Political Theory

Leigh Jenco is Professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has taught at universities all over the world, including Singapore, Taiwan, Germany and the US. Her research specialism is Chinese political thought, from the late imperial to the modern era. Her publications include Changing Referents: Learning Across Space and Time in China and the West (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Making the Political: Founding and Action in the Political Theory of Zhang Shizhao (Cambridge University Press, 2010). She is also co-editor (with Murad Idris and Megan Thomas) of the definitive Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory (Oxford University Press, 2020). Paulina Ochoa Espejo is Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia in the USA. She has written on democratic theory, territorial rights, and Latin American political thought. She is the author of On Borders: Territories, Legitimacy and the Rights of Place (Oxford University Press, 2020) and The Time of Popular Sovereignty: Process and the Democratic State (Penn State University Press, 2011) co–editor of the Oxford Handbook of Populism (Oxford University Press, 2017) and of articles in Political Theory the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Political Philosophy and the Journal of Politics among others. She has taught “Introduction to Political Theory” for almost 20 years, both at liberal arts colleges and research universities. Murad Idris is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan in the US. He writes on war, peace, empire, anticolonialism, religion, and Islamic political thought. He is the author of War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2019) and co-editor with Leigh Jenco and Megan Thomas of The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Critical Times, Political Theory, Modern Intellectual History, and European Journal of Political Theory, among others. At the University of Michigan, he teaches classes that span the history of ancient, modern, and contemporary political thought.

Chapter 1: What is political theory?
Chapter 2: Great texts
Chapter 3: The origins of politics
Chapter 4: War and violence
Chapter 5: The state and its alternatives
Chapter 6: Political action
Chapter 7: Property and territory
Chapter 8: Equality and hierarchy
Chapter 9: Ritual
Chapter 10: Development and progress
Chapter 11: Gender, race, and colonialism