Political theory and the politics of need

Abstract

The theory of needs has a political problem. Whilst contemporary theorists largely recognise that politics plays an important part in many of the processes surrounding our needs, they nevertheless hang onto the notion that our most important needs can be determined outside of the political. This article challenges that framing. It does so through a taxonomy and critique of the major contemporary approaches to needs. Considering the works of Len Doyal and Ian Gough, Martha Nussbaum, and Lawrence Hamilton, I divide these into three strands: theories that attempt to avoid, solve, and improve the politics of need. Despite some major differences, these approaches share an understanding of the underlying challenges involved in discerning which needs matter. That framing, I argue, is responsible for certain intractable difficulties that leave needs theorists unable to provide the solutions they demand to the theoretical dilemma they posit. Moreover, in attempting to find those solutions, these theories end up ignoring their partisan implications. The conclusion I reach is that the political theory of needs is not very ‘political’ at all, and that this represents the root of the problem. I thus suggest an alternative, politically realist framing that conceptualises needs as constitutively political.

Introduction

Needs suffuse our politics. Claims to need possess an intuitive moral urgency and gravity, and feature significantly in our everyday moral reasoning, social practices, and public policy. But whilst needs are very much in our politics, they are not usually thought to be of our politics. Theorists and practitioners have instead tended to view needs as normative standards that lie outside the political to-and-fro, and which can be used to judge it. Indeed, whilst most commentators these days acknowledge that politics has a part to play in many of the processes surrounding our needs – most obviously their satisfaction, but also their recognition, legitimation, and interpretation – they have nevertheless hung onto the notion that our important needs can be determined in an extra-political evaluative space.

This article challenges that framing. To do so, it explores how and why contemporary needs theory has taken on this anti-political character; argues that that character explains why certain problems have arisen, and proven intractable; and sketches a path forward, principally by suggesting an alternative understanding of the nature, constraints, and aims of the theoretical task at hand. What it does not do is present a ready-made alternative approach to needs. Instead, my more limited aim is to offer a different conceptualisation of the problem being confronted.

Needs come in different varieties, and range from the normatively compelling, urgent, and dire to the unremarkable, spurious, and even reprehensible (Braybrooke, 1987: 29–33; Doyal and Gough, 1991: 35–45; SC Miller, 2012: 15–23; Siebel and Schramme, 2020: 27–34). Any attempt to invoke needs as a normative standard must, therefore, begin by distinguishing the needs-that-matter from those that don’t. This, however, is where needs theorists have tended to run into difficulty. They have had to navigate, firstly, problematic divergences in people's assessments of the needs-that-matter. Because people hold very different values, live under different cultural norms, have different ways of life and individual identities, and pursue different goals, their needs seem also to differ according to those changing circumstances. Given this, some commentators have suggested that the importance of needs should be determined according to standards that vary between individuals, cultures, or other relevant domains (Miller, 2001: 203–209; Reader, 2007; Rist, 1980: 243–249; Townsend, 1979). This wholesale embrace of pluralism and difference has led, however, to a common criticism: that by trapping assessments of needs in context, these approaches make shared evaluations of needs impossible. This leads – according to numerous critics – to accounts that are (variously) untenably arbitrary and capricious; problematically insensitive to the universal conditions of human life; toothless as a cross-cultural or intergenerational critical standard; unable to plausibly allocate our duties surrounding needs; and ultimately nihilistic and self-subverting (Braybrooke, 1987: 5–24; Doyal and Gough, 1991: 7–45; Gasper, 2004: 208–212; Nussbaum, 1992, 2000: 41–59).

If, however, one responds by simply laying down normative standards over needs that supposedly exceed context, then this requires an unacceptable favouring of one disputed assessment of needs over others in a manner that seems to trample over legitimate difference and contestation. And when those assessments are operationalised, the resulting interventions inevitably ride roughshod over what people themselves think and avow in ways that are deemed to be unacceptably paternalistic, ethnocentric, domineering, dictatorial about the good, or some combination of those things (Hamilton, 2003: 47–52; Heller, 1993; Reader, 2006; Rist, 1980).

Needs theorists have often tussled with these unpalatable alternatives. Indeed, this is a well-worn and widely recognised challenge (Alkire, 2002: 154–196; Dean, 2020: 27–45; Gasper, 2004: 142–143; Lister, 2021: 28; Siebel and Schramme, 2020; Soper, 2007; Pölzler, 2021). And it has elicited, as we shall see, a number of sophisticated responses, several of which are widely and rightly acclaimed. Less well recognised, however, is that despite their differences, those responses share some significant and – I argue – problematic similarities. Central to these is a conception of the underlying challenge itself, the sorts of difficulties that challenge points to, and the kind of theory required in response. Specifically, contemporary theorists have framed the threats of both ground-up deference to context and top-down extra-contextual theorising as pointing to theoretical problems that together constitute a two-sided dilemma that both requires and is conducive to some form of resolution.

On one side of that dilemma, we have the disorder problem, which emerges from the historical spectre of an untenable subjectivism, relativism, or particularism about needs. Because those perspectives ground needs in features of our circumstances that vary from context to context, they are unable to provide standards for evaluating needs that cross between contexts. But if needs really matter, are taken to be relevant concerns for social justice, and imply burdensome duties we hold in common, then different individuals and/or groups cannot be the unquestionable adjudicator of their own needs. These theories are disorderly, then, in the sense that whilst we face problems that require shared assessments of needs, the conceptual framework they offer makes it impossible to bring together the varying assessments arising from our diverging contexts, adjudicate between them when they clash, or critique them when they are patently unconscionable. On the other side, there is the partisanship problem, which relates to the impermissibility of establishing those shared standards on unshared grounds. Here, the concern is that if needs impose demanding obligations on everyone, then they should not be justified by appealing to reasons that only have force for some. What has to be found, then, is a justification that all different peoples have good reasons to accept: that is, as Miller puts it, adequately non-partisan (D Miller, 2012: 411). But it appears difficult to do so in the face of ongoing, seemingly legitimate differences over needs.

In delineating these problems, I am speaking somewhat broadly, in that I am attempting to map a cluster of interrelated concerns expressed in different ways in the wider literature, and to capture and label the central problems underlying those concerns. And again speaking broadly, the received wisdom in that literature has been that these problems are the symptoms of flawed theories; and that consequently, a successful theory of needs can and should rid itself of those ‘flaws’.

