Anglo-American Political Theory Research Articles

When the people are not reasonable: Multiculturalism and realistic normative theory in the contemporary era

In this piece, I offer an original and fundamental critique of a range of approaches to multiculturalism that have dominated the field of Anglo-American political theory since first-wave debates conducted in the 1990s/2000s. I suggest that the politics of the early twenty-first century, and especially the widespread rise of anti-immigrant and anti-minority sentiments among citizens of liberal democratic states throughout the world, requires political theorists who seek feasible solutions to real-world political problems to reject these theories. I focus on two approaches in particular: political liberalism and the politics of difference. Neither offers a vision of politics that is tenable in the early twenty-first century, I argue, as they both require citizens to deliberate about political matters in ways that they cannot. In discussing these approaches, and finding them wanting, it is revealed that political theorists face a choice. They can present a theory which is realistic in the sense that it takes account of political reality and offers a strategy which might be used to genuinely inform a process of reform. Alternatively, they can abandon realism and also the desire to produce an operational normative theory which can resolve real problems in actually existing states. I lay out the nature and importance of this choice and explain some of its implications for the discipline and for our current political predicament. I suggest that the choice is unavoidable and that making it requires political theorists to make a more fundamental decision about the purposes of normative political theory itself.

Idealism, realism, and immigration: David Miller’s Strangers in Our Midst

David Miller’s Strangers in Our Midst is an important contribution to the debate among political philosophers about how liberal democratic states should deal with the issue of migration. But it is also a thoughtful statement concerning how best to do political philosophy and, as such, contributes also to the growing debate within Anglo-American political theory about the relative merits of ‘ideal’ versus ‘non-ideal’ normative theorising. Miller’s argument in the book builds on his earlier published work in suggesting that political philosophy should be ‘for Earthlings’: it should not be understood as a process of ideal theorising which ignores political reality. He argues that normative theorists should seek to resolve complex political problems by taking seriously the political context that makes these problems complex, rather than putting aside that context in the interests of deriving first principles. This is a controversial approach, which requires political philosophers to take more seriously than they often do the expressed concerns of citizens living in democratic states and the practical problems associated with applying normative principles in ways which actually help address the issue at hand. This piece discusses some of these themes, and the issue of migration more generally, in order to help frame the debate which follows.

Two Contemporary Approaches to Political Theory

Broadly speaking, the form that contemporary Anglo-American political theory has taken since the 1970s, with its reinvigoration in the seminal work of John Rawls, can largely be described as Platonic and Kantian, focusing on the formulation, comparison, and evaluation of abstract principles of justice, and only subsequently looking to their application in the real world. Concerned about this, a number of critics of the contemporary paradigm in political theory have emerged to offer their own alternatives. This article will discuss two of them: Raymond Geuss and Amartya Sen. This article does three things. Its first section lays out the realist approach to political theory advocated by Raymond Geuss and the comparative approach advocated by Amartya Sen, respectively. Here I argue that Sen's comparative approach can best be understood as a kind of realism. In the second section of this article, I explore what I take to be an underlying concern behind the work of both Sen and Geuss, and which, although it is rarely explicitly mentioned (and certainly never fully developed), I think we should bear in mind: namely, a strand of anti-Platonism in political theory. Third and finally, I present three arguments for why a realist approach to political theory is likely to be superior to those of their contemporary adversaries: the argument from efficacy claims that realist approaches are more likely to impact real politics; the argument from cognitive distortions claims that realist approaches are better equipped to notice and critically evaluate and revise undue assumptions and distortions of various kinds; and the argument from abstractness claims that since such distortions are likely to increase with a theory's degree of abstractness, and since realist theories tend to be less abstract than their competitors, a realist approach will likely be less susceptible to such distortions to begin with.

