Doing Realist Political Theory: Introduction

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Interpretation
• normativity
• practice and theory
• prescription
• realism in political theory

Over the last 15 to 20 years, realism has established itself as a distinct strand in political theory. In the most general sense, realism can be characterised by its commitment to what is often called the autonomy of the political (Galston, 2010, p. 387; Rossi, 2019, p. 639): realists argue that political theory should be done in a way that is truthful to the realities of politics (Sleat, 2018, p. 2). For Bernard Williams (2005) and those who develop realist political thought on the basis of his work, this commitment implies that political theorists should pay special attention to the “first political question” and the importance of the “securing of order, protection, safety, trust and the conditions of cooperation” (Williams, 2005, p. 3; Jubb, 2017, p. 114; see also Galston, 2010, p. 388). Other realists determine a broader scope of themes for a political theory that properly recognises the autonomy of the political. For example, Raymond Geuss (2008) asserts that political theorists should engage with “the way the social, economic, political, etc., institutions actually operate in some society at some given time, and what really does move human beings to act in given circumstances” (p. 9). Matt Sleat (2018) argues that realists should address the characteristics of the “complex sphere of human activity” (p. 2) that politics represents, which include a broader range of topics than those highlighted by Williams, such as “political possibility, political agency, compromise, political judgment, political institutions, and political responsibility” (p. 4).

Although realists spell out what it means to recognise the “autonomy of the political” differently, they are united by the view that political theory should take seriously the ways in which politics actually operates (Rossi & Sleat, 2014, p. 690). Relatedly, they reject forms of political theory that begin with the exploration of moral ideals, often dubbed incarnations of an “‘ethics-first’ approach to normative political theory” (Jubb, 2017, p. 112), “applied ethics” (Sleat, 2018, p. 3) or “political moralism” (Galston, 2010, p. 387).

The literature on realism in political theory has expanded rapidly over recent years, and it has already become clear that realism embodies a “family of theories of politics” (Rossi & Sleat, 2014, p. 696) rather than one unified approach (see also Baderin, 2014; McQueen, 2017; Sabl, 2017). This diversity is most likely a strength rather than a weakness of realism, because it means that it represents a strand of political theory that is rich both in possibilities of doing political theory and sources for internal critique. However, the debate in general is still very much occupied with discussing the central ideas and objectives of realist political theory compared to those of “moralist” political theory, rather than with actually doing realist political theory, in the sense of applying those ideas to the theorising of central political topics.

While there is an extensive body of literature on Williams’s theory and his case for the primacy of the “first political question”, there is comparably little work on what it might mean to theorise order, safety, cooperation and other themes highlighted by the first political question through a realist lens. Geuss’s call on political theorists to engage with the actual operations of “social, economic, political, etc., institutions” (Geuss, 2008, p. 9) has not sparked extensive discussions of the operations of institutions in the field of realist political theory, even if there are interesting exceptions that might represent the beginnings of a realist political theory of democratic institutions (Arlen, 2022; Arlen & Rossi, 2021). The diversification of themes in political theory that Sleat highlights as a central realist objective is predominantly a programmatic aspiration – realist work on topics such as “political possibility, political agency, compromise, political judgment, political institutions, and political responsibility” (Sleat, 2018, p. 4) is still rare. Notable exceptions go beyond the mentioned work on democratic institutions (e.g. Philp, 2012; Philp & Dávid-Barrett, 2015; Vogler & Tillyris, 2021), but Jubb’s assessment that “realists have been much more interested in diagnosing problems with contemporary political philosophy than replacing the positive theorizing they criticize” (Jubb, 2017, p. 117) is still relevant. Even rarer are studies that deal with practical political problems or challenges from a realistic perspective (but see, e.g., Beetz, 2018; Cozzaglio, 2022a; Prinz & Rossi, 2022; Raekstad, 2021; Verovšek, 2022).

If realism wants to realise its promise to offer a form of political theory that is less abstract and idealising, and more engaged with real politics than much of the mainstream of contemporary normative political theory that is often associated with the work of John Rawls (2005), it should overcome its silence on these and related topics and “make the transition from a critical to a more constructive or productive form of political thought” (Sleat, 2018, p. 10).