I will argue that this framing is a mistaken one that has led to insurmountable problems. Those problems are partly internal. Having set up this two-sided dilemma, and having characterised it in this theoreticised way, these approaches find themselves unable to offer tenable solutions. I make that argument by presenting a taxonomy and critique of the prevailing theoretical approaches to needs. Considering the works of Doyal and Gough (1991), Nussbaum (2000, 2006), and Hamilton (2003, 2014), I divide these into three strands: those that attempt to avoid, solve, and improve the politics of need. Despite considerable variety, sophistication, and some important advances, I show that the problem these approaches set for themselves is inimical to the sorts of resolutions they demand. I then supplement that internal critique with an external one: that when these theories do make normative claims about needs, they do so only by assuming away conflict, excluding dissenting voices, turning a blind eye to partisanship, or wishing away the problem.

I thus suggest a rethink. Theorists must, I argue, take as their starting point that one can never tidily resolve the tension between disorder and partisanship. Those two problems point instead to two constitutive features of our needs that together give them an essentially political character. Here, I understand the political as a domain characterised by the fundamental yet contrary impulses of ongoing conflict and necessary cooperation (Burelli, 2021; Galston, 2010; Waldron, 1999: 102). So rather than framing disorder and partisanship as problems requiring resolutions, they highlight the necessity of recognising the ineradicable, irreducible nature of conflict and difference over need, and of establishing the necessary grounds for collective decisions and actions over needs in the face of that conflict and difference. The problem with contemporary needs theories, then, is not a two-sided dilemma, but a singular failing: that because they attempt to ‘resolve’ the ‘problems’ of disorder and partisanship, they end up conceptualising needs in ways that extract them from their politics.

Avoiding politics

Some maintain that the needs-that-matter can be determined according to features of our circumstances that remain constant across our otherwise diverging contexts: specifically, certain normatively significant aspects of our universal human condition. It is, then, our basic human needs that really matter. By grounding them on such a universalist foundation, these theorists contend that they can determine our most important needs in an evaluative space that transcends our conflicts and differences, and which can be construed as lying beyond the political. And they hold, moreover, that the grounds they appeal to are fundamentally non-partisan, in that the justifications they offer apply to anyone and everyone, and would be implausible or unreasonable to reject.

Various strategies have been deployed to establish such non-partisan grounds (as summarised in Pölzler, 2021: 8–9). Two, however, are particularly central. The first contends that our myriad conflicts and differences over needs are only apparent, and are reducible to arguments about the appropriate mode of satisfaction for shared human needs. That contention hinges on the now-ubiquitous needs-satisfier distinction, which highlights and formalises the intuitively compelling observation that people can hold needs in common, and yet satisfy those needs in very different ways. Based on that observation, some claim that so long as needs are defined in a sufficiently abstract and general manner, then all our conflicts and differences over them collapse into debates about the appropriateness or adequacy of different satisfiers in different circumstances. By abstracting away from any stubborn differences over needs, one can seemingly shift all those differences from basic human needs themselves to the level of satisfiers, where differing (and even contrary) specifications can coexist. Repeatedly leveraging such a strategy of abstraction, basic human needs theorists suggest they can sidestep any and all problematic differences over needs, moving each of these to the level of satisfiers, and thereby presenting universalist accounts of needs acceptable to all parties (Doyal and Gough, 1991: 69–75; Gasper, 2004: 137–140; Max-Neef, 1991: 16–18; D Miller, 2012: 414–417).

This strategy is both extremely commonplace and seemingly compelling. And if needs theories are going to tell us anything about the needs we hold in common, then they must be defined abstractly to at least some degree. It would, however, be wrong to infer from that fact that abstract specifications alone can adequately address the disorder problem. That problem emerges because divergences in our assessments of needs mean that an ultimate deference to context makes it impossible to establish a common framework for assessing our needs. A strategy based only on abstraction, however, retains that problematic deference: it does not intervene in our differences over need, but shifts them away from the core account of needs themselves, referring them on to debates about how abstract needs get specified in context. Whilst this might indeed produce an uncontested set of abstractly defined needs, when one returns to concrete contexts exactly the same disputes inevitably resurface. If, therefore, basic human needs become nothing more than highly abstract labels for our existing assessments of needs, then whilst those labels might look very plausible and persuasive, they are plausible and persuasive only in precise relation to the extent that they are stripped of meaningful social, political, and normative implications (Alkire, 2005: 238–239; Boss, 2023; Soper, 2007: 360–364). Noting, for instance, that not everyone requires education or companionship to lead a decent life, Copp (1992: 255) suggests we require ‘more abstract descriptions of the underlying matters of basic need’, with education and companionship relegated to typical modes of satisfaction. Max-Neef (1991: 17) similarly suggests that even food and shelter are not in-themselves basic needs, but only satisfiers for an even more fundamental need for subsistence. Moves like this are, of course, conceptually plausible, and might allow the theorist to maintain that the basic needs they posit are indeed universal; but they do so at the cost of losing purchase on exactly the disputes and points of difference that prevent common standards over needs emerging from context. Consequently, an account of basic human needs defined abstractly enough so as to transcend all controversy would be tenable and compelling but pointless, since it would be unable to offer shared assessments at precisely those moments where we require them.

That danger has not gone unnoticed (Gough, 2015: 1200). Basic human needs theorists cannot, then, present those needs as nothing more than compelling but unsubstantial abstractions, remain neutral about different needs and needs-meeting practices, or content themselves with ordering people's extant assessments. They must, therefore, go beyond a strategy of pure abstraction, allying abstract specifications with some adequately substantial philosophical account of needs. So to flesh out their accounts, they have attempted to identify some normatively weighty consideration the satisfaction of basic human needs has some singular connection to. The challenge, however, has been finding a way to do so that is tenably non-partisan.

Perhaps the best way to proceed would be to focus only on a small range of needs rooted in our universally shared human physiology. There are indeed some plausible reasons to focus on such needs. Physiological needs seem, in particular, to be highly inescapable, and indeed exceptionally so. Because those needs are rooted – as Wiggins puts it – in ‘laws of nature, unalterable environmental facts, or facts about the human constitution’ (1998: 15), they cannot be changed or avoided. By contrast, other needs arise from features of our circumstances that are conceivably within the scope of our collective or individual agency to change, like our particular goals, social arrangements, or way of life (Brock, 1998; Brock and Miller, 2019; McLeod, 2014). The grounding of basic physiological needs in exceptionally invariable and entrenched facts seems, then, to make them good candidates for special normative consideration. Of course, that contrast is itself open to question: one might wonder, for instance, whether the notional possibility of changing our social arrangements makes needs grounded in our current arrangements any less significant. But even if one were to accept that physiological needs possess an exceptional form or degree inescapabilty, this is – in the end – only part of the normative picture. We can have highly inescapable needs grounded in our physiology that are not normatively compelling: Frankfurt (1998: 180) gives the example of ‘a genetic condition that… brings about nothing more than an occasional inconsequential itch’. What matters, then, is not just the inescapability of needs, but also their connection to some form of serious harm.

