Realism In Political Theory Research Articles

The ultimate political question? Realism and omnicide

ABSTRACT Realist political theory purports to prioritize the goals of order, security, and ‘political survival’. In spite of these concerns, it has not yet addressed the growing risk that humanity might be lurching towards self-extinction. This contribution considers what omnicidal risk means for contemporary realism, making two arguments. First, we argue that omnicidal risk poses a political problem in a distinctly realist sense of the term. In doing so, we demonstrate that omnicide is a relevant concern for all realists, while ordorealists in particular hold an unrecognized commitment to mitigating omnicidal risk. Second, by demonstrating the extent to which capitalism can be considered a cause of contemporary omnicidal risk, we argue that this concern and commitment should draw realists – and, in particular, ordorealists – into a critique of contemporary political economy. Realism should not ignore omnicidal risk; instead, its consideration should work to radicalize realism.

A Realist Ethos of Resistance in Global Politics

Abstract Realism is conventionally understood as coldly accepting the powerful dominating the weak. Reversing this image, I argue that Realism contains an implicit ethos of resistance. Drawing on a recent scholarship on the historical complexity and diversity of classical Realism in international relations (IR), this article uncovers this ethos by focusing on three shifts of perspective: (1) from an extreme to moderate view of power politics; (2) from naturalizing the status quo to envisaging progressive change; and (3) from a horizontal view of politics among nations (or other horizontally situated entities) to a global image of power politics. I then explore how these shifts exist in a different scholarship, the emergence of a so-called new Realism in political theory. The article builds a conversation between classical Realism in IR and the new Realist philosopher Bernard Williams’ work, finding that both articulate an ethos of legitimate resistance to domination. The significance of the Realist ethos is that it challenges stereotyped images of the tradition justifying domination and injustices, and it inserts and positions a Realist voice in recent debates over human rights to resist in global politics.

A Realist Membership Account of Political Obligation

The paper offers a realist account of political obligation. More precisely, it offers an account that belongs to the Williamsian liberal strain of contemporary realist theory (as opposed to a Geussian radical realist strain) and draws on and expands some ideas familiar from Bernard Williams’s oeuvre (thick/thin ethical concepts, political realism/moralism, a minimal normative threshold for distinctively political rule). Accordingly, the paper will claim that the fact of membership in a polity provides people with sufficient reason for complying with those political authority claims whose source is that particular polity. The paper will explain that membership in a polity is constituted not by communitarian identification (Horton), nationhood (Tamir), joined commitment/plural subjectivity (Gilbert), but by the fact that people are stably exposed to political authority claims associated with a particular polity which they find making sense as passing the minimal normative threshold for a distinctively political form of rule (as opposed to the rule of terror or sheer coercion). This political-ethical phenomenon is widely known as political obligation but the paper will argue that the label is in fact a misnomer because it does not refer to a generic obligation. The implications of this account are manifold but two seem especially important: first, the notion of political obligation makes sense even beyond the realm of moralist political theory and, second, realist political theory should pay more attention to the problem of compliance than it used to do.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Jürgen Habermas and the Public Intellectual in Modern Democratic Life

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Jürgen Habermas and the Public Intellectual in Modern Democratic Life

Against the status quo: the social as a resource of critique in realist political theory

ABSTRACT The forms of status quo critique that current approaches to realist political theory enable are unsatisfactory. They either formulate standards of constructive critique, but remain uncritical of a great range of political situations, or they offer means for criticising basically all political situations, but neglect constructive critique. As part of the endeavour to develop a status quo critique that is potentially radical and constructive, realists might consider possibilities to use non-standard social practices – social practices that function differently than stipulated by existing political forms – as resources for critique. The article shows how the capacity of non-standard social practices to serve as resources for critique might be exploited. It also defends the proposed procedure against the likely objection that it relies on moralist argumentation. The evaluation of the status quo and the selection of social practices need normative argumentation, but such argumentation can be grounded in the actual to an extent that safeguards its realist nature.

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.

The End of Open Society Realism?

AbstractDoes the ‘Zeitenwende’ herald the beginning of a new and as yet undefined open society realism? The present essay argues this question requires critical discussion of nature and value of realist political theory, particularly at a time where international society is accelerating to somewhere which is itself as yet unclear. Adding to revisionist research on political realism in International Relations (IR) theory I sketch how a political vision I call open society realism may be developed out of Classical realism, in sharp distinction to academic IR neorealism for methodological and political reasons. To strip foreign policy realism from Continental philosophy, law, and history risks that we become what political liberalism ought to avoid: a closed society with a good conscience retreating from world politics, hiding behind the ‘national’ interest as if strategic great power management is a methodic function of structure rather than the politics of an ethically conscious diplomacy.

