What is Political Theory? (updated for 2020)

Over 14 years I wrote this brief post on what I thought political theory is. This remains one of the most read posts on my blog. Today's post is an extended, and long overdue, update on that theme.

This summer I am undertaking a major revamp of the full year history of political theory course I have taught here at Queen's for the past 11 years to approximately 275 students. In the past this course was a standard Plato to Marx course. It will still cover major thinkers from the canon, but with a new mix of theorists and the themes will be juxtaposed with more contemporary issues and concerns. This is the new course outline for this coming year:

This course will survey and examine historical thinkers, and socio-political events, that have helped shape Western political thought. Ideas can be powerful catalysts for progressive change, but they can also be utilized to maintain and perpetuate oppression and exclusion. The study of the ideas and ideals of Western political thought reveal a diversity of assumptions (e.g. what is human nature?) and societal aspirations which invoke values like stability, individualism, community, equality, freedom and justice. Students will exam the writings of a diverse range of thinkers, ranging from Plato, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, to Emma Goldman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mary Wollstonecraft, Anna Cooper, W.E.B. Du Bois, JS Mill, Karl Marx and Frantz Fanon. These thinkers wrote about, and lived during, significant historical events in the development of Western democracies. From Athenian democracy and slavery, to the English Civil War, the French Revolution, colonialism, and industrialization and patriarchy, the history of political thought is ripe with examples of theorists diagnosing pressing societal predicaments, as well as exercising the intellectual skill of imagining collective solutions to these problems. Students will be expected to demonstrate both a comprehension of the material covered in the course and the ability to critically evaluate that material.

The impetus for these substantive changes to the course are three-fold:

(1) for my own interest and intellectual growth and development I had planned on revamping the course, and already started making substantive changes last year.

(2) Because of the COVID-19 pandemic the plan is, for at least the first term of the course, for the lecture material will be delivered online. This entailed a re-think of how the course is delivered, and it's aims and objectives. So I decided to do the complete overhaul at the same time.

(3) The recent events of the BLM movement and global protests against racism and police violence have helped give me the further push needed to update and invigorate my course with new content, to address ( more substantively) diversity concerns and better equip my students with an understanding of the political ideas and ideals needed to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

In order for a political theory course to be part of the solution to the problems of today (vs being part of the problem), it must be something an instructor constantly attends to and modifies vs simply hitting the "cruise control" button and teaching the same content in the same manner indefinitely.

Over the last two years I had removed Hume and Hegel from the course to provide space for addressing MLK and the civil rights movement. And this year I will also remove Aristotle and Kant to create space for a more extensive discussion of the BLM movement, Emma Goldman and anarchism, Charles Mills on the racial contract, WEB Du Bois and some Frantz Fanon in the final section of the course on Marx and Marxism.

I am working on the introduction lecture to the course and I would like to detail my thoughts for that introduction here.

Let us start with two important questions:

(1) What is political theory?
AND
(2) Why should we study and teach the history of Western political thought?

Both questions are hotly debated and contentious topics in the field. If you had 5 political theorists together in a room to answer these 2 questions you might actually get 10 different answers in total!

As the professor for the course I will give my answers to these questions, but students and readers of the blog should take my answers with a grain of salt. Having taught and published on these topics for over 20 years now I think my answers are plausible and defensible answers, but they are not the only answers. Nor do they have to become YOUR answers.

You might discover, as you engage with the course readings and topics for yourself, that you come to your own conclusions and answers to these questions. And that is a good thing. Higher education should facilitate insight and debate rather work towards a predetermined consensus on complex and important questions.

Whatever one says about the field of political theory, it certainly is a unique area of study in politics. Its main focus is on the realm of ideas and ideals vs specific institutions or the election outcomes of a particular country. Rather than focusing on empirical questions like “Why do voters vote for the candidates they vote for?” or “What causes war?”, political theory addresses moral, evaluative concerns. “What is justice?” “Are freedom and equality compatible political ideals?” “Why, and how, should we redress the inequalities persistent in today’s societies?” These are just a few of the concerns theorists address.

At it’s most general level, I like to think of political theory as the exercise of two distinct, but related, intellectual skills. In my earlier post from 14 years ago I referred to the 3 skills John Dunn notes, but for brevity I am reducing these 3 down to just 2 skills (merging his second two skills into one).

And to explain these skills I would like to make an analogy with the medical sciences. In oncology, which is the study of the pathology of cancer, there are two important aspects of cancer research- the diagnostic dimension AND the treatment dimension.

The first thing an oncologist must do is confirm if a patient actually has a cancer tumour vs a (harmless) benign growth. Cancerous tumours are not typically visible to the naked eye, which is why it is so important to catch cancer early on versus waiting for more serious symptoms to be manifest after the cancer has metastasized (that is, spread to other parts of the body). Thus some imaging scans like a CT scan, coupled with a biopsy of the suspicious mass, takes place to confirm if the tissue is cancerous or noncancerous.