The problem with English(es) and linguistic (in)justice. Addressing the limits of liberal egalitarian accounts of language

Van Parijs’s Linguistic Justice for Europe and the World furthers a nascent examination of multilingualism within political philosophy, drawing on continental European contexts where multilingualism is the norm. Van Parijs argues, in effect for linguistic cosmopolitanism via English as the current world language, and this seems ostensibly to be a considerable improvement on ‘the untrammeled public monolingualism’ of Anglo-American political theory. However, Van Parijs’s account is flawed in four key respects. First, there is the fundamental problem of his reductionist account of language – by which language is viewed only in terms of its communicative uses and reach and not in relation to its symbolic and identity functions. Second is his simplistic advocacy of English as a global lingua franca, which ignores issues of power and inequality, along with related delimited access to high-status English language varieties. Third are the inherent limitations associated with his advocacy of linguistic territoriality, which recognizes state-sanctioned languages but little else, thus failing to mitigate existing linguistic hierarchies. Finally, the wider argument for English as a global lingua franca is inevitably underpinned by a monolithic/hegemonic view of English itself. This monolithic conception of English stands in contradistinction, not only to the actual plethora of Englishes in the world today, but also, more importantly, to their widely varying status and use in furthering cross-communication and related notions of social and economic mobility. The latter thus fatally undermines Van Parijs’s central argument linking social and economic mobility ineluctably to access to English.

The social and the political in Luhmann

This article examines Luhmann’s contributions to contemporary political theory from a different light than has been made available thus far in Anglo-American political theory. More specifically, I argue that social systems theory makes a provoking and productive intervention in the ongoing debate on competing conceptions of ‘critique’ and normativity. I first compare Luhmann’s approach with that of Foucault’s and show that systems theory powerfully interrogates the sociological validity of the structure of normativity often found in the currently prominent liberal-universalist political theory. Later in the article, however, I identify a central theoretical problem in Luhmann’s brand of systems theory – namely a highly constricted notion of politics. This, I argue, stems from a strong apolitical structure of its overarching concept, the social. I trace this problem by analyzing the peculiar character of Luhmann’s normativism, or what I call ‘reluctant normativism’, and then by putting his central concepts alongside the recent developments in the theories of ‘the political’.

The Trial Transcript as Political Theory: Penn-Mead in Anglo-American Political Thought

One of the most exciting developments in the field of political theory in recent years has been the increasing attention to issues of form and genre. No longer content to analyze abstract principles of justice, political theorists have embraced an interdisciplinary approach that is increasingly sensitive to the ways in which political texts “work” not only in narrowly political but in broader cultural, social, and rhetorical ways. This paper draws on such an expanded view of political theory, exploring an important text in the legal tradition and its consequences for Anglo-American political theory and practice. The People’s Ancient and Just Liberties Asserted (1670), a purported transcript of the trial of young William Penn and his colleague William Mead for unlawful preaching, not only gave rise to important principles of jury nullification (despite repeated threats and punishments from the judge, the jury refused to convict the defendants); it also spawned a contentious public and polemical exchange about the principles of common law, popular liberties, and the rights of conscience. Although Penn denied authorship of the article, he did endorse its basic account of his trial and defended the work against those who denounced it. The Penn-Mead trial entered the mythos of the maturing Quaker movement and Penn’s own political career, which led to his insistence on the right of jury trial for his colony’s inhabitants.But such legacies do not always remain neatly within the mythic boxes that political actors attempt to construct for them. Ten years after the founding of Pennsylvania, a schism rocked the colony, and dissident Quakers were brought before civil courts on charges of sedition. One result of those trials (aside from the convictions) was a publication entitled New England’s Spirit of Persecution Transmitted to Pennsylvania, purporting to present a transcript of the trials. The work, written by George Keith, one of the defendants, was self-consciously modeled on the early transcript of the Penn-Mead trial, and thus sought to cast Keith in the role of Penn, and to associate the colonial authorities with English persecutors. This paper explores the ways in which these trial transcripts represent serious works of political theory: they present a vision of social order and an argument about the nature of liberty and authority, and engage in a spirited engagement with rival views of the good. Considering both the rhetorical and performative strategies on the one hand, and the substantive arguments on the other – and, perhaps most importantly, the interconnections between the two – gives political theorists new tools in the attempt to understand the many ways in which political ideas are shaped, articulated, and communicated.