We want to suggest that an important reason for why the debate has not moved more in this direction is that realists are still grappling with the task of clarifying some of their fundamental theoretical commitments, among them the commitment to begin political theory with an engagement with political practice and the commitment to provide normative yet non-moralist arguments. These two topics are the focus of this volume. The individual articles contribute novel considerations on what it might mean for realists to engage with actual practices and provide normative yet non-moralist arguments. Thereby, the volume helps to develop the debate on political realism further, in ways that might facilitate an expansion of this debate in the direction of a more constructive political theory.

Phases in the development of the debate on realism in political theory

Roughly two phases of the development of the debate on realism in political theory can be distinguished. In the first phase, realists criticised the “moralist” mainstream in normative political theory and determined, mainly on the basis of the works of Bernard Williams (2005) and Raymond Geuss (2008), the central themes and desiderata of a realist political theory. The strand of the debate that focused on Williams’s realism addressed the Basic Legitimation Demand (BLD) and the question of whether the normative content of the BLD can be read as distinctively political rather than moral (e.g. Hall, 2014, 2015; Sleat, 2010, 2014). A second strand of the debate in this phase, which focused on Geuss’s realism, showed that realism can be interpreted as a genuinely critical approach that “radicalises” criticism of the tendency of political rule to manipulate the acceptance of its legitimation stories, which was already expressed by Williams’s critical theory principle (Prinz, 2016; Rossi, 2010). It is also this first phase of the debate in which well-received overview articles on realist political theory appeared, which helpfully characterised different strands of the debate and described coherent agendas of political realism as a new field in contemporary political theory (Galston, 2010; Rossi & Sleat, 2014).

The second phase of the debate is characterised by engagements with certain blind spots and underdeveloped aspects of the theories of Williams and Geuss and, relatedly, by an increasing diversification of approaches to realist political theorising. Some scholars have looked beyond the topic of legitimacy and examined what it might mean to theorise other political themes based on the concepts and lines of argumentation of Williams’s realism, such as liberty (Hall, 2017) and equality (Jubb, 2015). Others have examined the limitations of Williams’s theory of legitimacy and explored the possibilities of theorising legitimacy realistically beyond the parameters of this theory (Aytac, 2022; Cozzaglio, 2021, 2022b; Fossen, 2022; Westphal, 2022a). The strand of the debate that is more inspired by Geuss’s realism has elaborated the possibilities of criticising the status quo alluded to in Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), particularly with a focus on the method of ideology critique (Prinz & Rossi, 2017; Rossi, 2019).

Among the list of themes discussed in the second phase of the debate on realist political theory are the two themes that we will address in more detail in the remainder of this introduction: engagement with practice, and a non-moralist normativity. By zooming in on these two topics, we do not suggest that they represent the most important topics for the debate on realism in political theory. For one thing, we do not claim that our condensed overview of the themes that have moved to the centre of attention for realists who seek to develop the enterprise of realist political theorising beyond Williams’s and Geuss’s theories is exhaustive. In addition, answers to the question of what topics are worthy of particular attention naturally depend on what sorts of questions one expects a theory to answer.

As mentioned above, we believe that it would be desirable for realism to become more “applied” in the sense of shifting its focus more to the task of spelling out what its commitment to doing political theory in a realist manner implies for the theorising of central political topics, such as stability, cooperation, institutions or political agency, or the engagement with current political and social developments and possibly even concrete policy questions. With a view to this objective, it is essential that realists clarify what they mean when they demand that political theorists should begin by engaging with actual practices and pursue non-moralist forms of normative argumentation. The content of any realist political theory that strengthens its constructive or “applied” character will to a significant extent depend on what is determined as the proper consideration of actual practices and on what it means to be normative in the right, non-moralist way.

