Pluralistic Partisanship

This essay explores and criticizes Matteo Bonotti’s argument that parties and partisans in a publicly justified polity should appeal primarily, if not exclusively, to accessible justificatory reasons to fulfill their political duties. I argue that political parties should only support coercive polic...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inRes publica (Liverpool, England) Vol. 25; no. 4; pp. 487 - 496
Main Author Vallier, Kevin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.11.2019
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Alliances
Citizens
Education
Ethics
Law
Legal History
Liberalism
Logrolling
Partisanship
Philosophy
Philosophy of Law
Political parties
Political Philosophy
Political systems
Political Theory
Theories of Law
Partisanship
Political liberalism
Public reason
Democratic theory
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN1356-4765
1572-8692
DOI10.1007/s11158-019-09436-1

Cover

More Information
Summary:This essay explores and criticizes Matteo Bonotti’s argument that parties and partisans in a publicly justified polity should appeal primarily, if not exclusively, to accessible justificatory reasons to fulfill their political duties. I argue that political parties should only support coercive policies if they rationally believe that the coercive law or policy in question can be publicly justified to those subject to the law or policy in terms of their own private—specifically intelligible—reasons. I then explore four practical differences between our two approaches. In contrast to Bonotti’s accessible reasons approach, the intelligibility approach (1) facilitates the provision of assurance between citizens and political officials, (2) requires that parties and partisans support fewer coercive policies, (3) allows more exemptions from generally applicable laws, and (4) facilitates logrolling and alliance formation.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:1356-4765
1572-8692
DOI:10.1007/s11158-019-09436-1