Realism, Liberalism and Non-ideal Theory Or, Are there Two Ways to do Realistic Political Theory?
| Author | Matt Sleat |
| Date | 01 March 2016 |
| Published date | 01 March 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.12152 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S : 2 0 1 4
doi: 10.1111/1467-9248.12152
Political Studies
2016, Vol. 64(1) 27 –41
Realism, Liberalism and Non-ideal
Realism, Liberalism and Non-ideal
© The Author(s) 2014
Theory
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Or, Are there Two Ways to do Realistic
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9248.12152
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Political Theory?
to do Realistic Political Theory?
Matt Sleat
University of Sheffield
The charge that contemporary political theory has lost touch with the realities of politics is common to both the
recent ideal/non-ideal theory debate and the revival of interest in realist thought. However, a tendency has arisen
to subsume political realism within the ideal/non-ideal theory debate, or to elide realism with non-ideal theorising.
This article argues that this is a mistake. The ideal/non-ideal theory discussion is a methodological debate that
takes place within the framework of liberal theory. Realism, contrary to several interpretations, is a distinct and
competing conception of politics in its own right that stands in contrast to that of liberal theory. While the two
debates are united in a sense that contemporary liberal theory needs to be more realistic, they differ significantly
in their understanding of this shortcoming and, more importantly, what it is to do more realistic political theory.
Keywords: realism; ideal/non-ideal theory; liberalism; utopianism; legitimacy
While the accusation that political theory is too detached from the real world of politics
is hardly novel – it has been made repeatedly throughout the years by those more
sympathetic to the empirical study of politics or who see themselves as men (or women)
‘of action’ – this charge is now being loudly and forcefully voiced from within the
sub-discipline itself. Both the ideal/non-ideal theory debate and the recent resurgence of
interest in realist political thought pursue this line of criticism, most often in relation
specifically to the work of John Rawls and the neo-Kantian liberal theorising he inspired.
However, though non-ideal theory and political realism make prima facie similar claims
regarding the need for contemporary liberal theory to be more in touch with reality, this
thematic similarity obscures significant differences in relation to their critiques of liberalism
and their suggestions as to how political theory can be more realistic. These differences are
being lost in an increasing and unfortunate tendency in the literature to elide the realist
critique of liberalism with the non-idealist critique of ideal liberal theory and, more
generally, realism with non-ideal theory. Realism is often presented as a variation of a
non-ideal theme. This conflation is a mistake. Whereas the ideal/non-ideal theory debate
consists of a series of methodological issues that take place squarely within the liberal
framework, and hence retains many (if not all) of its assumptions regarding the purpose of
politics and the ambitions of political theory, realism is a competing theory of politics in
its own right that presents a radical challenge to those liberal assumptions. In the context
of ongoing concerns about the relationship between political theory and political practice,
including the question of how realistic our theorising of politics needs to be, it is important
that these significantly different accounts of what it is to do realistic political theory are
highlighted and preserved.
