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Can Pragmatists be Institutionalists? John Dewey Joins the Non-ideal/Ideal Theory Debate

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Abstract

During the 1960s and 1970s, institutionalists and behavioralists in the discipline of political science argued over the legitimacy of the institutional approach to political inquiry. In the discipline of philosophy, a similar debate concerning institutions has never taken place. Yet, a growing number of philosophers are now working out the institutional implications of political ideas in what has become known as “non-ideal theory.” My thesis is two-fold: (1) pragmatism and institutionalism are compatible and (2) non-ideal theorists, following the example of pragmatists, can avoid a similar debate as took place between institutionalists and behavioralists by divulging their assumptions about institutions.

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Notes

  1. Citations follow the conventional method used by Dewey scholars, LW (Later Works) or MW (Middle Works) or EW (Early Works), volume: page number. For example, EW 4:40 refers to the Early Works, volume 4, page 40. The page number indicates the pagination found in Dewey (1996).

  2. The distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory was originally formulated by John Rawls (1971, p. 245, 1999, p. 89). For more recent accounts, see Michael Phillips (1985), John Gray (1995), David Miller (2001), Stuart White (2003), Colin Farrelly (2005, 2007) and A. John Simmons (2010). I do not intend to establish a dualism between ideal and non-ideal theory. Instead, the distinction is meant to be functional, that is, dependent on the degree to which the conditions modeled by the theory reflect ideal versus non-ideal conditions.

  3. In Rawls’s account of justice as fairness, he states that “justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory, however elegant and economical, must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.” (1971, p. 3). John Dryzek provides a brief historical survey of philosophical treatments of the topic of institutional design, from those of St. Augustine to contemporary Critical Theorists (1996, p. 58).

  4. For instance, Max Weber (1905/2003) understood modern institutions as doomed to increasing rationalization, captive within a metaphorical “iron cage” of never-ending bureaucratization. For Georg Simmel (1999), the personality of institutions could be witnessed in the myriad of ways that groups intersect within the social mass.

  5. Varieties of new institutionalism abound, from normative institutionalism (a pervasive logic of what is appropriate governs the behavior of actors in an institutional setting), rational choice institutionalism (institutional choices are bounded by limits on human rationality), historical institutionalism (institutional development is path dependent), constructive institutionalism institutions are constructed through the creation of ideas and through dialogue). See W. Richard Scott (2001), Herbert Simon (1997), Roger Friedland and Robert R. Alford (1991), Amy Binder (2007), and Vivien A. Schmidt (2008).

  6. For instance, in the early twentieth-century, members of the Vienna Circle met to formulate the several core commitments of Logical Positivism. While most philosophers now reject a strict fact-value dichotomy, this assumption informed the decision of early behavioralists and positivist-leaning social scientists to strictly demarcate science and ethics, positive and normative inquiry. See Hilary Putnam (2002) and Shane J. Ralston (2004).

  7. Early behavioralists endorsed a strict fact-value dichotomy inherited from the Logical Positivists. Op cit. note 6. Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley criticized the Logical Positivists’ fact-value dichotomy in Knowing and the Known: “[T]he logical distinction [between value judgments and existential judgments] which is supposed to be drawn rests upon denial, by assumption, that values and valuations are themselves factual or ‘existential’ [which] is the fundamentally… [flawed] matter” (1949/1996, LW 16:313). Many early behaviorialists also shared with economists a commitment to methodological individualism, or the belief that individual behavior is the most basic unity of analysis. In The Public and Its Problems, Dewey criticized the assumption: “We have asserted that all deliberate choices and plans are finally the work of single human beings. Thoroughly false conclusions have been drawn from this observation. By thinking still in terms of causal [or interactional] forces, the conclusion has been drawn from this fact that the state, the public, is a fiction, a mask for private desires for power and position” (1927/1996, LW 2:249). See also Westbrook (1991, pp. 433–435).

