Political Theory and Political Practice

What is the role of political theory in the real world of politics? Opinions have varied about this, ranging from Plato’s arguments for philosopher-kings to Marx’s relegation of political philosophy to the realms of mere ideology. This paper contrasts the competing claims of intellectualism vs pragmatism in politics. It explores the ends/means relation as one account of how ideas and actions might be connected. This relation is found to be inadequate, and with it the more ambitious claims of intellectualism. But an argument is advanced for the qualification of pragmatism with a more modest account of the role of ideas in politics.     

Political Globalization is Global Political Evolution

Political globalization is one dimension of a process that is multidimensional (not just economic), historical (in millennial proportions), and transformative (in changing planetary institutional structures). Conceiving of political globalization in evolutionary terms (as one centered on innovative sequences of search-and-selection) makes it possible to construct a time-table for global politics, and to derive from it an agenda of priority global problems. The following questions will be addressed on that basis: Where in that process are we situated at the present time? (a time that is one of palpable uncertainty); What global problems does this analysis point to, and what does it tell us about where we are heading? These are not forecasts but rather elements of an “institutional” framework of orientation for the discussion of the next several decades of global organization.     

Political Anti-Intentionalism

There has been little debate in political philosophy about whether the intentions of governments matter to the legitimacy of their policies. This paper fills this gap. First, I provide a rigorous statement of political anti-intentionalism, the view that intentions do not matter to political legitimacy. I do so by building on analogous debates in moral philosophy. Second, I sketch some strategies to defend political anti-intentionalism, which I argue are promising and available to a wide range of theories of legitimacy. Third, I show that the distinction has implications for debates surrounding neutrality and political liberalism.     

Naturalist Political Realism and the First Political Question

Many political realists reject the idea that the first task for political philosophy is to justify the existence of coercive political institutions (CPIs). Instead, they say, we should begin with the factual existence of CPIs, and ask how they ought to be structured. In holding this view, they adopt a form of political naturalism that is broadly Aristotelian in character. In this article, I distinguish between two forms that this political naturalism might take ‐ what I call a ‘strong’ form, and a ‘weak’ form ‐ and argue that both ought to be rejected. 1     

Political Graphology

The interrelationship of digit span and word span was studied in a group of 112 females, 17-81 years of age. When the subjects were assigned to groups of 38 young ([Xbar] = 25.6 years), 39 middle-aged ([Xbar] = 53.2 years), and 35 old ([Xbar] = 73.3 years), the correlation between the two types of span was larger in the old than in the young, reflecting a predicted greater degree of homogeneity of functioning. When spans were scored without consideration for exact order of recall, this finding no longer held, as was the case with a capacity decrement in digit span with the aged, thus reflecting the importance of the organizational factor in senescent memory ability.     

Political Contractarianism

I want to enquire into the relationship between the normative claims of a society and the normative stances of its members. I shall develop a contractarian perspective, as the only one available to persons who may neither expect nor require their fellows to share their own orientation to values and norms. Although I only touch on these matters here, I hope to contribute to an interpretation of the clauses on the establishment and exercise of religion in the First Amendment to the United States constitution, and to suggest guidelines for determining rights and duties in becoming and being a parent. More generally, I offer answers to certain questions about how social practices and institutions may be justified in a democratic society.     

儒家的政治思想与美德政治观

儒家政治哲学是中国古代哲学的政治思考的主要部分,自孔子以来就提出了德与政的一系列讨论,孔子以为政者的“自正”转变了西周春秋政治“政以正民”的方向,孟子则引入“他正”的“批评政治”,并被朱子继承。以美德政治为古代中国政治特色,就刻画传统中国政治而言是不充分的,必须同时强调批评政治,才能反映古代中国政治与传统的实际。儒家与西方人文主义的政治观相接近,而与立宪主义有较大区别。     

Religious Political Parties and the Limits of Political Liberalism

Political parties have only recently become a subject of investigation in political theory. In this paper I analyse religious political parties in the context of John Rawls’s political liberalism. Rawlsian political liberalism, I argue, overly constrains the scope of democratic political contestation and especially for the kind of contestation channelled by parties. This restriction imposed upon political contestation risks undermining democracy and the development of the kind of democratic ethos that political liberalism cherishes. In this paper I therefore aim to provide a broader and more inclusive understanding of ‘reasonable’ political contestation, able to accommodate those parties (including religious ones) that political liberalism, as customarily understood, would exclude from the democratic realm. More specifically, I first embrace Muirhead and Rosenblum’s (Perspectives on Politics 4: 99–108 2006) idea that parties are ‘bilingual’ links between state and civil society and I draw its normative implications for party politics. Subsequently, I assess whether Rawls’s political liberalism is sufficiently inclusive to allow the presence of parties conveying religious and other comprehensive values. Due to Rawls’s thick conceptions of reasonableness and public reason, I argue, political liberalism risks seriously limiting the number and kinds of comprehensive values which may be channelled by political parties into the public political realm, and this may render it particularly inhospitable to religious political parties. Nevertheless, I claim, Rawls’s theory does offer some scope for reinterpreting the concepts of reasonableness and public reason in a thinner and less restrictive sense and this may render it more inclusive towards religious partisanship.     

