Can political realism be action-guiding?

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Political realism
• moralism
• liberalism
• action guidance

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the article’s anonymous reviewers, and to Ed Hall for written comments and conversation. Versions of this paper were presented at the Normative Orders colloquium in Frankfurt, and the White Rose Political Theory Workshop in Leeds; I would like to thank both audiences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The other being liberal moralism’s purported descriptive inadequacy.

2. Even in the move to ‘political liberalism’, we are still to ‘think of persons as reasonable and rational, as free and equal citizens, with the two moral powers and having, at any given moment, a determinate conception of the good’ (Rawls, 1997, p. 800).

3. Contributions to these meta-ethical debates about ‘action guidance’ are themselves not even notionally addressed to the public at large, but rather to other political theorists. Yet within these debates arguments are made that one methodological approach or another is best placed to provide public action-guidance.

4. Note that a theory could meet all of these conditions and still be thought wrong. It would be action-guiding, nonetheless. By analogy, if you ask me the way to the bank, I point you in the opposite direction, and you set off in the direction I point, then I have still successfully offered you directions, even if I haven’t offered you the right directions.

5. Although some theorists dispute that action-guiding theories ought necessarily to be immediately feasible (e.g., Gheaus, 2013).

6. Some political philosophers take the view that answering the ‘how’ question is not their domain (e.g., Swift, 2008).

7. See, for example, (Farrelly, 2007; Miller, 2013; Mills, 2005; Sen, 2006; Wiens, 2015). For a qualified defence of the action guiding qualities of ideal theory, see (Valentini, 2009).

8. For a rejection of the normative significance of the purported constitutive features of politics, see (Erman & Möller, 2018).

9. Notional because, as we made clear above, political theorists face a publicity problem which they tend to ignore.

10. At least, all egalitarianisms with the same ‘site’, ‘scope’ and ‘currency’. See (Cohen, 1989; Tan, 2012).

11. Williams does at various points give the impression that he is primarily targeting other political theorists rather than offering an orientation for citizens generally to take on. Yet this impression is not consistent. For instance, Williams writes that ‘Even if we were utopian monarchs, we would have to take into account others’ disagreement as a mere fact. As democrats, we have to do more than that’ (Williams, 2005, p. 13). Here there does appear to be a wide notional target in view (i.e. all ‘we’ who are ‘democrats’).

12. In this context ‘liberalism’ is not the pejorative ‘liberalism moralism’ which realists criticise, but simply a commitment to general liberal ideas like individual liberty and toleration, aversion to cruelty, and the limitation of political power.

13. We might draw an analogy with Hume’s philosophical scepticism, which he found necessarily subverted when leaving the ‘philosophical sphere’ and returning to the ‘sphere of common life’.

14. Ed Hall suggests to me that Charles Mills’s work, in The Racial Contract (Mills, 1997) and elsewhere, is a good example of the latter. However, while Mills certainly emphasises the ideological nature of certain political ideas – and indeed of ‘ideal theory’ generally – he is nevertheless ultimately working within a self-confessed ‘non-ideal’ liberalism.

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Luke Ulaş

Luke Ulaş is a Lecturer in Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield. He is currently working on a book on cosmopolitanism and political psychology. Previous publications have appeared in journals including International Theory, European Journal of Political Theory, and Political Studies.