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Interpretative Realism and Prescriptive Realism
... Bernard Williams' posthumously published political-theoretical writings have been a major source of inspiration for 'doing realism', inspiring both liberal and more radical forms of realism, and are relatable to prescriptive and interpretive understandings of realism (see e.g. Freeden, 2012;Horton, 2017). 1 One important aspect of these writings that has thus far received sparse attention is that Williams seeks to develop his distinctively political thought through connecting political theory closely to the practices of politics in two key ways. First, he uses a diagnosis of the conditions of legitimation in current politics to situate his approach, which he boils down to the slogan 'LEG + Modernity = Liberalism' (Williams, 2005, p. 10). ...
... Williams' shortcomings may turn out to be productive: they could serve as a useful critical foil for thinking about how to practice realist political theory, because they could be viewed as closely connected to two more general problems that political realism is facing, namely the tension between shallow and deep understandings of reality (Edyvane, 2020;Frazer, 2018) and the dichotomy between interpretive and prescriptive forms of realism (Freeden, 2012). The challenge the first problem presents to practicing realism is that identifying exclusively with either the shallow or deep understanding would make it impossible for realism to connect to as comprehensive as possible a spectrum of manifestations of political thought and action. ...
... The other problem is the dichotomy between interpretive and prescriptive approaches to realism. A potent line of criticism developed by Freeden (2012) and Horton (2017) contends that realists do not depart significantly from their opponents, because in their focus on the prescription of norms or principles, realists ignore everyday political expressions just as much as idealists or moralists. Interpretive realism, in contrast, is mainly driven by the aim of understanding not just 'the fundamental concepts of political discourse and argument and at elucidating the structures of different ways of thinking about politics' (Horton, 2017, p. 499), but also 'the place of leadership, the role of contingency, the idea of political judgment and the meaning of political possibility' (Horton, 2017, p. 499). ...
This paper seeks to show that Bernard Williams’ approach to legitimacy falls short of its aspirations in ways that cast doubt on its fitness for guiding the practice of future realist political theory. More precisely, the paper focuses on the shortcomings of Williams’ realism in establishing a connection to (the practices of) politics, and on how to redeem those shortcomings in a way that would render them suitable for guiding future realist political theory. The first substantive section of the paper considers how compatible Williams’ commitments to diagnosis and interpretation are, with how he spells out his realist thought. The second section argues that making good on Williams’ commitments requires realist political theorists to rethink the sources of their insights and the basis of their claims, and sketches pragmatist and ethnographic approaches as promising examples of how realists could match theoretical commitments in practice.
... Bernard Williams' posthumously published political-theoretical writings have been a major source of inspiration for 'doing realism', inspiring both liberal and more radical forms of realism, and are relatable to prescriptive and interpretive understandings of realism (see e.g. Freeden, 2012;Horton, 2017). 1 One important aspect of these writings that has thus far received sparse attention is that Williams seeks to develop his distinctively political thought through connecting political theory closely to the practices of politics in two key ways. First, he uses a diagnosis of the conditions of legitimation in current politics to situate his approach, which he boils down to the slogan 'LEG + Modernity = Liberalism' (Williams, 2005, p. 10). ...
... Williams' shortcomings may turn out to be productive: they could serve as a useful critical foil for thinking about how to practice realist political theory, because they could be viewed as closely connected to two more general problems that political realism is facing, namely the tension between shallow and deep understandings of reality (Edyvane, 2020;Frazer, 2018) and the dichotomy between interpretive and prescriptive forms of realism (Freeden, 2012). The challenge the first problem presents to practicing realism is that identifying exclusively with either the shallow or deep understanding would make it impossible for realism to connect to as comprehensive as possible a spectrum of manifestations of political thought and action. ...
... The other problem is the dichotomy between interpretive and prescriptive approaches to realism. A potent line of criticism developed by Freeden (2012) and Horton (2017) contends that realists do not depart significantly from their opponents, because in their focus on the prescription of norms or principles, realists ignore everyday political expressions just as much as idealists or moralists. Interpretive realism, in contrast, is mainly driven by the aim of understanding not just 'the fundamental concepts of political discourse and argument and at elucidating the structures of different ways of thinking about politics' (Horton, 2017, p. 499), but also 'the place of leadership, the role of contingency, the idea of political judgment and the meaning of political possibility' (Horton, 2017, p. 499). ...
... The other intervention which is usually sidelined in the debates, because it seems to stand mostly orthogonally to them, is Michael Freeden's "interpretive realism" (Freeden 2012;see also 2005. Here the study of the structure of political thinking is the way to reach a more realistic political theorizing. ...
... Freeden's position marks an attempt to separate the structure of political thinking from "ethico-political philosophizing" which looks at politics from a predominantly normative point of view (Freeden 2009). This is the basis for Freeden's critique of other realists as sharing the orientation toward prescription of ethical norms or at least guiding action in any normatively relevant way with the liberal-normativist mainstream (Freeden 2012). ...
... If political theory is realist, it fails on the dimension of critical distance. This is the shorthand for the dilemma which is the basis of an argument for the division of labor which can be found in the debates (Valentini 2012: 659;Farrelly 2007;Freeden 2012;Hamlin and Stemplowska 2012;Stemplowska 2008: 332-333;Swift 2008: 387; see also the discussions of the dichotomy in chapter 5, and, applied to the question of legitimacy, as a tension between realist and liberal-normativist commitments, in chapter 6). Different ways to react to this dichotomy come to mind: First, a mixture of the idealist and realist aspects, second to try to keep the horns of this dilemma apart, doing idealist and realist political theory separatelythis is more or less the choice of the division of laborand, third, to find a novel approach to conceive of idealist and realist properties and of the scope of their criticism. ...
