Distinctively Political Normativity: Problems and Possibilities

In several debates in political philosophy over the last decade, theorists have expressed dissatisfaction with mainstream political theory for neglecting the importance of political practices when theorizing proper normative political principles. In the last couple of years, this has been discussed in terms of sources of normativity, and what has become labelled ‘distinctively political normativity’ has been explored by political realists. In brief, they argue that politics is an autonomous and independent domain with its own evaluative standards. The discussion about sources of normativity has raised methodological and meta-theoretical questions of importance for political theory. On the one hand, realist attempts to explain the distinctness of political normativity in what we may call the very ‘structure’ of normative theorizing, i.e., in the very mode of normative theorizing, seems to have failed. For there is little support for the idea that political normativity is structurally different from other practical normativity, such as moral normativity. On the other, it is a widely held view among political theorists to rely on a normative source which is explicitly said to be political rather than moral, or at least foremost political (although often couched in other terms than ‘distinctively political normativity’). A shared assumption seems to be that the conditions of politics are important when theorizing normative political ideals such as democracy and political legitimacy, not only as empirical constraints but also as normative constraints, i.e., as a particular kind of political normativity. In light of this concern, the present paper moves beyond political realism in the attempt to explore alternative ways of understanding distinctively political normativity, which might be useful for political theorists. More specifically, we investigate two candidate views. The first view, which seems rather common in the literature, traces distinctness to ‘domain’, i.e., to the circumstances of politics. Instead of focusing on structure, this view thus focuses on substance, such as particular political norms (but where no assumptions are made about them necessarily being of a non-moral kind). A prominent theorist holding this view is, for example, Jeremy Waldron. The second view, which we develop in the paper, traces distinctness to ‘role’, i.e., to the principles applying to us as political subjects. We claim that the domain view is problematic but that the role view is promising. In brief, we explore political normativity as a sub-domain of morality seen in analogue to other paradigmatic sub-domains, such as medical ethics. What one ought to do as a doctor in a given situation is not always the same as what one ought to do as a person. Thus, medical ethics is more restricted than general morality in the sense that it sets out parameters which make the ‘brief’ more limited, in order to assess role-specific norms and principles. In a similar fashion, we argue, normative principles utilizing distinctively political normativity generate role-specific rights and duties ascribed to us as political subjects, for example, as actual or potential citizens, as subjected to or affected by regulations.