The Imperative of Non-ideal Theory

Jack Knight
Duke University
In this review piece I assess the theoretical approach employed by Elizabeth Anderson in her book The Imperative
of Integration. Anderson advocates a non-ideal theoretical approach to questions of normative political theory. She
uses non-ideal arguments to offer a compelling justication of racial integration as a social policy. I unpack her
argument to identify some of the important strengths of non-ideal theory. In doing so, I argue that non-ideal
approaches provide insights that are necessary for the development of persuasive answers to normative questions,
but that are not achievable with ideal theoretical alternatives.
Keywords: Elizabeth Anderson; non-ideal theory
In Politics and Vision, Sheldon Wolin said that John Rawls Theory of Justice had revived
the eld of political philosophy (Wolin, 2004, p. 529). The basic claim was that Rawls
had demonstrated how the tools of analytical philosophy could be used to address the
pressing questions of justice in modern life. There is considerable merit in this claim.
The book has had a profound effect on the eld and has fostered a continuing debate
on the best approaches to the study of political philosophy. Central to this debate is
the question of the relative merits of ideal versus non-ideal theory. Rawls was and
remains the exemplar of the ideal theoretical approach. The debate has been com-
prehensive and exhaustive, characterized by a number of thoughtful and fruitful
contributions, but, more often than not, by meta-theoretical reection that has failed
to move opinion in one direction or another. Now Elizabeth Anderson re-enters this
debate with a powerful book, The Imperative of Integration (Anderson, 2010), which
should change the tenor of the debate and thus serve as an exemplar of the non-ideal
theoretical alternative.
***
Anderson begins the justication of her method with an acknowledgment that her
approach runs counter to common understandings that assume that ideal theory is a
prerequisite for a non-ideal problem-solving approach to questions of justice. She posits
the standard response to her approach: Dont we rst need to know what an ideally just
society would be, to identify the ways our current society falls short? Shouldnt the
principles for an ideal society be settled rst, so that we can work out how to get there
from here? (Anderson, 2010, p. 3). The implication of this response is that the real work
is done with ideal theory, that it is adequate to the task of answering the important
questions of justice and that non-ideal theory is left to the task of working out the details
of implementation.
Anderson challenges this common understanding by suggesting that ideal theory is
grounded in a faulty conception of how we really think about moral and ethical
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doi: 10.1111/1478-9302.12061
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questions. She argues that most of the time we act in unreective ways. We do not really
think about issues of justice until we are confronted by a problem to which we are
uncertain how to respond. Given the nature of the problems we confront, she suggests
that the product of the ideal theory is inappropriate to the common task at hand:
Nor do we need to know what is ideal in order to improve. Knowledge of the better does
not require knowledge of the best. Figuring out how to address a just claim on our conduct
now does not require knowing what system of principles of conduct would settle all
possible claims on our conduct in all possible worlds, or in the best of all possible worlds
(Anderson, 2010, p. 3).
Anderson offers three justications for a non-ideal theoretical approach to political
philosophy. First, we need answers to moral and ethical questions that are appropriate for
the types of people who must actually carry out the dictates of the theory. She insists that
we need to tailor our principles to the motivational and cognitive capacities of human
beings (Anderson, 2010, p. 3). The task, according to her, is to craft social and political
institutions that will facilitate better (here meaning more just) behavior and outcomes:
Just institutions must be designed to block, work around, or cancel out our motivational and
cognitive deciencies, to harness our nonmoral motives to moral ends, to make up for each
others limitations by pooling our knowledge and wills. To craft such designs, we must
analyze our motivational and cognitive biases, diagnose how they lead people to mistreat
others, and how institutions may redirect them to better conduct (Anderson, 2010, pp. 34).
Second, the ideal theoretical approach, with its focus on perfectly rational persons who
are pre-committed to trying to act in accordance with the principle of justice, limits the
range of analysis necessary to produce an adequate answer to questions of justice.
Anderson highlights two weaknesses here. On the one hand, the ideal approach may lead
to misunderstanding. It limits the nature of our inquiry in such a way that it may cause
us to miss certain important factors that are necessary for an adequate formulation of what
is the just policy or institution. On the other hand, the ideal theory may limit creative
alternatives. The non-ideal approach will open up possible options for new answers to
these questions:
When we alter our conceptual maps to gain a more empirically adequate understanding of
our problems, we also open some and close other evaluative options. New conceptual
terrain provides new perspectives from which to engage in evaluation and thereby prompts
us to articulate new ideals (Anderson, 2010, p. 5).
