This paper provides a critical overview of the realist current in contemporary political philosophy. We define political realism on the basis of its attempt to give varying degrees of autonomy to politics as a sphere of human activity, in large part through its exploration of the sources of normativity appropriate for the political, and so distinguish sharply between political realism and non-ideal theory. We then identify and discuss four key arguments advanced by political realists: from ideology, from the relationship of ethics to politics, from the priority of legitimacy over justice, and from the nature of political judgment. Next, we ask to what extent realism is a methodological approach as opposed to a substantive political position, and so discuss the relationship between realism and a few such positions. We close by pointing out the links between contemporary realism and the realist strand that runs through much of the history of Western political thought.Much contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy operates as a branch of applied ethics: normative political theory is supposed to implement moral commitments external to politics, be they teleological ideals or deontological constraints. However in recent years-under the loose label of 'political realism'-an alternative approach has emerged, or perhaps reemerged (Galston 2010; Runciman 2012). Crudely, realists maintain that political philosophy should not seek to regiment politics through morality; rather, it should theorise about the distinctive forces that shape real politics. Critics of realism see this move as a capitulation of normative theory in favour of descriptive approaches to politics. Realists see it as a way to make political philosophy more relevant and less ideological.This article has two main objectives and as many main sections. First, we propose a working definition of realism, and a critical overview of what we take to be the four key arguments in favour of that position. Second, we explore the status of realist theory: is it best characterised as a series of methodological concerns or does it represent a substantive political position it is own right? In the brief conclusion we discuss to what extent realism is (or could be) a new development rather than a revival of a traditional current of political thinking.
This paper provides a critical overview of the realist current in contemporary political philosophy. We define political realism on the basis of its attempt to give varying degrees of autonomy to politics as a sphere of human activity, in large part through its exploration of the sources of normativity appropriate for the political, and so distinguish sharply between political realism and non-ideal theory. We then identify and discuss four key arguments advanced by political realists: from ideology, from the relationship of ethics to politics, from the priority of legitimacy over justice, and from the nature of political judgment. Next, we ask to what extent realism is a methodological approach as opposed to a substantive political position, and so discuss the relationship between realism and a few such positions. We close by pointing out the links between contemporary realism and the realist strand that runs through much of the history of Western political thought.Much contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy operates as a branch of applied ethics: normative political theory is supposed to implement moral commitments external to politics, be they teleological ideals or deontological constraints. However in recent years-under the loose label of 'political realism'-an alternative approach has emerged, or perhaps reemerged (Galston 2010; Runciman 2012). Crudely, realists maintain that political philosophy should not seek to regiment politics through morality; rather, it should theorise about the distinctive forces that shape real politics. Critics of realism see this move as a capitulation of normative theory in favour of descriptive approaches to politics. Realists see it as a way to make political philosophy more relevant and less ideological.This article has two main objectives and as many main sections. First, we propose a working definition of realism, and a critical overview of what we take to be the four key arguments in favour of that position. Second, we explore the status of realist theory: is it best characterised as a series of methodological concerns or does it represent a substantive political position it is own right? In the brief conclusion we discuss to what extent realism is (or could be) a new development rather than a revival of a traditional current of political thinking.
The charge that contemporary political theory has lost touch with the realities of politics is common to both the recent ideal/non-ideal theory debate and the revival of interest in realist thought. However a tendency has arisen to subsume political realism within the ideal/non-ideal theory debate, or to elide realism with non-ideal theorising. This paper argues that this is a mistake. The ideal/non-ideal theory discussion is a methodological debate that takes place within the framework of liberal theory. Realism, contrary to several interpretations, is a distinct and competing conception of politics in its own right that stands in contrast to that of liberal theory and its ambitions. While the two debates are united in a sense that contemporary liberal theory needs to be more realistic, they differ significantly in both what this critique amounts to and, more importantly, what it is to do more realistic political theory.
This article explores the prospects for developing a realist political theory via an analysis of the work of Bernard Williams. It begins by setting out Williams’s theory of political realism and placing it in the wider context of a realist challenge in the literature that rightly identifies several deficiencies in the liberal view of politics and legitimacy. The central argument of the article is, however, that Williams’s political realism shares common features with liberal theory, including familiar normative concerns and a consensus view of the political and political legitimacy, which results in it replicating rather than overcoming the weaknesses that other realists have recognized in liberalism, thereby making it vulnerable to the same criticisms. Though these are taken to be significant problems for Williams’s theory, the purpose of making this argument is not to undermine the prospects for a realist political theory but to indicate obstacles and difficulties that any compelling account will need to address.
Most of us have at best a hazy understanding of what politics is. Even those who 'do' politics in the sense of either living 'for' or 'from' it (to employ Max Weber's distinction), journalists, politicians, civil servants, party officials and volunteers, campaigners, lobbyists and so on, are unlikely to have anything more that an indistinct view of what the activity is that they are engaged in. Among this list we might add contemporary political philosophers also, who, at least in the analytical Anglo-American tradition, have in recent decades given relatively little consideration to the question of the nature of the phenomenon they study, preferring to focus instead on normative questions about the values and ends that political activity should be oriented towards achieving.1 These are important questions: how societies answer them matters and political philosophy certainly has something to contribute to those inquiries. But we might think that political philosophy ought not to concern itself with the nature of actual political practice anyhow, that to do so would be to contaminate the purity of philosophical reflection with the messiness and contingency of real politics. This paper shall argue the opposite: the actual practice of politics places particular constraints on political philosophy which theorists ought to be sensitive to. Put differently, political philosophy should be appropriately guided by the practice of politics to which it seeks to speak about and to. This is not, as we will see, driven by the now familiar concern (of non-ideal theory) that contemporary political philosophy has become overly abstract and hence cannot offer action-guiding recommendations for us here and now.2 The central claim is rather more in keeping with the realist vein of contemporary political philosophy: that despite the inevitable need for abstraction and idealisation, any theory has to retain an appropriate degree of fidelity to the phenomenon that it theorises in order to be a theory of and for that phenomenon.
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