Linking Genetics and Political Attitudes: Reconceptualizing Political Ideology

In this paper, we trace the route by which genetics could ultimately connect to issue attitudes and suggest that central to this connection are chronic dispositional preferences for mass‐scale social rules, order, and conduct—what we label political ideology. The need to resolve bedrock social dilemmas concerning such matters as leadership style, protection from outgroups, and the degree to which norms of conduct are malleable, is present in any large‐scale social unit at any time. This universality is important in that it leaves open the possibility that genetics could influence stances on issues of the day. Here, we measure orientation to these bedrock principles in two ways—a survey of conscious, self‐reported positions and an implicit association test (IAT) of latent orientations toward fixed or flexible rules of social conduct. In an initial test, both measures were predictive of stances on issues of the day as well as of ideological self‐labeling, thereby suggesting that the heritability of specific issue attitudes could be the result of the heritability of general orientations toward bedrock principles of mass‐scale group life.     

Belonging and Doing: Political Churches and Black Political Participation

The importance of the political church in Black political participation has brought to the attention of scholars the differences among Black churches and their effect on Black mobilization. The Black church has on many occasions transformed itself into a politicized organization. These political churches become settings that encourage political knowledge and skills ( Tate, 1993 ) and communicate political activity as a norm ( Calhoun-Brown, 1996 ). The earlier work on political churches has established the importance of these organizations for voter turnout and other forms of political participation. What has been left unexamined is the nature of the political churches themselves. This project disentangles these churches by looking at the heterogeneity within the structures of the political churches. In general, we seek to understand which of the internal activities of the political church tend to foster acts of political participation. We hypothesize that cost- underwriting activities and obligation-creating activities within the church setting have the greatest impact on participation. By examining a robust and expansive operationalization of the political church construct, we find that these types of political church activities matter more than other activities. In specifying how churches may work to directly affect the participation of their members, we seek to expand the scope of general comprehension of political churches.     

Distinctively Political Normativity in Political Realism: Unattractive or Redundant

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - Political realists’ rejection of the so-called ‘ethics first’ approach of political moralists (mainstream liberals), has raised concerns about...     

Political weather reports

According to the hermeneutical theory of the evolution of conciousness, the development of a new relationship between our species and the biosphere may be encouraged by monitoring political and ecological variables or indicators, and feeding them back into society through broadcasting media. This possibility was foreseen by Richardson in 1919, as a means for avoiding wars. In this paper we describe a practical implementation of this program, based on the animated atlas technique.     

政治道德之学理透析

对作为政治哲学基本范畴和价值基础的政治道德概念之厘定,应以"以人为本"为价值内核和价值基准并涵盖公共领域、价值基础、直接目标、政治主体和调整对象等要素.透析并发挥政治道德的价值导向、价值评价与价值协调功能,有助于缓解、消弭政治现代性危机,也在价值诉求、制度走向和行为方式等向度上直接规定了当代中国政治文明建设的基本理路.     

论政治的正当性

政治的正当性问题,是政治伦理和政治哲学的核心命题.自古以来,人类在不同的时空条件下,从不同视角对政治正当性进行探索和实践的历程,就是人类政治文明发展的历程,是人类政治同"善的生活"逐渐统一的历程.政治与"善的生活"的联系,在历史、法律和价值三个方面得到不断揭示和深化.政治的正当性,作为一种政治秩序应该获得其成员承认的价值根本,在人类政治生活中具有优先性:它是政治生活和政治发展的根本动力;是国家与社会、政治家与公民有效结合的基础;是政治生活和政治发展的最终目的和归宿;对谋取"善的生活"的不同方法和途径,决定了人类政治生活的变更和形式.     

Knowledge Is Political

Boyle, Mary. Schizophrenia, a Scientific Delusion? London: Rout‐ledge. First published in 1990. Paperback, 1993.     

Broadening Political Psychology

One hundred years ago, if we proposed that we could make you happy with a pill, we would have been ridiculed and would have entered the realm of science fiction and not science itself. Yet that is precisely where we are today. The genetics and neurobiological revolution is upon us, and we advocate that political psychology not simply join this revolution but take a lead role in it. Here in this review, we explore the various ways in which political psychology can embrace this revolution and incorporate work in neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, endocrinology, and recent advances in genetics. In doing so, we advocate the adoption of an epidemiological approach and discuss the ways in which various methods including physiological experimentation, genetic analysis, and neurological explorations including MRIs and other technical advances provide critical insight into human behavior and present intriguing possibilities for exploring the nature of political attitudes, attachments, and behaviors. In advocating for broadening the approaches used in the field, we reflect critically on how we might improve and strengthen the accuracy of our understanding of the psychological bases of political preferences and behavior in the future.