research topics in political philosophy

Political Philosophy Research Paper Topics

This page provides a comprehensive list of political philosophy research paper topics that aim to guide students through the vast expanse of ideas, theories, and debates that have influenced political thought over the ages. Political philosophy, with its emphasis on societal structures, rights, justice, and governance, offers a rich tapestry of subjects for academic exploration. Navigating these topics is crucial for understanding the foundational principles that have dictated and continue to shape political systems worldwide.

100 Political Philosophy Research Paper Topics

Political philosophy holds an esteemed position in the vast realm of philosophical inquiry, examining the fundamental nature of governance, rights, freedom, and societal structures. As societies evolve, so too does the need for a deepened understanding of the principles that guide them. Diving into political philosophy research paper topics is more than an academic exercise; it’s an exploration into the fabric of our collective societal heritage and a forecast of future trajectories.

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• Origin and evolution of political thought.
• Natural rights and their influence on politics.
• The role of reason in political decision-making.
• The concept of the common good.
• Pluralism and its implications.
• Classical vs. modern political philosophies.
• The notion of political obligation.
• Autonomy and its role in politics.
• Political philosophy and the question of human nature.
• Liberty, equality, and their tensions.
• Rousseau’s Social Contract and the general will.
• Locke’s Two Treatises of Government and property rights.
• Hobbes’ Leviathan and the necessity of a strong sovereign.
• Rawls’ theory of justice and the veil of ignorance.
• Scanlon’s contractualism.
• Gauthier’s Morals by Agreement.
• Contemporary criticisms of social contract theories.
• The role of trust in social contracts.
• Feminist perspectives on the social contract.
• The social contract and non-Western philosophies.
• Classical principles of Athenian democracy.
• Modern representative democracies.
• Merits and criticisms of autocratic governance.
• The rise and implications of technocratic governance.
• Participatory vs. deliberative democracy.
• The challenges of direct democracy.
• Monarchies and their evolving roles.
• Theocracy and its place in modern politics.
• Tribal and indigenous governance structures.
• Supranational entities and global governance.
• The philosophical foundations of human rights.
• Balancing individual freedom and collective responsibility.
• Limitations and responsibilities of free speech.
• Rights to privacy in the digital age.
• Economic rights and their implications.
• Rights of marginalized and indigenous groups.
• Environmental rights and intergenerational justice.
• Philosophical debates on freedom vs. security.
• The right to revolt and civil disobedience.
• Duties and the scope of global responsibilities.
• Socratic views on governance and society.
• Medieval political thought and the divine right.
• Enlightenment thinkers and the rise of republicanism.
• Fascist and Nazi political philosophies.
• Post-colonial political thought.
• Marxism and its global implications.
• Feminist political philosophies through history.
• Confucianism and East Asian political thought.
• African Ubuntu philosophy and politics.
• The political thought of the American Founding Fathers.
• Rawls’ Theory of Justice.
• Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
• Distributive vs. commutative justice.
• The gendered perspective on justice.
• Restorative and retributive justice.
• The philosophy of social and economic equality.
• Capability approach to justice.
• The philosophical foundations of affirmative action.
• Intersecting oppressions and justice.
• The role of luck in justice and fairness debates.
• Classical conceptions of political power.
• Weber’s tripartite classification of authority.
• The problem of political obligation.
• Foucault’s power/knowledge thesis.
• Challenges to political legitimacy.
• The philosophical underpinnings of civil resistance.
• Power dynamics in international relations.
• The concept of soft power.
• Critical theory and power structures.
• The philosophy behind sovereign immunity.
• Just War theory and its critiques.
• Philosophical perspectives on nuclear deterrence.
• Humanitarian interventions and their ethical implications.
• Realism vs. liberalism in international politics.
• Kant’s Perpetual Peace and modern peace theories.
• The politics and philosophy of global institutions.
• Philosophical underpinnings of international law.
• Terrorism, radicalism, and their challenges to political philosophy.
• The ethics of drone warfare.
• Philosophical discussions on global migration and borders.
• Philosophical defenses and critiques of capitalism.
• Marxist theory and its contemporary relevance.
• The evolution and varieties of socialism.
• Anarchist philosophies and critiques of the state.
• Fascism and its ideological roots.
• Libertarianism: principles and criticisms.
• Environmental political philosophies.
• Feminist political ideologies.
• Postmodern political thought.
• The future of neoliberalism.
• Contemporary Issues and Challenges in Political Philosophy.
• The philosophical implications of populism.
• Identity politics and its critiques.
• Political philosophy in the age of information.
• Climate change and political responsibilities.
• Bioethics, technology, and governance.
• Challenges and opportunities of globalism.
• Philosophical perspectives on nationalism.
• The future of democracy in a digital age.
• The rights and roles of AI in politics.
• The political implications of post-truth.

As we delve into the labyrinth of political philosophy research paper topics, we find ourselves confronted with a vast array of ideas, theories, and questions that have shaped societies for millennia. The dynamic interplay of power, rights, governance, and ethics remains as relevant today as it did in the days of Plato and Aristotle. Engaging with these topics is more than an academic endeavor—it’s a journey into the heart of what it means to be human, to be a citizen, and to be a part of the ever-evolving story of civilization. The timeless value of political philosophy serves as a testament to its enduring influence and the essential role it plays in our collective narrative.

The Range of Political Philosophy Research Paper Topics

Introduction

The annals of Western thought have been significantly shaped by the enduring influence of political philosophy. From the early musings of Socratic dialogues to the nuanced debates in contemporary think tanks, political philosophy provides a compass by which societies navigate the turbulent waters of governance, rights, and justice.

Overview of the Historical Evolution of Political Philosophy

Political philosophy, as a distinct discipline, has its roots in ancient civilizations. Early Greek thinkers, notably Plato and Aristotle, laid the groundwork for many debates that persist today. Their considerations of the ideal state, justice, and the nature of leadership set the stage for millennia of discourse. This classical foundation was built upon during the Roman era by philosophers like Cicero and later during the Enlightenment by figures such as Locke, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. Their discussions on social contracts, individual rights, and the separation of powers have left an indelible mark on Western political systems.

The 19th and 20th centuries ushered in a plethora of new ideologies, spurred by industrialization, wars, and revolutions. Thinkers like Marx and Engels critiqued capitalism and introduced revolutionary socialist ideals. Concurrently, the horrors of war led to reflections on nationalism, imperialism, and the ethics of conflict, with philosophers like Hannah Arendt dissecting the roots of totalitarianism and the banality of evil.

Relevance of Political Philosophy Research Paper Topics

A venture into political philosophy research paper topics offers a unique prism through which one can comprehend the evolution and diversity of human governance. Every political system, from monarchies to democracies, springs from a foundational philosophical rationale. For instance, understanding the American Revolution and its aftermath is enriched by a grasp of Lockean principles of life, liberty, and property. Similarly, dissecting the rise and fall of Soviet communism is more insightful when one considers Marxist-Leninist tenets.

Moreover, as globalization melds East and West, there’s an increasing importance in understanding non-Western political philosophies. Confucianism’s influence on East Asian governance models, or the Ubuntu philosophy’s impact on African communal values, are testament to the vast expanse of political philosophical thought.

Contemporary Significance and Challenges Addressed by Political Philosophy

Today, the world is no less complex than it was for our philosophical forebears. We grapple with issues of globalism vs. nationalism, the role of AI in governance, and the sociopolitical ramifications of climate change. These challenges necessitate a philosophical lens. For instance, debates on global migration are enriched by applying Rawlsian principles of justice. Similarly, the ethical implications of surveillance in our digital age can be assessed through Foucauldian concepts of power dynamics.

Political philosophy research paper topics also offer avenues to dissect newer ideologies and movements. The rise of populism in various parts of the world, debates surrounding identity politics, and the philosophical underpinnings of the alt-right or antifa movements provide rich grounds for exploration.

The Role of Political Philosophy in Shaping Public Opinion, Policy-making, and Societal Norms

While often regarded as a high-brow academic pursuit, political philosophy is intrinsically tied to the pulse of the street. The philosophical convictions of thinkers often trickle down to shape public opinion and, by extension, influence policy-making. For instance, the principles articulated in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty inform contemporary discussions on free speech and societal limits.

Additionally, societal norms, like our collective views on privacy, freedom, or equality, are continually shaped by ongoing philosophical discourses. The feminist philosophical movement, for example, has had tangible impacts, reshaping societal norms and pushing for policy changes in areas like workplace rights, reproductive health, and representation.

As the global landscape undergoes rapid and unpredictable shifts, the significance of political philosophy research paper topics becomes ever more pronounced. These topics, rooted in age-old debates yet adaptable to contemporary quandaries, provide invaluable tools for dissecting, understanding, and ultimately shaping the world around us. In a globalized, digitized age, political philosophy remains a beacon, illuminating the path for governance, societal values, and human rights. Its timeless relevance stands as a testament to the depth and breadth of issues it addresses, guiding societies past, present, and future.

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Research Topics & Ideas: Politics

100+ Politics-Related Research Ideas To Fast-Track Your Project

Finding and choosing a strong research topic is the critical first step when it comes to crafting a high-quality dissertation or thesis. If you’ve landed on this post, chances are you’re looking for a politics-related research topic , but aren’t sure where to start. Here, we’ll explore a variety of politically-related research ideas across a range of disciplines, including political theory and philosophy, comparative politics, international relations, public administration and policy.

NB – This is just the start…

The topic ideation and evaluation process has multiple steps . In this post, we’ll kickstart the process by sharing some research topic ideas. This is the starting point, but to develop a well-defined research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , along with a well-justified plan of action to fill that gap.

If you’re new to the oftentimes perplexing world of research, or if this is your first time undertaking a formal academic research project, be sure to check out our free dissertation mini-course. Also, be sure to sign up for our free webinar that explores how to find a high-quality research topic from scratch.

Overview: Politics-Related Topics

• Political theory and philosophy
• Comparative politics
• International relations
• Public administration
• Public policy
• Examples of politics-related dissertations

Topics & Ideas: Political Theory

• An analysis of the impact of feminism on political theory and the concept of citizenship in Saudi Arabia in the context of Vision 2030
• A comparative study of the political philosophies of Marxism and liberalism and their influence on modern politics
• An examination of how the Covid-19 pandemic affected the relationship between individual freedom and collective responsibility in political philosophy
• A study of the impact of race and ethnicity on French political philosophy and the concept of justice
• An exploration of the role of religion in political theory and its impact on secular democracy in the Middle East
• A Review of Social contract theory, comparative analysis of the political philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau
• A study of the concept of the common good in political philosophy and its relevance to the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe
• An examination of the relationship between political power and the rule of law in developing African countries
• A study of the impact of postmodernism on political theory and the concept of truth, a case study of the US
• An exploration of the role of virtue in political philosophy and its impact on the assessment of moral character in political leaders

Topics & Ideas: Comparative Politics

• A comparative study of different models of federalism and their impact on democratic governance: A case Study of South American federalist states
• The impact of ethnic and religious diversity on political stability and democracy in developing countries, a review of literature from Africa
• An analysis of the role of civil society in promoting democratic change in autocratic regimes: A case study in Sweden
• A comparative examination of the impact of globalization on political institutions and processes in South America and Africa.
• A study of the factors that contribute to successful democratization in authoritarian regimes, a review of the role of Elite-driven democratization
• A comparison of the political and economic systems of China and India and their impact on social development
• The impact of corruption on political institutions and democracy in South East Asia, a critical review
• A comparative examination of the impact of majoritarian representation (winner-take-all) vs proportional representation on political representation and governance
• An exploration of Multi-party systems in democratic countries and their impact on minority representation and policy-making.
• A study of the factors that contribute to successful decentralization and regional autonomy, a case study of Spain

Topics & Ideas: International Relations

• A comparative analysis of the effectiveness of diplomacy and military force in resolving international conflicts in Central Africa.
• The impact of globalization on the sovereignty of nation-states and the changing nature of international politics, a review of the role of Multinational Corporations
• An examination of the role of international aid organizations in promoting peace, security, and development in the Middle East.
• A study of the impact of economic interdependence on the likelihood of conflict in international relations: A critical review of weaponized interdependence
• A comparative analysis of the foreign policies of the EU and the US and their impact on international stability in Africa
• An exploration of the relationship between international human rights and national sovereignty during the Covid 19 pandemic
• A study of the role of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO)s in international politics and their impact on state behaviour
• A comparative analysis of the effectiveness of international regimes in addressing global challenges such as climate change, arms control, and terrorism in Brazil
• An examination of the impact of the rise of BRICS on the international system and global governance
• A study of the role of ideology in shaping the foreign policies of states and the dynamics of international relations in the US

Tops & Ideas: Public Administration

• An analysis of the impact of digital technology on public administration and the delivery of public services in Estonia
• A review of models of public-private partnerships and their impact on the delivery of public services in Ghana
• An examination of the role of civil society organizations in monitoring and accountability of public administration in Papua New Guinea
• A study of the impact of environmentalism as a political ideology on public administration and policy implementation in Germany
• An exploration of the relationship between public administration and citizen engagement in the policy-making process, an exploration of gender identity concerns in schools
• A comparative analysis of the efficiency and effectiveness of public administration, decentralisation and pay and employment reform in developing countries
• A study of the role of collaborative leadership in public administration and its impact on organizational performance
• A systematic review of the challenges and opportunities related to diversity and inclusion in police services
• A study of the impact of corrupt public administration on economic development and regional growth in Eastern Europe
• An exploration of the relationship between public administration and civil rights and liberties, including issues related to privacy and surveillance, a case study in South Korea

Topics & Ideas: Public Policy

• An analysis of the impacts of public policy on income inequality and poverty reduction in South Sudan
• A comparative study of the effectiveness of legal and regulatory, economic and financial, and social and cultural instruments for addressing climate change in South Korea
• An examination of the role of interest groups in shaping public policy and the policy-making process regarding land-use claims
• A study of the impact of globalization on the development of public policies and programs for mitigating climate change in Singapore
• An exploration of the relationship between public policy and social justice in tertiary education in the UAE
• A comparative analysis of the impact of health policies for the management of diabetes on access to healthcare and health outcomes in developing countries
• Exploring the role of evidence-based policymaking in the design and implementation of public policies for the management of invasive invertebrates in Australia
• An examination of the challenges and opportunities of implementing educational dietary public policies in developing multicultural countries
• A study of the impact of public policies on urbanization and urban development in rural Indonesia
• An exploration of the role of media and public opinion in shaping public policy and the policy-making process in the transport industry of Malaysia

Examples: Politics Dissertations & Theses

While the ideas we’ve presented above are a decent starting point for finding a politics-related research topic, they are fairly generic and non-specific. So, it helps to look at actual dissertations and theses to see how this all comes together.

Below, we’ve included a selection of research projects from various politics-related degree programs to help refine your thinking. These are actual dissertations and theses, written as part of Master’s and PhD-level programs, so they can provide some useful insight as to what a research topic looks like in practice.

• We, the Righteous Few: Immoral Actions of Fellow Partisans are Judged as Less Possible (Varnam, 2020)
• Civilizing the State: Civil Society and the Politics of Primary Public Health Care Provision in Urban Brazil (Gibson, 2012)
• Political regimes and minority language policies: evidence from Taiwan and southeast Asia (Wu, 2021)
• The Feminist Third Wave: Social Reproduction, Feminism as Class Struggle, and Contemporary Women’s Movements (Angulo, 2019)
• The Politics of Immigration under Authoritarianism (Joo, 2019)
• The politics of digital platforms: Sour Dictionary, activist subjectivities, and contemporary cultures of resistance (Okten, 2019)
• Vote choice and support for diverse candidates on the Boston City Council At-Large (Dolcimascolo, 2022)
• The city agenda: local governance and national influence in the policy agenda, 1900-2020 (Shannon, 2022)
• Turf wars: who supported measures to criminalize homelessness in Austin, Texas? (Bompiedi, 2021)
• Do BITs Cause Opposition Between Investor Rights and Environmental Protection? (Xiong, 2022)
• Revealed corruption and electoral accountability in Brazil: How politicians anticipate voting behavior (Diaz, 2021)
• Intersectional Solidarity: The Political Consequences of a Consciousness of Race, Gender and Sexuality (Crowder, 2020)
• The Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Coalitional Representation of Latinxs in the U.S. House of Representatives (Munoz, 2019)

Looking at these titles, you can probably pick up that the research topics here are quite specific and narrowly-focused , compared to the generic ones presented earlier. In other words, to create a top-notch research topic, you must be precise and target a specific context with specific variables of interest . In other words, you need to identify a clear, well-justified research gap.

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If you’re still feeling a bit unsure about how to find a research topic for your dissertation or research project, check out our Topic Kickstarter service below.

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Loyola University Chicago

Department of philosophy.

PHIL 327: Topics in Political Philosophy

The Generic Catalog Description

This course will concentrate on a specific issue in political philosophy. Typical topics include civil disobedience, war and peace, theories of political revolution, theories of utopia, and punishment and criminal justice.

PHIL 327: Topics in Political Philosophy: Liberalism and Feminism (class is linked with Dr. Ingram's PHIL 480)

This course will examine the liberal and feminist traditions in contemporary social and political philosophy.  We will begin by considering the foundational liberal social contract theory of John Rawls.  We will then address the ways that feminists have incorporated and rejected liberal thought within their theories of justice and care.  The course will also address radical feminist approaches that question the dominant liberal rights-based framework.  We will consider issues such as distributive justice and the family, the gendered basis for care and caregiving, multiculturalism and feminism, and liberal versus radical feminist positions on pornography.  Readings for the course will draw from the Anglo-American tradition in philosophy, possibly including works by authors such as John Rawls, Susan Moller Okin, Martha Nussbaum, Eva Kittay, Catharine MacKinnon, and Shulamith Firestone.

PHIL 327: Topics in Political Philosophy: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy

How should we, as social beings, live together?  This is the fundamental question of political philosophy.  This course will address this question directly.  Following the example of Plato, we will think about an Ideal Society.  Specifically, we will ask, given the knowledge and resources that we possess, what is the best form of society that we, in the United States today, might construct? 

Virtually everyone would agree as to the basic political structure of our ideal society.  It should be a democracy.  Democracy has proven itself to be a durable and contagious ideal.  The history of the past several centuries has witnessed a steady deepening of democracy to include all citizens of a society and a steady spread of democracy--at least as an ideal--throughout the world.

There may be agreement about political structure, at least in broad outline, but there is no agreement about that other fundamental feature of a society--its economic structure.  It is this disagreement that will be the focus of this course.  Should our economic structure remain capitalist?  If so, to what sort of capitalism should we aspire, a conservative free-market economy that gives keeps governmental intervention to a minimum, or a more liberal version that would, among other things, allow the government to regulate the economy more and significantly redistribute income and wealth.  Or should we aim for something more drastic.  Should we aim for a "green" economy that incorporates both capitalist and socialist structures.  Or should we try to move beyond capitalism altogether?  Does there exist an economically viable socialist alternative to capitalism, or has the socialist project been wholly discredited?  If an economically viable alternative to capitalism does exist, is it worth fighting for?

To clarify the issues, we will read three books and a set of articles, each representing a contending view: conservative, liberal, green and socialist.  The conservative position is represented by the most influential economist of the post-World-War-Two period, Milton Friedman. We will read his classic statement, which is still, as you will see, highly relevant. The liberal position is represented by several figures, the philosopher John Rawls, the British philosopher/political scientist, Brian Barry and the economist James Galbraith.  The green position will be represented by another classic text, E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful.  The socialist position will be set out in David Schweickart’s After Capitalism. 

These readings will comprise the first two-thirds of the course.  During the last third the class will divide into four groups, each of which will draw up a blueprint for its own Ideal Society, based (at least loosely) on one of the above perspectives.  The course will culminate in a Great Debate, in which each group attempts to defend its vision against the alternatives.

PHIL 327: Topics in Political Philosophy: Globalization Ethics

Thomas Wren

In this course we will explore economic and cultural issues of globalization, with particular attention to their normative dimensions of economic and cultural issues such as nationalism, colonialism, immigration,  cultural identity, group rights, and related topics such as global ecology.

We will draw on a variety of sources, including videos as well as books and articles. We will begin the course with excerpts from classic works such as Aristotle's Politics , Rousseau's Social Contract , Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Pea ce, and perhaps Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's Communist Manifesto .    We will then look at texts from contemporary authors such as John Rawls. Jurgen Habermas, Thomas Pogge, Iris young, and  Seyla Benhabib.  The readings will be supplemented with several videos about some of the disturbing by-products of globalization.

This class will meet with Dr. Ingram's graduate seminar (PHIL 480) for lectures and video presentations, though not for the scheduled discussion sessions. 

Philosophy 327: Critical Theory: Classical and Contemporary Readings

David Ingrim

The course will survey some of the major themes and thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School of critical social theory. Besides examining issues  - most notably the dialectic of enlightenment, the authoritarian personality, and the problem of technology - that preoccupied first-generation critical theorists  Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer, we will also discuss problems of communicative intersubjectivity, moral development, and self-identity that have dominated the thought of second-generation critical theorist Jürgen Habermas. We will then examine a major contemporary work on globalization and global solidarity by one of Habermas’s former students, Hauke Brunkhorst.

