How should we do political theory? Reading Rawls on method

Normative political theory over recent decades has focused mainly on what ought to be done as far as migration policies are concerned. It faces a basic challenge, which stems from two competing, yet equally fundamental, ideals underpinning liberal democratic societies: a commitment to moral universalism and the exclusionary requirement of democracy. The objective of this special issue, ‘New Challenges in Immigration Theory’, is to provide a conceptual overview of (some) immigration theories and to highlight the challenges new streams of immigration pose for normative (political) theory and liberal democratic practice. The issue will consider how to reconcile state-based exclusion with a commitment to equal moral concern for all persons, by focusing on the non-standard immigration questions that have so far been ‘neglected’ by normative political theory. In line with this objective, the issue will discuss some of the inadequacies of the dominant political theories of immigration and show how such theories can be expanded to take account of new migration challenges such as brain drain, climate migration, detention of irregular migrants and asylum seekers, rights of labour migrants, transnational networks of movement, and so on.

Historical analyses of the relations between political theory and time often hinge on two claims. The first is that political theorists have until recently put less emphasis on the future than the past when debating political legitimacy and obligation. The second is that the history of political theory draws a fundamental distinction between theories that invoke time to legitimate political structures and theories that reject temporal considerations in favor of timeless principles. This chapter disputes these two claims by maintaining that competing languages of legitimacy harbor different and interrelated conceptions of temporality. A survey of time conceptions in the history of political philosophy shows that normative political theory is inherently multitemporal, involving double regard for the past and the future. And, since even tenseless principles of legitimacy often depend on temporally related forms of formulation and application, considerations about time seem inescapable in normative political theory.

In recent decades political theory has been an area of undoubted strength in Australian political studies. Across fields such as deliberative democracy, republicanism, feminist theory, and environmental political theory, the Australian contribution to international debates has been considerable. Yet telling the story of the development of Australian political theory involves grappling with certain definitional challenges, which stem both from the nature of political theory as an intellectual endeavour as well as its ambiguous location within the academy. First, although the identity of political theory as a distinct academic sub-field is closely related to the development of political science it in fact draws on a range of intellectual disciplines including philosophy, history, sociology and law, and political theorists can be found in university departments in all of these disciplines. The second point concerns the political philosophy versus political science divide (with the corresponding division between ‘normative’ and ‘empirical’ theory) which has not been as sharply drawn in Australia as it has been, especially, in the United States, with its strong behaviouralist and positivist traditions. The dominance of a behaviouralist conception of political science — ‘the American Science of Politics’ in Bernard Crick’s phrase — gave rise to the oft-repeated story of the death of classical or normative political theory in the 1950s and 1960s, only to be revived by Rawls and Nozick in the early 1970s.KeywordsPolitical SciencePolitical TheoryAustralian StudyPolitical TheoriseDeliberative DemocracyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Should Animals Have Political Rights?

Neoliberalism initially invoked the authority of competitive markets as the ideal epistemic mechanism for socio-economic coordination. Yet, the rise of neoliberal ‘market society’ in Western advanced economies since the 1970s has been underpinned by a normative political theory that advocates the reconfiguration of society and politics around the authority of economic theory and knowledge in both production, but especially finance. Conversely, the reform-era development of China’s ‘socialist market economy’ has been underpinned by an insistence on retaining centralized political power over the allocation of financial capital. This article argues that the rise of digital algorithmic technologies constitutes one means by which these contrasting politico-economic visions are being more closely reconciled. It investigates the ways in which China’s ongoing construction of an explicitly authoritarian capitalism is being facilitated by the deployment of complementary financial technologies that enable the Chinese Communist Party to embrace the micro-level epistemic coordinative function of markets without relinquishing macro-level political power and juridical sovereignty over these markets. Following a comparative historiography of the praxis of ‘neoliberal’ and ‘neostatist’ political theory in contemporary capitalism, two case studies of blockchain-enabled currency and big-data driven credit scoring in China illustrate the emergent Fintech foundations of Chinese authoritarian capitalism. The findings contribute to our understanding of how markets are being reshaped by new algorithmic technologies, as well as illuminate some of ideological contradictions in existing conceptions of markets as (neo)liberal institutions at the centre of capitalist political economy.

