On the Side of Angels symposium
10. Patrick Deneen: Progressivism and Partisans
Nancy Rosenblum has done a great service in seeking to rehabilitate the place of parties and partisanship in the discourse of political philosophy. Her effort to categorize the sources of “anti-party” sentiment is admirable – divided into categories of “the luster of independence,” “escape from the deadly groove,” and “weightlessness.” A bit of historical flesh on these theoretical bones might add both some complexity and robustness to her categories, and further pose a challenge to her categorizations of what is praiseworthy about parties and partisanship – namely, “inclusiveness,” “comprehensiveness,” and “compromisingness.”
I wish, in particular, to focus on the second of the grounds for philosophical opposition to parties and partisanship: the desire or imperative to “escape from the deadly groove.” Rosenblum stresses the Progressive-era sources of this particular suspiciousness, and rightly so: it was during the Progressive era that an increasingly dim view of the role of Parties in electoral politics and governance reached a modern apogee. Suspicions toward Party gave rise to reforms such as the Direct Primary, the Initiative and Referendum, and perhaps most importantly (in terms of eviscerating the practical force of Parties), civil service reform leading to a massive decrease of political appointments.
While many of the criticisms of Party were couched in recognizable terms that decried the role of the “partisan hack” or the absence of expertise in government (this was the same period that witnessed the rise of Political Science as an ascendant discipline), at a more fundamental level many of the criticisms of partisanship partook of a deep suspicion toward “the deadly groove” of ethnic or “tribal” solidarity. In particular, once-ascendant Protestant leaders had witnessed the rise of a new form of Party government – the urban machine – one that rested deeply upon the communal coherence of immigrant communities. These communities – often Irish, but also Italian, German, and Jewish – represented not only a different set of ruling personalities, but more often than not a fundamental challenge to the liberal idea of Party that resolved itself around interests. Instead, there was a fear that Parties were increasingly defined in terms that were less grounded ultimately in the individual and instead coalesced around shared communal and social features based in common ethnicity, religion, and history. This changed landscape represented a basic challenge to the liberal assumptions that had permitted the flourishing of Party – namely, that all Parties are reducible to individuals who possess interests, and thus that are manageable in accordance with the systemic assumptions of the liberal constitutional order. By contrast, Parties based in identification of blood, race, history, religion and ethnicity were a different beast: this form of identification represented a deep and fundamental challenge to liberal democracy, and thus had to be combated with determined ferocity.
Progressives – most often liberal Protestants – increasingly decried Parties in general, and couched their criticisms in terms of an aspiration to a new universalism that resembled… liberal Protestantism writ large. Thinkers such as Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and John Dewey urged a transcendence of “partisan” particularity in the name of a new form of national unity. Such thinkers aimed to hollow out devotions to local and particular associations and identifications, at once reducing identity to that of the individual and the nation (the temporary, even Hegelian locus of the “universal”). The partial or mediated identifications of the new immigrant classes represented a threat to the liberal order; indeed, it can be argued that the religious (often Catholic) sources of commitment to various forms of local mediation (e.g., the parish) were seen by many as the greatest obstacle to the assimilation of these new immigrant communities into the liberal individualist and universalist order. Concurrent with attacks on Party and partisanship were similar efforts to “universalize” a new form of national, liberal education (represented best in the efforts of Horace Mann and John Dewey) and the embrace of a new science of politics (i.e., a universal and replicable form of “political science.”).
That is: what was precisely objectionable about the form of Party that so perturbed the liberal elite was that these parties were noteworthy for being: 1. exclusive; 2. particular; and 3. uncompromising. They were parties based upon strong local communities with longstanding shared traditions and beliefs. They rejected many of the fundamental premises of liberalism, including most fundamentally a self-understanding that begins by conceiving humans to unencumbered, monadic, rational individuals. Reading the arguments of the Progressive opponents to Party during the early years of the twentieth-century, one encounters over and over a condemnation of their irrationality, their “tribal” quality, their backwardness, their recidivism, their very threat to the American way of life. Opponents to such threats couched their alternative vision in the name of the universal, the rational, the scientific, the national and transcendent. If parties were to survive, it was only by basing a new form of Party upon these latter, liberal characteristics. By means of a variety of Progressive-era reforms, the “organic,” communal and local form of partisanship was largely routed in favor of our current form of Parties that are predominantly national, interest-based, shifting alliances.
If Rosenblum is today able to praise parties at best for being “inclusive,” “comprehensive” and “compromising,” it is only because one major and challenging alternative to the liberal conception of partisanship was almost wholly defeated in the early part of the 20th-century. Her praise of Party is made within the comfort of the liberal paradigm – seemingly challenging the “independent” or “rationalist” extremes of liberalism, albeit well within the comfort zone of liberal presuppositions of the role and status of Parties within the contemporary polity. One wonders on what side Rosenblum would have found herself during the Progressive era, when Parties were proudly exclusive and liberalism believed itself under assault by a very different set of anthropological assumptions lodged under the banner of Party?
Patrick Deneen
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
On the Side of Angels symposium
9. Henry Farrell: Comparative questions
On the Side of the Angels is more than a good book; it’s a necessary one. The lack of sympathetic accounts of partisanship in political theory, and in our wider public discourse, is extraordinary, and Rosenblum provides a nuanced, well-argued and exciting account of why we should think about partisanship as having benign consequences for politics.
That said, a seminar like this is supposed to provoke critical debate, not gushing encomia, if it’s going to have value. So here’s my criticism. I would have liked to have seen more comparative analysis of parties, and the debates around parties, in different countries. Such analysis is present in Rosenblum’s book, but mostly around the margins – her main interest (with the exception of the final chapter on banning parties) is very clearly the US debate on partisanship and parties, and the various streams of thought that have flowed into it. I think that a lot could be learned from applying her arguments to different contexts. Since I’m most familiar with European political parties, here are two examples.
First – Rosenblum’s fascinating account of the modern American critique of partisanship situates it in large part in the historical context of the Progressive movement. The Progressives saw party machines as intrinsically bad for American politics, and sought to encourage reforms that would weaken political parties in various ways. Many Progressives believed that politics in the ideal would not involve partisanship at all, instead relying on various forms of civil society mobilization to tackle political problems. The ideal political actor was not the partisan (who was supposedly dependent on bosses to tell him what to do) but the independent. Rosenblum’s account of how this implicit set of biases feeds into contemporary debates about the virtues of deliberation, the benefits of civil society, the need to reform fundraising practices and so on is quite convincing. While (as she acknowledges), other strains of thought are implicated, there is an apparent connection between Progressive critiques of parties, and the assumptions of latter-day civic reformers.
This spurs an interesting (at least to me) question – can some of the differences between left-of-center European critiques of parties and left-of-center American critiques be traced back to cross-Atlantic differences in historical situation at the beginning of the last century? The argument might go as thus: those who were most influential in the US debate were indeed Progressives, who, as Rosenblum observes, believed that parties were intrinsically problematic. Those who were most influential in the European debate were Social Democrats and their intellectual heirs, who had quarreled with Communists (the Kautsky-Bernstein debates), and who held that the best way to achieve socialist equality was through the ‘paper stones’ of the ballot box rather than revolution.
Thus, not only were the European reformers not opposed to parties, but they saw one party (the Social Democratic party) as having the capacity to redeem politics. While American reformers worried about party politics as such, European reformers worried that the party (and especially its leaders) would be corrupted by its engagement with traditional politics. The perceived problem was the opposite of the American one – not that politics would be debased by parties, but that parties (and left parties in particular) would be debased by politics. Thus, in part, a very particular European tradition of critique, ranging from Michels through Pizzorno to this recent piece for the New Left Review by Peter Mair, all focus on the ways in which parties may be corrupted by an overly close engagement with hierarchy and the state.
Now, to be clear, one should not construct an overly idealist account of how this debate has developed – differences between European and American debates are at least as much the product of different objective situations as of different historical traditions of debate. But Rosenblum’s fascinating historical account of Progressivism at the least raises the question of whether debates about parties from early in the era of mass-mobilization continue to resonate in Europe too.
A second comparative angle is suggested by Rosenblum herself in an aside. When writing about mixed constitutions (which seek to address social divisions by assigning different institutions to different parts of society, rather than allowing parties to organize themselves), Rosenblum suggests that the European Union is a good modern example of what a mixed constitution looks like. This – combined with her later arguments about the salutary consequences of partisanship for politics – has some interesting possible implications that could be developed further.
Political theoretic debates about the European Union typically focus on its ‘democratic deficit’ and its lack of a ‘demos.’ Here, the problem is two-fold. First, the European Union has serious problems of democratic legitimacy, because of the quite attenuated links between EU decision making and democratic choice. Not all agree that this attenuation is a problem (some, like Andrew Moravcsik, perceive it in quite benign terms), but the perceived democratic illegitimacy of the European Union has haunted debates over reform, and helped spur various initiatives (greatly improving the decision making clout of the European Parliament, seeking to provide greater involvement for national parliaments and the like).
There is still controversy over the extent to which supranational arrangements can have direct democratic legitimacy in the absence of a self-conscious European demos, but perhaps more pertinently, none of these reforms seem to have worked. The European Union is suffering a continuing legitimation crisis, which appears to have worsened dramatically over the period of reforms, rather than getting better. EU publics, in contrast to elites, seem indifferent towards the EU and disengaged from it when they are not actively hostile toward it.
Here, Rosenblum’s arguments perhaps provide a different perspective on the problem and the possible locus of a solution. By treating the EU as a mixed constitution, we can see how the EU’s legitimacy problem has similarities with the more general question of how different sets of interests should be balanced in mixed arrangements. But more importantly perhaps, we can also see how further constitutional reforms may not on their own be sufficient to engage publics with the EU. We may need partisan contention (or some close equivalent) too. Some of the EU’s legitimacy problem may not rest with the institutions but with Europe’s political parties.
Most particularly, there is a nearly complete absence of partisanship at the European level. This is not to say that there are not European parties. The European Parliament groups together Socialists, Christian Democrats, Liberals and others in broad party organizations which do have an important role in organizing debate at the European level. Furthermore, national level parties have created some limited umbrella groupings, so that Christian Democratic leaders from different countries meet together regularly. But these are parties without partisanship. Voters, to the extent that they know these groupings exist, don’t care about them (for example, voting for European Parliament candidates usually turns on purely domestic issues, punishing the government etc).
This lack of partisanship in turn means that European political parties have not constructed the kinds of divisions that (as Rosenblum argues), usefully organize political contention, transforming it from a potentially inchoate mass of quarreling interests and groupuscules into a comprehensible and relatively organized system where politics is organized around one or a few key differences of policy and/or philosophy. Instead of being presented with clearly different approaches to governing Europe, voters are typically presented either with party consensus (that Europe is a ‘good’ thing) or with a battle between this consensus (as presented by mainstream parties) and a variety of arguments from those on left and right who argue that the European Union is fundamentally ill-advised or illegitimate.
The pro- and anti-Europe divide may, or may not, itself be a useful division. But what it surely means that voters are not presented with choices about which Europe (whether social-democratic, free market or whatever). Instead, they are faced with a choice (to the extent that they have a choice at all) over whether Europe – e.g. whether to affirm or reject the decisions made by a coalition of left-wing and right-wing elites about the direction of European integration.
The lesson that I’d like to draw (which goes somewhat further than Rosenblum’s own argument about the benefits of partisanship) is as follows. The European Union would likely have more legitimacy in the eyes of voters if it were organized as a space of partisan contention. The lack of real argument between different partisan forces as to how Europe should be organized contributes to voters’ disengagement.
Henry Farrell
9. Henry Farrell: Comparative questions
On the Side of the Angels is more than a good book; it’s a necessary one. The lack of sympathetic accounts of partisanship in political theory, and in our wider public discourse, is extraordinary, and Rosenblum provides a nuanced, well-argued and exciting account of why we should think about partisanship as having benign consequences for politics.
That said, a seminar like this is supposed to provoke critical debate, not gushing encomia, if it’s going to have value. So here’s my criticism. I would have liked to have seen more comparative analysis of parties, and the debates around parties, in different countries. Such analysis is present in Rosenblum’s book, but mostly around the margins – her main interest (with the exception of the final chapter on banning parties) is very clearly the US debate on partisanship and parties, and the various streams of thought that have flowed into it. I think that a lot could be learned from applying her arguments to different contexts. Since I’m most familiar with European political parties, here are two examples.
First – Rosenblum’s fascinating account of the modern American critique of partisanship situates it in large part in the historical context of the Progressive movement. The Progressives saw party machines as intrinsically bad for American politics, and sought to encourage reforms that would weaken political parties in various ways. Many Progressives believed that politics in the ideal would not involve partisanship at all, instead relying on various forms of civil society mobilization to tackle political problems. The ideal political actor was not the partisan (who was supposedly dependent on bosses to tell him what to do) but the independent. Rosenblum’s account of how this implicit set of biases feeds into contemporary debates about the virtues of deliberation, the benefits of civil society, the need to reform fundraising practices and so on is quite convincing. While (as she acknowledges), other strains of thought are implicated, there is an apparent connection between Progressive critiques of parties, and the assumptions of latter-day civic reformers.
This spurs an interesting (at least to me) question – can some of the differences between left-of-center European critiques of parties and left-of-center American critiques be traced back to cross-Atlantic differences in historical situation at the beginning of the last century? The argument might go as thus: those who were most influential in the US debate were indeed Progressives, who, as Rosenblum observes, believed that parties were intrinsically problematic. Those who were most influential in the European debate were Social Democrats and their intellectual heirs, who had quarreled with Communists (the Kautsky-Bernstein debates), and who held that the best way to achieve socialist equality was through the ‘paper stones’ of the ballot box rather than revolution.
Thus, not only were the European reformers not opposed to parties, but they saw one party (the Social Democratic party) as having the capacity to redeem politics. While American reformers worried about party politics as such, European reformers worried that the party (and especially its leaders) would be corrupted by its engagement with traditional politics. The perceived problem was the opposite of the American one – not that politics would be debased by parties, but that parties (and left parties in particular) would be debased by politics. Thus, in part, a very particular European tradition of critique, ranging from Michels through Pizzorno to this recent piece for the New Left Review by Peter Mair, all focus on the ways in which parties may be corrupted by an overly close engagement with hierarchy and the state.
Now, to be clear, one should not construct an overly idealist account of how this debate has developed – differences between European and American debates are at least as much the product of different objective situations as of different historical traditions of debate. But Rosenblum’s fascinating historical account of Progressivism at the least raises the question of whether debates about parties from early in the era of mass-mobilization continue to resonate in Europe too.
A second comparative angle is suggested by Rosenblum herself in an aside. When writing about mixed constitutions (which seek to address social divisions by assigning different institutions to different parts of society, rather than allowing parties to organize themselves), Rosenblum suggests that the European Union is a good modern example of what a mixed constitution looks like. This – combined with her later arguments about the salutary consequences of partisanship for politics – has some interesting possible implications that could be developed further.
Political theoretic debates about the European Union typically focus on its ‘democratic deficit’ and its lack of a ‘demos.’ Here, the problem is two-fold. First, the European Union has serious problems of democratic legitimacy, because of the quite attenuated links between EU decision making and democratic choice. Not all agree that this attenuation is a problem (some, like Andrew Moravcsik, perceive it in quite benign terms), but the perceived democratic illegitimacy of the European Union has haunted debates over reform, and helped spur various initiatives (greatly improving the decision making clout of the European Parliament, seeking to provide greater involvement for national parliaments and the like).
There is still controversy over the extent to which supranational arrangements can have direct democratic legitimacy in the absence of a self-conscious European demos, but perhaps more pertinently, none of these reforms seem to have worked. The European Union is suffering a continuing legitimation crisis, which appears to have worsened dramatically over the period of reforms, rather than getting better. EU publics, in contrast to elites, seem indifferent towards the EU and disengaged from it when they are not actively hostile toward it.