• Undergraduate
• Graduate/ Professional
• Adult Education

• Department of Philosophy

Research themes

Political Philosophy

Political Philosophy is the philosophical investigation of politics . Traditionally, it asks us to reconsider the concepts taken for granted in political discussions and practices: What is democracy ? Must we obey the state ? What is justice ? What is the good society ? Under what conditions can we be said to be free or equa l? More broadly, though, political philosophy is interested in the moral, metaphysical, and epistemological commitments involved in social movements , civic and political action , and state-making . It therefore considers questions such as: What does the current generation owe to future generations, and how should we share global resources? How can we solve collective action problems in the absence of a powerful coordinating entity? When is it legitimate to engage in civil disobedience, or even overthrow the current political regime? How should we punish the criminally guilty? Under what circumstances can a country justly go to war with another? And what do rich countries owe to poor countries?

At Sheffield, political philosophy has long been a strength. Our academics working in this field have well-established links with other centers of excellence, including the Stanford Center for Ethics and Society, the Ash Center and the Safra Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University, the Philosophy Department at MIT, and the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. We also regularly welcome visiting political philosophers in the department (most recently, Robert Talisse, Vanderbilt University, and Mara-Daria Cojocaru, Munich Institute of Philosophy). We have been successful in attracting research grants in this area , for example: Jenny Saul, Jules Holroyd, Robin Scaife, and Tom Stafford (Psychology) received funding for a two-year project working with the Cabinet Office to investigate workplace climate and improve diversity and inclusion in the government security workforce; Joshua Forstenzer and Vachararutai Boontinand (University of Mahidol) won a two-year Newton Fund Fellowship to study how effective pedagogies associated with philosophical enquiry can be in teaching critical thinking and democratic citizenship in Thai Higher Education. Our expertise in implicit bias training has resulted in a consultancy with the UK Civil Service  and our expertise in theories of political education and social change led to a consultancy with a Member of European Parliament. 

The Center for Engaged Philosophy houses regular activities on related topics: from a running seminar series in the philosophy of education, to regular workshops on environmental justice, implicit bias, philosophy of race, and nationalism. Furthermore, our Masters in Political Theory (run in collaboration with the Politics department) and the continual presence of a significant number of PhD students undertaking research in this field ensures a vibrant community which runs regular reading groups. As a result of this culture, our former PhD students often go on to research and teach in strong philosophy departments (for example, Carl Fox, Leeds; Jessica Begon, Durham; Katharine Jenkins, Glasgow; Tom O’Shea, Edinburgh; Natasha McKeever, Leeds; Joseph Kisolo-Ssonko, Nottingham; Katherine Puddifoot, Durham; Angie Pepper, Birmingham; Jonathan Parry, LSE).

We have particular strengths in the following areas of political philosophy, as well as in social philosophy . 

Global Justice and Environmental Justice

Megan Blomfield’s research concerns global justice and the environment , focusing on the normative dimensions of climate change . Her 2019 book on this topic,  Global Justice, Natural Resources, and Climate Chang e , asks what the world would look like if natural resources were shared fairly and then explains how this can help us to better understand the kind of problem that climate change presents and what a just response to it would look like. In related work, she investigates the connections between climate change and injustices such as colonialism .

• Blomfield M. (2015). “Geoengineering in a climate of uncertainty”. In J. Moss (ed), Climate Change and Justice . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Blomfield, M. (2016). “Historical use of the climate sink”. Res Publica .
• Blomfield, M. (2019). Global Justice, Natural Resources, and Climate Change . Oxford University Press.

Philosophy of Law

Chris Bennett has worked on numerous areas of criminal law and criminal justice , in particular on the nature and justification of punishment , the nature of criminal responsibility , the authority of criminal law; the role of eyewitness testimony in criminal trials ; and the role of emotion in excuses in the criminal law. Furthermore, he researches and teaches across both Philosophy and Law departments at Sheffield in recognition of his inter-disciplinary expertise. Jules Holroyd has worked on how we should interpret the reasonable person standard in the context of claims of self-defence, and is currently working on the notion of integrity in evidence law . 

• Bennett, C. (2008). The Apology Ritual: A Philosophical Theory of Punishment. Cambridge University Press.
• Bennett, C. (2014). “What is the core normative argument for greater democracy in criminal justice?” The Good Society .
• Bennett C. (2017). “Invisible punishment is wrong – but why? The normative basis of criticism of collateral consequences of criminal conviction”. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice. .
• Bennett, C. (2019). “The authority of moral oversight: On the legitimacy of criminal law”. Legal Theory .
• Holroyd, J, & Picinali, F. (forthcoming) Implicit Bias, Self-Defence, and the Reasonable Person, in The Criminal Law’s Person , edited by Claes Lernestedt and Matt Matravers, Hart Publishing
• Holroyd, J. & Picinali, F. (in progress) What role for Integrity?

Theories of Social Change

Joshua Forstenzer works on theories of democracy , especially on democratic innovation and democratic socialism. He also works on epistemic dimensions of deliberation and methodological debates in political philosophy. His 2019 book, Deweyan Experimentalism and the Problem of Method in Political Philosophy , proposes a middle route between ideal theory and realist political philosophy by drawing on John Dewey ’s conceptions of philosophy and democracy. Bob Stern has worked widely on Hegel , and also on his relation to Marx and the Marxist tradition, focusing on ideas such as recognition, alienation, and perfectionism.

Representative publications:

• Forstenzer, J. (2017). “Deweyan democracy, Robert Talisse, and the fact of reasonable pluralism: A Rawlsian response”. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society .
• Forstenzer J. (2018). “‘Something has cracked’: Post-truth politics and Richard Rorty’s postmodernist bourgeois liberalism”. Ash Center Occasional Papers: Harvard Kennedy School .
• Forstenzer, J. (2019). Deweyan Experimentalism and the Problem of Method in Political Philosophy . Routledge.
• Stern, R. (1994). “MacIntyre and Historicism”. In J. Horton J. & S. Mendus (eds), After MacIntyre . Polity. 
• Stern, R. (2014). “On Bernard Bosanquet’s ‘The Reality of the General Will’”. Ethics .

Health Justice

Ben Davies works on issues of justice in healthcare , including resource allocation, discrimination, and responsibility. More recently, he has begun working on the role of democratic deliberation in making political health decisions. Before joining Sheffield, he held a Wellcome Trust fellowship for a project on the application of sufficientarian justice to healthcare.

• Davies, B., De Marco, G., Levy, N. and Savulescu, J., eds. (Forthcoming) Responsibility and Healthcare.  Oxford University Press
• Park, J. and Davies, B. (Forthcoming). Rationing, responsibility, and vaccination during COVID-19: A conceptual map.   American Journal of Bioethics .
• Davies, B. (2023) Healthcare priorities: The ‘young’ and the ‘old’. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics  
• Davies, B. (2022) Responsibility and the recursion problem. Ratio

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Political Philosophy’s Methodological Moment and the Rise of Public Political Philosophy

• Symposium: The State of Analytic Political Theory
• Open access
• Published: 22 April 2022
• Volume 59 , pages 129–139, ( 2022 )

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• Jonathan Floyd 1  

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Political philosophy is having a methodological moment. Driven by long-standing frustrations at the fragmentation of our field, as well as recent urges to become more engaged with the ‘real’ world, there is now a boom in debates concerning the ‘true’ nature of our vocation. Yet how can this new work avoid simply recycling old rivalries under new labels? The key is to turn all this so-called methodological interest into a genuinely new programme of ‘methodology’, defined here as the careful identification and evaluation of all the different methods of reasoning available to us as political philosophers. This programme would clarify, for the first time, all the many ways in which we might argue with one another, thus making us less likely to talk past each another, and more likely to work fruitfully together.

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Introduction

A house divided cannot stand, but it can certainly argue. Egalitarians and libertarians in the kitchen, unable to agree on the division of labour for tonight’s family dinner. Democrats and liberals in the lounge, unable to agree on suitable viewing for tonight’s family television. Cosmopolitans and statists in the study, shutting their ears to such domestic squabbles, yet unable to agree on even the simplest boundaries in their own shared space, especially since being told by their employers to ‘work from home’, wherever that might be. And these are just the friendly rivalries — siblings operating on a shared floor, and with more in common than they like to admit.

In the rest of the house things really fall apart, with distant mutterings and slammed doors a now familiar but staccato backing track to our theoretical life, echoing at times the polarised politics of the wider world outside. This is the hum and buzz of realists in the basement, sticking to the foundations, and moralists in the attic, reaching for the sky; of continentals in the bedrooms, artfully putting on their make-up, and analytics in the bathroom, vigorously scrubbing it all away; but also the rest of us, doing as best we can in those liminal zones of landing, hallway, and stairs. For us, it’s the subtle art of blending approaches without antagonising peer-reviewers, as feminists, multiculturalists, critical theorists, and every ism-less hybrid in between, sometimes tilting to facts and sometimes principles, sometimes contexts and sometimes universals, sometimes thinking historically and sometimes globally. Such open-plan working can be a grind, of course, but it’s not the harshest fate on offer. Being evicted would be much worse; not being admitted in the first place the worst of all.

Imagine then what would happen if, one day, an outsider came to political philosophy’s front door for the first time, hearing the hubbub within, as they take the steps up the porch, and hoping to learn something — as we all do in this collection — of the ‘state of the art’ that produces it. What would they make of it all? What would they make of us ? And would they, somehow, see method in our madness? Perhaps so, if they glimpsed some overarching goal that is well served by such creative pluralism, animating the house from the outside though we do not always see it within, or if they saw a family that is slowly coming together rather than painfully growing apart, or if they saw us as helpful neighbours, with valuable skills for those around us. Yet they might see something else, if they looked a little less kindly and a little more honestly. They might see, in truth, that there are really multiple methods at play here. This is because, deep down, our house is one in which we talk past each other because we talk in different ways. Or, put differently, one in which at least some of the rivalries and misunderstandings that bedevil us stem not from irreconcilable aims, but from unspoken disagreements over the forms of reasoning we use to pursue them.

Let us call this view, from now on, the methodological explanation of our current plight, and let us note, straight away, that although it is a less optimistic view than the three more charitable interpretations mooted, it does have one signal advantage over all of them, which is that, instead of just wishful thinking, it suggests a timely and potentially rich programme of scholarship: a programme of methodology in political philosophy, understood here as the judicious identification, analysis, and evaluation of all the various methods of argument available to political philosophers.

This work is timely, in part, because of the noted fragmentation of our house, but also something more recent, as well as more distinctive of the current zeitgeist: the methodological moment political philosophy now finds itself in, as produced by the cumulative work of a wide range of scholars, all of whom have become deeply engaged with questions regarding the overall nature and purposes of our discipline. From ideal versus nonideal theory (Hamlin & Stemplowska, 2012 ; Erman & Möller, 2022 ), to moralism versus realism (Rossi & Sleat, 2014 ; Rossi, 2019 ), to transcendental versus comparative theory (Sen, 2009 ), all the way through to ‘political’ political theory (Waldron, 2016 ), our subject has never been more preoccupied than it is right now with general questions of orientation, as well as more precise questions concerning, say, fact-independence (Ronzoni & Valentini, 2008 ), practice-dependence (Sangiovanni, 2008 ), action-guidance (Valentini, 2012 ), and the gap between perfect utopias (Estlund, 2019 ) and real contexts (Modood & Thompson, 2018 ). Footnote 1 So, we are divided, sure, but not dumbstruck; lacking harmony, undoubtedly, but not noise. What we have on our hands is an impasse, but also an opportunity: to gather up these new ideas, to organise them into a new field of enquiry, and then to use that field, with a bit of luck, to change the way we currently talk both to and past one another.

This, at least, is the hope of the programme of methodology proposed here, and it can only be a hope for now, given how many new and previously unasked questions it gives us. These include how many methods our subject really has, when they are helpful, and how they differ from those found in moral philosophy and political science. They include whether we should really be labelling, as ‘methods’, such diverse items as realism, contextualism, data-mining, conceptual analysis, reflective equilibrium, and normative behaviourism (Perez, 2020 ). And they include, on the back of these initial enquiries, where exactly philosophical reasoning diverges from political rhetoric. For example, if a philosopher deploys a moving thought experiment about a child drowning in a pond (Singer, 1972 ), whilst a politician recounts the parable of the Good Samaritan (Spencer, 2017 ), what precisely is the difference? Or, from a different angle, if a philosopher makes their case for socialism by telling a folksy story about how we would or should behave on a camping trip (Cohen, 2009 ), is that not emotive analogical rhetoric, just as much as it is clever analogical reasoning? And indeed, if that same scholar entitles their book with what we’d normally call a ‘rhetorical’ question — ‘If you’re an egalitarian, how come you’re so rich?’ (Cohen,  2021 ) — is that not, again, a sign that the line between cold-blooded philosophy and hot-blooded politics is less clear than we might hope? We might decide here, of course, that there is a degree of acceptable overlap, but also that some methods are just too manipulative for sober prose, though fine for catchy book titles, yet either way, we first need to know exactly what these methods are and how they work. That is, we first need to do the methodology .

There is though something of a paradox here, or at least a little irony, bearing in mind that one of the driving forces behind this recent methodological moment, as witnessed in the literature just noted, has been an urge to make our subject more practical . How exactly does that urge square with the claim made here that we should now turn, at least initially, to the kind of meta -theory often thought of as indulgent navel-gazing? The truth is that this is unavoidable. We simply cannot rush, in the name of rights or racism, let alone relevance, from contemplation to coercion — not if we want there to be any cogency to it, let alone consent. First, we get our house in order and then, maybe, we think about ordering others. Methodology is a pre-requisite, not a panacea: a first, not a final stage, for those with wider political ambitions. Or, put differently, it is a necessary though naturally insufficient step towards strongly ‘practical’ or ‘political’ political philosophy of the much-desired kind, setting the scene for world-shaping interventions without making them directly itself. And that is just fine. Its mission is simply to ease us away from the babble of our current House of Babel, and towards not just better conversations, but also better collaborations, including with those in the non-academic world beyond. If it manages that, it would be more than enough to be going on with. In the language of an earlier zeitgeist , it would be the kehre out of our current methodenstreit , giving us an exciting body of work for now and a significant one for the future.

The key task then, for the rest of this article, will be to show just some of this excitement, as a prelude to the full programme to come. This will be done in four stages. First, a careful mapping out of the methodological terrain that has so far only been illustrated via the issues mentioned. Second, a proposed framework for organising this terrain, building on previous work on the same front. Third, a return to the theme of practical urgency, and thus one of the most pressing issues mooted earlier, of how we can separate rhetoric from reason in our methods, particularly when contemplating the rise of what I will call here ‘public political philosophy’. Fourth, some consideration of the future of methodology, stressing that it will need diverse hands as well as open minds. Note though that at all times here the aim is simply to provide plausible yet provisional suggestions regarding how this new research field might be organised. This is crucial, because although we need common terms of reference, if we are to move forwards, we also need a degree of flexibility, if we are to avoid ultimately slipping back into the kind of polarisation and mutual misunderstandings that currently dog our discipline.

Methodology as a Subject Area

The suggestion here, then, is that political philosophy needs to seize our current methodological moment and turn it into proper methodology. This means, above all else, working up a new research agenda concerned with setting out the various tools at our disposal, and evaluating them in terms of what they might to do for us, whatever ends we have in mind. For example, what can we do, and not do, with thought experiments? How should we use facts, whether hard data or soft anecdotes, when pursuing principles, moral, political, or otherwise? How might we blend sociology, history, political science, moral psychology, anthropology, economics, and the burgeoning field of comparative political theory? And indeed, how can we do all this given that the issue is not just how we might use such materials in terms of the familiar tasks already being pursued in this ‘house’ we call political philosophy, but also how useful they might be when put to work in ‘real’ politics? Footnote 2

We might wonder, after all, if that latter kind of work requires the same tools, though used in different ways and with different blends, or whether it somehow involves its own methods, which again we would need to investigate, and indeed master, if we want to change the world in line with our cherished principles. We also might worry about the fact that working with people as they are, rather than as we idealise them, brings an opposing pair of risks. On the one hand, we can become unduly conservative, simply reaffirming the status quo. On the other, we can become unduly radical, thus banishing ourselves to those ivory towers we all claim to shun. So, again, we need to get our methods straight if we are to have any hope of encouraging the kinds of political intervention required of our various theories of, for example, justice, democracy, rights, and so on.

This means, initially, getting the concept of methodology straight, by dividing it into the following two levels of enquiry. First, at the level discussed so far, we need to work out, in broad terms, what our subject involves, and then work out, in careful detail, all the various tools at our disposal, from thought experiments, to historical expositions, to opinion surveys, and beyond. Second, at a level to come, we need to develop a rich body of arguments concerning these very issues. In other words, as this new field grows, it will become not just a case of one or more individuals trying to work out, idiosyncratically, the modes and methods of our subject, but also of groups of scholars engaging in concert with a growing body of scholarship on just these issues. That, after all, is just what we would expect of any established field in political philosophy, or indeed any coherent research programme, and we want the same here of methodology.

What though, exactly, would progress look like here, bearing in mind these two levels? Ideally, of course, it would involve convergence and consensus on an increasing number of issues: perhaps on the variety of available methods, if not their value, or perhaps on the need to tailor our methods for different audiences, if not quite on how to manage this. Yet what if this does not happen? What if, instead, things become more fractious and rivalrous than that, as we might suspect? If so, and our eristic tendencies continue to match our analytical ones, then there could still be hope on the horizon. We need not despair, or fear we are returning to the babble described above, just so long as these new camps are sedulously defended and developed, and become established and suitably refined positions (and ‘isms’) in their own right. If this happens, then no matter the differences between these camps, they will still provide, when taken together, a useful set of resources from which all can learn and borrow, as well as, crucially, a new and common language capable of facilitating those productive conversations and collaborations we long for. Disagreement, in other words, is fine, just so long as it is clear and constructive.

On this note, perhaps, it is worth recounting something Onora O’Neill once noted of a set of responses to Christine Korsgaard’s The Sources of Normativity . ‘Needless to say’, she writes, ‘no unanimity has been achieved [here], but a vigorous approach to a set of topics that are central for ethics has been proposed, explored, and criticised’ (O’Neill, 2010, xii). Well, of course, it was almost needless to say as much in an academic philosophical context, given our propensity to engage with one another solely through critique, but even so, it is always worth remembering that there are different forms of critical disagreement that can develop over time in our profession, ranging from outright dismissal and rejection, at one end of the spectrum, to careful differentiation, and even more careful blending, on the other. The latter, crucially, is progressive, co-operative, and hopeful, without being dependent on everyone agreeing on everything. All it requires, at root, is contributors working up their positions in good faith, presenting them to others with transparency, and judiciously refining and developing them as new alternatives and objections come along. This, again, should be our ambition with methodology.

One Possible Methodological Framework

Now, in order to encourage this ambition, rather than simply ‘calling’ for it, I want to propose an initial starting position regarding what political philosophy involves and how we might organise the methods at its disposal. Remember, this is just one viable view amongst several: a provisional offer for others to engage with. Nonetheless, the hope here, borrowing a distinction from Rawls, is that it helps us see the fruitfulness of the general concept of methodology described, however much we disagree over particular conceptions within it (Rawls, 1971). If scholars learn from it, use it, borrow from it, improve it, or develop alternatives that they believe avoid errors within it, then that’s all to the good. Methodology in political philosophy — and this is crucial — only has to be useful in the way that a DIY shop is useful. It does not matter whether we all buy identical tools for identical houses; all that matters is that methodologists set these tools out on display, as clearly as possible, and with appropriate advice on what they are good for, so that others can find, choose, and use them as best they see fit.

Here then is just one possible theory of future methodology in political philosophy, a theory that echoes many in the long tradition of Western political thought by having three key parts to it: (1) a general framework for our subject matter; (2) a set of three tasks serving that framework; and (3) a range of methods applicable to those tasks. These run as follows.

First, the general framework which holds that political philosophy should be defined not in terms of ideals , such as justice or legitimacy, or institutions , such as the state or government, but rather in terms of a question : ‘how should we live?’ This is an argument developed at length elsewhere (Floyd, 2011 ; Floyd, 2017A ), but the key rationale for it is simple enough. In contrast to ideal-based or institution-based definitions, this question-based approach is both inclusive and exclusive to just the right degree: inclusive given that it can accommodate, say, libertarian and egalitarian work, or statist and cosmopolitan positions, without difficulty; exclusive given that it can be helpfully separated from equivalent questions for both the moral philosopher — ‘how should I live?’ — and the social scientist — ‘how do we live?’ As a result, with this framework in hand, we nudge the disciplinary dial away from competition and towards cooperation, making the domestic babble described above just a little less likely. And, at the same time, we delineate a subject, not just in which existing scholars can find a comfortable home, but also one to which outsiders can be warmly invited, knowing that they are visiting somewhere that is usefully distinct from other academic houses in the neighbourhood.

Next, then, we have the idea that political philosophy can be divided into three distinct tasks, building again on a position developed elsewhere (Floyd, 2019 ). These three are analysis , critique , and ordering , with each working roughly as follows. Analysis, first, involves isolating and illuminating whichever concepts interest us when thinking about how we should live, including values such as freedom and equality. This maps out for us our basic working material. Critique, second, subjects those values to various objections, each of which might affect our willingness to promote them in the real world. This tests our working material, giving us a good initial sense of what it can and cannot handle. And then comes ordering. This third task involves drawing on the materials provided by analysis and critique in order to generate precise sets of political principles capable of guiding our concrete political preferences. Footnote 3 Here, then, we aim to order our ideas in order to shape our political orders. All of which, when taken together, gives us three distinct tasks that are not just important, but also mutually compatible . Analysis, clearly enough, serves critique, which in turn serves ordering, though each can be pursued in isolation, depending on our interests, as well as the faith we have in our assumptions concerning the contents of the others. And this is crucial, bearing in mind our wider aims here. As with the general framework, it again encourages cooperation over conflict, because again it allows various projects in our subject to live alongside one another without the need to declare themselves the one true faith.

