What is political theory?

Introduction

By political theory we do not mean simply the study of the state, for politics is far wider than the state. It takes account of activity that focuses on the state – like parties, for example, which in liberal democracies are not part of the state, but seek through elections to become the government. Nor is politics simply about activities that focus on the state. It is about conflict, and conflict occurs at every level of society – between nations and states, within trade unions, businesses, families, churches. There can even be conflict within an individual – whether to go swimming or fishing – and this too is politics although not a particularly profound example of it. However, the overall point is important. Politics is about conflict and its resolution, and resolving conflicts of interest occurs in all societies, at all levels.

Students of politics often believe that politics can be studied without theory. They take the view that we can focus upon the facts without worrying about general ideas, but we should never underestimate just how important theories and theorists are to politicians. For example, Ben Barber tells us in his website (http://www. benjaminbarber.com/bio2.html) that he was an informal adviser to President Bill Clinton between 1994 and 1999 because of his ‘ability to bridge the worlds of theory and practice’, which was reflected in his role as informal outside adviser. Tony Blair relied heavily upon Anthony Giddens, and Mrs Thatcher was greatly influenced by Frederick Hayek whom she later knighted. David Cameron, the current British prime minister, gave his members of parliament advice on what they should read over the summer, and the novels of Kingsley Amis and Ian McEwan were turned to by the press after the atrocities of the attack on the twin towers in New York known generally as 9/11. Theorists are not only important to politicians: our notions of common sense and human nature are heavily infused with the views of thinkers we may never have actually heard of. Students of politics often identify with the concept of a chaotic state of nature – a world before the state – of the seventeenth-century political theorist Thomas Hobbes because his somewhat gloomy realism strikes them as profound and meaningful.

Theory and action

The truth is that in everyday life we are guided by notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, so that everything we do is informed by concepts. Politicians

Hoffman, John, and Paul Graham. Introduction to Political Theory, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/westminster/detail.action?docID=1975279. Created from westminster on 2020-10-04 11:41:08.

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http://www.benjaminbarber.com/bio2.html

are similarly guided. It is not a question of whether political animals follow theory, but a question of which theory or concept is supported when they present policies and undertake actions. We can argue as to whether the British prime minister or the president of the United States acts according to the right political concepts, but it is undeniable that their actions are linked to theory. Humans in general cannot act without ideas: indeed, it is a defining property of human activity that we can only act when we have ideas in our head as to what we should do.

In discussing ideas about the state or democracy or freedom in this book, we are talking about ideas or concepts or theories – we use the terms interchangeably – that guide and inform political action. Some courses are presented as courses in political philosophy and we feel that philosophical questions such as the nature of truth, will, determinism, etc. play a crucial role in our argumentation, but we prefer the term ‘theory’ because it seems less daunting to many students, and it seems less abstract. However, we do not see any substantive difference between theory, on the one hand, and philosophy, on the other.

As for theory and ideology, here the difference is more tangible. Ideologies seek to persuade, theories to expound and explain, and in a way that encourages the reader to think for themselves. Of course, there is overlap as well: ideologies are arguably more persuasive if the theory they draw upon is rigorous and accurate, but the two have different roles to play. It is vital that readers should feel encouraged and stimulated to form their own views, using logic, evidence and rigour to present their case. A student may feel, for example, that the invasion of Iraq was justified as a way of removing an evil and oppressive dictator: what is vital is that this view is not simply expressed as an opinion, but is backed up with evidence and thoughtful argument. It is important that views are not put forward simply because it is felt that they will please peers or tutors.

In the concepts presented here, the state is particularly important in Part 1 and readers should tackle this topic at an early stage. It is a great pity that theory is sometimes presented as though it inhabits a world of its own: as though it can be discussed and analysed in ways that are not explicitly linked to practical questions and political activity. This is, indeed, something this book seeks to address.

Theory as abstraction

We accept that all theory by definition involves abstraction. The very words we use involve a ‘standing back’ from specific things so that we can abstract from them something that they have in common. To identify a chair, to use a rather corny example, one needs to abstract the quality of ‘chairness’ from a whole range of objects, all of which differ in some detail from every other. Take another example. The word ‘dog’ refers both to particular dogs and dogs in general. If we define a dog as a mammal with four legs, it could be said that a dog is the same as an elephant. So our definition is too abstract. We need to make it more particularistic. A dog is a four-legged mammal with fur. But does this mean that all dogs are poodles? Such a view is too particularistic: we need to argue that ‘dogness’ is more abstract than just being a poodle.