Here, Rosenblum’s arguments perhaps provide a different perspective on the problem and the possible locus of a solution. By treating the EU as a mixed constitution, we can see how the EU’s legitimacy problem has similarities with the more general question of how different sets of interests should be balanced in mixed arrangements. But more importantly perhaps, we can also see how further constitutional reforms may not on their own be sufficient to engage publics with the EU. We may need partisan contention (or some close equivalent) too. Some of the EU’s legitimacy problem may not rest with the institutions but with Europe’s political parties.
Most particularly, there is a nearly complete absence of partisanship at the European level. This is not to say that there are not European parties. The European Parliament groups together Socialists, Christian Democrats, Liberals and others in broad party organizations which do have an important role in organizing debate at the European level. Furthermore, national level parties have created some limited umbrella groupings, so that Christian Democratic leaders from different countries meet together regularly. But these are parties without partisanship. Voters, to the extent that they know these groupings exist, don’t care about them (for example, voting for European Parliament candidates usually turns on purely domestic issues, punishing the government etc).
This lack of partisanship in turn means that European political parties have not constructed the kinds of divisions that (as Rosenblum argues), usefully organize political contention, transforming it from a potentially inchoate mass of quarreling interests and groupuscules into a comprehensible and relatively organized system where politics is organized around one or a few key differences of policy and/or philosophy. Instead of being presented with clearly different approaches to governing Europe, voters are typically presented either with party consensus (that Europe is a ‘good’ thing) or with a battle between this consensus (as presented by mainstream parties) and a variety of arguments from those on left and right who argue that the European Union is fundamentally ill-advised or illegitimate.
The pro- and anti-Europe divide may, or may not, itself be a useful division. But what it surely means that voters are not presented with choices about which Europe (whether social-democratic, free market or whatever). Instead, they are faced with a choice (to the extent that they have a choice at all) over whether Europe – e.g. whether to affirm or reject the decisions made by a coalition of left-wing and right-wing elites about the direction of European integration.
The lesson that I’d like to draw (which goes somewhat further than Rosenblum’s own argument about the benefits of partisanship) is as follows. The European Union would likely have more legitimacy in the eyes of voters if it were organized as a space of partisan contention. The lack of real argument between different partisan forces as to how Europe should be organized contributes to voters’ disengagement.
Henry Farrell
On the Side of Angels symposium
8. Mara Marin: Holism and the public interest
In her On the Side of Angels Nancy Rosenblum offers us reasons to reject a long tradition in the history of political thought according to which “partisan” is an invective and “Independents” are “portrayed as partisans undisputed moral superiors.” She proposes “an ethic of partisanship” as the ground for appreciating parties.
Parties have three features, she argues, that are as many reasons for us to appreciate them. Parties aim, first, to be inclusive, secondly, to offer “a comprehensive story about the economic, social and moral changes of the time, and about national security” and, thirdly, partisans are inclined to compromise.
This is a refreshing and complex view that I appreciate not only for establishing parties and partisanship as legitimate and central subjects for political theory, but for being an excellent example of how work in political theory can be developed in dialogue with both empirical political science and the history of political thought.
But what strikes me about these features is that they invoke a public, collective “we” (beyond that of the party membership) and an idea of the public interest. (This is true of at least the first two features, but arguably also about the third, given that the justification of this last feature is linked to the other two features). For the inclusiveness feature of parties does not simply mean that party identification is shared by diverse groups (people from different states, of different religions, etc.). Rather, it means that partisans want to be in the majority because they “want the moral ascendancy that comes from earning the approval of ‘the great body of the people.’” Parties are comprehensive in the sense that even as partisans pursue partial interests, they “share a complex of concerns and connect particular interests to a more general conception of the public interest” (my emphasis). Parties make possible what Rawls calls “public reason” by situating particular issues “in what we consider the most reasonable and “complete” conception of political justice we can advance” and by speaking “to all citizens as citizens and not view them only as situated in some interest group or social class” (On the Side of the Angels, 359).
But if the value of parties is given by the moral value that comes from being approved by the people, and from offering a conception of the public interest, then it seems that ultimately what matters is the whole, the country, not the parts, the parties (even when they are inclusive and comprehensive). To put it differently, there is, at least at first sight, a tension between justifying parties by invoking the public interest and rejecting holism as a tradition of antipartyism. Or is there a difference between the conceptions of “we” and of “public interest” invoked by the ethic of partisanship and those at work in holism? What are these differences, if any?
I think that we need to know more about these differences not only to have a more complete picture of the ethic of partisanship, but also to understand what about holism is responsible for its antipartyism tendencies. Is it simply the idea of a body politic, or is it a particular way of conceiving it (for example, as an organic entity to whom all parts should be subordinate) that is responsible for antipartyism? Is it possible to distinguish the general ideas of the political “we” and of “public interest” from the particular ways of understanding them that constitute holism as a tradition of antipartyism, and thus maintain a more widely acceptable conception of holism? More importantly, does the ethic of partisanship depend on a such version of holism - a conception of what constitutes the body politic and the general interest - that is not inimical to parties? If so, what is that conception?
Finally, is the ethic of partisanship a normative standard to be used to assess and criticize particular parties and particular party systems? Should we commend parties for their sincere attempts to link particular proposals to a general conception of the public interest? Should we reject parties that do not make that attempt (or are - in our view - insincere when making it)? Does the ethic of partisanship give us a reason to reject proportional representation systems because they make parties less likely to be comprehensive (On the Side of the Angels, 359)? Does it give us reason to prefer systems with fewer parties because having “fewer parties enables coherent and comprehensive narratives” (On the Side of the Angels, 359)?
Mara Marin
8. Mara Marin: Holism and the public interest
In her On the Side of Angels Nancy Rosenblum offers us reasons to reject a long tradition in the history of political thought according to which “partisan” is an invective and “Independents” are “portrayed as partisans undisputed moral superiors.” She proposes “an ethic of partisanship” as the ground for appreciating parties.
Parties have three features, she argues, that are as many reasons for us to appreciate them. Parties aim, first, to be inclusive, secondly, to offer “a comprehensive story about the economic, social and moral changes of the time, and about national security” and, thirdly, partisans are inclined to compromise.
This is a refreshing and complex view that I appreciate not only for establishing parties and partisanship as legitimate and central subjects for political theory, but for being an excellent example of how work in political theory can be developed in dialogue with both empirical political science and the history of political thought.
But what strikes me about these features is that they invoke a public, collective “we” (beyond that of the party membership) and an idea of the public interest. (This is true of at least the first two features, but arguably also about the third, given that the justification of this last feature is linked to the other two features). For the inclusiveness feature of parties does not simply mean that party identification is shared by diverse groups (people from different states, of different religions, etc.). Rather, it means that partisans want to be in the majority because they “want the moral ascendancy that comes from earning the approval of ‘the great body of the people.’” Parties are comprehensive in the sense that even as partisans pursue partial interests, they “share a complex of concerns and connect particular interests to a more general conception of the public interest” (my emphasis). Parties make possible what Rawls calls “public reason” by situating particular issues “in what we consider the most reasonable and “complete” conception of political justice we can advance” and by speaking “to all citizens as citizens and not view them only as situated in some interest group or social class” (On the Side of the Angels, 359).
But if the value of parties is given by the moral value that comes from being approved by the people, and from offering a conception of the public interest, then it seems that ultimately what matters is the whole, the country, not the parts, the parties (even when they are inclusive and comprehensive). To put it differently, there is, at least at first sight, a tension between justifying parties by invoking the public interest and rejecting holism as a tradition of antipartyism. Or is there a difference between the conceptions of “we” and of “public interest” invoked by the ethic of partisanship and those at work in holism? What are these differences, if any?
I think that we need to know more about these differences not only to have a more complete picture of the ethic of partisanship, but also to understand what about holism is responsible for its antipartyism tendencies. Is it simply the idea of a body politic, or is it a particular way of conceiving it (for example, as an organic entity to whom all parts should be subordinate) that is responsible for antipartyism? Is it possible to distinguish the general ideas of the political “we” and of “public interest” from the particular ways of understanding them that constitute holism as a tradition of antipartyism, and thus maintain a more widely acceptable conception of holism? More importantly, does the ethic of partisanship depend on a such version of holism - a conception of what constitutes the body politic and the general interest - that is not inimical to parties? If so, what is that conception?
Finally, is the ethic of partisanship a normative standard to be used to assess and criticize particular parties and particular party systems? Should we commend parties for their sincere attempts to link particular proposals to a general conception of the public interest? Should we reject parties that do not make that attempt (or are - in our view - insincere when making it)? Does the ethic of partisanship give us a reason to reject proportional representation systems because they make parties less likely to be comprehensive (On the Side of the Angels, 359)? Does it give us reason to prefer systems with fewer parties because having “fewer parties enables coherent and comprehensive narratives” (On the Side of the Angels, 359)?
Mara Marin
On the Side of Angels symposium
7. Melissa Schwartzberg: The development of parties' programs
On the Side of the Angels is, in my view, an exemplary work of political theory: it demonstrates the value of classical works of political thought as source material by which to challenge conventional views, and the richness that comes from drawing on the findings of empirical political science to construct normative arguments. Rosenblum’s discussion of the role of parties in fostering deliberation is illustrative of her general methodological approach, as she draws on classical political theory, contemporary normative work, and empirical research in developing her claims. Against much of deliberative theory, Rosenblum suggests that parties have a pivotal role to play in enabling deliberation. On her account, parties serve (attractively) to reduce the multidimensional nature of disagreement: parties bring interests and opinions into sharp opposition so as to subject them to Millian “trial by discussion.” Freeform deliberation is doomed to fail, she rightly holds, and to the extent that parties clarify points of disagreement and thereby enable deliberation to occur more robustly prior to voting, they perform a critical democratic activity. Yet it doesn’t strike me as obvious that the reductive process generated by the party system will necessarily operate in a way that enhances deliberation or democracy more generally, and so I’d like briefly to consider the circumstances under which it is likely to be beneficial and the conditions under which this process could do real harm.
The best-case scenario for parties and deliberation might run as follows: Parties’ agendas emerge from a substantially less constrained deliberative process; it is relatively easy for civilian partisans to participate in this process, and there is a forum in which outlying or extreme positions can be heard and debated. Through this deliberative process, candidates are identified and platforms developed. Civilian partisans then can take up the banner, helping to construct arguments on behalf of the proposed policies and responding to criticisms of opposing parties, which have generated their own policies and platforms through a dynamic process that responds to the choices of the other parties. In this world, independents would, as Rosenblum argues, miss out on the fundamental activity of framing, defending, and criticizing issues in response to others’ arguments. Further, given the expansive nature of the deliberative process ex ante, the independent might rightly be charged with epistemic or moral hubris insofar as they fail to listen to or learn from others’ positions.
Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe that policy agendas and candidates do actually emerge in such an inclusively deliberative fashion – programs and candidates typically result from internal conflicts among party leaders and activists at various levels. Now, Rosenblum would probably argue that this isn’t a problem: she holds, I think, that the real work of citizenship comes after the construction of parties and their agendas, of deliberating in the context of preexisting alternatives. But without such a role for citizen partisans in the construction of these alternatives, I fear that the beneficial reduction in the dimensionality of debates generated by internal party politics may have as a side effect an unappealing parochialism. Further, since would-be civilian partisans may not view the party as reflecting their divergent perspectives – that is, they may feel it is insufficiently inclusive – their identification with the party may be gravely attenuated, thereby pushing more partisans into the ranks of the disaffected independents. The argument, in this case, that independents are “weightless” may be unfair if, while partisans, they felt that their weight – their distinct perspectives and their solidarity within a deliberative process – had gone unnoticed. The creativity and moral salience of partisanship so elegantly defended by Rosenblum depends, it seems to me, upon offering civilian partisans a genuine opportunity to participate in the development of their parties’ programs.
[On the role of deliberation in reducing the dimensions of disagreement and thus helping to generate single-peaked preferences (and avoid cycling), see also Jack Knight and James Johnson, “Aggregation and Deliberation: On the Possibility of Democratic Legitimacy,” Political Theory 22:2 (May 1994), pp. 277-296)]
7. Melissa Schwartzberg: The development of parties' programs
On the Side of the Angels is, in my view, an exemplary work of political theory: it demonstrates the value of classical works of political thought as source material by which to challenge conventional views, and the richness that comes from drawing on the findings of empirical political science to construct normative arguments. Rosenblum’s discussion of the role of parties in fostering deliberation is illustrative of her general methodological approach, as she draws on classical political theory, contemporary normative work, and empirical research in developing her claims. Against much of deliberative theory, Rosenblum suggests that parties have a pivotal role to play in enabling deliberation. On her account, parties serve (attractively) to reduce the multidimensional nature of disagreement: parties bring interests and opinions into sharp opposition so as to subject them to Millian “trial by discussion.” Freeform deliberation is doomed to fail, she rightly holds, and to the extent that parties clarify points of disagreement and thereby enable deliberation to occur more robustly prior to voting, they perform a critical democratic activity. Yet it doesn’t strike me as obvious that the reductive process generated by the party system will necessarily operate in a way that enhances deliberation or democracy more generally, and so I’d like briefly to consider the circumstances under which it is likely to be beneficial and the conditions under which this process could do real harm.
The best-case scenario for parties and deliberation might run as follows: Parties’ agendas emerge from a substantially less constrained deliberative process; it is relatively easy for civilian partisans to participate in this process, and there is a forum in which outlying or extreme positions can be heard and debated. Through this deliberative process, candidates are identified and platforms developed. Civilian partisans then can take up the banner, helping to construct arguments on behalf of the proposed policies and responding to criticisms of opposing parties, which have generated their own policies and platforms through a dynamic process that responds to the choices of the other parties. In this world, independents would, as Rosenblum argues, miss out on the fundamental activity of framing, defending, and criticizing issues in response to others’ arguments. Further, given the expansive nature of the deliberative process ex ante, the independent might rightly be charged with epistemic or moral hubris insofar as they fail to listen to or learn from others’ positions.
Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe that policy agendas and candidates do actually emerge in such an inclusively deliberative fashion – programs and candidates typically result from internal conflicts among party leaders and activists at various levels. Now, Rosenblum would probably argue that this isn’t a problem: she holds, I think, that the real work of citizenship comes after the construction of parties and their agendas, of deliberating in the context of preexisting alternatives. But without such a role for citizen partisans in the construction of these alternatives, I fear that the beneficial reduction in the dimensionality of debates generated by internal party politics may have as a side effect an unappealing parochialism. Further, since would-be civilian partisans may not view the party as reflecting their divergent perspectives – that is, they may feel it is insufficiently inclusive – their identification with the party may be gravely attenuated, thereby pushing more partisans into the ranks of the disaffected independents. The argument, in this case, that independents are “weightless” may be unfair if, while partisans, they felt that their weight – their distinct perspectives and their solidarity within a deliberative process – had gone unnoticed. The creativity and moral salience of partisanship so elegantly defended by Rosenblum depends, it seems to me, upon offering civilian partisans a genuine opportunity to participate in the development of their parties’ programs.
[On the role of deliberation in reducing the dimensions of disagreement and thus helping to generate single-peaked preferences (and avoid cycling), see also Jack Knight and James Johnson, “Aggregation and Deliberation: On the Possibility of Democratic Legitimacy,” Political Theory 22:2 (May 1994), pp. 277-296)]
On the Side of Angels symposium
6. Nadia Urbinati: Parties are not an Option in Representative Democracy
Rosenblum’s defense of the morality of the political party and partisanship represents a seminal contribution to both democratic theory and political theory. Resuming Ignazio Silone’s maxim that the crucial political judgment is “the choice of comrades”, not of independent bystanders, Rosenblum links partisanship to citizens’ participation and political responsibility. This is her central thesis: “Inclusiveness, comprehensiveness and compromisingness set the contours for the best possible partisanship. They enable the distinctive work of partisans: drawing the lines of division and shaping the system of conflict that orders democratic deliberation and decision. Among the political identities that democracy generates, only partisanship has this potential.” Partisanship is an indispensable mean to regulate political conflict in peaceful manner, recognize political pluralism, and generate political agendas and political identities. These are compelling arguments, essential to the understanding of political action in democratic society, both inside and outside of the institutions. Drawing on my book on representative democracy, I would propose an additional argument that may stress Rosenblum’s thesis: representative democracy makes parties essential.