Finally, then, we have the claim that each task suits a different set of methods. Critique, for instance, can involve a charge of what we might call ‘problematic implications’, whereby a given idea has dangerous consequences, or a charge of ‘inconsistency’, whereby a given position has incompatible elements within it. Isaiah Berlin’s critique of positive liberty (Berlin, 1969 ), for example, is a case of the first, whilst Charles Taylor’s later critique of Berlin’s position (Taylor, 1979 ) is a case of the second. Similarly, ordering might involve a method of testing political principles against ‘considered judgements’ (Gaus, 2010 , 174; Floyd, 2017a , 131–138), or perhaps our more abstract ‘intuitions’ (Appiah, 2008 ; Floyd, 2017a , 138–153) or perhaps a combination of both via ‘reflective equilibrium’ (Rawls, 1971; Daniels, 1979 ; Floyd, 2017b ). It might even involve, looking at more recent scholarship, a new method of testing principles for real-world suitability proposed by De-Shalit under the label of ‘public reflective equilibrium’ (de Shalit, 2020 ; cf. Wolff, 2020 ). Again though, there are all options . Each of these methods, and others, can be experimented with, and each scrutinised by methodologists. We do not say here, then, that this or that is the perfect or comprehensive method. We say simply that, with political philosophy framed as an open-ended question, and divided into a friendly division of labour, let us try and look at all such methods with a little more freedom, fairness, and focus, than they normally receive, given that we are no longer trying to bundle them up with any one substantive position, from egalitarianism, to libertarianism, to communitarianism, and beyond.

So, once more, the conception offered here frames our subject in terms of the following: (1) a question; (2) a set of tasks serving that question; and (3) a range of methods serving those tasks. As a result, it maps out a terrain that we had previously only guessed or gestured at, relying on the knack and judgement of experience, or the examples provided by those we considered experts in our field. Now, by contrast, we can go well beyond such things. Building on the promise of this new field, we will soon identify and explore both smaller and larger features of our work than had been properly considered before.

We might, for example, start to give proper scrutiny to what often seems, rightly or wrongly, some kind of ‘master’ method in political philosophy, and indeed in much of academic enquiry beyond our borders: the method of arguing for our own position by arguing against the position of others. This is something, intriguingly, that Mill touches on in On Liberty , when approvingly quoting Cicero’s remark that three quarters of all arguments in moral, civil, and political matters are ultimately arguments against the alternatives and objections to our own case (Mill, 1989 , 30). It is also something, equally intriguingly, that we typically adhere to without comment in most of our books and articles, not to mention the ‘literature review’ sections of most doctoral theses. Clearly, we instantiate it every day via norms of peer review, just as legal systems channel it with trials by jury. Yet what exactly does this mostly adversarial practice involve? What assumptions does it rest upon? And can it ultimately be justified without relying on itself? Perhaps, for example, this multi-purpose tool relies upon a deeper notion of expert ‘judgement’, whereby rejecting the ‘best’ positions on a given topic, such as justice, whilst our own view remains intact, gives the latter some kind of halo effect Footnote 4 ? Or might it rest on ‘falsification’, borrowing from Popper, with progress in our field coming, not from proving new theories, but from steadily falsifying old ones (Popper, 1963 )?

In any case, whatever the truth is of this method, or indeed the more particular ones practised under each task, and whatever the extent might be to which different methods can be used for more than one task, the key point remains that simply having a framework of the kind proposed, and looking carefully, as a result, at all these general and replicable forms of reasoning, outside of any substantive arguments over justice, rights, or legitimacy, can only be a good thing for our work. It leads to novel and potentially productive questions. It helps us get our thinking straight, so that communication, justification, and political applications are all enhanced. And it does this, crucially, even if we continue to disagree, not just about those substantive issues, but also the merits of each of these tools. All that really matters here, for most of us, is that we start to share a better collective understanding of the methods at our disposal; all that really matters, for the methodologist, is that their work supports this collective understanding. It is enough, for this new field, to identify and illuminate the tools at our collective disposal, without prescribing the end to which they should be put. If we can separate and display them, with clear labels and neat boundaries, our job is more than well done, without pre-empting the jobs of others.

Reason, Rhetoric, and the Hybrid Art of Public Political Philosophy

The argument so far has taken us from a general concept of methodology to a particular conception of how it should be organised. This opens up a range of fertile topics, including the aptness of that conception, but also, and more importantly, the details of the methods it illuminates. Of all these methods, however, one cluster in particular stands out as a useful illustration of the value of this new field: a cluster that I will refer to, from here on in, as the art of ‘public political philosophy’.

This art really matters to methodology, and for at least four reasons. First, because of the noted practical ambitions behind much of our subject’s recent methodological moment, from ideal vs. non-ideal theory, to moralism vs. realism, to ‘political’ political theory, and beyond (Floyd, 2010 ; Floyd, 2020 ). Second, because we clearly need to work at this art, not just in order to meet those ambitions, but also to meet the growing requirements of our funding bodies, most of whom now push ‘engagement’ or ‘impact’ as conditions of their various fellowships and audits (just as they once, notably, pushed ‘methods training’ Footnote 5 ). Third, and more importantly, because its workings remain unclear, despite being well illustrated, in recent times, by charismatic scholars such as Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, and Michael Sandel. Fourth, and most importantly of all, because it is not even clear, if we mastered such workings, what success on this front would actually look like.

We could, for example, just bow here to whatever the latest intellectual and institutional pressures are to be ‘relevant’, and then say that any method of argument is good if it serves that end. If so, ‘good’ public political philosophy could be measured in likes, views, re-tweets, and so on. Yet that cannot be right, given the principled demands of our various theories, and there are clearly pros and cons to different kinds of ‘relevance’. On the one hand, sure, getting things right could lead to a wider audience and better world, but getting them wrong could be disastrous. Superficiality, undue deference, excessive conservatism, unintended legitimisation, hollow virtue signalling, and the steady marginalisation of any topic without immediate practical ‘benefit’ — these are just some of the risks we incur when reaching out to the public via The Times , TedX , or TikTok .

Given these dangers, then, how might methodology get a handle on this art? Perhaps, as a first step, by looking critically at some of the language used in this very article. Consider, for example, the various analogies deployed so far, from houses to tools to DIY stores. Or consider, once more, Singer’s famous thought experiment involving a child drowning in a pond whom you could rescue if you chose, though it might cost you a suit, or at least a hefty dry-cleaning bill (Singer, 1972 ). What is going on with these analogies? As methods of argument, are they innocent illustrations or something more substantial? At root, do they function as thought experiments, allegories, case-studies, or something else? And, most importantly of all, do they help or harm our pursuit of a better world?

Clearly, knowing the answers to these questions would be a good start when it comes to understanding, and mastering, public political philosophy. It would help us begin to divide progressive techniques from those likely to backfire. It would help us separate short-term attention-grabbing from long-term cultural change, and thus ‘relevance’ from ‘significance’. And it would help us, in turn, draw a careful line between the wider mediums of philosophical reasoning and political rhetoric, meaning we could then better distinguish serious scholarship from the kind of cheap put-downs found in election campaign posters, in both our own arguments and the arguments of others.

This will not, however, be easy work, and not just because of institutional and political pressures to ‘cut through’ and ‘make a difference’, or indeed our own biases on particular causes, but also because of ingrained writing habits. How we write, who we write for, and the way in which we blend prose and polemic — these are all highly developed traditions involving a whole range of methods of reasoning. Consider, for example, that just as political philosophers use analogies ad nauseum to build their cases, they also use reductio ad absurdum to demolish their opponents’. Footnote 6 Like novelists, they depict utopias and dystopias for both critical and constructive purposes. Footnote 7 Like lawyers, they constantly argue against as a means of arguing for — as noted earlier. So, of course, the line between professional and polemical argument matters here, and yes, if we can get it right it will help us master public political philosophy to good effect, but it will not be a quick conceptual split. It is, instead, a serious, long-term methodological project, covering various methods and confronting various interests. Or, more analogically, it’s a project worth getting our teeth into, but hardly bite-size.

Again though, how we might start to move this work forward? Well, perhaps by taking just one plausible interpretation of the ‘logic’ of the analogies just discussed and then applying it to the problem at hand. That is, if we assume that analogical reasoning is something like reasoning from case-studies , with inferences drawn accordingly, what we could do here is study some of the better known instances of where public and philosophical argument cross paths in order to work out which methods best serve our purposes — and indeed in order to work out, as noted, just what our purposes should be here in the pursuit of ‘success’, ‘relevance’, ‘impact’, and so on. We might, for example, look at someone like Iris Murdoch, thinking about fiction and philosophy. In her case, novels serve as a unique space to explore ideas, as well as to share them far and wide. Or we might look at Cicero, as a philosopher, lawyer, and politician. In his case we find public political philosophy taken to the highest possible level, as well as reflections on the proper place of rhetoric in republics, though also an awkward caveat, at least for today’s professional theorists — the caveat that ‘true’ wisdom here requires considerable practical experience, especially when it comes to the merits of Romans over Greeks.

These cases, however, though clearly meriting future methodological scrutiny, are still not the best at hand for now. Instead, for our purposes, it would be better to look at contemporary political philosophers, working in our institutional and intellectual culture, and doing their best to blend what seem to be these rival imperatives of truth and power. On this front, several candidates come to mind, including those three mentioned earlier — Appiah, Nussbaum, and Sandel. Better still, though, would be three thinkers who have both stepped into the political realm and philosophically reflected upon that very step — Amartya Sen, Onora O’Neill, and Jonathan Wolff. With each of these cases, we can ask: What methods have they deployed? Have those methods led to them going too far or not far enough? And how might we combine the approaches they have both articulated and practised in order to master this hybrid art of ‘public political philosophy’?

Let’s detail each of these in turn, starting with Sen, whose theoretical work on utilitarianism, democracy, justice, and development, including collaborative efforts with Martha Nussbaum on the ‘capabilities’ approach, led famously to the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) (Sen, 2001 ). More recently, he has also shed light on the jump from theory to practice by developing a ‘comparative’ approach to justice that focuses our attention, echoing Judith Shklar, more on immediate injustices than the pursuit of perfect utopias (Sen, 2009 ; Shklar, 1990). On this view, intriguingly, and building on his earlier work, eliminating dictatorship is more important than perfecting democracy, just as ending famines is more important than achieving equality. It is though for that earlier work that he is most widely known, leading not just to a Nobel Prize in economics, but also a National Humanities Medal from a President who was in turn occasionally described as a modern ‘philosopher-king’: Barack Obama. This medal, aptly, was awarded for the application of ‘philosophical thinking to questions of policy’. Footnote 8

Second, we have O’Neill, whose long-standing research on Kantian ethics informed not just pioneering theoretical arguments on ‘idealisation’ (O'Neill, 1987 ), in similar territory to Sen’s recent writings, but also public intellectual contributions on ‘trust’ (O'Neill, 2002 ), as well as a broad portfolio of policy work as a Member of the House of Lords. Footnote 9 This work ranged from banking reform to media regulation, and has taken place alongside both more traditional and more public-facing intellectual activity, including most recently on the ethical challenges of pandemics (Niker & Bhattacharya, 2021 ). It also consistently provided not just an expression of certain core philosophical skills, but also an expression of a particular view on public political philosophy, as articulated in her From Principles to Practice (O'Neill, 2018 ). On this view, the key role for the aspiring Cicero is not to try and dictate perfect policy, as if one had a captive or perfectly willing audience, but to produce careful yet accessible arguments, involving explicit principles and transparent inferences, so that democratic publics can make better, or at least more informed, decisions themselves.

All of which takes us to Wolff, whose early work on abstract theories of justice led not just to more ‘applied’ theoretical publications on the ideas of disability and disadvantage (Wolff, 2009 ), but also a rich body of work on various councils and committees, as well as, most recently of all, an illuminating distillation of how best to go about this activity in Ethics of Public Policy (Wolff, 2012 ). Here, drawing on policy-review experience across rail safety, drug reform, gambling controls, and more besides, Wolff follows O’Neill in advocating the careful presentation of arguments for and against different policy options, with meticulous and explicit reference to the principles involved, as well as cautious reflections on how attractive those principles might be, and where they might lead if left unchecked. He also shares an approach that encourages us to shed philosophical light on issues as and when they acquire political salience, regardless of whether they are academic hot-topics, which is why he too has commented on the ethics of pandemics and lockdowns, alongside more ‘traditional’ theorising. Footnote 10 Again then, there is a consistent focus here on enriching rather than controlling conversations, though that too, perhaps, is encouraged by political rather than academic fashions, if it is indeed true that polarisation has now supplanted apathy as the great danger of modern democracies. Footnote 11

Clearly, there is much to learn from these thinkers. Zooming in on their methods, we see them deploy, for example, conceptual analysis (of democracy, trust, risk, etc.), analogies to real and hypothetical examples (from Indian famines to imaginary train crashes), and the careful mapping out of inferences between principles and cases, verging at times on a public form of reflective equilibrium. Footnote 12 Zooming out, we see their explanations of why such methods are appropriate for public political philosophy, and in particular the principled limits that O’Neill and Wolff have set themselves in such work. As noted, these two prefer to explain the connections between theory and practice, or more precisely between principles and policies, without for the most part prescribing to their democratic audience. The dilemma is x , they tend to say; the choices y and z . Success, on this view, is measured in clarity, consciousness, and culture, not policy or popularity. The role of the public political philosopher is simply to illuminate options, enrich debates, nuance conversations, and indeed democratic deliberations, without having to pick sides, in the sense of strongly aligning oneself to any particular party or policy.

Is this approach, however, just a bit too timid ? Yes, it can look like wise and patient politics, but also convenient deference. After all, if these authors have the truth about banking, disability, gambling, and so on, should not they push a little harder? Should they not, perhaps, tell the public that this is what philosophy shows , or proves , even if not all philosophers agree with them? Maybe so, though presumably a key worry here is that such an approach could easily backfire, leading to less influence for them, and perhaps even intellectuals or ‘experts’ in general. Footnote 13 Nonetheless, there is also the danger here that just by taking part in debates, processes, and policy reviews, our illustrious political philosophers give weight to particular policy outcomes, even when expressing disagreement with them. Consider, for example, the case of Jeremy Waldron, as ‘Chichele chair of Social and Political Theory’ at Oxford, when commenting on the Leveson enquiry into media regulation in the UK. Footnote 14 Here, as with any contributor, it is easy to ‘note’ his contribution without addressing it, and thus easy to treat him as a ‘consultant’, or even a ‘co-author’, without having to take his view on board. And indeed, that becomes even easier the more scholars one involves, because when so many diverse voices are gathered up in such ‘enquiries’, there is little pressure on the enquiry chair to bow to any one of them, though every reason to boast, upon finishing such work, of all the great and the good whose thinking ‘informed’ the finished product.

This worry, then, about unintended collusion, is a serious one, and it leads in turn to a second — the worry that perhaps the real ‘methods’ that matter in this realm are not really to do, after all, with what is said, but rather how and by whom . Of course, we all wring our hands about how to square the philosophical imperative of truth with the public imperative of impact, but the reality might be, not just that easier influence sometimes comes from deviations from the truth, but also that it depends on the right form of delivery. We know full well, after all, that political triumphs often flow simply to those who are seen by their audience as the most competent or trustworthy voice on stage, regardless of the ‘real’ merits of their arguments on the issue at hand. Or, put differently, we know full well that, regardless of their methods , persuasive people persuade us, whether through objective credentials or personal charisma. Yes, it might also be true that, at least sometimes, charisma flows from the possession of a clear set of core principles, held with certainty and expressed with clarity, yet some people, it seems, just sound or look right to the audience at hand, whatever the quality of their mind-set. They speak the right way; make the right jokes; hold themselves in just the right posture; and so on and so forth.

What though, if anything, can those of us who are awkward philosophers do about this awkward fact? Presumably not very much, at least when it comes to changing it. Yet that does not mean we cannot work around it, and again, perhaps individual case-studies offer a way forward, especially when provided by thinkers who have come even closer to the front line of politics, without being the front man or woman themselves. Here, for example, we might look at William Galston’s work with Clinton, or Philip Pettit’s work with Zapatero, or Yael Tamir’s work in the 15th, 17th, and 19th Knessets. Or, better still for our purposes, we might look at Marc Stears, drawing on his time as Chief Speechwriter to Ed Miliband, the then Leader of the Opposition in British Politics. Footnote 15 Stears, notably, mirrors Galston in being an adherent to the ‘new realism’ in political theory, though how exactly that shapes his politics is unclear. What is clear is that his role here saw him combine, at one stage, (1) the latest political theory on ‘pre-distribution’ with (2) contemporary anxieties over the cost of living, into (3) a prize-winning speech that called for, amongst other things, an energy price cap. Footnote 16 As a result, his public-political-philosophical work provides a case-study, not just in combining abstract theory with pressing policy choices, but also the kind of rhetorical flair we presumably need if we are to be sufficiently persuasive.

So what exactly does this case tell us? Well, as with Anscombe and Cicero, there is obviously much that needs to be scrutinised here by future methodologists. And, as with Sen, O’Neill, and Wolff, there is obviously much to emulate. Clearly, Stears joins a long line of political philosophers, from Aristotle and Averroes to Mary Warnock and Bernard Williams, who have managed to alter, in various ways, the wider flows of public discourse. Nonetheless, for now, there is a much harsher lesson that needs to be taken on board by anyone hoping to find the right methods of public political philosophy. Out there in the ‘real world’, it took just one widely shared picture of Miliband ‘trying’ to eat a bacon sandwich to do more harm than any philosophical thought experiment ever could when it came to winning power for this new and principled policy-platform. Footnote 17 Out there, in the cut and thrust of ad hominem politics, it took just one clever campaign poster, involving a visual analogy of Miliband sitting ‘in the pocket’ of the Scottish National Party’s leader, Alex Salmond, to do more harm than any think-tank paper ever could on the merits of devolution, no matter how careful its conceptual analysis. Footnote 18 So, although it remains true that the public can be moved by informed debate, and that there are more and less dangerous ways of our trying to gain their attention, there is clearly no silver bullet for public-minded philosophers. Whether one likes it or not, messengers matter, not just messages; images matter, not just intellects. Naturally, the public like clear policies with clear rationales, but they like them most of all when offered by people they already find likeable.

All of which, then, seems to put us back in the quandary we started with. How can public political philosophers play with fire without getting burnt? How can they ‘do’ politics without sliding into petty point-scoring? And how can they shape public debate without presenting only our most populist ideas via our prettiest philosophers? Well, here is a cautious suggestion. Drawing on all these cases considered so far, perhaps the key point is that we should not forget what we do well in order to try and do everything. We should not, that is, become too ‘political’ (Waldron, 2016 ; cf. Finlayson, 2015 ), just as academia, in general, should not become too ‘activist’. This is because, if we stop being distinctively cautious and abstract, we lose our unique purpose, and indeed our claim to the resources and audience we already have , as opposed to those extra readers, listeners, and viewers we might reach for in the pursuit of ‘impact’. From Sen and O’Neill, to Wolff and Stears, the best cases of public political philosophy seem to suggest not just a handy quiver of methods worth borrowing, but also a careful remit worth following — a remit that helps us enhance debates, as well as the reputation of our subject, without adding to the forces of ‘polarisation’ and ‘post-truth’ already out there. Of course, we will always be tempted to exceed this remit, given the confidence of our convictions, and indeed the severity of the injustices that anger us, but we should hold fast, at least as long as we are presenting ourselves as analysts rather than actors. Failing to do so, as in the recent politics of Covid, would make us something like politicians pretending to be scientists, asserting judgements as truths when what we should be doing is explaining choices as trade-offs. Again, we cannot do everything , so should do well the thing that is both unique to us and valuable to others. This means illuminating options and arguing for them accordingly, knowing at all times that that final verdict is not for us , but for those in power, and indeed those who vote for them.

So, on the one hand, let us not try to control debates or pre-empt outcomes. That comes across as liberalism trying to end democracy, with populism kicking back harder, and intellectuals banished to the margins. On the other, let us not stoop so low as to simply tell people what they already think or hear. That again makes us irrelevant, and not now because we are ahead of our time, but because we are quickly outmoded. Regardless of our personal appeal, we should be Daedalus not Icarus; sweet-spot sages, or goldilocks gurus, practising the astute moderation of the Aristotelian mean. By all means, then, deploy the rhetorical methods of alliteration, contrastive pairs, and analogies found in the previous sentence, yet remember that even when well deployed, you might still go unheard, or heard and disagreed with, or even widely agreed with yet still on the losing side of the crucial vote or decision due to wider political dynamics. And why should that be otherwise? The public, after all, are long used to not getting what they want when their representatives have other ideas, whether on borders, taxation, or the death penalty. Philosophers should accept the same with equanimity, resisting the temptation to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and dropping precision or patience in the pursuit of perfect justice or legitimacy. So, no sulking or venting on Twitter, if possible, and no besmirching too quickly the abilities of voters or those they vote for, especially if you know, deep down, just as Plato knew, close up, that you do not want the reigns and responsibilities of power yourself.

