Dissertation Introduction : The Structure of Political Theories: Why Normative Theories of Politics and Economics Depend on Ethics

The dissertation has two aims. First, to explain why normative theories of politics, economics, and group decisions depend on ethics. Second, to refute the view that they need not. This latter view has recently been defended by Rawls, Hampshire, Williams, and Habermas. The view that all such theories necessarily depend on some normative ethical theory I call the Dependence Thesis. The dissertation defends the Thesis by an argument I call the Argument from Claims about Interest-Affecting Normative Requirement. Chapters 1-3 defend the Argument's three premises. Chapter 1 offers a conception of normative ethical theories. Chapter 2 offers a conception of normative theories of politics, economics, and group decision. Chapter 3 shows why theories of the second type depend on theories of the first. Chapter 4 defends the Dependence Thesis against objections from the anti-theory position in ethics; from a view of the aim of politics, defended by Hampshire and Williams; from Rawls's criterion of public justification; and from Habermas's view that genuinely democratic lawmaking cannot be controlled by moral principles. Chapter 5 applies the Thesis and tests it against hard cases. It uses the Thesis to resolve the monism-dualism debate in political philosophy. That debate concerns whether there is a fundamental principle for regulating political institutions that does not apply to personal conduct. The Chapter shows that there can be such principles, but that all such principles are shaped by normative ethical theories. The Chapter then shows that the Thesis accurately describes three hard cases: Rawls's political conception of justice, Debreu's theory of the optimality of general equilibrium, and Buchanan and Tullock's normative theory of decision rules