Making Sense of Political Normativity

This paper defends the existence of a distinctively political domain of normativity—that is, distinct from morality and other normative domains—organized around the central value of a political order making sense (MS) to its subjects as authoritative. The argument is based on an inference to the best explanation: in the same way that the other normative domains help explain familiar normative conflicts, the political domain best explains a familiar kind of normative conflict in politics, namely, the conflict between what morality demands and what makes sense to people as an authoritative order of power. This is the conflict involved when democracies pass unjust laws, or when we consider what would be wrong with instantiating the best theory of justice in a society where people did not want it. I defend this view against two objections. The first is the claim that MS is a notion that can be fully handled from within the moral domain. The second is that even if it is distinctly political, it has no normative authority. I argue that the first objection must give up the plausible thought that MS is pro tanto good, and that the second objection rests on a narrow and untenable notion of normative authority that stacks the deck in favor of the objector. In sum, the paper contributes both (1) a methodological framework for individuating normative domains by their role in explaining conflict, and (2) a substantive case for recognizing a political domain structured around MS.