This thesis intervenes into the current debates about realism in political theory. Realism is a new challenge to the liberal mainstream in political theory. However, the extent to which realism, in its heterogeneity, actually has the potential to pose such a challenge, has thus far remained largely unexplored. The thesis offers the first differentiated assessment of this potential of realism and, finding it limited, embarks on a radicalization of realism. Having established a critical foil through a political reading of Rawls’ Political Liberalism, I divide contributions to realism into those who aim to revise, reform and reject liberal-normative political theory. This ‘ordering perspective’ of realism allows analyzing the thus far neglected similarities between realists and their liberal-normative opponents. This analysis suggests that the less critical subdivisions of realism limit themselves to be internal correctives to the liberal mainstream. However, even the most critical and challenging of the prevalent subdivisions of realism, which I call ‘vision of politics’ realism, remains caught in tensions between realist and liberal-normative commitments. In reaction to this limitation, my re-interpretation of Raymond Geuss’ realism as a modification of early Critical Theory through Foucauldian elements provides the basis for the development of a radical realism. This radical realism departs radically from the prevalent understandings of liberal-normative political theory and transcends the limitations of realism through changing the relationship between political theory and its political context. Radical realism brings the tensions and entanglements between normative and descriptive aspects of political theorizing into view and bases its critical purchase and practical orientation on the diagnostic examination of the political context. A discussion of the criteria for legitimacy in public justification liberalism, realism and radical realism finally ties together the argumentation of the thesis and offers a reflection on its bearing on a key question of contemporary political theory.
... According to Berlin, the notions of positive and negative freedom are answers to different questions. 4 He claims that the concept of negative freedom is the answer to the question asking the domain within which a person is able to do whatever he wants to do without interference by others [1, p.169]. On the other hand, the concept of positive freedom "is involved in the answer to the question 'What, or who, is the source of control or interference that can determine someone to do. . . ...
... 2 See Freeden [4] for further discussion on the relationship between interpretivism and realism. ...
Fabian Wendt [20] argues that political realism is not capable of explaining how the state’s moral right to rule over its subjects is generated. I believe that Wendt’s criticism is not sound because his position relies on the false implicit assumption that realism and moralism ask the same philosophical questions on state authority. I contend that it is fallacious to evaluate the realist account of legitimacy by the standards of moralism, and vice versa, as these two accounts arrive at different conceptions of legitimacy by raising different sets of philosophical questions. The two sets of philosophical questions are not reducible to each other. The realist account of legitimacy does not aim to explain what the moralist account of legitimacy aims to explain.
... It is a serious mistake of Williams's critics to suppose he implicitly relied upon some (unrealistic, fantastical) consensus view of politics whereby states are only legitimate if all those subject to its power accept it as such (Freeden, 2012;Rossi, 2013;Sleat, 2010). His was a more basic analytic contention that in order for there to be such a thing as politics at all, something has to be said to those being coerced. ...
... For an overview, see Geuss (1981). 5 Critics such as Freeden are thus mistaken in accusing Williams of an inability to recognise the plurality of political-philosophic outlooks within modern liberal society (Freeden, 2012). Williams would have no problem recognising that many people are not liberals, and, on the other hand, he would likely have agreed with Rawls that one of the proper functions of political philosophy is the 'Hegelian' task of reconciling us to our circumstances when those circumstances deserve our reconciliation (Rawls, 2001, p. 3). ...
Bernard Williams was an ethical sceptic, but he was also a proponent of liberalism. To what extent can one finally be both? This article explores this question through a particular emphasis on Williams, but seeks to draw wider lessons regarding what ethical scepticism should and should not amount to. It shows how ethical scepticism can be reconciled with a commitment to what Williams, following Judith Shklar, called ‘the liberalism of fear’, which is revealed as an ecumenical outlook for different stripes of ethical sceptic. The article concludes by drawing some lessons for the recent ‘realist’ turn in political theory.
... 45 As such, "thinking ideologically is an inevitable subdivision of thinking politically-that is to say, all thinking politically is embedded in ideological frameworks that showcase thinking about politics." 46 To think about politics without thinking about ideology or, maybe worse, to think about it in such a way that assumes ideology is something necessarily distorting to be overcome, is therefore a mark against any theory that makes a claim to being realistic. But the deeper challenge this poses for radical realists is that if ideologies fix the meaning of our political concepts, it is not clear on an account such as Freeden's that the very aspiration of a nonideological social order freed of distorted understanding can make sense. ...
Is it possible to do ideology critique without morality? In recent years a small group of theorists has attempted to develop such an account and, in doing so, makes claim to a certain sort of “radical realism” distinguished by the ambition to ground political judgments and prescriptions in nonmoral values, principles, or concepts. This essay presents a twofold critique of this realist ideology critique (RIC) by first offering an internal critique of the approach and then arguing that the very attempt to do political theory generally—and ideology critique more specifically—in a way that abjures morality is misguided. In doing so, I contribute both to current debates around “new” ideology critiques and to contested questions about what it means to do political theory realistically.
... Williams' realist thought on legitimacy and legitimation has served as a cornerstone of debates in political theory about the delimitation of politics (e.g., Cozzaglio & Greene, 2019;Cross, 2020;Forrester, 2012;Freeden, 2012;Hall, 2015;Jubb, 2015;Prinz, 2022;Sagar, 2018;Sleat, 2013Sleat, , 2014b. More important still, his legitimacy-focused account of politics is an example of a widely used conceptualization of politics. ...
In Western democracies, people harbor feelings of disgust or hatred for politics. Populists and technocrats even seemingly question the value of politics. Populists cry that they are not politicians and that politics is necessarily corrupt. From the opposite side, technocrats view politics as a pointless constraint on enacting the obviously right policies. Are Western democracies facing a rejection of politics? And is politics worth defending? This paper offers a vindicatory genealogy of politics, vindicating the need human beings have for this practice and clarifying the extent of its contemporary rejections. To achieve these contributions, the paper connects the literatures on pragmatic genealogy and on political realism, revealing how they can complement each other. Following pragmatic genealogy, the practice of politics is vindicated, because it meets an inevitable functional need for collectively binding decision-making. However, and importantly, political realism allows us to see that the functional mechanisms through which politics fulfills this need vary contextually and thus require careful empirical scrutiny. The paper thus dispels confusion about seeming rejections of politics by clarifying what is unavoidable, and what is revisable about politics.