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Political Studies 64 (1)
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M A T T S L E A T
In order to make these arguments I want to proceed in three stages. The next section
will explicate the central features of the ideal/non-ideal theory debate, and in particular
draw attention to its critique of contemporary liberal theory and how realism has been
employed in this discussion. The section after that will briefly set out the general features
of the realist account of politics, focusing specifically on those aspects that lead it to dismiss
liberal theory as grounded in an inadequate conception of politics as a human activity
(rather than as excessively fact-insensitive or impracticable as is the non-ideal charge). The
final section will trace the consequences of these differences, and explore how non-ideal
theory and realism offer alternate accounts of what it is to do realistic political theory,
including what the appropriate objectives of political theory should be and the nature of
the constraints under which it must work. In doing so, it shall also highlight how non-ideal
theory’s status as a methodological debate within liberal theory results in it replicating
several assumptions of the liberal conception of politics that, from the perspective of realist
theory, are thoroughly unrealistic and must be abandoned if we are to engage in properly
realistic political theorising.1
The Ideal/Non-ideal Theory Debate
Even a cursory glance at the impressive body of literature that the ideal/non-ideal theory
debate has already generated is enough to demonstrate that there is little consensus on how
to characterise these arguments, exactly what the shortcomings of ideal theory are taken to
be, or any common understanding of the nature of the relationship between the two (see
Hamlin and Stemplowska, 2012; Valentini, 2012). Nevertheless, theorists have offered two
broad responses to the question of what ideal theory is and its perceived limitations. Some
insist that ideal theories are those which are directed towards ‘modelling perfection’, setting
out what a perfectly just society would look like and providing a vision of the ideal towards
which we should work (Estlund, 2011; Jubb, 2012; Lawford-Smith, 2010; Simmons, 2010;
Swift, 2008). ‘The aim of ideal theory,’ as Ingrid Robeyns (2008, p. 343) has put it, ‘is to
work out the principles of justice that should govern a society, that is, to propose and
justify a set of principles of justice that should be met before we would consider a certain
society just’. Ideal theory provides the blueprint for a perfectly just society, our desired
endpoint towards which political action, reform and design should be directed. And by
providing such a blueprint it also enables us to make evaluative comparisons between the
ideal and the non-ideal circumstances we live in today, allowing us to determine where
injustices prevail and when at least partial justice has been achieved. But ideal theory tells
us nothing about how we get from our circumstances of partial justice to those of full
justice. Addressing this specifically practical and transitional question is the proper purview
of non-ideal theory. There is no claim that ideal theory is deficient in any regard; rather
there is simply a division of labour between the aims and objectives of ideal and non-ideal
theories such that the latter needs to be engaged in questions of the practical implemen-
tation of normative recommendations that are not appropriate for the former.
Others have identified ideal theories as those that share a particular deficiency in
common – that of impracticability (Farrelly, 2007; Miller, 2008; Stemplowska, 2008;
Valentini, 2009; Wiens, 2012). Ideal theories offer ‘no immediate or workable solutions to
any of the problems our societies face’ (Stemplowska, 2008, p. 19) insofar as they are either
© 2014 The Author. Political Studies © 2014 Political Studies Association
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2014
Sleat
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inadequately sensitive to certain politically salient facts (about human nature, psychology,
economics, etc.), incorporate inappropriate idealisations (see Valentini, 2009, pp. 351–5),
take place at too high a level of abstraction to allow them to offer relevant action-guiding
recommendations in relation to the actual political problems we face, or pay little heed to
the existence of feasibility constraints that limit how effectively normative prescriptions
could be put into practice. The charge is that these deficiencies in ideal theory make it at
best an insufficient guide for political action in our non-ideal contexts, at worst an
irrelevant or possibly even dangerous blueprint for political reform (Hendrix, 2013; Miller,
2013; Robeyns, 2008, pp. 357–8; Valentini, 2009). The majority of those who endorse this
account of ideal-theory-as-impracticability support the former claim and hence argue that
ideal theory retains an appropriate role in normative theorising, though it might be a much
more circumscribed one. Some of the more extreme critics of ideal theory, such as Colin
Farrelly (2007), C. W. Mills (2005), Amartya Sen (2006) and David Wiens (2012), have
argued that there is no place at all for ideal theory as it has most often been understood and
practised, and hence that the vast majority of work undertaken in our theoretical inves-
tigations into the demands of justice, for instance, over the past four decades has been
fatally and seemingly irredeemably methodologically flawed. But for most, non-ideal
theory is not a rival approach to ideal theorising; in fact, it is not a distinct theory at all, but
rather a set of concerns regarding the practicability of liberal theory in its most idealised
form. Hence even those who see ideal theory as impracticable often believe that it remains
a necessary or important facet of normative political theorising, though one that needs
tempering with more non-ideal concerns.
For non-ideal theory, the problem...
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