Integration and Identity in an International Context: Problems and Ambiguities in the New Politics of Multiculturalism

Debates about multiculturalism, minority rights, and identity dominated Anglo-American political theory during the majority of the 1990s, and continue to raise important questions concerning the nature of citizenship, community, and the responsibilities of liberal states. They were popular, too, among policy makers, politicians, and journalists: many academics and practitioners were, for a time, united in their support for multiculturalism. Just as the philosophical literature at that time became more ‘multiculturalist’, so many European states increasingly adopted multiculturalist policies as a way of including historically marginalised groups into mainstream liberal culture or, in some cases, as a way of protecting minority groups from unfair pressures from the majority culture. However, as time has gone on, the multiculturalist turn in liberal political theory, and among many European governments, has waned. In the wake of terrorist atrocities around the world, growing concerns about the erosion of civic and national identity, and fears that cultural recognition can permit illiberal practices, many academics and practitioners have sought to distance themselves from the idea that it is a role of the state to afford special treatment to cultural minorities, and have sought once again to emphasise those common bonds which unite citizens of liberal democratic states, rather than those cultural identities which may serve to divide them. This article evaluates some of the recent philosophical literature on multiculturalism against the changing political landscape in Britain and Europe and suggests that the multiculturalist position remains weakened by a number of crucial ambiguities.

Through a Glass, Darkly: The Vision and Visions of Political Theory

This article assesses the recent history and possible future of political theory in Britain. Part One surveys the difficulties that political theory has faced. In particular, it focuses on the relationship between political theory and three developments in the study of politics: (i) the divorce of Anglo-American and continental political theory; (ii) the rise of the idea of a political science; and (iii) the tendency to narrow the focus of Anglo-American political theory around the themes of liberalism and justice. In Part Two the article focuses on the nature of both seeing and being seen by political theory. In doing so a conception of political theory is developed that views it as the activity of seeing ourselves reflected with others. Such an account of political theory advances it as (i) a social activity; that (ii) focuses on the importance of understanding; and (iii) involves a perspectivism based around a reflective seeing with others. This opens a space for a pluralistic political theory—a pluralism that reflects both perspectives and change, but one that is always limited by the reality, values and value of others, and the possibility of a shared understanding.

In Defense of Herder on Cultural Diversity and Interaction

Diversity and unity are pivotal to the thought of the eighteenth-century German philosopher, Johann Gottfried Herder. Yet despite the enormous influence of his thought on the late Isaiah Berlin in the development of his own pluralism and Berlin's urging for those interested in cultural diversity to learn from Herder, many commentators fail to heed Berlin's equal recognition of Herder's radical antidualism. Thus, while an increasing number of theorists now note Herder's contribution to philosophical and political thought in being one of the first to recognize the value of cultural diversity, many fail to grasp fully the complexity and subtlety of his understanding of culture. Contrary to what is becoming the orthodox view in Anglo-American political theory, Herder was fully aware of the diversity existing within any given cultural community and promoted cultural interaction and interchange in a spirit of cooperation. He only opposed the cultural domination of indigenous populations.

The house that Chuck built: twenty-five years of reading Charles Beitz

On the face of it, this might seem a somewhat frivolous, not to say over-familiar, title for an essay on the influence of Charles Beitz's Political Theory and International Relations (hereafter, PTIR); Beitz, however, will recognise the implicit comparison between his work and John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, and will accordingly, I hope, forgive the familiarity. But, accepting that this is a title that conveys respect, it might still be argued to be inappropriate on the rather different grounds that it substantially overstates the influence of PTIR. Can it really be the case that this relatively short (under 200 pages) volume with an over-ambitious title ‘changed the subject’ in the way that A Theory of Justice certainly did a few years earlier? Obviously the subject in question – international political theory – is rather more limited than the whole world of at least Anglo-American political theory that was changed by Rawls's work, but such a claim can, I think, be defended.

