Essentially contested concepts as a tool in political studies: definition and criteria

Abstract

A notion of "essentially contested concepts", introduced by a prominent British philosopher W. B. Gallie in 1956, still remains practically unknown or at least not sufficiently well researched in the Ukrainian political science. In order for this notion to be applied as a tool in empirical studies either using data on political processes in Ukraine or studying external processes from a Ukrainian perspective, it has to be defined and discussed. This article provides an original definition of essentially contested concepts as it was introduced by Gallie, and his seven original criteria for defining a given concept an essentially contested are presented and commented. As a great master of his mother tongue – the English language – W. B. Gallie used a plethora of opportunities provided to him by the richness of his language to put forward and advocate for his idea of essential contestability of some concepts. Consequently, a number of criteria for defining essentially contested concepts possess some unique qualities that may be lost once translated into another language – which is also the case with Ukrainian translation. This article points to a number of such instances, of which Ukrainian scholars should be aware, namely: the original component "contested" provided for a whole stream of discussion regarding the "contestedness" of some concepts as a genuine quality of phenomena that will inevitably become objects of constant disputes and contestations. Secondly, the criteria of "appraisiveness" and "diverse describability" are not easily translated and need to be taken care of when applying them as practical characteristics of concepts under study. This article lists the original criteria for the essentially contested concepts: appraisive character of such concepts, their internal complexity, diverse describability, openness, recognition of their contested essence by the contending parties, existence of an exemplar that anchors conceptual meaning of such a concept, and progressive contestation by means of which a better coherence of concept’s usage can be achieved. Moreover this article also pays attention to a number of additional nuances articulated by Gallie that are of great importance when dealing with essentially contested concepts: the lack of any quantitative scheme or general rule for deciding on the best concept in any contestation regarding the correct use of such a concept and the fact that the uses of essentially contested concepts are discussed and debated "aggressively and defensively" by the contesting parties. Despite the fact that Gallie didn’t pay any attention to the linguistic side of concept’s studies, this article shows that a search for an original meaning of any concept can be misleading – or even illusory. Using two examples of contested concepts – "populism" in the works of two German scholars J.W. Müller and B. Stegemann and the “virus of dictatorship” by the Dutch social psychologist F. Schaper, this article demonstrates that the essence of such concepts can be contested based on the ideological stances taken by the contesting parties, as well as because of the choice of terms and methodologies embodied into the discussion of the correct uses of such concepts. Finally, this article calls for further enquiries into the studies of the nature of modern discourses in which different concepts are debated and contested.