democracy when paternalistic state power expands and gradually undermines the spirit of self-government. Such an eventuality, feared by Tocqueville in the nineteenth century, has now become a reality throughout the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. So Rahe asserts, and he explains what must be done to reverse this unfortunate trend. Read more and available at Amazon.com

Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory Under the English Republic

Modern republicanism—distinguished from its classical counterpart by its commercial character and its jealous distrust of those in power, by its use of representative institutions, and by its employment of a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances—owes an immense debt to the republican experiment conducted in England between 1649, when Charles I was executed, and 1660, when Charles II was crowned. Though abortive, this experiment left a legacy in the political science articulated both by its champions, John Milton, Marchamont Nedham, and James Harrington, and by its sometime opponent and ultimate supporter Thomas Hobbes. This volume examines these four thinkers, situates them with regard to the novel species of republicanism first championed in the 1520s by Niccolò Machiavelli, and examines the debt that he and they owed the Epicurean tradition in philosophy and the political science crafted by the Arab philosophers Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroës. Available at Amazon.com

Republics Ancient & Modern I: The Ancient Regime in Classical Greece

The first in a three part series, Regimes bridges the gap between political theory, comparative history and government, and constitutional prudence, Rahe challenges prevailing interpretations of ancient Greek republicanism, early modern political thought, and the founding of the American republic. Read reviews of Republics, Ancient and Modern or Available on Amazon.com

Republics Ancient & Modern II: New Modes & Orders in Early Modern Political Thought

Republics Ancient & Modern III: Inventions of Prudence, Constituting the American Regime

The third volume continues the discussion of republican thought through the American founding period. Available at Amazon.com

Machiavelli's Liberal Republic Legacy

The significance of Machiavelli's political thinking for the development of modern republicanism is a matter of great controversy. In this volume, a distinguished team of political theorists and historians reassess the evidence, examining the character of Machiavelli's own republicanism; charting his influence on Marchamont Nedham, James Harrington, John Locke, Algernon Sidney, John Trenchard, Thomas Gordon, David Hume, the baron de Montesquieu, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton; and arguing that, while Machiavelli was himself no liberal, he did set the stage for the emergence in England of liberal republicanism, he provided the foundations for a moderation of commonwealth ideology by the exponents of commercial society, and he exercised considerable, if circumscribed, influence on the statesmen who founded the American Republic. Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy will be of great interest to political theorists, early modern historians, and students of the American political tradition. Available at Amazon.com

Montesquieu's Science of Politics: Essays on The Spirit of Laws

Co-edited with David W. Carrithers and Michael A. Mosher, a collection of essays dedicated to analyzing Montesquieu's contributions to political science, reviewing some of the most vexing controversies that have arisen in the interpretation of his thought. Available at Amazon.com