The Illusions of Egalitarianism

The Illusions of Egalitarianism. By John Kekes. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. 228p. $29.95.According to John Kekes, contemporary Anglo-American political theory is dominated by egalitarian writers to the extent that all other voices are either drowned out or systematically excluded. Egalitarians “write books about each other's books, and mostly articles about each other's articles” (p. 188), and when confronted by those who disagree, they merely resort to “abuse” (p. 66). This egalitarian hegemony is both surprising and, where it does not render political theory irrelevant, politically dangerous because it is built on illusions rather than rational, defensible, arguments. The point of this book is to reveal those illusions and the absurdities that follow from them.

A Good Judge of Character?

A Question of Character: Scientific Racism and the Genres of American Fiction, 1892-1912. By Cathy Boeckmann. Tuscaloosa, Ala.: The University of Alabama Press, 2000. 238 pages. $39.95 (cloth). Judgments of character can be the most political judgments of all. And yet the most common judgments of character—the most personal, the most everyday—are most political precisely when their reliance on a politics of character is least visible. The arena in which character has been most visible as a political concept, however, is the arena of national character. In Anglo-American political theory, at least since Hobbes, the concept of character has been a key term for imagining the reach of the public over the private sphere, the reach of the nation over and into the citizen. But as postcolonial and postnational critics have been keen to suggest, perhaps the question of character, particularly the question of national character, is no longer relevant in an increasingly postnationalist frame. Indeed, as Emily Apter among others has observed, in "the postnational 'beyond,' the category of national character fails to figure prominently, if at all." 1 Perhaps the reign of character has passed, residually relegated to conservative polemics of personal accountability and liberal universalizations of cultural difference. Perhaps the phantom of national character has become less relevant as a subject of political analysis, even a red herring of sorts in the study of transnational and global circuits of power and subject formation. But I suspect that it has not. Character continues to be a powerful term in the most everyday strategies of reading, representing, [End Page 325] and performing personal identity, and remains so because of its naturalization, because of its increasing invisibility as a political category. Indeed, as Cathy Boeckmann's richly informed and theoretically astute book, A Question of Character: Scientific Racism and the Genres of American Fiction, 1892-1912, reminds us, the concept of character is perhaps most relevant, most resourceful and galvanizing, in times of its own invisibility, in times in which it no longer appears to be in question at all. Appraising the American subject's approximation to and incorporation of national ideals has long taken shape as "a question of character." And yet the question of character, the reflexive question which asks what kind of semantic and performative resources have made the concept of character such a privileged mediator of national identity in the United States and beyond, is asked with surprising rarity. It is difficult to imagine another key concept which has done so much hard and politically vexed work throughout the history of the United States. From the patricians of the early republic to post-Reconstruction racial scientists, from fin de siècle progressivist social reformers to post-war sociologists, character has had a very long and checkered rhetorical career giving shape to the individualistic terms of American national identity. It is thus surprising that, at a time when interrogations of many of the central discursive bearers of national, racial, gender and class identity have so reinvigorated American studies, such a productive—and often nefarious—concept has received such scant attention, even as the object of a simple genealogical stocktaking. After a generation of post-war sociological and literary accounts of the "American character" (Riesman's The Lonely Crowd perhaps the most influential among them), Warren Susman's influential essay in Culture as History on how the "modal concept" of character organized both techniques of self-mastery and modes of public presentation in nineteenth-century American culture was one of the first to critically assess the concept of character within a broad historical framework. 2 And while Alan Trachtenberg has more pointedly suggested in The Incorporation of America that character "has not received the critical attention that it deserves," 3 such critical attention continued to take shape only as the scattered, incidental, or methodological remarks on character by scholars pursuing other topics. More recently, however, such scattered remarks have given way to a developed body of scholarship on the...

The theoretical foundations of liberalism

The publication of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice in 1972 inaugurated a new era in Anglo-American political theory by providing a sophisticated and complex paradigm of liberal political diagnosis of and prescription for contemporary society; it resulted in a flood of detailed analyses and discussions of Rawls' proposals in the large and in the small, and also brought forth (in the form of Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia) a counterblast from the libertarian Right which was of commensurate scope and vigour. In the present decade, however, the challenge to Rawlsian liberalism has taken on a new guise—one which it is the purpose of this paper to explore.