Here then, in summary, are our two conclusions regarding methodological reflection on public political philosophy. First, that it is well practised when aimed at better public deliberation, as opposed to perfect political outcomes, and when deployed via particular methods that serve this end, including hypothetical and real analogies, the conceptual analysis of ‘hot’ topics, and the casuistry of mapping out implications between cases and principles. Second, and more broadly, that methodology here clearly matters , both in the sense of raising interesting questions and in the sense of helping us meet at least some of the practical ambitions of our recent methodological moment. And again, this is just the start . In the future, there will be new methods to consider, new cases to examine, and new risks and possibilities to map out. Would political philosophers, for example, have more impact if they worked humour into their thought experiments? Would they have more relevance if analysing the judgements of voters a little more, and the intuitions of philosophers a little less? Would they acquire more authority, or even charisma, if organised into committees and institutions, producing enquiries and reports as formal associations rather than as a free-wheeling diaspora of intellectuals? Footnote 19 Of course, there would be risks and trade-offs with each of these choices too, but that is not the point. The point is that they provide rich material for future methodology.

Where Next?

Over the coming years, methodology in political philosophy will need to develop carefully over the two ‘levels’ described earlier. That is, it will need new and refined proposals for how to organise and ‘conceptualise’ its subject matter, as well as new and refined analyses of all the many methods at our disposal, including those applicable to public political philosophy. This, in turn, will bring yet further issues and methods to light, but also, with a bit of luck, something else. In time, whilst establishing methodology as a new ‘room’ within our subject’s ‘house’ (perhaps a well-lit conservatory?), it will also, hopefully, start to change the atmosphere in the rest of the building. This is because, as we become a little wiser about the different ways in which we argue, we also become less likely to misunderstand or mistrust each other, and in turn more likely to widen and deepen our subject’s conversations.

We will though, clearly, need an attitude to match this ambition. Just as public political philosophers need to illuminate and offer, without insisting or berating, so do methodologists need to map and display, without dictating or demanding. Methodology quickly outruns its purposes, not just if it specifies what justice is, or what utopia looks like, but also if it stipulates too rigidly what our subject involves, or how many methods it contains. Provisionality, experimentalism, and fallibility are all key watchwords here. In the short run, they stop us closing ourselves off into babbling rivalries; in the long run, they open up new vistas. These will include, no doubt, some of the methods of argument discussed earlier, but also as yet unimagined. As with technology and politics, we should soon see here what Popper called radical conceptual innovation (Floyd, 2009 ), meaning that although we could guess at future work on, for example, the methodological uses of artificial intelligence, or the best forms of public political argument in the ‘multiverse’, we cannot predict it. And indeed, why would we want to? Uncertainty keeps subjects interesting and scholars curious. We can then happily leave the tracking of such developments to future historians, or perhaps another group altogether. Perhaps those future philosophers who have just been asked, as we have here, to reflect upon the latest ‘state of the art’ in this old subject of ours.

Several edited collections have further helped to produce this moment, including Leopold and Stears ( 2008 ); Floyd and Stears ( 2011 ); and Blau ( 2017 ).

For valuable early work on some of these issues, see e.g. Leopold and Stears ( 2008 ); Floyd and Stears ( 2011 ); Dowding ( 2016 ); and Blau ( 2017 ).

Ordering thus has a dual meaning here. First, we order our thoughts, in the sense of organising all those political ideas to which we are attracted. Second, we produce a clear prescription of political order, in the sense of generating principles against which both contemporary politics and future proposals can be measured.

On ‘judgement’, see for example the essays on John Dunn’s work gathered in (Bourke & Geuss, 2009 ). See also Rawls’ early work on the ambition of ‘explicating’ the judgements of competent judges, in e.g. (Rawls, 2013 )

Though with more success, on that front, in the empirical social sciences than was ever had in normative corners of the humanities, and it remains the case that most students and scholars of political theory/philosophy merely gesture at ‘methods’ talk in their essays, dissertations, and applications, without really knowing what is wanted of them. Supervisors are thus regularly asked: ‘Cannot I just say I’m going to be reading texts and arguing about them?’.

A ‘method’ which Raz once claimed was significant precisely because it lacked presuppositions (Raz, 1999 , 367).

On this note, Rorty once wrote of the importance of novelists like Dickens, given that they, more than theorists such as Marx, really bring home to people things like the ‘exploitation’ and ‘alienation’ of capitalism (Rorty, 1989 , xvi, 146–149).

https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/DCPD-201200095 .

For the details of this work, see here: https://members.parliament.uk/member/2441/career

See: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/new-risk-social-contract-covid-ethics/621246/

For popular rather than philosophical commentary on this shift, see e.g. ( https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2019/04/13/the-positives-of-political-polarization/ ) or ( https://www.ft.com/content/5655ab7c-1152-414e-bd22-67acd06c5c51 )

Rawls’ distinction between three kinds of reflective equilibrium is interesting here, though it was never fully developed (Rawls, 2001 , 30–31).

O’Neill has written extensively on this issue, in terms of the decline in ‘trust’ in public life, as well as in response to misinterpretations of a remark once made by Michael Gove in the context of the 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum. See e.g. http://whenexpertsdisagree.ucd.ie/trust-speaker-preview-onora-oneill/

For the details of Waldron’s statement, as well as the wider report to which it contributed, see here: https://discoverleveson.com/evidence/Witness_Statement_of_Professor_Jeremy_Waldron_redacted/11462/media

For a good example of how Galston can combine political experience with philosophical theory to reach non-academic audiences, see here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/political-rhetoric-and-political-experience-with-william-galston . For an extended treatment of Pettit and Zapatero’s work together, see (Martí & Pettit, 2012 ). For the details of Tamir’s work in government, see here: https://main.knesset.gov.il/en/MK/APPS/mk/mk-personal-details/697

This was first mocked, and later adopted, by the government of the day. For a useful overview, see: http://justice-everywhere.org/democracy/an-interview-with-marc-stears-beyond-the-ivory-tower-series/

See e.g. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ed-miliband-bacon-sandwich_n_5bbe27b0e4b01470d0580898

See e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/13/spin-it-to-win-it-what-does-that-miliband-salmond-poster-tell-us-about-the-battle-of-the-political-brands . Note also the effect of the same imagery on David Steel, a generation earlier: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/wife-of-david-steel-blames-tv-1094162

Just as methodology might get more attention, and thus resources, if organised into a ‘standing group’, ‘research network’, or even just an acronym, whether PPM (Political Philosophy Methodology?) or MPT (Methods in Political Theory?), which is why all three are now being pursued.

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Floyd, J. Political Philosophy’s Methodological Moment and the Rise of Public Political Philosophy. Soc 59 , 129–139 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-022-00710-2

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Articles on Political philosophy

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Liberalism is in crisis. A new book traces how we got here, but lets neoliberal ideologues off the hook

Jane Goodall , Western Sydney University

Jürgen Habermas is a major public intellectual. What are his key ideas?

Duncan Ivison , University of Sydney

Debate: Why France needs the Fifth Republic

Emmanuel Destenay , Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Fascism lurks behind the dangerous conflation of the terms ‘partisan’ and ‘political’

Lawrence Torcello , Rochester Institute of Technology

Aneurin Bevan’s writings still have lessons for contemporary politics – and far beyond the NHS

Nye Davies , Cardiff University

What ethical standards should we hold politicians to? A philosopher explains two different approaches

Joshua Hobbs , University of Leeds

An antidemocratic philosophy called ‘neoreaction’ is creeping into GOP politics

George Michael , Westfield State University

Is Boris Johnson lying? A philosopher on why it’s so hard to tell

Sorin Baiasu , Keele University

It’s no surprise liberal democracy is giving way to authoritarianism

Ben Whitham , SOAS, University of London

Novak Djokovic: the legal problem of having one rule for some, another for everyone else

Joshua Jowitt , Newcastle University

Why spite could destroy liberal democracy

Simon McCarthy-Jones , Trinity College Dublin

Why lockdowns don’t necessarily infringe on freedom

Annelien de Dijn , Utrecht University

Is political violence ever justifiable?

Gwilym David Blunt , City, University of London

Coronavirus: it feels like we are sliding into a period of unrest, but political philosophy offers hope

Vittorio Bufacchi , University College Cork

How philosophy 101 could help break the deadlock over drug testing job seekers

Alison Ritter , UNSW Sydney

Why Norman Geras’s essay ‘Our Morals’ should be essential reading for politics students – not a subversive threat

Stephen De Wijze , University of Manchester

It’s a turbulent world. Stop stressing and adapt

Alasdair S. Roberts , UMass Amherst

After Charlottesville, how we define tolerance becomes a key question

Peter Godfrey-Smith , University of Sydney and Benjamin Kerr , University of Washington

Could an African passport bring to life the dreams of Nkrumah, Senghor and Touré?

Uchenna Okeja , Rhodes University

Explainer: what is free speech?

David van Mill , The University of Western Australia

Related Topics

• Free speech
• Liberal democracy
• Political history
• Same-sex marriage

Top contributors

Associate Professor in Political Science and International Relations, The University of Western Australia

Assistant Professor in AI, Data, and the Rule of Law, The University of Edinburgh

Senior lecturer in democracy studies, University of Canberra

Professor & Specialist in Drug Policy, UNSW Sydney

Professor of Philosophy and Political Theory, University of New England

Associate Professor of Philosophy, Deakin University

Professor, School of Law, Western Sydney University

Senior Lecturer in Communication, Deakin University

Research Fellow, University of Exeter, University of Exeter

Professor of Economics, RMIT University

Project Co-ordinator, Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, University of Helsinki

Professor of Political Philosophy, UNSW Sydney

Director, School of Public Policy, UMass Amherst

Assistant researcher, University of Sydney

Adjunct Research Fellow, Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy, La Trobe University

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Varieties of Conservatism in America

via Hoover Institution Press

Varieties of Progressivism in America

Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government, and Political Moderation

Peter Berkowitz identifies the political principles social conservatives and libertarians share, or should share, and sketches the common ground on which they can and should join forces.

The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government

via Harvard University Press

Never a Matter of Indifference: Sustaining Virtue in a Free Republic

Peter Berkowitz

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. In 2019-2021, he served as the Director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, executive secretary of the department's Commission on Unalienable Rights, and senior adviser to the Secretary of State. He is a 2017 recipient of the Bradley Prize. He is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. He serves as director of studies for The Public Interest Fellowship. He is the author of Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government, and Political Moderation (Hoover Institution Press, 2013); Israel and the Struggle over the International Laws of War (Hoover Institution Press, 2012); Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 1999); and Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist (Harvard University Press, 1995). He is the editor of seven collections of essays on political ideas and institutions published by the Hoover Institution: Renewing the American Constitutional Tradition (2014); Future Challenges in National Security and Law (2010); The Future of American Intelligence (2005); Terrorism, the Laws of War, and the Constitution: Debating the Enemy Combatant Cases (2005); Varieties of Conservatism in America (2004); Varieties of Progressivism in America (2004); and Never a Matter of Indifference: Sustaining Virtue in a Free Republic (2003). He has written hundreds of articles, essays and reviews on a range of subjects for a variety of publications, including The American Interest, the American Political Science Review, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Claremont Review of Books, Commentary, First Things, Forbes.com, Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, the London Review of Books, National Journal, National Review, The New Criterion, The New Republic, Policy Review, Politico, The Public Interest, the Times Literary Supplement, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, The Wilson Quarterly, and the Yale Law Journal. In addition to teaching regularly in the United States and Israel, Dr. Berkowitz has led seminars on the principles of freedom and the American constitutional tradition for students from Burma at the George W. Bush Presidential Center and for Korean students at Underwood International College at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. He taught constitutional law and jurisprudence at George Mason University School of Law from 1999 to 2006, and political philosophy in the department of government at Harvard University from 1990 to 1999. He holds a JD and a PhD in political science from Yale University; an MA in philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and a BA in English literature from Swarthmore College.

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David Estlund Lombardo Professor of the Humanities, Brown University

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Even though political philosophy has a long tradition, it is much more than the study of old and great treatises. Contemporary philosophers continue to press new arguments on old and timeless questions, but also to propose departures and innovations. The field changes over time, and new work inevitably responds both to events in the world and to the directions of thought itself. This volume includes twenty-two new pieces by leaders in the field on both perennial and emerging topics of keen interest to contemporary political philosophers. In addition to longstanding issues such as authority, equality, freedom, and democracy, there are articles on less classical topics such as race, historical injustice, deliberation, money and politics, global justice, and ideal and non-ideal theory. The introductory article briefly situates this snapshot in a broader view of developments in political philosophy in the last forty years, and looks forward to future developments. The articles not only survey but provide provocations to think further about the questions, puzzles, and practical problems that animate recent work in political philosophy.

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7 key conversations that are dominating the field of political philosophy today

Even if you’ve never taken a course in political philosophy, odds are that you’ve spent time thinking about questions of political philosophy. What does it mean to be free? What is a fair way of distributing wealth and income? What do we owe citizens of other countries?

Getting started on the systematic study of these questions can be a daunting prospect, however. Even if you’ve studied political philosophy on your own or in a class, it can be hard to know what’s cutting edge in the discipline. In this post, I’ll give you of a sense of some of the topics that have captured the attention of political philosophers in recent years. By no means is this an exhaustive list; it’s just one political philosopher’s rough and incomplete impression of the state of the field.

Climate Change

As you might expect, what’s cutting edge in political philosophy partly tracks what’s cutting edge in real-world politics. Climate change is a case-in-point. What to do about climate change is not simply a question for scientists, politicians, and economists—it’s a question for philosophers, too. Should we sacrifice some of our material well-being today to leave a better world for our grandchildren? How can we have moral obligations to future generations when those generations don’t yet exist? Do you have an obligation to cut back on your pollution even though in the grand scheme of things your actions as a single individual won’t make any difference?

For those interested in climate ethics and politics, John Broome’s book Climate Matters is an excellent place to start. Broome tackles questions of what citizens and policymakers ought to do in the face of the problems posed by climate change. In “ It’s Not My Fault: Global Warming and Individual Moral Obligations,”

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues for a counterintuitive conclusion: you do not have an individual moral obligation to reduce your carbon emissions. Because the scale of climate change is so enormous and your individual contribution is so small, driving your SUV for fun won’t make anyone worse off than they otherwise would be. On Sinnott-Armstrong’s view, it’s the job of the government rather than individual citizens to mitigate climate change.

Mark Budolfson, a philosopher at the University of Vermont, has a number of interesting papers on topics in environmental ethics. Much of Budolfson’s work tackles the aforementioned problem of “causal impotence”—what are our individual moral obligations in a world in which many of our individual actions make no difference? For a provocative book on the ethics of procreation, check out Sarah Conly’s One Child which argues that we ought to limit ourselves to producing one child.

Global Justice

Philosophers have been at the forefront of the increasingly popular “effective altruism” movement, which advises us to send our charitable donations to the places where they will do the most good. Peter Singer is the founding father of the movement and his book The Most Good You Can Do serves as a nice introduction to his thoughts on giving. William MacAskill’s Doing Good Better is also an accessible and informative overview of effective altruism. Of course, effective altruism is not without its critics–see, for instance, this discussion in the Boston Review .

Immigration also remains a topic of great interest in political philosophy. Important recent books on immigration include Joseph Carens’s The Ethics of Immigration and David Miller’s Strangers in Our Midst . Miller is skeptical about the case for open borders, whereas Carens argues for relaxing immigration restrictions. Other important pieces on immigration have been written by Javier Hidalgo , Michael Huemer , Chandran Kukathas , Loren Lomasky and Fernando Teson , Kieran Oberman , and Christopher Wellman and Phillip Cole .

One issue at the core of this debate is the nature of the special obligations (if any) that we have to our fellow compatriots. May states restrict immigration in order to prop up the wages of native-born citizens or preserve a particular sort of national culture? For excellent work on cosmopolitanism, see, e.g., Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers and Richard Arneson’s “Extreme Cosmopolitanisms Defended” .

Race and Justice

Political philosophers often make use of social contract theory to understand the nature of justice and the state. Although specific theories differ in their details, the rough idea is that the state is justified as a means of enforcing mutually agreeable terms of social cooperation. However, the adequacy of social contract theory is the matter of much debate in recent work on race and justice. Tommie Shelby argues that a Rawlsian-contractarian approach, with an emphasis on impartiality and fair equality of opportunity, contains theoretical resources to help illuminate racial justice.

Other work on race and justice has a less sanguine perspective on the social contract framework. Charles Mills’s book The Racial Contract argues that the traditional understanding of the social contract served not to secure the rights and liberties of all people but rather to perpetuate racial injustices. Mills offers a direct challenge to Shelby’s arguments in his paper, “ Retrieving Rawls for Racial Justice? ” Elizabeth Anderson, in her book The Imperative of Integration argues that Rawls’s original position, in which parties choose principles of justice without any knowledge of themselves or their particular social and historical circumstances, wrongly withholds crucial information about society’s past and present record of racial injustice. Christopher Lebron’s The Color of Our Shame objects that Rawls’s focus on formal principles of distributive justice unduly ignores questions of character, attitudes, and actions that are crucial to understanding racial justice.

Democratic Theory

Philosophers have been talking about democracy for thousands of years, but the recent election has reignited interest in the justification of democratic institutions. Jason Brennan’s Against Democracy might be the most discussed work in political philosophy right now. Making use of empirical social science on the biases and ignorance of voters, Brennan argues against equal suffrage in favor of “epistocracy”—roughly, rule by an intellectual elite. For a skeptical take on deliberative democracy in particular, I’d recommend Guido Pincione and Fernando Teson’s Rational Choice and Democratic Deliberation . Influential defenses of democracy include Thomas Christiano’s The Constitution of Equality and David Estlund’s Democratic Authority . Christiano argues that the justification of democracy lies is, in part, its equal treatment of all citizens. Estlund rejects epistocracy partly on the grounds that political justifications must be acceptable from all qualified points of view.

Paternalism

What can the state force you to do for your own good? The topic of paternalism is of perennial theoretical and practical interest. The United States bans many drugs, imposes heavy taxes on cigarettes, and restricts activities like gambling and prostitution.

But should it?

A recent book from Sarah Conly, Against Autonomy , argues for an uncompromising pro-paternalism position. Conly reviews findings from psychology and behavioral economics that suggest we do a poor job of pursuing our own long-term interests. So, Conly argues, the state should forcibly prevent us from doing things that are bad for us. For instance, rather than tax the sale of cigarettes to discourage the smoking, the state should simply ban smoking outright for the good of would-be smokers themselves. (William Glod notes some of the problems with Conly’s and others’ arguments in his forthcoming book, Against Paternalism: A Liberal Case for Self Direction as a Basic Right . He offers a preview of some of his arguments here .)

Another interesting read on paternalism is Peter de Marneffe’s Liberalism and Prostitution , which makes the case for regulations and restrictions on prostitution. De Marneffe also co-wrote The Legalization of Drugs: For and Against with Douglas Husak, which is of interest to those working on the topic of drug criminalization.

For a detailed exposition of an anti-paternalist position, I’d recommend Jessica Flanigan’s forthcoming book Pharmaceutical Freedom . Flanigan defends a robust right of choice in the context of pharmaceutical use in particular.

Ideal and Nonideal Theory

Much has been written in the last decade about John Rawls’s ideal theory . Rawls theorizes about justice and institutions on the assumption that society is fully (or at least nearly fully) just. We study the perfectly just society to, among other things, give us an ideal to guide our real-world actions.

Charles Mills’s groundbreaking paper “ ‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology” argues that ideal theory is unable to provide useful real-world guidance and ignores decidedly nonideal problems, such as gender and racial inequalities. Amartya Sen’s influential The Idea of Justice criticizes ideal theory partly on the grounds that we don’t need to a conception of the perfect to have a workable conception of what counts as better . To use Sen’s example, I don’t need to know that Mount Everest is the world’s tallest mountain to know that one mountain is taller than another. Gerald Gaus’s The Tyranny of the Ideal builds a sustained critique of ideal theory as well. Gaus argues that utopian political theorizing is by nature a speculative enterprise and that the pursuit of perfect justice might mean that we fail to correct immediate injustices. My own book, Unequivocal Justice , argues against using the assumptions of ideal theory to analyze different types of political systems.

On the other side of the debate, G.A. Cohen’s Rescuing Justice and Equality criticizes Rawls for not being ideal enough . Cohen thinks that Rawls was wrong not to insist that people internalize an “egalitarian ethos” to motivate equality-minded decisions in their private lives. David Estlund’s “Utopophobia” argues that our theoretical account of justice need not be constrained by the likelihood of achieving that account of justice in practice. Other valuable insights into ideal theory can be found in the work of A. John Simmons , Zofia Stemplowska and Adam Swift , and a recent Social Philosophy and Policy volume .

Classical Liberalism and Social Justice

John Tomasi’s Free Market Fairness argues that classical liberal economists and philosophers have long endorsed a conception of social justice according to which institutions should be arranged to preferentially benefit society’s poorest members. Adam Smith and John Rawls might not be so different after all. More generally, Tomasi argues that a classical liberal political regime (in Tomasi’s terms, market democracy ) can satisfy Rawlsian standards of justice and legitimacy. Another exposition of this kind of “neoclassical” liberal position can be found in Jason Brennan’s Libertarianism: W hat Everyone Needs to Know .

As you might expect, these arguments have generated a flurry of responses. An online symposium on Tomasi’s book was hosted by Bleeding Heart Libertarians . For interesting criticisms of Tomasi, see articles from Samuel Arnold , Jeppe von Platz , and a recent symposium in Critical Review .

As I mentioned at the outset, this was not a complete account of the state of the field. Rather, it was an introduction to some—and only some—of the debates that are currently gripping political philosophy. There are many others that are worth exploring further.

