Political Theory and Partisan Politics

INTRODUCTION

Introduction 1 I N T R O D U C T I O N By its very nature political theory must be more concerned with political potential than with the processes or means by which this potential, however conceived, might be realized. To theorize is to generalize, if not universalize, and the criteria by which satisfactory collective existence is assessed, because more general, have greater theoretical priority than the institutional procedures and political sentiments they rationalize. And for the same reason, these procedures and sentiments are of greater theoretical significance than the techniques that might be used to install or instill them. The purpose of this collection of essays is not to bring this bias into question, for it is entailed in theoretical endeavor itself; to be a political theorist is to be so biased. Instead, our purpose is to explore one of the consequences of the priority political theorists give to political potential over political process. This is the marked tendency of political theorists to define politics, or at least the “political,” in ways that diverge from meanings most often given the term. For most people, politics almost always refers to a type of conflict or competition. Colloquially, politics usually refers to something professional politicians are supposed to do, which is to engage in an opportunistic competition for positions of authority. At higher levels of conceptual sophistication politics typically is seen as a struggle for influence through the mobilization of constituencies, as opposed to the use of physical coercion or the control of scarce resources . Military, economic, and political competition, in other words, tend to be distinguished by the different means they employ. The fact that politics is typically seen as a form of conflict, especially when in conjunction with opportunism, certainly does much to explain the negative connotations associated with the word in popular discourse. Political theorists do not share this disdain for the word, largely because “politics” usually means something different to them. For example, in an influential essay of an earlier decade, Christian Bay used the term “pseudopolitics” to characterize factional struggle over interests or goals unguided by universal moral priorities. Genuine politics, according to Bay, must proceed from a concern with, and therefore from a conception of, human need. Bay confidently asserted 1 2 POLITICAL THEORY AND PARTISAN POLITICS that a theoretically guided political science could eventually discern basic human needs, and thereby “become a potent instrument for promoting political development in the service of human development ” (Bay 1965, 51). Not only must genuinely political action be normative, but it also must be “an instrument of reason.” From this perspective, however much the champions of rational human need may be forced by circumstance to resort to deceitful rhetoric, appeals to parochial interest, or compromise in order to prevail over the irrational or the malevolent, public issues are ultimately amenable to rational solution and politics is, at least ideally, a rational rather than a conflictual, partisan endeavor. Many issues of public policy undoubtedly are matters of knowledge , and perhaps an appreciable fraction of social animosity is the result of ignorance and misunderstanding. Yet Bay’s rather facile assumption that theoretically guided research will disclose an unambiguous set of rational human needs would be questioned by many if not most contemporary political theorists. And without this assumption , “genuine politics” is likely to be just as partisan, and perhaps even more conflictual than “pseudopolitics” since disagreement over the nature of the good can be at least as deep as that resulting from the clash of individual or group interests. By extension, partisan divisions based upon competing constellations of interests, such as class conflict, are in some ways less likely to lead to serious political enmity than those based upon contradictory moral or ideological priorities. Conflict generated by divergent interests need not be “zero-sum.” Indeed, within a single political jurisdiction there is almost always a significant degree of mutual dependence among competing interests. As Karl Marx himself realized, class conflict is not likely to lead to class war unless the system itself suffers from “internal contradictions” that threaten the very existence of at least one of the contestants. In the absence of such fundamental structural instability, interest conflict is amenable to mutual accommodation through negotiation and compromise. Whatever its faults, selfishness is not inherently inflexible, much less aggressive.1 Moral commitment, on the other hand, is not always so readily compromised. Even bargaining with like-minded counterparts of good faith can be difficult, but bargaining with the morally...