Political realism for a multipolar world

Abstract

Political realism appeared as a reaction to the highly moralised and idealised form of political theory developed by John Rawls and a great part of contemporary political theory. Political realism in political theory defends that politics is a distinctive sphere of human thought and action not reducible to morality or economics. In other words, realists argue that politics owes its normativity. As it is well-known for Anglophone academics in political theory, political realism has increased its influence on many topics through problems of political theory and other political science subjects. One of those topics is international political theory. International political theory is the branch of political theory and the study of international relations whose target is to propose, evaluate and justify normative principles that guide the complex array of relations and issues among international agents. In this academic discipline, prominent debates are related to global justice. The two main theoretical positions are cosmopolitanism and statism. The main critique from political realists to this debate between those positions in global justice is that both represent the priority of a moral approach to international relations. Political realists such as Duncan Bell, Enzo Rossi, Jan Pieter Beetz, Alison McQueen and Matt Sleat have elaborated contributions in this field. One of these investigations examines the theoretical connections between political realism in political theory and the large tradition of political realism in the study of international relations. The other program is based on extending Bernard Williams’ theory of political legitimacy to international political theory. This program aims to distinguish itself from, on the one hand, the moralistic approach of statism and cosmopolitanism and, on the other hand, those views in political realism within the international relations —often called Realpolitik— that reduce politics to the pursuit of interests using the power of international agents. Contrary to both approaches, in the international political theory political realists argue that politics is conceptually different from successful domination and terror. Politics is legitimised coercion to sustain a social order where there are disagreements and conflicts. This article focuses on this last area of research, focusing on Sleat’s proposal. Drawing on Williams’ Basic Legitimation Demand (BLD), Sleat poses a normative political principle for international relations. This principle prevents universal evils recognised as a summum malum: unfair war, torture, devastation, famine and so forth are evils that everyone everywhere fears. As Judith Shklar points out, this means putting cruelty first as a summum malum, and it represents a normative political principle. For the international sphere, the basic task for international agents is to avoid this cruelty. In this sense, an international agent is justified if it follows BLD. In other words, an action in the international sphere is justified if its target is to prevent or avoid cruelty. On the other hand, Chantal Mouffe has been catalogued as a realist author for contemporary political realists because she conceptualises the political as conflict, and politics as the human activity that manages legitimately this conflict. Despite being formed by the influence of continental philosophers such as Louis Althusser and Jaques Derrida, she has debated her political proposals with Rawls’ political philosophy and other analytical authors. Regarding Mouffe’s work in international political theory, she contends for an agonistic model of global order. In this model different international agents coexist, gathered around diverse regional poles without the supremacy of one type of hegemony. In other words, there is a plurality of both states and international associations that follow different economic systems and have different cultures. Notwithstanding, Mouffe’s agonistic proposal lacks of a normative principle to guide the cooperation among these international agents. There is no political principle to justify the intervention of one of these agents in the issues of other agents in a multipolar world. Mouffe argues that posing such as principle is an erroneous step because it would subjugate this multipolar world to a moral principle for multiple and diverse states and associations. In short, it would pose a moral hegemony over the whole world. In this paper, I argue that the DLB posed by Sleat in international political theory complements the agonistic model of global order canvassed by Mouffe. I suggest that DLB is an appropriate principle to justify basic cooperation in a multipolar world. To contend my argument, the methodology followed here is characteristic of the analytic political theory developed mainly in Anglo-American research groups: draw distinctions between concepts and establish conceptual relationships to argue a point of view. My argument shows that BLD bypasses the critics posed by Mouffe to moral principles because it is a political principle, not a moral one. BLD offers a realist normative standard that is formulated from a realist conception of politics and is attentive to the context in which it emerges. BLD has a minimal account of human rights that is not made by an ideal and moralistic consensus but by a summum malum of evils that it is essential to continually prevent, being even a necessary condition for raising and demanding greater demands of justice. Therefore, BLD is an adequate source of normativity for international cooperation in a multipolar world. The stages to defend this argumentation follow the next structure: firstly, I draw distinctions between Sleat's political realism, the cosmopolitan and statist positions of global justice, and the Realpolitik approach in international relations. In this part, I counterargue this last position to affirm that it is possible to propose normative principles in the international sphere. In the next part, the BLD proposed by Sleat is characterised as a summum malum for agents in international relations. Thirdly, the idea of the multipolar world proposed by Mouffe is conceptually reconstructed based on her proposal of agonistic democracy, distinguishing it from cosmopolitanism positions. The fourth section presents the argument of this paper: the BLD is a basic normative principle for international cooperation in a multipolar global. Based on a realist approach, this last section draws conceptual relationships between the BLD and the multipolar world. In this part, it is argued that the BLD is a realistic normative principle suitable for the agonistic proposal of a multipolar world put forward by Mouffe.