Distinctively Political Normativity: Unattractive or Redundant

In the debate between so-called ‘political realism’ and ‘political moralism’ in political philosophy, realists have been accusing mainstream liberal theorists of relying on the so-called ‘ethics first’ premise, which they take to be fundamentally flawed. This criticism has raised concerns about what source of normativity realists have in mind that is not moral. In recent years, we have witnessed a shift in realist thought from criticism to positive contributions, in which realists have attempted to respond to this concern. In general, they emphasize that politics is an autonomous and independent domain with its own evaluative standards. Therefore, it is in this source – rather than some moral values ‘outside’ of this domain – that normative justification should be sought when theorizing justice, democracy, political legitimacy, and the like. For realists the question about a distinctively political normativity is important, because they take the fact that politics is a distinct affair to have severe consequences for both how to approach the subject matter as such and for which principles and values can be justified. However, it is still far from clear what this distinctively political normativity consists of and why it matters. The aim of this paper is to take some further steps in answering these questions. We argue that realists have the choice of committing themselves to one of two coherent notions of distinctively political normativity. The first is an instrumental notion independent of moral values, which we argue is unattractive since it fails to accommodate the essentially contestable nature of the boundary and content of politics. The second is dependent of moral values, which we argue is sound but redundant since no moralist would ever reject it. Hence, realism would not contribute anything new with regard to sources of normativity in political theory.