... Further, we do not wish to suggest that contemporary realist thought in toto fails to distinguish between these two conceptions of reality and succumbs to Platonist temptations we identify (see Prinz and Rossi 2017, Rossi 2019, Honig and Stears 2011, Freeden 2012. Finally, though most realists fail to pay sufficient attention to the distinction between these two styles of realism, our discussion uncovers an overlooked schism within realist thought which casts further doubt on the tendency to portray realism as a coherent tradition which promotes a 'common perspective' (pace Sigwart 2013, 409;Galston 2010;Philp 2012;Sleat 2018, see also Rossi 2019, Cross, 2021: between contemporary realists whose accounts comprise a melange of contradictory elements (e.g. ...
The realist injunction to attend to the ‘realities of politics’ when we do political philosophy, though obviously appropriate, is highly platitudinous. By drawing on the underappreciated realist insights of Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire and Hannah Arendt, we elaborate a neglected distinction between two antagonistic conceptions of political reality – the realism of surface and the realism of depth – and consider its implications for the recent realist turn. We illustrate how that distinction reveals some neglected tensions and incoherencies within contemporary realism and go some way towards untangling and addressing these. Specifically, we enrich the realist charge and highlight two directions which realist scholarship can pursue in its endeavour to offer a meaningful alternative to moralism: an emphasis on i) Vichian fantasia – a kind of knowledge which entails historical awareness but also sensitivity to philology; and ii) suffering and injustice as a basis for critique and for developing a suitable political sphere.
... Correctly separating contingent from universal features of politics is a fundamental challenge for realism(Erman and Moller 2018, 531) but cannot be addressed here. Realists are aware of the risk of ideological universalisations(Freeden 2012; Prinz and Rossi 2017, 8).7 One may rebut that the existence of a scientific discipline is no conclusive evidence in favour of the existence of its object of inquiry, as it was the case with astrology. However, denying the epistemic credentials of political science seems a high cost to pay just to reject political realism. ...
This article argues that political realists have at least two strategies to provide distinctively political normative judgements that have nothing to do with morality. The first ground is instrumental normativity, which states that if we believe that something is a necessary means to a goal we have, we have a reason to do it. In politics, certain means are required by any ends we may intend to pursue. The second ground is epistemic normativity, stating that if something is (empirically) true, this gives us a reason to believe it. In politics, there are certain empirical regularities that ought to be acknowledged for what they are. Both sources are flawed. Instrumental normativity only requires coherence between attitudes and beliefs, and one can hang on to false beliefs to preserve attitudes incompatible with reality. I may desire to eschew power relations, and accordingly I may imagine politics to be like a camping trip. Epistemic normativity, on the other hand, operates critically, striking down existing normative claims. It shows us that politics is nothing like a camping trip, but it doesn’t tell us what we should do about it (beyond abandoning some false beliefs). We conclude by showing that if the two are taken together, they remedy each other’s flaws.
... Hence, if we can call this interpretive-ideological approach a heuristic sketch outlining 'the mechanics and organics of thinking politically, categorizing, mapping, unpacking, decoding, comparing, illuminating and coming to grips with the raw material of political conceptualization', then being delineated is not a normative solution to deep polarization. 73 Rather, it is a theoretical framework for understanding how disputants got to where they are and how they might overcome certain limitations on how they think and act in the present context. ...
Seemingly intractable social-political divisions involving a range of actors and interests with zero-sum propensities continue to haunt Thailand. This article argues that unmasking the contingent nature of Thailand’s polarized politics helps vindicate the possibility of depolarization in societies steeped in polarization. It proceeds by sketching the development of the so-called ‘Yellow-Red’ divide, identifying it with the hard-edged, ideological bifurcation of ‘right’, i.e. liberalism/conservatism, and ‘left’, i.e. egalitarianism, respectively. The article then demonstrates that while ideologically polarized configurations such as illiberal democracy and undemocratic liberalism/conservatism necessarily sustain the resilience of Yellow and Red, they may be surplus to the range of ideological configurations with which disputants first and foremost identify. The theoretical argument is that holding different ideological viewpoints do not necessitate polarization. Deep polarization is contingent and this is connected to Michael Freeden’s morphological account of ideology. Depolarization reflects less of a rejection and more of a restructuring of the right-left binary along the lines of a continuum running from right to left. To elaborate, by the same logic that structured antagonisms may be superimposed over varied ideologies, thereby triggering ideological mutation, they are also liable to dislodgement .
... Whereas realism, I argue, is an approach grounded in our best social-scientific accounts of politics, but not in such a way as to jeopardize the transformative potential of our political imagination. The upshot is that, if we set aside the quasi-technocratic aspirations of a political theory geared to generate immediate policy guidance, realism (rather than nonideal theory) emerges as the best bet for those sympathetic to many of the concerns about fidelity to the facts of real politics raised in current methodological debates (e.g., Estlund, 2014Estlund, , 2017Freeden, 2012;Hamlin & Stemplowska, 2012;Horton, 2017;Miller, 2016;Mills, 2005;Rossi, 2016;Valentini, 2012;Wiens, 2012). ...
... Secondly, the very point of important contributions to these debates is to orient political theory away from the justification of normative principles or at least from being primarily concerned with justifying normative principles. Consider for example interpretive realism (Freeden, 2012(Freeden, , 2014Horton, 2017), Geuss' (2008, 2010 radical realism or Thomas Fossen's (2013 approach to legitimacy. ...
