Public Reason, Partisanship and the Containment of the Populist Radical Right

Political Studies 71 (1):198-217 (2023)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This article discusses the growth of the populist radical right as a concrete example of the scenario where liberal democratic ideas are losing support in broadly liberal democratic societies. Our goal is to enrich John Rawls’ influential theory of political liberalism. We argue that even in that underexplored scenario, Rawlsian political liberalism can offer an appealing account of how to promote the legitimacy and stability of liberal democratic institutions provided it places partisanship centre stage. Specifically, we propose a brand-new moral duty binding ‘reasonable’ partisans committed to pluralism. This duty establishes conditions where partisans must strategically transform society’s public reason (i.e. transform the visions for society their parties campaign on) in ways that promise to attract back support from illiberal and antidemocratic competitors. While this strategic behaviour might seem impermissible, we show that Rawls’ distinctive account of sincerity in democratic deliberation is uniquely placed to justify it as perfectly ethical.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2023-02-07

Downloads
395 (#76,117)

6 months
81 (#78,273)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Gabriele Badano
University of York
Alasia Nuti
London School of Economics

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Political Liberalism.J. Rawls - 1995 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 57 (3):596-598.
Liberalism Without Perfection.Jonathan Quong - 2010 - Oxford University Press.
Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies. A Précis.Matteo Bonotti - forthcoming - Philosophy and Public Issues - Filosofia E Questioni Pubbliche.
The Meaning of Partisanship.Jonathan White & Lea Ypi - 2016 - New York, NY: Oxford University Press UK. Edited by Lea Ypi.

View all 17 references / Add more references