Political realism and the relationship between ideal and non-ideal theory

ABSTRACT When interest in political realism started to resurge a few years ago, it was not uncommon to interpret realist political theory as a form of non-ideal theorising. This reading has been subjected to extensive criticism. First, realists have argued that political realism cannot be interpreted as merely a form of applied political theory. Second, realists have explained that political realism can defend a role for unfeasible normative prescriptions in political theory. I explain that these developments, besides allowing us to reject interpretations of political realism as a form of non-ideal theory, have given us reason to think of political realism as a form of ideal theory. Yet, when ideal theory enters the picture, a series of methodological questions arise regarding the proper use of ideals. In this paper, I clarify how the relationship between ideal and non-ideal theory ought to be conceptualised in realist political theory. I examine the two major interpretations of the role of ideals that have been provided so far – the target and benchmark interpretations – and I show that neither is compatible with some of the fundamental theoretical commitments of realist political theory. This both allows me to point out the requirements that an interpretation of the relationship between ideal and non-ideal theory must meet to be defined as properly realist and allows me to emphasise the strengths of the realist approach. Accordingly, I propose a new interpretation of the role of ideals, one consistent with realist theoretical commitments: I suggest that realist political ideals ought to be interpreted as models.

Realism and real politics. The gap between promise and practice in Bernard Williams’ realism

ABSTRACT This paper seeks to show that Bernard Williams’ approach to legitimacy falls short of its aspirations in ways that cast doubt on its fitness for guiding the practice of future realist political theory. More precisely, the paper focuses on the shortcomings of Williams’ realism in establishing a connection to (the practices of) politics, and on how to redeem those shortcomings in a way that would render them suitable for guiding future realist political theory. The first substantive section of the paper considers how compatible Williams’ commitments to diagnosis and interpretation are, with how he spells out his realist thought. The second section argues that making good on Williams’ commitments requires realist political theorists to rethink the sources of their insights and the basis of their claims, and sketches pragmatist and ethnographic approaches as promising examples of how realists could match theoretical commitments in practice.

Political realism and the quest for political progress

Political realism and the quest for political progress

Climate Change and the Politics of Apocalyptic Redirection

Alison McQueen’s study of the historical role of apocalyptic ideas in realist political theory cautiously proposes the ‘redirection’ of apocalyptic thought as a plausible alternative to its rejection. Apocalyptic redirection, so understood, uses apocalyptic language to describe potential future catastrophes in order to inspire drastic action to prevent them. Although McQueen acknowledges that apocalyptic redirection may have certain risks, she suggests it may be an appropriate response to the crisis of climate change. In this article, I aim to show that this use of the discourse of apocalyptic redirection is ideologically problematic. I argue that it involves conflating the interests of those who are at least moderately materially comfortable with the interests of humanity as a whole. I will also draw on the 2019 ‘Stop Adani Convoy’ in Australia as a case study to show how the ideological character of this discourse renders it ill-suited to generating popular support for action on climate change, and liable to reproduce existing power relations.

Transformative Contextual Realism

Realist political theory is often confronted with the objection that it is biased towards the status quo. Although this criticism overlooks the fact that realist political theories contain various resources for critique, a realist approach that is strong in status quo critique and contributes, constructively, to the theorising of alternatives to the status quo is a desideratum. The article argues that contextual realism, which sources its normativity from particular contexts, harbours an underexploited potential to establish such a form of political theorising. By drawing on ideas and principles that have guided critical engagements with social and political forms in a particular context, and on widely shared views of need for reform, realists can identify deficits of the status quo and contribute to a debate on how these deficits might be addressed. This article describes and illustrates the idea of a transformative contextual realism, and defends it against some potential objections.

\u2018Disfigurations\u2019 of Democracy? Pareto, Mosca and the Challenge of \u2018Elite Theory\u2019

Considering recent re-assessments of Pareto and Mosca, I discuss whether these thinkers’ socio-political orientations contribute to the ‘disfiguration’ of democracy (in: Urbinati, Democracy disfigured: opinion, truth, and the people, Harvard, Cambridge, MA, 2014) or provide a resource for the renewal of democratic institutions. Femia (Pareto and political theory, Routledge, Abingdon, 2006) presents Pareto as being in the “Machiavellian tradition of sceptical liberalism,” revealing the liberal potential of Pareto’s realist political theory. Finocchiaro (Beyond right and left, Yale, New Haven, London, 1999) ameliorates the conservative consequences of Mosca’s thought by reinterpreting him as a ‘democratic elitist,’ who holds a conception of political liberty “as a relationship such that authority flows from the masses to the elites.” Highlighting the significance of internal tensions within each thinker’s work foregrounded by these readings, between the causal primacy of psychic states and the ‘mutual dependence’ of social factors (Pareto), and between the elite principle and ‘balanced pluralism’ (Mosca), I ask whether the ‘sceptical liberal’ Pareto or the ‘democratic elitist’ Mosca elude Urbinati’s unpolitical, populist and plebiscitarian ‘disfigurations’ of democracy.