To be clear at this point, we do not believe that realists must agree on a single interpretation of what it means to do realist political theory. We are convinced that the diversity of realist political thought is one of its strengths, not a weakness. What is needed are answers, in the plural, to the question of what it might mean to implement realists’ fundamental commitments in the practice of political theorising. When we now give an overview of the current debates on two central themes of realist political theory, and highlight some blind spots and open questions, we do not assume that there is one right way of answering them. The role of practice in realist political theory and the place and nature of normativity in the theory require further attention and intensified debates, but the goal of such debates should be to examine potentially diverse possibilities of addressing them. In the final part of this introduction, we will outline how the articles assembled in this special issue help illuminate paths for developing the respective debates further.

The role of practice in realist political theory

Rossi and Sleat (2014) describe what probably counts as a widely agreed understanding of what the role of practice in realist political theory should be. “Broadly, realists maintain that political theory should begin (in a justificatory rather than temporal sense) not with the explication of moral ideals (of justice, freedom, rights, etc.), which are then taken to settle the questions of value and principle in the political realm, but in an (typically interpretative) understanding of the practice of politics itself” (p. 690). That means that realists do not merely criticise the “detached” nature of much of political philosophy, or its tendency to “displace” politics (Baderin, 2014). Rather, they argue that the content of political theory, and its mode of argumentation, should be oriented towards understanding the particularities of political practice. What might it mean to realise this objective in the practice of political theorising? The broader field of realist political theory contains at least two different interpretations.

One interpretation can be found in Bernard Williams’s realism, which focuses on the meaning of political practices in general, i.e. the unique features that distinguish politics from other sorts of social practices. Crudely, the idea is that what characterises politics as a distinct sort of social practice is that it aims to secure “order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation” under circumstances of disagreement and conflict (Williams, 2005, p. 3; see also Sleat, 2013, p. 47). In addition, politics provides answers to the first political question that are acceptable for the ruled – otherwise, the answers would be acts of terror rather than products of politics (Williams, 2005, pp. 4-5). From this perspective, the central characteristics of politics, which separate it from other sorts of social practices, function as criteria or filters for the identification of appropriate norms and instruments of political theory.

To be sure, Williams’s interest in determining the meaning of political practices in general does not mean that his thinking is insensitive to the specificities of contexts. For example, his discussion of liberalism as a necessary property of legitimate states under the conditions of modernity (Williams, 2005, pp. 9-10) shows that he specifies the content of the BLD in consideration of the particular characteristics of concrete contexts. However, the concepts and principles that make up the agenda of a realist political theory are determined through a reflection of what characterises political practices qua being political practices.

A different interpretation of what it might mean to begin the enterprise of political theory by engaging with practice can be found in radical realism as is undertaken by those who identify the capacity of ideology critique to guide potentially fundamental realist criticisms of the status quo (Prinz & Rossi, 2017; Rossi, 2019). Radical realists treat political practices as the objects of a critique that has two components, namely a diagnosis of “the patterns of power exercise” that hegemonic practices exhibit (Prinz & Rossi, 2017, p. 350), and an assessment of the ideological nature of the beliefs that structure these practices, measured as a resistance to revision in light of empirical evidence (Prinz & Rossi, 2017, p. 359). In contrast to Williams’s approach, this form of doing realist political theory begins by analysing particular political practices, instead of the overall category of political practices, and aims at debunking – or vindicating (see Rossi, 2019, p. 645) – those practices, rather than carving out their distinct purposes to determine a positive agenda for political theory. From this perspective, political practice and the beliefs that support particular political practices are the central material of investigations that free assessments of how political theory might orient political action from possible illusions.

These two alternatives show that there is more than one possibility to make sense of realists’ commitment to begin the enterprise of political theory with an interpretation of political practice. However, it is less clear what the relationship between the approaches is. For example, it is not obvious whether the critical engagement with concrete practices that characterises radical realism as ideology critique should presume Williams’s understanding of the point and purpose of politics as such. Relatedly, one might ask to what extent a positioning on the question of what the point and purpose of politics is influences the selection of practices that radical realists make the objects of their critique.