Some of our physiological needs are, of course, patently dire – like those required for our basic survival – and clearly connected to the threat of harm. But there are also many harms that go beyond mere survival, and which are not obviously connected to our physiology: the harm that exclusion from education does to a child, for instance (Nussbaum, 2006: 279). So whilst the central significance of our dire physiological needs is beyond reasonable contestation, a narrow focus on only those needs allows wider ones – like those connected to our individual agency, culture, or broader identity – to be brushed off as mere wants, and dismissed as not ‘really’ needed. For this reason, a life reduced to the bare minimum of physiological survival is widely regarded as an inadequate and (if taken in isolation) unjustifiable standard for needs (Nullmeier, 2020: 200–201; Reader, 2007: 64–68; Soper, 2007: 355–360). Theorists must begin, therefore, with a thicker notion of a decent human life from the start (Siebel and Schramme, 2020: 30–36). But how, one might ask, can one specify such a life without resorting to either partisan top-down determinations, or a disorderly relativistic free-for-all?

Basic human needs theorists have presented the following plausible response: that basic human needs matter not because they are connected to some particular partisan account of a decent human life, but because they represent the universally necessary prerequisites to leading any kind of decent human life, however such a life is envisioned. That argument is indebted to Doyal and Gough (1991), whose seminal innovation was to combine a relativistic account of normative standards underpinning need with a universalist account of the human prerequisites required to meet those standards. Whilst Doyal and Gough (1991: 50) contend that the normative importance of basic human needs hinges on their connection to serious harm, they also hold that harm can only be understood relative to our particular societies and/or visions of the good. Nevertheless, Doyal and Gough (1991: 49–75) go on to argue that whatever one's way of life or vision of the good happens to be, and whatever specific context one finds oneself in, there are certain universal prerequisites to pursuing a decent life (whatever that is) and avoiding harm (however it is understood), prerequisites that are themselves grounded in our common humanity. Our ability to participate in any society, or pursue any vision of the good life, thus depends, they say, on our possessing certain generally human capacities: namely, the twofold requirements of health and autonomy. And gaining and maintaining those capacities requires that we meet certain needs. Consequently, they argue that meeting those needs is a universally important normative priority that can be asserted independently of any partisan claims about the specific nature of a decent human life.

This form of argument has been widely adopted amongst contemporary proponents of the basic human needs approach (Brock, 2009: 63–69; Copp, 1998; SC Miller, 2012: 15–44). One might wonder, however, why we should not go further. The satisfaction of universally shared needs might indeed be necessary for avoiding these contextually-conceptualised harms, but it is not obviously sufficient. If we take seriously – as Doyal and Gough suggest we should – the idea that people's conceptions of a minimally decent, unharmed life will diverge, then achieving such a life will require meeting a range of requirements, only some of which will be universal, and some of which might be quite particular. Doyal and Gough (1991: 55) recognise that this outcome is likely, if not certain. But this poses a problem. This approach maintains that it does not ascribe fundamental value to anything, but only identifies the universally human prerequisites to pursuing whatever one's particular valued form of life happens to be. And it does so for good anti-partisan reasons. That formulation on its own fails to explain, however, why prerequisites that enable us to pursue any vision of the good, or live in any society, should matter any more than those required for this particular one. So if these relativistic grounds are really all that underpins this approach, then why do those grounds not also lead to relativistic outcomes?

Doyal and Gough (1991: 39) provide an answer: that the normatively important needs must be ‘universalisable’. In their view, this is a definitional feature of needs, and part of what differentiates normatively important needs from mere wants (1991: 35–45; see also Copp, 1998: 123–130; SC Miller, 2012: 20–22; Pölzler, 2021: 4). Their approach does not claim, then, that these universalisable needs are some of the normatively important needs, but that they are – in some conceptually exclusive way – the normatively important needs. It is not clear, however, that this is indeed a conceptual necessity (Reader, 2007: 46–63), and it would be too quick to settle an open and contested normative question about needs through definition alone. Indeed, there seem to be cases where people quite reasonably assess their particular needs to be more central to their way of life than universal ones, especially when we remember that this approach is not aimed solely at our most dire needs, but at the wider conditions necessary to secure minimally decent lives. There are those, for instance, who view spiritual fulfilment as the most important component of such a life, and who are willing to sacrifice their more ‘basic’, universal needs in favour of more particular ones (c.f. Alkire, 2002: 157; Miller, 2007: 197–200). Consequently, it now seems that where this approach weighs in on our disputes over needs, it does so based on assertions about the priority of universalisable needs that not everyone will necessarily accept; which do not follow directly from any non-partisan principles; and which one can have reasonable grounds to reject.

There are at least three such grounds. The first is that the resulting assessments are too restrictive, in that they do not include all the conditions necessary to secure minimally decent lives (Gasper, 1996; Soper, 1993; Reader, 2007: 64–82). It might reasonably be objected that if the point of guaranteeing basic human needs is that this protects us from harm, then we would be remiss if we disregard certain harms simply because their source was not universal. A second ground is redistributive. If basic human needs are prioritised simply because of their universalisability, and if that prioritisation is used to spell out a theory of socially just distribution, then this might require forms of redistribution that generate more harms (again, understood relatively) than they avoid. Most strongly, if basic human needs are given a lexical form of priority (e.g. Copp, 1998: 113–119), then this entails an indifference to the cost of satisfying those needs, no matter the number of those affected, the magnitude of that cost, or the fairness or desert of its distribution. And even if weaker kinds of priority are endorsed (as proposed by Knight, 2022), then we are still given pro tanto reasons to redistribute in favour of basic human needs satisfaction at the expense of others. But a relativised notion of a decent human life gives us no obvious reason to accept this: how, after all, could we reasonably expect someone to bear greater harms in order to prevent lesser ones, just because the means to avoiding those harms happen not to be universalisable?

Some might respond at this point by highlighting the partial nature of needs theories as accounts of social justice. If basic human needs represent only a fairly undemanding social minimum – one whose requirements are satiable, clear, and highly constrained – then perhaps we can make meeting those needs a distributive priority whilst also leaving plenty of opportunity to pursue a wider sweep of values over-and-above that minimum. The difficulty with this response, however, is that in spite of the claims of some commentators (e.g. Nullmeier, 2020: 207), the duties and sacrifices required to meet basic human needs are often extensive, surprisingly difficult to contain, can spiral out of control, and present particularly stark choices given our ageing populations and the climate crisis (Braybrooke, 1987: 293–301; Copp, 1998: 117–121; Gough, 2015: 1205–1209; Soper, 2007: 369–370). In that context, the pursuit of basic human needs satisfaction is open to the charge of excessiveness, in that it runs the real risk of crowding out our wider values, endeavours, and indeed needs. Such implications cannot, however, be established on the comfortingly relativistic and non-partisan grounds posited by Doyal and Gough: if one wants to defend a focus on basic human needs on the basis that they enable the pursuit of the different ways of life people might value, then one might wonder what the point of such a focus is if it ends up demanding so much that those wider pursuits become eclipsed.