Representative democracy reveals the limits of a conception of politics as an individual-to-individual relation between the candidate and the electors sealed by elections. It reveals the limits of a conception that rests on the formalistic element of authorization (voting) and a juridical (as private) interpretation of representation as agent/principal relation. A democratic theory of representation compels us to go beyond the intermittent and discrete series of electoral instants (sovereign as the authorizing will) and investigate the continuum of influence and power created and recreated by political judgment and the way this diversified power relates to representative institutions. Augustine Cochin wrote years ago that “a people of electors by itself is not capable of initiative, but at most of consent;” yet a representative democracy is not a “crowd of inorganic voters.” Political parties and movements are the means citizens create to give their political presence an effective and persistent character through time. Their strength and social rootedness signal the strength of democratic representation.
Moreover, since representation functions politically (to make laws) in a collective and public setting and since laws cannot be treated like contractual agreements because they impose their authority on all indiscriminately, not just on those who agree with them or those whose ideas are represented by the majority, it is extremely important that we abandon the logic of the contract in interpreting representation.
However, that representation cannot be regulated and checked like a 'contract' between a principal and an agent does not mean that citizens can only check representatives through elections. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was right to say that representation cannot be a contract. Yet just because political representation can only exist in the juridical form of a non-legally bounded contract of mandate, some other form of ‘political’ mandate is needed to check representatives. The very fact that representatives play an active (legislative) role implies that they are not independent of the electors; it implies a political kind of 'mandate.'
The seed of the democratic character of representation germinates from the paradox that although a representative is supposed to deliberate about things that affect all members of the polity, she is also supposed to have a sympathetic relation to a part (the part that votes for her). In substance, a relation of ideological sympathy and communication between the representative and her electors is necessary and can occur only because political representation excludes legal mandate and is not a contract. The sympathetic relation of the representative to the part that voted for her is and must only be a matter of opinions or ideas, an informal and thus not authoritative kind of relation. This means however that the representative is not politically autonomous from her electors although she must be legally autonomous. Party is the political link of interdependence between citizens and elected representatives.
In democratic politics, representation is not "acting in the place of somebody," but more precisely, being in a political relation of sympathetic similarity or communication with those in the place of whom the representatives act in the legislature (from here citizens’ quest of representativity comes). The assumption of this (idealized or ideological) kind of sympathy (which is the foundation of the advocacy aspect of representation) is reflected in the statute that regulates how the deputies vote in the representative assembly. Except in clearly specified cases (which pertain to decrees, not laws), the voting record must be made public. Electors need to know what the representatives do and say and how they vote in the assembly because they need to compare representatives judgment to their own judgment.
That a political representative is required to share her ideas only with her electors, not with the whole nation as a homogeneous body, entails that representation is itself a denial of plebiscitarian and populist democracy (a homogeneous identification of the body politics with one leader). Indeed, in order to acquire the moral and political legitimacy to make laws for all it must articulate pluralism but not superimpose an unreflective unity over an indistinct mass of individuals. It is thus important to make clear that representation is a process of unification not an act of unity that erases pluralism. As such, it presupposes and fosters pluralism, one that is not a mere social given but a political construction made by free citizens in their conflicting divisions or sympathetic alliances. Representative democracy is based on political parties and partisanship.
Nadia Urbinati
6. Nadia Urbinati: Parties are not an Option in Representative Democracy
Rosenblum’s defense of the morality of the political party and partisanship represents a seminal contribution to both democratic theory and political theory. Resuming Ignazio Silone’s maxim that the crucial political judgment is “the choice of comrades”, not of independent bystanders, Rosenblum links partisanship to citizens’ participation and political responsibility. This is her central thesis: “Inclusiveness, comprehensiveness and compromisingness set the contours for the best possible partisanship. They enable the distinctive work of partisans: drawing the lines of division and shaping the system of conflict that orders democratic deliberation and decision. Among the political identities that democracy generates, only partisanship has this potential.” Partisanship is an indispensable mean to regulate political conflict in peaceful manner, recognize political pluralism, and generate political agendas and political identities. These are compelling arguments, essential to the understanding of political action in democratic society, both inside and outside of the institutions. Drawing on my book on representative democracy, I would propose an additional argument that may stress Rosenblum’s thesis: representative democracy makes parties essential.
Representative democracy reveals the limits of a conception of politics as an individual-to-individual relation between the candidate and the electors sealed by elections. It reveals the limits of a conception that rests on the formalistic element of authorization (voting) and a juridical (as private) interpretation of representation as agent/principal relation. A democratic theory of representation compels us to go beyond the intermittent and discrete series of electoral instants (sovereign as the authorizing will) and investigate the continuum of influence and power created and recreated by political judgment and the way this diversified power relates to representative institutions. Augustine Cochin wrote years ago that “a people of electors by itself is not capable of initiative, but at most of consent;” yet a representative democracy is not a “crowd of inorganic voters.” Political parties and movements are the means citizens create to give their political presence an effective and persistent character through time. Their strength and social rootedness signal the strength of democratic representation.
Moreover, since representation functions politically (to make laws) in a collective and public setting and since laws cannot be treated like contractual agreements because they impose their authority on all indiscriminately, not just on those who agree with them or those whose ideas are represented by the majority, it is extremely important that we abandon the logic of the contract in interpreting representation.
However, that representation cannot be regulated and checked like a 'contract' between a principal and an agent does not mean that citizens can only check representatives through elections. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was right to say that representation cannot be a contract. Yet just because political representation can only exist in the juridical form of a non-legally bounded contract of mandate, some other form of ‘political’ mandate is needed to check representatives. The very fact that representatives play an active (legislative) role implies that they are not independent of the electors; it implies a political kind of 'mandate.'
The seed of the democratic character of representation germinates from the paradox that although a representative is supposed to deliberate about things that affect all members of the polity, she is also supposed to have a sympathetic relation to a part (the part that votes for her). In substance, a relation of ideological sympathy and communication between the representative and her electors is necessary and can occur only because political representation excludes legal mandate and is not a contract. The sympathetic relation of the representative to the part that voted for her is and must only be a matter of opinions or ideas, an informal and thus not authoritative kind of relation. This means however that the representative is not politically autonomous from her electors although she must be legally autonomous. Party is the political link of interdependence between citizens and elected representatives.
In democratic politics, representation is not "acting in the place of somebody," but more precisely, being in a political relation of sympathetic similarity or communication with those in the place of whom the representatives act in the legislature (from here citizens’ quest of representativity comes). The assumption of this (idealized or ideological) kind of sympathy (which is the foundation of the advocacy aspect of representation) is reflected in the statute that regulates how the deputies vote in the representative assembly. Except in clearly specified cases (which pertain to decrees, not laws), the voting record must be made public. Electors need to know what the representatives do and say and how they vote in the assembly because they need to compare representatives judgment to their own judgment.
That a political representative is required to share her ideas only with her electors, not with the whole nation as a homogeneous body, entails that representation is itself a denial of plebiscitarian and populist democracy (a homogeneous identification of the body politics with one leader). Indeed, in order to acquire the moral and political legitimacy to make laws for all it must articulate pluralism but not superimpose an unreflective unity over an indistinct mass of individuals. It is thus important to make clear that representation is a process of unification not an act of unity that erases pluralism. As such, it presupposes and fosters pluralism, one that is not a mere social given but a political construction made by free citizens in their conflicting divisions or sympathetic alliances. Representative democracy is based on political parties and partisanship.
Nadia Urbinati
On the Side of Angels symposium
5. Nadia Urbinati: A Third Tradition of Anti-Partyism
Against the current: this would be my blurb for Nancy L. Rosenblum’s On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship, a fresh and bold attempt to subvert the “canonical” opposition to “parties as institutions and moral disdain for partisans” in the history of political thought. More than that, Rosenblum’s book is a timely and praiseworthy vindication of the value and uniqueness of democratic politics, the true Cinderella in contemporary democratic theory’s turn to cognitivism and the obsession with truth.
On the Side of the Angels wants to rescue “from futility” the positive role of political party “in the long history of antipartyism” that has marked the renaissance of democracy in modern world. Rosenblum reconstructs two “Glorious Traditions” of antipartyism: the holistic one and the pragmatic one. The former is radically hostile to pluralism; it can be either hierarchical and communitarian or egalitarian but is decisively anti-democratic (the Platonist tradition and reactionary tradition, from Rousseau to de Maistre fit this description). The latter is instead realist in accepting social pluralism but still resilient in justifying partisanship (Hume and Madison fit this description). Few are the modern authors on the side of the angels; among them Burke, Hegel, Tocqueville, and moreover John Stuart Mill who, although did not praise parties, grasped the dialectics of opposite visions of society (Progressive and Conservative) in representative government. We owe Mill the point that “without party rivalry, ‘trial by discussion’ cannot be meaningful,” writes Rosenblum. Developing from Mill’s proto-partytism, Rosenblum offers two strong and persuasive arguments in defense of partisan politics: that parties shape political conflict as no other collective actors can do, and that their decline or even absence in contemporary democracy signals a crisis of democratic politics.
I would propose to integrate Rosenblum’s two antiparty traditions with a third one: the myth of the unpolitical and even the anti-political. Whereas the former two traditions belonged to or were born from within a pre-democratic society, this new antiparty tradition is instead the offspring of a mature democratic society, and the expression of contemporary democratic theory. Strain of politicization is not new to critics of democracy. Beginning with early nineteenth century and as a reaction against the political process of emancipation started with the French revolution, it crossed the works of several generations of communitarians, anti-rationalists and anti-egalitarians. Burke and de Maistre, the founding fathers of modern anti-democracy, were critical of popular assemblies mainly because elections dethroned competence and virtue from politics and made the latter an arena of competing interests, in which all issues became relative in value and subjected to the volatile opinion of numerical majorities.
Yet contemporary’s strain of partisanship is more intriguing than the traditional anti-democratic lamentation because is made in the name of, not against democracy’s values. Criticism of democracy’s vocation to engender partisanship is to be found in Philip Pettit’s work and, although to a lesser degree, in Pierre Rosanvallon’s. Democratic institutions (a “system whereby the collective will of the people rules,” Pettit writes) are fueled by the “politics of passion” to narrow which proponents of unpolitical democracy see only one remedy: containing politics altogether while expanding deliberative fora and committees of experts, and moreover instituting adversarial practices of judicial contestation, solutions that are not democratic in character because not based on majority rule. From here comes, Rosanvallon has argued, “the growing importance we must recognize to the development of new modes of intermediary structuring of actions of surveillance by means of militant yet not partisan organizations.”
In contemporary democracy, the working force against partisanship is thus judgment, a faculty that plays a negative role, as that of monitoring and censuring. Judgment acquired momentum in the second half of the twenty-century, in coincidence with the consolidation of constitutional democracy, the technological revolution of the means of information and communication, and the expansion of civil society, domestically and globally. In representative democracy, the actor of negative politics is not the citizen-elector but the citizen-judge through an uninterrupted work of public scrutiny that is and remains informal although extremely influential. Judgment is the site of counter-politics; is located in civil political society as a permanent work of evaluation and criticism of politique politisée.
Yet the citizen-judge wants to make power more transparent and impartial, not more affordable or widespread. Unlike with the citizen-elector or the political participant, the goal of the citizen-judge is to devise institutions and rules that can in the long run make political participation less needed and thus partisanship less pronounced and relevant. Apathy seems to be the final outcome of this new trend of democratic antipartitism and antipartisanship. In Rosenblum’s words, the strategy of contemporary political philosophers “to sever deliberation from partisanship” is primed to foster an attitude that is inimical to democracy, which is unavoidably political because makes all issues an object of public talk and all values a matter of opinion.
Works cited:
Philip Pettit, “Depoliticizing Democracy”, Ratio Juris, 17 (March 2004): 52-65.
Philip Pettit, “Deliberative Democracy, the Discursive Dilemma, and Republican Theory,” in Debating Deliberative Democracy, ed. James S. Fishkin et Peter Laslett, Oxford, Blackwell, 2003.
Pierre Rosanvallon, La contre-démocratie. La politique à l’âge de la défiance. Paris: Seuil, 2006.
Nadia Urbinati
5. Nadia Urbinati: A Third Tradition of Anti-Partyism
Against the current: this would be my blurb for Nancy L. Rosenblum’s On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship, a fresh and bold attempt to subvert the “canonical” opposition to “parties as institutions and moral disdain for partisans” in the history of political thought. More than that, Rosenblum’s book is a timely and praiseworthy vindication of the value and uniqueness of democratic politics, the true Cinderella in contemporary democratic theory’s turn to cognitivism and the obsession with truth.
On the Side of the Angels wants to rescue “from futility” the positive role of political party “in the long history of antipartyism” that has marked the renaissance of democracy in modern world. Rosenblum reconstructs two “Glorious Traditions” of antipartyism: the holistic one and the pragmatic one. The former is radically hostile to pluralism; it can be either hierarchical and communitarian or egalitarian but is decisively anti-democratic (the Platonist tradition and reactionary tradition, from Rousseau to de Maistre fit this description). The latter is instead realist in accepting social pluralism but still resilient in justifying partisanship (Hume and Madison fit this description). Few are the modern authors on the side of the angels; among them Burke, Hegel, Tocqueville, and moreover John Stuart Mill who, although did not praise parties, grasped the dialectics of opposite visions of society (Progressive and Conservative) in representative government. We owe Mill the point that “without party rivalry, ‘trial by discussion’ cannot be meaningful,” writes Rosenblum. Developing from Mill’s proto-partytism, Rosenblum offers two strong and persuasive arguments in defense of partisan politics: that parties shape political conflict as no other collective actors can do, and that their decline or even absence in contemporary democracy signals a crisis of democratic politics.
I would propose to integrate Rosenblum’s two antiparty traditions with a third one: the myth of the unpolitical and even the anti-political. Whereas the former two traditions belonged to or were born from within a pre-democratic society, this new antiparty tradition is instead the offspring of a mature democratic society, and the expression of contemporary democratic theory. Strain of politicization is not new to critics of democracy. Beginning with early nineteenth century and as a reaction against the political process of emancipation started with the French revolution, it crossed the works of several generations of communitarians, anti-rationalists and anti-egalitarians. Burke and de Maistre, the founding fathers of modern anti-democracy, were critical of popular assemblies mainly because elections dethroned competence and virtue from politics and made the latter an arena of competing interests, in which all issues became relative in value and subjected to the volatile opinion of numerical majorities.
Yet contemporary’s strain of partisanship is more intriguing than the traditional anti-democratic lamentation because is made in the name of, not against democracy’s values. Criticism of democracy’s vocation to engender partisanship is to be found in Philip Pettit’s work and, although to a lesser degree, in Pierre Rosanvallon’s. Democratic institutions (a “system whereby the collective will of the people rules,” Pettit writes) are fueled by the “politics of passion” to narrow which proponents of unpolitical democracy see only one remedy: containing politics altogether while expanding deliberative fora and committees of experts, and moreover instituting adversarial practices of judicial contestation, solutions that are not democratic in character because not based on majority rule. From here comes, Rosanvallon has argued, “the growing importance we must recognize to the development of new modes of intermediary structuring of actions of surveillance by means of militant yet not partisan organizations.”
