Res Publica 17 (2):107-123 (2011)
Authors |
|
Abstract |
Political parties have only recently become a subject of investigation in political theory. In this paper I analyse religious political parties in the context of John Rawls’s political liberalism. Rawlsian political liberalism, I argue, overly constrains the scope of democratic political contestation and especially for the kind of contestation channelled by parties. This restriction imposed upon political contestation risks undermining democracy and the development of the kind of democratic ethos that political liberalism cherishes. In this paper I therefore aim to provide a broader and more inclusive understanding of ‘reasonable’ political contestation, able to accommodate those parties (including religious ones) that political liberalism, as customarily understood, would exclude from the democratic realm. More specifically, I first embrace Muirhead and Rosenblum’s (Perspectives on Politics 4: 99–108 2006) idea that parties are ‘bilingual’ links between state and civil society and I draw its normative implications for party politics. Subsequently, I assess whether Rawls’s political liberalism is sufficiently inclusive to allow the presence of parties conveying religious and other comprehensive values. Due to Rawls’s thick conceptions of reasonableness and public reason, I argue, political liberalism risks seriously limiting the number and kinds of comprehensive values which may be channelled by political parties into the public political realm, and this may render it particularly inhospitable to religious political parties. Nevertheless, I claim, Rawls’s theory does offer some scope for reinterpreting the concepts of reasonableness and public reason in a thinner and less restrictive sense and this may render it more inclusive towards religious partisanship
|
Keywords | Religious political parties Political liberalism Public reason Reasonableness Unreasonable parties |
Categories | (categorize this paper) |
ISBN(s) | |
DOI | 10.1007/s11158-010-9138-7 |
Options |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Download options
References found in this work BETA
View all 17 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Partisanship and Public Reason.Matteo Bonotti - 2014 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 17 (3):314-331.
Introduction: Parties, Partisanship and Political Theory.Veit Bader & Matteo Bonotti - 2014 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 17 (3):253-266.
Similar books and articles
Beyond Establishment and Separation: Political Liberalism, Religion and Democracy.Matteo Bonotti - 2012 - Res Publica 18 (4):333-349.
Religious Parties, Religious Political Identity, and the Cold Shoulder of Liberal Democratic Thought.Nancy L. Rosenblum - 2003 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6 (1):23-53.
“Political, Not Metaphysical”: Reading the Bishops’ Letter as a Form of Public Reason.James W. Boettcher - 2003 - Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 77:205-219.
Political Liberalism and Political Compliance: Part 2 of the Problem of Political Compliance in Rawls’s Theories of Justice.Alan Carter - 2006 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 3 (2):135-157.
Justice and Restrain.João Cardoso Rosas - 2006 - The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 2:153-157.
Epistemic Foundations of Political Liberalism.Fabienne Peter - 2013 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 10 (5):598-620.
Feminism, Religion, and Shared Reasons: A Defense of Exclusive Public Reason.Christie Hartley & Lori Watson - 2009 - Law and Philosophy 28 (5):493 - 536.
Religious Pluralism and Democratic Society: Political Liberalism and the Reasonableness of Religious Beliefs.Thomas M. Schmidt - 1999 - Philosophy and Social Criticism 25 (4):43-56.
Legitimacy, Democracy and Public Justification: Rawls' Political Liberalism Versus Gaus' Justificatory Liberalism.Enzo Rossi - 2014 - Res Publica 20 (1):9-25.
Reasonable Pluralism and the Domain of the Political: How the Weaknesses of John Rawls's Political Liberalism Can Be Overcome by a Justificatory Liberalism.Gerald F. Gaus - 1999 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 42 (2):259 – 284.
What is Reasonableness?James W. Boettcher - 2004 - Philosophy and Social Criticism 30 (5-6):597-621.
Rawls’s Notion of the Political Conception as Educator.Steinar Bøyum - 2013 - European Journal of Political Theory 12 (2):136-152.
Political Liberalism, the Internal Conception, and the Problem of Public Dogma.Thomas M. Besch - 2012 - Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche 2 (1):153-177.
Analytics
Added to PP index
2010-12-24
Total views
133 ( #88,901 of 2,518,075 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
1 ( #409,045 of 2,518,075 )
2010-12-24
Total views
133 ( #88,901 of 2,518,075 )
Recent downloads (6 months)
1 ( #409,045 of 2,518,075 )
How can I increase my downloads?
Downloads