The Practical Turn in Political Theory sounds like the monograph political theorists have been waiting for – a monograph that identifies ‘practices’ as a uniting theme that runs through several recently influential debates on non-ideal theory, practice dependence, realism and pragmatist theories of legitimacy and democracy, and then discusses the promise and limits of this uniting theme for the future of political theory. However, The Practical Turn is driven by selective portrayals, omissions and misrepresentation, and hence is not a good source to turn to for understanding the debates it surveys or whether they manifest a ‘practical turn in political theory’ or not; rather, it serves as a warning of how struggles over power can influence and even structure seemingly the most purely intentioned of practices.
... There is, of course, yet another alternative open for political realism, gestured by Horton in a recent article: to give up on normative political theory altogether. Applying Michael Freeden's distinction between 'prescriptive realism' (normative theories telling us what we ought to do, what legitimacy or justice is, how we ought to organize our societies, and so on) and 'interpretative realism' (theories telling us what politics is about), Horton admits that his own prescriptive political theory of modus vivendi has been "without much success" (Horton forthcoming: 8;Freeden 2012). Therefore, he now wants to endorse interpretative realism, instead trying to "understand the fundamental concepts of political discourse" and "elucidating the structures of different ways of thinking about politics" (Horton forthcoming: 13). ...
... Naturally, they sometimes have different views about precisely how this should be pursued, but the aim and the critique are broadly shared. Adopting some useful terminology from Michael Freeden, these theorists can be labelled 'prescriptive realists' (Freeden 2012). ...
This paper explores two different versions of ‘the realist turn’ in recent political theory. It begins by setting out two principal realist criticisms of liberal moralism: that it is both descriptively and normatively inadequate. It then pursues the second criticism by arguing that there are two fundamentally different responses among realists to the alleged normative inadequacy of ideal theory. First, prescriptive realists argue that the aim of realism is to make political theory more normatively adequate by making it more realistic. Interpretative realists, on the other hand, argue that realist theorising should detach itself from such an aspiration, and instead aim at theoretical understanding rather than normative prescription. After some further elaboration of what interpretative realism might look like, it is acknowledged that both approaches still need to address the question of political normativity.
... 77-78). Note that the belief in rational agreement and consensus on certain substantive values is insensitive to political reality, and does not just entail that that belief is merely practically difficult to achieve but nonetheless conceivable (pace Gutmann and Thompson 2012;Philp 2007;Valentini 2012;Hamlin and Stemplowska 2012;Freeden 2012). What is at stake here is not merely a matter of practical 'feasibility' or 'constraint' but rather a question of what should be seen as plausible even in theory, even under the most ideal of circumstances. ...
The claim that democratic politics is the art of compromise is a platitude but we seem allergic to compromise in politics when it happens. This essay explores this paradox. Taking my cue from Machiavelli’s claim that there exists a rift between a morally admirable and a virtuous political life, I argue that: (1) a ‘compromising disposition’ is an ambiguous virtue—something which is politically expedient but not necessarily morally admirable; (2) whilst uncongenial to moral integrity, a ‘compromising disposition’ constitutes an essential aspect of political integrity. In so doing, I question certain moralistic assumptions which fuel contemporary vilifications of compromise—that, in theory, democratic politics should be inhospitable to compromise and that political integrity should be akin to moral integrity—and which are shared by Walzer’s Dirty Hands thesis which professes to be sensitive to the realities of politics. These assumptions displace the complex realities of politics and misconstrue the standards of political excellence; they unsatisfactorily idealize political integrity and the messy context in which democratic politicians operate—a context characterized by a plurality of incompatible traditions, each with its own values and principles. Whilst commitment to a set of principles stemming from one’s tradition or pre-election promises implies commitment to realize these, leading a virtuous political life amidst such a grubby domain often requires abandoning some of these. An innocent, all-or-nothing pursuit of one’s principles in politics might prompt political disaster or defeat: an uncompromising disposition entails the entire abandonment of any hope of realizing all of those principles.
... Realism is often construed in opposition to utopianism and so it is taken to be characterised simply by a concern for issues of feasibility (e.g. Freeden 2012;Valentini 2012: 657-660;Zuolo 2012). Yet, if the defining feature of realism is the attempt to give autonomy to political normativity and political theorising through a fuller understanding of the sources of normativity in politics, then the issue of feasibility turns out to be orthogonal to the realism/moralism dichotomy -which is not to say, though, that feasibility issues will not feature in some comprehensive realist accounts of politics, but they will not be exhaustive of them and will sit alongside a host of other considerations (such as those explored below). ...
This paper provides a critical overview of the realist current in contemporary political philosophy. We define political realism on the basis of its attempt to give varying degrees of autonomy to politics as a sphere of human activity, in large part through its exploration of the sources of normativity appropriate for the political and so distinguish sharply between political realism and non-ideal theory. We then identify and discuss four key arguments advanced by political realists: from ideology, from the relationship of ethics to politics, from the priority of legitimacy over justice and from the nature of political judgement. Next, we ask to what extent realism is a methodological approach as opposed to a substantive political position and so discuss the relationship between realism and a few such positions. We close by pointing out the links between contemporary realism and the realist strand that runs through much of the history of Western political thought.
The ability of political orders to command respect rather than just compliance is one of the most pervasive themes in political theory (Outhwaite 2009, p. 62). The death of god, in the Hegelian sense, means that legitimacy based on some divine ordained right to rule are no longer valid, and modern states must seek fresh rationales for the legitimacy to rule. This chapters argues that the Weberian schemes of legitimacy do not consider the possibility that a regime may be illegitimate. The thicker liberal concepts of legitimacy, for example, John Rawls’s Political Liberalism, however, set the bar too high, and if followed to their logical conclusions, can render all regimes illegitimate. This chapter draws on the writings of Bernard Williams and Jurgen Habermas to arrive at a legitimacy framework based on democratic legitimation and the interchangeability between norms, values and the promise of rewards. This framework makes no normative requirement of a regime except for popular sovereignty, a concept already invoked by almost all modern secular regimes. It is devised to be suitable for the examination of liberal as well as non-liberal orders, and therefore appropriate for the examination of legitimacy of the Chinese state.
