Reflections on the relationship between political theory and political practice: assessing realist challenge to liberal-normative political theory
Author
Seven, Gülşen
Advisor
Karakayalı, Nedim
Date
2017-01Publisher
Bilkent University
Language
English
Type
ThesisItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
This thesis is a study of value of theorizing for the practical world of politics. It
addresses the question of how it is advisable to conceive the relationship between
political theory and political practice. It does so by focusing on contemporary
discussions about realism and moralism in political theory. Realism is a
contemporary theoretical approach that poses a challenge to the dominant liberal
paradigm, which allegedly bases its understanding of politics on the primacy of the
moral over the political. The meaning and implications of such moralized
understanding are explored, in this dissertation, in relation to John Rawls. After
presenting a reading of Rawls’s major works in relation to the relationship between
political theory and political practice, I specify general principles guiding the recent
realist revival in political theory. This account suggests that realism encompasses a
wide variety of non-moralizing positions whose critical purchase on dominant
political theory varies. More critically, it illustrates how some varieties of realism invite moralism through the back door, primarily due to their insistence on some
form of foundationalism for a political theory to be action-guiding. I single out John
Dunn’s sceptical activist realism and Raymond Geuss’s critical activist realism as
two alternative candidates that exhibit the possibility of political theory, centred on
the notion of political judgment, to be action-guiding without having foundational
commitments of the kind typically presupposed. This account essentially presents an
alternative conceptualization of the relationship between political theory and political
practice to that of mainstream liberal political theory.