In Equal Recognition, Alan Patten argues that in a proper relationship between normative political theory and democratic politics, we must make a clear distinction between two questions related to cultural rights: (a) authority (who should decide?) and (b) the substance of deliberation. The question he wants to explore, however, is not the authority question but the substantive question. The aim of this article is to show that an account of equal recognition cannot bracket out the democratic element. It argues, first, that Equal Recognition does not live up to its initial promise, as it contains a number of reflections and recommendations (on language rights, on secession, on the rights of migrants’ cultures) that either explicitly or implicitly include the democratic element. Second, it points at other important areas of political decision-making – such as electoral system design, districting, referendums, quotas – in which it is quite clear that in order to extend equal recognition to minority cultures, we are obliged to take decisions related to the design of democratic institutions.

This thesis offers a positive reinterpretation of the relevance of Isaiah Berlin’s political thought. It re-examines his work hermeneutically with the double aim of claiming its intrinsic relevance as a work of political theory beyond what most critics have acknowledged, first; and second, with the intention of using it to draw conclusions that will address some of the most pressing discussions found in contemporary liberal political theory, such as the conflicting link between value pluralism and liberalism, or the recent confrontation between political moralism and political realism. This is achieved by reading Berlin hermeneutically, and thus transcending the categorical differentiation between historical and philosophical methods in his work. The argument is presented in three sections. The first one is a biographical introduction that acts as a methodological statement. In it, the dilemma on the nature of values that sits at the heart of Berlin’s work is defined by reference to his biographical context. The second section of the thesis is formed by three chapters that look at the central philosophical aspects of Berlin’s political thought: value pluralism and a neo-Kantian normative ethical theory that emerges in relation to it. By claiming a relationship between Berlin and Kant, and by presenting value pluralism as a meta-ethical theory, the thesis offers an alternative reading of Berlin’s work that deviates substantively from most existing scholarship. The third section of the thesis compares Berlin’s political interpretation of value pluralism with that of Bernard Williams and John Rawls, in order to claim that liberal theory demands a hermeneutic method in its justification. This will show the enduring relevance of Berlin’s contribution to political theory as one that expands beyond his own historical moment, against what many commentators have argued. It also raises a strong claim on the crucial implications of method in political theory, calling for a more hermeneutic approach.

Could the notion of compromise help us overcoming – or at least negotiating – the frequent tension, in normative political theory, between the realistic desideratum of peaceful coexistence and the idealistic desideratum of justice? That is to say, an analysis of compromise may help us move beyond the contrast between two widespread contrasting attitudes in contemporary political philosophy: ‘fiat iustitia, pereat mundus’, on the one side, and ‘salus populi suprema lex’, on the other side. More specifically, compromise may provide the backbone of a conception of legitimacy that mediates between idealistic (or moralistic) and realistic (or pragmatic) desiderata of political theory, i.e. between the aspiration to peace and the aspiration to justice. In other words, this paper considers whether an account of compromise could feature in a viable realistic conception of political legitimacy, in much the same way in which consensus features in more idealistic conceptions of legitimacy (a move that may be attributed to some realist theorists, especially Bernard Williams). My conclusions, however, are largely sceptical: I argue that grounding legitimacy in any kind of normatively salient agreement does require the trappings of idealistic political philosophy, for better or – in my view – worse.

The prospect of rapid technological development and automation has heightened attention toward issues of work and leisure, prompting many to ask what the future of work will be. Though this question is sometimes asked as a matter of forecasting, the path forward is not predetermined. A range of collective choices shape the conditions of people's work and leisure. It is essential for these choices to be guided by consideration of what the future of work should be. This article reviews recent literature in normative political theory about work and leisure, focusing on how they should be conceptualized, the multidimensional values and disvalues associated with both, and the grounds of people's claims to each. It highlights how the goods and bads of work and leisure are unequally shared by class, race, and gender, as well as the theoretical and practical advantages of considering people's interests in work and leisure in conjunction.