In contemporary democracy, the working force against partisanship is thus judgment, a faculty that plays a negative role, as that of monitoring and censuring. Judgment acquired momentum in the second half of the twenty-century, in coincidence with the consolidation of constitutional democracy, the technological revolution of the means of information and communication, and the expansion of civil society, domestically and globally. In representative democracy, the actor of negative politics is not the citizen-elector but the citizen-judge through an uninterrupted work of public scrutiny that is and remains informal although extremely influential. Judgment is the site of counter-politics; is located in civil political society as a permanent work of evaluation and criticism of politique politisée.
Yet the citizen-judge wants to make power more transparent and impartial, not more affordable or widespread. Unlike with the citizen-elector or the political participant, the goal of the citizen-judge is to devise institutions and rules that can in the long run make political participation less needed and thus partisanship less pronounced and relevant. Apathy seems to be the final outcome of this new trend of democratic antipartitism and antipartisanship. In Rosenblum’s words, the strategy of contemporary political philosophers “to sever deliberation from partisanship” is primed to foster an attitude that is inimical to democracy, which is unavoidably political because makes all issues an object of public talk and all values a matter of opinion.
Works cited:
Philip Pettit, “Depoliticizing Democracy”, Ratio Juris, 17 (March 2004): 52-65.
Philip Pettit, “Deliberative Democracy, the Discursive Dilemma, and Republican Theory,” in Debating Deliberative Democracy, ed. James S. Fishkin et Peter Laslett, Oxford, Blackwell, 2003.
Pierre Rosanvallon, La contre-démocratie. La politique à l’âge de la défiance. Paris: Seuil, 2006.
Nadia Urbinati
On the Side of Angels symposium
4. Nancy Rosenblum: "The Moral Distinctiveness of ‘Party ID’," Part II: Moments of Appreciation of Partisanship
(See Part I here)
Now for three notes of appreciation for partisanship, corresponding to the elements of my proposed ethic of partisanship.
1. Inclusiveness. The first is the inclusive character of party id, which is characteristic though not unique to partisanship in the U.S.. That is, identification with Democrats or Republicans from Florida to California, and at every level of government. No other political identity is shared by so many segments of the population as measured by SES or religion. Nor are partisans clumped tightly together on an ideological spectrum. This is not to say that all partisans have an especially deep moral commitment to inclusiveness -- only that they are ambitious to be in the majority. Understand, however, that claiming a majority is more than a matter of strategic necessity or institutional design. Partisans want to win elections, but a plurality can suffice. They want to have their policies enacted, but there are other avenues of political efficacy. Rather, partisans want the moral ascendancy that comes from earning the approval of “the great body of the people”. In this respect, inclusiveness is a conscious democratic value.
Party candidates may have short-term strategic interests (or safe seats) that allow them to speak only to “the base”, or to sliver audiences, or even to deliberately depress participation, and activists may demand single-minded attention to one issue and ideological purity. But ordinary civilian partisans aspire to persuade and mobilize as many as possible to identify with them. Their horizon of political expectation extends beyond a single election cycle, and their disposition is to inclusiveness.
2. Comprehensiveness. The second element of an ethic of partisanship, and grounds for appreciation, is attachment to others in a group with responsibility for telling a comprehensive public story about the economic, social, and moral changes of the time, and about national security. Of course, partisans sometimes focus on a specific event and their party’s competence to identify and deal with it. Partisans pursue partial interests, though this is not unreconstructed interest group pluralism since partisans share a complex of concerns and connect particular interests to a more general conception of the public interest.
It would be overstating the case to say that given the comparative comprehensiveness of their concerns partisans assume the obligation Rawls articulated: to advance some conception of the public good that is not ad hoc but situated in the most complete conception of political justice we can advance. It would be understating the case to say that in contrast to members of interest and advocacy groups, including self-styled public interest groups, partisans are not single-issue voters. An important result follows from comprehensiveness: ordinary partisans are rarely extremists because adhering single-mindedly to one single dominating idea has little appeal.
3. Compromisingness. Inclusiveness and a comprehensive account of what needs to be done are only possible if “we partisans” demonstrate the disposition to compromise. When compromise is with fellow partisans it acknowledges the larger “we”. We have only to think of political purists to underscore compromisingness as a moral disposition of ordinary partisans. Purists “cant about principles”. They represent intransigence as a virtue. They do not find failure ignominious. As one Republican sensibly objected, “I did not become a conservative in order to become a radical…”.
Of course, compromise can be evidence of abject pandering or raw opportunism. If you are partisans, you know for yourselves, I suspect, that working out the bounds of reasonable compromise is part of the discipline of partisanship.
Inclusiveness, comprehensiveness and compromisingness set the contours for the best possible partisanship. They enable the distinctive work of partisans: drawing the lines of division and shaping the system of conflict that orders democratic deliberation and decision. Among the political identities that democracy generates, only partisanship has this potential.
The Moral Distinctiveness of ‘Party ID’
This brings me to the overarching achievement of parties and partisanship. We know that in political life partiality and disagreement are inescapable, and so are groups and associations of all kinds organized in opposition to one another. But we tend to forget that political parties and partisanship are not inevitable, and should not be taken for granted. Commitment to political pluralism, to regulated political rivalry, and to shifting responsibility for governing makes party id the morally distinctive political identity of representative democracy.
We might think that the vicissitudes of political fortune and the limits of human volition make this existentially true, a felt experience. Or we might say that all citizens in democracy have a part in this; they do, presumptively, formally. But partisans are expressly identified with it. Partisanship is the political identity that does not see political pluralism and conflict as a glum concession to the ineradicable “circumstances of politics”. And while thinking they should speak to everyone, partisans do not imagine they speak for the whole. True, they are on the side of the angels, offering a satisfactory account of what needs to be done. But however ardent and devoid of skepticism, there is this reticence. Partisans do not represent the opposition as a public enemy. They don’t secede, revolt, or withdraw in defeat, and “elections are not followed by waves of suicide.”
Skeptics of my appreciation of partisanship can be forgiven today. For several decades, the leadership of American parties often appears to want to destroy one another as an effective and legitimate opposition – even to the extent of trying to criminalize political differences. They are hubristic, claiming to represent the nation not a part. Intransigence has become a virtue; compromise even with fellow partisans is not in their repertoire; failure is not ignominious even if the public business is not done. The thrust of an ethic of partisanship, of course, is critical as well as appreciative.
These failings do not characterize ordinary partisans, or taint partisanship as a proud political identity. In any event, nonpartisanship cannot sustain democracy and democratic citizenship, and even vaunted bipartisanship is a temporary corrective at best. That is all the more reason for democratic theorists to connect the practice of democratic citizenship with partisanship, and to consider the terms and conditions of better partisanship as seriously as they do impartiality and institutions designed to work without parties or partisans. Political theorists should adopt these orphans of political philosophy and take them in.
Works Cited:
Edmund Burke, “An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs”
Jesse Macy, Political Parties in the United States 1846-1961
Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum, “Political Liberalism vs. “The Great Game of Politics””, Perspectives on Politics (March, 2006).
Theodore Roosevelt, American Ideals
E.E. Schattschneider, Party Government
Judith N. Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion
4. Nancy Rosenblum: "The Moral Distinctiveness of ‘Party ID’," Part II: Moments of Appreciation of Partisanship
(See Part I here)
Now for three notes of appreciation for partisanship, corresponding to the elements of my proposed ethic of partisanship.
1. Inclusiveness. The first is the inclusive character of party id, which is characteristic though not unique to partisanship in the U.S.. That is, identification with Democrats or Republicans from Florida to California, and at every level of government. No other political identity is shared by so many segments of the population as measured by SES or religion. Nor are partisans clumped tightly together on an ideological spectrum. This is not to say that all partisans have an especially deep moral commitment to inclusiveness -- only that they are ambitious to be in the majority. Understand, however, that claiming a majority is more than a matter of strategic necessity or institutional design. Partisans want to win elections, but a plurality can suffice. They want to have their policies enacted, but there are other avenues of political efficacy. Rather, partisans want the moral ascendancy that comes from earning the approval of “the great body of the people”. In this respect, inclusiveness is a conscious democratic value.
Party candidates may have short-term strategic interests (or safe seats) that allow them to speak only to “the base”, or to sliver audiences, or even to deliberately depress participation, and activists may demand single-minded attention to one issue and ideological purity. But ordinary civilian partisans aspire to persuade and mobilize as many as possible to identify with them. Their horizon of political expectation extends beyond a single election cycle, and their disposition is to inclusiveness.
2. Comprehensiveness. The second element of an ethic of partisanship, and grounds for appreciation, is attachment to others in a group with responsibility for telling a comprehensive public story about the economic, social, and moral changes of the time, and about national security. Of course, partisans sometimes focus on a specific event and their party’s competence to identify and deal with it. Partisans pursue partial interests, though this is not unreconstructed interest group pluralism since partisans share a complex of concerns and connect particular interests to a more general conception of the public interest.
It would be overstating the case to say that given the comparative comprehensiveness of their concerns partisans assume the obligation Rawls articulated: to advance some conception of the public good that is not ad hoc but situated in the most complete conception of political justice we can advance. It would be understating the case to say that in contrast to members of interest and advocacy groups, including self-styled public interest groups, partisans are not single-issue voters. An important result follows from comprehensiveness: ordinary partisans are rarely extremists because adhering single-mindedly to one single dominating idea has little appeal.
3. Compromisingness. Inclusiveness and a comprehensive account of what needs to be done are only possible if “we partisans” demonstrate the disposition to compromise. When compromise is with fellow partisans it acknowledges the larger “we”. We have only to think of political purists to underscore compromisingness as a moral disposition of ordinary partisans. Purists “cant about principles”. They represent intransigence as a virtue. They do not find failure ignominious. As one Republican sensibly objected, “I did not become a conservative in order to become a radical…”.
Of course, compromise can be evidence of abject pandering or raw opportunism. If you are partisans, you know for yourselves, I suspect, that working out the bounds of reasonable compromise is part of the discipline of partisanship.
Inclusiveness, comprehensiveness and compromisingness set the contours for the best possible partisanship. They enable the distinctive work of partisans: drawing the lines of division and shaping the system of conflict that orders democratic deliberation and decision. Among the political identities that democracy generates, only partisanship has this potential.
The Moral Distinctiveness of ‘Party ID’
This brings me to the overarching achievement of parties and partisanship. We know that in political life partiality and disagreement are inescapable, and so are groups and associations of all kinds organized in opposition to one another. But we tend to forget that political parties and partisanship are not inevitable, and should not be taken for granted. Commitment to political pluralism, to regulated political rivalry, and to shifting responsibility for governing makes party id the morally distinctive political identity of representative democracy.
We might think that the vicissitudes of political fortune and the limits of human volition make this existentially true, a felt experience. Or we might say that all citizens in democracy have a part in this; they do, presumptively, formally. But partisans are expressly identified with it. Partisanship is the political identity that does not see political pluralism and conflict as a glum concession to the ineradicable “circumstances of politics”. And while thinking they should speak to everyone, partisans do not imagine they speak for the whole. True, they are on the side of the angels, offering a satisfactory account of what needs to be done. But however ardent and devoid of skepticism, there is this reticence. Partisans do not represent the opposition as a public enemy. They don’t secede, revolt, or withdraw in defeat, and “elections are not followed by waves of suicide.”
Skeptics of my appreciation of partisanship can be forgiven today. For several decades, the leadership of American parties often appears to want to destroy one another as an effective and legitimate opposition – even to the extent of trying to criminalize political differences. They are hubristic, claiming to represent the nation not a part. Intransigence has become a virtue; compromise even with fellow partisans is not in their repertoire; failure is not ignominious even if the public business is not done. The thrust of an ethic of partisanship, of course, is critical as well as appreciative.
These failings do not characterize ordinary partisans, or taint partisanship as a proud political identity. In any event, nonpartisanship cannot sustain democracy and democratic citizenship, and even vaunted bipartisanship is a temporary corrective at best. That is all the more reason for democratic theorists to connect the practice of democratic citizenship with partisanship, and to consider the terms and conditions of better partisanship as seriously as they do impartiality and institutions designed to work without parties or partisans. Political theorists should adopt these orphans of political philosophy and take them in.
Works Cited:
Edmund Burke, “An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs”
Jesse Macy, Political Parties in the United States 1846-1961
Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum, “Political Liberalism vs. “The Great Game of Politics””, Perspectives on Politics (March, 2006).
Theodore Roosevelt, American Ideals
E.E. Schattschneider, Party Government
Judith N. Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion
On the Side of Angels symposium
3. Nancy Rosenblum: "The Moral Distinctiveness of ‘Party ID’," Part I: Independence
On the Side of the Angels has three purposes. I create a typology of the antiparty arguments that recur in the history of political thought, and identify rare “moments of appreciation”. [Blog #1] I go on to trace the “post-party depression” that accompanied the rise of mass electoral parties in the U.S.. Virtually every contemporary political pathology and scheme for correcting the system by eliminating, circumventing, or containing parties has its roots in Progressive Era, when antipartyism and the ideal of political Independence were at a pitch. I trace this continuity in case law and democratic theory. Finally, drawing on work in political science, I propose grounds for an appreciation of partisanship in democratic politics today, and I outline an ethic of partisanship.
Partisanship needs a moment of appreciation. We recognize “partisan” as invective; the barb comes out of improbable mouths, a virtual reflex. Nothing is clearer than the solicitous attention showered on political Independents, or that they are typically portrayed as partisans’ undisputed moral superiors. Democratic theorists are no exception. Parties are famously “orphans of political philosophy”, and political theorists today continue to ignore or disown them. Sober realists might concede the minimum: that parties are convenient mechanisms for “reducing the transaction costs” of democracy. Perhaps they might be brought to say that while partisans are not admirable, some number of them are indispensable to realize the function of parties. But any concession is pragmatic, unexuberant, unphilosophical, grudging.
The notion commonplace in democratic theory that an “intelligently and progressively democratic” system depends on the ability of its supporters to attain a nonpartisan spirit is exactly wrong. In contrast, I cast partisanship as the characteristic and morally distinctive political identity of representative democracy. I chip away at the moral high ground claimed by Independents, and provide “party id” – ordinary citizens’ identification as a partisan –an iota of dignity. (My focus here is “civilian” partisans, referred to as “the party in the electorate”, though a similar argument applies to partisans in government.)
To make the case, I offer three points each about Independence and partisanship.
1. The Luster of Independence. Declining party identification – a “no preference” response on a survey of political attitudes -- is widespread throughout advanced democracies, but the proud self-designation “Independent” is unique to the U.S.. The peculiar luster of Independence here owes to a civic ideal of self-reliance as a virtue and social condition that preceded organized parties, and was later replanted in the soil of electoral politics. In Judith Shklar’s formulation: citizens [must] “be independent persons in both their political and civil roles, who give and withdraw their votes from their representatives and political parties as they see fit.” From early on partisanship began to be cast as degraded citizenship, as abject dependence rooted in clientelism, capture, or blind loyalty.
To be clear: the core of Independence as a political identity today is antipartisanship, not antipartyism. True, fundamentalist Independents reject party systems per se as too rigid to accommodate political judgment, and others may regret the current configuration of parties. But it is the avowal that she is not a partisan that gives Independence its luster, and explains the apt term “closet partisans” applied to the majority of Independents who end up voting regularly with one party.
2. ‘Escape from the Deadly Groove’
Progressives introduced the influential view that where the partisan is seduced or bought, the Independent is a free agent. The supporters of party organizations were characterized as thoughtless, set in some “deadly groove” and under some affective thrall. Today, the contrast is posed in cognitive as well as moralistic terms. Where partisans are “judgment-impaired”, crippled by perceptual bias, the Independent is a nimble “positive empiricist”, “cognitively mobilized.” These assertions do not stand up to empirical scrutiny. Independents typically know less than strong partisans, and cannot reasonably claim that they bring balanced information to bear. Unanchored, Independent’s considerations are more likely to be chaotic and ad hoc than partisans’. They participate in politics less.
