LIBERALISM 3 page

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 337.

Significance

While a willingness to use aspects of a functional approach to understand political processes has a long heritage, functionalism has never

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enjoyed the academic status in political analysis that it did in sociology in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was accepted, in the United States in particular, as the dominant theoretical perspective. Nevertheless, an important application of functionalist thinking has been in the traditional conservative notion of an organic society. This is based upon an organic analogy that draws parallels between society and living entities. In this view, society and social institutions arise out of natural necessity, and each part of society – family, church, business, *government and so on – plays a particular role in sustaining the whole and maintaining the ‘health' of society. Functionalism's impact upon academic political analysis was greatest in the early post-1945 period, when it was linked to the application of the systems model of political interaction, and was widely used in analysing institutional relationships and performance.

However, the star of functionalism has faded since the 1960s, in political analysis as in sociology. Functionalism has been criticised in two main ways. First, it has been accused of reductionism in that it appears to deprive the *state and political institutions of meaning in their own right and interprets them only in terms of their role in relation to the whole political system. Second, functionalism is implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, conservative. If what is important about institutions is their function in maintaining society, all existing institutions must play a worthwhile role in this respect and the value of maintaining the existing social order is taken for granted. For example, the very survival of the *monarchy becomes its defence – it has survived because of its capacity to generate social cohesion, national unity or whatever, and it should therefore be preserved for the benefit of present society and future generations.

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

Historical materialism is the theory of history developed by Karl Marx (1818–83), described by his friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels (1820–95) as ‘the materialist conception of history'. It highlights the importance of economic life and the conditions under which people produce and reproduce their means of subsistence. This is reflected, simplistically, in the belief that the economic ‘base', consisting essentially of the ‘mode of production', or economic system, conditions or determines the ideological and political ‘superstructure', which encompasses all other institutions including

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*politics, *law, religion, art and so on. Another formulation of this is Marx's assertion that ‘social being determines consciousness'. Historical materialism therefore explains social, historical and cultural development in terms of material and class factors. Considerable debate has nevertheless surrounded the precise nature of the ‘base/superstructure' relationship. Marx's early writings are dialectical in the sense that they acknowledge a two-way relationship between human beings and the material world, an idea that Engels tried to acknowledge in describing economic factors as ‘the ultimately determining element in history'. Historical materialism should be distinguished from ‘dialectical materialism', which dominated intellectual life in the Soviet Union and had an overtly mechanistic and determinist character.

Significance

Historical materialism has had considerable significance as the philosophical cornerstone of *Marxism and therefore as the basis of social and political analysis for generations of Marxist thinkers. Its attraction as a means of enquiry has undoubtedly been that it promises to explain virtually all aspects of social and political existence and uncovers the significance of processes that conventional theory ignores. In particular, it establishes what Lenin (1870–1924) referred to as ‘the primacy of economics' and allows all other aspects of life to be interpreted in material or class terms. However, historical materialism can be criticised in a number of ways. These include that it is based upon questionable philosophical assumptions about the impact material production and social existence has upon consciousness, and that there are technical difficulties about the precise meaning of and relationship between the ‘base' and the ‘superstructure'. Moreover, as neo-Marxists accept, it overstates the importance of economics and threatens to turn into a form of materialist reductionism. The final problem is that if the ‘base' determines the ‘superstructure', historical materialism is determinist, and if it does not the theory has no predictive value.

IDEALISM

Idealism is understood in one of two senses, metaphysical and political. Metaphysical idealism is the belief that, in the final analysis, only

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ideas exist. The structure of reality is thus understood in terms of consciousness, as in the work of Plato (427–347 BCE), Kant (1724–1804) and Hegel (1770–1831). Kant's ‘transcendental idealism' holds that meaning is not inherent in the external world but is imposed by the knowing subject. Idealism in this sense contrasts with philosophical materialism (as opposed to *historical materialism), the belief that nothing exists except matter, and *empiricism, the theory that knowledge is derived from experience or observation of the external world. Political idealism refers to theories or practices that are characterised by an unbending commitment to stipulated ideals or principles (the term is sometimes used pejoratively to suggest a belief in an impossible goal). As a theoretical school of international politics, idealism views international relations from the perspective of values and norms, such as *justice, peace and international law. It thus contrasts with *realism in that it is concerned less with empirical analysis (with how international actors behave) than with normative judgements (with how they should behave). Political idealism may be seen as a species of *utopianism.

