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.
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