Brooke A. Ackerly

Grounded normative theory focuses on enriching normative political theory arguments through recursive empirical engagement that strives for inclusiveness and accountability. It is increasingly influential but also has been critiqued as too broad to provide clear guidance. We argue that the approach, when understood as anchored in a complex conception of intellectual humility, can give crucial practical guidance, while also helping us to make sense of and evaluate ways of empirically informing normative theory. We demonstrate how different emphases on self-regarding and other-regarding intellectual humility guide research design, methods, and analysis in two main variants of grounded normative theory: theory testing and theory building. We show how specific normative-empirical projects can be situated and unpacked within the variants, and how each can give insights for project execution and assessment on empirical and normative criteria.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s As We Have Always Done works from and develops Biiskabiyang, the Nishnaabeg conceptualization of freedom as ‘the process of returning to ourselves, a reengagement with...

This piece introduces a symposium on Luis Cabrera’s The Humble Cosmopolitan (Oxford University Press, 2020), which is a comparative political theory text in three senses. First, it expands conventional conversation partners to include authors who are engaged in constructing their nation out of a colonial context, principally, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar is a scholar, politician, Chairman of the Constitutional Drafting Committee for the newly independent India, and Dalit activist (“Dalit” being the self-applied term for those outside of the Hindu caste hierarchy) and Madhavrao Sadashivrao Golwalkar, the historical thought leader of Hindu nationalism. Second, Cabrera reaches across the colonized-colonizer divide, engaging with intra-nation difference, enabling cross-time comparisons, broadening the moral and political meanings of, contributions to, and criticisms of cosmopolitan thinking. Third, using grounded normative theory, it is methodologically comparative, utilizing the author’s own empirical research through over 150 interviews of activists and politicians from both Indian and European cosmopolitan and anti-cosmopolitan struggles.

What a rich and complex book has brought together these commentators. Sungmoon Kim’s Democracy After Virtue is grounded in contemporary politics and yet challenges us to imagine democratic possibilities for East Asian societies with long Confucian histories, contemporary Confucian practices, and heterogeneous commitments to Confucian virtues.For any of us, imagining the meaning and potential meaning of “Confucian democracy” is easier if we recognize that we have never seen an actual “liberal democracy” either. If you are willing to see democratically endorsed oppression of freedom and obstacles to equal participation of a majority or a minority within a country and still call the government that authorizes these a “liberal democracy,” then you are ready to play the “what is Confucian democracy?” game.However, if you want to come up with a Confucian democracy that functions outside of your imagination, then you also need to consider the contemporary circumstances of politics, national and international. Sungmoon Kim begins and ends his theoretical search for Confucian democracy with these circumstances. This is the approach to Confucian democracy that has been one of the defining features of Kim’s scholarship throughout his career. The other has been careful, rigorous treatment of serious political philosophers, revealing for us in their work both strength and opportunity (for improvement). In his scholarship he has always been a generous and critical interlocutor whose work he engages is flattered by the engagement despite the inevitable criticism it entails. I worry in this instance that some of these interlocutors dictate too much of the shape of the argument, more than the circumstances of politics do.Sungmoon Kim’s Democracy After Virtue is a Confucian and pragmatist construction of a democratic theory. He sets out to create a democratic theory appropriate for guiding East Asian states with a Confucian history and complicated and heterogeneous respect for Confucian virtue ethics today and for providing a Confucian account of the democratic moments within the recent past of these East Asian states. Calling his approach pragmatic and his theory a “Pragmatic Confucian Democracy,” Kim sets his approach to the scope and function of Confucian Democratic Theory apart from those of most others in this field because for Kim any such attempt must begin with “the circumstances of modern politics in East Asia.”1 Because Confucianism is a perfectionist virtue ethics, Kim argues that a Confucian democratic theory respects democracy instrumentally, not only for enabling the people to hold their leaders to account for promoting or not promoting the well-being of the people (as in Korea and Taiwan), but also for being able to accommodate the pluralism of contemporary East Asian societies, enabling those with Confucian virtues to cultivate these in community with each other, and with those who do not. Kim does not support a view of Confucian democracy that would support people being oppressed by civic instantiations of Confucianism that demand too much of them. The argument is then applied to three questions of justice faced in contemporary political circumstances: punishment, socioeconomic inequality, and humanitarian intervention.The argument is huge, but the conversation partners are narrow. The field of Confucian democratic theory and political argument is vast. It has been developing since the end of the last Chinese dynasty and enjoyed a resurgence since in the 1990s various East Asian countries explored renovating and relegitimating their government institution with both Confucian and democratic influences. In this vast field as Kim constructs it, the contemporary conversation has two main perspectives: one that chooses democracy as the best way of realizing Confucian perfectionism in civic culture (Confucian Democrats, generally Sor-hoon Tan and Steve Angle) and one that chooses Confucian meritocratic institutions as means for accountable (but not democratically accountable) governance (Confucian Meritocrats, generally Joseph Chan and Daniel Bell).My comments and corresponding questions focus on four aspects of this wonderful book, a book that prompted me to further the implications of a pragmatic Confucian methodology of political theory.First, Kim refers to his pragmatism as grounding his theory in “the circumstances of modern politics in East Asia.” How true is his pragmatism to the Deweyan interest in the public and its problems? Second, Democracy After Virtue could be read as a pragmatist reflection on democracy for societies that now hold Confucian values only heterogeneously. However, Confucianism could also be read as a pragmatist political theory such that if the contemporary puzzle for East Asian political societies (Deweyan publics) were “how to do democracy” now that Confucianism is not the only virtue ethics held within each, the answer might be Kim’s Democracy After Virtue. Third, Kim centers much of his interpretation of Confucian virtue ethics on the Mencius. Given the rich history of Confucian thought, why? Fourth, given Kim’s espoused pragmatism, why does he follow other political theorists in the framing of what a Confucian democrat must address as part of a Confucian democratic theory? Do Confucian considerations affect what constitutes a problem? Or do contemporary political circumstances? Rather than discussing all three substantive chapters, I illustrate this point in my last section by discussing chapter 6’s focus on humanitarian intervention. I take each of these four questions in turn, but the overarching observation is that the book strikes me as ambiguously grounded in Confucianism—but only some Confucianism—and in contemporary political puzzles for East Asian societies—but using only some contemporary arguments....