  8. Easton defined a “political system” as an assortment of inter-connected variables: “[A]t the outset, a system was defined as any set of variables regardless of the degree of interrelationship among them. […] To be of maximum utility, I have argued, a political system can be designated as those interactions through which values are authoritatively allocated for a society; this is what distinguishes a political system from other systems that may be interpreted as lying in its environment” (1965, p. 21). By helping to locate such interrelated variables in a general system, political theory complements empirical political research. John G. Gunnell (1993, 2004) disputes Easton’s view, contending that the behavioral revolution highlighted an age-old split between empirical political science and political theory, originating with the strained relationship between political authority and knowledge-based authority.

  9. Early in the Behavioral Revolution, some notable political scientists, such as David Truman, came to the defense of institutionalists. Truman writes: “The latter-day rebels have mostly rallied around the banner of ‘political behavior’ to do battle with the ‘institutionalists.’ Like most embattled revolutionists, many of them have unwisely and impetuously consigned to oblivion all the works of their predecessors” (1955, p. 215).

  10. Henry Shue insists that basic rights to security and subsistence should be prioritized before non-basic rights to human flourishing because without the former, the pursuit of the latter would be hopeless: “When a right is genuinely basic, any attempt to enjoy any other right by sacrificing the basic right would be quite literally self-defeating, cutting the ground from beneath itself” (1996, p. 97).

  11. Alan Hamlin and Stemplowska’s (2010) more recent treatment of the relative merits of ideal and non-ideal theory restates the claim that the two form a “multi-dimensional continuum” and delivers a more measured critique of non-ideal theory. The chasm between political practice and theory, or political activism and scholarly inquiry, is nicely captured in Bent Flyvbjerg’s distinction between the phronetic inquirer, who is concerned with “political interventions” and “social betterment,” and the epistemic inquirer, who is motivated solely by the desire to gain more knowledge (2001, pp. 163–164).

  12. Other candidates for what constitutes ideal theory, several of which overlap with Stemplowska’s, can be found in the works of Onora O’Neill (1996, p. 41), Farrelly (2007, pp. 844–8), Mills (2005, pp. 166–172) and Amartya Sen (2009). Michael Phillips provides a clear account of the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction: “Very roughly, Ideal Theory attempts to describe those principles for the design of institutions and the conduct of persons that would be appropriate to a morally and politically ideal order, while non-Ideal Theory concerns itself with the principles that would be appropriate for these purposes under less perfect conditions” (1985, p. 551).

  13. Relevant to the question of whether good theory must recommend or prescribe is David Estlund’s (2010) distinction between “institutional proposals” and “institutional principles.” While proposals recommend and do not require compliance, principles require that recommendations be instituted and complied with. However, there is nothing about recommending that requires that those recommendations will be instituted or that they be complied with. Thus, institutional principles are only advisory, not prescriptive.

  14. Dworkin explains the rationale behind the highly abstract insurance scheme he describes in Sovereign Virtue: “So the idea of the imaginary insurance auction provides at once a device for identifying cravings and distinguishing them from positive features of personality, and also for bringing these cravings within a general regime designed for handicaps.” (2000, p. 83).

  15. For example, Jürgen Habermas’s (1984, 1990) discourse ethics involves justifying claims and norms through a process of dialogue under certain highly idealized (what he calls ‘pragmatic-transcendental’) conditions, thereby making the process rational, fair, and free from coercion (McCarthy 1984, p. viii-x). Ideal theorists, such as Habermas, were able to isolate the essential features of an ideal deliberative situation by bracketing real-world constraints, e.g. scarcity of resources, incommensurable worldviews and strategic action.

  16. In Robert Goodin’s estimation, “[w]hat especially distinguishes the deliberative democracy movement is its concern with finding ways of putting the theory into practice. […] Of course, all democratic theorists would like to see their theories put into practice. But deliberative democrats have been far more assiduous in joining up their theory with practice than most” (2008, pp. 2–3).