If a cancer diagnosis is confirmed, then a treatment plan for this specific type (and stage) of cancer will need to be developed. This might involve chemotherapy and/or radiation and surgery, or a combination of different types of treatment. Even when a cancer turmour has been removed, there must be periodic followup exams to make sure it doesn’t return or grow.

Political theorists are kind of like oncologists for the cancers of politics and our collective lives. And like oncology, political theory has both a diagnostic and prescriptive function:

1. The diagnostic dimension: identifying pressing societal problems by developing the conceptual tools to identify, and quantify, societal problems. Political theory helps put on our “radar” things that we might not realize are significant problems. These problems can range from economic inequality and patriarchy, to climate change, racism, intolerance and unjustified government interference in our liberty.

2. The prescriptive dimension: showing us how best to confront these societal problems. Like a skilled cancer surgeon, a skilled political theorist will help us develop the insights needed to determine "what needs to be done” to improve our collective future. The prescription might be democratic reform, imposing clear limits on governmental power and authority, tackling inequality within the family or engaging in civil disobedience to raise awareness to persistent injustice. This second skill engages our capacity for political imagination (going beyond what is currently feasible), but is tempered by a pragmatic disposition to keep prescribed political actions and ambitions within the realm of "potential" vs "the impossible".

This last point is of course subject to much debate and disagreement. What seemed impossible only yesterday is often taken as "a given" today (e.g. universal suffrage, industrialization, peace, economic prosperity, etc.). But on the flip side, appealing to overly idealized "pie-in-the-sky" aspirations is one sure way to ensure no change ever comes. Incremental meaningful progress is still progress. Admittedly determining what the optimal point is between prioritizing "the feasible" and the "truly transformative" will be rife with disagreements over the magnitude of the shortcomings of the status quo vs the magnitude of the potential benefits (and possible harms) of more radical change. Such debates are the essence of what politics is about.

Now let us turn to question #2: (2) Why should we study and teach the history of Western political thought?

There are a variety of different perspectives to take on answering this question, sometimes these perspectives are driven by disagreement over which thinkers and themes to cover, sometimes the disagreement tracks different ideological convictions concerning the pros and cons of the ideas developed in Western political theory (and Western civilization more generally).

Perhaps the most contentious and divisive topic in academia today (at least in North America) are the pros and cons of Western civilization. Countries like Canada, England, Scotland, the United States, Australia, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, etc. are among the most free, equal and democratic countries in the world. The citizens of such societies enjoy legal and political rights that would have been unimaginable just a few centuries ago, and remain the envy of people living in authoritarian regimes in the world today. Citizens in such countries also enjoy high levels of economic development and prosperity, as well as democratic governance, freedom of the press and religion, and access to quality education and healthcare. These countries have the highest life expectancy for human populations in the world.

These positive features of Western liberal democracies are the envy of persons living in societies where they have no substantive voice in their political futures, and little or no access to the benefits of gender equality, freedom of religion or the press, or access to quality education and healthcare. And yet, ironically, many people living in developed democracies take for granted the benefits they enjoy (benefits they have access to merely as a consequence of their being born when, and where, they were born). It is easy to watch social media and the news about the political dysfunction of one's society and mistakenly equate those shortcomings with a condemnation of the system as a whole. The "twitterverse" amplifies this ahistorical, non-comparative understanding of the virtues and vices of the status quo within today's most affluent, free and tolerant societies.

But having said all of the above, concerning the successes of Western civilizations, this does not negative the reality that there still are significant injustices and problems facing all such societies. A history of colonialism and slavery, coupled with the persistence of institutional racism, intolerance, climate change and socio-economic inequality all pose formidable challenges for even the most successful societies of today. It can be true that a society like Canada fares (comparatively) very well on many indexes of justice (e.g. freedom, equality between the sexes, tolerance, affluence, treatment of minorities, etc.) and yet it can also be true to argue that Canada comes up well short on other important dimensions of justice (e.g. treatment of Indigenous persons and addressing concerns of transitional justice, the health and inclusion of its democratic practices and institutions, etc.)

Western civilization has had a dramatic impact (both positive and negative) on the life prospects of humanity. Rather than reduce these impacts to the simplistic narratives of "all good" or "all bad", an engagement with the history of political theory encourages us to do an extensive inventory of the mistakes we have made in the past, and continue to make today, as well as acknowledge the successes we have made in overcoming many of the exclusionary, intolerant, authoritarian, and shortsighted ways the collective fate of human societies have been decided in the past (and still are in many parts of the world).

I believe the study of the history of political thought in the 21st century is as important today as it ever has been. Sadly I fear my perspective is becoming more and more of a minority position within the discipline of political science. This is why I continue to passionately teach the large service course in the history of political thought. Each new generation must make its own reckoning with our past, for today's present will be tomorrow's past. And yesterday's past was once a potential future humans could have altered and changed. By learning how the ideas of past, and those of today, help shape our collective futures students can gain an awareness of the importance of attending to their own political beliefs, assumptions and aspirations. By doing so we will be better positioned for redressing the injustices that persist today, and improve the odds that the societies of the future will flourish vs flounder/perish.

Cheers,
Colin