Nonetheless, several heroic representations of Independence are commonplace and need to be disposed of. Escape from the deadly groove does not make the Independent bravely Thoreauian, doing in every case “what I think right”, since she is reduced to choosing among courses set by others. There is no warrant for casting Independents as Humean impartial observers, judicious umpires inclining victory to this side or that “as they think the interests of the country demand”. Nor as sensitive to Mill’s “half-truths” and to the dynamic by which every position derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other.
What if individual Independents were disinterested, or impartial observers and correctors of the deficiencies of every party? Even the ideal Independent lacks the moral distinctiveness of “party id” I turn to shortly, beginning with the fact that Independents are politically detached and weightless.
3. Weightlessness. Partisanship is identification with others in a political association. “We partisans” organize and vote with allies, not alone. Independents are as detached from one another as they are from parties. If Silone is right that the crucial political judgment is “the choice of comrades”, Independents do not make it. They are not sending a coordinated message (even if analysts are in the business of interpreting what their votes meant). Independents do not assume responsibility for the institutions that organize public discussion, elections, and government and are not responsible to other like-minded citizens.
Which is why what Teddy Roosevelt called “mere windy anarchy” is the perennial anxiety of those who imagine Independents as the hope for democratic reform. I’ll give the last word on this point to Edmund Burke, who said it first: “In a connexion, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the publick.”
(Continued in Part II here.
Nancy Rosenblum
3. Nancy Rosenblum: "The Moral Distinctiveness of ‘Party ID’," Part I: Independence
On the Side of the Angels has three purposes. I create a typology of the antiparty arguments that recur in the history of political thought, and identify rare “moments of appreciation”. [Blog #1] I go on to trace the “post-party depression” that accompanied the rise of mass electoral parties in the U.S.. Virtually every contemporary political pathology and scheme for correcting the system by eliminating, circumventing, or containing parties has its roots in Progressive Era, when antipartyism and the ideal of political Independence were at a pitch. I trace this continuity in case law and democratic theory. Finally, drawing on work in political science, I propose grounds for an appreciation of partisanship in democratic politics today, and I outline an ethic of partisanship.
Partisanship needs a moment of appreciation. We recognize “partisan” as invective; the barb comes out of improbable mouths, a virtual reflex. Nothing is clearer than the solicitous attention showered on political Independents, or that they are typically portrayed as partisans’ undisputed moral superiors. Democratic theorists are no exception. Parties are famously “orphans of political philosophy”, and political theorists today continue to ignore or disown them. Sober realists might concede the minimum: that parties are convenient mechanisms for “reducing the transaction costs” of democracy. Perhaps they might be brought to say that while partisans are not admirable, some number of them are indispensable to realize the function of parties. But any concession is pragmatic, unexuberant, unphilosophical, grudging.
The notion commonplace in democratic theory that an “intelligently and progressively democratic” system depends on the ability of its supporters to attain a nonpartisan spirit is exactly wrong. In contrast, I cast partisanship as the characteristic and morally distinctive political identity of representative democracy. I chip away at the moral high ground claimed by Independents, and provide “party id” – ordinary citizens’ identification as a partisan –an iota of dignity. (My focus here is “civilian” partisans, referred to as “the party in the electorate”, though a similar argument applies to partisans in government.)
To make the case, I offer three points each about Independence and partisanship.
1. The Luster of Independence. Declining party identification – a “no preference” response on a survey of political attitudes -- is widespread throughout advanced democracies, but the proud self-designation “Independent” is unique to the U.S.. The peculiar luster of Independence here owes to a civic ideal of self-reliance as a virtue and social condition that preceded organized parties, and was later replanted in the soil of electoral politics. In Judith Shklar’s formulation: citizens [must] “be independent persons in both their political and civil roles, who give and withdraw their votes from their representatives and political parties as they see fit.” From early on partisanship began to be cast as degraded citizenship, as abject dependence rooted in clientelism, capture, or blind loyalty.
To be clear: the core of Independence as a political identity today is antipartisanship, not antipartyism. True, fundamentalist Independents reject party systems per se as too rigid to accommodate political judgment, and others may regret the current configuration of parties. But it is the avowal that she is not a partisan that gives Independence its luster, and explains the apt term “closet partisans” applied to the majority of Independents who end up voting regularly with one party.
2. ‘Escape from the Deadly Groove’
Progressives introduced the influential view that where the partisan is seduced or bought, the Independent is a free agent. The supporters of party organizations were characterized as thoughtless, set in some “deadly groove” and under some affective thrall. Today, the contrast is posed in cognitive as well as moralistic terms. Where partisans are “judgment-impaired”, crippled by perceptual bias, the Independent is a nimble “positive empiricist”, “cognitively mobilized.” These assertions do not stand up to empirical scrutiny. Independents typically know less than strong partisans, and cannot reasonably claim that they bring balanced information to bear. Unanchored, Independent’s considerations are more likely to be chaotic and ad hoc than partisans’. They participate in politics less.
Nonetheless, several heroic representations of Independence are commonplace and need to be disposed of. Escape from the deadly groove does not make the Independent bravely Thoreauian, doing in every case “what I think right”, since she is reduced to choosing among courses set by others. There is no warrant for casting Independents as Humean impartial observers, judicious umpires inclining victory to this side or that “as they think the interests of the country demand”. Nor as sensitive to Mill’s “half-truths” and to the dynamic by which every position derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other.
What if individual Independents were disinterested, or impartial observers and correctors of the deficiencies of every party? Even the ideal Independent lacks the moral distinctiveness of “party id” I turn to shortly, beginning with the fact that Independents are politically detached and weightless.
3. Weightlessness. Partisanship is identification with others in a political association. “We partisans” organize and vote with allies, not alone. Independents are as detached from one another as they are from parties. If Silone is right that the crucial political judgment is “the choice of comrades”, Independents do not make it. They are not sending a coordinated message (even if analysts are in the business of interpreting what their votes meant). Independents do not assume responsibility for the institutions that organize public discussion, elections, and government and are not responsible to other like-minded citizens.
Which is why what Teddy Roosevelt called “mere windy anarchy” is the perennial anxiety of those who imagine Independents as the hope for democratic reform. I’ll give the last word on this point to Edmund Burke, who said it first: “In a connexion, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the publick.”
(Continued in Part II here.
Nancy Rosenblum
On the Side of Angels symposium
2. Nancy Rosenblum: "Glorious Traditions of Anti-Partyism and Moments of Appreciation," Part II
(See Part I here.)
But a third moment of appreciation, a philosophical defense of parties, did depend on the character of the lines of division among parties. Like regulated rivalry and governing, this moment of appreciation assigns the advantages of parties to the very divisiveness that appalls antiparty theorists. Hume’s version of the philosophical moment rests on a stringent ethic of partisanship. Here, as in ethics, Hume assumes the pose of “impartial observer”, the standpoint he took assessing the actions and claims of Whigs and Tories during the Glorious Revolution. “Impartial” is understood relative to the parties; the observer is independent of connections, nonpartisan. But Hume wants to claim more: the position of impartial observer has its own center and ballast -- what he calls “the proper medium”, “extremes of all are to be avoided”. From this standpoint: “Though no one will ever please either faction by moderate opinions, it is there we are most likely to meet with truth and certainty.”
The striking note is that Hume would impress the impartial observer’s perspective on partisans themselves. Partisans might be injected with “a small tincture of Pyrrhonism” and hesitation. Partisans should sometimes exhibit a sense of fallibility and accompanying humility, and should incline to a generous estimate of the opposition’s intentions (“there are on both sides wise men who meant well to their country”). Hume escalates his demands further: partisans must also “persuade each that its antagonist may possibly be sometimes in the right…that neither side are …so fully supported by reason as they endeavor to flatter themselves”. This requires partisans to acknowledge that no one party is in the complete interest of the nation, or even of those who advance it. Hume proposes an ethics of partisanship equivalent to moderation grounded not in pragmatic accommodation or the checking function of opposition but in philosophic insight into parties’ “proper poise and influence”.
Hume’s imperative goes against the grain of actual partisanship. After all, the role of philosophic spectator is phenomenologically alien, and the attitude of hesitation is antithetical to much political action. Generous assumptions about the opposition’s intentions (“wise men who mean well”) are episodic at best. Only sometimes, and only some partisans, stand back from their rightness, and when they do it does not always mean recognizing that other parties share in being right or moderation of a kind “likely to bring truth and certainty”. A less demanding ethics of partisanship is my subject in later posts.
The most enduring philosophical moment of appreciation shares Hume’s assumption that parties’ contributions are complementary, only here, the benefits of opposition do not depend on partisans’ stepping back to become impartial observers. Less stringently, more hopefully, the dynamic of party antagonism does the work. I call this moment proto-Millian.
We are familiar with Mill’s insistence on “the social function of antagonism” and his signature argument about one-sidedness. Truth “is so much a question of the reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough process of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners.” Mill erected the philosophical framework of progressive antagonism and insisted that this process requires actual advocates, not devil’s advocates or impartial observers. He explained in On Liberty that objections have force when they come “from persons who actually believe them, who defend them in earnest, and do their utmost for them.” But is Mill’s “trial by discussion” a defense of parties?
The claim that contestation corrects error, heightens awareness of arguments for and against propositions, and produces better decisions and more legitimate ones was and remains long-standing enlightenment orthodoxy, but the link between opposition and improvement did not identify political parties as the agents of fruitful antagonism. For example, the most ardent voice of enlightenment, William Godwin, tied social improvement to “communicative politics” (his term) but insisted that the “shibboleth of party has a more powerful tendency, than perhaps any other circumstance in human affairs, to render the mind quiescent and stationery”.
This judgment should be familiar, for contemporary political philosophers typically sever deliberation from partisanship. Insofar as “the internal telos of deliberation is consensus”, partisanship is anathema by definition. Deliberative theorists who do not aim at overcoming disagreement nonetheless associate partisanship with “coercion, negotiation, or, in its most discursive form, rhetorical manipulation”. (Gunderson)
We are prodded to ask: when Mill speaks of “The great council of the nation; the place where the opinions which divide the public on great subjects of national interest, meet in a common arena, do battle, and are victorious and vanquished”, does he intend a brief for parties? There are good reasons to think that Mill’s “party of order or stability” and “party of progress or reform” each of which “derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other”, did not refer to actual political associations but to “modes of thinking”, a bow to two seminal minds in philosophy, Bentham and Coleridge. Actually existing parties appalled him. “In the present situation of Great Britain, and of all countries in Europe” parties are incapable of serving as the nation’s “Committee of Grievances and its Congress of Opinion”.
So I call this moment of appreciation proto-Millian. Mill himself turned to institutional arrangements for antagonism without parties, the most important being his campaign on behalf of proportional representation. A new breed of political men, “hundreds of able men of independent thought” would enter the field and be voted into government, he imagined. Honorable, distinguished men “having sworn allegiance to no political party” would offer themselves in undreamed numbers. In place of party Mill imagined a “personal merit ticket”. But could “hundreds of able men of independent thought” drive improvement on Mill’s own terms? Does independence insure “a serious conflict of opposing reasons” or a real struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners? True, Mill’s nonpartisan men of merit are not Humean impartial observers. But why should we think that Independents would spontaneously fall into complementary camps, partisans of order or progress, rather than promiscuous coalitions? Or that they would provide actual liberal and conservative partisans backbone and muscular reasons? Mill was right to be skeptical that coherent legislation could emerge from “a miscellaneous assembly”, and to approve of “concert and cooperation”. Yet he leaves us to imagine Independents doing the work.
I am wary of the philosophical moment of appreciation if only because a lot is lost if intellectual boredom leads us to take regulated rivalry and responsibility for governing for granted, or if they are overshadowed by the drama of progressive antagonism. Another caveat is that there is no reason to think that principles or values or interests arise in antagonistic pairs, or at all. Finally, the philosophical moment of appreciation invites disappointment: from this perspective, partisans disappoint when they are resistant to “a small tincture of Pyrrhonism”, or when “men not measures” dominate, or when contest leads to stasis or compromise. Indeed, the failed promise fuels ferocious attacks on parties and partisanship, most famously Carl Schmitt’s.
The proto-Millian moment of appreciation can be rescued by restating it more modestly. Parties don’t dependably add up to a comprehensive, philosophically defensible whole and are not complements whose antagonism is dependably countervailing, much less progressive. But parties do draw politically relevant lines of division, reject elements of the others’ account of projects and promises, and accept regulated rivalry as the form in which they are played out. It is enough that party antagonism focuses attention on problems, information and interpretations are brought out, stakes are delineated, points of conflict and commonality are located, the range of possibilities winnowed, and relative competence on different matters is up for judgment. We can preserve the proto-Millian position in paler shades as long as parties create lines of division and define themselves in relation to one another. For, caveats in view, it is still the case that politically salient values, preferences, programs, interest, and principles are unlikely to be cast in terms of Mill’s “serious conflict of opposing reasons” unless partisans do the work of articulating lines of division and advocating on the side of the angels. That is the main point to retain from a pared down proto-Millian position: without party rivalry, “trial by discussion” cannot be meaningful. It will not be if interests and opinions are disorganized and are not brought into opposition, their consequences are not drawn out, argument is evaded. Nor can it be fruitful if the inclusion of interests and opinions is exhaustive and chaotic; parties are about selection and exclusion. Shaping conflict is what parties and partisans do, and what will not be done, certainly not regularly in the way representative democracy requires, without them.
My next entry offers a defense of partisanship, and challenges its indefensible absence from democratic theory today.
Works Cited:
William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.
Adolf G. Gundersen, “Deliberative Democracy and the Limits of Partisan Politics: Between Athens and Philadelphia,” in Political Theory and Partisan Politics, eds. Edward Portis, Adolf Gundersen, and Ruth Shively.
Hegel, “Proceedings of the Estates Assembly in the Kingdom of Wurtenberg” in Z.A. Pelcyzynski, ed., Political Writings.
David Hume, “That Politics May be Reduced to a Science” and “Of the Independency of Parliament”Political Essays, ed. Haakonssen.
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813, Memorial Edition.
James Madison, “Parties”, in Jack N. Rakove, ed., James Madison: Writings (New York: The Library of America, 1999).
Mill, "On Liberty" and “Edinburgh Review”in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J.M. Robson; Considerations on Representative Government.
Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems, borrowing from Oakeshott.
Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America.
Nancy Rosenblum
2. Nancy Rosenblum: "Glorious Traditions of Anti-Partyism and Moments of Appreciation," Part II
(See Part I here.)
But a third moment of appreciation, a philosophical defense of parties, did depend on the character of the lines of division among parties. Like regulated rivalry and governing, this moment of appreciation assigns the advantages of parties to the very divisiveness that appalls antiparty theorists. Hume’s version of the philosophical moment rests on a stringent ethic of partisanship. Here, as in ethics, Hume assumes the pose of “impartial observer”, the standpoint he took assessing the actions and claims of Whigs and Tories during the Glorious Revolution. “Impartial” is understood relative to the parties; the observer is independent of connections, nonpartisan. But Hume wants to claim more: the position of impartial observer has its own center and ballast -- what he calls “the proper medium”, “extremes of all are to be avoided”. From this standpoint: “Though no one will ever please either faction by moderate opinions, it is there we are most likely to meet with truth and certainty.”
The striking note is that Hume would impress the impartial observer’s perspective on partisans themselves. Partisans might be injected with “a small tincture of Pyrrhonism” and hesitation. Partisans should sometimes exhibit a sense of fallibility and accompanying humility, and should incline to a generous estimate of the opposition’s intentions (“there are on both sides wise men who meant well to their country”). Hume escalates his demands further: partisans must also “persuade each that its antagonist may possibly be sometimes in the right…that neither side are …so fully supported by reason as they endeavor to flatter themselves”. This requires partisans to acknowledge that no one party is in the complete interest of the nation, or even of those who advance it. Hume proposes an ethics of partisanship equivalent to moderation grounded not in pragmatic accommodation or the checking function of opposition but in philosophic insight into parties’ “proper poise and influence”.