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The point is that we are abstracting all the time, whether we like it or not! This is the only way to understand. Thus, in an analysis of the war in Iraq, we might use a whole host of abstractions to make sense of what we see: ‘war’, ‘violence’, ‘law’, ‘armies’, the elusive ‘weapons of mass destruction’, etc. Particular things are injected with a conceptual dimension, so that references to ‘democracy’ or ‘terrorism’ (for example) reflect interpretations as well as physical events.

Political theory, however, seems rather more abstract than, say, an analysis of the Iraq War, because it considers the notion, for example, of ‘violence’ beyond any particular instance, asking what violence is in every circumstance that we can imagine. This apparent remoteness from specific instances creates a trap and gives rise to a pejorative use of the term abstract. For thousands of years, theorists have believed that the abstraction is somehow independent of reality or, even worse, that it creates reality. Because we cannot act without ideas, the illusion arises that ideas are more important than, and are even independent of, objects. We can, therefore, talk about democracy or the state, for example, without worrying about particular states or specific kinds of democracies. Understandably students may find it bewildering to be asked ‘what is power?’ or ‘what is democracy?’, without this being related to, for example, the power which Mao Zedong exerted over the Chinese people before he died in 1976 or the question of whether the inequalities of wealth in contemporary Britain have a negative impact upon the democratic quality of its political institutions.

We believe that this link between theory and recognisable political realities is essential to an understanding and appreciation of the subject. What gives concepts and theories a bad name is that they are all too often presented abstractly (in the pejorative sense). Thinkers may forget that our thoughts come from our experience with objects in the world around us, and they assume that political thought can be discussed as though it is independent of political realities. It is true that a person who is destitute and asking for money in the street is not necessarily conscious of whether they are acting with freedom and what this concept means; but it is equally true that a theorist talking about the question of freedom may not feel the need to relate the concept of freedom to the question of social destitution. It is this act of abstraction that makes many students feel that theory is a waste of time and is unrelated to the world of realities. What we are trying to do in this book is to show that general ideas can help rather than hinder us in getting to grips with particular political events.

The distinction between facts and values

One of the common arguments that aggravates theory’s abstractness (unless otherwise stated, we will use the term abstraction in its pejorative sense) arises when people say that theory is either empirical or it is normative. In fact, it is always both. Facts and values interpenetrate, so that it is impossible to have one without the other.

Are facts the same as values? To answer this, we turn to a concrete example. It is a fact that in Western liberal societies fewer and fewer people are bothering to vote. George W. Bush was elected US president in 2000 in a situation in which only

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about half of the electorate turned out to vote. This fact has an implicit evaluative significance because, historically, democracy has implied participation, and this fact suggests either that Western liberal societies are minimally democratic, or that the notion of democracy has to be revised. The implicitly evaluative dimension of this fact is evidenced in the way it is challenged, or at least approached. It might be said that low voter participation is only true of some Western liberal societies (the USA in particular), and it might be said that voting is not the only form of political participation that counts – people can participate by joining single-issue organisa- tions such as Greenpeace or Amnesty International.

The point about facts is that they are generally agreed upon, and can be verified in ways that are not particularly controversial. They are accepted much more widely than explicit value judgements. Evaluation, on the other hand, refers to the relationships that are only implicit in the fact. Thus, the interpretation of the fact that fewer and fewer people in Western liberal societies vote, raises the question of why. Does the reason for this arise from a relationship with poverty, lack of self- esteem, education, disillusionment or is it the product of a relationship to satisfaction? The explanation embodies the evaluative content of the fact much more explicitly, since the explanation offered has obvious policy implications. If the reason for apathy is poverty, etc. then this has very different implications for action than an argument that people do not vote because they are basically satisfied with what politicians are doing in their name.

Therefore, we would argue that although facts and values are not the same, they are inherently linked. In our view, it is relationships which create values, so that the more explicit and far-reaching these relationships, the more obviously evaluative is the factual judgement. The fact that the earth goes round the sun is not really controversial in today’s world, but it was explosively controversial in the medieval world, because the notion that the earth was the centre of the universe was crucial to a statically hierarchical world outlook.

