1. Normative Political Theory
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

2. Introduction
Traditionally, the scientific study of politics has been associated with a value neutral approach to the subject.
One seeks to uncover what is, not what ought to be, in the political realm.
This is what distinguishes a ‘‘positive’’ science from opinionizing, social engineering, or political philosophy.
If Political Science is to matter to policymakers or citizens, authors must be clear about how their subject ties into some broader telos that others might share.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

3. Introduction
First, how does a particular subject of political science affect the broader public? (What is its relevance?)
Second, how can one demonstrate this relevance empirically?
Finally, how might other ways of viewing this issue change the way the ‘‘goodness’’ of the subject is perceived?
The first issue is simply a matter of clarification,
The second a matter of demonstration, and
The third a matter normally reserved for political philosophy.
All are necessary components of a relevant and useful Political Science discipline.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

4. Origin of Normative Political Theory
It traces its roots to Ancient Greeks.
Since Plato and Aristotle, questions about:
The best kind of life that can be lived,
The best political order that would promote that life.
The search for ultimate, objective moral reference points, will help critical assessment of our existing political practices and institutions.
The theory has undergone many changes and crises.
the attack on it was so strong in the twentieth century that many thought that political philosophy was no longer viable.
The biggest assault on normative political theory was mounted by logical positivists.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

5. Normative vrs Empirical Political Theories
Traditionally, the scientific study of politics has been associated with a value neutral approach to politics.
One seeks to uncover what is, not what ought to be, in the political realm.
This is what distinguishes a ‘‘positive’’ science from opinionizing, social engineering, or for that matter from political philosophy.
While Plato and Aristotle sought to identify the characteristics of a good polity, most modern political scientists seek to identify the characteristics of polities, their causes and effects, leaving aside moral judgments about their goodness or badness.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

6. Normative vs. Empirical Political Theories
‘‘A science cannot be a science,’’ writes Levy-Bruhl, in so far as it is normative.
In the other corner are ‘‘normative’’ theorists, those engaged in a study of the good—without explicit or sustained attention to empirical realities.
Thus is the fact/value dichotomy reflected in the disciplinary subdivisions of political science.
Empirical research is about facts,
While normative theorizing (‘‘political theory’’) is about values.
The positivistic view of political science seems an apt description of the enterprise at least since the advent of the behavioralist movement.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

7. Normative vs. Empirical Political Theories
Robert Dahl, writes:
The empirical political scientist is concerned with what is. . .not with what ought to be. He finds it difficult and uncongenial to assume the historic burden of the political philosopher who attempted to determine, prescribe, elaborate, and employ ethical standards—values, to use the fashionable term—in appraising political acts and political systems. The behaviorally minded student of politics is prepared to describe values as empirical data; but, qua ‘‘scientist’’ he seeks to avoid prescription or inquiry into the grounds on which judgments of value can properly be made.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

8. Feature of Normative Political Theory
The four main features of normative political theory are:
Action-guiding,
Idealizing,
Moral, and
Liberal.
These are the most important features in particular because they form the tacit background of assumptions.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

9. Action-guiding
The point of setting out systematic accounts of political values is to guide action.
The aim is to put us in a position not only to appreciate, as spectators, the goodness, rightness, beauty, or usefulness of actions and states of affairs,
But also to engage our will as participants in the forms of life at stake.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

10. Idealizing
At its most ambitious, the project is meant to address anyone that can have an impact, however small, on political outcomes.
If the political value is ‘justice’, then the political outcomes include the organization of policy, law, and administration, as well as broader societal norms.
In some cases, the societal norms could be as encompassing and informal as the particular social ethos pervading a political community.
The principles articulated in Normative Political Theory include:
(a) a citizen contemplating which party to vote for or whether to vote at all;
(b) a legislator contemplating how to vote on a bill;
(c) a judge deciding a hard case;
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

11. Idealizing (cont’d)
(d) a civil servant facing a discretionary decision on whether to deport an illegal immigrant and his family;
(e) someone contemplating violent forms of political resistance in a democracy;
(f) someone contemplating violent forms of political resistance in a non-democracy;
(g) a subject of a non-democracy contemplating various ways to organize
resistance to the current leader, without toppling the state;
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

12. Idealizing (cont’d)
h) a teacher contemplating her curriculum and her general approach to marking;
(i) a novelist deciding whether to publish her (politically controversial) book;
a citizen contemplating how much time to spend on various forms of political action;
(l) a couple deciding how to divide resources between their daughter and their son.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

13. Idealizing (cont’d)
The aim of ideal normative political theory is to formulate principles for the governance of a society in which everyone complies with those principles, and that compliance is common knowledge.
The aim of non-ideal theory, by contrast, is to articulate lower-level principles, precepts, and rules to guide decision-making in circumstances—our own—in which there is only partial compliance with principles.
The key point is that our actions in non-ideal circumstances must ultimately be justifiable in light of the principles and ideals identified by ideal theory; principles formulated for a perfectly just society should function as a regulative ideal for us here and now.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

