ENGLISH

Bentham and Bureaucracy

By L. J. Hume

Book information

Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Year
2004
ISBN
052152606X, 9780521526067
Open Library ID
OL7744540M
Language
english
Format
DJVU
Filesize
2 MB (1686392 bytes)
Series
Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics
Pages
334\334
DPI
300
Time added
2011-04-18 11:31:18

Description

Most accounts of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) deal with him as a prophet of either utilitarianism or of liberal democracy. This book discusses a less familiar but very important aspect of his political thought: his theory of how government institutions should be organised in order to function as efficient and yet responsive guardians of the community's interests. It thus focuses on his programme for he executive and judicial branches of government rather than for the legislature and the electorate. Dr Hume suggests that eighteenth-century political thought was richer in ideas about government that has usually been allowed, but that Bentham's special qualities of mind enabled him to widen and deepen those ideas much further than his contemporaries could have foreseen.

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