This book offers a stimulating new approach to studying social and political theory. It combines specially selected extracts from the political classics with original and insightful essays offering a commentary upon them.

Richard Bellamy is Director of the Max Weber Programme at the EUI and Professor of Political Science, University College London (UCL), University of London. Recent publications include Liberalism and Pluralism: Towards a Politics of Compromise (Routledge, 1999), Rethinking Liberalism (Continuum, 2000, 2005), Political Constitutionalism: A Republican Defence of the Constitutionality of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Citizenship: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2008), Croce, Gramsci, Bobbio and the Italian Political Tradition (ECPR Press, 2014) and (as co-editor) The Cambridge History of Twentieth Century Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Lineages of European Citizenship (Palgrave, 2004) and Making European Citizens (Palgrave, 2006). His A European Republic of Sovereign States is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.