14. Idealizing (cont’d)
A conception of justice must specify the requisite structural principles and point to the overall direction of political action.
In the absence of such an ideal form for background institutions, there is no rational basis for continually adjusting the social process so as to preserve background justice, nor for eliminating injustice.
Thus ideal theory, which defines a perfectly just basic structure, is a necessary complement to non-ideal theory.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

15. Idealizing (cont’d)
The philosopher can say that ultimately his or her aim is to guide action in non-ideal circumstances
but that his or her aim qua philosopher is merely to articulate the principles that should govern an ideal society (in which the complexities of the above-listed cases are only contingently relevant).
How to implement that ideal in the ‘real world’ is left to those with more specialized knowledge of the empirical, sociological, and historical facts affecting feasible paths of reform.
The ideal theorist does not claim to address individual action directly but only indirectly.
The normative political theory is, in sum, idealizing.
An essential precondition for doing political philosophy is to focus attention on the idea of a ‘perfectly just society’, even if we have little confidence that such a society could ever arise.
Without the projection of such a perfectly just society, our desire for change, Rawls claims, would lack an aim.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

16. Moral
The study of normative political theory is the study of political morality, or the attempt to understand the variety of ways in which we can wrong one another through various forms of:
political action,
the nature of our remedial obligations in rectifying wrongs for which we are responsible, and,
the analysis of the ways in which a society organized according to the correct moral-political principles should and would operate.
Political values such as justice, of course, are not the whole of morality, but only one significant part of it.
While non-moral values such as, for example, well-being or efficiency or prudence may enter into the justification of moral- political values, such as justice, they are never the conclusion of any particular bit of political theorizing.
NPT also answers the question ‘What is the best life for me (or us) to lead?’
It also tells us what moral constraints we should recognize in organizing our cooperation whatever the (non-moral) goals we have set ourselves.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

17. Liberal
The project aims to set out principles and values that are, in some sense, liberal.
There is wide and persistent disagreement about what exactly liberalism is.
But it seems uncontroversial to say that all those involved in the project are self- described liberals.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

18. Ernest Barker’s view on NPT
NPT is a branch of moral philosophy
It is concerned with the ends which human beings propose to themselves and the means for achieving those ends.
Barker argues that normatism deals with values.
To him certain questions such as:
Why does the state exist?
The purpose and ends of the state,
The appropriate means for realizing the ends of the state among others; will always remain relevant in any human society.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

19. Ernest Barker’s view on NPT (cont’d)
Barker contends that it is not proper and even derogatory to confine political theory to historical processes.
Barker does not disregard the relevance of historical analysis in political theory.
Barker also posits that political theory determines the ends and ultimate values that govern the life of society.
It also identifies the means normally employed or to be employed to realize such ends and values.
Political ends may vary from country to country and from time to time.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

20. Ernest Barker’s view on NPT (cont’d)
The means for satisfying political ends may also vary with respect to the final goal and the set of institutions, customs, traditions and problems within which the final goal is to be realized.
According to Barker (1951), this explains why political theory is always new and yet old.
It also explains why PT is constantly changing and yet remains unchanged.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

21. Isaiah Berlin’s View on NPT
Isaiah Berlin (2) contends that NPT involves the discovery and application of moral notions in the area of political relations.
He also believes that NPT is a branch of moral philosophy which is composed of basic propositions that impact on political life.
NPT in their operational form, according to Berlin, deals with the detail understanding of institutions and policies.
It also deals with whether the institutions are used to serve the larger interest of the society.
It normally constructs moral principles that ought to be used to guide political practice.
It also investigates the implications of such moral principles.
It fundamentally brings intellectual analysis to bear on the way the game of politics ought to be played.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

22. Isaiah Berlin’s View on NPT (cont’d)
Isaiah Berlins opines that NPT involves the following:
Internal consistency and logical coherence of moral arguments through the clarification of concepts.
Making use of concepts from other disciplines such as economics, history, psychology etc.
Examining the conclusions of arguments in light of their own intuitions.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

23. The relevance of NPT
The presentations of Isaiah Berlin and Ernest Barker above indicate that NPT is very relevant to the study of political science.
It prescribes the rules and norms that must guide the conduct of politics.
It ensures certainty, clarity and rule of law instead of arbitrariness and rule of men.
The call for strong institutions will be of limited utility if there are no laid down rules to govern the conduct of politicians and the entire citizenry.
It promotes accountability and responsiveness in the sense actions and activities of leaders are assessed on the basis of the rules and regulations that govern their such actions. (what is the role of citizens here?
It is because of NPT that concepts like democracy, participation, rule of law, equality etc have triumphed and are hailed in political science discourse.
Normative political theory enhances the performance of political science. These practitioners are able to comment effectively on policies and analyze the activities of government the arsenals provided by normative political theory.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