Christopher Freiman

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Topics in Contemporary Political Theory

In this seminar we will explore some key concepts in contemporary political philosophy, including justice, equality, democracy, and rights.  Topics will include the metrics of distributive justice, the relation between justice and equality, and tensions between democracy and rights. The course has no prerequisites, though previous coursework in political theory or philosophy would be helpful.

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We offer a broad range of courses on the nature and role of political philosophy. Our department has strengths in modern and contemporary political philosophy, especially in the areas of democratic theory, liberalism, Continental and American political thought. We emphasize how political philosophy can contribute to the study of important contemporary issues such as modernization, globalization, democratic consolidation, civic engagement, globalization, terrorism and the rule of law.

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PHIL 279. Topics in Political Philosophy

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Political Philosophies and Positive Political Psychology: Inter-Disciplinary Framework for the Common Good

This manuscript explores the relationship between positive psychology and political philosophy, revealing an inter-disciplinary approach that speaks to the concerns of the common good. Since positive psychology has been expanding its reach into social and political spheres, its relationship to philosophical arguments has been worthy of exploration. Positive psychology is associated with utilitarianism, and aspects of hedonic psychology. However, an alternative concept of eudaimonic well-being has enabled this psychology to have links to other political philosophies. Therefore, this manuscript provides an overview of contemporary political philosophies: first, it discusses the debate between liberalism and communitarianism, and secondly, it summarizes the subsequent developments of liberal perfectionism, capability approach, and deliberative democracy. Then, the configuration of these political philosophies is indicated by the figure of two axes of “individual/collective” and “ethical/non-ethical.” The following section compiles the inter-relationships between the conceptions of citizenship, justice, and well-being, regarding the main political philosophies: egoism, utilitarianism, libertarianism, liberalism, communitarianism, and conservatism. Utilitarianism is associated with happiness, while liberalism and libertarianism rely on the concept of rights, which is almost equal to the idea of justice. Accordingly, utilitarianism is a philosophy of well-being, while liberalism and libertarianism are philosophies of justice. However, there is little connection between well-being and justice in these philosophies because the two kinds of philosophies are incompatible. The latter kind criticizes the former because the maximization of happiness can infringe on people’s rights. Moreover, these philosophies do not particularly value citizenship. In contrast, communitarianism is intrinsically the political philosophy of citizenship most attuned to increasing well-being, and it can connect an idea of justice with well-being. The final part offers a framework to develop an inter-disciplinary collaboration. Positive psychology can provide the empirical basis of the two axes above concerning political philosophies. On the other hand, the correspondence makes the character of political philosophies clearer. While libertarianism and liberalism correspond to psychology as usual, utilitarianism and communitarianism correspond to positive psychology, and the latter can be regarded as positive political philosophies. This recognition leads to the interdisciplinary framework, enabling multi-disciplinary collaboration, including work with the social sciences, which could benefit the common good.

Introduction: Psychology and Political Philosophy

Positive psychology and utilitarian tradition.

This manuscript will explore “Psychology for the Common Good” by examining the association between psychology and philosophy, more concretely, positive psychology in the context of political philosophies. Positive psychology investigates the good life scientifically. On the other hand, philosophy examines ideal ways of living and suggests ways to improve our society. Combining philosophical inquiries with contemporary science can assist us in exploring new ideas and practices related to personal and public well-being. This article seeks to accomplish this task by extending the recent developments of positive psychology.

Let us begin by reviewing the basics. There are several major contemporary political philosophies: utilitarianism, libertarianism, liberalism, communitarianism, or republicanism. Although there are various sub-types, intermediaries, and combinations, this manuscript first focuses on these major representative philosophies for making the relationships between political philosophies and psychology clear. 1

Positive psychology has been frequently associated with utilitarianism within these political philosophies ( Veehhoven, 2003 ; Tännsjö, 2007 ). The reason for this is that this philosophy typically argues for the maximization of happiness for all people concerned. The classical formulation is Jeremy Bentham’s “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Correspondingly, positive psychology often utilizes the indicators of “subjective well-being” explored by Ed Diener, and the form of psychology that measures well-being in this way is sometimes called “hedonic psychology” ( Kahneman et al., 1999 ).

However, there has emerged a considerable amount of criticism against this ascription. Some scholars have argued against using pleasure as a measurement of well-being, and they have objected to such ideas as Hedonia, putting forth instead a new concept and measurement based on the word “Eudaimonia,” which originated in ancient Greece. They pushed forward the idea of “eudaimonic well-being,” suggesting that conceptions such as growth, self-realization, engagement, and meaning constitute eudaimonic well-being.

This was followed by a heated debate between those arguing for subjective well-being (e.g., Kashdan et al., 2008 ) and those supporting eudaimonic well-being ( Waterman, 1993 , 2008 , 2013 ). This debate seems to empirically demonstrate the conclusion based on the following: the two indicators are correlated but independent, and eudaimonic well-being has a higher correlation with eudaimonic functioning such as self-realization, endeavor, meaning, elevation, relation with others, and creativity, while subjective well-being correlates more highly with hedonic pleasure or enjoyment.

Therefore, it follows from this debate that the philosophical underpinnings of positive psychology should not be confined to classical utilitarianism. While the classical utilitarianism of Bentham is viewed as hedonic and quantitative, J. S. Mill later proposed qualitative utilitarianism. Moreover, there have appeared various variations of consequentialism or welfarism from this tradition in contemporary philosophy. Consequentialism signifies that specific normative properties depend on consequences, which are calculated by the sum of pleasure in classical utilitarianism but are inferred by more sophisticated ways in non-utilitarian consequentialism today.

Welfarism in economics is a kind of consequentialism, which regards the impact on welfare as morally significant. This economic idea depends on the conception of utility, and it assumes that social welfare can be conceived as an aggregation of individual utilities. As utility means the degree of pleasure or satisfaction an individual receives from economic activity, it is more or less a hedonic conception. In contrast, welfarism in a broad sense, signifies “nothing but welfare matters, basically or ultimately, for ethics” ( Sumner, 1996 , p.184), and it is neither necessarily consequential nor aggregational.

As qualitative utilitarianism recognizes the difference in the quality of pleasure, it is closer to communitarianism discussed below than original utilitarianism. In contrast, non-utilitarian consequentialism is frequently unrelated to a specific human description. Accordingly, there is little relationship between these currents originating from utilitarianism and psychology. In addition, while economic welfarism is basically hedonic and preserves the utilitarian element, welfarism in general is compatible not only with utilitarianism but also with the other political philosophies discussed below ( Sumner, 1996 , p. 186).

It would then be necessary to examine the relationship between the other political philosophies and positive psychology.

Criticism Against Positive Psychology and Its Two Frontiers

Apart from this debate, positive psychology has been criticized on various points since its birth ( Lazarus, 2003 ). For example, existential psychologist Paul Wong pointed to its problems or limitations: elitism, scientism, positive-only focus, componential rather than holistic thinking, value-neutral position, lack of comprehensive theory, positivist paradigm, dependence on “quick-and-dirty” measures, cultural critiques ( Wong and Roy, 2018 ). Among such weak points, two “challenges to positive psychology” ( Gable and Haidt, 2005 , p. 107) are especially prominent: first, focus on the positive side disregarding the negative side; secondly, little progress in research on positive institutions and communities.

The second point is closely related to the subjects of political philosophy. One of the most scathing criticisms against positive psychology is that it is permeated with a Western-centered or American-inspired brand of individualism. As a result, it does not sufficiently deal with a societal, cultural, and political force ( Becker and Marecek, 2008 ).

In reality, the manifest of positive psychology enumerated its three pillars as “subjective emotion, individual traits, and institution”( Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000 ). Accordingly, the institutional dimension has been theoretically considered one of the core subjects of positive psychology. The monumental article explained the third element in the following manner: “At the group level, it is about the civic virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship: responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility, moderation, tolerance, and work ethics” ( Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000 , p. 5). Thus, this element precisely signifies just the civic virtues and institutions for citizenship.

Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that its focuses have been on the former two, namely, the investigations of personal well-being and character strengths. As a result, early hopes for exploring new fields like positive anthropology and positive social sciences have gone “unfulfilled” ( Gable and Haidt, 2005 , p. 108).

Accordingly, as a response to this criticism, there have been some noteworthy attempts at deploying positive psychology for the development in social or political spheres ( Haidt, 2012 ; Kern et al., 2019 ; Ward et al., 2021 ) or the application in policy evaluation and policy studies ( Diener and Seligman, 2004 ; Diener et al., 2009 ). The conception of positive social science or positive organizational studies has already been put forth ( Cameron et al., 2003 ). Nevertheless, it would still be essential to examine further the relation to social or political studies.

Moreover, the first point has relevance also in the collective spheres. Unfortunately, the world remains full of negative political and social phenomena such as misery, poverty, conflicts, war, corruption, dictatorship, and pandemic like COVID-19. Thus, there are many issues of “political philosophy (and political sciences) as usual”. In contrast, positive ideas, including justice, fairness, and the common good, are included within central political philosophy conceptions. Accordingly, it is necessary to deal with both dark and bright sides in social or political spheres.

Fortunately, there have appeared new waves of positive psychology for amending the two weaknesses. Second wave positive psychology aims to integrate the positive and negative sides dialectically, exploring the complex relationships between both sides ( Wong, 2011 ; Ivtzan et al., 2016 ). Then, third wave positive psychology proposes to go beyond the inquiry of individuals for that of groups and systems with the greater complexity, utilizing more interdisciplinary, multicultural, and various methodologies ( Lomas et al., 2020 ).

Figure 1 illustrates such a development. The vertical axis is ‘‘positive/negative (or as usual)’’ as ‘‘positive psychology/psychology as usual.’’ The horizontal axis is ‘‘individual (or private)/collective (or communal, public).’’ Thus, the positive collective psychology in the first quadrant consists of positive psychologies in public spheres, including politics, economy, and society. So then, the research on political themes and well-being can be called ‘‘positive political psychology 2 similar to “positive social psychology” ( Lomas, 2015 ) concerning sociocultural well-being in general.

Positive individual/collective psychology.

The themes of justice and citizenship are primarily related to the political sphere, and this manuscript investigates them from the angle of positive political psychology.

Major Political Philosophies and Recent Developments

The debate between liberalism and communitarianism: justice and the good life.

The most salient contemporary philosophical alternatives to utilitarianism are liberalism and libertarianism. However, in general, these are not related to psychology. These political philosophies assume that there are many conceptions of the good life grounded in the value-system or worldview of today, and it could repress the other to base justice on one of them. Thus, the argument is that it would be impossible to take one of them as the basis for public decisions and policies, and the only way of agreeing on justice beyond such different views would be to rely upon the concept of rights. Accordingly, these theories are called deontology or rights-based theories.

There are intense controversies over welfare issues between egalitarian liberalism and market-oriented libertarianism: the former can provide a philosophical foundation of the welfare state by its conception of welfare or social rights, while the latter argues for small states with little welfare emphasizing the property rights. Nevertheless, both share a deontological theoretical construction based on the conception of rights.

These theories value modern ideals such as autonomy, equality, individuality. They rely on the idea that each human being is crucial in oneself, and an individual’s choice by their free will needs to be respected, whether the choice seems good or bad from some outside ethical perspective. Thus, these are individualistic and non-ethical.

The most well-known contemporary theory among these is John Rawls’ liberalism described in A Theory of Justice . The cardinal idea of liberalism is summarized as “the priority of justice over the good” ( Rawls, 1971 ). Pursuing the good life is not prohibited in private lives, but it is not related to the public sphere. Instead, justice in public decisions should be grounded upon the concept of rights, bracketing the difference over the conception of the good life. Although there are variations of theoretical notions, most representative liberalists and libertarians supported the idea of state neutrality among various conceptions of the good life and its virtues, and this thesis came to be the central conception of mainstream liberalists ( Nozick, 1974 ; Dworkin, 1978 ; Ackerman, 1980 ; Larmore, 1987 ; Kymlicka, 1989 ; Nagel, 1991 ).

As most of these thinkers support the deontological construction based on the conception of rights, these will be termed deontological rights-based liberalism. This word here signifies moral theories requiring people to accomplish what people ought to do (deontic theories) on the reasoning of the priority of the right over the good in opposition to virtue theories and consequentialism.

“The priority of justice over the good” in these thoughts was challenged by Michael Sandel (1982) . According to him, it is impossible to make public decisions based only on the concept of rights. For instance, the conceptions of rights in liberalism and libertarianism are critically opposed to each other. On the one hand, Rawlsian egalitarian liberalism argues for distributive justice and a welfare state. On the other hand, libertarianism attaches importance to property rights and denies the right to welfare. As a result, it is almost equal to neo-liberalism in economics in the negation of the welfare state and calling for a small state.

From the outside perspective, the difference originates from their views on the good associated with various worldviews. It is difficult to decide what justice is regarding the environment, security, bioethics, and welfare, without mentioning values. Consequently, it is necessary to conduct public discussions on these issues concerning the good life and determine what is just through public deliberation. That is to say, justice is related to the conception of the good life. In other words, the right is concerned with the good. This idea is the core of the communitarian concept of justice. Therefore, it is important to dare discuss these public issues referring to the good life to revitalize democratic politics.

This argument leads to the debate between liberalism and communitarianism ( Mulhall and Swift, 1996 ). Sandel’s criticism against Rawls’ A Theory of Justice includes the view of self ( Sandel, 1982 ). Rawls assumed that people in the original position knew nothing about their concrete situations such as age, sex, talent, status, and income under the “veil of ignorance” when they considered and agreed with the principles of justice in the hypothetical social contract. Sandel called this conception of self the “unencumbered self” and pointed out that the actual self is situated in various contexts and constituted by the ethical ideals of the good life in such contexts as the family and multiple communities.

Similarly, Alasdair MacIntyre criticized modern ethics and revived virtue ethics ( MacIntyre, 1981 ). The sociologist Amitai Etzioni emphasizes the importance of responsibility as well as the concept of rights and promotes the responsive communitarian movement ( Etzioni, 1993 ).

In addition, such an ethical orientation is frequently considered to be important in the political sphere. For example, Sandel typically argued for the resurgence of republicanism as a public philosophy in America instead of the liberalism that has been dominant since WWII ( Sandel, 1996 ). Republicanism originates in res publica in ancient Greek and Rome, and it means active political participation for self-government by people with civic virtue. If people lack civic virtue, they tend to fall into political apathy or become manipulated by demagogues. Thus, civic virtue has a vital role in making democracy sound and better in quality.

Although liberalism sometimes supports republicanism, it respects the institutional mechanism against dictatorship, typically separation of powers. Accordingly, it sometimes supports people’s political participation: this version is liberal republicanism ( Ackerman, 1993/2000 ). Nevertheless, liberalism, including even this version, tends to disregard the ethical aspect of republicanism. In contrast, communitarianism emphasizes the vital significance of civic virtue for political participation. It advocates civic virtue as one of the essential human virtues, and therefore it frequently accompanies republicanism to be termed communitarian republicanism.

In sum, while liberalism and libertarianism are individualist and non-ethical, especially concerning public spheres, communitarianism has an ethical and communal (or public) orientation: it attaches importance to various collaborative activities and communities, as well as to the good life sustained by morality and virtue, not only in private lives but also in public lives. As this debate presents one of the essential issues in contemporary political philosophy, the two ethical and communal (or public) axes found in this debate will be helpful to overview the other recent developments in the next section.

Beyond Deontological Rights-Based Liberalism

Liberal perfectionism.

Partly due to the impact of the communitarian charge, some new approaches from within liberal currents are somehow opposed to typical deontological rights-based liberalism, and they have led to the “troubled dominance of the liberal paradigm” ( Christiano and Christman, 2009 , p. 5).

First, concerning the ethical dimension, the neutrality thesis was amended even within liberal theorists. Some admitted that any liberal belief of state neutrality could not be consistently justified: some ethical goals and ideals may be supported by the state because many virtues or conceptions of the good such as love and friendship are entirely uncontroversial. In sum, the thesis is an illusory myth ( Beckman, 2001 , pp. 262–264).

Accordingly, there appeared discussions between state neutrality principle and perfectionism, assuming that the state should favor some valuable conceptions of the good ( Wall and Klosoko, 2003 , pp.13–16; Merrill and Weinstock, 2014 ). For instance, some critics pointed to value commitments in the proponents of state neutrality for moral equality, liberty, and democracy ( Haksar, 1979 ; Macedo, 1990 ). Related discussions illuminated that there are various versions of neutrality principles concerning the scope, formulation, and stringency.

For example, Joseph Raz argued that the achievement of strict political neutrality is almost impossible and proposed liberal perfectionism based on moral pluralism, regarding autonomy as ethics of well-being. According to him, states have the duty to provide conditions for facilitating or defending objective well-being: much perfectionist political action need neither be coercive nor controversial. This is not necessarily grounded in a unitary comprehensive conception of the good life ( Raz, 1986 ).

Thus, several theorists following Raz have insisted on liberal perfectionism ( Hurka, 1993 ; Sher, 1997 ; Wall, 1998 ). Most of these are the weak thesis of perfectionism trying to balance with non-perfectionist regard: perfectionism can defend individual freedom and limited government, frequently based on value pluralism and the ideal of autonomy as perfectionist good ( Wall and Klosoko, 2003 , pp. 17).

Although this liberal perfectionism can contain deontological elements such as the state’s duty in Raz’s conception, the duty originates from the good rather than the right. Therefore, this is opposed to deontological rights-based liberalism due to rejecting “the priority of the right over the good.”

Capability Approach: Consequential, Perfectionist, and Political Liberalism

Secondly, a noteworthy attempt from within economics, which is also concern with the ethical dimension, appeared. As is well-known, Amartya Sen intrinsically criticized the new welfare economics within the tradition of utilitarianism. He regarded utilitarianism as a combination of three requirements: welfarism, sum ranking, and consequentialism. Sum-ranking had already been criticized within economics, and there remained only the (non-utilitarian) consequentialism after his criticism of welfarism ( Sen, 1979 , 1987 , p.39).

While mainstream economics is based on the individualistic construction associated with egoism, Sen criticized the self-interest maximization view of rationality behind “economic man” in neo-classical economics ( Sen, 1977 ). He paid attention to the reality of interdependence, departing from the shared assumption of both utilitarianism and deontology: individuals are independent and separate. He furthermore focuses on “sympathy,” deriving from A. Smith, and “commitment,” an attitude to pursue a value without self-interest. Smith, a founding father of modern economics, was also a moral philosopher: his two masterpieces are The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and the Wealth of Nations (1776), corresponding to moral philosophy and economics. Thus, Sen tries to recover the bridge between the ethical and engineering approaches in economics, each of which existed in the origin of modern economics ( Sen, 1987 ).

Then, he proposed the concept of functioning (achievement of a person) instead of utilitarian welfarism and defined the concept of capability as an “alternative combination of functioning the person can achieve, and from which he or she can choose one collection” ( Sen, 1993 , p. 31; Sen, 1999 , p. 9).

On the other hand, he valued the concepts of rights for their essential role in overcoming the shortcoming of welfarism. Accordingly, he tried to integrate consequentialism and deontology by proposing the concepts of a “coherent goal-rights system,” emphasizing the necessity of freedom ( Sen, 1987 ). Thus, his approach is close to liberalism in his focus on freedom in terms of capability. Instead of Rawl’s contractual reasoning, he proposed an impartial and objective approach of justice based on the capability approach ( Sen, 2009 ). Accordingly, this approach is regarded as a (non-utilitarian) consequential (non-deontological) liberalism.

In addition, philosopher Martha Nussbaum collaborated with Sen in the quality of life project at the World Development Bank because Sen invited her to cooperate. This project influenced the idea of human development embodied in the Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Program.

At the time, Nussbaum proposed a kind of Aristotelian philosophy (internal-essentialism). Although Sen does not support constructing a universal and comprehensive list of capabilities ( Sen, 1993 ), Nussbaum presented the list of “thick vague theory of good” ( Nussbaum, 1987 , 1990 , 1992 , 1993 ). Therefore, her theory was characterized as a “liberal perfectionist egalitarian approach” ( Arneson, 2000 ): perfectionistic because of her Aristotelean objective theory of the human good and liberal because of the conception of capability.

However, in 1998, Nussbaum surprisingly radically shifted her approach to replace the conception of human capabilities from the Aristotelian framework into Rawlsian political liberalism ( Rawls, 1993 ; Nussbaum, 1998 , 2000 ; Deneulin, 2002 ). Consequently, Nussbaum moved from the Aristotelian liberal perfectionist capability approach to the Rawlsian liberal capability approach, refuting Raz’s perfectionist liberalism ( Nussbaum, 2011 ). Thus, while Sen reached consequential liberalism as an alternative to Rawlsian deontological liberalism, Nussbaum turned to Rawlsian political liberalism.

Deliberative Democracy: Liberal/Critical vs. Republican Version

Thirdly, theories of deliberative democracy have surged since 1990’ with regard to the communal or public dimension. Before then, the predominant theories of liberal democracy theories do not value civic participation and discussion, for example, in the elitist theory of democracy (J. Schumpeter) and political theories grounding on the assumption of self-interests (such as pluralism and rational choice theory). Instead, deliberative democracy has focused on citizens’ democratic reflection and debate and regards deliberation as central to decision-making ( Bohman and Rehg, 1997 , p. ix) for the common good or public good to increase the quality of democracy.