Confronted by intersecting ecological and social crises associated with the rise of the Anthropocene, architects of global environmental governance have often attempted to harness accountability claims to single out the individual or organisational actors contributing most significantly to these crises and pressure them to uphold responsibilities to society and the planet. Yet critics have cautioned against excessive reliance on individualised accountabilities as means of tackling planetary crises, given the constrained ability of such approaches to lead the large‐scale transformations required to redirect anthropogenic drivers of global environmental change. This article adapts agent‐centered approaches to accountability to address such critiques. It is first argued that agent‐centered accountability is an important element in broader efforts to support systemic change, helping to identify responsible powerholders, redefine normative standards of responsibility and empower advocates of strengthened global environmental governance to demand compliance with expanded responsibilities. However to take seriously the distinctive demands of large‐scale institutional change, such approaches need to be: (a) differentiated in ways that account for the contrasting roles of different individual and organisational actors within de‐centred accountability systems; (b) materially extended in ways that enable agents to be held more effectively to account for their contributions to collective social and political processes; and (c) discursively challenged in ways that resist discursive efforts to present individualised accountabilities as substitutes for more radical and large‐scale institutional interventions. The article's argument is elaborated and illustrated through exploration of problems and practices of accountability associated with the contested governance of global production systems.
For political realists, legitimacy is a central requirement for the desirability of political institutions. Their detractors contend that it is either descriptive, and thus devoid of critical potential, or it relies on some moralist value that realists reject. We defend a functionalist reading of realist legitimacy: descriptive legitimacy, i.e., the capacity of a political institution to generate beliefs in its right to rule as opposed to commanding through coercion alone, is desirable in virtue of its functional role. First, descriptive legitimacy plays an evaluative role: institutions can fail to convince citizens that they have a right to rule and can be ranked by how well they do so. Second, descriptive legitimacy plays a normative role, because if an institution fails to convince subjects of its right to rule, this gives them a reason not to comply with its directives, even if it satisfies philosophers' standards for possessing such right.
This introductory chapter gives an overview of the debate on realism in political theory and sets out two themes that are particularly important for this debate: the role of practice in realist political theory and the nature and place of normativity in realist political theory. These two themes are not only among the most discussed topics in the debate on possibilities to do realist political theory. Answers to the question of what more applied forms of realist political theory might look like will also depend significantly on how realists specify the role of practice in political theory and the meaning of realist normative argumentation. We outline some of the main positions in the field and highlight questions that have been insufficiently addressed. Finally, we give an overview of the arguments of the articles assembled in this collection and how they contribute to the ongoing debates on the two themes.
When interest in political realism started to resurge a few years ago, it was not uncommon to interpret realist political theory as a form of non-ideal theorising. This reading has been subjected to extensive criticism. First, realists have argued that political realism cannot be interpreted as merely a form of applied political theory. Second, realists have explained that political realism can defend a role for unfeasible normative prescriptions in political theory. I explain that these developments, besides allowing us to reject interpretations of political realism as a form of non-ideal theory, have given us reason to think of political realism as a form of ideal theory. Yet, when ideal theory enters the picture, a series of methodological questions arise regarding the proper use of ideals. In this paper, I clarify how the relationship between ideal and non-ideal theory ought to be conceptualised in realist political theory. I examine the two major interpretations of the role of ideals that have been provided so far – the target and benchmark interpretations – and I show that neither is compatible with some of the fundamental theoretical commitments of realist political theory. This both allows me to point out the requirements that an interpretation of the relationship between ideal and non-ideal theory must meet to be defined as properly realist and allows me to emphasise the strengths of the realist approach. Accordingly, I propose a new interpretation of the role of ideals, one consistent with realist theoretical commitments: I suggest that realist political ideals ought to be interpreted as models.
Some realists in political theory deny that the notion of feasibility has any place in realist theory, while others claim that feasibility constraints are essential elements of realist normative theorising. But none have so far clarified what exactly they are referring to when thinking of feasibility and political realism together. In this article, we develop a conception of the realist feasibility frontier based on an appraisal of how political realism should be distinguished from non-ideal theories. In this realist framework, political standards are feasible if they meet three requirements: they are (i) politically intelligible, (ii) contextually recognisable as authoritative, and (iii) contestable. We conclude by suggesting that our conception of realist feasibility might be compatible with utopian demands, thereby possibly finding favour with realists who otherwise refuse to resort to the notion of feasibility.
Various political realists claim the superior 'action guiding' qualities of their way of approaching normative political theory, as compared to 'liberal moralism'. This paper subjects that claim to critique. I first clarify the general idea of action guidance, and identify two types of guidance that a political theory might try to offer - 'prescriptive action-guidance' and 'orienting action-guidance' - together with the conditions that must be met before we can understand such guidance as having been successfully offered. I then go on to argue that if we take realist understandings of political psychology seriously, then realist attempts to offer action guidance appear to fail by realism’s own lights. I demonstrate this by means of engagement with a variety of different realist theorists.
In the last decade or so, political realism has become a fashionable phrase to describe a new (or, perhaps, rediscovered) understanding of political theory. Many otherwise disparate thinkers, either willingly contributed to or have retrospectively been thrown into what one of the scholars has likened to a community stew. Among the latter, Michael Oakeshott is highly interesting, given one of the central tenets of contemporary political realism is a reworking of the relationship between politics and philosophy, which Oakeshott famously vehemently rejected. In this chapter, the author considers Michael Oakeshott in relation to contemporary political realism, not primarily because interpreting him as a political realist would enable us to understand him better (though, incidentally, it might), but because, his understanding of the modern political predicament can potentially shed new light on the nature of the relationship between political theory and political practice, which is still a matter of controversy among contemporary realists.