Significance

Metaphysical idealism underpinned much of the political philosophy of the classical, medieval and early modern periods. Its strength was that, in holding that values such as justice, natural law and reason are implicit in the structure of reality itself, it gave thinkers a firm and universalist perspective from which to judge existing arrangements and engage in political advocacy. However, the status of metaphysical individualism was gradually eroded by the emergence of empirical and scientific approaches to political theorising. Political idealism has been criticised on the grounds that it encourages political energies to be expended on goals that may be unrealistic or unachievable; that it fails to recognise the extent to which political action is determined by practical considerations such as the pursuit of power or the satisfaction of material interests; and that, anyway, political ideals may be contested and lack universal authority. For example, realist theorists in international politics have long ridiculed the idealist's faith in collective security and international harmony. Nevertheless, as examples such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King demonstrate, idealism has an undoubted and enduring capacity to inspire commitment

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and stimulate political activism. Similarly, to downgrade the importance of ideals and principles in political analysis may simply be to legitimise power-seeking and unprincipled behaviour. Thus, disenchantment with the amoral power politics of the superpower era has led in international politics to the emergence of neo-idealism, a perspective that emphasises the practical value of morality and, in particular, of respect for *human rights and national interdependence.

INSTITUTIONALISM

An institution is an enduring and stable set of arrangements that regulates individual and/or group behaviour on the basis of established rules and procedures. Political institutions have a formal and often legal character, employ explicit and usually enforceable rules and decision-making procedures, and are typically part of the machinery of the *state. For this reason political institutions have been defined as ‘the rules of the game'. Examples of political institutions include *constitutions, *elections, *parliaments, *bureaucracies, *judiciaries, party systems and so on. Institutionalism, as an approach to political analysis, is the attempt to make sense of political realities by studying the causes and consequences of political institutions. It thus views institutions as political actors in their own right, independent from and capable of influencing wider social, economic and cultural forces.

Traditional institutionalism took political institutions to be the key political actors in that it encouraged reflection upon *politics to focus upon descriptions of institutional behaviour, the analysis of formal or legal rules, or a comparative or historical examination of institutional structures. The idea of new institutionalism or neo-institutionalism has been increasingly fashionable since the 1980s. Although it does not have a clear or developed meaning, it tends to be characterised by a recognition of the importance of informal as well as formal institutions and looks beyond traditional institutionalism by accepting that formal-legal approaches to political understanding have only a limited value. As such, it reflects a shift in perspective away from *government and towards *governance. The principal forms which new institutionalism has taken are historical institutionalism, rational-choice institutionalism and sociological institutionalism.

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Significance

Institutionalism was the dominant tradition of political analysis until the 1950s. In a sense it can be traced back to the classical political theory of Plato (427–347 BCE) and Aristotle (384–22 BCE), and was developed by Machiavelli (1469–1527), Hobbes (1588–1679), Locke (1632–1704) and Rousseau (1712–78), in that such thinkers not only grappled with political ideals such as *justice, *order and *freedom, but also examined the political institutions most likely to secure these political goods. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this developed into a constitutional–institutional approach to political analysis that emphasised, for instance, differences between codified and uncodified constitutions, parliamentary and presidential systems, and federal and unitary systems. However, the institutional approach became distinctively less fashionable in the 1950s and 1960s in the light of the rise of *behaviouralism, *systems theory and subsequently growing interest in *Marxism.

The main criticisms of institutionalism are that it is guilty of the sin of what David Easton (1981) called ‘hyperfactualism', a reverence for facts and a disregard for theory; that it ignores non-institutional influences upon *policy and the distribution of *power; and that it is an entirely state-centred approach to politics that ignores the degree to which the state is linked to and shaped by society. Nevertheless, institutionalism continued to be a significant school of political analysis and, since the 1970s, has been revived through growing interest in constitutional reform, public administration and policy analysis. While an exclusive focus upon institutions may reduce political analysis to dull legalism, to neglect political institutions on the grounds that they may merely be a reflection of, for instance, the utility-maximising behaviour of their members (as *rational choice theory suggests), the distribution of power amongst groups (*pluralism or *elitism), or the basic economic structure of society (*Marxism), is to ignore the fact that state structures and the organisation of government matter.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy, in general terms, is the search for wisdom and understanding using the techniques of critical reasoning. However, philosophy has also been seen more specifically as a second-order

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discipline, in contrast to first-order disciplines which deal with empirical subjects. In other words, philosophy is not so much concerned with revealing truth in the manner of science, as with asking secondary questions about how knowledge is acquired and about how understanding is expressed; it has thus been dubbed the science of questions. Philosophy has traditionally addressed questions related to the ultimate nature of reality (metaphysics), the grounds of knowledge (epistemology) and the basis of moral conduct (ethics).