The deliberative process can change people’s preferences before decision-making. This transformative nature of deliberation is different from bargaining and aggregation of preferences. Therefore, in contrast to aggregative democracy, deliberative democracy requires citizens to transcend their private self-interests predominant in the market and search for public interests. For this purpose, public forums for deliberation and reason are evaluated and proposed, exemplified by empirical research and proposals such as deliberative polls and deliberative day ( Fishkin, 1991 , 1995 ; Fishkin and Laslett, 2003 ; Ackerman and Fishkin, 2004 ).

As the similarity to republicanism is evident, republicanism can be a type of deliberative democracy (cf. Forst, 2001 ). Some try to bridge these two ( Pettit, 1997 ; Peterson, 2009 ; Hurt, 2018 ) or by terming both kinds of republicanism together as “civic republican deliberative democracy” ( Peterson, 2011 , Ch. 5).

However, representative theorists tend to differentiate their ideas from current republicanism ( Sandel, 1996 ; Sustein, 1988 ) because of the difficulty of shared identity or values in communities at the present age of value pluralism. Accordingly, the deliberative conception based on liberalism is influential: they frequently mention Rawl’s notion of public reason. His student Joshua Cohen extended the sphere of deliberation to various democratic practices in civil society. Cohen proposed an “ideal deliberative procedure” for public reflection toward the common good under the age of reasonable pluralism, respecting citizens’ autonomy ( Cohen, 1989 , 1997 ).

This ideal procedure seems to be inspired by Jürgen Habermas’ idea of ideal speech situation ( Habermas, 1996 ). Inspired by his critical theory, there is a more radical conception of discursive democracy, stressing active citizenship and public discourse as sources of democratic critique and renewal ( Dryzek, 1990 , 2000 ).

The most salient difference between republican and liberal or discursive deliberative democracy is that while the former indispensable element is civic virtue, the latter does not necessarily refer to such a substantial ethical conception. Accordingly, while the former embraces the aim of “a comprehensive or thick common good,” the latter holds that of a “non-comprehensive or thin conception of the common good” ( Gutmann and Thompson, 2004 , pp. 26–27). In sum, although mainstream deliberative democracy shares the public orientation to the common good with republicanism, the former has a weaker ethical orientation than the latter.

Characteristics of Political Philosophies

Configuration of contemporary political philosophies.

Then, Figure 2 indicates the configuration of contemporary political philosophies by the two axes of “individual (private)/collective (communal or public)” and “ethical (virtuous)/non-ethical (non-virtuous),” found in the debate between liberalism and communitarianism.

Configuration of political philosophies.

First, the major political philosophies mentioned above are configured in the three quadrants. Communitarianism in the first quadrant has two distinguishable features, namely, the ethical (virtuous) and the communal orientation. Within its cardinal concept of the common good, “common” signifies communal orientation, and “good” indicates the virtuous.

In contrast, egoism, libertarianism, and liberalism in the third quadrant are neither communal nor virtuous. These are individualistic. At the same time, egoism and utilitarianism are hedonic; libertarianism and liberalism are non-ethical because they do not assume any particular view of persons.

While utilitarianism or utilitarian consequentialism in the fourth quadrant somehow holds the collective elements in summing the happiness of all people, it lacks the virtuous moment.

Secondly, liberal perfectionism in the section “Liberal Perfectionism” is situated in the second quadrant because this is both individualistic and ethical (virtuous).

Thirdly, the other recent developments in the section “Beyond Deontological Rights-Based Liberalism” can be mapped at intermediate places between plural quadrants. For example, Sen’s capability approach started from utilitarian consequentialism and integrated liberal ideas of rights with consequentialism. It attempts to bridge the consequential fourth quadrant and the liberal third quadrant. Moreover, he introduced some ethical elements such as sympathy, and his approach is related to the second quadrant to some degree. On the other hand, while early Nussbaum’s Aristotelian capability approach is interpreted in the second quadrant as liberal perfectionism, the present approach is mapped in the third quadrant because of its Rawlsian liberal framework.

The deliberative democracy is opposed to aggregative democracy, which is grounded on self-interests, associated with a version of egoism. Accordingly, it holds the collective or the public orientation in the right-hand spheres. Thus, while the republican deliberative democracy is mainly situated in the first quadrant, the liberal version bridges liberalism in the third quadrant with the collective or public domain somewhere between the first and the fourth quadrant.

Thus, it is possible to map these political philosophies in this diagram, indicating the recent noteworthy attempts in relation to the main political philosophies and liberal perfectionism. The most recent developments can be seen as the intermediary or combination of some main typical political philosophies. Moreover, although mainstreams of both the capability approach and deliberative democracy are liberal political philosophies, they embrace another remarkable version tangent to liberal perfectionism or communitarianism: Former Nussbaum’s Aristotelian capability approach is close to the former, and republican deliberative democracy adjoins the latter. This tangency proves that the four quadrants are adequate for mapping these theories.

Characteristics of the Main Political Philosophies: Citizenship, Justice, and Well-Being

Accordingly, it would be sufficient for this paper to summarize the essential characteristics of main political philosophies from the epistemological or methodological point of view, especially regarding “citizenship, justice, and well-being.”

Table 1 , “Basic Characteristics of Main Political Philosophies.” indicates characteristics of these political philosophies, adding (social) conservatism together with the main political philosophies mentioned above. Both libertarianism and contemporary liberalism stemmed from historical liberalism by, for example, J. Locke and J.S. Mill. Contemporary communitarianism derives from classical Greek thought, such as Aristotelian philosophy ( Aristotle, 1953/2004 ). The atomistic worldview is predominant in egoism, libertarianism, and liberalism, while holistic worldview dominates social conservatism. Communitarianism is situated between liberalism and social conservatism, as Etzioni mapped these in his renowned The New Golden Rule ( Etzioni, 1996 ). Accordingly, it is sometimes called “liberal communitarianism.”

Basic characteristics of political philosophies.

These philosophies can be classified from their human orientations and the corresponding epistemological (or methodological) viewpoint “Individualism (Atomism)/ Collectivism (Holism).” Psychological and ethical egoism is strongly individualistic and hardly communal, and their self-views are “egoist” or “selfish” because they suppose that people act in self-interest or for hedonic pleasure; they are epistemologically based on the atomistic world-views. Since Epicurus in ancient Greek, various theories have more or less associated some forms of egoism: for example, psychoanalysis and behaviorism in psychology, neo-classical economics, and rational-choice theory in political science.

In contrast, utilitarianism is based on the sum of the happiness of individuals, and therefore mildly individualistic and substantially collectivistic (holistic): its self-view is “selfish” in valuing self-interests or pleasure. Its collective aspect is criticized by libertarianism and liberalism. Their self-views are “separable” entities, and the liberal self-view is also “abstract” because, for example, Rawls’ theory assumes the hypothetical situation under the veil of ignorance.

The individualistic and collective orientations of libertarianism and liberalism are respectively “strong” and “weak”. The individualism of libertarianism is more potent than that of liberalism: the collectivism of the former is weaker than the latter because liberalism results in some concern for the welfare of the poor, in contrast to libertarianism. Social conservatism is on the opposite side of liberalism and libertarianism, and the individualistic and collectivistic orientation is respectively “weak” and “strong”. Liberal communitarianism is in the middle ground between liberalism and conservatism. Accordingly, its individualism and collectivism are respectively “mild” and “substantial (considerable)”: its collective orientation signifies the “communal” element as can be seen in various communities, and its self-view is “relational” or “encumbered”. The individualistic and collectivistic orientations of social conservatives are respectively weaker and more potent than those of communitarianism. Its self-view is “order-oriented,” that is, “obedient” to authority, and its solid collective orientation is “traditional” or “conventional”.

The ethical features of these political philosophies are closely related to the Hedonia/Eudaimonia mentioned above. The well-being of egoism is “hedonic” as well as that of utilitarianism, while that of communitarianism is “eudaimonic.” Both libertarianism and liberalism have no particular conception of well-being, but they regard the pursuit of happiness as “private” matters, which should have no relation with public decisions. The conception of well-being held by conservatism is culturally “traditional” or “conventional.” Accordingly, there is almost no ethics or morality in egoism, and they are weak or feeble in utilitarianism because utilitarian morality relies on hedonic pleasure. They are also non in libertarianism and liberalism because they have “no” connection with particular morality, or they are “weak” or “thin” because the conception of rights is sometimes considered thin ethics ( Waltzer, 1996 ). In contrast, communitarian ethics or morality is eudaimonic, and therefore “substantial” and “thick.” On the other hand, socially conservative ethics or morality is also potent but “conventional” rather than philosophical.

Relationships Among Citizenship, Justice, and Well-Being

The concept of citizenship is “composed of the three main elements or dimensions”: (1) legal citizenship of rights status classically formulated by T. H. Marshall (1950/1992) as ‘‘civil, political, and social,’’ (2) political citizenship as agents actively participating in politics, and (3) ethical or social citizenship as membership in a political community. 3 This manuscript focuses on the former two, called “legal citizenship” and “political citizenship” hereafter.

The concept of justice also includes these meanings: legal justice, political and economic justice, and ethical justice. Legal justice is closely associated with the concept of rights for some liberty. Political and economic justice has had a connection with distributive justice since the time of Aristotle, and the central theme of justice in politics is still distributive justice in contemporary political philosophy. Ethical or moral justice signifies the quality of being morally fair and right from some ethical or transcendent point of view. So then, these three aspects will be called “liberal justice,” “distributive justice,” and “ethical justice”.

Psychological or ethical egoism has little concern for these because activities related to citizenship or justice require time and energy, which are not part of their interests: egoists usually have no concern with these, and they use legal rights as they need them for themselves. So then, there is typically “no” relationship between citizenship/justice and well-being, or if there is one, it is “weak”.

Utilitarianism does not necessarily emphasize citizenship but sometimes recognizes its value (especially legal citizenship) because its preservation can contribute to people’s general happiness. Accordingly, their commitment to citizenship is “weak” or “mild,” and its relationship to citizenship and well-being is “mild” in the contribution of citizenship to general well-being.

Utilitarianism judges justice by the utilitarian principle, and its relationship between good and justice (the right) exists because the maximization of “hedonic” happiness (the good) is justice. As the good of the people concerned signifies hedonic well-being, its relationship between justice and well-being is also “firm” and “direct”. However, as its commitment to citizenship is “mild”, its relationship between citizenship and justice is also “mild” because citizenship is deemed to contribute to the maximization of happiness only to some degree.

Both libertarianism and liberalism depend on the concept of rights, and they regard legal citizenship and liberal justice as necessary. Nevertheless, libertarianism mainly values economic, legal rights such as property rights, while liberalism also values welfare rights as distributive justice. Accordingly, their commitments to (legal) citizenship are “firm” in private spheres, but that of libertarianism and liberalism are, respectively “weak” and “substantial” in public or social spheres.

Their relationship between citizenship and well-being lies in their “enabling possibility” rather than the existence or the degree such as weak/strong. The reason is that legal citizenship enables citizens to pursue happiness by using their legal rights, but that its existence does not necessarily guarantee the realization of well-being.

Their concepts of justice are almost equivalent to legal rights, and they are not related to the good, and there is no relationship between good and justice, as explained in the section “The Debate Between Liberalism and Communitarianism: Justice and the Good Life”.

From their perspective, citizenship mainly signifies the legal aspect, namely, rights, and justice is largely equal to “legal rights”. Therefore, concerning their relationships between citizenship and justice, former conceptions are identical to the latter. Accordingly, their relationships between justice and well-being are equal to those between citizenship and well-being, namely “enabling possibility”. However, these are “indirect” relationships because rights as justice do not necessarily lead to well-being but only prepare the conditions for an individual’s well-being.

Nevertheless, while libertarianism and some version of liberalism tend to disregard political citizenship, liberal republicanism respects it as the execution of legal and political rights. Accordingly, there can be a mild relationship between justice and citizenship in liberal republicanism, in contrast to libertarianism and non-republican liberalism.

Furthermore, communitarianism evaluates highly political citizenship, accompanied by civic virtues/activities, as well as legal rights. Therefore, its commitment to citizenship is most “substantial”. Moreover, as civic activities are thought to promote people’s well-being, the relationship between citizenship and well-being is also “substantial”.

The conception of justice in communitarianism is “ethical” as well as legal and distributive, and its relationship between good and justice exists (“yes”). The good is based on the philosophical concept and “eudaimonic,” as was explained before. Its relationship to citizenship and justice is different from that found in the relationship in libertarianism and liberalism. Communitarian justice is both legal and ethical, and its citizenship includes not only legal citizenship but also political citizenship. Political active citizenship tends to contribute to realizing justice; the relationship between the two is “substantial”.

Moreover, its relationships between justice and well-being are also “substantial” because its ethical justice contributes to realizing the common good, almost equal to public well-being. Thus, the relationship is “direct” in that justice directly leads to well-being compared to the indirect mode of the two rights-based theories.

The commitment of conservatism to citizenship is “mild” because they tend to disregard fundamental human rights and active citizenship. They instead value duties and the concept of nationality. Accordingly, its relationship between citizenship and well-being is “weak” or “mild” because of its disrespect of citizens’ rights. Its justice depends on the “traditional norms” and national “security/interests”. Accordingly, its relationship between the good and justice “exists (yes)” on the condition that the good is the “traditional and national” in contrast to the communitarian “eudaimonic” conception.

Its relationship between citizenship and justice is “weak” or “mild” because simple nationality is not necessarily related to substantial justice. Its relationship between justice and well-being is “mild” because its justice of traditional norms and national security/interests are respectively associated with its well-being of traditional order and national interests, but only to some extent. The reason is that the national kind of well-being sometimes corresponds to the public well-being of citizens but that the former can contradict the latter in some cases, for example, in which states begin unnecessary wars for the interests of the military-industrial complex in the name of protecting their national interests.

In summary, the relationships between citizenship/justice and well-being in each of the political philosophies are “non or weak (egoism)”, “mild or firm (utilitarianism)”, “enabling possibility (libertarianism and liberalism),” “substantial (communitarianism),” and “weak or mild (conservatism)”. Consequently, the interdependence among citizenship/justice and well-being is the most substantial in communitarianism and the second strongest in utilitarianism. On the other hand, the interdependence in libertarianism and liberalism remains a possibility; conservatism is the second weakest; egoism is the weakest.

Moreover, the relationship between citizenship and justice is mild in utilitarianism and substantial in communitarianism. Therefore, interdependence among citizenship, justice, and well-being is the most substantial in communitarianism.

The reason for the difference related to interdependence can be summarized as follows. Utilitarianism has been historically associated with happiness, while liberalism and libertarianism rely on the concept of rights, which is almost equal to the concept of justice in these philosophies. Accordingly, utilitarianism is a philosophy of well-being, while liberalism and libertarianism are philosophies of justice.

Accordingly, there is little connection between well-being and justice in these philosophies because these are incompatible. Libertarianism and liberalism criticize utilitarianism because the maximization of happiness or utility can infringe on fundamental human rights. On the contrary, the latter criticizes the former because the two deontological philosophies neglect consequential well-being.

In addition, utilitarianism emphasizes (hedonic) well-being but does not emphasize citizenship, while libertarianism and liberalism evaluate legal citizenship but do not take well-being into account. As a result, one is contradictory to the other: the connection between citizenship/justice and well-being is not strong between citizenship and well-being (utilitarianism) or between justice and well-being (libertarianism and liberalism).

In contrast, communitarianism is intrinsically the political philosophy of citizenship most attuned to increasing well-being, and it can connect an idea of justice with well-being. It respects fundamental human rights in its liberal wing and well-being in its communal wing. Therefore, citizenship and justice are not only compatible with consequential well-being but also essential for the latter because they enable the realization of public well-being, namely, the common good. Therefore, citizenship and justice are significant ingredients of civic life and politics. It follows from these arguments that the interdependence among citizenship, justice, and well-being is the most substantial in communitarianism.

The Relationship Between Political Philosophies and Positive Psychology

The ethical and communal orientations in positive psychology.

It will be helpful to offer an inter-disciplinary framework depicting the correspondence between political philosophy and positive psychology to develop the collaboration between the two for pursuing the issues such as citizenship, justice, and well-being. Positive psychology can offer empirical evidence or evidence-based theories corresponding to the two axes of contemporary political philosophies.

First, regarding the first ethical axis, in addition to the eudaimonic well-being mentioned above, Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson proposed the classification of virtues or character strengths in the name of Value in Action Inventory (VIA). They classified character strengths under six virtues: wisdom and knowledge, courage, love and humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence ( Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ). These are assumed to be universal through history in the whole globe, and this idea can be regarded as a scientific psychological formulation of virtue ethics. They suppose that human well-being is grounded in them.

Seligman’s theory of well-being (PERMA model) in Flourish ( Seligman, 2011 ) is multi-dimensional and contains the elements of eudaimonia , especially in meaning (M) and engagement (E). In addition, his close collaborator, a philosopher J. O. Pawelski pushes forward the idea of “eudaimonic turn” in humanities such as literary studies ( Pawelski and Moores, 2013 ). Moreover, other eminent psychological theorists such as Carol Ryff and Richard Ryan and Edward Deci claim that their theories (psychological well-being, self-determination) align with eudaimonic well-being or flourishing in Aristotelian philosophy ( Ryan et al., 2013 ; Ryff, 2013 ).

The eudaimonic turn in positive psychology is in tune with communitarianism and liberal perfectionism (the upper half in Figure 2 ): psychological studies can provide these philosophies with scientific corroboration or supporting evidence.

Secondly, positive psychology accumulated extensive evidence that a good human relationship is significant for well-being, regarding the second communal axis. Accordingly, for instance, a positive relationship is one of the pillars, for example, in Seligman’s well-being theory, Ryff’s psychological well-being, and Ryan and Deci’s self-determination theory.

Human relationship in these theories is associated with community or society in the philosophical conception of relationality. As the communitarian view of persons is relational (see section “Relationships Among Citizenship, Justice, and Well-being”), political philosophy can be regarded as a relational public philosophy. Correspondingly, in psychological research, “relational welfare” has already been explored regarding the co-creation of health and well-being for all ( Heimburg and Ness, 2020 ).

Concerning the relational aspect of society, as was touched on cursorily in the section “Criticism Against Positive Psychology and Its Two Frontiers”, an eminent social psychologist Corey Keyes pushed forward a social model of well-being by proposing the measure of “social well-being.” This scale measures the collective orientation for the community, society, and the world ( Keyes, 1998 , 2005 ).

While much community psychology intervention such as prevention is still “individualistic or micro-centere micro-centered” ( Prilleltensky and Nelson, 2009 , pp. 127-129), critical community psychology offers theoretical discussions of community well-being. For example, Isaac Prilleltensky and Ora Prilleltensky pointed to the three primary sites of well-being: personal well-being, organizational well-being, and community well-being ( Prilleltensky and Prilleltensky, 2006 , p. 11). They accomplished a comparative analysis across countries regarding community well-being and concluded that the more egalitarian countries are, the better health is. According to them, the three key determinants of health and well-being are poverty, power, and participation; critical consciousness about the three determinants, critical experiences, and critical actions are vital to overcoming oppression and exploitation.

In addition, there was also the concept of the common good in the values of organizational well-being and community well-being ( Prilleltensky and Prilleltensky, 2006 , p.13, Table 1 ). Accordingly, the conception of community well-being is quite in line with communitarianism. The interdependence of the three types of well-being makes us recognize that private well-being is interwoven with public well-being. Since liberalism and libertarianism separate the two by segregating public decisions from the private understanding of “good life,” they cannot increase public well-being by public decisions based upon some values of personal well-being. In contrast, communitarianism admits various public policies grounded on them. Therefore, it can activate the synergy between personal well-being and public well-being. Moreover, as they emphasized participation and actions, their arguments align with communitarian republicanism.

Furthermore, the idea of positive critical psychology recently emerged. Its handbook ( Brown et al., 2018 ) contains a foreword by Prilleltensky and related articles suggesting a collaboration between community psychology and positive psychology ( Martino et al., 2018 ). The proposed banner of integrating the two approaches, “community positive psychology” or “community-based positive psychology” ( Martíniz and Martino, 2018 ), is almost equal to positive communitarian psychology.

In addition, the pioneering work by Jonathan Haidt (2012) on the relationship between psychology and political philosophy is worth noting. His study focuses on the moral foundation of political philosophies of conservatism, liberalism, and libertarianism. Although this research did not deal with communitarianism, it provides insights into the psychological background of various political philosophies.

These empirical psychological studies can increase or decrease the relative reliability of specific political philosophy in Figure 2 . For example, the eudaimonic ethical moment of positive psychology aligns with liberal perfectionism, but it does not necessarily fit its communal moment. On the other hand, the communal developments above have much in common with the communitarian political philosophy. Such a correspondence seems to increase the credibility of some in contrast to different political philosophies.

Clarification of Political Philosophies and Positive Political Philosophy

This recognition of the association between positive psychology and political philosophies makes the theoretical character of political philosophies clearer from the perspective of the former. The tenet of positive psychology is that it studies the positive side of human mental conditions. In contrast, “psychology as usual” has focused on the negative side of mental disease for its remedy. This characterization is helpful for grasping the opposition between the two rights-based deontological political philosophies (libertarianism and liberalism) and communitarianism.

Figure 3 indicates the configuration of the main political philosophies by using the two axes deriving from the psychological arguments: “negative/positive” and “non-ethical (non-virtuous)/ethical (virtuous)”. The vertical axis is the same as Figure 2 . Utilitarianism is hedonic (anti-virtuous), and its goal of maximizing hedonic well-being is principally positive. Accordingly, this is mapped basically in the fourth quadrant. Nevertheless, the formula includes the negative element “sum of happiness-(minus)sum of misery”. Therefore, it is also related to opposing spheres in the third quadrant as “negative utilitarianism.”