24. Objections Feasibility
The first objection receives its clearest and most far-reaching form with regards to the project’s contributions to the global justice debates
Realists worry that the circumstances are not right for justice to be done at the global level.
Indeed, because the circumstances are not right, the pursuit of justice—when it is pursued—is likely to lead to a kind of blindness to the facts of global interaction, most important of which is the absence of a sovereign.
By seeking justice, the moralizing politician will produce its opposite.
Those who defend the normative political theory project’s involvement in the global justice debates have a respectable reply.
They can claim that the realist accepts that there is an ideal worth defending, but only questions the circumstances in which it can be realized.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

25. Objections (cont’d) Ideal Theory is Neither Necessary nor Sufficient
‘Feasibility’ turns out to be a weak basis from which to critique the project of normative political theory.
What does it mean to ‘approximate’? How can we tell which feasible institutional scheme is ‘closest’ to satisfying whatever set of principles one favours?
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

26. Objections (cont’d)
Sen summarizes his own argument as follows (Sen calls ideal theory in the Rawlsian mold ‘transcendental’):
A transcendental approach cannot, on its own, address questions about advancing justice and compare alternative proposals for having a more just society, short of proposing a radical jump to a perfectly just world.
Indeed, the answers that a transcendental approach to justice gives—or can give—are quite distinct and distant from the type of concerns that engage people in discussions on justice and injustice in the world, for example, iniquities of hunger, illiteracy, torture, arbitrary incarceration, or medical exclusion as particular social features that need remedying.
The focus of these engagements tends to be on the ways and means of advancing justice—or reducing injustice—in the world by remedying these inequities, rather than on looking only for the simultaneous fulfillment of the entire cluster of perfectly just societal arrangements demanded by a particular transcendental theory.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

27. Objections (cont’d) The Liberalism of Fear
Among the most incisive and unquestionably ‘realist’ critiques of the project are those flying under the banner of the ‘liberalism of fear’. Included in their ranks are Judith Shklar (who first hoisted it), Bernard Williams, and Raymond Geuss.
Against the ‘intense moralism of much American political and indeed legal theory’, they defend a negative liberalism that eschews an approach to politics and political philosophy as ‘applied morality’.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

28. Objections (cont’d)
Calling upon an earlier tradition of liberalism (Constant, Mill, Tocqueville, Humboldt, Berlin), they seek to show that current liberal ideal theorizing is a turn decisively in the wrong direction.
Justifications of liberalism are at their best when they point to the importance of avoiding ‘what is universally feared: torture, violence, arbitrary power, and humiliation’ and at their worst when they try to paint edifying fantasies of what political life would be like were everyone to be ‘reasonable’.
Bernard Williams and Raymond Geuss’s have developed qua critiques of the project.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

29. Objections (cont’d)
The fundamental claim, is that the ‘intense moralism’ of the project leads its champions to misunderstand the nature, limits, and possibilities of politics.
This claim can be parsed into two main objections.
First, the project suffers from a misconceived understanding of the relationship of ‘morality’ to political life.
The second objection questions the ‘action-guiding’ pretensions of NPT
The very elements that make NPT unique—namely, its abstract, moralizing, systematic, and idealizing character—ensure its disconnection from the real world of political struggle, and hence its irrelevance.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

30. Objections (cont’d)
Not all human beings can make meaningful moral choices.(it is difficult for NPT to place importance on moral values that ought to guide the conduct of politics, especially where most values are highly subjective and emotive).
Values and normative statements which are not empirically verifiable are meaningless.
Logical positivists argue that NPT is subjective but not necessarily false but technically nonsense.
NPT is too abstract in dealing with issues that are far from realities of life.
The approach is also regarded as unscientific and backward because it highlight values that are subject to our sensory experiences.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018

31. Reactions to the objections
Advocates of NPT concede that moral propositions are not facts. But this does not harm to the theory. The theory can use both facts and evidence from descriptive social science.
The theory makes use of logical relationship in much the same way as the natural science emphasize logic and critical thinking as critical tools.
It is true that the theory has been criticized for only concentrating on “values” or what ought to be”, but facts can only make sense when they are used in the context of “what ought to be”.
Before one can prescribe “what ought to be”, one must know “what is” or the facts on the ground.(in the study of institutions, one must look at their operations before one can prescribe what ought to be).
In the same sense, a medical doctor is able to make sense of ones body temperature only because he knows what the normal body temperature of a human being is, otherwise the current body temperature makes no sense to him/her.
EADARKOH
9/19/2018