These lines of objection are notably divergent, and this itself is revealing. The charges against basic human needs seem to require both that these theories do more and that they do less, and the more one tries to remedy concerns about restrictiveness or redistribution by expanding one's list of basic human needs, then the more one is open to the charge of excessiveness. This highlights that these objections are not ultimately about where one draws their particular line between basic and non-basic needs, but instead point to the fact that drawing any such line requires a partisan determination of one kind or another to be made.

Solving politics

Another approach targets the empirical assumptions underlying the problems of partisanship and disorder. Those problems emerge only because people's assessments of needs diverge in important ways. If that were not the case, then one could set out clear and coherent standards that give quite determinate answers about which needs matter, and could do so without requiring people to live with anything beyond what they themselves readily affirm. So a plausible route forward is to argue that such an agreement is already present; or, more tentatively, is possible or achievable. This approach makes no attempt to specify the needs-that-matter in abstraction from what people themselves think and avow: indeed, those deploying it tend to be sceptical of the notion that one can dispel the tension between partisanship and disorder by laying down abstract universalised standards. But they nonetheless maintain that that tension is resolvable: not through conceptual analysis alone, but due to alignments between our assessments of needs that arise in practice.

The most straightforward way to proceed would be to identify an existing alignment of that kind. Braybrooke's (1987) influential account, for instance, does just that. Similarly, contemporary poverty researchers – in particular those deploying consensual methods for measuring deprivation that hark back to the seminal intervention of Townsend (1979) – contend that there is ample evidence of widespread agreement on at least some basic necessities (Lansley and Mack, 2015; Pantazis et al., 2006; Narayan et al., 2000; see also Miller, 2020; Tay and Diener, 2011). This should not, however, be misunderstood as a quick ticket out of our dilemma. As Fahmy et al. (2015) note, much of the empirical literature rests on a conception of consensus that presumes some underlying agreement as already present and given, and which the evidence does not have to establish, but only reliably approximate. That literature aims to demonstrate that there is some statistically significant degree of overlap in our assessments of needs, and whilst they have had considerable success in doing so, the presence of such an overlap does not entail the sort of consensus that might finally defuse concerns about partisanship. One could accurately claim that such a convergence in our assessments of needs exists, and is empirically demonstrable, even when there is considerable difference and conflict; and even when this is sufficiently vociferous to undermine the deployment of that consensus as a non-partisan common standard.

The question, then, is not just whether an agreement over needs exists, but also whether such an agreement is of the right sort. It is not clear, however, that we (1) agree enough about (2) enough of the right sort of things in (3) all the right sort of ways, or (4) for the right sort of reasons, for this approach to fully dissolve the threat of partisanship. Even where, firstly, one finds high aggregate levels of agreement over needs, this can mask considerable interpersonal variation, including of a quite fundamental kind (McKay, 2004). Moreover, where the evidence does suggest agreement within certain groups and societies, these can differ from group-to-group and society-to-society, and the evidence for a cross-cultural consensus over needs is more limited (Alkire, 2002: 157; Doyal and Gough, 1991: 49). Secondly, even putting aside disputes over needs themselves, there are still plenty of others that might prove troublesome: over, for instance, the order of priority ascribed amongst the agreed-upon important needs, and between those agreed-upon needs and other ones (Rojas et al., 2023; Wolff, 2020a). Thirdly, widespread agreements over needs tend to pertain only at a high level of abstraction and over a relatively narrow range of needs (Fahmy et al., 2015: 603–604; Sen, 1995: 107–109), running the risk of the sorts of indeterminacy and insufficiency I problematised earlier. Furthermore, there are questions about stability: in debates about sustainability, for instance, can we be confident that the needs of future generations will mirror an existing consensus? Finally, these approaches can problematically occlude the ways in which our current normative thinking has adapted to our circumstances, including those characterised by inequality, disadvantage, and the operation of power (Halleröd, 2006; Hamilton, 2003: 63–102). The further risk, then, is that in trying to avoid laying down standards over needs in a partisan and paternalistic fashion, this approach becomes hostage to views produced through circumstances that are objectionable on the same grounds.

We should not, however, be too hasty in rejecting this approach on empirical grounds alone. Even if such an agreement does not exist today, this does not mean that it could not be reached in some possible future state of affairs. If our present disagreements only arise because of false empirical beliefs; or could be resolved through conceptual analysis; or would plausibly disappear when subject to deliberative scrutiny; or are the result of pernicious states of affairs that could or should be different, then one could argue that whilst we currently lack an agreement (of the ‘right sort’), one could nevertheless be brought about. Such an approach remains committed to the notion that one can provide substantive answers to questions about the needs-that-matter on the basis of an agreement, but shifts from the idea that we do agree, to the agreements that we could reach, or indeed should reach, in spite of our current differences.

Needs theorists taking that approach have tended to draw on the politically liberal notion of an overlapping consensus. The classic Rawlsian form of that notion begins by affirming the fundamental nature of many of our conflicts and differences (Rawls, 1996: 35–40). Responding to those conflicts and differences (the presumption of ‘reasonable pluralism’), the necessity of shared social and political institutions, and the impermissibility of coercion, Rawlsian political liberals attempt to construct a political conception of justice to govern those institutions that is ‘freestanding’, in that it can be set out independently from, and endorsed by all those who hold, the full range of reasonable comprehensive conceptions. When all those holders do indeed endorse such a conception, then we have an overlapping consensus (Rawls, 1996: 133–172).

Building on Rawls, some suggest that any plausible overlapping consensus must incorporate a set of normatively important needs (Brock, 2009: 48–57; Wolf, 2009). In the most celebrated version of that argument, Nussbaum contends that the realities of human interdependence and vulnerability require political liberals to spell out a set of cross-cultural basic entitlements (2000: 70–73, 2006: 159–160). To that end, she employs the idea of a life in accordance with human dignity, as well as a Marxian/Aristotelian conception of truly human functioning, arguing that the necessary prerequisites to a minimally acceptable human life can be identified by reflecting upon those notions (2000: 70–77, 2006: 69–81). The result is Nussbaum's list of the ten ‘central capabilities’ (2000: 78–80). And whilst she presents that list in terms of capabilities, it is in keeping with her account to turn it to the question of which needs matter: both because those concepts share a similar conceptual space and substantive content (Alkire, 2002: 154–195; Brock, 2009: 69–71; Reader, 2006); and because Nussbaum herself has increasingly drawn on the concept of need (2006: 87–89, 159–160, 273–281).