Positive political philosophy.

Similarly, libertarianism and liberalism are non-ethical and mapped in the lower half, as indicated in Figure 2 . Concerning the horizontal axis, the central theme of historical liberalism in Western history is the defense of individual rights from its infringement by the state. The coercive power’s invasion or oppression of liberty is a negative phenomenon. Various autocracies or dictatorships embody the danger. Therefore, liberalism, in the broad sense, is a political philosophy whose main aim is to prevent the appearance of such negative politics.

This element corresponds to “negative liberty” ( Berlin, 1969 ), which is expressed by “freedom from” such as “freedom from evil powers” in the literature of political philosophy. Both libertarianism and liberalism are decedents of historical liberalism, and they share the conception of negative liberty. In particular, while liberalism embraces a limited degree of positive concern because of its justification of welfare policy, libertarianism lacks the positive element.

In contrast, communitarianism is both virtuous and positive and mapped in the first quadrant. The aim of the common good is positive: it indicates various desirable things, such as a suitable environment, peace, and welfare, for people in the community. This element is equal to “positive liberty” (I. Berlin), which is expressed by “freedom to.”

Accordingly, utilitarianism and communitarianism are positive political philosophies. These are teleological because their purposes were maximization of happiness (utilitarianism) or the common good (communitarianism). While the former depends on the hedonic conception of happiness, the latter requires people’s virtues, including civic virtue. Accordingly, these are, respectively mapped in the fourth and the first quadrant: the attention to human nature corresponds to its psychological counterpart, namely, positive psychology.

Positive psychology sometimes encounters criticisms because it neglects the importance of curing mental illness’s negative phenomenon. Likewise, liberalists and libertarians attack utilitarianism and communitarianism as follows: Their pursuit of positive ideals may lead to negative politics such as repression, dictatorship, and violation of human rights.

Positive psychologists reply to the reproach that they do not deny the importance of psychology as usual, and they are only adding a new field of inquiry to it. Seligman and others suggested the goal of “a balanced psychology” as “an integrated, balanced field” ( Seligman et al., 2004 ). Similarly, communitarians refute the liberal and libertarian charges in that they also attach importance to rights and liberty, just as conventional psychology is still vital from positive psychology. For example, Etzioni distinguished their ideas from social conservatives ( Etzioni, 1996 ). While social conservatives surely belittle individual’s autonomy, rights, and liberty, communitarians balance rights with responsibility. The term “liberal communitarianism” signifies an integration of preventing the negative and pursuing the positive. It thus tries to embrace both negative and positive elements in some way. This vision for the integrated, balanced political philosophy is just as balanced psychology.

Inter-Disciplinary Framework of Political Philosophy and Psychology

On the other hand, such a philosophical typology can inspire psychology. First of all, “psychology as usual” (the third quadrant in Figure 1 )is to positive psychology what libertarian and liberal political philosophies (the third quadrant in Figure 2 ) are to utilitarian and communitarian philosophy (the fourth and first quadrant in Figure 2 ).

Positive individual psychology (the second quadrant in Figure 1 ) has already developed with utilitarianism as hedonic psychology (see section “Positive Psychology and Utilitarian Tradition”). However, on the other hand, positive psychology has developed toward perfectionist direction by the conception of eudaimonic well-being. Therefore, this kind of theory is “positive perfectionist psychology” or “individual eudaimonic psychology,” corresponding to liberal perfectionism (the second quadrant in Figure 2 ).

Positive collective psychology (the first quadrant in Figure 1 ), including positive political psychology, corresponds to utilitarian and communitarian political philosophy, as was suggested in the last section. While hedonic psychology can develop collectively (the fourth quadrant in Figure 2 ), positive psychology can develop toward the communal or republican direction (the first quadrant in Figure 2 ). This vision of “communal eudaimonic psychology” is, as it were, “positive communitarian psychology.” It straightforwardly leads to psychology for the common good.

Then, positive political psychology can develop in two directions. First, it is principally related to positive collective psychology, corresponding to utilitarianism and communitarianism (the right side in Figure 2 ). Nevertheless, it also has to do with individual psychology because it is associated with libertarianism, liberalism, and liberal perfectionism (the left side in Figure 2 ). In particular, liberal perfectionism is related to positive individual psychology, which has to do with positive political psychology.

In addition, there may be developments of political psychology inspired by the other theories in Figure 2 . In the first place, the capability approach has already impacted well-being studies as the Human Development Index. Furthermore, the psychological dynamics during the deliberation process would be a vital research theme for developing deliberative democracy. Thus, the capability approach or the deliberative democracy can stimulate the progress of positive collective psychology.

Thus, the framework illustrated in the figures and the table makes it possible to summarize the key arguments of this paper. First, as Figure 1 shows, it is desirable to explore positive collective psychology on the basis of the development of positive individual psychology (from individual psychology as usual) and collective psychology as usual, such as social psychology. This new development enables positive psychology to overcome the charge against its character as Western-centered individual psychology (see section “Criticism Against Positive Psychology and Its Two Frontiers”).

Secondly, although positive psychology has been associated with utilitarianism in its early stage, it turned to have links with other political philosophies after the conceptual emergence of eudaimonic well-being (see section “Positive Psychology and Utilitarian Tradition”). Figure 2 indicates contemporary political philosophies, including their recent developments (see section “Major Political Philosophies and Recent Developments”), by the two axes of “individual (private)/collective (communal or public)” and “ethical (virtuous)/non-ethical (non-virtuous).” The four quadrants correspond to communitarianism, liberal perfectionism, egoism/libertarianism/liberalism, and utilitarianism. Capability approach and deliberative democracy are situated somewhere between these four (see section “Configuration of Contemporary Political Philosophies”).

Therefore, it is sufficient to focus on major political philosophies to investigate the relationship between citizenship, justice, and well-being. Then, thirdly, Table 1 summarizes their basic characteristics and the relationship (see section “Characteristics of the Main Political Philosophies: Citizenship, Justice, and Well-being”). As positive psychology embraces the ethical and communal orientation along with the two axes in Figure 2 (see section “The Ethical and Communal Orientations in Positive Psychology”), the framework consisting of the figures and the table will benefit empirical research of positive political psychology.

Fourthly, this framework can also illuminate political philosophies from the perspective of psychology. Figure 3 maps principle political philosophies by two axes of “negative/positive” and “ethical (virtuous)/non-ethical (non-virtuous).” The former horizontal axis corresponds to the “freedom from” and “freedom to,” which are the fundamental concepts of political philosophy: these are parallel to the opposition between libertarianism/liberalism and utilitarianism/communitarianism.

Multi-Disciplinary Development for Common Good as Collective Well-Being

This clarification and classification of political philosophies can inspire positive psychology or psychology for the common good. For example, empirical research on the relationship between citizenship, justice, and well-being will be possible, bearing the classificatory framework in mind. This kind of empirical research will benefit remarkably political philosophy and, furthermore, social sciences in general.

For example, Harold Lasswell’s pioneer work Psychopathology and Politics ( Lasswell, 1930/2020 ) applied clinical psychology concepts to predict and avoid societal and political conflicts. This book is the classical work of political science for preventing negative politics, utilizing psychology as usual.

On the other positive side, while the contents of the common good in philosophical or theoretical discussions in social sciences are abstract in most cases, psychological concepts such as well-being can clarify its effects or levels and make measurement possible. This vision may make the unfulfilled idea of positive social sciences a reality.

For this purpose, it is worthwhile to introduce the concept of collective well-being. This term was proposed for measuring the overall “health” of a community ( Roy et al., 2018 ), and it can be applied to various institutions in society ( Waters et al., 2021 ). This term is close to community well-being mentioned above, and it can be replaced by “common well-being” or “public well-being” in the context of political philosophy and thinking about the common good.

From this perspective, overall well-being or general well-being embraces both individual and collective aspect, and it is affected by “individual well-being” and “collective well-being,” each of which corresponds to positive individual psychology and positive collective psychology. Positive individual psychology verified that individual factors influence individual well-being, illustrated by a happy chart consisting of set points by biological genes, circumstances, and intentional activities ( Lyubomirsky, 2007 , p.39). The happiness formula expresses this relationship by Seligman ( Seligman, 2002 , p.45): H(enduring level of happiness) = S(set range) + C(circumstance) + V(voluntary control). Despite the recent critical revision of interpretation or clarification regarding this, 4 it is still helpful to bear the three factors in mind.

Similarly, positive collective psychology can suppose that collective well-being is affected by culture, society, and politics (or policy). It would be natural to conceive the following correspondence between an individual and a collective factor: biological gene and culture, circumstance and society, and voluntary control and politics (or policy). Then, the collective well-being may be expressed by a formula: CoW(level of collective well-being) = CuW(cultural well-being) + SoW(social well-being) + PoW(political well-being). While cultural well-being is associated with a cultural set range, social well-being depends on social circumstances, and political well-being can change by voluntary collective control of policies.

Accordingly, the introduction of the idea of political well-being may be effective just as community well-being or social well-being. First, citizenship and justice can affect the level of political and social well-being, then collective well-being, and finally, overall well-being. The increase of collective well-being empirically indicates the level of realizing the common good.

In the past, Sen and Nussbaum’s capability approach has influenced not only social sciences but also well-being research. On the other hand, Rawls referred to moral psychology in his Theory of Justice ( Rawls, 1971 , section 69, 75). Habermas introduced and reconstructed Lawrence Kohlberg’s empirical psychological model of moral development for creating discursive ethics in the critical theory ( Habermas, 1979 ).

Likewise, political philosophy can inform psychology, and psychology can invigorate political philosophy through the dynamics of this interdisciplinary framework. As a result, a political philosophy may emerge grounded in the empirical science of psychology, which may develop based on inspiration from political philosophy. In sum, these would be scientific philosophy and philosophical science.

The map of the correspondence between the two disciplines may well prompt new explorations in both fields. Moreover, this collaboration of the two disciplines will also impact social sciences in general. Consequently, this inter-disciplinary framework will accelerate multi-disciplinary development and enable us to proceed toward a psychology for the common good.

Author Contributions

MK conducted this research with the assistance of Hirotaka Ishikawa (graduate student of Graduate School of Humanities and Studies on Public Affairs, Chiba University).

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Acknowledgments

I especially appreciate the kind suggestions and advice from the reviewers for writing this paper. I am also grateful for the advice and encouragement from Martin Seligman and Lindsay Oades for exploring the new idea of positive political psychology.

1 The following representative political philosophies are summarized and discussed in Michael Sandel’s much-acclaimed book on justice ( Sandel, 2009 ) for general readers. There are other philosophies such as Marxism, multi-culturalism, feminism, post-modern theories for investigating various issues in the contemporary world ( Kymlicka, 2001 ).

2 This concept was proposed in my presentation “Possibility of Positive Political Psychology” in the 6th World Congress of International Positive Psychology Association, 19th, July 2019.

3 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006, 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/citizenship/ .

4 Sonja Lyubomirsky, the creator of the happy chart, expressed the modification including the withdrawal of approximate percentage of each factor at the 6th World Congress of International Association of Positive Psychology (July, 2019) in response to criticisms.

This study was conducted by the grants-in-aid for scientific research in Japan, Fundamental Research(C), Theory and of Positive Political Psychology: Relationship between Political System and Psychological Well-being, 2020–2022. It was also supported by Chiba Studies on Global Fair Society, Institute for Global Prominent Research.

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Philosophy Dissertation Topics

Published by Grace Graffin at January 9th, 2023 , Revised On January 9, 2023

Introduction

The choice of dissertation topic is crucial for research as it will facilitate the process and makes it an exciting and manageable process. Several dissertation ideas exist in philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, logic, aesthetics, deontology, absurdum, and existentialism. Philosophy dissertations can be based on either primary research or secondary research.

Primary data dissertations incorporate the collection and analysis of data obtained through questionnaires and surveys. On the other hand, secondary data dissertations make use of existing literature to test the research hypothesis . To help you get started with philosophy topic selection for your dissertation, a list is developed by our experts.

These philosophy dissertation topics have been developed by PhD qualified writers of our team , so you can trust to use these topics for drafting your dissertation.

You may also want to start your dissertation by requesting  a brief research proposal  from our writers on any of these topics, which includes an  introduction  to the topic,  research question ,  aim and objectives ,  literature review  along with the proposed  methodology  of research to be conducted.  Let us know  if you need any help in getting started.

Check our  dissertation examples  to get an idea of  how to structure your dissertation .

Review the full list of  dissertation topics for 2022 here.

Philosophy Dissertation Topics of Research

Topic 1: an examination of women's perspective on feminist philosophy..

Research Aim: This study aims to look into the importance of feminism in a philosophical context. It will also identify the factors that lead to postmodernism and liberal feminism from women’s perspectives and will also focus on the impact of feminist philosophy on the development of modern society.

Topic 2: Sociological Functionalism- Investigating the Development and Beliefs

Research Aim: This research study will focus on new types of functionalism and get a deeper understanding of inner and outer circumstances in which different approaches take place. This study will also investigate how the researchers use social theory to acquire a better understanding of the environment in which these concepts are used. It will also promote sociology through informing and inspiring practices and research.

Topic 3: Assessing the History and Development of Philosophical Work from the 15th to 21st Century.

Research Aim: This study aims to find the history and development of philosophical work from the 15th and 21st Centuries. It will examine the theoretical foundations of the practice, applications, and social consequences. This study will also focus on different factors of how philosophy has evolved in these centuries and what changes have occurred.

Topic 4: A Comprehensive View of Social Development of Loneliness.

Research Aim: This study will comprehend how various theoretical points of view are connected or linked r to loneliness. This study will also present an argument for an interpretative social point of view by dissembling the sense of loneliness into key components. It will also focus on the problems and different behaviours of people.

Topic 5: What does it mean to live in an Ideal Society- Discuss using Plato's Philosophies.

Research Aim: Plato is well known for his monologue known as the Republic; he was also the classical political philosopher whose views influenced future political thoughts. Plato’s ideal society was created during a time when Plato was exceedingly optimistic about human nature and its ability to absorb knowledge. This study will conduct a deep analysis of Plato’s ideologies and his views and their impact on the western political world.

More Philosophy Dissertation Research Topics

Topic 1: why we should stop capital punishment and adopt permanent solutions to help solve crimes..

Research Aim: This research aims to analyse the importance of rehabilitation and counseling of criminals to bring them back to their usual walks of life. The whole idea is to eliminate crime, and capital punishment does not provide solutions where a clean society can be developed.

Topic 2: Should people always obey the rules? A closer look at the line between breaking rules and rebellion.

Research Aim: Rules are developed to maintain a balance in society and ensure discipline, which helps an individual in every sphere of their lives. But specific rules are created only for serving a group and not for the whole society’s best interest. This research aims at finding pieces of evidence where rule-breaking is a rebellion and for the upliftment of humanity and not in personal interest.

Topic 3: Loneliness: Reconstructing its meaning

Research Aim: This research aims at finding the meaning of loneliness, what it is to feel lonely, why some people are reclusive, isolate themselves. Loneliness is not always related to sadness, and some people feel better in isolation due to their bitter experiences of life.

Topic 4: Understanding why religion is paramount above anything else for many people around the globe.

Research Aim: Religion forms the basis of life and way of living for many people around the globe. People often get confused with religion and spiritualism, and the grandeur associated with religion becomes more important. The lack of knowledge and education forces blind faith. This research aims to find the reason for dependency on religion and how it negatively affects human lives.

Topic 5: What is the best way to boost a person’s creativity?

Research Aim: This research aims at finding the best possible way to boost a person’s creativity. The most important way is to motivate, inspire, and support them in their process of exploring innovative ideas. Recognition of talent can be the most effective method, which the research will investigate.

Topic 6: Morality and religion: Why are they different, yet they talk about the same thing?

Research Aim: The fundamental essence of religion is compassion and empathy for humans and ensures morality and ethics as a way of life. This research emphasises the primary aim of a religion and how people are getting disoriented and making rituals of religion the prime concern.

Topic 7: Wealth: Is it possible to be rich without having a lot of money?

Research Aim: Wealth and money are co-related as lots of money gives the power to buy anything. But a wealth of human life lies in their moral values, love, affection, proper health and wellbeing, and money cannot accept them. This research topic will speak about becoming wealthy, even with limited monetary wealth.

Topic 8: How can the custom of dowry be eliminated from people’s minds?

Research Aim: Dowry is a social parasite, and it is now a punishable offence by the law. But rules alone cannot change society. The research aims at eradicating the practice of dowry from people’s minds in the light of education.

Topic 9: To love or to be loved: Which is more important?

Research Aim: Love is the feeling of intense desire or deep affection. The most beautiful feeling gives a sense of satisfaction and grows through exchange between two individuals. To love and be loved are two co-related aspects as human expects love in return. The research focuses on the more critical dilemma, being on the giving or receiving side of love.

Topic 10: Why social behaviour and ethics cannot be separated?

Research Aim: The research aims to evaluate the importance of ethics in social behaviour and why they cannot be separated. An ethical society is a proper place to thrive for every individual.

Topic 11: A more in-depth look at things that make human life meaningful.

Research Aim: Money, power does not always buy happiness. The research lays the foundation for the importance of care, compassion, empathy. Love and affection as the more essential aspects that make human life meaningful.

Topic 12: Is it possible to create an ideal society?

Research Aim: An ideal society is free from any crime and economic disparities where everyone is treated equally. This research will discuss whether a perfect community is attainable; it is practically possible or not.

Topic 13: A closer look at modern life values.

Research Aim: The research aims to focus on the change in values in modern times. The research’s primary purpose is to provide a comparative study of how modern people’s mindset has changed over time.

Topic 14: Euthanasia: Is it ethical?

Research Aim: A long time debate exists regarding the ethical side of euthanasia. Ending someone’s life can be considered unlawful as we do not have the right to end something we did not create. This research aims at providing evidence in favour of euthanasia and also the negative aspects.

Topic 15: What is the value of truth? Are there instances when lying is good?

Research Aim: The research aims to provide evidence where lying is not unethical. The study will give an example from Bhagwat Gita, where Lord Krishna lied to safeguard humanity.

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Political science plays an important role in how we shape the world around us. It offers insight into governments, political systems, public policies, international relations, and more. This makes it a broad subject to explore. But it can also be challenging to find a captivating political science research topic. 

To make things easier, we’ve collected multiple political science research paper topics that suit any taste and need. We made a step further and divided these ideas into accessible categories. Choose the area you are most interested in and get ready to find a bunch of political science research topics in your domain.

But first things first, let’s figure out what politics is all about.

What Are Political Science Research Topics?

Politics is the study of governments, public policies, and political processes. It investigates how societies make decisions. Political science also examines how decisions affect people, both on a small scale, like a neighborhood, and on a global scale, like international relations.

Political science research paper topics can range widely within this discipline. Depending on your interests and goals, you could explore anything from voting behavior to gender equality in politics. You can also study global diplomatic relations, electoral systems, or the influence of media on political outcomes.

Characteristics of Good Political Science Research Paper Topics

Politics shapes our world in myriad ways. Every aspect of it bears relevance and offers a platform for thoughtful discourse, making it a fertile field for academic exploration.

However, good political science topics aren’t just about selecting a subject itself. Great ideas require elements of intrigue, relevance, and potential for in-depth examination, all while showcasing your input. So, what should you consider while choosing between different political research topics? Well, your passion and expertise are pivotal. Your topic should resonate with your interests and align with your academic focus.

Here's a brief overview of characteristics that make up engaging political science research topics:

• Relevant and contemporary
• Balanced in its scope
• Well-documented and containing enough material
• Interesting to you as well as your readers
• Suitable for follow-up studies and/or additional research.

How to Choose a Political Science Research Topic?

Stumped about which political science topic to choose for your research paper? It's a common dilemma for many students. You shouldn’t just pick a theme. You must ensure that your topic sustains your interest, meets academic requirements, and resonates with your audience.

No need to stress, though! This blog is here to help you navigate these tricky waters. Our online essay writer team has shared these step-by-step guidelines to help you choose a successful topic for your political science paper:

• Start with something you’re passionate about. Your enthusiasm and interest will animate the project and guide you to success.
• Come up with an original idea that hasn’t been explored in depth before or is still relevant today.
• Find something that’s timely and engaging to a wider audience. This should be something that people care about and are actively discussing.
• Look for hidden connections, patterns, and solutions. Make sure your political science research topic is complex enough to ensure in-depth research.
• Gather the necessary materials beforehand. Ensure availability of information before you begin analyzing your theme.

List of Political Science Research Topics

Before you plunge into our expertly compiled list, remember to double-check your instructor's guidelines. Aligning your choice with your course requirements is vital. Now, prepare to browse through the most captivating politics research topics that could be the launchpad for your future paper.

• Understanding democracy: An evolving concept.
• Rise of populism in 21st-century politics.
• Climate change and global governance.
• Role of United Nations: Effectiveness and criticisms.
• Politics behind nuclear disarmament.
• Influence of social media on political campaigns.
• Immigration policies: A comparative study.
• Human rights and foreign policy.
• Impact of political instability on economic growth.
• Cybersecurity in international relations.
• Decoding political symbolism in public spaces.
• Feminism and its political impact.
• Role of youth in politics.
• Is healthcare a political issue?
• Examining political bias in media.

Easy Political Science Research Topics

While the field of political science can seem intricate, there are areas within it that are more accessible, yet equally intriguing. If you're new to the discipline or prefer less complex issues, this list of simple political science paper topics could be your go-to. Each topic is designed to offer an easy entry point into political science, but still, provide room for critical analysis .

