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Article Excerpt
1.
In my book Political Conduct, I argue that we need a deeply contextual analysis of political agency if it is to be appropriately understood and evaluated. (1) The argument is essentially that we cannot judge people in politics solely in terms of the states of affairs that result from their actions or from the principles upon which they act; rather, we have to have a sophisticated understanding of what was politically possible in that context, where that understanding does not simply insist on various hard structural constraints to action but also factors into the calculation what the agent could bring about, what it would cost to do so, what other objectives might have to be forgone, how stable and enduring the achievement would be, and how far that would depend on deals and commitments made that enable the actor to retain office and to be able to see through the implementation and consolidation of the policy over a number of years. And in taking those factors into account, we should recognize that the world of politics is a world of often rather grubby deals, agreements, and compromises that are essential to secure and exercise political power, but which necessarily constrain what can be achieved in office. It is also, albeit more rarely, a world in which politicians can move people, change their minds, and achieve goals that seem impossible through a mixture of political skill and the ability to communicate ideals in ways that allow members of the public to grasp their importance and share the aspiration for their achievement. Part of this process is one of taking abstract ideals and values and making them concrete for people-showing them what these ideals demand in practice and what can be achieved through their implementation. On this picture, political possibility is a function partly of structural constraints, partly of the constraints that arise from the exigencies and compromises that political office necessitates, but also partly of the political will, tenacity, courage, imagination, and flair that politicians bring to bear.
This way of thinking about political possibility is not normally ac knowledged as a component of political philosophy, whose aim is, rather, the elaboration of coherent and consistent principles and the working out of their implications, where the issue of whether or how these could be put into practice is regarded as at best second order, and where insurmountable obstacles to implementation do not themselves count against the truth or value of the principle. Debates, for example, over the relative merits of telic egalitarianism, prioritarianism, or sufficientarianism, and over whether these are independent principles or interpretations of the same principle, seem not to be touched by the difficulties of implementing the outcome of such deliberations. Being committed to giving a weight to equality, independent of considerations of priority or sufficiency, may well have little real-world application, both in the sense that the differences between these positions may be largely theoretical and in the sense that there is often no attempt made in the discussion of the principles themselves to think about the way in which such principles might be action-guiding in particular policy contexts. Even if such an attempt is made, it remains the case that the real concern is with the truth of the principle, something that is thought to be independent of whether it is feasible in fact to realize that principle (a position that seems irresistible).
There are, however, grounds for thinking that the translation of general principles to specific judgments about cases faces two distinct sets of obstacles. The first, drawing on Sen's account of what he calls "transcendental" theories of justice (theories that start from the question: "What is a just society?"), suggests that such theories often cannot provide us with a basis for making decisions where the available courses of action fall short of complete justice and where some judgment has to be made as to which is closest to or furthest from that standard. (2) On Sen's argument, different features are involved in distance from the ideal: there may be "(1) different fields of departure, (2) varying dimensionalities of transgressions within the same general field, and (3) diverse ways of weighing separate infractions." (3) Sen's case is directed against a particular-some would argue rather partial--reading of Rawls, and against those who argue for particular metrics of equality, and it essentially attacks a style of political philosophy that starts from the position of saying what would be a just political order and set of distributions. And his (Sen's) claim is that such perspectives not only do not, but also cannot tell us much about the relative merits of many--indeed typically most--different social arrangements. (4) If prioritarianism is the right interpretation of egalitarianism, and if sufficientarianism's concerns can be broadly comprehended within prioritarianism, then there's still the question of how prioritarianism can be brought to have an impact upon the current political agenda. And, in the case of prioritarianism, Sen would be concerned with the difficulties that the priority principle might have in identifying and then ranking the different dimensions of welfare on which people may not be equal: difficulties in weighing the degree to which, for example, personal responsibility within a single dimension of welfare (say, physical well-being) needs to be factored into the assessment of which groups count as the worst off; and difficulties in saying on what basis comparative judgments could be made between people who are badly off on the same dimension and to a similar degree, but where the outcomes of the same treatment would vary along some other dimensions (longevity, happiness, well-being, and so on).
A further case, however, can be made for the limitations of principles of justice in determining our evaluation of states of affairs on the grounds that almost no attention is given to the way in which such values, ideals, or principles might enter into the armory of political contestants, how their advocates might seek to establish their legitimacy and desirability, and what concessions might need to be made to the exigencies of both the political process and the current political context in their pursuit. It is not simply that attention has not traditionally been given to these aspects, but that there is no way systematically to give attention to these aspects from within theories of justice. More generally, indeed, it is not only that the practical application of principles is not generally discussed, but it is not altogether clear how to discuss it.
This line of argument recognizes that those active in politics face a wide range of competing demands and must take into account a whole spectrum of issues and values within a timetable that includes maintaining political power and securing popular support for policies. Faced with these demands, what the right or best thing to do is, at any particular moment, a complex question, but it cannot be solely to pursue, for example, prioritarianism simpliciter. At the very least, that value must be weighed in the balance with the demands of holding, consolidating, and exercising political power over time. A determined prioritarian might still say that we should judge people's political careers by how far they were committed to pursuing the welfare of the least well off (P) and how zealously they pursued that cause. But the degree to which P can be realized is in part a function of the extent to which the politician or political party in question is able to make that principle salient, feasible, and desirable for a population, and how in that process it is concretely specified for ordinary members of the political system. And how far they are able to do that will involve personal qualities and abilities that go beyond their fidelity to the particular principle. This is so in the following sense. The form of P is in part determined by the way it is made a part of the political agenda, becoming P*; and, because of this, P* is a particular, determinate reading of P that instantiates P only within certain limits. And in valuing P*, we compare it not only with intuitions about P, but with judgments about its standing and value relative to other possible forms that P* might have taken. That judgment must also weigh what values could not be simultaneously realized with P*, and how these compare with different values that would be excluded or incompletely realized if other decisions about the form of P* to be pursued had been taken. In making these judgments we might be trying to make the kind of comparative judgment that Sen thinks is often impossible; but we might equally be making a judgment of a very different kind--one that recognizes the agent as having shown certain qualities that led to the choice of P* and enabled it to be realized against its competitors. That latter judgment might be thought to be simply an instrumental one--we value Agent X insofar as and to the extent that he furthers P. But that position is partly compromised by Sen's claims where P is a transcendental theory. And, even without that set of concerns, to have a sense of what sort of achievement P* is, one needs to know more than how P* relates to P; one also needs to have a sense of the extent to which the agent who realized P* made it possible through an exercise of agency and commitment, and how far P* is evidence of a failure of the appropriate degree of political will initiative and...
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