The practical relevance of ideal theory as part of the ideal guidance approach

ABSTRACT

Contrary to comparativist critics of ideal theory, I argue that ideal institutions become relevant for issues of nonideal theory through their role as part of the ideal guidance approach (IGA). So far, the most important argument against the IGA has been the second-best argument. However, this argument is only damaging for the IGA under certain conditions: Firstly, when the ideal is not realizable, and, secondly, when the path to the ideal does not contain the second-best world. Since it is an empirical question whether this is the case, the article discusses the empirical relevance of the second-best argument. By employing causal mechanisms identified in the institutionalist literature – path dependence and institutional complementarity – I argue that the IGA actually offers better prospects for the evaluation of nonideal alternatives than the comparative approach. This is, because the latter systematically excludes the information of how an ideal institutional design looks like from consideration. I also discuss and reject the objection that a more comprehensive version of the comparative approach could take these issues into consideration: Such an approach is either epistemically infeasible or very similar to the IGA.

KEYWORDS:

• Ideal theory
• ideal institutions
• feasibility
• Rawls
• nonideal theory
• comparative approach

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Francisco García Gibson, Doris Unger and the participants of the workshop ‘Methodological Challenges to Liberal Egalitarianism’ at MANCEPT Workshops 2019 as well as anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. There are some notable exceptions, such as García Gibson (2016), Gilabert and Lawford-Smith (2012), Sen (2009), and Wiens (2012). Among these, only Gilabert and Lawford-Smith (2012) provide a systematic approach to the construction of ideal theory. But, as has been argued elsewhere, their approach lacks a proper understanding of the role of ideal institutions within the IGA (Sirsch, 2020).

2. For a more comprehensive account, see Sirsch (2020, pp. 113–170).

3. However, Wiens (2016) shows that the interpretation of the second-best problem that is predominant in the literature (and that I use here) does not represent a plausible interpretation of the original by Lipsey and Lancaster (1956). Nonetheless, the version I rely upon (which is partly similar to Wiens’s (2016) ‘ideal institutions interpretation’) poses the most relevant objection to the use of ideal institutions within IGA. This is, because the similarity of an incompletely realized version of ideal institutions to ideal institutions does not imply a similarity of outcomes as well. As Wiens (2016) notes, this version does not threat the ‘Target View’ – his version of practically relevant ideal theory. However, please note that the IGA is not equivalent to Wiens’s (2016) Target View because Wiens (2016) assumes that the Target View aims at realizing ideal principles as far as possible, (see Wiens, 2016, p. 136). The IGA is different to the Target View, because it includes ideal institutions as well as ideal principles for purposes of evaluating available nonideal alternatives.

4. Also, adaptive preferences and issues of manipulation of preferences induce the need for an objective standard of the good in theories of justice. Many theories provide such a standard, for example, in the form of primary goods or capabilities, in a way that relies on a neutralist theory of the good that is supposed to be compatible with different subjective accounts of the good (Colburn, 2011; Elster, 2016; Rawls, 2001).

5. Furthermore, all practical thinking formulating alternatives to the status quo faces the second-best problem (Estlund, 2020, p. 277): When one of the conditions assumed in formulating a solution X, e.g., the presence of a certain causal mechanism Y, is not fulfilled, the most similar solution to X might perform worse than a solution more dissimilar solution to X. Thus, the comparativist must presuppose that the occurrence of second-best problems is more likely when we employ ambitious ideals that are more likely to not be fully realizable.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jürgen Sirsch

Jürgen Sirsch teaches political theory at Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg. His main research interests are ideal theory and institutional design, egalitarian-liberalism and neorepublicanism.