Normative Political Theory

Citizens, and politicians, frequently argue about how resources should be distributed within society, how political power should be allocated, what the rights and duties of citizens are, and much else besides. When we argue in this way we make use of normative concepts such as justice, equality, freedom, rights, democracy and authority. They are ‘normative’ in the sense that they seek to specify what we ought to do, rather than simply describing how political life works. Such concepts are in a very real sense the fundamental building -blocks of political debate, and the precise meaning we attribute to them can turn out to be enormously consequential. While most of us profess to believe in community, and social justice, and equality of opportunity, say, this superficial agreement masks considerable disagreement about how best to understand those concepts, and this dissensus is inevitably reflected in further disagreement about their political implications. As a result, you may well find yourself voting for a politician who claims to believe in social justice and equality of opportunity only to discover that his understanding of what those words mean is entirely different to yours. If so, you might throw up your hands and announce that the meaning of these concepts is simply a matter of opinion, that they can be made to mean whatever we want them to mean, and that you are not going to listen to politicians any longer. While the conclusion about politicians might be understandable, the conclusion about the meaning of the concepts themselves would be resisted by many political theorists. For many of them are united in the belief that, just as progress is possible in science or (on a good day) in economics, so too might we make progress in sorting good normative arguments from bad, in revealing the inconsistencies and weak points of political arguments, and in building better and more coherent political theories.