Norms, Interests, and Desirable Futures

Abstract

This chapter builds on literatures that have set Parsons’ foundational work ‘The Structure of Social Action’ in a political context, and it identifies links between current research on global politics and Parsonian studies. Will contemporary political upheavals lead to a decline of ‘Western’ liberal institutions, to which Parsons adhered throughout his life? In order to answer, these developments are read through the lens of Parsons’ voluntaristic theory of action. In addition to political practices and public discourses, this means to consider social scientific thinking as genuine ingredient of the current global scene. The paper finds what Parsons would have called positivistic or idealistic reductionisms as part of public and academic discourses. These reductionisms might reinforce several potentially or effectively detrimental developments that have been going on for some time, such as trends toward authoritarianism, increasing cultural pessimism, hateful discrimination, and retreat from Western multilateral institutions. By clearing misinterpretations of Parsons’ ‘normative’ approach, voluntarism is presented as an analytical base for finding arrangements that reconcile (seemingly) conflicting visions of desirable futures. Voluntarism can thus help create new, viable forms of cooperation that might pacify conflicts on national and global levels.