The idea that facts and even ideas can be value-free ignores the linkage between the two. Not only is this empiricist view (as it is usually called) logically unsustainable, but it is another reason why students may find theory boring. The more you relate political ideas to political realities (in the sense of everyday controversies), the more lively and interesting they become. David Hume (1711–76) argued famously that it would be quite rational to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger (1972: 157), but we would contest this scepticism. Reason implies the development of humans, and this is why political theory matters. Of course, what constitutes the well-being of people is complex and controversial but a well-argued case for why the world should be preserved and its inhabitants flourish, is crucial for raising the level of everyday politics.

The contestability thesis

As we see it, all theories and concepts are contestable. By contestable, we mean controversial so that we note that all theories are either challenged or at least open to challenge. Even the notion of freedom that we might think everyone subscribes to, can be contested by a religious fundamentalist on the grounds that it involves

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disrespect for God. To take another example, democracy is contestable because some identify democracy with liberal parliamentary systems that already exist such as the British or French or Indian systems, while others argue that democracy implies a high level of participation so that a society is not democratic if large numbers are not involved in the process of government.

There is a more specialist use of the notion of ‘contestability’, associated in particular with a famous essay by Gallie (1955: 188–93). Gallie argued, first, that only some political concepts are contestable (democracy was his favoured example) and that when concepts are essentially contestable, we have no way of resolving the respective methods of competing arguments. We can note the rival justifications offered (they are mere emotional outpourings), but we cannot evaluate them in terms of a principle that commands general agreement.

This implies that evaluation is only possible on matters about which we all agree. Such an argument stems from a misunderstanding of the nature of politics, for politics arises from the fact that we all have different interests and ideas, and the more explicit the difference between us is, the more explicit the politics. It therefore follows that a political concept is always controversial and it cannot command general agreement. Where an issue ceases to be controversial, it is not political. In this case differences are so slight that conflict is not really generated. Let us assume that chattel slavery – the owning of people as property – is a state of affairs which is so widely deplored that no one will defend it. Slavery as such ceases to be a political issue, and what becomes controversial is whether patriarchal attitudes towards women involve a condoning of slavery, or the power of employers to hire and fire labour gives them powers akin to a slave owner. We think that it is too optimistic to assume that outright slavery is a thing of the past, but it is used here merely as an example to make a point.

All political concepts are inherently contestable since disagreement over the meaning of a concept is what makes it political, but does it follow that because there is disagreement, we have no way of knowing what is true and what is false? It is crucial not to imagine that the truth has to be timeless and above historical circumstance, but this rejection of ahistorical, timeless truth does not mean that the truth is purely relative. A relativist, for example, might argue that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. This would make an ‘objective’ definition of terrorism (to pursue our example) impossible.

To argue that something is true is not to banish all doubt. If something is true, this does not mean that it is not also false. It simply means that on balance one proposition is more true or less false than another. To argue otherwise is to assume that a phenomenon has to be one thing or another. Philosophers call this a ‘dualistic’ approach. By dualism is meant an unbridgeable chasm, so that, in our example, a dualist would assume that unless a statement is timelessly true, it is absolutely false. In fact, to say that the statement ‘Barack Obama is a good president’ is both true and false. Even his most fervent admirers would admit (we hope!) that he is deficient in some regards, and even his fiercest critics ought to concede that he has some positive qualities.

Take the question of freedom, as another example. What is freedom for Plato (427–347 BC) differs from what freedom is for Rousseau (1712–78), and freedom for Rousseau differs from what we in the twenty-first century normally mean by freedom. So there is an element of relativity: historical circumstances certainly affect

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the character of the argument. Still we can only compare and contrast different concepts of freedom if we have an absolute idea as to what freedom is. The absolute notion of freedom refers to some kind of absence of constraint, but this absolute idea can only be expressed in one historical context rather than another, and it is this context which gives an absolute idea its relativity. As a consequence, there is both continuity (the absolute) and change (the relative).

There is a distinction between the absolute and the relative, but not a dualism, for we cannot have one without the other. The same is true of the distinction between the general and the particular, and the subjective and the objective. In our arguments in this book we strive to make our ideas as true as possible – i.e. we seek to make them objective, accurate reflections of the external world – but because they are moulded by us, and we live in a particular historical context, an element of subjectivity necessarily comes in.