Another relevant question is whether the two alternatives that we traced here already exhaust possibilities of interpreting realists’ commitment to begin political theory in an understanding of practice. More specifically, one might ask if an engagement with particular practices can be made the basis of a more positive form of political theorising than embodied by ideology critique. Could realists create a positive agenda for political theory by analysing the practices that can be found in concrete contexts, rather than by analysing the general characteristics of politics as a distinct sort of social practice? Recent work that encourages realists to look into ethnographic methodology (Prinz, 2019) or people’s critical thinking about the status quo (Westphal, 2022b) indicates that it might be worthwhile to explore this question further, especially if one thinks that the debate on realism in political theory would benefit from developments that promote both its transition to a “more constructive or productive form of political thought” (Sleat, 2018, p. 10) and a diversification of realist political theory.

However, such strategies provoke the question of what criteria should guide the selection of political practices that could serve as starting points of constructive and practical forms of realist political theory. More specifically, they raise the question of what requirements the selected practices must meet. Under what conditions must they work, and for whom – for everyone, as many people as possible, or only for specific groups? And what normative criteria are used to determine which practices are more “productive” or more “compatible” with the relevant context? The latter question in particular makes it clear that the role of practice in a realist political theory cannot be fully determined in isolation from questions about the specificity of normativity in realist political theory.

Finally, one might ask whether it makes sense to limit the potentially productive role of recourse to political practices in the narrow sense. Whereas strong interpretations of the “autonomy of the political” might demand a focus on political practices, some authors have argued that realist political theory would benefit from expanding the range of practices with which it engages. For example, Manon Westphal (in her contribution to this volume) refers to the “social embeddedness of politics”. It is probably not by chance that realists who build on insights from feminism and the significance of private contexts for the discovery of mechanisms of domination and oppression argue against the strict separation of the political from other spheres of social action (Baderin, 2021).

Normativity in realist political theory

The place and nature of normativity in realist political theory has been a much-debated topic ever since the “arch-realists” Williams and Geuss argued that political theory needs a realist reorientation to avoid the “moralist” tendencies of mainstream political philosophy. At least three questions have been at the centre of the debate on what this rejection of moralism implies for a realist political theory.

First, there is the question of whether realists should engage in normative theorising at all. While the majority of realists think that realists should re-orient normative theorising in a direction that avoids the pitfalls of moralism (e.g. Rossi & Sleat, 2014), some voices in the debate argue that realists should abandon normative aspirations, at least in the form of prescriptions, and turn to more outrightly interpretive forms of political theory. By contrast with prescriptive political theorising, which seeks to provide “recommendations and justifications for political action” of some sort, interpretive political theorising is about “understanding politics” (Freeden, 2012, p. 1, italics in original). Michael Freeden argues that the advantage of an interpretive approach is that it can help uncover and explore an essential feature of reality: the messiness of social life. Freeden is concerned that prescriptive ambitions guide political theorists to narrowing their thinking to “generalizations or simplifications” that obfuscate the messy character of social life and the political thinking that shapes it (Freeden, 2012, p. 4). In a similar vein, John Horton articulates reservations about prescriptive political theorising and argues that realists should “elucidate and analyse” political concepts and ideas and leave the task of determining what would be desirable to achieve in politics to citizens and political actors (Horton, 2017, p. 497).

However, since not all realists retreat to the view that a realist political theory should understand itself as a purely interpretive endeavour, and many defend the notion that a realist lens inspires a reorientation of normative theorising, questions about the nature of normativity in realist political theory have played a central role in the debate.

Therefore, a second question that has received much attention is that of whether there is a distinctively political normativity upon which realists may draw to make normative yet non-moralist arguments, i.e. whether the commitment to what is often called the autonomy of the political implies a commitment to the “normative autonomy of the political” (Rossi, 2019, p. 639). Critical voices in the debate, such as Erman and Möller (2015, 2018) and Leader Maynard and Worsnip (2018), question the possibility of a distinctively political normativity and argue that realists cannot avoid “ethics-first” thinking if they want to retain some prescriptive hold over the actuality. This conclusion has been criticised by realists in different ways (e.g. Burelli & Destri, 2022; Jubb, 2019; Jubb & Rossi, 2015). While realists are united in rejecting the equation of normative argumentation with “ethics-first” reasoning, not all advocate the notion of a distinctively political normativity. Those who explicitly defend the possibility of a political normativity do so on different grounds. Some argue that a political normativity is distinct to the extent that it includes epistemic (Rossi, 2010, 2019) or functional normativities (Burelli, 2022) that are distinct from morality (for a discussion of both sorts of non-moral normativities, see Burelli & Destri, 2022). Others highlight the character of politics as a distinct sphere of social relationships and assert that a political normativity embraces values, both moral and non-moral, that are suitable for the political sphere in the sense that they are compatible with the particular logic and circumstances of politics (Sleat, 2016, 2022).

