Deliberative Democracy, Disengagement, and the Limits of Ideal Theory

Anglo-American political philosophy, as a sub-field and practice, does not exist to resolve a wide range of normative questions facing diverse states around the world but rather to justify a particular form of North American liberal constitutionalism, and to identify and resolve a relatively narrow range of normative problems experienced by liberal democratic states through a North American lens. Ideal theorising of the kind employed by many Anglo-American political theorists is thus less equipped to identify and resolve political problems in different social, political, and institutional contexts than those who practice it often assume. In particular, the insights produced by ideal theory cannot be straightforwardly applied to the British context in the way that many contemporary political theorists believe. Moreover, the enduring assumption among many theorists working in Britain and North America that the work of ideal theorists like Rawls, Dworkin, Kymlicka, and other liberal egalitarians can be unproblematically applied to British institutions and political problems in Britain has served to mischaracterise the problems faced by British democracy and produce constitutional, institutional, and policy solutions which do not speak to these problems. My argument contributes to long-running discussions among political theorists about the appropriate conduct of normative theorising and the role of ideal theory. Critics of the Anglo American political theory mainstream, and of its preoccupation with post-Rawlsian idealised forms of normative deliberation concerning first principles, have rejected much of what dominates these forms of inquiry, as well as the method of inquiry itself. The response among many Anglo-American ideal theorists has been to strengthen their support for ideal theory. The validity of normative first principles can and should be determined independently of contingent facts about the world, they argue. By deliberately bracketing off the complexities introduced by empirical circumstance and existing institutional mechanisms and procedures at the domestic and global levels, and putting aside concerns about feasibility and non-compliance, ideal theorists can produce normative conclusions which are uncluttered by lived experience, do not dependent on any particular localised understandings for their validity and, hence, produce outcomes which can be applied in different countries and in different contexts. I argue that the outcomes produced by ideal normative theorizing often cannot be applied in different countries and in different contexts and, in particular, cannot be straightforwardly applied to British politics. I suggest that, if we look at some of the most important normative contributions to Anglo-American political theory over the past three decades, such as multiculturalism, political liberalism, and deliberative democracy, we can see that they are driven by concerns which have little purchase in the British context, and propose solutions which do not speak to problems faced by British democracy. I therefore suggest in the paper that the dominance of ideal theory has displaced the ‘Anglo’ in the ‘Anglo-American’ tradition, has hindered the development of a normative tradition which can genuinely speak to British issues, and has contributed to the under-theorisation of British politics more widely. I therefore propose an alternative approach.