  17. According to Estlund, some normative theories are “utopian” (or overly unrealistic) because they neglect “nonmoral facts about the world” (i.e., “factual utopianism,” e.g., assuming that humans are immortal or have unlimited natural resources to exploit); others can be utopian because they assume certain moral standards that it would be impossible for moral agents to meet (i.e., “moral utopianism,” e.g. assuming that people can be perfectly moral when they are incapable); still others can be realistic but hopelessly so (i.e., “hopeless realism,” e.g., a “vision” of citizens who are virtuous and institutions that enable them to be so, but the failings of humans and institutions make it unlikely); and yet still others place an imprimatur of normative legitimacy on the current state of affairs (i.e., “complacent realism,” e.g., American democracy as it is currently in operation is the ideal). In regard to the last, Estlund states: “The most realistic normative theory of all would recommend or require people and institutions to be just as they actually are already” (2008, pp. 263–264). The danger in this kind of complacent realism in normative theory is that it makes any criticism of the status quo and its institutions manifestly illegitimate.

  18. Estlund treats the institutional implications of non-ideal theory most directly in the section of chapter 14 of Democratic Authority titled “Institutional Reticence.” He begins the section by acknowledging that “[p]eople who like ‘realism’ in their theories often want not only standards that have a good chance of being met, but also specific (and non-hopeless) prescriptions for institutions” (2008, pp. 270–271). This treatment dovetails with Stemplowska’s observation that non-ideal theory is typically prescriptive. She also addresses some of Estlund’s argument against utopophobia, which was only in draft form, since his book was not published yet (2008, pp. 319, 333, especially ftn. 35).

  19. Estlund imagines institutional arrangements that would ban victims of injustice from being compensated. “The best institutions for the best possible people might avoid mechanisms of victim compensations of certain kinds.” If people cannot live up to the ideal, then the institutional scheme is doomed in advance. Institutions may be designed that will only realize certain benefits, e.g., to make everyone virtuous, “if only people lived up to their duties, but [otherwise] only make things worse if people do not live up” (2008, p. 266).

  20. Surely there are exceptions, such as Dan Kemmis, a Harvard-trained philosopher and lawyer who served as mayor of Missoula, Montana (1990–1996), and wrote about his experience in The Good City and the Good Life: Renewing the American Community (1995). So, admittedly, the argument is hyperbolic, though effective for illustrating Estlund’s point.

  21. While the omission of other pragmatists’ political theories might be held to be a weakness of my analysis, I think of it instead as an invitation for future scholarly inquiry.

  22. Antonio Gramsci (2000) and Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) notions of cultural hegemony and cultural capital virtually ensure that the dominant institutions are nothing more than reproductions of bourgeois values.

  23. Dewey claims that in the institutional phase “[w]e acted as if democracy were something that took place mainly at Washington and Albany—or some other state capital—under the impetus of what happened when men and women went to the polls once a year or so—which is a somewhat extreme way of saying that we have had the habit of thinking of democracy as a kind of political mechanism that will work as long as citizens were reasonably faithful in performing political duties” (1939/1996, LW 14:225). In the ideational phase, “[t]he idea of democracy is a wider and fuller idea than can be exemplified in the state even at its best. To be realized it must affect all modes of human association, the family, the school, industry, religion” (Dewey 1927/1996, LW 2:325). Westbrook (1991) believes that Dewey’s idea of democracy is closest to the notion of participatory democracy (pp. 547–550).

  24. Robert Westbrook (2005, p. 185) and Cornel West (1990) have made similar criticisms. I am indebted to Phillip Deen for pointing this out to me. Deen’s (2004) dissertation is an excellent treatment of Dewey’s social theory and its critics. Morton White (1976) identified “Dewey’s avowed opposition to formalism” as a barrier to theorizing about institutions (p. 21).

  25. By “habit” Dewey does not mean a rutted channel or fixed pattern of past behavior. Habits are live with values, virtues and possibilities for intelligent action. Dewey explains why he chose to employ the word ‘habit’ as the repository of both values and virtues: “But we need a word [‘habit’] to express that kind of human activity which is influenced by prior activity and in that sense acquired; which contains within itself a certain ordering or systematization of minor elements of action; which is projective, dynamic in quality, ready for overt manifestation; and which is operative in some subdued subordinate form even when not obviously dominating activity” (1921/1996, MW 14:31).