The disagreement among realists on what the best interpretation of the distinctiveness of political normativity is relates to a third question in the debate, namely: what are the sources of normativity? Rossi (2019), for example, distinguishes three strategies to source the content of a realist normativity. The ordorealist asks what the central tasks or purposes of politics are. The “provision of order and stability” (Rossi, 2019, p. 642) is an obvious answer to this question, which is reflected, for example, in Williams’s argument about the primacy of the first political question (Williams, 2005, p. 3). But there are alternative interpretations of this strategy. For example, Burelli (2022) argues that “the ability to select and implement collective decisions” (Burelli, 2022, p. 640) represents the central function of politics and should thus be considered the distinct standard of a political normativity. The contextual realist, on the other hand, sources normative standards through “an interpretation of the point and purpose of particular political practices” in concrete contexts (Rossi, 2019, p. 642, with reference to Jubb, 2015 and Beetz, 2017 for this way of determining the sources of realist normativity). Finally, the radical realist’s strategy of sourcing normativity is mostly negative in the sense of debunking: it applies epistemic standards to expose the ideological nature of beliefs in legitimation stories (Rossi, 2019, p. 645).

There are also realists who question the thesis of an autonomy of politics – or at least the view that politics is autonomous in the sense that it implies a normative autonomy (Baderin, 2021) – or do not find this question particularly interesting “because politics and society never have and do not require regulative ideals supplied by theory or philosophy” (Sabl, 2017, p. 381). Several authors point out that the thesis of the (normative) autonomy of politics imposes considerable burdens of justification – especially, though not exclusively, metaethical ones – which have not been answered satisfactorily so far, and doubt the usefulness of such an undertaking (Baderin, 2021; Leader Maynard, 2022; Nye, 2015; Sleat, 2022). However, if it turns out that the strong thesis of the (normative) autonomy of politics cannot be defended, which would also render the associated thesis of the existence of a distinctively political normativity questionable, the question of what distinguishes a realist “normativity” from the criticised forms of normative political theory in terms of “ethics-first” (Jubb, 2017, p. 112), “applied ethics” (Sleat, 2018, p. 3) or “political moralism” (Galston, 2010, p. 387) becomes pressing once more.

In addition, there are several interesting questions about the nature and place of normativity in realist political theory that have been insufficiently addressed, partly because the controversy over whether or not there is such a thing as a distinctively political normativity in the first place has consumed so much attention. One is about what could be called the selection problem. How exactly do realists source their normativity? For example, how do realists determine what counts as a task or purpose of politics unique enough to fill the notion of a political normativity with content? What elements of contexts are relevant for the contextual strategy of sourcing normativity in a realist vein? What legitimation stories should radical realists look to when attempting to debunk ideologically infused beliefs? In addition, relatively little has been said on possibilities to combine the different strategies. Rossi (2019) highlights that they are not mutually exclusive and identifies traces of all of them in Williams’s theory. However, it might be worthwhile discussing alternative possibilities for combination and whether there are good reasons to refer exclusively to the logic of politics, contextual resources or the means of ideology critique at least in relation to some themes or problems.

Another question that deserves more attention is what the appropriate form of prescription in realist political theory is. All those who do not understand realism as a purely interpretative undertaking advocate the view that realists should deliver arguments about what would be desirable to achieve in politics. However, there are diverse possibilities to interpret this endeavour. Should arguments be limited to debunking the status quo, or to delineating political situations that are worth striving for? Those who opt for interpreting the prescriptive ambitions of realist political theory constructively face a number of choices.

