Taking rulers' interests seriously: The case for realist theories of legitimacy

Cross, Ben

doi:10.1177/14748851221114302

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…The second necessary condition points to the limitations of ‘ruler-disinterested theorising’ (Cross, 2022b), where one makes political prescriptions without considering whether there is any political ruler with an interest in acting on them. The main idea here is neatly expressed by Williams’ (2002: 208) observation that there is little point in telling tyrants why tyranny is bad.…”

Section: The Motivation Objectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It appears especially serious when we are concerned with certain interests that rulers must safeguard to remain rulers. Rulers who do not recognise or prioritise an interest in preserving the stability of their rule tend not to remain rulers for long (Cross, 2022b: 12). We might therefore suppose that any norm requiring a ruler to do something that will very clearly undermine the stability of their rule will be particularly unlikely to be transparently motivationally effective.…”

Section: The Motivation Objectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Getting Realistic About Action-Guidance: Moralism, Radical Realism and Divisions of Labour

Cross

2023

Political Studies Review

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Moralists and radical realists both seem to employ a division of intellectual labour to enable their theories to be action-guiding. Moralists typically distinguish between formulating normative principles and devising suitable means for implementing or approximating them. Radical realists, meanwhile, seem to distinguish between the findings of ideology critique and further political theorising informed by these findings. However, radical realist criticisms of the moralist division of labour may suggest a tu quoque objection to radical realism: if the moralist division of labour is defective, why does the same not also hold for the radical realist division of labour? My aim in this article is to answer this question. I identify two distinct radical realist objections to the moralist division of labour, which I refer to as the seminar room objection and the motivation objection respectively. I then argue that radical realists can deal effectively with these objections if they were to be turned against their version of the division of labour. Hence, radical realists can consistently criticise moralist versions of the division of labour while simultaneously employing their own version.

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Section: The Motivation Objectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Motivation Objectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Getting Realistic About Action-Guidance: Moralism, Radical Realism and Divisions of Labour

Cross

2023

Political Studies Review

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“…The paper will hopefully generate further discussion on how to uncover the latent political functions of everyday practices in social and economic institutions. In this way, the argument advances the political realist ambition to center normative theorizing around real-world actors’ actions and interests (Bagg 2022; Burelli and Destri 2022; Cross 2022; Kreutz and Rossi 2022; Raekstad 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Defense of Shirking in Capitalist Firms: Worker Resistance vs. Managerial Power

Aytac

2023

Political Theory

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Shirking, the act of avoiding the demands of one’s job, is generally seen as unethical. Drawing on empirical evidence from the sociology of work, I develop a normative conception of shirking as a form of worker resistance against illegitimate managerial power. In doing so, I present a new approach to the political theory of the firm, which is more adversarial and agent-centered than available alternatives. It is more adversarial as it recognizes the political value of counterproductive and disruptive behavior in capitalist firms. It is more agent-centered because it theorizes the firm from the perspective of workers, asking what pro tanto reasons they have to shirk. I show that shirking under the structural domination of capitalism has diagnostic, agential, and epistemic values. The paper contributes to the wider methodological ambition to tailor political theorizing to the positionality of social actors by shifting attention from the institutional design of the firm to the methods of worker resistance.

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A genealogy of politics: Vindicatory, pragmatic, and realist

Burelli,

Prinz

2024

European J of Philosophy

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In Western democracies, people harbor feelings of disgust or hatred for politics. Populists and technocrats even seemingly question the value of politics. Populists cry that they are not politicians and that politics is necessarily corrupt. From the opposite side, technocrats view politics as a pointless constraint on enacting the obviously right policies. Are Western democracies facing a rejection of politics? And is politics worth defending? This paper offers a vindicatory genealogy of politics, vindicating the need human beings have for this practice and clarifying the extent of its contemporary rejections. To achieve these contributions, the paper connects the literatures on pragmatic genealogy and on political realism, revealing how they can complement each other. Following pragmatic genealogy, the practice of politics is vindicated, because it meets an inevitable functional need for collectively binding decision‐making. However, and importantly, political realism allows us to see that the functional mechanisms through which politics fulfills this need vary contextually and thus require careful empirical scrutiny. The paper thus dispels confusion about seeming rejections of politics by clarifying what is unavoidable, and what is revisable about politics.

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Taking rulers' interests seriously: The case for realist theories of legitimacy

Cited by 7 publications

References 68 publications

Getting Realistic About Action-Guidance: Moralism, Radical Realism and Divisions of Labour

Getting Realistic About Action-Guidance: Moralism, Radical Realism and Divisions of Labour

In Defense of Shirking in Capitalist Firms: Worker Resistance vs. Managerial Power

A genealogy of politics: Vindicatory, pragmatic, and realist

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