Hume’s imperative goes against the grain of actual partisanship. After all, the role of philosophic spectator is phenomenologically alien, and the attitude of hesitation is antithetical to much political action. Generous assumptions about the opposition’s intentions (“wise men who mean well”) are episodic at best. Only sometimes, and only some partisans, stand back from their rightness, and when they do it does not always mean recognizing that other parties share in being right or moderation of a kind “likely to bring truth and certainty”. A less demanding ethics of partisanship is my subject in later posts.
The most enduring philosophical moment of appreciation shares Hume’s assumption that parties’ contributions are complementary, only here, the benefits of opposition do not depend on partisans’ stepping back to become impartial observers. Less stringently, more hopefully, the dynamic of party antagonism does the work. I call this moment proto-Millian.
We are familiar with Mill’s insistence on “the social function of antagonism” and his signature argument about one-sidedness. Truth “is so much a question of the reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough process of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners.” Mill erected the philosophical framework of progressive antagonism and insisted that this process requires actual advocates, not devil’s advocates or impartial observers. He explained in On Liberty that objections have force when they come “from persons who actually believe them, who defend them in earnest, and do their utmost for them.” But is Mill’s “trial by discussion” a defense of parties?
The claim that contestation corrects error, heightens awareness of arguments for and against propositions, and produces better decisions and more legitimate ones was and remains long-standing enlightenment orthodoxy, but the link between opposition and improvement did not identify political parties as the agents of fruitful antagonism. For example, the most ardent voice of enlightenment, William Godwin, tied social improvement to “communicative politics” (his term) but insisted that the “shibboleth of party has a more powerful tendency, than perhaps any other circumstance in human affairs, to render the mind quiescent and stationery”.
This judgment should be familiar, for contemporary political philosophers typically sever deliberation from partisanship. Insofar as “the internal telos of deliberation is consensus”, partisanship is anathema by definition. Deliberative theorists who do not aim at overcoming disagreement nonetheless associate partisanship with “coercion, negotiation, or, in its most discursive form, rhetorical manipulation”. (Gunderson)
We are prodded to ask: when Mill speaks of “The great council of the nation; the place where the opinions which divide the public on great subjects of national interest, meet in a common arena, do battle, and are victorious and vanquished”, does he intend a brief for parties? There are good reasons to think that Mill’s “party of order or stability” and “party of progress or reform” each of which “derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other”, did not refer to actual political associations but to “modes of thinking”, a bow to two seminal minds in philosophy, Bentham and Coleridge. Actually existing parties appalled him. “In the present situation of Great Britain, and of all countries in Europe” parties are incapable of serving as the nation’s “Committee of Grievances and its Congress of Opinion”.
So I call this moment of appreciation proto-Millian. Mill himself turned to institutional arrangements for antagonism without parties, the most important being his campaign on behalf of proportional representation. A new breed of political men, “hundreds of able men of independent thought” would enter the field and be voted into government, he imagined. Honorable, distinguished men “having sworn allegiance to no political party” would offer themselves in undreamed numbers. In place of party Mill imagined a “personal merit ticket”. But could “hundreds of able men of independent thought” drive improvement on Mill’s own terms? Does independence insure “a serious conflict of opposing reasons” or a real struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners? True, Mill’s nonpartisan men of merit are not Humean impartial observers. But why should we think that Independents would spontaneously fall into complementary camps, partisans of order or progress, rather than promiscuous coalitions? Or that they would provide actual liberal and conservative partisans backbone and muscular reasons? Mill was right to be skeptical that coherent legislation could emerge from “a miscellaneous assembly”, and to approve of “concert and cooperation”. Yet he leaves us to imagine Independents doing the work.
I am wary of the philosophical moment of appreciation if only because a lot is lost if intellectual boredom leads us to take regulated rivalry and responsibility for governing for granted, or if they are overshadowed by the drama of progressive antagonism. Another caveat is that there is no reason to think that principles or values or interests arise in antagonistic pairs, or at all. Finally, the philosophical moment of appreciation invites disappointment: from this perspective, partisans disappoint when they are resistant to “a small tincture of Pyrrhonism”, or when “men not measures” dominate, or when contest leads to stasis or compromise. Indeed, the failed promise fuels ferocious attacks on parties and partisanship, most famously Carl Schmitt’s.
The proto-Millian moment of appreciation can be rescued by restating it more modestly. Parties don’t dependably add up to a comprehensive, philosophically defensible whole and are not complements whose antagonism is dependably countervailing, much less progressive. But parties do draw politically relevant lines of division, reject elements of the others’ account of projects and promises, and accept regulated rivalry as the form in which they are played out. It is enough that party antagonism focuses attention on problems, information and interpretations are brought out, stakes are delineated, points of conflict and commonality are located, the range of possibilities winnowed, and relative competence on different matters is up for judgment. We can preserve the proto-Millian position in paler shades as long as parties create lines of division and define themselves in relation to one another. For, caveats in view, it is still the case that politically salient values, preferences, programs, interest, and principles are unlikely to be cast in terms of Mill’s “serious conflict of opposing reasons” unless partisans do the work of articulating lines of division and advocating on the side of the angels. That is the main point to retain from a pared down proto-Millian position: without party rivalry, “trial by discussion” cannot be meaningful. It will not be if interests and opinions are disorganized and are not brought into opposition, their consequences are not drawn out, argument is evaded. Nor can it be fruitful if the inclusion of interests and opinions is exhaustive and chaotic; parties are about selection and exclusion. Shaping conflict is what parties and partisans do, and what will not be done, certainly not regularly in the way representative democracy requires, without them.
My next entry offers a defense of partisanship, and challenges its indefensible absence from democratic theory today.
Works Cited:
William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.
Adolf G. Gundersen, “Deliberative Democracy and the Limits of Partisan Politics: Between Athens and Philadelphia,” in Political Theory and Partisan Politics, eds. Edward Portis, Adolf Gundersen, and Ruth Shively.
Hegel, “Proceedings of the Estates Assembly in the Kingdom of Wurtenberg” in Z.A. Pelcyzynski, ed., Political Writings.
David Hume, “That Politics May be Reduced to a Science” and “Of the Independency of Parliament”Political Essays, ed. Haakonssen.
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813, Memorial Edition.
James Madison, “Parties”, in Jack N. Rakove, ed., James Madison: Writings (New York: The Library of America, 1999).
Mill, "On Liberty" and “Edinburgh Review”in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J.M. Robson; Considerations on Representative Government.
Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems, borrowing from Oakeshott.
Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America.
Nancy Rosenblum
On the Side of Angels symposium
1. Nancy Rosenblum: "Glorious Traditions of Anti-Partyism and Moments of Appreciation," Part I
In political theory today, political parties and their partisan supporters are disparaged if not actively despised. They always have been. The canonical history of political thought is a record of relentless opposition to parties as institutions and moral disdain for partisans. Parties do have one classic defender, Edmund Burke. Of whom William Goldsmith wrote in 1774 “Here lies our good Edmund. Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind. And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.” On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship is my analysis of antipartyism and attempt at rehabilitation.
To begin, I’ll introduce two high points on my map of the terrain, two “Glorious Traditions” of antipartyism. The character and purpose of political parties vary over time and political contexts, of course, but if “party” lacks institutional coherence, aversions to parties are surprisingly steady. The first glorious tradition of antipartyism insists that political society should be integral and that divisions are unwholesome. The formulations are familiar – an organic body politic, an indivisible nation or people, unitary royal or popular sovereignty, a general will that cannot err, one determinable common good. “Holism” can be hierarchical or communitarian and egalitarian. From a holist perspective, every partial group and association fosters particularist interests and opinions. No form of pluralism is benign. Parts just are partial, and every organized interest and opinion is an actual or latent political party. Because parties’ raison d’etre is partiality and conflict, they are particularly anathema -- parts against not of the whole. This aversion is with us still.
The second glorious tradition of antipartyism accepts pluralism and partiality, and incorporates social and political parts into the frame of government. It is one thing to accommodate divisions in a system of representation (as in the mixed constitution or corporatism), however, and another to organize party conflict within or among them. “In all civilized societies, distinctions are various and unavoidable”, Madison wrote to Jefferson, but the logic of pluralism does not extend to parties. What earns the accusatory label “party” is turning acceptable divisions into warring factions, or inventing needless, novel divisions as an excuse for contesting for power. Partisans are passionate zealots, extremists, begetters of “extraordinary ferment” and “violent animosities”. Partisans, Hume wrote, suffer “madness of heart”.
In this tradition of antipartyism, in contrast to holism, however, reconciliation to parties is conceivable. For here, parties are less symptoms of deeper intolerable division than causes and drivers of arrant divisiveness, disrupters of political equilibrium. They can conceivably be tempered and put to use. We see this in the half-way house status of the party of constitutional necessity that David Hume identified with the fortunate parties of the Glorious Revolution. Constitutional necessity was the judgment partisans passed on their own activity, of course, before parties became respectable. Partisan association was temporary, a dangerous instrument political men must occasionally employ for the public good. The halfway house party of necessity with its disclaimers of partisanship is still with us: a nonpartisan party uniting people of all views in defense of the neglected national interest; an honorable party of independents; a party to transcend parties.
A set of recurrent themes marks the long course of the antiparty tradition that sees parties as fatally divisive, among them grim explanations for the ubiquity and irrepressibility of parties. Finally, there were so many causes there seemed to be no cause and we can almost see Madison throwing up his hands when he wrote, “A difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most natural and fruitful source of them.” Another constant theme is party archetypes, as in Jefferson’s “the terms whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history.” Both themes had a critical thrust, but they could be inverted and recast as appreciative of parties. For example, it is not hard to see that with a half conceptual turn it would be possible to represent parties as antagonistic but necessary elements of a reasonable political order – party of order/party of progress, say, so that parties appear as philosophically defensible parts whose dynamic is mutually corrective, even progressive. Similarly, the charge that parties not only exploit deep divisions but also invent conflicts (“the smallest appearance of real difference suffices”) contains the insight that parties create rather than simply mirror social or ideological divisions. The creative role of parties drawing lines of political division and as Tocqueville recognized “introduce[ing] a new power into the political world” is foreshadowed, aversively, here.
Against the background of these glorious traditions of antipartyism, I retrieve early moments of appreciation that can serve as guides to the achievement of parties. Sartori commented that “great achievements are accomplished in the mental fog of practical experience”. My challenge is to rescue from futility the traces of positive in the long history of antipartyism, and underscore their significance.
One moment of appreciation belongs to Burke, who portrays party conflict as a form of regulated rivalry. “Every good political institution must have a preventive operation as well as a remedial”, he wrote. Revolution and impeachment are recognized remedies for tyranny, but party conflict is the previously unrecognized preventative that makes these remedies unnecessary. The spirit of party is a “vigilant watchman over those in power”. Parties expose one another’s crimes and failures. Regulated party rivalry entails enormous political self-restraint; that was a crucial insight. The discipline consists of conceding each party’s status as just a part in a permanently pluralist politics, and with it the provisional nature of being the governing party, and the charade of pretending to represent the whole.
By bringing opposition within the frame of government, parties do more than manage political conflict; they organize the business of government. Perhaps surprisingly, this moment of appreciation belongs to Hegel. He argued that the real issue vexing political representation is not the right of enfranchisement or who were to be the constituents but rather the result of representation: the creation of a legislative assembly. Political men must recruit responsible colleagues and form parties in order to govern, which requires more than temporary cooperation or a commanding personality. Hegel wrote of the opposition party: “What it is often charged with, as if with something bad, namely all it wants is to form a Ministry itself, is in fact its greatest justification.”
Both regulated rivalry and governing are forgiving when it comes to the character of parties; neither moment of appreciation appears to depend on “great parties” mirroring deep natural or social cleavages or on partisans’ shared philosophy. “Small” parties can do the work, and serve as templates for great transformative parties.
(Continued in Part II here.)
Nancy Rosenblum
1. Nancy Rosenblum: "Glorious Traditions of Anti-Partyism and Moments of Appreciation," Part I
In political theory today, political parties and their partisan supporters are disparaged if not actively despised. They always have been. The canonical history of political thought is a record of relentless opposition to parties as institutions and moral disdain for partisans. Parties do have one classic defender, Edmund Burke. Of whom William Goldsmith wrote in 1774 “Here lies our good Edmund. Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind. And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.” On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship is my analysis of antipartyism and attempt at rehabilitation.
To begin, I’ll introduce two high points on my map of the terrain, two “Glorious Traditions” of antipartyism. The character and purpose of political parties vary over time and political contexts, of course, but if “party” lacks institutional coherence, aversions to parties are surprisingly steady. The first glorious tradition of antipartyism insists that political society should be integral and that divisions are unwholesome. The formulations are familiar – an organic body politic, an indivisible nation or people, unitary royal or popular sovereignty, a general will that cannot err, one determinable common good. “Holism” can be hierarchical or communitarian and egalitarian. From a holist perspective, every partial group and association fosters particularist interests and opinions. No form of pluralism is benign. Parts just are partial, and every organized interest and opinion is an actual or latent political party. Because parties’ raison d’etre is partiality and conflict, they are particularly anathema -- parts against not of the whole. This aversion is with us still.
The second glorious tradition of antipartyism accepts pluralism and partiality, and incorporates social and political parts into the frame of government. It is one thing to accommodate divisions in a system of representation (as in the mixed constitution or corporatism), however, and another to organize party conflict within or among them. “In all civilized societies, distinctions are various and unavoidable”, Madison wrote to Jefferson, but the logic of pluralism does not extend to parties. What earns the accusatory label “party” is turning acceptable divisions into warring factions, or inventing needless, novel divisions as an excuse for contesting for power. Partisans are passionate zealots, extremists, begetters of “extraordinary ferment” and “violent animosities”. Partisans, Hume wrote, suffer “madness of heart”.
In this tradition of antipartyism, in contrast to holism, however, reconciliation to parties is conceivable. For here, parties are less symptoms of deeper intolerable division than causes and drivers of arrant divisiveness, disrupters of political equilibrium. They can conceivably be tempered and put to use. We see this in the half-way house status of the party of constitutional necessity that David Hume identified with the fortunate parties of the Glorious Revolution. Constitutional necessity was the judgment partisans passed on their own activity, of course, before parties became respectable. Partisan association was temporary, a dangerous instrument political men must occasionally employ for the public good. The halfway house party of necessity with its disclaimers of partisanship is still with us: a nonpartisan party uniting people of all views in defense of the neglected national interest; an honorable party of independents; a party to transcend parties.
A set of recurrent themes marks the long course of the antiparty tradition that sees parties as fatally divisive, among them grim explanations for the ubiquity and irrepressibility of parties. Finally, there were so many causes there seemed to be no cause and we can almost see Madison throwing up his hands when he wrote, “A difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most natural and fruitful source of them.” Another constant theme is party archetypes, as in Jefferson’s “the terms whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history.” Both themes had a critical thrust, but they could be inverted and recast as appreciative of parties. For example, it is not hard to see that with a half conceptual turn it would be possible to represent parties as antagonistic but necessary elements of a reasonable political order – party of order/party of progress, say, so that parties appear as philosophically defensible parts whose dynamic is mutually corrective, even progressive. Similarly, the charge that parties not only exploit deep divisions but also invent conflicts (“the smallest appearance of real difference suffices”) contains the insight that parties create rather than simply mirror social or ideological divisions. The creative role of parties drawing lines of political division and as Tocqueville recognized “introduce[ing] a new power into the political world” is foreshadowed, aversively, here.
Against the background of these glorious traditions of antipartyism, I retrieve early moments of appreciation that can serve as guides to the achievement of parties. Sartori commented that “great achievements are accomplished in the mental fog of practical experience”. My challenge is to rescue from futility the traces of positive in the long history of antipartyism, and underscore their significance.