The advantage of such an approach is that whilst it only requires people to live under principles that they themselves affirm, its justification rests principally not on empirical claims (‘here is an existing agreement over needs’) but on normative reasoning (‘here is a potential agreement, and here is why you should (or, more weakly, plausibly could) agree to it’). Consequently, our current disagreements cease to pose an insurmountable problem. There are, however, new problems. The challenge now is to specify a possible future agreement that is both thick enough to give substantive answers about the importance of different needs, but thin enough to realistically command our agreement. Moreover, this approach must map a route to that agreement that is both plausible and justifiable, and that goes beyond the mere possibility of one (one could not, for instance, pin their theory on the hope that our disagreements will spontaneously melt away, or simply exclude all the dissenters).

The debates surrounding Nussbaum's approach have largely revolved around that challenge. On the one hand, her critics argue that her account is too demanding, in that it requires that we overcome disagreement over fundamental matters in ways that are implausible, incoherent, and possible only through an inevitably partisan determination between contested conceptions. Nussbaum's list appears to hand down judgements in many areas of significant controversy: not only in terms of what is on that list; but also what is left off it; and, moreover, in terms of the metaphysical and normative assumptions that lie behind it (Clark, 2009; Fabre and Miller, 2003: 8–9; Menon, 2002; Nelson, 2008: 94–103; Robeyns, 2016: 409–411). And whilst one can offer more modest prospective lists (some commentators do just that (e.g. Cripps, 2013: 7–10)), the issue here goes beyond incongruities in Nussbaum's specific list, pointing instead to a tension traceable to the arguments she uses to frame and justify her inquiry in the first place. That tension, in short, is that whilst forcing Rawlsians to confront human vulnerability might look to be all well and good, one can still wonder whether the resulting fusion of politically liberal methods and Aristotelian problematics makes sense in its own terms (Alexander, 2014; Clark, 2009; Terlazzo, 2019). Reaching agreement over our basic entitlements seems to require (in spite of Nussbaum's protestations to the contrary (2000: 76–77, 2003: 27–28, 2006: 79)) that we overcome differences that are deep, highly divisive, appear to be intractable, and which have proved insoluble in the face of a long history of investigation. This looks like not only an unrealistically high bar, but also to fly in the face of political liberalism's fundamental assumptions and principles concerning reasonable pluralism, respect for persons, and the freestanding character of the political conception of justice.

But on the other hand, even Nussbaum's demanding case might not be demanding enough. To make that case look more tenable, Nussbaum has tried to detoxify some of the thorny controversies raised by her list. Her early attempts to do so revolved around her ‘thick, vague’ specification of her account (1992: 214–237), but as her approach has evolved, the range of strategies she uses to accommodate diversity and difference has also expanded (see 2000: 105, 2003, 2004, 2006: 78–80, 179–186, 295–298). These moves, however, sap controversy from her approach largely by withdrawing from taking a stand on matters that might prove divisive. This has the effect of reintroducing several of the inadequacies highlighted earlier: her account is deliberately highly abstract (2006: 78–79); equivocal in concrete contexts (2000: 105); vague about thresholds (2000: 77); largely non-committal about the relative priority of our entitlements (2000: 81); and ambivalent about the status of capabilities (or needs) that are not ‘central’ (2006: 75–76). Furthermore, the shift from empirically verifiable real-world agreement to possible future one introduces a new source of inadequacy: the inability to decide between the different plausible agreements on offer (Clark, 2009). Nussbaum's principle and dominant method – a version of Rawlsian reflective equilibrium (Nussbaum, 2000: 101–105, 2004; for discussion, see Alkire, 2002: 32–43; Jaggar, 2006) – does not necessarily provide the neat result of a unique outcome. Indeed, given our often deep differences concerning needs, multiple reflective equilibriums are both likely (Floyd, 2017a: 376–378) and what the empirical evidence suggests (Wolff, 2020b). Even if, then, we could be persuaded to sign up to a list of the needs-that-matter, we might still face problematic disputes between this list and that list.

In response, Nussbaum sometimes appeals to the presence or potential presence of a shared ‘intuitive starting point’ (2004: 194). If one is indeed present, then it looks more plausible to suggest that even our seemingly deep disagreements could be overcome through the persistent advocacy of ideas that are – as she claims – already widely adopted and deeply rooted in many places. Nussbaum has, however, tended to posit that we share certain intuitions without stating how that has been established, who the pronoun ‘we’ refers to, why these particular intuitions are the relevant ones, and what this means for those who do not share ‘our’ intuitions (Alkire, 2002: 39–42; Clark, 2013; Jaggar, 2006; Okin, 2003). To establish that shared starting point, one might try to identify an existing overlap in our intuitions (Nussbaum, 2000: 71–73, 2006: 298–305). That claim, however, is empirically shaky; seems to shore up a particular list by dismissing dissenting voices; is potentially hostage to problematically adapted intuitions; and depends on a happenstance overlap in a way that erodes the freestanding character of the political conception of justice. Nussbaum might instead be more selective, suggesting that certain intuitions could, should, or will come to be widely shared (2000: 161–166, 2003, 2006: 298–305). The problem now, however, lies in justifying this choice of intuitive starting points over others. This seems to be implausibly arbitrary, circular, and to put the theorist in the worryingly compromised position of having to decide which intuitions to include and exclude in the first place.

The search for a future agreement over needs is thus stuck in a familiar trap. If there are indeed deep and abiding differences over the needs-that-matter, then such a future agreement either has to loosen its commitments so much that it encompasses all these differences, or take a substantive stand for some of the extant assessments and against others. Nussbaum's attempts to tussle with these tensions only shore up one flank at the expense of undermining the other: the better her account is at making it look plausible that we can all, in spite of our differences, sign up to a future possible agreement over needs, then the weaker the ensuing proposed agreement, and the more rival candidate lists multiply. And where she tries to address both flanks simultaneously, she presents those deep differences as, in the end, only apparent, and as ultimately defeasible in light of our supposedly shared intuitions

Improving politics

Suppose one were to accept that our conflicts and differences over needs cannot be readily resolved or avoided. One might then say: if needs cannot be examined outside of context; and agreements over needs are not forthcoming; but shared assessments of needs are nevertheless required, then perhaps what political theory should do is lay out a set of procedures and decisions-rules that allow us to make justifiable collective decisions and conduct justifiable collective actions in spite of those circumstances. Such an approach shifts from a substantive inquiry into the needs-that-matter, to a procedural one concerning how our collective decision-making and actions should be conducted in the light of ongoing, ineradicable difference and conflict, taking as its starting point that not all such processes are equal; that they can be conducted in better or worse ways; and that theory can help make that conduct better.