Political philosophy is often viewed as a subfield of ethics or moral philosophy, in that it is preoccupied with essentially prescriptive or normative questions, reflecting a concern with what should, ought or must be brought about, rather than what is. Its central questions have included ‘why should I obey the state?', ‘who should rule?', ‘how should rewards be distributed?' and ‘what should be the limits of individual freedom?' Academic political philosophy addresses itself to two main tasks. First, it is concerned with the critical evaluation of political beliefs, paying attention to both inductive and deductive forms of reasoning. Second, it attempts to clarify and refine the concepts employed in political discourse. What this means is that, although political philosophy may be carried out critically and scrupulously, it cannot be objective in that it is inevitably concerned with justifying certain political viewpoints at the expense of others and with upholding a particular understanding of a concept rather than alternative ones. Political philosophy is therefore clearly distinct from *political science. Although political philosophy is often used interchangeably with *political theory, the former deals strictly with matters of evaluation and advocacy, while the latter is broader, in that it also includes explanation and analysis and thus cuts across the normative/empirical divide.

Significance

Political philosophy constitutes what is called the ‘traditional' approach to politics. It dates back to Ancient Greece and the work of the founding fathers of political analysis, Plato (427–347 BCE) and Aristotle (384 –22 BCE). Their ideas resurfaced in the writings of medieval thinkers such as Augustine (354–430) and Aquinas (1224–74). In the early modern period, political philosophy was closely associated with the social contract theories of Hobbes (1588 –1679), Locke (1632–1704) and Rousseau (1712–78), while

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in the nineteenth century it was advanced through J. S. Mill's (1806–73) work on *freedom and Marx's (1818–83) materialist conception of history. However, the status of political philosophy was gradually weakened from the late nineteenth century onwards by the rise of the empirical and scientific traditions, which led by the 1950s and 1960s to a frontal assault on the very basis of normative theorising. Political philosophy was declared to be dead, on the grounds that its central principles, such as *justice, *rights, liberty and *equality, are meaningless because they are not empirically verifiable entities. However, there has been a significant revival in political philosophy since the 1970s and the tendency is now for political philosophy and political science to be seen less as distinct modes of political enquiry, and still less as rivals. Instead they have come to be accepted simply as contrasting ways of disclosing political knowledge. This has occurred through disillusionment with *behaviouralism and the recognition that values, hidden or otherwise, underpin all forms of political enquiry, and as a result of the emergence of new areas of philosophical debate, linked, for instance, to *feminism and to rivalry between *liberalism and *communitarianism.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge) is a field of study that aims to develop reliable explanations of phenomena through repeatable experiments, observations and deductions. The ‘scientific method', by which hypotheses are verified (proved true) by testing them against the available evidence, is therefore seen as a means of disclosing value-free and objective truth. Karl Popper (1902–94), however, suggested that science can only falsify hypotheses, since ‘facts' can always be disproved by later experiments. Scientism is the belief that the scientific method is the only source of reliable knowledge, and so should be applied to fields such as philosophy, history and *politics, as well as the natural sciences. Doctrines such as *Marxism, *utilitarianism and *racialism are scientistic in this sense.

Political science can either be understood generally or more specifically. In general terms political science is an academic discipline which undertakes systematically to describe, analyse and explain the workings of *government and the relationships between political and non-political institutions and processes. The traditional

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subject matter of political science, so defined, is the *state, although this has broadened during the twentieth century to include social, economic and other processes that influence the allocation of values and general resources. In this view political science encompasses both descriptive and normative theory: the task of describing and analysing the operations of government institutions has often been linked to evaluative judgements about which ones work best. More narrowly defined, political science sets out to study the traditional subject matter of *politics using only the methods of the natural sciences. From this perspective, political science refers to a strictly empirical and value-free approach to political understanding that was the product of *positivism and reached its highest stage of development in the form of *behaviouralism. This implies a sharp distinction between political science and *political philosophy, reflecting the distinction between empirical and normative analysis. It may also, in its scientistic form, imply that the philosophical or normative approach to political understanding is, in the final analysis, worthless.