A first concerns the question whether realist normativity is non-utopian or open to utopianism. While there is broad agreement among realists that feasibility is an important feature of political options that could be assessed positively from a realist perspective, realism is not committed to rejecting utopianism per se. As William Galston puts it in his well-received overview article, realists criticise mainstream political theory for being “utopian in the wrong way” (Galston, 2010, p. 387). Over the last years, radical realists in particular have argued that realist political theory should explore more what it might mean to be utopian in the ‘right’, distinctly realist way (Raekstad, 2018, 2021; Rossi, 2019).

A second choice concerns the extent to which realist normativity should be prescriptive. While Williams’s BLD and his case for the preferability of liberal legitimacy in modernity insinuate the notion of a categorical normativity, others understand realist normativity as providing, at best, well-founded hypotheses helpful to orient the political judgements of addressees (Bagg, 2022). In light of their understanding that a diversity of normative views and fundamental disagreements are central features of politics, realists might also understand their normative interventions as explicitly partisan (Sleat, 2013) or as mere options. Finally, where realists draw on non-moral resources such as epistemic ones and focus on debunking the status quo, claims to prescription can be abandoned altogether (Rossi, 2019, pp. 646, 648).

A third choice concerns the scope of validity of realist normativity. Williams’s requirement (2005, pp. 4-5) that all answers to the first political question must make sense to those subject to domination – though he does not state whether he thinks that there is only one way in which people can make sense of those answers – is at least open to being interpreted as a case for something like an epochal universalism (for the debate on this question see, e.g. Hall, 2015; Sleat, 2010). In contrast, Rossi seems to assume, at least with regard to forms of “prefigurative politics”, that the scope of normative orientations that realists can provide is limited to particular groups (Rossi, 2019, p. 648). Indeed, it seems that realists’ commitment to recognising the diversity of normative views and the fundamental disagreements that result from this diversity makes it very difficult to endow realist normativity with a claim to comprehensive validity. After all, this was one of the main reasons for Freeden and Horton to renounce prescriptive aspirations entirely.

The articles collected in this volume speak to the outlined themes in unique ways. To be sure, they all contribute to the debate on what it might mean to do realist political theory in ways that cannot be reduced to their merits for reflections on the role of practice and normativity in realist political theory. In acknowledgment of the fact that no summary of the developed arguments can be encompassing, we take the freedom to highlight those aspects of the arguments that relate to the themes set out in this introductory chapter. We do so not to predetermine readers’ perceptions of the articles, but to encourage reading them while being aware of the broader themes they speak to – themes that occupy the debate on realist political theory more generally.

The contributions

Janosch Prinz deals with Bernard Williams’s realism and argues that it “falls short of its own commitment to connect to the practices of politics”. Prinz argues that Williams limits the task of legitimation to a few political goods provided by the state, and criticises Williams for allowing “interpretive contextual variation” only as far as the content of the BLD is concerned, not in terms of its structure. Prinz proposes two possible sources of inspiration for methodological innovation that might help bridge the gap between theory and practice that he identifies in Williams’s theory: pragmatism and ethnography. While pragmatism can teach realists to begin the theorising of legitimation through interpreting “concrete stance-taking practices of people”, ethnography can infuse investigations of concrete contexts not only with a sensitivity to the multiplicity of meanings of practices, but also with an openness to what problems might be worth addressing (and answering) in the first place. Prinz argues that a realist political theory that employs pragmatist and ethnographic methods would marry prescriptive and interpretive elements and thereby challenges all framings of the assertion that realists would have to choose between prescriptive and interpretive interpretations of what it means to do political theory realistically.

Jonathan Floyd presents the theory of normative behaviourism as a member of the realist family. Normative behaviourism reverses what mainstream philosophy understands to be the natural relationship between principles and actions, which is that principles justify actions. Floyd assumes that real actions can justify principles and proposes to read the practices with which people react to “real political institutions and policies” as verdicts on the quality of the principles that these institutions and policies represent. He treats criminal and insurrectionary actions as prime examples of actions that express negative verdicts on the institutions structuring their context and argues that regimes that produce fewer such actions are preferable over regimes that produce more of them. Floyd thus offers a distinct interpretation of realists’ understanding that institutions should play a central role in political theory and shows what it might mean to tap into particular sorts of contextual resources for prescriptive argumentation. Against the background of data showing that egalitarian liberal democracies face comparably little criminal or insurrectionary behaviour, normative behaviourism gives a “clear liberal-democratic-egalitarian political prescription“ but retains a critical eye for the status quo, assuming that things could always be better – or might already have been better elsewhere.