This sort of approach is exemplified in the work of Hamilton (2003, 2014). That work notably sets out by strongly affirming the fundamentally political character of needs. Whilst needs, Hamilton argues, are indeed objective and normative, their objectivity and normativity are never just abstract, generally human, and universal; but always simultaneously also specific, concrete, contextually-determined, and actually experienced (2003: 21–62). The result is a strong emphasis on the social-historical circumstances in which needs are generated, interpreted, legitimated, and met. Moreover, those social-historical circumstances are – Hamilton tells us – always and fundamentally also political circumstances, in that unavoidably conflict-ridden, power-laden, and inimical to consensus (2003: 63–133, 2014: 65–93).

To highlight this point, Hamilton drives a wedge between his account and that of Sen. Addressing what he calls the ‘inescapable valuational problem’ (1999: 31) within the capabilities approach, Sen famously refuses to offer direct answers to valuational questions, pointing instead to the central role of public scrutiny, deliberation, and democratic decision-making (1999, 2010). But the problem with this procedural, ‘public reasoning’ approach, says Hamilton, is that it posits an idealised form of democratic interaction and consensual decision-making that downplays the depth of our conflicts and differences, as well as the pervasive role played by partiality and power in real-world democratic contexts (2003: 99–100, 2019: 144–148). So whilst Sen's approach might provide helpfully non-partisan assessments of needs in certain ideal circumstances, it does so partially by abstracting away from the conditions that make assessing needs challenging in the first place (see, for instance, Sen, 1999: 146–159, 2010: 321–354). This problematises Sen's account as a response to our central dilemma. That dilemma arises, after all, precisely because in contemporary contexts we encounter circumstances that make arriving at shared assessments of need challenging: as the previous section highlighted, the problem at hand is a tricky one precisely because those circumstances are both present and hard to budge. What Hamilton points out, then, is that in reaching for his idealised consensual procedures, Sen postulates a radically altered picture of our social arrangements that assumes away at least part of the problem that has to be confronted.

But whilst Hamilton emphasises – pace Sen – the indelible part played by disagreement, conflict, and power in the assessment of needs, this does not imply a neutrality towards political processes and outcomes, or that the only choice left is a normative free-for-all. Instead, Hamilton takes a distinctive turn towards the manner in which the political to-and-fro over needs is conducted. Whilst needs themselves always emerge in political circumstances suffused with power relations, those relations can, he argues, be more or less evenly distributed, and thus more or less characterised by ‘oppression’ and/or ‘domination’. Whether or not one lives in a state of domination depends ‘upon the extent and kind of power one has to determine one's needs’ (2014: 88), and the more oppressed and dominated someone is, then the more ‘distorted’ or ‘pathologised’ their ensuing needs (2003: 86–88, 2014: 74–92). It follows that the circumstances under which we assess needs can display varying degrees of domination, resulting in needs – and, says Hamilton, contextual judgements, deliberations, and practices concerning needs – that can be judged better or worse.

Even if, then, theory cannot posit any principle or standard concerning needs beyond what society judges for itself, what it can do is analyse and assess the conditions under which political processes occur, and lay out how we might improve those conditions (2003: 116–146). So whilst top-down theoretical approaches to needs are inevitably anti-political, and indeed dictatorial (2003: 48–50); and whilst idealised consensual pictures of democracy assume away too much of the problematic real-world politics of need; political theory can nevertheless offer a principled guide to navigating that politics, plotting a path towards avoiding or minimising domination as we attempt to answer these difficult questions and challenges for ourselves. Hamilton's account then culminates by identifying a practical agent to enact these interventions: what he calls the ‘state of needs’ (2003: 134–170).

Something significant has happened here. Hamilton's account is no longer wedded to the supposition that the problems of partisanship and disorder are neatly resolvable or avoidable in either theory or practice. Instead, he turns away from framing those two challenges as theoretical or practical problems that must ultimately be solved, understanding them instead as inescapable parts and products of the fundamentally political processes inevitably intertwined with our needs. He thus moves the debate towards the sorts of legitimate procedures, practices, and institutions we should put in place given that those threats nevertheless have to be confronted. This, I argue, is a crucial advance that upends much of the orthodox frame of contemporary needs theory.

But notwithstanding that advance (more on which in the next section), Hamilton's approach suffers from an important problem. This arises because of two features of his account: the way in which it attempts to assess and improve political processes according to a normative vision that escapes context; and the way in which that vision ends up spilling over into the political domain (c.f. Byskov, 2017; Claassen, 2011; Floyd, 2017b: 55–61; Lane, 2006). This, I argue, leads Hamilton into a paradoxical position: on the one hand, his approach rests on a normative vision that has at its core the claim that when it comes to certain matters it is the people, and not the theorists, that must decide; but on the other hand, that vision seems unable to avoid straying into precisely those matters. The challenge, then, lies in rendering consistent the normative promise at the heart of Hamilton's account with its own normative implications.

Difficulties emerge because of how Hamilton attempts to evaluate and improve the politics of need on the basis of a set of normative principles that transcend actual political practice. One must, however, be careful here. Hamilton's account is intended to be heuristic, experientially and practically grounded, and radically politically realist; and he denies that it represents some sort of transcendental theoretical schema (2003: 1–20). Despite that claim, however, that account rests on a disjointed approach to two levels of analyses: the levels of the politics of need itself; and of the political philosophy of needs. As Hamilton makes clear, analyses of needs themselves occur at the first level, and are inherently political. At the second level, however, one can seemingly step outside of political processes, taking the perspective of an external observer who evaluates those processes and their conduct according to theoretical criteria that exceed context. There is, then, a bifurcation between the theoretical and the political at the core of Hamilton's approach.

