Two Ways to Justify the Limit of Political Possibilities

Political theories may exercise a normative function. When political theories are meant to play such a normative role, their main objective consists in providing principles for political action: principles that would enlighten which courses of action should be preferred among others and pursued in the political sphere. Setting themselves this peculiar task, normative political theories are essentially interested in being consistent with what is practicably possible. For, if its main goal is to provide advice for choosing and acting properly, normative political theory aims at being relevant for actual agents. This desideratum can be satisfied only by recommending principles that can be acted upon – i.e. states of affairs that can be set as object of our actions, in other words, practicable. Given this fundamental requirement placed over normative political theories, it looks necessary to define which political states of affairs could be labelled as practicably possible (politically possible for short). Indeed, enlarging or narrowing the conception of political possibility might cause the rejection of revision of the normative principles endorsed. In the recent literature about the methods of political theory some attempts to provide an answer to this problem have been offered, directly or indirectly. I am going to show that in the current debates two major strategies to justify the border of political possibilities can be traced: the output strategy and the input strategy. According to the output strategy, the border of political possibilities is defined by placing constraints on the conclusions of theories: the distance between the actual and the possible normative political theory can admit is given by the required degree of applicability of the worlds the theory recommends, i.e. by the description of those facts that the theory must not attempt to change. Hence, for this first approach, political possibilities are the result of constraints externally imposed on theories: once the theory is developed, it must be adapted or tested against the selected circumstances of application. According to the input strategy, the border of political possibilities is defined by placing constraints on the premises of theories: the set of political possibilities admissible is given by the appropriate sources of normativity of political theory, i.e. the description of political reality we should start from, and hold fixed, when we are construing normative frameworks. So, for this second approach, political possibilities are the result of constraints internally imposed on theories: the content of the theory itself is sensitive to the selected factual constraints. Here, political possibilities matter with respect to the justification, not the application, of the theory. The output strategy is mostly found in the debates on feasibility and ideal theory, whereas the input strategy mainly characterises political realism. Crucially, these two methodological strategies are independent: a theory admissible according to the first strategy – because appropriately applicable – could be refuted by the second one – because inadequate premises makes it invalid (and vice-versa). Yet, this justificatory diversity has remained largely unrecognised. I will argue that both strategies must be taken into account and assessed in order to understand the boundary of political possibilities for normative political theory properly. Accordingly, I will propose a unified framework of analysis through which intersecting both methodologies. Following a combined understanding of the two strategies, politically possible worlds will be defined as representations of states of affairs consistent with the descriptive constraints placed both on inputs and on outputs of theories.