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Essays on Political Actors and Attitudes: Do They Constitute Distributed Reflexivity? Part 2: A Dynamical Typology of Rationality
[journal article]
Abstract What is the relationship between the logic that guides political attitudes of constituencies and the logic of political actors, whose legitimacy is rooted in electoral choice of the constituencies? Classical approaches, such as the median voter theorem, view political actors as passively mirroring v... view more
What is the relationship between the logic that guides political attitudes of constituencies and the logic of political actors, whose legitimacy is rooted in electoral choice of the constituencies? Classical approaches, such as the median voter theorem, view political actors as passively mirroring voters’ preferences. An alternative approach, that we suggested in the first part of this series of essays, assumes that how constituencies see the competences of political actors, is crucial, in the sense that it does not only reflect voters’ preferences, but it is also manipulable by the agency of political actors themselves. In this article we provide additional arguments in support of the thesis that the perception of competences is socially constructed and contextually dependent. We hypothesise that in times of well-being the logic of appropriateness prevails among both the constituencies and their political representatives, while in times of crisis constituencies resort to the logic of arguing, and leaders predominantly use the logic of consequences with some admixtures of the logic of arguing. Our arguments draw on Raymond Boudon’s neo-Weberian “judicatory” or “cognitivist” model of rationality; on the theory of securitisation developed by Barry Buzan and his collaborators, under the influence of “speech act” theory of John Austin; and on the typology of basic logics of action, first proposed by James March and Johan Olsen, and later refined by Thomas Risse, under the influence of Jürgen Habermas.... view less
Keywords
instrumental rationality; logic; typology; rationality; political actor; political attitude; political philosophy; political elite
Classification
Philosophy of Science, Theory of Science, Methodology, Ethics of the Social Sciences
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Basic Research, General Concepts and History of Political Science
Free Keywords
typology of rationality; axiological rationality; logic of appropriateness; logic of arguing; logic of consequences
Document language
English
Publication Year
2013
Page/Pages
p. 1-9
Journal
European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities, 2 (2013) 3
Issue topic
Political philosophy
ISSN
2285-4916
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed
Licence
Creative Commons - Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works