That bifurcation is evident in several ways. Signs of it appear in Hamilton's choice of language. When it comes to the politics of need, Hamilton repeatedly calls out attempts to circumvent that politics, rules out viewpoints that supposedly transcend political processes, and emphasises that all attempts to analyse needs are embedded in a social-historical terrain characterised by conflict, coercion, and the interplay of power. But when he turns to the theoretical analysis of that politics, the language shifts to ‘improving’, ‘rectifying’, and ‘correcting’ political processes according to criteria that are posited to be ‘objective’, ‘external’, and to ‘stand above context’ (2003: 116–146). What explains that divergent language is Hamilton's conception of the task of political philosophy. As he has it, that task involves assessing the social-historical terrain in which the politics of need occurs; evaluating that terrain according to principled normative arguments; and offering imaginative ways to improve that terrain (2003: 63–65, 103–104, 2014: 83–92). Those assessments are offered, however, on the basis of extra-political principles, rather than on the basis of criteria occurring immanently within actually existing political practice, or reflecting our extant values and mores. His argument is, then, a demand for better application of political theory to political practice, rather than a method for achieving goals found within extant practices. Indeed, this seems to be necessary given the failings Hamilton detects in actually existing political practices: if – as he suggests (2003: 2–10, 2014: 88–90) – those practices are deeply flawed; and are, as he contends, under the sway of forms of normative thinking that are fundamentally problematic; then it seems his call for better political practices must rest on a notion of what would be ‘better’ that is not drawn from the same flawed source.

This bifurcation appears between distinct domains and sets of problems. And if these could be kept strictly separated, then perhaps all would be well. The difficulty, however, is that they cannot; and that consequently, Hamilton ends up confronting questions about the needs-that-matter at the level of his extra-political normative vision. To see why, note that Hamilton's account does not promise a set of institutions and reforms as an independent procedural bolt-on, but instead a thoroughgoing reshaping of our social, economic, and political institutions; societal norms; and actual political and social practices (2003: 134–170). And whilst Hamilton rejects the abstract, idealised democratic procedures he associates with Sen, he nevertheless puts forward those reforms based on a normative yardstick that transcends context. This becomes clear in his discussion of the state of needs: such a state exists, he argues, only as a ‘potential’ within current states; to realise that potential, we must enact demanding reforms; and those demands are not premised on realising actual trajectories of development located within contemporary social and political practice, but instead involve embodying the principles contained in his normative vision (2003: 134–144).

Those principles, moreover, have important normative implications concerning needs. Hamilton points out that the kind of reflective evaluations his approach demands requires that we have access to the appropriate ‘means and resources to cognise, meet and criticise needs’ (2003: 158). And these include, it seems, what we require to satisfy certain procedurally important needs. He highlights, for instance, that someone could never fully participate in the way his vision demands if they were caught up in a daily struggle to meet their vital needs; asserts the central importance of those needs as ‘a universal fact’; and so ascribes them a normative priority that transcends context (2003: 147–8). More broadly, if – as he puts it – the ‘quality and quantity’ of our participation is related to the ‘objective state of one's vital and agency need development’ (2003: 127); if those abstract needs constitute ‘universal determinants of and guides to individual and political agency’ (2003: 155, emphasis added); and if those needs represent ‘requirements and objectives’ that can act as ‘criteria that stand above context’ (2003: 133), then any extra-contextual normative requirements concerning the effectiveness of participative processes will have a direct bearing on our assessments of needs. So the task of mapping, assessing, and improving the political terrain does not easily separate from and precede the task of deciding which needs matter.

The upshot is a breakdown between the bifurcated domains that Hamilton's approach presupposes. This is where matters come to a head. At the core of Hamilton's account is his claim that to avoid states of domination, people must have the means to determine their own needs; but to acquire those means, people must put into practice a demanding extra-contextual normative vision that determines their needs on the basis of quasi-transcendental claims they have no hand in shaping. The problem, then, is not that Hamilton offers theoretical assessments of needs when he should not, but that he makes those assessments on the basis of a theory whose own central promise is that it leaves exactly those matters for the people themselves to decide. This reflects general difficulties with this type of approach. If one holds that the reality of human vulnerability has important normative implications, but also that the politics of need should be improved according to an extra-political normative vision, then it is difficult to prevent those implications combining with that vision in ways that precipitate a substantial core of normatively important needs in the name of a purely theoretical call for better politics. In this way, questions about needs thus surface in the wrong place, with extra-political theoretical requirements bleeding over from the domain of procedural antecedents to the domain of what these theories themselves assert must be, and can only justifiably be, procedural outputs. So whilst the normative promise of such a theory hinges on its claim that we must respect what people themselves think and avow about their needs, that commitment can go, in the end, only so far down. The end result is the uncomfortable position of a theory struggling to justify its own intervention.

Doing politics

So contemporary theories have not adequately addressed the dangers of partisanship and disorder. In one case, it proved impossible to assign normative importance to needs outside of the political without engaging in at least some degree of partisanship. In another, no singular account of the needs-that-matter could be made to emerge within that politics without excluding or ignoring dissenting voices, or imagining away our conflicts and differences. And a third approach, meanwhile, ended up bifurcating the political and the theoretical, before then frustrating its own promise by addressing normative questions about needs in a problematically extra-political evaluative space. Moreover, these difficulties are rooted in the theoretical methods, presumptions, and perspectives these approaches adopt. That means that they cannot be easily overcome without a fundamental rethink of our approach.

This section sketches such a rethink. These intractable difficulties arise, I argue, because of how theorists have framed the underlying problem they attempt to answer. Those difficulties originate in the unfortunate legacy of a flawed and dichotomised historical debate over needs. Fears surrounding the theoretical and public policy implications of both ground-up contextualism and top-down universalism have been problematically conceptualised as the theoretical dilemma between disorder and partisanship. The ensuing suggestion has been that any adequate theory of need must solve, avoid, or overcome those two ‘problems’: or else risk either reducing needs to a chaotic and unruly mishmash of different valuations; or unacceptably overriding people's legitimate differences and conflicts. But in searching for closure around those two issues, theorists have structured the debate over needs in ways that have produced a dilemma strongly resistant to solutions. Moreover, the sometimes paradoxical problems surrounding these theories – which appear at times to be both unduly limited and too open-ended; too restrictive and too expansive; too demanding and not demanding enough – provide further evidence that the horns of that dilemma cannot be resolved simultaneously.

Theorists must thus, I argue, accept and take as their starting point that that dilemma is inimical to the sort of resolutions most theories demand. Instead, the twin elements of ongoing conflict and necessary cooperation should be regarded as warring yet constitutive elements of the fundamentally political processes that always determine which needs matter. The resulting view holds – firstly – that any attempt to determine the normative importance of needs will be the subject of conflicts that are irreducible and ineradicable. This is not to say that all conflicts over needs are like this: some may be down to various remedial circumstances, like provably false empirical beliefs. There are, however, forms of conflict over need that are not resolvable in any such way; and consequently, conflict should be taken as a given background condition. But this does not mean – secondly – that we should abandon the search for common standards. Instead, the necessity of reaching collective decisions and conducting collective actions is viewed as equally unavoidable. The challenge, then, is finding common assessments of needs despite the continued presence of conflict. This changes the nature of the problem at hand: rather than trying to identify a way to determine the normative importance of needs that is simultaneously both cross-contextual and non-partisan, we are required to recognise that making such determinations inevitably involves bridging positions that are not wholly integrable. The resulting view is broadly politically realist in nature. I say ‘broadly’ because my purposes here are themselves broad and open-ended: there may, then, be many possibilities within the family of realists approaches that reflect the considerations I have outlined, and I remain open to the possibility that approaches beyond realism might be able to do so.

