A critical examination of the normative approach

Introduction

Political theory has been studied through three main approaches, the normative, the historical and the empirical. The normative approach is the one most concerned with what ought to be. To examine it critically is to state what it claims, what it contributes and where it is vulnerable.

The normative approach

The normative approach holds that political life can be understood and judged in terms of purposes, values and ends, with the help of the theorist's reasoning, insight and experience. It is also called philosophical or ethical theory, and in effect is philosophical reflection on values. Its characteristic questions are what the end of political institutions should be, what should govern the relation of the individual to the social organisations around them, and which arrangements and rules would make a society model or ideal. Because it borrows its tools and its idea of the good life from political philosophy, it looks for coherence among concepts and tends to build an ideal type, which is why it is the home of utopian imagination in politics. Leo Strauss argued that political things are by nature open to approval and disapproval and cannot be judged except as good or bad, just or unjust, so that a political science stripped of such judgement is defective. The syllabus lists normative theory as the first approach to be studied.

Strengths. It keeps alive the questions that matter most to citizens: why obey, what is justice, how far liberty may be restricted. It gives reform a standard, and in recent work it has been tied to evidence, as when Rawls built his "original position" to link a moral argument to real problems of distribution and the welfare state. A normative framework is also what lets political theory resolve social and political problems instead of merely describing them.

Weaknesses. (1) Its values are presented as universal and absolute although ethical values are relative to time and place and carry a subjective element, and the theorist is also a subjective instrument. (2) Empirical critics point to the relativity of values, the cultural basis of norms, the ideological content of the enterprise and its abstract, utopian character. (3) Under positivism it was dismissed as mere opinion and preference, and during the behavioural phase it was nearly pushed out. (4) Contemporary writers add that claims of universality hide a particularism that reflects the experience of the West.

Assessment. The sensible conclusion is that normative theory is indispensable but unreliable when cut off from facts; it works best when tied to empirical observation, which is the direction recent political theory has taken.

Recent developments

The old aim of linking principle with the real world has been revived. Rawls's A Theory of Justice is the favoured example: its "original position" is a device to connect moral argument with real worries about distributive justice and the welfare state. Contemporary theory also treats political theory as an inherently normative and politically engaged project, offering prescription and a vision of the future, in contrast with the value-free aspirations of behaviouralism. The contemporary challenge is to ground normative theory in the empirical reality of society and politics, which is the way to overcome both abstraction and relativism.

Conclusion

The normative approach is the part of political theory without which questions of justice, legitimacy and the good life cannot be asked, and its weakness, a tendency toward absolute and abstract claims, is a reason to temper it with evidence and with the humility that historical and empirical study teach. A critical examination thus supports neither dismissal nor uncritical acceptance, but a normative theory that is argued, comparative and aware of its own situation.