Guiding Real Political Agents with an Ethic of Responsibility

How should political theorists guide political agents in real political circumstances? Political realists have argued that ‘moralistic’ political theory is not truthful to politics and therefore cannot guide agents. Surprisingly, political realists have not developed a clear methodology for theorists to develop realistic prescriptions for political agents with limited power. There has been a lot of work on ‘Interpretative Realism’, which tries to ‘make sense of politics’ rather than develop normative prescriptions (Horton, 2017, 497). New literature has emphasised the radical potential of ideology critique. Finally, a lot of ink has been spilled on developing a distinctively political normativity. Even those sympathetic to the idea have to admit that the complexity of the concept has been a source of confusion, which makes it difficult to develop a clear method to guide political agents with limited power in real politics. I argue, to guide real political agents, political realists want to theorist about politics with a particular perspective, which I refer to as an Ethic of Responsibility. We can use a case to see this perspective in action. Should a politician in Germany today vote in parliament to accept more refugees into their country? Moralistic political theorists might claim that (a) ‘we have a strong duty of rescue to accept as many as we can, regardless of what citizens think and what other countries are doing’ (ethic of conviction) or (b) ‘because other countries are not doing their fair share, Germany is only obliged to take their fair share’ (ethic of principle). Moralists are concerned with engaging with principled disagreement, which means unprincipled option (c) ‘because other countries are not doing their fair share, Germany can also avoid their share’, is excluded from the discussion. The range of considerations relevant for a theorist with an ethic of responsibility is much broader. They will have to consider how other politicians are voting and whether their individual vote will make a difference. They might have to amend the bill to increase something like defence spending to incentivise support. They might consider how (reasonable and unreasonable) people will react. Citizens might vote to replace morally-motivated politicians with immoral ones. As Williams argues, realists want a “broader view of the content of politics, not confined to interest, together with a more realistic view of the powers, opportunities, and limitations of political actors, where all the considerations that bear on political action – both ideals and … political survival – can come to one focus of decision”. The first step of a method for ‘responsible’ theorising is to develop a model of the political landscape. This involves modelling who has power, how much power they have, and what they want. We start by observing what resources different political agents can bring to the bargaining table, and what coalition’s current powerful political agents are relying on to maintain power. Using this model, theorists can move to the next step of normative strategizing. I discuss three options available to the ‘responsible’ theorist, compromising, convincing, and defeating.