Some might object that this analysis has taken us to a dead-end. One might think, in particular, that it is implausible to suggest that we should avoid taking a normative stand anywhere for fear of (as it were) stepping on political toes. I will say two things in reply. Firstly, the claim that one cannot make extra-political normative claims about needs does not imply that those claims cannot be made elsewhere. Some might think that my arguments about needs can be generalised to other topics (like rights or interests), or to the way normative considerations bear on politics more generally. A strong conclusion either way does not, however, follow from my analysis here, since that analysis has narrowly focused on the task of theorising needs. I have, moreover, highlighted certain empirical and normative considerations that bear on that task – the presence of ongoing, ineradicable conflicts; and the question of whether, when, and how it can ever be permissible to override people's reasonable assessment of their own needs – that do not necessarily generalise to those other areas. My argument is thus intended for a demarcated domain, and I make no claims here about other domains.

Secondly, it does not follow from my argument that theorists cannot or should not adopt any sort of normative stance regarding needs whatsoever. Instead, my target is a particular sort of stance: specifically, one which attempts to weigh into the politics of need on the basis of normative principles posited to lie beyond the political. As Burelli (2021) highlights, the issue at hand is not so much the feasibility or justifiability of different types of theories in the political domain, but rather their desirability: just as a theoretical model of a plane developed in abstraction from gravity would be possible but pointless (2021: 987), so a theoretical model within the political domain has to take into consideration certain necessary features and constraints if it is to be useful. That desirability, moreover, might come in different forms. It might be theoretical (would the resulting theory be a ‘good’ one, according to some standard), or normative (would it have results that one has wider normative reasons to endorse), or pragmatic (would it be likely to achieve desired practical outcomes). What my internal critique of the literature highlights, then, is not that we should give up theorising about needs, but that certain sorts of approach fail to be appropriate or advantageous given the circumstances we face.

This leaves unanswered questions about the sorts of normative stances that are desirable within the political domain. The debate here is large and remains open, and goes beyond my purposes here (for discussion, see Galston, 2010; Jubb, 2019; Rossi, 2019; Rossi and Sleat, 2014; Sleat, 2022). Within needs theory, a possible template has been offered by a handful of theorists whose approach is principally contextual, immanent, and critical-descriptive, rather than abstract, explanatory, and solution-seeking (e.g. Dean, 2020; Fraser, 1989: 144–187; Schaap, 2010; Soper, 2007, 2020). Because they refuse to adopt theoretical stances that abstract away from the politics of need, approaches like these have the potential to refigure the intractable dilemma between disorder and partisanship: rather than ask, abstractly, ‘which needs matter?’ or ‘what are the real needs?’, they explore how a constitutively political to-and-fro over needs has been and is being conducted; how we respond to that history and to present political practice; and where we go from here.

Beyond avoiding its internal problems, this realist reconceptualization of contemporary needs theory's central challenge might bring further benefits. Space limits what can be said here, but I will finish by making some brief and tentative comments. One such benefit is the centrality of facts on the ground to realist theories. A difficulty that has repeatedly resurfaced in this article is that in order to square the circle between the impermissibility of partisanship and the hard reality of ongoing, ineradicable conflict, needs theorists have ended up re-imagining the political community in ways that might make it easier to theorise, but which do so only by wishing away political conflict, or dismissing, excluding, or silencing dissenting voices. By contrast, politically realist approaches begin with the political community as it is, and stress its political nature: that is, that it is a particular kind of community that engages in cooperative practices and has common institutions, but which nevertheless is characterised by ongoing conflict (Galston, 2010; Hall, 2017; Sleat, 2022). This makes realist approaches strongly attentive to the sorts of paternalistic impositions and coercive practices that underpin concerns about partisanship.

These theories do not, however, imagine that coercion can be wholly avoided. Instead, they recognise that there are circumstances where we require authoritative assessments of needs, and that given ineradicable conflict, some form of coercion will necessarily figure in political processes. This moves the focus from finding non-partisan assessments of needs, to judging the merits of the political processes that determine which assessment is taken to be authoritative. Whilst, then, they are grounded in our extant communities and normative thinking, realist approaches are – unlike relativist, disorderly ones – far from neutral about the assessments of needs that emerge from context. This was an important advance contained in Hamilton's account. But whilst Hamilton's abstract account of the legitimate conduct of the politics of need ended up subverting that very politics, an alternative realist approach might focus on the concrete actions and social choices faced by specific agents caught up in that politics, and on critiquing the actual processes of legitimation that are in operation (Bagg, 2022; Rossi and Sleat, 2014: 691–696; Rossi, 2019). Fraser's work on the ‘politics of need interpretation’, for instance, offers an actor-centred and action-guiding framework for evaluating how struggles over the authoritative assessments of need occur in actual political practice, and between social actors endowed with different and unequal means and powers (1989: 144–187). Central to this kind of approach to needs is the political agent themselves; the messy, often complex, and always conflict-ridden and power-laden realities they have to face; and the sorts of strategies, practices, and institutional arrangements they should pursue as a result.

The resulting approach has, finally, considerable transformative potential (Rossi, 2019). Some might find that claim surprising. By opposing certain kinds of extra-contextual moralism, and by emphasising the importance of fidelity to facts on the ground, some argue that realism is inherently conservative. But the alternative – the view that one can and must settle on an assessments of needs outside of politics – is even more problematic: it has tended to ossify aspects of our existing social and political order as extra-political ‘givens’, limiting the scope of our political agency, and narrowing the horizon of social possibility. Take the role needs play in debates over our response to climate change. There, needs are sometimes envisaged as a standard of social necessity that is largely independent of, and closed to, the processes of political scrutiny and assessment. Indeed, the global and intergenerational nature of the problems raised by climate change makes exactly that kind of standard very appealing (Gough, 2015). The difficulty, however, is that climate change poses such a fundamental challenge that we have to confront deep and difficult questions about our way of life; and that a fixed standard of social necessity is ill-equipped to meet that challenge (Gardiner, 2004: 586; Soper, 2020). A realist approach, by contrast, opens those standards to political scrutiny and judgement. By doing so, political realist approaches to needs offer to highlight new possibilities for political agency and intervention; bring to the surface power dynamics surrounding needs that have been obscured; prompt certain forms of concrete political action over others; and provide conceptual resources to the political actors implicated in struggles over the needs-that-matter.