The political AI

This article adopts a political theoretical perspective to address the problem of AI regulation. By disregarding the political problem of enforceability, it is argued that the applied ethics approach dominant in the discussions on AI regulation is incomplete. Applying realist political theory, the article demonstrates how prescriptive accounts of the development, use, and functioning of AI are necessarily political. First, the political nature of the problem is investigated by focusing on the use of AI in politics on the one hand and the political nature of the AI regulation problem on the other. Second, the article claims that by revisiting some of the oldest political and theoretical questions, the discourse on guidelines and regulation can be enriched through the adoption of AGI and superintelligence as tools for political theoretical inquiry.

Political Realism as Methods not Metaethics

This paper makes the case for a revision of contemporary forms of political realism in political theory. I argue that contemporary realists have gone awry in increasingly centring their approach around a metaethical claim: that political theory should be rooted in a political form of normativity that is distinct from moral normativity. Several critics of realism have argued that this claim is unconvincing. But I suggest that it is also a counterintuitive starting point for realism, and one unnecessary to avoid the ‘applied morality’ approach to political theory that realists oppose. Instead, realism should be methodologically orientated around what I term ‘empirically constitutive political realities’ - enduring features of real political contexts that are systematically consequential in their normative implications. Realists can persuasively argue that such empirically constitutive political realities must be attended to in political theory-building, and not merely treated as a context in which independently formulated moral theories are simply applied. This framing of realism accords real politics a genuinely foundational theoretical role, but without requiring any contentious metaethical stance about a non-moral political normativity. I explain some methodological implications that follow for realism – in particular the need to prioritise empirically grounded theorisation of real political contexts over abstract and rather essentialist claims about ‘the political’. I also argue that such a framing of realism helps engender a more accurate, less divisive, and more pluralist conception of methodological debates within political theory.

Realism in Political Theory

The physical sciences discarded the method of Cartesian rationalism in the 18th century, but much of contemporary political theory continues to adhere to this outdated method, following the famous rationalist social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant. This paper proposes an alternative, non-rationalist paradigm for political theory, which is based on the writings of empiricist theorists. This realist paradigm is based on five premises: (i) Men are born into families, tribes, and nations to which they are bound by ties of mutual loyalty. (ii) Individuals, families, tribes, and nations compete for resources and honor until a threat from outside recalls them to the mutual loyalties that bind them to one another. (iii) Language, religion, law, economic forms, and government are traditional institutions developed by particular families, tribes, and nations with the aim of strengthening themselves and ensuring the welfare of their members. (iv) Political obligation arises as a consequence of membership in these loyalty groups. (v) These premises are derived from experience, and may be challenged and improved upon in light of experience.

Politics and the limits of philosophy: Bernard Williams on realism in political theory

Bernard Williams?s papers collected in the volume In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument had a great influence on contemporary normative political theory. Williams not only revived the topic of realism in political theory, but also defended the approach of political realism that he contrasts to the approach of political moralism. This paper will focus on the distinction between political realism and political moralism. Moreover, the question of legitimacy will be considered in the light of this distinction. After examination of the distinction between political realism and political moralism, we will be in a position to address the main question that this paper aims to answer: does political realism set any limits on political philosophy?