In this paper I unpack a realistic conception of politics by tightly defining its constitutive features: conflict and order. A conflict emerges when an actor is disposed to impose his/her views against the resistance of others. Conflicts are more problematic than moralists realize because they emerge unilaterally, are potentially violent, impermeable to content-based reason, and unavoidable. Order is then defined as an institutional framework that provides binding collective decisions. Order is deemed necessary because individuals need to cooperate to survive, but groups cannot spontaneously secure collective decisions and are prone to conflicts. Particularly, the fact that potentially violent conflicts emerge unilaterally means that order requires coercion. I conclude that mischaracterizing conflict and order leads to undesirable normative principles, and that this criticism can be leveraged not only against Rawlsian liberals who moralize conflicts away, but also against some agonists who underestimate the need for order and some communitarians who underplay both circumstances.
Political theory is often defined as a normative discipline that distances itself from real politics. But does political theory need to be normative vis-à-vis real politics? What is the proper relationship between theory and reality, and what is real politics? This article addresses these questions by exploring the works of contemporary political realists, Raymond Geuss and Bernard Williams. Both Geuss and Williams are critical of how mainstream normative political theory is underwritten by moralism. Instead, they call for a mode of political theorizing that attunes itself to the reality of politics. I argue that while their criticism of mainstream political theory is on point, their adherence to normative theorizing risks to betray their promising criticisms. In order to rescue the possibility for realist political theory, I then in turn attend to the alternative possibilities offered by Geuss’s and Williams’s concepts of genealogy and reminder of politics.
Modus vivendi theories are caught in an uneasy relationship with a substantive, normative pluralism of toleration and a conceptual and structural awareness of the unavoidability of sociopolitical diversity and contestation. The chapter explores the semantic space occupied by modus vivendi and the kind of political thinking it represents, in particular as a variant of the quest for order and the inevitability of ranking priorities. The implicit boundary drawn by ‘modus vivendi’ theorists between solid blocs of ideas and practices is questioned. When larger magnification orders are employed, points of contact and intertwining may reveal a messiness with which conventional modus vivendi approaches cannot engage. Modus vivendi would consequently benefit from a micro-analysis of its various components instead of being subject to broad-brush treatment, particularly in view of a morphological approach to political concepts. Modus vivendi is also examined in contrast to consensus theories, compromise theories, and agonism, and some of its different forms—fragmentation, segmentation, and asymmetry—are discussed. Finally, modus vivendi is interrogated as an interpretative rather than a prescriptive thought-practice, relating it to a realism based on the ascertainable core characteristics of the political.
In this paper I seek to explore how the idea of modus vivendi might help us to understand political legitimacy. A suitable conception of modus vivendi, I suggest, can represent a way of underpinning a viable and attractive account of political legitimacy. On my account a modus vivendi is basically a set of arrangements that are accepted as basis for conducting affairs by those who are party to them. Political legitimacy, I argue, is ultimately rooted in the judgements of those subject to it, but is mediated through a language in which claims to it are argued and assessed. The thought is that the web of operative beliefs and values in any given society, which constitute the grounds of judgements about political legitimacy, are what sustains a modus vivendi around the basic political institutions and practices. On this view, legitimate political institutions and practices incline towards a modus vivendi in that they are the outcome of an historical and ongoing conglomeration of settlements reflecting shifting and conflicting values and interests, as well relative balances of power, both currently and in the past. The marriage of modus vivendi and political legitimacy, therefore, seeks to reflect the contingent and ‘negotiated’ character of basic political institutions and practices and an understanding of political legitimacy that sees it as mediated through an ongoing and emergent discourse of argument and judgement, which remains nonetheless always vulnerable to challenge and change.
This article explores the relevance of the work of Cambridge historian of political thought István Hont to contemporary political theory. Specifically, it suggests that Hont’s work can be of great help to the recent realist revival in political theory, in particular via its lending support to the account favoured by Bernard Williams, which has been a major source for recent realist work. The article seeks to make explicit the main political theoretic implications of Hont’s historically-focused work, which in their original formulations are not always easy to discern, as well as itself being a positive contribution to realist theorizing, moving beyond a merely negative critique of dominant moralist positions.
Il confine tra realismo politico e liberalismo non è teoricamente così chiaro come l’asprezza del dibattito sembrerebbe suggerire. Tra le due tradizioni non c’è una forte distinzione né sul piano metodologico né su quello sostanziale. Il dibattito sul metodo, che ruota attorno alle condizioni di realizzabilità dei propri ideali, non basta a qualificare una posizione come realista, perché questa preoccupazione è presente anche nella tradizione liberale della cosiddetta teoria non-ideale (Valentini 2012). Molti realisti, come Matt Sleat (Sleat 2014), Enzo Rossi (2015b) ed Edward Hall (2015), ritengono riduttivo assimilare le loro tesi a questa posizione. Nemmeno sul piano sostanziale è facile distinguere tra realismo e idealismo perché entrambi gli approcci sostengono istituzioni liberali e democratiche. I realisti in questo caso si limitano a criticare il modo in cui queste vengono giustificate dagli idealisti (Finlayson 2015). Per cercare di chiarire questo dibattito, è dunque necessario specificare che la «caratteristica che lo definisce […] è il tentativo di dare autonomia al politico» (Rossi e Sleat 2014, 2). Questo articolo mira perciò a mettere a fuoco la «concezione fondamentalmente diversa di che cos’è la politica» (Sleat 2014, 5) adottata dai realisti politici. Utilizzando questa come criterio è possibile distinguere il realismo dal liberalismo politico kantiano di ispirazione rawlsiana, variamente criticato nella letteratura come «umanesimo liberale» (Gray 2002a, xI), «moralismo politico» (Williams 2005, 1), «approccio ethic-first» (Geuss 2009, 1), e «alto liberalismo» (Galston 2010, 385).