Third, the non-ideal approach will do a better job of actually identifying injustices in the
real world. This claims follows from the core dictates of the method, that the analysis of
actual problems of injustice is the rst and most important stage in the process of
developing answers to questions of justice. Here Anderson intends to support this claim
by example, through the force of her analysis of the injustice of racial segregation.
After offering this general justication of the non-ideal approach to political philoso-
phy, she explains how it specically relates to her study of racial injustice. I want to
highlight two aspects of this discussion. First, Anderson clearly explains how the ideal
approach is inadequate to the task of assessing racial injustice in a societys policies and
institutions:
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This orientation raises methodological difculties when the contractualist ideal is used as a
standard of assessment for nonideal societies. For when we assess whether a society is deviating
from ideal justice, we still assess it from the standpoint of representative positions in the ideally just
society. Since no racial positions exist in the ideal society, they do not dene a standpoint
from which to assess racially unjust societies. Hence, ideal theories that make race invisible
fail to supply the conceptual framework needed to recognize and understand contemporary
racial justice. The principled color-blindness of ideal theory is epistemologically disabling: it
makes us blind to the existence of race-based injustice (Anderson, 2010, p. 5; emphasis
added).
Second, she claries the role that she sees for ideals of justice in a non-ideal theoretical
approach:
In ideal theory, ideals function as standards of assessment for any society. They are not
subject to testing in practice because they set standards, outside of practice, for the success
of practice. In nonideal theory, ideals embody imaginative solutions to identied problems
in society. They function as hypotheses, to be tested in experience. We test our ideals by
putting them into practice and seeing whether they solve the problems for which they were
devised, settle peoples reasonable complaints, and offer a way of life that people nd
superior to what they had before (Anderson, 2010, p. 6).
***
I am a pragmatist in my understanding of the world and thus in my philosophical
commitments. Therefore, I fully endorse the characterization that Anderson offers of
how we address moral and ethical questions in everyday life. We confront these questions
as problems that are in need of a solution. It is only when they disrupt our basic
understanding of the world that we stop and reect on them. I am a political theorist by
training and thus seek to come to the task of such normative questions in a manner that
is most appropriate for our real-world conditions and concerns.
It is from this perspective that I want to lend support to what Anderson has done here.
It is an extraordinary achievement. This is the most sustained and persuasive defense of
the non-ideal theoretical approach to questions of justice of which I am aware. In doing
so she makes a compelling case for the important role for racial integration in democratic
society. In the remainder of this commentary I want to lend further support to Ander-
sons methodological agenda. To do so I want to expand on the discussion of what
political theorists do when they address these questions. In the course of this discussion
I will highlight the following points. The non-ideal approach emphasizes the importance
of consequences in the development of solutions to questions of justice. The non-ideal
approach offers more nuanced and thus more complicated answers to questions of justice
than those proposed by ideal theory. The non-ideal approach does incorporate the tools
of ideal thought, but does so in a way that may be more complex than Anderson
suggests.
In my joint work with James Johnson, we have characterized the practice of political
theory in terms of three interrelated tasks (Knight and Johnson, 2011). The rst is
analytical. It involves a consideration of possible solutions to the normative problem at
hand. If the problem is one of creating a just institution, then the analytical task will
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involve assessing how the available alternatives would address the problem and delineat-
ing the conditions necessary for the institution to facilitate the desired goal effectively.
This involves an assessment of how different institutions would work when they are
operating under the best possible conditions. For purely analytical purposes we are
unconcerned with the question of how or under what conditions any given institutional
arrangement might actually emerge. This task merely involves an analysis of what is
possible.
The second task is explanatory. This involves both a theoretical and an empirical
analysis of the institutions that actually exist in a society. In our pursuit of solutions to
questions of justice, we must account for how and why we have the specic set of
policies and institutions that we actually do. This will commonly involve at least two
dimensions of analysis: identifying the underlying causal mechanisms that explain why we
get the institutions that we actually have; and diagnosing the discrepancies between the
institutional possibilities that are derived from our analytical analysis and the real-world
conditions that tend to undermine the institutional goals that we attribute to them.
The third task, addressing the burden of normative justication, follows from the fact
that that which is possible is not that which actually exists. This problem commonly
manifests itself in the signicant discrepancy that exists between how an institution
actually emerges and operates in a particular society and the theoretical ideal of how that
institution operates that its advocates invoke in the arguments they present on its behalf.