Unity

Previous articleNext article FreeEditors’ NoteUnityRoger Karapin and Leonard FeldmanRoger KarapinEditor-in-Chief Search for more articles by this author and Leonard FeldmanAssociate Editor for Political Theory Search for more articles by this author Editor-in-ChiefAssociate Editor for Political TheoryPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreUnity as a political ideal is related to the strength of the group in confronting outsiders, whether in domestic conflicts involving political parties, interest groups, or social movements, or in international conflicts involving states and nations. Unity may also be valued intrinsically as an expression of the essence of a human group defined by similar characteristics that lead it to naturally act as one. Indeed, it is difficult to even think the concept of community without recourse to an account of some substance that unites its members.Unity could be achieved through bargaining and compromise, but also through domination and imposition. Because the collective essence or common identity that is frequently the basis of unity is created, not discovered, its generalization may require violent exclusion, the marginalization of dissent, and the assimilation of difference. Furthermore, what constitutes the unity of a collectivity may turn out to be a negation, a constitutive exclusion of an other against which the community is defined. Hence the ideal of unity, especially when applied to an entire polity, is deeply at odds with liberal democracy. It can readily be used to repress or exclude those who do not agree with current leaders or who lack supposedly essential characteristics used to define the nation. Unity can be used as a pretext for untrammeled rule by one person or one party, claiming to solely represent the popular will while ignoring or eliminating constitutional constraints and pluralistic institutions. Still, effective collective action without any unity is difficult to imagine, since political movements and parties require at least provisional stabilization around a common sign or demand.John Grant, in “Justifying Constituent Power in an Age of Populism,” examines the ontological assumptions of theories of constituent power and populism. He finds that the former is a better basis for contentious politics in a democracy, while what the latter offers—“pure unity, the defeat of the enemy, a glorious future—is ontologically suspect and politically impossible.”1 Hobbes’s political order, according to Sarita Zaffini in “Real Unity and Representation in Hobbes, Schmitt, and Barth,” requires something more than rational agreement. That something more is “real unity,” which, Zaffini argues in drawing on the work of Carl Schmitt and the theologian Carl Barth, happens through a transformative theological event—the political equivalent of the representation relationship between Jesus Christ and his church members.2 Janosch Prinz, in “Realism in Political Theory, Ethnographic Sensibility, and the Moral Agency of Bureaucrats,” argues that an ethnographic orientation can be helpful to the realist project of providing grounded, contextually sensitive political analysis and critique. Examining Bernardo Zacka’s account of the moral dispositions of street-level bureaucrats in When the State Meets the Street, Prinz shows how the turn to ethnography can also correct the tendency in realist political theory to separate morality and politics.3In “The Effective Altruist’s Political Problem,” Theodore M. Lechterman criticizes both the idea of effective altruism defined in cost-benefit terms and recent proposals to promote and measure the effects of advocacy; both focus on what is measurable, neglect the importance of institutional change, and risk perpetuating political inequality.4 Finally, in “A U.S. Tripartite Experiment in the Kennedy Administration,” Yongwoo Jeung analyzes a failed attempt to create consensus between labor and management in dealing with problems of international competitiveness and automation, a failure that helped lead to the adversarial era of industrial pluralism and reactionary Keynesianism.5 Notes 1. John Grant, “Frames of Contention: Justifying Constituent Power in an Age of Populism,” Polity 52 (2020): 3–34, at 33.2. Sarita Zaffini, “Real Unity and Representation in Hobbes, Schmitt, and Barth,” Polity 52 (2020): 35–63.3. Janosch Prinz, “Realism in Political Theory, Ethnographic Sensibility, and the Moral Agency of Bureaucrats,” Polity 52 (2020): 64–87.4. Theodore M. Lechterman, “The Effective Altruist’s Political Problem,” Polity 52 (2020): 88–115.5. Yongwoo Jeung, “A U.S. Tripartite Experiment in the Kennedy Administration,” Polity 52 (2020): 116–55. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Polity Volume 52, Number 1January 2020Unity The Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/707027HistoryPublished online November 18, 2019 © 2019 Northeastern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Smashing the state gently: Radical realism and realist anarchism

The revival of realism in political theory has included efforts to challenge realism’s conservative reputation and argue that radical forms are possible. Nonetheless these efforts have been criticised as insufficient to overcome realism’s inherent conservatism. This article argues that radical forms of realism can be better appreciated by considering the application of the realist perspective within an existing radical ideology: anarchism. This may seem an unusual choice, considering anarchism’s standard representation as naïvely idealistic and paradigmatically non-realist. However, attention to the breadth of diversity in anarchist theory reveals a collection of positions that together represent a ‘realist anarchism’ which not only challenges anarchism’s reputation as uniformly committed to unrealistic and idealistic utopianism but also demonstrates the existence of genuinely radical forms of realism.

Realism in Political Theory, Ethnographic Sensibility, and the Moral Agency of Bureaucrats

This article argues that ethnographic methods, or an ethnographic sensibility more broadly speaking, can go some way to addressing a thorny issue of realism in political theory. Realists are committed to taking context seriously and to offering critique, but how can they do both? Based on a reconstruction of the main lines of inquiry and arguments of Bernardo Zacka’s When the State Meets the Street, the article shows that an ethnographic sensibility is well suited to address the realist predicament because it combines two levels of interpretation. On one level, it seeks to reconstruct people’s understanding of what they are doing and who they are. On a second level, ethnography seeks to interpret the larger ideational and material power relations that affect people’s values and practices. The essay spells out how taking an ethnographic sensibility can enhance (realist) political theorists’ understanding of the nature and limits of politics in a particular context, while at the same time providing a starting point for potentially transformative criticism from within this context.