One moment of appreciation belongs to Burke, who portrays party conflict as a form of regulated rivalry. “Every good political institution must have a preventive operation as well as a remedial”, he wrote. Revolution and impeachment are recognized remedies for tyranny, but party conflict is the previously unrecognized preventative that makes these remedies unnecessary. The spirit of party is a “vigilant watchman over those in power”. Parties expose one another’s crimes and failures. Regulated party rivalry entails enormous political self-restraint; that was a crucial insight. The discipline consists of conceding each party’s status as just a part in a permanently pluralist politics, and with it the provisional nature of being the governing party, and the charade of pretending to represent the whole.
By bringing opposition within the frame of government, parties do more than manage political conflict; they organize the business of government. Perhaps surprisingly, this moment of appreciation belongs to Hegel. He argued that the real issue vexing political representation is not the right of enfranchisement or who were to be the constituents but rather the result of representation: the creation of a legislative assembly. Political men must recruit responsible colleagues and form parties in order to govern, which requires more than temporary cooperation or a commanding personality. Hegel wrote of the opposition party: “What it is often charged with, as if with something bad, namely all it wants is to form a Ministry itself, is in fact its greatest justification.”
Both regulated rivalry and governing are forgiving when it comes to the character of parties; neither moment of appreciation appears to depend on “great parties” mirroring deep natural or social cleavages or on partisans’ shared philosophy. “Small” parties can do the work, and serve as templates for great transformative parties.
(Continued in Part II here.)
Nancy Rosenblum
On the Side of Angels symposium: Introduction
This week in this space we'll be having a look at Nancy Rosenblum's important new book, On the Side of Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship.
Those who read this blog from time to time will know that one recurring issue is the intellectual relationship between political theory and political science, and that I'm constantly urging a view of political theory as within and tied to the social sciences, not only within or tied to philosophy. On the Side of Angels sets a high new standard for what political-theory-with-political science can look like and do. A number of our commentators also do exemplary work at that intersection; and all are terrific and thoughtful scholars whom I'm honored to have on this site for a week!
Our participants are:
Nancy L. Rosenblum, Senator Joseph Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government and chair of the Department of Government at Harvard University, and Vice-President of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy. She is the author of Membership and Morals: The Personal Uses of Pluralism in America , Another Liberalism: Romanticism and the Reconstruction of Liberal Thought, and editor of, among other volumes, the very influential collection Liberalism and the Moral Life. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Patrick Deneen, Markos and Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Chair in Hellenic Studies and Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University. He is the author of The Odyssey of Political Theory (2000) and Democratic Faith (2005), and coeditor of Democracy's Literature. He blogs regularly at What I Saw In America.
Henry Farrell, well-known in the blogosphere from his frequent contributions to Crooked Timber (which pioneered this kind of book event) and The Monkey Cage, is Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University; the author of The Political Economy of Trust: Institutions, Interests and Inter-Firm Cooperation in Italy and Germany, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press; and co-editor (with Dan Drezner of The Political Promise of Blogging, forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press.
Jacob T. Levy, That's me. Just for the sake of completeness within one post, I'll say: I am Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University, and the author of The Multiculturalism of Fear.
Mara Marin is Collegiate Assistant Professor of Social Sciences and a member of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago. Her research centers on the status of commitments in politics and political theory.
Andrew Rehfeld is Associate Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Political Theory Workshop at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of The Concept of Constituency: Political Representation, Democratic Legitimacy and Institutional Design and is currently writing a book entitled A General Theory of Political Representation . He made an important and controversial contribution to the political theory/ political science debates with his paper Offensive Political Theory.
Melissa Schwartzberg is Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. Her research centers on the historical origins and normative consequences of rules governing democratic decision-making. Her first book, Democracy and Legal Change (Cambridge, 2007), retrieves and defends the historically salient view that democracies regularly change their laws, while exploring the circumstances under which democracies have enacted immutable rules. She is writing a second book, Counting the Many, on the historical development and justifications of supermajority rules. Democracy and Legal Change was featured, along with Corey Brettschenider's Democratic Rights, in a mutual-critical-exchange in Perspectives on Politics 6(2), June 2008.
Nadia Urbinati is Nell and Herbert M. Singer Professor of Contemporary Civilization in the department of Political Science at Columbia University. She is co-editor of Constellations, and author of Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy (University of Chicago Press 2006), and Mill on Democracy: from the Athenian Polis to Representative Government (University of Chicago Press, 2002; Italian translation by Laterza 2006), which received the David and Elaine Spitz Prize as the best book in liberal and democratic theory published in 2002.)
Welcome to all of you!
The symposium will begin with posts by Rosenblum summarizing a few of the central arguments of On the Side of Angels, so that blog-readers not familiar with the book can take part in the conversation. Several of the commentators will focus on the arguments in those posts, though reference is made to the book as well. I'll be posting the contributions to the symposium between now and Thursday, so that each cluster of posts spends some time as a possible locus of conversation.
This week in this space we'll be having a look at Nancy Rosenblum's important new book, On the Side of Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship.
Political parties are the defining institutions of representative democracy and the darlings of political science. Their governing and electoral functions are among the chief concerns of the field. Yet most political theorists--including democratic theorists--ignore or disparage parties as grubby arenas of ambition, obstacles to meaningful political participation and deliberation. On the Side of the Angels is a vigorous defense of the virtues of parties and partisanship, and their worth as a subject for political theory.
Nancy Rosenblum's account moves between political theory and political science, and she uses resources from both fields to outline an appreciation of parties and the moral distinctiveness of partisanship. She draws from the history of political thought and identifies the main lines of opposition to parties, as well as the rare but significant moments of appreciation. Rosenblum then sets forth her own theoretical appreciation of parties and partisanship. She discusses the achievement of parties in regulating rivalries, channeling political energies, and creating the lines of division that make pluralist politics meaningful. She defends "partisan" as a political identity over the much-vaunted status of "independent," and she considers where contemporary democracies should draw the line in banning parties.
On the Side of the Angels offers an ethics of partisanship that speaks to questions of centrism, extremism, and polarization in American party politics. By rescuing parties from their status as orphans of political philosophy, Rosenblum fills a significant void in political and democratic theory.
Those who read this blog from time to time will know that one recurring issue is the intellectual relationship between political theory and political science, and that I'm constantly urging a view of political theory as within and tied to the social sciences, not only within or tied to philosophy. On the Side of Angels sets a high new standard for what political-theory-with-political science can look like and do. A number of our commentators also do exemplary work at that intersection; and all are terrific and thoughtful scholars whom I'm honored to have on this site for a week!
Our participants are:
Nancy L. Rosenblum, Senator Joseph Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government and chair of the Department of Government at Harvard University, and Vice-President of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy. She is the author of Membership and Morals: The Personal Uses of Pluralism in America , Another Liberalism: Romanticism and the Reconstruction of Liberal Thought, and editor of, among other volumes, the very influential collection Liberalism and the Moral Life. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Patrick Deneen, Markos and Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Chair in Hellenic Studies and Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University. He is the author of The Odyssey of Political Theory (2000) and Democratic Faith (2005), and coeditor of Democracy's Literature. He blogs regularly at What I Saw In America.
Henry Farrell, well-known in the blogosphere from his frequent contributions to Crooked Timber (which pioneered this kind of book event) and The Monkey Cage, is Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University; the author of The Political Economy of Trust: Institutions, Interests and Inter-Firm Cooperation in Italy and Germany, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press; and co-editor (with Dan Drezner of The Political Promise of Blogging, forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press.
Jacob T. Levy, That's me. Just for the sake of completeness within one post, I'll say: I am Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University, and the author of The Multiculturalism of Fear.
Mara Marin is Collegiate Assistant Professor of Social Sciences and a member of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago. Her research centers on the status of commitments in politics and political theory.
Andrew Rehfeld is Associate Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Political Theory Workshop at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of The Concept of Constituency: Political Representation, Democratic Legitimacy and Institutional Design and is currently writing a book entitled A General Theory of Political Representation . He made an important and controversial contribution to the political theory/ political science debates with his paper Offensive Political Theory.
Melissa Schwartzberg is Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. Her research centers on the historical origins and normative consequences of rules governing democratic decision-making. Her first book, Democracy and Legal Change (Cambridge, 2007), retrieves and defends the historically salient view that democracies regularly change their laws, while exploring the circumstances under which democracies have enacted immutable rules. She is writing a second book, Counting the Many, on the historical development and justifications of supermajority rules. Democracy and Legal Change was featured, along with Corey Brettschenider's Democratic Rights, in a mutual-critical-exchange in Perspectives on Politics 6(2), June 2008.
Nadia Urbinati is Nell and Herbert M. Singer Professor of Contemporary Civilization in the department of Political Science at Columbia University. She is co-editor of Constellations, and author of Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy (University of Chicago Press 2006), and Mill on Democracy: from the Athenian Polis to Representative Government (University of Chicago Press, 2002; Italian translation by Laterza 2006), which received the David and Elaine Spitz Prize as the best book in liberal and democratic theory published in 2002.)
Welcome to all of you!
The symposium will begin with posts by Rosenblum summarizing a few of the central arguments of On the Side of Angels, so that blog-readers not familiar with the book can take part in the conversation. Several of the commentators will focus on the arguments in those posts, though reference is made to the book as well. I'll be posting the contributions to the symposium between now and Thursday, so that each cluster of posts spends some time as a possible locus of conversation.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
I'm going to live, and keep my wits about me, forever, part of a continuing series
Coffee Linked to Lower Dementia Risk : "A team of Swedish and Danish researchers tracked coffee consumption in a group of 1,409 middle-age men and women for an average of 21 years. During that time, 61 participants developed dementia, 48 with Alzheimer’s disease.
After controlling for numerous socioeconomic and health factors, including high cholesterol and high blood pressure, the scientists found that the subjects who had reported drinking three to five cups of coffee daily were 65 percent less likely to have developed dementia, compared with those who drank two cups or less. People who drank more than five cups a day also were at reduced risk of dementia, the researchers said, but there were not enough people in this group to draw statistically significant conclusions."
Coffee Linked to Lower Dementia Risk : "A team of Swedish and Danish researchers tracked coffee consumption in a group of 1,409 middle-age men and women for an average of 21 years. During that time, 61 participants developed dementia, 48 with Alzheimer’s disease.
After controlling for numerous socioeconomic and health factors, including high cholesterol and high blood pressure, the scientists found that the subjects who had reported drinking three to five cups of coffee daily were 65 percent less likely to have developed dementia, compared with those who drank two cups or less. People who drank more than five cups a day also were at reduced risk of dementia, the researchers said, but there were not enough people in this group to draw statistically significant conclusions."
Saturday, January 24, 2009
On The Side of Angels symposium: prologue
In Barack Obama’s inaugural address last week,Americans encountered their quadrennial moment of post-partisanship. Since Thomas Jefferson’s “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists,” almost nothing has been so common in an inaugural address as a call to move past old partisan divides. (See recent examples below.) In many respects this is politeness and graciousness in victory: no one thought that Jefferson really was a capital-F Federalist, and no one is at risk of forgetting that Obama is a Democrat. An inauguration marks the transition from candidate to president, from campaign to governing, and from voice of a party to head of a government. There’s something appropriate in the new president’s acknowledgement that, while remaining a partisan, he is now responsible to and for an entire citizenry.
But there is still something odd about the trope. There is always a hint that, prior to the great man’s arrival, the parties disputed over petty and silly things, whereas now they shall unify behind his vision of greatness. It’s partly a result of presidentialism; where the head of state is separate from the head of government, the head of government doesn’t feel the same need to pretend to be above party, and doesn’t have the same presumptuousness that his or her program is now the whole nation’s program. But it’s also partly a legacy of a reflexive distrust of parties and partisanship—a disposition we’ll be considering here next week.
Reagan, 1985:
Our two-party system has served us well over the years, but never better than in those times of great challenge when we came together not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans united in a common cause.
Bush, 1989:
For Congress, too, has changed in our time. There has grown a certain divisiveness. We have seen the hard looks and heard the statements in which not each other's ideas are challenged, but each other's motives. And our great parties have too often been far apart and untrusting of each other. It has been this way since Vietnam. That war cleaves us still. But, friends, that war began in earnest a quarter of a century ago; and surely the statute of limitations has been reached. This is a fact: The final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation can long afford to be sundered by a memory. A new breeze is blowing, and the old bipartisanship must be made new again. To my friends—and yes, I do mean friends—in the loyal opposition—and yes, I mean loyal: I put out my hand. I am putting out my hand to you, Mr. Speaker. I am putting out my hand to you, Mr. Majority Leader. For this is the thing: This is the age of the offered hand. We can't turn back clocks, and I don't want to. But when our fathers were young, Mr. Speaker, our differences ended at the water's edge. And we don't wish to turn back time, but when our mothers were young, Mr. Majority Leader, the Congress and the Executive were capable of working together to produce a budget on which this nation could live. Let us negotiate soon and hard. But in the end, let us produce. The American people await action. They didn't send us here to bicker. They ask us to rise above the merely partisan. "In crucial things, unity"—and this, my friends, is crucial.
Clinton, 1997:
To that effort I pledge all my strength and every power of my office. I ask the members of Congress here to join in that pledge. The American people returned to office a President of one party and a Congress of another. Surely, they did not do this to advance the politics of petty bickering and extreme partisanship they plainly deplore. No, they call on us instead to be repairers of the breach, and to move on with America’s mission.
Bush, 2005:
These questions that judge us also unite us, because Americans of every party and background, Americans by choice and by birth, are bound to one another in the cause of freedom. We have known divisions, which must be healed to move forward in great purposes—and I will strive in good faith to heal them. Yet those divisions do not define America. We felt the unity and fellowship of our nation when freedom came under attack, and our response came like a single hand over a single heart. And we can feel that same unity and pride whenever America acts for good, and the victims of disaster are given hope, and the unjust encounter justice, and the captives are set free.
In Barack Obama’s inaugural address last week,Americans encountered their quadrennial moment of post-partisanship. Since Thomas Jefferson’s “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists,” almost nothing has been so common in an inaugural address as a call to move past old partisan divides. (See recent examples below.) In many respects this is politeness and graciousness in victory: no one thought that Jefferson really was a capital-F Federalist, and no one is at risk of forgetting that Obama is a Democrat. An inauguration marks the transition from candidate to president, from campaign to governing, and from voice of a party to head of a government. There’s something appropriate in the new president’s acknowledgement that, while remaining a partisan, he is now responsible to and for an entire citizenry.
But there is still something odd about the trope. There is always a hint that, prior to the great man’s arrival, the parties disputed over petty and silly things, whereas now they shall unify behind his vision of greatness. It’s partly a result of presidentialism; where the head of state is separate from the head of government, the head of government doesn’t feel the same need to pretend to be above party, and doesn’t have the same presumptuousness that his or her program is now the whole nation’s program. But it’s also partly a legacy of a reflexive distrust of parties and partisanship—a disposition we’ll be considering here next week.
Reagan, 1985:
Our two-party system has served us well over the years, but never better than in those times of great challenge when we came together not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans united in a common cause.
Bush, 1989:
For Congress, too, has changed in our time. There has grown a certain divisiveness. We have seen the hard looks and heard the statements in which not each other's ideas are challenged, but each other's motives. And our great parties have too often been far apart and untrusting of each other. It has been this way since Vietnam. That war cleaves us still. But, friends, that war began in earnest a quarter of a century ago; and surely the statute of limitations has been reached. This is a fact: The final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation can long afford to be sundered by a memory. A new breeze is blowing, and the old bipartisanship must be made new again. To my friends—and yes, I do mean friends—in the loyal opposition—and yes, I mean loyal: I put out my hand. I am putting out my hand to you, Mr. Speaker. I am putting out my hand to you, Mr. Majority Leader. For this is the thing: This is the age of the offered hand. We can't turn back clocks, and I don't want to. But when our fathers were young, Mr. Speaker, our differences ended at the water's edge. And we don't wish to turn back time, but when our mothers were young, Mr. Majority Leader, the Congress and the Executive were capable of working together to produce a budget on which this nation could live. Let us negotiate soon and hard. But in the end, let us produce. The American people await action. They didn't send us here to bicker. They ask us to rise above the merely partisan. "In crucial things, unity"—and this, my friends, is crucial.