What we think of freedom today will necessarily be refined by the events of tomorrow. We are only now becoming aware of how, for example, sexual orientation affects the question of freedom, and there is understandable concern about increasing freedom for people with disabilities. Health, physical and mental, also affects freedom, and all we can say is that our conception of freedom will inevitably alter in the future, but the change that will take place is not without its continuity with past concepts. Freedom is still an absolute concept, although it can only be identified in relative form.

The contestability thesis must, in our view, be able to address not merely the controversial character of political concepts, but how and why we can prefer some definitions in relation to others. Otherwise the thesis becomes bogged down in a relativism that merely notes disagreements, but has no way to defend preferences. A belief that post-war elections in Iraq would advance democracy is not an arbitrary assertion: it is the argument that can be defended (or challenged) with evidence and information to establish how much truth it contains.

The structure of the book

In our view, a work on political theory should address itself to the kind of issues that politicians and the media themselves raise, and which are part and parcel of public debate. In the first part of this work we seek to investigate the classical concepts. We start with these because these are the ones that readers are likely to be more familiar with, if they have already read some political thought, and they represent the ‘staple diet’ of courses on political theory. Hence we deal with these concepts first. We aim to explain even the older ideas as clearly as possible so that those who have had no contact with political theory at all will not feel disadvantaged.

Of course, the fact that these concepts are traditional does not mean that our treatment of them will be traditional. We seek to make them as interesting and contentious as possible, so that readers will be stimulated to think about the ideas in a new and more refreshing way. We aim to combine both exposition and argument to enable readers to get a reasonable idea of the terrain covered by the

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concept, and to develop a position on the concept, often in opposition to the one we adopt. The fact that this work is written by two people means that differences will manifest themselves in the way that ideas and ideologies are analysed. We think that this will benefit the reader since they will see, at first hand, how it is impossible for two individuals to agree about everything, and some readers might be able to note that certain chapters were drafted by one of us and differ from the others.

The ideas that we deal with are interlinked so that, for example, the argument about the state (and its problematic character) has a direct bearing on democracy. It is impossible to discuss the issue of citizenship without, for example, under- standing the argument about justice. Of course, it is always possible to choose to present ideas differently. In some texts, for example, sovereignty is dealt with as a separate topic. In making sense of ideas and ideologies, it is crucial to say something about the key thinkers and the key texts. Our biography boxes in the website seek to show the background and wider interests of key thinkers. And within each chapter we cross-reference other relevant chapters so as to emphasise the linkages between thinkers and ideas.

Introduction xvii

Part 1 – Classical ideas (state, freedom, equality, justice, democracy, citizenship, punishment)

Part 2 – Classical ideologies (liberalism, conservatism, socialism, anarchism, nationalism, fascism)

Part 3 – Contemporary ideologies (feminism, multiculturalism, ecologism, fundamentalism)

Part 4 – Contemporary ideas (human rights, civil disobedience, political violence, difference, global justice).

In what order should the concepts be read? This is a difficult question to answer in general terms because the reader may want to read the concepts in the order in which they are presented in the lectures they are attending. Another way of reading the book might be to select concepts in couples so that the chapter on the state is read with the chapter on punishment, and the chapter on justice is read with the chapter on global justice, and so on. It might be thought that the newer ideas relate more specifically to political controversies, and of course it is true that recent debates have raised these questions acutely, but the classical ideas have not lost their relevance.

All the ideas, whether contemporary or classical, are treated in ways that relate them to ongoing controversies, and show why an understanding of theory is crucial to an understanding of political issues. We hope that you find the chapters both helpful and entertaining. Political theory is hard work, but it can also be fun.

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Questions

1. Is it possible to devise political concepts that have no normative implications, and are thus value-free in character?

2. Can one make a statement about politics without theorising at the same time?

3. Should political theory embrace or seek to avoid controversy?

4. Do teachers of political theory make practical political judgements?

5. Is the use of logic and the resort to factual evidence ethically neutral?

References

Gallie, W. (1955) ‘Essentially Contested Concepts’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56, 167–98.

Hoffman, J. (1988) State, Power and Democracy Brighton: Harvester-Wheatsheaf. Hume, D. (1972) A Treatise of Human Nature Books 2 and 3, London: Fontana/Collins.

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