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FEASIBILITY FOUR WAYS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 June 2017

Alan Hamlin
Alan Hamlin*
Affiliation:
Politics, University of Manchester; Political Economy, King’s College London
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Abstract:

Both the idea of feasibility and the role that it might play within political theory are controversial. Recent discussions have attempted to specify an appropriate overall conceptualization of feasibility. This essay offers a more nuanced account of a number of interrelated aspects of feasibility and argues for a more realistic view of feasibility. Four aspects of feasibility are identified and discussed: resource feasibility, value feasibility, human feasibility, and institutional feasibility.

Keywords

Feasibilityresourcesvaluesmotivationinstitutions
Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , Summer 2017 , pp. 209 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2017 

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Footnotes

*

Earlier versions of this essay have benefited from discussion by audiences in Manchester, London and Montreal. I particularly thank Geoffrey Brennan, Kimberley Brownlee, Richard Child, Jerry Gaus, Mike Munger, Mark Pennington, Miriam Ronzoni, Zofia Stemplowska, Jonathan Wolff, and the editor and anonymous referees for this journal for their helpful comments.

References

1 See, for example, Räikkä, Juha, “The Feasibility Condition in Political Theory,” Journal of Political Philosophy 6, no. 1 (1998): 27–40;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Geoffrey Brennan and Philip Pettit, “The Feasibility Issue,” in The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy, ed. Frank Jackson and Michael Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Geoffrey Brennan and Nicholas Southwood, “Feasibility in Action and Attitude,” in Hommage à Wlodek. Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Wlodek Rabinowicz (http://www.fil.lu.se/hommageawlodek/site/paper/Brennan&Southwood.pdf: 2007); Cowen, Tyler, “The Importance of Defining the Feasible Set,” Economics and Philosophy 23, no. 1 (2007): 1–14;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Gilabert, Pablo and Lawford Smith, Holly, “Political Feasibility: A Conceptual Exploration,” Political Studies (2012): 809–25;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Brennan, Geoffrey, “Feasibilty in Optimizing Ethics,” Social Philosophy and Policy 30, nos. 1–2 (2013): 314–29;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Lawford-Smith, Holly, “Understanding Political Feasibility,” Journal of Political Philosophy 21, no. 3 (2013): 243–59;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Pablo Gilabert, “Justice and Feasibility: A Dynamic Approach,” in Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates, ed. Kevin Vallier and Michael Weber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Wiens, David, “Political Ideals and the Feasibility Frontier,” Economics and Philosophy 31, no. 3 (2015): 447–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Particularly, Brennan and Southwood, “Feasibility in Action and Attitude”; Gilabert and Lawford Smith, “Political Feasibility: A Conceptual Exploration”; Lawford-Smith, “Understanding Political Feasibility”; Gilabert, “Justice and Feasibility: A Dynamic Approach.”

3 Gilabert and Lawford-Smith, “Political Feasibility,” 809.

4 Ibid., 815.

5 Wiens, “Political Ideals and the Feasibility Frontier.”

6 In this section, resources are interpreted as nonhuman resources — I consider human resources and motivations in Section IV below.

7 Gilabert, “Justice and Feasibility: A Dynamic Approach” focuses attention on dynamic feasibility and the “dynamic duties” that arise.

8 Wiens, “Political Ideals and the Feasibility Frontier.” “Everything” here includes all those issues that I include under human and institutional factors in addition to nonhuman resources and technology.

9 See, for example, Michael, Stocker, Plural and Conflicting Values (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990)Google Scholar; Galston, William, Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The idea of value feasibility is employed in Alan Hamlin and Zofia Stemplowska, “Theory, Ideal Theory and the Theory of Ideals,” Political Studies Review 10, no. 1 (2012): 48–62.