Significance

Although it is widely accepted that the study of politics should be scientific in the broad sense of being rigorous and critical, the claim that it should be scientific in the stricter sense, that it can and should use the methodology of the natural sciences, is much more controversial. The attraction of a science of politics is clear. Most importantly, it promises an impartial and reliable means of distinguishing truth from falsehood, thereby giving us access to objective knowledge about the political world. The key to achieving this is to distinguish between ‘facts' (empirical evidence) and ‘values' (normative or ethical beliefs). Facts are objective in the sense that they can be demonstrated reliably and consistently; they can be proved. Values, in contrast, are inherently subjective, a matter of opinion.

However, any attempt to construct a science of politics confronts three difficulties. First, there is the problem of data. Human beings are not tadpoles that can be taken into a laboratory or cells that can be observed under a microscope. We cannot get ‘inside' a human being, or carry out repeatable experiments on human behaviour. What we can learn about individual behaviour is therefore limited

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and superficial. In the absence of exact data we have no reliable means of testing our hypotheses. Second, there are difficulties that stem from the existence of human values. The idea that models and theories of politics are entirely value-free is difficult to sustain when examined closely. Facts and values are so closely intertwined that it is often impossible to prise them apart. This is because theories are inevitably constructed on the basis of assumptions about *human nature, society and the role of the state that have hidden political and ideological implications. Third, there is the myth of neutrality in the social sciences. Whereas natural scientists may be able to approach their studies in an objective and impartial manner, holding no presuppositions about what they are going to discover, this is difficult and perhaps impossible to achieve in politics. However politics is defined, it addresses questions relating to the structure and functioning of the society in which we live and have grown up. Family background, social experience, economic position, personal sympathies and so on thus build into each and every one of us a set of pre-conditions about politics and the world around us. Scientific objectivity, in the sense of absolute impartiality or *neutrality, must therefore always remain an unachievable goal in political analysis.

POLITICAL THEORY

A theory is anything from a plan to a piece of abstract knowledge. In academic discourse, however, a theory is an explanatory proposition, an idea or set of ideas that in some way seeks to impose order or meaning upon phenomena. As such, all enquiry proceeds through the construction of theories, sometimes thought of as hypotheses, explanatory propositions waiting to be tested. *Political science, no less than the natural sciences and other social sciences, therefore has an important theoretical component. For example, theories such as that *social class is the principal determinant of voting behaviour and that *revolutions occur at times of rising expectations, are essential if sense is to be made of empirical evidence. This is what is called empirical political theory.

Political theory is, however, usually regarded as a distinctive approach to the subject, even though, particularly in the USA, it is seen as a subfield of political science. Political theory involves the analytical study of ideas and doctrines that have been central to

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political thought. Traditionally, this has taken the form of a history of political thought, focusing upon a collection of ‘major' thinkers – for instance, from Plato to Marx – and a canon of ‘classic' texts. As it studies the ends and means of political action, political theory is concerned with ethical or normative questions, related to issues such as *justice, *freedom, *equality and so on. This traditional approach has about it the character of literary analysis: it is primarily interested in examining what major thinkers said, how they developed or justified their views and the intellectual context in which they worked. An alternative approach has been called formal political theory. This draws upon the example of economic theory in building up models based upon procedural rules, as in the case of *rational choice theory. Although political theory and *political philosophy clearly overlap, and the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, a distinction can be drawn on the grounds that political theory may content itself with explanation and analysis, while political philosophy is inevitably involved at some level with evaluation and advocacy.

Significance

Political theory, as an approach to *politics that embraces normative and philosophical analysis, can be seen as the longest and most clearly established tradition of political analysis. However, the status of political theory was seriously damaged in the twentieth century by the rise of *positivism and its attack upon the very normative concepts that had been its chief subject matter. Although the notion that political theory was abandoned in the 1950s and 1960s is an exaggeration, the onset of the ‘behavioural revolution' and the passion for all things scientific persuaded many political analysts to turn their backs upon the entire tradition of normative thought. Since the 1960s, however, political theory has re-emerged with new vitality, and the previously sharp distinction between political science and political theory has faded. This occurred through the emergence of a new generation of political theorists, notably John Rawls (1971) and Robert Nozick (1974) , but also through growing criticism of *behaviouralism and the re-emergence of ideological divisions, brought about, for instance, through anti-Vietnam war protest, the rise of *feminism and the emergence of the *New Right and *New Left.