Drawing on empirical evidence from history and anthropology, we aim to demonstrate that there is room for genealogical ideology critique within normative political theory. The test case is some libertarians’ use of folk notions of private property rights in defense of the legitimacy of capitalist states. Our genealogy of the notion of private property shows that asking whether a capitalist state can emerge without violations of self-ownership cannot help settling the question of its legitimacy, because the notion of private property presupposed by that question is a product of the entity it is supposed to help legitimize: the state. We anchor our genealogical critique in recent work on ideology in epistemology and philosophy of language and in current debates on the methodology of political theory. But, unlike more traditional approaches that aim to debunk whole concepts or even belief systems, we propose a more targeted, argument-specific form of ideology critique.

What exactly is the role of empirical beliefs in moral reflective equilibrium (RE)? And if they have a part to play, can changes in our empirical beliefs effectuate changes in the moral principles we adopt? Conversely, can empirical beliefs be adjusted in light of certain moral convictions? While it is generally accepted that empirical background theory is of importance to the method of wide reflective equilibrium (WRE), this article focuses on a different aspect, namely the role of empirical beliefs that is intrinsic to the coherence relation of moral beliefs in any (narrow or wide) conception of RE. First, it is shown that in the application of RE, empirical beliefs are crucial to the procedure of matching principles to considered judgments. Changes in our empirical beliefs may therefore upset the relevant coherence relation and motivate changes in the moral principles we adopt. This more detailed account of the interplay between empirical and moral beliefs can help evaluate the overall philosophical appeal of RE. Finally, it is argued that, at least in WRE, the relation between empirical and moral beliefs need not be a one-way street, that is, moral convictions can provide us with some epistemic means of adjudicating between competing empirical descriptions of the world.

Subjecting the tradition to stress Rorty and the self-image of philosophy how to be sceptical about philosophy the tradition in retreat on being ontologically unserious Wittgenstein, Wittgensteinians and the end of philosophy can there be progress in philosophy? scientism, pragmatism and the fate of philosophy searching for an emancipatory perspective - wide reflective equilibrium and the hermeneutical circle wide reflective equilibrium and the transformation of philosophy in defence of wide reflective equilibrium.

ABSTRACTThis introduction surveys the normative literature on language policy and planning. Specifically, its aim is three-fold. It first explains how normative political theory adds to long-standing debates regarding language and linguistic diversity. Second, it explores some of the important trends within this normative literature as well as its fault lines. And finally, it discusses the main contributions of each article that comprises this special issue.

“Indigenous Disruptive Conservatism: Looking Forward to Our Ancestors in Normative Political Theory” synthesizes considerations exemplified in the work of various Indigenous thinkers to present a methodological approach referred to as disruptive conservatism. A “braiding” and a “disjunctive” variant of this approach are presented, the second being the one primarily adopted in the following chapters. This methodological approach is a way of reflecting normatively about politics that draws on, and grounds itself in, existing Indigenous traditions of thought in a critical manner in order to bring about a better world. It is clarified that this methodological approach is distinct both from classical conservatism and more rationalist approaches to normative theory. This chapter is concerned with how to conduct normative-critical political theorizing given the context of settler colonialism and coloniality, the need to resist that context, and the presumption that Indigenous traditions disclose an attractive otherwise.

I propose that a logical formalization of a natural language text (especially an argument) may be regarded as adequate if the following three groups of beliefs can be integrated into a wide reflective equilibrium: (1) our initial, spontaneous beliefs about the structure and logical quality of the text; (2) our beliefs about its structure and logical quality as reflected in the proposed formalization, and (3) our background beliefs about the original text’s author, his thought and other contextually relevant factors. Unlike a good part of the literature, I stress the indispensable role of initial beliefs in achieving such a wide reflective equilibrium. In the final sections I show that my approach does not succumb to undue subjectivism or the mere perpetuation of prejudice. The examples I use to illustrate my claims are chiefly taken from Anselm’s Proslogion 2–3 and the various attempts to formalize these texts.