The freedom of citizens to form voluntary associations has long been viewed as an essential ingredient of modern civil … society. Our chapter revises the standard Tocquevillian account of associational freedom in the early United States by …

Hayek (1960) distinguishes the institutions of English freedom, which guarantee the independence of judges from … political interference in the administration of justice, from those of American freedom, which allow judges to restrain law … reflect these institutions of English and American freedom, and ask whether these rules predict economic and political freedom …

-specific characteristics such as the level of political freedom are taken into account. Political freedom is shown to explain terrorism, but it … does so in a non-monotonic way: countries in some intermediate range of political freedom are shown to be more prone to … terrorism than countries with high levels of political freedom or countries with highly authoritarian regimes. This result …

encompass the emergence of fully liberal political and social theory, and an early version of liberal political practice, in … oppositional political action that could protect pluralism and freedom …