• Defining basic political ideologies: Liberalism, Conservatism, and Socialism.
• How does voting work? An overview.
• Impact of political cartoons on public opinion.
• Presidential vs. parliamentary systems.
• Role of lobby groups in shaping policy.
• Political satire and its influence.
• Environmental policy: Understanding basics.
• What role does local government play?
• Does every vote count in elections?
• How accurate are public opinion polls?
• Politics in sports.
• Privacy rights in a digital era.
• Gender representation in politics.
• Patriotism vs. nationalism: Understanding the difference.
• Role of celebrities in political campaigns.

Interesting Political Science Research Topics

Political science never falls short of captivating topics. With its dynamic nature and its intricate connection to real-world issues, there's always something noteworthy to explore. We've done our utmost to curate a list of topics in political science that will pique anyone’s curiosity:

• Lessons from literature on dystopian governance.
• The war on drugs policy.
• What influence does propaganda have on contemporary governance?
• How governing ideologies influence art.
• Balancing national security with personal freedoms.
• Importance of whistleblowers in democratic societies.
• Rhetoric and reality behind political speeches.
• Implications of artificial intelligence on governance.
• Attainability of world peace: A critical perspective.
• Dynamics of power in non-democratic systems.
• Global pandemics and their effects on governance.
• Competing for Mars: A new space race.
• Impact of religion on governance.
• Perspective on animal rights from a political viewpoint.
• Food accessibility: Who decides who gets to eat what?

Good Topics for a Political Science Research Paper

Scoring points with your professor often comes down to choosing compelling and thought-provoking research paper ideas . The following list includes good political science research questions that are in tune with contemporary discourse. Each topic offers plenty of room to showcase your analytical skills and knowledge.

• Evaluating e-democracy: Benefits and drawbacks.
• How migration policies shape nations.
• Media as a tool for political persuasion.
• Political philosophy in science fiction literature.
• Trade wars and global relations.
• Is there a global shift towards autocracy?
• Understanding diplomatic immunity: Rights and abuses.
• Role of non-state actors in shaping international policy.
• Rise of nationalism in globalized societies.
• Impact of climate change on national security.
• Examination of censorship laws across nations.
• Can blockchain technology revolutionize voting systems?
• Decoding political rhetoric in campaign promises.
• Gender pay gap: A policy analysis.
• Influence of economic inequality on social unrest.

Best Political Science Research Topics

We have curated an irresistible list of political science topics for a research paper. These ideas range from pressing international issues to more granular policy questions, all guaranteed to challenge your analytical skills.

• Exploring causes and effects of global populism.
• Transparency as a key to ethical political leadership.
• Evaluating the role of social media censorship in political landscapes.
• Influence of multiculturalism on policy development.
• Unpacking the outcomes and justifications of military interventions.
• Corruption's destructive role in democratic systems.
• Merits and pitfalls of technocracy.
• Interplay of bureaucracy and governance.
• Pathways to address political polarization.
• Effects of historical colonization on current government structures.
• Role of extremism in shaping international relations.
• How global climate commitments affect nations.
• Using sanctions as a diplomatic tool.
• Conflict resolution through international law.
• Geopolitics in outer space exploration.

Current Research Topics in Political Science

Political science is a progressing field, so the problems you research will always be relevant. Our list of up-to-date topics of political science will help you make sure your paper is on point.

• Artificial intelligence in global governance.
• Global health governance in pandemics.
• Impact of digital currencies on economies.
• Changes in contemporary immigration attitudes.
• Climate crisis' role in diplomatic dialogues.
• Social movements and societal change.
• Tech giants and information control.
• Civil liberties in pandemic responses.
• Gender disparities in political representation.
• Decolonization trends in the 21st century.
• Cyber warfare and national security.
• Ethics of drone warfare.
• Crypto-anarchy and state sovereignty.
• Right-wing extremism in the digital age.
• Power dynamics in international space law.

Political Science Research Topic Ideas for Students

Navigating politics can be overwhelming for students, given its broad nature and intersecting disciplines. With the right research topics for political science, however, this complexity transforms into an opportunity for a decent study. Our list of political science research topics ideas is designed with students in mind, focusing on engaging, relevant, and manageable themes.

Political Science Research Paper Topics for College Students

For college students, political science topics for research papers should strike a balance between complexity and approachability. With that in mind, here's a collection of college-level political topics to write about.

• Leadership styles across governments.
• Impact of gender roles in election campaigns.
• Role of think tanks in shaping public opinion.
• Studying historical revolutions and their aftermath.
• Influence of socio-economic status on voting behavior.
• Exploring ethical dilemmas in international relations.
• Cultural diplomacy and its effectiveness.
• Sovereignty disputes and their resolution.
• Rise and implications of digital citizenship.
• Evaluating meritocracy as a system of governance.
• Role of peacekeeping operations in conflict resolution.
• Comparing capitalist and socialist economies.
• Decoding cyber diplomacy in the digital age.
• Relationship between economic crises and political changes.
• Minority rights in democratic societies.

Political Science Research Topics for University

When it comes to political topics to talk about in university, politics offers a variety of interesting options. Here's a list of captivating research ideas that are sure to get you top grades:

• Political revolutions in the digital age.
• Comparative study of political systems.
• Effectiveness of international climate agreements.
• Unraveling political consequences of economic sanctions.
• Studying neocolonialism in modern economies.
• Impact of income inequality on social stability.
• Debating political implications of universal basic income.
• Role of international courts in global governance.
• Influence of cultural diversity on national policies.
• Dissecting geopolitics in Arctic resource exploitation.
• Understanding post-conflict reconciliation processes.
• Evaluating state responses to refugee crises.
• Study of civil disobedience in democratic societies.
• Role of soft power in international relations.
• Disentangling politics of global water disputes.

Political Science Research Topics by Subjects

Political science is a diverse field, consisting of multiple subdomains. To help you spot a fitting theme, we've organized research paper topics for political science according to these subjects. From international relations to public policy, this assortment promises a treasure trove of research opportunities just waiting to be explored.

Philosophy Political Science Research Topics

Philosophy politics research topics explore the intersection of political science and philosophical thought. These themes focus on fundamental questions, such as the purpose of politics and its effects on society. Here are a few ideas to get your started:

• Relevance of Machiavelli's theories today.
• Understanding justice in Plato's Republic.
• Influence of Kantian ethics on governance.
• Are human rights universal or culturally relative?
• Interplay of liberty and equality in societies.
• Exploring Hobbes' notion of social contract.
• Rawls versus Nozick: theories of justice compared.
• Feminist perspectives on political participation.
• Role of ethics in bureaucratic institutions.
• Marx's theory of capitalism: A critical review.
• Foucault's perspectives on power and control.
• Locke's influence on modern democracies.
• Concepts of civil disobedience in Thoreau's writings.
• Arendt on violence, power, and authority.
• Exploring Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony.
• Derrida's deconstruction: A political tool?
• Nietzsche’s perspectives on societal structure.
• Understanding politics through Spinoza's lens.
• Evaluating communitarianism in contemporary societies.
• Habermas on communicative action in politics.

>> View more: Philosophy Paper Topics

Political Science Research Topics on Public Law

Public law is one of the most popular subdomains of political science, as it focuses on legal systems and state power. It's a domain that lets you explore how laws are formulated, implemented, and impact society. Below you can find various political research questions in public law, including constitutional issues, administrative governance, and individual rights, among others.

• Role of constitution in shaping governance.
• Impact of judicial activism on democracy.
• Analyzing separation of powers in governments.
• Free speech rights in digital platforms.
• Repercussions of surveillance laws on privacy.
• Comparative study of electoral laws.
• Analyzing federalism in constitutional law.
• Police power and civil liberties.
• Effectiveness of anti-discrimination laws.
• Administrative discretion: Power and accountability.
• Impact of immigration laws on societies.
• Understanding lawmaking process in parliamentary systems.
• Role of supreme courts in constitutional interpretation.
• Law enforcement and minority rights.
• Legal aspects of environmental protection.
• Hate speech laws and freedom of expression.
• Public health laws in times of crisis.
• Legal mechanisms to fight corruption.
• Analyzing gun control laws across nations.
• Legal challenges in the implementation of welfare policies.

>> Learn more:  Law Research Topics

Research Topics in Political Science on Public Administration

Public administration is the study of how governments and other public institutions are managed. It examines their structures, operations, policies, and politics to understand how they work in practice. Here's a collection of project topics for political science on public administration worth attention:

• Understanding bureaucracy in modern governance.
• Role of public administrators in policy implementation.
• Effect of administrative reforms on public services.
• Importance of ethics in public administration.
• Evaluating public financial management systems.
• Role of e-governance in public service delivery.
• Analyzing gender representation in public administration.
• Public administration in urban planning.
• Role of public-private partnerships in governance.
• Crisis management strategies in public administration.
• Leadership challenges in public organizations.
• Role of transparency in public service delivery.
• Organizational culture in public administration.
• Analyzing the politics-administration dichotomy.
• Decision-making processes in public organizations.
• Evaluating accountability mechanisms in public administration.
• Human resource challenges in public services.
• Impact of corruption on public administration.
• Role of citizens' participation in public administration.
• Comparative study of public administration models.

Political Science Research Paper Topics on Comparative Politics

Comparative politics research topics offer a window into how different political systems operate, what works, and what needs reevaluation. It encourages you to step outside the boundaries of your local context and grasp a more global perspective on political processes. The following political essay topics and paper ideas will fit any compare and contrast essay or project.

• Social welfare measures across democracies.
• Examining stability in different governmental systems.
• Comparative analysis of electoral mechanisms.
• Impact of societal culture on governance.
• Federalism versus unitary systems: A comparative study.
• Scrutinizing corruption in diverse economies.
• A cross-nation study of education systems.
• Protection of minority rights across countries.
• Comparing freedom of the press globally.
• Role of armed forces in various governmental structures.
• Analyzing constitutional designs across nations.
• A study on decentralization efforts in different countries.
• Comparative research on party systems.
• Gender and leadership: A cross-country examination.
• Populism in different societal contexts.
• Comparative view of environmental conservation measures.
• Human rights protections in different nations.
• Influence of colonial history on modern governance.
• Cross-national study of immigration rules.
• Role of religion in different governance systems.

Political Science Research Topics on Conflict Resolution

Conflict resolution is an essential field in political science, focusing on the methods and strategies used to mitigate disputes on local, national, and international levels. It opens up opportunities to explore how peace is achieved, maintained, and sometimes lost. Below you can find political issues to write about if you want to focus on different disputes.

• Peacebuilding strategies in post-war societies.
• Role of diplomacy in averting conflicts.
• Effectiveness of international arbitration.
• Power sharing as a tool for peace.
• Influence of civil society on conflict resolution.
• Role of United Nations in global peacekeeping.
• Mediation strategies in intra-state conflicts.
• Women in peace negotiations.
• Strategies for resolving territorial disputes.
• Analyzing post-conflict reconciliation processes.
• Impact of economic sanctions on conflict resolution.
• Role of international law in conflict mitigation.
• Effectiveness of non-violent resistance.
• Analyzing the success of peace treaties.
• Study of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration processes.
• Resolving resource-based conflicts.
• Role of third parties in conflict resolution.
• Approaches to addressing ethnic conflicts.
• Influence of climate change on conflict resolution.
• Cyber conflict resolution strategies.

Political Science Research Topics on Meditation and Negotiation

Mediation and negotiation sit at the heart of conflict resolution, focusing on peaceful strategies to address disputes and foster cooperation. These techniques find wide application in various contexts, from local disagreements to international conflicts. These interesting research topics in political science allow you to understand how these processes work in theory and practice:

• Role of intermediaries in peace processes.
• Strategies for successful diplomatic discussions.
• Comparative analysis of negotiation techniques.
• Dialogue styles in international diplomacy.
• Analyzing the success of secret diplomatic talks.
• Role of non-state actors in negotiation.
• Gender dynamics in discussion processes.
• Influence of cultural factors on dispute resolution.
• Role of international organizations in diplomatic dialogues.
• Arbitration in maritime territorial disputes.
• Use of discussions in trade agreements.
• Role of trust in successful dialogues.
• Addressing power asymmetry in discussions.
• Track II diplomacy in mediation.
• Impact of communication technology on dispute settlement.
• Role of empathy in successful negotiation.
• Influence of domestic politics on international mediation..
• Conflict resolution strategies in labor disputes.
• Role of transparency in negotiations.
• Evolution of dispute resolution techniques over time.

>> View more: Communication Research Topics

International Relations Political Research Topics

International relations explores connections among nations, the roles of sovereign states, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, and multinational corporations. This field offers a multitude of engaging research topics ranging from issues of diplomacy, international conflict, global cooperation, to international trade. Here are some political science research ideas that focus on international relations:

• Role of multinational corporations in global governance.
• Cross-border environmental cooperation.
• Effectiveness of international law enforcement.
• Influence of globalism on sovereignty.
• Impact of digital diplomacy in foreign relations.
• Evolution of global power structures.
• Influence of cultural diplomacy in global partnerships.
• Strategies for global poverty reduction.
• Understanding geopolitics in Arctic exploration.
• Challenges to global health collaboration.
• Role of non-state actors in global governance.
• Interplay of economics and international relations.
• Humanitarian interventions: A critical analysis.
• Cross-border migration and its global implications.
• International responses to global pandemics.
• Role of international courts in justice delivery.
• Diplomacy in the age of information technology.
• Analyzing global disarmament efforts.
• Global efforts in counter-terrorism.
• Evolution of international trade agreements.

American Politics Research Paper Topics

American politics is a wide-ranging field, including issues from the local, state, to national levels. It incorporates diverse aspects like public opinion, public policy, ideological shifts, and more. The United States' unique political system offers abundant potential for research. Here are American politics research topics for your next project:

• Evolution of American federalism.
• Impact of Supreme Court decisions on society.
• Understanding American political polarization.
• Role of third parties in U.S. elections.
• Influence of social movements on legislation.
• Examining executive orders' effectiveness.
• Shifts in public opinion on climate change.
• Impact of lobbying on American health care reform.
• Influence of Presidential debates on voters.
• Effects of gerrymandering on electoral outcomes.
• Analyzing campaign finance reform in U.S.
• Role of think tanks in shaping U.S. policy.
• Implications of immigration reform on U.S. economy.
• Gun control debate and policy outcomes.
• Social justice and law enforcement reform.
• Influence of race and ethnicity on voting patterns.
• Role of the media in shaping public opinion.
• Analyzing the U.S. response to global pandemics.
• Examination of U.S. trade policies.
• Impact of technology on U.S. governance.

Government Research Paper Topics

Government is a broad field that includes many different subdomains and politics topics to discuss. It revolves around the structures, processes, and functions of governing bodies, allowing you to explore the inner workings of various political systems. Here are some useful ideas on government:

• Evaluating the meritocracy in civil services.
• Digitization of public services: Impact and challenges.
• Understanding state surveillance: Balancing security and privacy.
• Impact of decentralization on local development.
• Government's role in disaster management.
• Analyzing the government's role in fostering innovation.
• Study on government initiatives for financial inclusion.
• Role of government in mitigating income inequality.
• Government strategies in promoting renewable energy.
• Analysis of government responses to recessions.
• Public-private partnerships in infrastructure development.
• Government regulation of the gig economy.
• Role of government in promoting cultural heritage.
• Public sector reforms for better governance.
• Government interventions in housing markets.
• Assessing government transparency initiatives.
• Government's role in universal health care provision.
• The impact of political term limits on governance.
• Government initiatives in curbing the opioid crisis.
• The role of governments in combating online misinformation.

Political Science Research Questions

Research questions provide a clear direction to your studies, defining what you want to achieve. Here are some unique research questions for political science that span a wide array of sub-areas:

• How does social media shape public opinion on climate change policy?
• How can local governments boost civic engagement?
• How does income inequality impact political participation?
• How do trade policies affect domestic industries?
• How do immigration laws influence national identity?
• How does political advertising affect voter turnout?
• How does corruption impact public trust in government?
• How does gender representation in government influence policy decisions?
• What role does education play in political awareness?
• How does political satire influence public perception of politicians?
• How have government responses to pandemics evolved over time?
• How does foreign aid impact the donor-recipient relationship?
• How can governments leverage technology to improve public services?
• How does cybersecurity impact national defense strategies?
• How do international treaties impact national sovereignty?
• How do political ideologies shape foreign policy?
• How can governments promote sustainable urban development?
• What is the role of youth in shaping future politics?
• How does political stability affect economic growth?
• How does political rhetoric shape public perception of immigration?

Extra Political Science Topics for Research Papers

Although the topics for political science research papers given above should help you kickstart your project, here are a few extra ideas to make sure you write an excellent project:

• Green parties' influence on environmental sustainability.
• Significance of political graffiti in social movements.
• Virtual reality's potential in public engagement.
• Role of cognitive psychology in voter behavior.
• Understanding biopolitics: control and manipulation.
• Space law's implications for international cooperation.
• Implications of Internet of Things (IoT) for national security.
• Analysis of language used in peace treaties.
• Incorporating indigenous governance in modern state systems.
• Decoding humor in political satire.
• Political underpinnings in fantasy literature.
• Political landscapes in virtual communities.
• The politics of cryptocurrency regulation.
• Using machine learning to predict election outcomes.
• Role of street art in political protests.
• Exploring the politics of veganism.
• Political dimensions of genetic engineering ethics.
• Pop culture's influence on political consciousness.
• Influence of climate fiction ("cli-fi") on environmental policy.
• Geopolitical consequences of the commercialization of space.

Bottom Line on Political Science Topics

We did our best to provide you with an assortment of good topics for political science research paper in every subdomain. Whether you're interested in philosophy, public law, international affairs, or something else entirely – this collection should have it all. We hope that at least one of these themes motivates you to do your best work yet! Remember that you can buy coursework or any other academic paper from certified writers with solid experience.

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Study finds political beliefs shape the way the public interprets history

by City University London

Research shows that when exploring attitudes in the U.S., UK, Italy, South Africa, Mexico, and Poland—countries with different economies, cultures and political regimes (past and present)—right- compared to left-wing supporters evaluated the past more positively.

The data reveal that, in part, this occurs because right-wing supporters are more nostalgic about tradition. While the right looked more favorably to the past, in the U.S. and Poland (and potentially in the UK too), the left was more optimistic about what humanity can potentially achieve in the future. Though these observations indicate that political opinions matter when people consider the past and the future, the study found no difference in how people on the right versus left evaluate the present.

Published in the journal Political Psychology , the paper shows that how history is interpreted is central not only to political elites but also to lay people reporting divergent political opinions. These findings are particularly relevant today, given the number of prominent election campaigns taking place this year.

Politics and history

When looking at classical political texts, one realizes that the way history is interpreted is one of the major aspects. Marxism, for example, offers a view of history where, following original communism characterizing ancient hunter-gatherer societies, new economic systems replace old ones, with class conflict being common to all. This process is believed to culminate in a new age of communism, where economic scarcity is finally overcome and class conflict ends.

As another example, central to many classical liberal writings is the idea that, before civilization emerged, mankind lived in a state of nature where individuals survived without being part of an institutionalized community. History is central to fascist ideology too, where people are mobilized towards a struggle to recreate a mythical past during which the folk expressed all its power and glory.

As these examples illustrate, the pivotal role of history in the thinking of political elites is well established. This raises the following question: is history interpreted differently also by laypeople with divergent political opinions?

Assessing history

To understand more about how history is assessed by lay people reporting different political orientations, Dr. Francesco Rigoli, Reader in the Department of Psychology at City, conducted an online study with 1,200 participants from the U.S., the UK, Italy, South Africa, Mexico, and Poland where, in addition to reporting their positioning on a left-right political spectrum, participants evaluated the recent past (i.e., the period ranging from 1950 to 2000), the present, and the near future (i.e., society in 25 years).

The data show that, in all countries, right- compared to left-wing supporters evaluated the past as more positive. To elucidate this effect, a second study manipulated the appraisal of the past between groups, but found that this did not influence participants' political ideas.

A third study manipulated the prominence of political opinions between groups. Here, the high-prominence group displayed a stronger link between political ideas and evaluation of the past, indicating that embracing certain political opinions encourages a specific interpretation of the past.

Exploring the factors mediating this effect, one last study found that nostalgia for tradition partially explains why right-wing supporters cherish the past more.

Dr. Rigoli said, "It is remarkable that the rhetoric employed by politicians often evokes images of the past or visions of the future, such as the recent slogans of Barack Obama ('Yes we can') and Donald Trump ('Let's make America great again'). I wanted to explore whether these messages resonate with the general public by exploring whether people on the right of the political spectrum appraise the past, present, and future differently from people on the left.

"My observations indicate that a better appraisal of the past distinguishes the right from the left, an effect evident in all nations and thus reflecting a general phenomenon. Moreover, the data suggest that this does not arise because people with a better opinion about the past are attracted towards the right, but rather because the right-wing ideology provides a framework to interpret the past as being a better age.

"This suggests that nostalgia for tradition might mediate this effect, at least partially: people on the right report a longing for tradition, for hierarchical order, and for family connections, which they attribute to the recent past.

"The analyses also reveal that left-wing supporters believe that human actions can make a difference: their opinion is that, if appropriate choices are made, the future can improve substantially. However, the left's optimism was evident only in the U.S., Poland and possibly the UK, indicating that this is not a general phenomenon.

"These observations may help to clarify why people on the right often resist change: this may occur not much because they like the present, but, rather, because they like the past and they may view change as being a further step away from the past."

Provided by City University London

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