Dirty hands and clean gloves: Liberal ideals and real politics
| Date | 01 October 2010 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885110374002 |
| Published date | 01 October 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
9(4) 412–430
!The Author(s) 2010
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885110374002
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Article
Dirty hands and clean
gloves: Liberal ideals
and real politics
Richard Bellamy
University College
Abstract
Can liberal ideals clean up dirty politicians or politics? This article doubts they can. It
disputes that a ‘clean’ liberal person might inhabit the dirty clothes of the real politician,
or that a clean depoliticized liberal constitution can constrain real-world dirty politics.
Nevertheless, the need for a democratic prince to wear clean liberal gloves offers a
necessary and effective political restraint. It also means that citizens share the hypocrisy
and dirt of those who serve them – for we legitimize the dirtiness of politics by
requiring politicians to seem cleaner than we know they ever can be in reality.
Keywords
democratic politics, dirty hands, legitimacy, Machiavelli, private, public, Rawls, Weber
With a few notable exceptions, politicians – even democratic politicians, who form
the subject of this article – do not enjoy a good press, either among philosophers
or the wider public. Cynicism provides the default position of most citizens in most
of the world’s democracies. As Michael Walzer famously remarked, it is the ‘con-
ventional wisdom’ (that is, ‘the wisdom of the rest of us’) ‘that politicians are a
good deal worse, morally worse, than the rest of us’.
1
That common attitude can
seem justified not just by the expenses and sex scandals that periodically hit the
headlines, or even the backbiting and backstabbing that attends most ascents up
the greasy pole of politics, but also by the need for democratic politicians to make
deals and compromises either to accommodate diverse groups and interests and
build coalitions between them, or to square the different and often conflicting
moral concerns and considerations present within hard cases and difficult decisions.
Both the personal and the political compromises can make politicians appear
Corresponding author:
Richard Bellamy, Department of Political Science, School of Public Policy, University College, 29/30 Tavistock
Square, London WC1H 9QU
Email: r.bellamy@ucl.ac.uk
untrustworthy, unprincipled and occasionally ruthless hypocrites. Indeed, the ten-
dency for the media to concentrate on the personal improprieties of politicians as
much as – in certain cases, even more than – their public wrongdoing, can make it
seem that the two are all of a piece. On this account, either politics is dirty because
those involved in it are, or it is a dirty business that appeals to dodgy characters.
Cleaning up political life, therefore, depends on either attracting a cleaner sort of
person into politics or depoliticizing it as much as possible. This article disputes
both these views. Popular though these prescriptions are, neither seems to go to the
heart of the ethical problems surrounding public life.
There is little evidence that the personal morality of the average democratic
politician is worse than that of the average citizen. Politicians simply operate
under the public gaze and for the public good, so we know more about them
and expect more of them. After all, the incentives and opportunities of many pri-
vate individuals to commit minor crimes and misdemeanours can be as great if not
greater than that of the general run of politicians. Their doing so can even be as
well known. But they rarely attract the same intensity or quality of opprobrium.
Within most working democracies, the financial gains to be made by fair means or
foul from politics are less than those available in business, while sports stars, actors
and musicians frequently enjoy greater social prestige and celebrity than politi-
cians. The corresponding economic and sociocultural power exercised by these
groups offers if anything more potent occasions than political power for either
fraud and deception or vainglorious behaviour and sexual impropriety. Yet the
few who succumb to these temptations are as likely to attract envy or amusement
as censure. Indeed, polls indicate that a high percentage of the general population
indulges in mild sexual and personal transgressions – be it cheating on taxes or on
their wives and husbands – with far less inducement. We know these facts about
ourselves yet desire better of those that represent us because we expect them to
serve our interests rather than their own.
Do such double standards make not politicians but us ordinary citizens the
hypocrites? Or does politics require we hold politicians to a higher standard of
moral judgement than that we would apply to ourselves? Most people do not have
to read Adam Smith to appreciate that supermarkets, trades people and all the
other businesses and services we draw on to supply our material wants do so not
from an altruistic desire to meet our needs but in order to make a profit and serve
their own.
2
Nevertheless, we shrink from accepting that politicians might be sim-
ilarly motivated. In part, we do so for the good reason that markets and other
social activities are not entirely self-policing, nor would we be entirely happy with
them being so. So we look to politicians and other public servants to aim consci-
entiously at upholding the public good, not least by regulating the activities of
those – including ourselves – who might be tempted to subvert it. However, this
very desire contains a paradox. For the standard required of politicians proves to
be a different rather than simply a higher criterion to that expected of private
individuals – one that from the perspective of the citizen may well make politics
and politicians appear worse rather than better than the rest of us. Yet, that
Bellamy 413
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