Greta Favara argues that realist political theorists may draw on ideals in prescriptive argumentation without betraying their commitment to recognising the circumstances of politics if ideals are understood as models. Favara develops a realist critique of two alternatives that are well-established in the debate on non-ideal theory: interpretations of ideals as targets, and interpretations of ideals as benchmarks. She argues that neither of the two interpretations harmonises with the realist outlook. If political theory treats ideals as targets, it leaves too little room for manoeuvre in situations in which actions that would bring circumstances closer to an ideal create significant costs. If it treats ideals as benchmarks for the evaluation and comparison of political options, it neglects the necessity to generate normative judgments through context-sensitive engagement with political circumstances. In contrast, Favara argues that interpreting ideals as models means treating them as investigative tools that help examine familiar problems from new perspectives on the basis of intuitions and judgements rather than rules. Favara thus proposes the situating of ideals “between” theory and practice as a realist alternative to the supposed choice between treating ideals as entities that dictate what should be done from outside practice and abandoning them altogether.

Nat Rutherford identifies two types of “barrenness” in the political theories of Williams and Geuss and argues that story-telling represents a neglected possibility to do realist political theory in a way that overcomes the limitations of both theories. As far as Williams’s realism is concerned, Rutherford diagnoses that it cuts itself off from normative resources outside the particular history of liberal societies and thereby forecloses all “criticism beyond liberal criticism”. Although Geuss’s realism is not bound to the status quo, it is “barren” in the sense that it limits its normative ambitions to diagnosis and critique and avoids positive prescriptions. Rutherford argues that story-telling could be a potentially fruitful method for radical realists to produce such positive prescriptions in non-moralist ways. He highlights that story-telling does not dictate and restrict, but reconfigures and invents to the extent that it encourages “revised judgments about the limits of political possibility” in forward-looking and creative ways. According to Rutherford, the 1871 Paris Commune illustrates how the telling of alternative stories about ourselves and the political can inspire new ways of doing politics, even if there is no guarantee that the stories being told are progressive or practically successful.

Manon Westphal argues that those who seek to develop realist political theory in the direction of a constructive normative undertaking should engage more with the diversity of social practices that is to be found in real contexts. More specifically, she argues that non-standard social practices, i.e. practices that differ from what the norm is in a given situation, offer resources for constructive realist critique. The argument builds on the observation that politics is embedded with the social to the extent that social practices often influence political developments, e.g. by constraining or enabling political practices. Westphal proposes that realists who aim to theorise alternative political futures draw inspiration from the social embeddedness of politics and the enabling function of social practices in particular. Doing so would mean treating non-standard social practices that exist today as reasons to enter critical investigations of elements of the status quo with which they are in tension and theorise more general political practices that might emerge from the relevant social practices. While this way of doing realist political theory would not seal itself off from moral considerations, Westphal argues that it can be separated from the sort(s) of moralism that realists want to abandon.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the participants of the international conference “Doing Realist Political Theory” that we co-organised with John Horton in July 2018 in Münster. The debates at the conference encouraged us to put together this collection and most of the contributions are based on presentations at the conference. We also thank the Centre for Advanced Study in Bioethics (DFG Kolleg-Forschergruppe 1209) for the generous funding of the conference.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Manon Westphal

Manon Westphal is a postdoctoral researcher in political theory at the University of Münster. She is a research fellow in the joint research project “Cultures of Compromise” and works mainly in the fields of democratic theory, agonism and political realism.

Ulrich Willems

Ulrich Willems is professor of political theory at the University of Münster. He is one of the directors of the joint research project “Cultures of Compromise”. His research in the field of political theory focuses on political realism, the political and legal constitution of pluralist societies and the relationship between politics and religion.