CONTESTED CONCEPTS

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 475.

A further problem is that political concepts often become the subject of intellectual and ideological controversy. It is not uncommon, as pointed out above, for political argument to take place between people who claim to uphold the same principle or the same ideal.

Conceptual disagreement is therefore one of the battlegrounds of politics itself. This is reflected in attempts to establish a particular conception of a concept as objectively correct, as in the case of ‘true' democracy, ‘true' freedom, ‘true' justice and so forth. A way out of this dilemma was suggested by W. B. Gallie (1955–6), who suggested that in the case of concepts such as ‘power', ‘justice' and ‘freedom' controversy runs so deep that no neutral or settled definition can ever be developed. These concepts should be recognised, he argued, as ‘essentially contested concepts'. In effect, each term encompasses a number of rival concepts, none of which can be accepted as its ‘true' meaning. To acknowledge that a concept is ‘essentially contested' is not, however, to abandon the attempt to understand it, but rather to recognise that competing versions of the concept may be equally valid.

The notion that most, if not all, concepts are many-faced or ‘essentially contested' has nevertheless been subject to criticism, particularly by Terence Ball (1988) . Two lines of argument have been advanced. The first notes that many theorists who attempt to apply Gallie's insights (as, for example, Lukes (1974) in relation to ‘power') continue to defend their preferred interpretation of a concept against its rivals. This refusal to accept that all versions of the concept are equally valid produces on-going debate and argument which could, at some stage in the future, lead to the emergence of a single, agreed concept. In other words, no concept is ‘essentially' contested in the sense that rivalry and disagreement are fundamental to its nature. The second line of argument points out that Gallie's analysis is ahistorical. Certain concepts are now contested which were once the subject of widespread agreement. It is notable, for instance, that the wide-ranging and deep disagreement that currently surrounds ‘democracy' only emerged from the late eighteenth century onwards alongside new forms of ideological thinking. As a result, it is perhaps better to treat contested concepts as ‘currently' contested ( Birch, 1993 ) or as ‘contingently' contested ( Ball, 1997 ).