Can liberal ideals clean up dirty politicians or politics? This article doubts they can. It disputes that a ‘clean’ liberal person might inhabit the dirty clothes of the real politician, or that a clean depoliticized liberal constitution can constrain real-world dirty politics. Nevertheless, the need for a democratic prince to wear clean liberal gloves offers a necessary and effective political restraint. It also means that citizens share the hypocrisy and dirt of those who serve them — for we legitimize the dirtiness of politics by requiring politicians to seem cleaner than we know they ever can be in reality.
M. Walzer ( 1972) ‘Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands’ , Philosophy and Public Affairs1: 162.
2.
A. Smith ([ 1776] 1981) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. 1, ed. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, book 1, ch. 2, para. 2. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
3.
For a useful; summary see S. Hampshire (1978) ‘Public and Private Morality’, in S. Hampshire (ed.) Public and Private Morality, p. 49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4.
See T. Nagel ( 1978) ‘Ruthlessness in Public Life’, ibid. pp. 75-91, for one such attempt, explored in section 1, and J. Rawls (1993) Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press for another, explored in section 2.
5.
E.g. J. Quong (2004) ‘The Scope of Public Reason’, Political Studies52: 233-50.
6.
E.g. J. Rawls ( 1993) Political Liberalism, p. 214. New York: Columbia University Press.
7.
J. Waldron ( 1999) Law and Disagreement, pp. 107-18. Oxford: Oxford University Press. A. Weale (1999) Democracy, pp. 8-13. Basingstoke: Macmillan .
8.
That certain dilemmas of democratic princes stem from their obligations to the electorate is noted by B. Williams (1978), ‘Politics and Moral Character’, in Hampshire (n. 3), pp. 60-70. And also by M Hollis (1982) ‘Dirty Hands’, British Journal of Political Science 12: 396-7. These two classic essays inspire more generally much of the present article.
9.
A move in this direction appears to lie behind the nuanced case for a limited moral absolutism in T. Nagel, ‘War and Massacre’, reproduced in T. Nagel (1979) Moral Questions, ch. 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10.
E.g. Rawls (n. 6), p. 161.
11.
N. Machiavelli ([1513/32] 1995) The Prince, ed. and tr. D. Wootton.Indianapolis: Hackett. M. Weber ([1919] 1994) ‘The Profession and Vocation of Politics’ , in Political Writings, ed. P. Lassman and D. Speirs, oo. 309-69. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
12.
J. Elster (ed.) (1998), Deliberative Democracy, pp. 12, 111. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13.
I take this metaphor from Hollis’s pithy summary of Machiavelli’s views in The Prince as ‘He should get his hands dirty and wear clean gloves’ in Hollis (n. 8), p. 389.
14.
See e.g. the similarities and contrasts between Machiavelli (n. 11), pp. 48-9, and Hampshire (n. 3), pp. 49-50, and Nagel (n. 4), pp. 89-91.
15.
On the distinction between the ‘non-derivability’ of public from private morality and their ‘independence’ from each other, see Nagel (n. 4), pp. 78-9, who notes (and appears to hold) that ‘both may derive from a common source that yields different results when applied to the generation of principles for action in the widely differing circumstances of private and public life’. The argument of this section is that they are both non-derivable from each other and independent.
16.
Hollis (n. 8), p. 390.
17.
Ibid. p. 393. S. Mendus ( 2010), Politics and Morality, pp. 33-4, 43. Cambridge: Polity Press.
18.
Ibid. pp. 29-30. See too Weber (n. 11), pp. 357-69.
19.
Hollis (n. 8), p. 390.
20.
Nagel (n. 9), p. 63.
21.
Ibid. pp. 64-73. Kant likewise allows for the ‘moral politician ... who conceives of the principles of political expediency in such a way that they can co-exist with morality’. I. Kant (1970) ‘On the Disagreement between Morals and Politics in Relation to Perpetual Peace’, in Kant’s Political Writings, ed. H Reiss, p. 118. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
22.
Nagel (n. 9), which I take as an exemplary case of this sophisticated account, appears to base his reasoning on what in ‘Ruthlessness’ (n. 4) he refers to as the ‘common source’ of morality - namely, what we owe as moral individuals to other persons as such.
23.
Walzer (n. 1), p. 168.
24.
This is clearly the case in Kant (n. 21), p. 117.
25.
Hollis (n. 8), pp. 393-5.
26.
Rawls (n. 6), p. 223.
27.
Ibid. p. 161.
28.
Ibid.
29.
Ibid. p. 157.
30.
Ibid., pp. 213, 223-7.
31.
Ibid. p. 214.
32.
Ibid. pp. 215-16, 231-40.
33.
Ibid. pp. 55-7.
34.
RJR MacDonald Inc. v Canada, [1995] 3 SCR 199.
35.
I have documented these issues in R. Bellamy (2007) Political Constitutionalism: A Republican Defence of the Constitutionality of Democracy, esp. ch. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
36.
Ibid. ch. 2 and C.R. Sunstein (1996) Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict, pp. 48-50. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
37.
Rawls (n. 6), p. 251.
38.
Quoted in Shuhei Kurizaki (2007) ‘Efficient Secrecy: Public versus Private Threats in Crisis Diplomacy’, American Political Science Review101: 543.
39.
See C. Brown and D. McKittrick (1993) ‘The Secret IRA Meetings: IRA Leak Puts Major on Rack’, Independent , 29 Nov., accessed at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-secret-ira-meetings-ira-leak-puts-major-on-rack-mi6-blamed-for-unauthorised-contacts-mayhew-to-publish-more-documents-1507407.html
40.
Machiavelli (n. 11), p. 48.
41.
Ibid.
42.
Ibid. p. 49.
43.
Ibid. p. 54.
44.
For proportionality as a restraint in both Machiavelli and Weber see M. Philp ( 2007) Political Conduct, ch. 4. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
45.
Weber (n. 11), pp. 310-11.
46.
Machiavelli (n. 11), p. 30.
47.
Ibid. p. 67.
48.
N. Machiavelli ([1513-17] 1960) Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio in Il Principe e Discorsi, ed. S. Bertelli, book1, ch. 9, p. 153. Milan: Feltrinelli .
49.
Machiavelli (n. 11), pp. 30-1.
50.
I discuss the different types of compromise and their relationship to the circumstances and groups involved in R. Bellamy (1999) Liberalism and Pluralism: Towards a Politics of Compromise, esp. ch. 4. London: Routledge.
51.
Michael Freeden (2005) ‘What should the ‘‘Political’’ in Political Theory Explore?’, Journal of Political Philosophy13: 123.
52.
Machiavelli (n. 11), pp. 54-5.
53.
Once again the classic account of this key feature of modern politics, whereby the prince became a democratic prince, is Weber (n. 11).
