Taking political normativity seriously: legitimacy and political realism

The article challenges the notion that political realism necessarily requires a distinctively political normativity. Drawing on the works of Weber and Nietzsche, it offers an alternative reading of political realism. The article uncovers in Williams’ scholarship a dual-layered legitimacy framework, displaying three inherent demands (namely, discursive, intelligibility, and reflective vindication demand) in his idea of legitimacy. In so doing, the article demonstrates how political realism employs its own prescriptive resources to critically scrutinize politics, while highlighting the crucial distinction between political realism and applied ethics. The article finally contends that political realism can, through immanent critique, maintain its evaluative standards and critical potency without necessarily engaging with political normativity.