  26. For Dewey’s own autobiographical account of the “Hegelian deposit” in his philosophy, see “From Absolutism to Experimentalism” (1930/1996, LW 5:147–59). Thomas Alexander claims that “a point that is often missed” by Dewey scholars is that Dewey, even after his turn away from Hegelianism, was still “deeply impressed by Hegel” and sought to identify empirical equivalents of Hegel’s unempirical concepts (2002, pp. 7–8). For another account of Dewey’s conversion to a more empirical philosophy, see John Shook (2000, pp. 121–62).

  27. Similar to Fukuyama (1990), Dewey defines political democracy in liberal-democratic terms, that is, as those “traditional political institutions” which include “general suffrage, elected representatives, [and] majority rule” (1927/1996, LW 2:325).

  28. Dewey’s reluctance to specify model institutions that would realize his democratic ideal is mirrored in the aversion that contemporary critical theorists have to institutional design. According to Aaron Schutz, “Dewey resisted calls for him to develop a specific model of democratic government, arguing that it must look differently in different contexts” (2001, p. 288). Dryzek explains: “Overly precise specification of model institutions involves skating on thin ice. Far better, perhaps, to leave any such specification to the individual involved. The appropriate configuration will depend on the constraints and opportunities of the existing social situation, the cultural tradition(s) to which the participants subscribe, and the capabilities and desires of these actors” (1987, p. 665).

  29. Further on, Dewey writes: “[T]he ultimate value of every institution is its distinctively human effect—its effect upon conscious experience…” (1916/1996, MW 9:9–10).

  30. Indeed, one of the forefathers of the policy sciences, Harold D. Laswell, invoked “the work of Dewey and other American philosophers of pragmatism” as a prime “example of what may be expected [… when policy scientists] quickly move to the consideration of social institutions” (1951, p. 12). Commentators, such as Douglas Torgerson (1985, p. 24–5) and Frank Fischer (1980, p. 160), note that the policy sciences did not travel the strongly positivist route of the rest of political science (via the Behavioralist Revolution) largely because Laswell conceived policy making as a naturalistic and contextualized process—that is, on par with Dewey’s process of experimental inquiry. See also Laswell (1970).

  31. Similar to Anthony Kwame Appiah’s (2008) position, I understand “experimental philosophy” as normative theorizing that is attentive to concrete situations and capacities. Assuming that “ought” implies “can,” being attentive to empirical realities is a prerequisite for conducting meaningful normative inquiry, including theorizing about phenomena under non-ideal conditions. So, “experimental” signifies being broadly sensitive to empirical realities, including institutional facts. What I do not mean is that philosophy is a set of empirically-oriented experimental or social scientific methods. Also, experimental philosophy does not require that philosophers conduct their own experiments. The view that philosophers should design and conduct their own experimental inquiries is closer to the position of one sub-set of experimental philosophers. See Joshua Knobe (2007) and Knobe and Shaun Nichols (2008).

  32. For instance, Hook opposed the series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s mandating secularism in the public schools. See Ralston (2009, pp. 13–4) and Talisse (2007, pp. 124–125).

  33. Weber is an assistant professor in the Public Policy Leadership Program at the University of Mississippi. He has also authored an essay entitled “Learning from Others: What South Korean Technology Policy Can Teach the U.S.,” which argues that policy-makers in the U.S., and specifically Mississippi, could productively emulate many of the economic and technological policy innovations in South Korea (Weber 2008b).

  34. In political science, several of the key assumptions in rational choice theory appear to be utterly unrealistic or otherwise unrepresentative of actual political phenomena. See Donald Green and Ian Shapiro (1994) and Jeffrey Friedman (1996). In philosophy, examples can be found in the writings of Judith Jarvis Thompson (1971), in particular, her absurd though memorable thought experiments about famous dying violinists and babies in military tanks.

  35. Estlund (2010) has publicly announced that his next book will be a fuller defense of ideal theory and rejection of utopophobia.

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Ralston, S.J. Can Pragmatists be Institutionalists? John Dewey Joins the Non-ideal/Ideal Theory Debate. Hum Stud 33, 65–84 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-010-9138-9

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