Realism, Legitimacy, and Climate Change

In this article, I argue that the existential threat of climate change creates significant tension between two foundational commitments of political realism. On the one hand, political realists maintain that we should rely on eliciting the actual beliefs and attitudes of a population towards its rulers and their decisions when determining the legitimacy of a regime or its actions. This gives the realist framework an inherent democratic drive. On the other hand, however, realists emphasize that legitimate political action should be oriented towards a Weberian ethics of responsibility. As they maintain, rather than shaping society after their ethical convictions, power holders ought to, first and foremost, avoid disastrous outcomes for the populations they lead. With these two commitments, the realist framework can produce countervailing normative prescriptions for political leaders. After all, citizens often do not support necessary but far-reaching political interventions aimed at avoiding disastrous future consequences of climate change. To overcome this tension, I will argue that realists coherently can and should prioritize ethics of responsibility considerations over bottom-up preferences when determining the legitimacy of political actions.