10 Gilabert and Lawford-Smith, “Political Feasibility,” 813.

11 Estlund, David, “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 39, no. 3 (2011): 207–37;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Wiens, David, “Motivational Limitations on the Demands of Justice,” European Journal of Political Theory 15, no. 3 (2016): 333–52;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Estlund, David, “Reply to Wiens,” European Journal of Political Theory 15, no. 3 (2016): 353–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Estlund’s discussion is explicitly concerned with motivational capacities rather than motivational feasibility, but his question concerns whether any motivational incapacity should count as a (feasibility) constraint on morality.

13 See Gilabert and Lawford Smith, “Political Feasibility,” 812.

14 For detailed accounts of current approaches to group agency see List, Christian and Pettit, Philip, Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents (Oxford University Press Oxford, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raimo Tuomela, Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents (Oxford University Press, 2013). List and Pettit identify three conditions for a group to be an agent, the group must: (1) hold “beliefs” or “representational states” relating to the environment in which it operates, (2) hold “desires” or “motivational states” relating to features of its environment, and (3) have a capacity to “act” in the environment in pursuit of its desires.

15 Tomlin, Patrick, “Should We Be Utopophobes About Democracy in Particular?” Political Studies Review 10, no. 1 (2012): 36–47, especially 43–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Although Wiens criticizes Gilabert and Lawford-Smith in relation to their position, I suggest that his position — as evidenced in the discussion with Estlund — is quite similar.

17 For a simple account of the fundamental welfare theorem see Bator, Francis M., “The Simple Analytics of Welfare Maximization,” The American Economic Review 47, no. 1 (1957): 22–59Google Scholar.

18 Von Mises, Ludwig, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1990)Google Scholar. Friedrich August von Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review XXXV, no. 4 (1945): 519–30.

19 Mark Pennington, “Robust Political Economy and the Priority of Markets,” in this volume of Social Philosophy and Policy.

20 A similar point is made by Räikkä, “The Feasibility Condition in Political Theory.”

21 I focus here on the role of electoral commitments in democratic politics; other forms of politics may require other forms of commitment and may also generate political impasses.

22 For a discussion of incentive effects see Gneezy, Uri, Meier, Stephan, and Rey-Biel, Pedro, “When and Why Incentives (Don’t) Work to Modify Behavior,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives (2011): 191–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For discussion of “nudge”-based strategies see John, Peter et al., Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think: Experimenting with Ways to Change Civic Behaviour (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 This sketch owes much to conversations with Jerry Gaus. See Gaus, Gerald F., “The Evolution, Evaluation and Reform of Social Morality: A Hayekian Analysis,” in Hayek and the Modern Economy, ed. Levy, David M., Peart, Sandra (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)Google Scholar; Gaus, Gerald F., “The Role of Conservatism in Securing and Maintaining Just Moral Constitutions: Toward a Theory of Complex Normative Systems,” in Nomos LVI: American Conservative Thought, ed. Levinson, Sanford V., Parker, Joel, and Williams, Melissa S. (New York: New York University Press, 2016)Google Scholar.

24 For the purposes of this illustrative discussion I abstract from any issues relating to the distribution of the relevant knowledge within society and its impact on individual and collective decision making.

25 Note that I assume that the definition and measurement of value are constant throughout. If moving around the surface causes us to redefine value or reevaluate all potential points in the landscape, so that morality is endogenous with respect to features, the model becomes more complex and may become chaotic.

26 For a critical discussion of the precautionary principle see Sunstein, Cass R., Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 See Brennan, Geoffrey and Hamlin, Alan, “Analytic Conservatism,” British Journal of Political Science 34 (2004): 675–91;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Brennan, Geoffrey and Hamlin, Alan, “Conservatism, Idealism and Cardinality,” Analysis 66, no. 4 (2006): 286–95;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Brennan, Geoffrey and Hamlin, Alan, “Conservatism and Radicalism,” Constitutional Political Economy 24, no. 2 (2013): 173–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Wiens, “Political Ideals and the Feasibility Frontier,” 451–52.