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However, revived political theory differs in a number of respects from its earlier manifestations. One feature of modern political theory is that it places greater emphasis upon the role of history and culture in shaping political understanding. While this does not imply that the study of ‘major' thinkers and ‘classic' texts is worthless, it does emphasise that any interpretation of such thinkers and texts must take account of context, and recognise that, to some extent, all interpretations are entangled with our own values and understanding. The second development is that political theory has become increasingly diffuse and diverse. This has occurred both through the fragmentation of *liberalism and growing debate within a broad liberal tradition, but also through the emergence of new alternatives to liberal theory to add to its established Marxist and conservative rivals, the most obvious examples being feminism, *communitarianism and *ecologism. Finally, modern political theory has lost the bold self-confidence of earlier periods, in that it has effectively abandoned the ‘traditional' search for universal values acceptable to everyone. This has occurred through a growing appreciation of the role of *community and local identity in shaping values, brought about, in part, by the impact of *postmodernism.

POSITIVISM

Positivism is the doctrine that the social sciences, and, for that matter, all forms of philosophical enquiry, should strictly adhere to the methods of the natural sciences. The term was introduced by Claud-Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825) and popularised by his follower, Auguste Comte (1789–1857). Positivism thus assumes that science holds a monopoly of knowledge. In the form of logical positivism, which was advanced in the 1920s and 1930s by a group of philosophers collectively known as the Vienna Circle, it rejected all propositions that are not empirically verifiable as simply meaningless.

Significance

Positivism did much in the twentieth century to weaken the status of *political philosophy and to underpin the emergence of *political science. Normative concepts and theories were discarded as

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nonsense, on the grounds that they were ‘metaphysical' and did not deal with that which is externally measurable. Not only did this undermine the credentials of the philosophical approach to political analysis but it also encouraged philosophers to lose interest in moral and political issues. On the other hand, one of the chief legacies of positivism was the emergence of *behaviouralism and the attempt to develop a value-free science of *politics. However, the influence of positivism upon philosophy and political analysis declined significantly in the second half of the twentieth century. This occurred partly because positivism was associated with a simplistic faith in science's capacity to uncover truth that has come to be regarded as naœve, and partly because, in rejecting altogether the beliefs, attitudes and values of political actors, it drew politics towards dull and exclusively empirical analysis.

POSTMODERNISM

Postmodernism is a controversial and confusing term that was first used to describe experimental movements in Western architecture and cultural development in general. Postmodern thought originated principally in continental Europe, especially France, and constitutes a challenge to the type of academic *political theory that has come to be the norm in the Anglo-American world. Its basis lies in a perceived social shift – from modernity to postmodernity – and a related cultural and intellectual shift – from modernism to postmodernism. Modern societies are seen to have been structured by industrialisation and class solidarity, social identity being largely determined by one's position within the productive system. Postmodern societies, on the other hand, are increasingly fragmented and pluralistic ‘information societies' in which individuals are transformed from producers to consumers, and *individualism replaces class, religious and ethnic loyalties. Postmodernity is thus linked to postindustrialism, the development of a society no longer dependent upon manufacturing industry, but more reliant upon knowledge and communication.

The central theme of postmodernism is that there is no such thing as certainty: the idea of absolute and universal truth must be discarded as an arrogant pretence. Although by its nature postmodernism does not constitute a unified body of thought, its critical attitude to truth-claims stems from the general assumption that all knowledge is partial and local, a view it shares with certain forms of

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*communitarianism. Poststructuralism, a term sometimes used interchangeably with postmodernism, emphasises that all ideas and concepts are expressed in language which itself is enmeshed in complex relations of *power.

Significance

Since the 1970s postmodern and poststructural political theories have become increasingly fashionable. In particular they have attacked all forms of political analysis that stem from modernism. Modernism, the cultural form of modernity, is seen to stem largely from Enlightenment ideas and theories, and has been expressed politically in ideological traditions that offer rival conceptions of the good life, notably *liberalism and *Marxism. The chief flaw of modernist thought, from the most postmodern perspective, is that it is characterised by foundationalism, the belief that it is possible to establish objective truths and universal values, usually associated with a strong faith in progress. Jean-François Lyotard (1984) expressed the postmodern stance most succinctly in defining it as ‘an incredulity towards metanarratives'. By this he meant scepticism about all creeds and ideologies that are based upon universal theories of history which view society as a coherent totality.