Clinton, 1997:
To that effort I pledge all my strength and every power of my office. I ask the members of Congress here to join in that pledge. The American people returned to office a President of one party and a Congress of another. Surely, they did not do this to advance the politics of petty bickering and extreme partisanship they plainly deplore. No, they call on us instead to be repairers of the breach, and to move on with America’s mission.
Bush, 2005:
These questions that judge us also unite us, because Americans of every party and background, Americans by choice and by birth, are bound to one another in the cause of freedom. We have known divisions, which must be healed to move forward in great purposes—and I will strive in good faith to heal them. Yet those divisions do not define America. We felt the unity and fellowship of our nation when freedom came under attack, and our response came like a single hand over a single heart. And we can feel that same unity and pride whenever America acts for good, and the victims of disaster are given hope, and the unjust encounter justice, and the captives are set free.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Of what is political theory a subset?
The newly-engaged Will Wilkinson is back from southeast Asia and has been blogging up a non-stop storm of terrific posts for a week now. I keep wanting to put up one-line posts that say "what he said!" with a link, but that way lies Instapunditry and is best kept to a minimum.
In response to this post (and as much as I like Will as a commentator on current politics, I like him still better when he engages in political philosophy), I posted the following in comments.
Will says he'll answer at some point; I eagerly await his views. In the meantime, on to my own independent interests in it, as the exchange has crystallized some old thoughts in a new way for me.
---------------------------------------
I have a longstanding interest (dating, in my published work, to the first few pages of The Multiculturalism of Fear) in the puzzle of which facts of the world should be taken as given and which susceptible to deliberate reform in normative theory. This is closely tied to a favorite topic around here (see e.g. this post and the comments thread): the relationship of political theory to both political science and political philosophy. And today I was rereading parts of D’Alembert’s Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedie with its tree of domains of knowledge.
These all get me to the following framing:
Of what is political theory a subset?
The answer we get from the Rawlsian revival is: political theory/philosophy is a subset of moral philosophy/ethics. (As between the latter two categories, it doesn’t matter for my purposes which is a subset and which is a superset, or whether they’re distinct.) “What is the right thing to do?” has as a special applied case “what is the right thing to legislate?” or “what is the right thing for a judge to do?” It has other special applied cases: “What is the right thing for a doctor, a corporation, a biologist to do?” We call these medical ethics or business ethics or bioethics or… We don’t call “what is the right thing to legislate?” “political ethics,” because the person of the legislator disappears from that question; “political ethics” is reserved for questions that can’t be rendered actorless. (Should the legislator accept a donation? Should a bureaucrat resign?)
Nonetheless, I trust that the idea that political philosophy is a kind of applied ethics or moral philosophy is familiar enough. We treat a journal called Ethics as perhaps the highest-prestige place in which to publish political philosophy; the network of institutional interdisciplinary homes of political philosophy are often characterized as ethics centers, and the ur-center is a center for ethics and the professions; and the methodology of the canonical Theory of Justice is laid out and legitimized in an article called “the autonomy of moral theory.”
But political theory has (increasingly-atrophied) sister disciplines in the other social sciences: economic theory and social theory, both practiced by Montesquieu, Smith, Marx, and Weber, and at least one of which was practiced by Tocqueville, Foucault, Polanyi, Durkheim, Hayek, and Habermas. These are, broadly, descriptive and explanatory theoretical disciplines, attempts to understand the phenomena of the social world. They often analyze phenomena that are too broad and sweeping to be easily tractable by fine-grained and localized data analysis: modernization, modernity, industrialization, market society, nationalism, and so on. Stereotypically, these disciplines study such huge phenomena as to look like the sweep and tide of history, things that seem especially un-suited to analysis in terms of what the right thing for a person to do is. (Business ethics and economic theory in this sense are wholly distinct enterprises.) They are the study of necessity and given phenomena, not normative choice and deliberate reform. I regret the unavailability of the word “phenomenology” for this kind of study; let’s call it social-science theory.
(It’s obviously a little too simple to describe sociological theory, which has as one of its central axes the “structure or agency?” question, as all being about structural necessity—but the “agency” side of those debates isn’t about the deliberate normative choices people informed by social theory should make, but a descriptive/ explanatory claim about the world, about the efficacy of individual choices and actions.)
Political theory might—mightn’t it?—be a subset of social science theory. The political theorist might seek to be to states and wars and elections as Hayek or Marx or Polanyi or Weber are to markets, or as Foucault or Durkheim is to modernity, or as Gellner is to nationalism. I try to make a start in my article on David Miller's book, which gradually turns into an article on what normative political theory can look like if we take a social-science theory view of the world of states.
(Interestingly, legal philosophy, analytic jurisprudence as that field has come to exist since Hart, is not construed as a subset of ethics or as the study of the right choice to make; Hart characterized his enterprise as one of “descriptive sociology,” and even non-positivist or partly non-positivist successors such as Fuller, Finnis and Dworkin, have had to work out a theory of what law is in a way that has not been much paralleled in political philosophy. Legal philosophy, in this sense, looks more like social-science-theory than like political philosophy.)
Now, there are understandable reasons, both simple and complicated, for emphasizing politics as the domain of choice. One complicated reason has to do with the influence of Arendt and the idea of freedom in human action, located quintesentially in the realm of the political. One simple reason is that what politicians like to tell us about themselves is that they're always in the business of Doing Something, and that every Something they Do will dissolve some unpleasant thing in human social life. The domains studied by economists and sociologists tend to lack actors claiming those magical powers.
But here it's worth remembering my exchange with Will. He's far from believing in the magical ability of political officials to alter just any thing they wish in the social world. But he, too, treats politics as a domain differently from other domains; economic facts just are, whereas political facts are unjust results of human decisions that presumably could and should be decided differently. The world of states (and of states' relationships to borders and economies and labor migration) is up for normative grabs.
I believe in the importance and value of normative questions about politics, and normative theories that try to answer them! The possibility of freely-chosen deliberate normative reform is real. I don't think that political theory is best done as only a subset of a social-science theory of necessity. (Indeed, I suspect the same is true of theorizing about economics or culture or social structures.) But I also don't think it's best done as only a subset of ethics or moral theory. Our aspiration should be to do both-- to theorize the social phenomena of politics, and to analyze the morality of choices within politics, as well as to think about how each of those shapes the other. To be grandiose: we should try to reunify some of what's been divided in the human sciences, and to understand normative reflection and explanatory explorations as linked and complementary.
And I suspect that, even as we approach 40 years on from Theory of Justice, it's the social-science theory part of our vocabulary and intellectual toolkit that's currently underdeveloped. (This is truer in some parts of the field than others; those for whom Foucault or the early Habermas is more significant than Rawls aren't as likely to fit the "subset of ethics" model, and some of those explicitly reject normative theory as an enterprise. But that's not what I want, either.) I also suspect that developing that part of our intellectual toolkits will require abandoning the ideal/ non-ideal theory distinction. Perhaps individual moral decisions can be analyzed in an idealized abstraction; but social and political decisions, not so.
In the current literature, G.A. Cohen’s Rescuing Justice and Equality (about which more in another post, or follow the beginnings of the symposium at Crooked Timber) seems especially strongly committed to the view I’m implicitly criticizing here. So too is David Estlund, a critic of what he calls "utopophobia." Any thing which is not naturally impossible (as Blackstone described Parliament’s legislative competence) is within the scope of what our normative political principles might legitimately demand. I haven't here offered any substantive argument against their views. I'm trying, however, to alter the terms of debate a bit. I think that there's a sense in which that substantive position is allowed to follow too quickly on an implicit sense of what our intellectual enterprise just is.
(NB: In an inchoate but real way this post is indebted to Jeremy Waldron's old essay "What Plato Would Allow," from Nomos: Theory and Practice, and to a related talk I heard him give at ANU sometime in the 1993-94 school year.)
The newly-engaged Will Wilkinson is back from southeast Asia and has been blogging up a non-stop storm of terrific posts for a week now. I keep wanting to put up one-line posts that say "what he said!" with a link, but that way lies Instapunditry and is best kept to a minimum.
In response to this post (and as much as I like Will as a commentator on current politics, I like him still better when he engages in political philosophy), I posted the following in comments.
Will, I wonder whether there are political facts which you think can be taken as given for purposes of moral inquiry in the same way that you take economic facts as given...?
Evidently you don't attribute to them just the same status. The gap between the Canadian and the Mexican dingus-tightener is to be the object of direct moral criticism in a way that the gap between the American dingus-tightener and the American widget-polisher is not. T
I know some of the moves that could be made here, but I don't want to provide too much of a prompt. So let me start with: Do political facts about the world occupy a categorically different status from economic facts about the world for purposes of moral inquiry? If so, why? If not, then why is the fact of the border-controlling 'nation-'state up for moral criticism in a way that market outcomes aren't?
(As always, I agree with your analysis of nearly everything! But I'm pulling on a loose thread to see what unravels, partly because it seems relevant to your argument and partly because I'm independently interested in it.)
Will says he'll answer at some point; I eagerly await his views. In the meantime, on to my own independent interests in it, as the exchange has crystallized some old thoughts in a new way for me.
---------------------------------------
I have a longstanding interest (dating, in my published work, to the first few pages of The Multiculturalism of Fear) in the puzzle of which facts of the world should be taken as given and which susceptible to deliberate reform in normative theory. This is closely tied to a favorite topic around here (see e.g. this post and the comments thread): the relationship of political theory to both political science and political philosophy. And today I was rereading parts of D’Alembert’s Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedie with its tree of domains of knowledge.
These all get me to the following framing:
Of what is political theory a subset?
The answer we get from the Rawlsian revival is: political theory/philosophy is a subset of moral philosophy/ethics. (As between the latter two categories, it doesn’t matter for my purposes which is a subset and which is a superset, or whether they’re distinct.) “What is the right thing to do?” has as a special applied case “what is the right thing to legislate?” or “what is the right thing for a judge to do?” It has other special applied cases: “What is the right thing for a doctor, a corporation, a biologist to do?” We call these medical ethics or business ethics or bioethics or… We don’t call “what is the right thing to legislate?” “political ethics,” because the person of the legislator disappears from that question; “political ethics” is reserved for questions that can’t be rendered actorless. (Should the legislator accept a donation? Should a bureaucrat resign?)
Nonetheless, I trust that the idea that political philosophy is a kind of applied ethics or moral philosophy is familiar enough. We treat a journal called Ethics as perhaps the highest-prestige place in which to publish political philosophy; the network of institutional interdisciplinary homes of political philosophy are often characterized as ethics centers, and the ur-center is a center for ethics and the professions; and the methodology of the canonical Theory of Justice is laid out and legitimized in an article called “the autonomy of moral theory.”
But political theory has (increasingly-atrophied) sister disciplines in the other social sciences: economic theory and social theory, both practiced by Montesquieu, Smith, Marx, and Weber, and at least one of which was practiced by Tocqueville, Foucault, Polanyi, Durkheim, Hayek, and Habermas. These are, broadly, descriptive and explanatory theoretical disciplines, attempts to understand the phenomena of the social world. They often analyze phenomena that are too broad and sweeping to be easily tractable by fine-grained and localized data analysis: modernization, modernity, industrialization, market society, nationalism, and so on. Stereotypically, these disciplines study such huge phenomena as to look like the sweep and tide of history, things that seem especially un-suited to analysis in terms of what the right thing for a person to do is. (Business ethics and economic theory in this sense are wholly distinct enterprises.) They are the study of necessity and given phenomena, not normative choice and deliberate reform. I regret the unavailability of the word “phenomenology” for this kind of study; let’s call it social-science theory.
(It’s obviously a little too simple to describe sociological theory, which has as one of its central axes the “structure or agency?” question, as all being about structural necessity—but the “agency” side of those debates isn’t about the deliberate normative choices people informed by social theory should make, but a descriptive/ explanatory claim about the world, about the efficacy of individual choices and actions.)
Political theory might—mightn’t it?—be a subset of social science theory. The political theorist might seek to be to states and wars and elections as Hayek or Marx or Polanyi or Weber are to markets, or as Foucault or Durkheim is to modernity, or as Gellner is to nationalism. I try to make a start in my article on David Miller's book, which gradually turns into an article on what normative political theory can look like if we take a social-science theory view of the world of states.
(Interestingly, legal philosophy, analytic jurisprudence as that field has come to exist since Hart, is not construed as a subset of ethics or as the study of the right choice to make; Hart characterized his enterprise as one of “descriptive sociology,” and even non-positivist or partly non-positivist successors such as Fuller, Finnis and Dworkin, have had to work out a theory of what law is in a way that has not been much paralleled in political philosophy. Legal philosophy, in this sense, looks more like social-science-theory than like political philosophy.)
Now, there are understandable reasons, both simple and complicated, for emphasizing politics as the domain of choice. One complicated reason has to do with the influence of Arendt and the idea of freedom in human action, located quintesentially in the realm of the political. One simple reason is that what politicians like to tell us about themselves is that they're always in the business of Doing Something, and that every Something they Do will dissolve some unpleasant thing in human social life. The domains studied by economists and sociologists tend to lack actors claiming those magical powers.
But here it's worth remembering my exchange with Will. He's far from believing in the magical ability of political officials to alter just any thing they wish in the social world. But he, too, treats politics as a domain differently from other domains; economic facts just are, whereas political facts are unjust results of human decisions that presumably could and should be decided differently. The world of states (and of states' relationships to borders and economies and labor migration) is up for normative grabs.
I believe in the importance and value of normative questions about politics, and normative theories that try to answer them! The possibility of freely-chosen deliberate normative reform is real. I don't think that political theory is best done as only a subset of a social-science theory of necessity. (Indeed, I suspect the same is true of theorizing about economics or culture or social structures.) But I also don't think it's best done as only a subset of ethics or moral theory. Our aspiration should be to do both-- to theorize the social phenomena of politics, and to analyze the morality of choices within politics, as well as to think about how each of those shapes the other. To be grandiose: we should try to reunify some of what's been divided in the human sciences, and to understand normative reflection and explanatory explorations as linked and complementary.
And I suspect that, even as we approach 40 years on from Theory of Justice, it's the social-science theory part of our vocabulary and intellectual toolkit that's currently underdeveloped. (This is truer in some parts of the field than others; those for whom Foucault or the early Habermas is more significant than Rawls aren't as likely to fit the "subset of ethics" model, and some of those explicitly reject normative theory as an enterprise. But that's not what I want, either.) I also suspect that developing that part of our intellectual toolkits will require abandoning the ideal/ non-ideal theory distinction. Perhaps individual moral decisions can be analyzed in an idealized abstraction; but social and political decisions, not so.
In the current literature, G.A. Cohen’s Rescuing Justice and Equality (about which more in another post, or follow the beginnings of the symposium at Crooked Timber) seems especially strongly committed to the view I’m implicitly criticizing here. So too is David Estlund, a critic of what he calls "utopophobia." Any thing which is not naturally impossible (as Blackstone described Parliament’s legislative competence) is within the scope of what our normative political principles might legitimately demand. I haven't here offered any substantive argument against their views. I'm trying, however, to alter the terms of debate a bit. I think that there's a sense in which that substantive position is allowed to follow too quickly on an implicit sense of what our intellectual enterprise just is.
(NB: In an inchoate but real way this post is indebted to Jeremy Waldron's old essay "What Plato Would Allow," from Nomos: Theory and Practice, and to a related talk I heard him give at ANU sometime in the 1993-94 school year.)
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