A common denominator of recent proposals suggested by political realists has been a rather pessimistic view of what we may rightfully demand of political authorities in terms of legitimacy. In our analysis, three main justificatory strategies are utilized by realists, each supposedly generating normative premises for this “low bar conclusion.” These strategies make use of the concept of politics, the constitutive features of politics, and feasibility constraints, respectively. In this article, we make three claims: first, that the two justificatory strategies of utilizing the concept of politics and the constitutive features of politics fail, since they rely on implausible normative premises; second, that while the feasibility strategy relies on reasonable premises, the low bar conclusion does not follow from them; third, that relativist premises fit better with the low bar conclusion, but that this also makes the realist position less attractive and casts doubt on several of its basic assumptions.
This paper provides a critical overview of the realist current in contemporary political philosophy. We define political realism on the basis of its attempt to give varying degrees of autonomy to politics as a sphere of human activity, in large part through its exploration of the sources of normativity appropriate for the political, and so distinguish sharply between political realism and non-ideal theory. We then identify and discuss four key arguments advanced by political realists: from ideology, from the relationship of ethics to politics, from the priority of legitimacy over justice, and from the nature of political judgment. Next, we ask to what extent realism is a methodological approach as opposed to a substantive political position, and so discuss the relationship between realism and a few such positions. We close by pointing out the links between contemporary realism and the realist strand that runs through much of the history of Western political thought.
A common trait of all realistic political theories is the rejection of a conception of political theory as applied moral philosophy and an attempt to preserve some form of distinctively political thinking. Yet the reasons for favouring such an account of political theory can vary, a point that has often been overlooked in recent discussions by realism’s friends and critics alike. While a picture of realism as first-and-foremost an attempt to develop a more practical political theory which does not reduce morality to politics is often cited, in this paper we present an alternative understanding in which the motivation to embrace realism is grounded in a set of critiques of or attitudes towards moral philosophy which then feed into a series of political positions. Political realism, on this account, is driven by a set of philosophical concerns about the nature of ethics and the place of ethical thinking in our lives. This impulse is precisely what motivated Bernard Williams and Raymond Geuss to their versions of distinctively realist political thought and is important to emphasise because it demonstrates that realism does not set politics against ethics (a misunderstanding typically endorsed by realism’s critics) but is rather an attempt to philosophise about politics without relying on understandings of morality which we have little reason to endorse.
Cambridge Core - Political Theory - Methods in Analytical Political Theory - edited by Adrian Blau
The paper is an intervention in the dispute about the moralism of the recent realist trend in political philosophy. It is particularly focused on analysing the debate on this subject between Niklas Erman and Eva Möller (2015a; 2015b) and Robert Jubb and Enzo Rossi (2015a; 2015b). Examining the main arguments of both parties, I argue that realists (i.e., Jubb and Rossi) lost the debate, that realism is, in fact, moralism in disguise, and that its main methodological request – giving up „pre-political” moral principles and values in political philosophy – is „unrealistic” (i.e., unfeasible).
This essay seeks to defend the claim that political philosophy ought to be appropriately guided by the phenomenon of politics that it seeks to both offer a theory of and, especially in its normative guise, offer a theory for. It does this primarily through the question of political values. It begins by arguing that for any value to qualify as a value for the political domain, it must be intelligible in relation to the constitutive features of politics as a human activity. It then examines the extent to which the preconditions for the realization of values in practice ought to figure in our considerations as to whether they are values that fit or belong to our social world. We can understand these parts of the essay as responding to two related questions, respectively: (i) Is this a political value at all? — which is to ask, is it a value that is appropriate for the political realm?; and then (ii) Is this a political value for us? The final section responds to the often-made complaint that political philosophy ought not to make any concessions to the actual world of politics as it really is, arguing that attending to the realities of politics, and in particular the constitutive conditions of political activity, gives meaning to the enterprise as the theorization of politics (and not something else). Furthermore those same conditions provide the limits of intelligibility beyond which ideals and values can no longer be, in any meaningful sense, ideals and values for the political sphere.
In the last ten or fifteen years, realism has emerged as a distinct approach in political theory. Realists are skeptical about the merits of abstract theories of justice. They regard peace, order, and stability as the primary goals of politics. One of the more concrete aims of realists is to develop a realist perspective on legitimacy. I argue that realist accounts of legitimacy are unconvincing, because they do not solve what I call the “puzzle of legitimacy”: the puzzle of how some persons can have the right to rule over others, given that all persons are equals. I focus on the realist accounts of legitimacy developed by Bernard Williams and John Horton.
This paper examines the various ways in which nonideal theory responds to noncompliance with ideal principles of justice. Taking Rawls’ definition of nonideal theory as my point of departure, I propose an understanding of this concept as comprising two subparts: Complementary nonideal theory responds to deliberate and avoidable noncompliance and consists mainly of theories of civil disobedience, rebellion, and retribution. Substitutive nonideal theory responds to nondeliberate and unavoidable noncompliance and consists mainly of theories of transition and caretaking. I further argue that a special case of substitutive nonideal theory may arise when noncompliance is a result of a lack of motivation among citizens. This situation, I suggest, calls for nonideal theorizing (1) when our aim is to evaluate the political actions undertaken by specific members of a society (in particular the ruling elite) whose set of feasible options is constrained as a result of others’ lack of motivation and (2) when a situation of mutually reinforcing distrust and noncooperation—sometimes called a “social trap”—constrains the feasible option set of the entire population. The main advantage of the twofold conceptualization of nonideal theory is that it bridges the theoretical gap between actor-oriented and situation-based accounts of justice: It allows us to preserve the term ideal justice for justice under minimal feasibility constraints, while recognizing that a situation where all agents comply with their duties must in some sense be characterized as just.
This article seeks to map the current discussion of secularism and propose two conceptual expansions. The first is to include modest establishment in a framework of secularism defendable by political liberalism, and the second is to consider secularism in close connection to a theory of peoplehood. This understanding is illustrated by a reconstruction of Danish secularism and a recent case of Danish legislation allowing same-sex church marriage. Here, attention will be given to how questions of basic liberal principles in relation to religion spilled over into questions of peoplehood.
What, if anything, can realism say about the normative conditions of political legitimacy? Must a realist political theory accept that the ability to successfully employ coercive power is equivalent to the right to rule, or can it incorporate normative criteria for legitimacy but without collapsing into a form of moralism? While several critics argue that realism fails to adequately differentiate itself from moralism or that it cannot coherently appeal to normative values so as to distinguish might from right, this article seeks to help develop a realist account of legitimacy by demonstrating how it can successfully and stably occupy this position between moralism and Realpolitik. Through this discussion, however, the article also argues that political rule necessitates the use of coercive power which is (at best) imperfectly legitimated, and that this blurs the distinction between politics and successful domination which lies at the heart of many recent accounts of political realism. In at least this sense, realism retains important and under-acknowledged affinities to Realpolitik.
In this article I discuss Bernard Williams' realist conception of legitimacy. According to his critics Williams tacitly incorporates various moral claims, endorses a philosophically suspect ‘consensus’ view of politics, and employs an unrealistic and moralised conception of political rule. I argue that these criticisms mischaracterise the nature of the basic legitimation demand and the judgements about the acceptability of the state at its core and conclude that political theorists who object to the direction and style of much contemporary political theory should take seriously the possibility of developing an appropriately ‘political’ political theory on Williamsian lines.
This article sets out some of the key features of a realist critique of liberal moralism, identifying descriptive inadequacy and normative irrelevance as the two fundamental lines of criticism. It then sketches an outline of a political theory of modus vivendi as an alternative, realist approach to political theory. On this account a modus vivendi should be understood as any political settlement that involves the preservation of peace and security and is generally acceptable to those who are party to it. In conclusion, some problems with this conception of modus vivendi and with a realist political theory more generally are discussed. In particular, the question is raised of whether a realist political theory should be understood as an alternative to liberal moralism or only a better way of doing basically the same kind of thing.
Can liberal ideals clean up dirty politicians or politics? This article doubts they can. It disputes that a ‘clean’ liberal person might inhabit the dirty clothes of the real politician, or that a clean depoliticised liberal constitution can constrain real world dirty politics. Nevertheless, the need for a democratic Prince to wear clean liberal gloves offers a necessary and effective political restraint. However, it also means that citizens share the hypocrisy and dirt of those who serve them - for we legitimise the dirtiness of politics by requiring politicians to seem cleaner than we know they ever can be in reality.
Political theorists periodically go public to fault their subdiscipline for its flaws. As the chapters of this volume demonstrate, the critique is often that political theory is too ahistorical, abstract and removed from the political realities theory is supposed to help us understand. Caught up in canonical texts, gripped by ideal questions never asked by real politicians, like ‘what is justice?’ or ‘which is the best regime?’ or ‘how are subjects formed?’, political theory is said to list too far to one side, becoming all theory, no politics. On the other hand, when political theorists correct the imbalance and turn to complex historical case studies or the practicalities of daily life, they are accused of abandoning the big questions and grand narratives that dignify their mode of inquiry and distinguish it from mere journalism. Both timeless and timebound, it sometimes seems that political theory can do no right
This chapter traces the intellectual trajectory of the author from analysing liberal thought, through exploring the structure and meaning of ideologies, to investigating the actual thought practice of thinking politically. It then considers five responsibilities of political theorists towards their profession: relevance, understanding, inclusiveness, critical distance, and tentativeness. Relevance refers to the relationship of political thinking to the real world, to the accessibility of political theory to ordinary people, and to incorporating the vernacular. Understanding refers to the quest for interpretative complexity and for regularities of thinking through decoding political thought. Inclusiveness refers to studying of all forms of political thinking impartially, as well as penetrating disciplinary boundaries. Critical distance alludes to the ability to assess one's own perspectival shortcomings, and to the level of magnification employed in illuminating an issue. Tentativeness relates to flexibility in assessing one's findings, awaiting contrary interpretation. These five responsibilities are applied to previous chapters.
This article argues for greater realism in political theory with respect to judgements about what politicians ought to do and how they ought to act. It shows that there are major problems in deducing what a given politician should do from the value commitments that are common to liberalism and it makes a case for recognizing the major role played by the context of action and particular agent involved. It distinguishes political virtue from moral virtues and argues that the ‘decisionist’ features of political agency render evaluation a partly post hoc process. The article advocates a version of political realism that is rooted in an understanding of the distinctive character of political rule and that provides the basis for a contextualist but non-relativist account of ‘what is to be done’.
The article investigates failures of political thinking as a normal and endemic phenomenon, yet one that is theoretically under-conceptualised. It postulates three criteria for such failure: (1) the failure to deliver ideationally what the political theory in question has itself undertaken through its creator(s) to deliver; (2) the failure to take on board the constraints imposed on the initial construction of a theory or argument by the features and structure of political concepts; and (3) the failure of the specific epistemologies and ideologies that underlie political theorising to confer sufficient conclusiveness on the theories that emerge from them. The underlying causes of those three criteria invoke, in turn, three problems with political language and argument: first, the impossibility of keeping meaning constant over time; second, the indeterminacy that surrounds the eliciting and defining of the concepts and values a theory desires to promote; and third, the inevitable ineffectiveness of offering sufficient comprehensive detail in prescribing paths of political change or reform. Focusing on normatively prescriptive political thinking with regard to the construction of political macro visions and single overarching regulative principles, the article examines classical and contemporary instances of political thought. It studies their failures in the forms of uncontrollable and absent temporal trajectories of argument; conceptual polysemy and decontestation; and the impediments normative thinking encounters when applied to the distinctive circumstances of every individual. Finally, it dismisses any necessary connection between theories of failure and conservatism, arguing instead that liberal epistemologies can accommodate some salient conceptual failures in thinking about politics. The article concludes that modest failure and temporary success may not be that distinct from one another; anything more spectacular in either direction should cause political theorists to ponder.