One need only consider standard arguments about the relative merits of the market
versus the state to see how common this mistake is.
Here it is important to note that, when the problem is one of establishing and
maintaining just institutions, the normative task entails a process of comparative institu-
tional analysis. And it results in a choice among alternative institutional arrangements. It
involves a normative justication of a particular institutional arrangement as well as a
related claim about the necessary conditions for achieving the goals that we have for it.
In this way, the normative task requires not just a justication of the institution itself but
also of the set of conditions necessary for the institution to facilitate just outcomes
effectively.
These three tasks are interrelated. They need not track in a particular order in the
presentation of the argument, but all three require our attention in the process of
engaging in philosophical analysis of moral and political questions. Andersons argument
does an excellent job of satisfying all three of these tasks. Highlighting this will allow me
to offer further evidence for the argument that a non-ideal theoretical approach is a more
useful method for contemporary political philosophy.
Early in the book Anderson highlights the conceptual relationships that form the basis of
her argument: Recognition of the deep connections among integration, equality, and
democracy lies at the core of the quiet revival of integrationist thought among American
intellectuals (Anderson, 2010, p. 2). And it is through the process of elaboration of these
relationships that Anderson makes her case for racial integration. As I understand her
argument, the underlying logic of the imperative of racial integration is twofold: (1) it is
a policy that enhances social equality which is something that we value on its own terms
as a principle of justice; and (2) it creates the conditions necessary for the effective
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realization of democracy that we also understand to be part of our theory of justice. On
this account, the justication for racial integration rests on the fact that it promotes justice,
and on the good consequences that it produces for just social and political relationships.
In the early chapters of the book, Anderson attends primarily to the explanatory task
of political philosophy with the analytical assumptions playing an implicit role in the
discussion. The focus is on segregation and she provides a well-reasoned analysis of its
effects on racial relations. Throughout this early discussion there is a more or less implied
counterfactual argument that integration would do a better job of creating the conditions
for social equality and effective democracy. In Chapters 5 and 6, Anderson makes this
analytical argument explicit.
It is in these middle chapters that we can see how the analytical task of a non-ideal
approach to political philosophy nonetheless employs a form of ideal reasoning. Consider
the argument about democracy in Chapter 5. Anderson describes the purpose of this
chapter in her introduction as follows: Chapter 5 initiates the positive case for racial
integration, arguing that it is needed to realize a democratic culture and to fulll the
promise of democratic governance to serve all citizens equally (Anderson, 2010, p. 22).
In the chapter itself she sets out the argument for the possibilities of democracy under the
conditions of real racial equality. The argument employs a theoretical construct of what
democracy is capable of facilitating when it works effectively. She takes care not to cast
the argument at too high a level of abstraction, but the at times explicit and at other
times implicit argument that runs throughout the account is an ideal-typical model of
democracy.
By describing it as an ideal-typical model of democracy I do not mean to equate it
with the product of an ideal theoretical approach to the question of justice. These
models are at a lower level of abstraction than the ideal principles of justice. Rather,
what I have in mind is more akin to what Weber conceptualized as ideal types in his
various studies of social institutions. Or perhaps a variant on what economists and
political scientists who employ the tools of social choice and game theory produce in
their studies of institutional design. These are models of how institutions instantiate ideals
and operate under various sets of conditions. They make the best-case scenario for what
social institutions can do in the way of facilitating just social outcomes. And they serve
to identify the causal mechanisms that underlie the effective performance of these
institutions. In doing so they provide the basis for much of the real-world analysis that
constitutes the explanatory task.
This may be what Anderson has in mind when she says that ideals serve as
hypotheticals to be tested in her non-ideal approach. These models can clearly serve that
function. And they are subject to revision in those instances in which the claims of
effectiveness under an existing set of conditions are challenged by experience and
practice. But I may have a broader conceptual role in mind to the extent that the models
in our account are more than merely ideal principles. These models play a signicant role
in identifying the social and institutional factors that underlie the analysis of real-world
institutions. Since Anderson does not offer an extended example of how this testing of
ideals works in the case of racial integration, it is hard for me to assess how seriously she
takes the role of this lower level of ideal reasoning in her approach.
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Andersons use of social scientic research in satisfying the explanatory task is deftly
handled and persuasive. She makes a sustained case that segregation causes group inequal-
ity and has negative effects on the conditions for democracy to work effectively. Through
her use of the relational theory of group inequality she is able to identify several
mechanisms that help to explain how the policy and practice of segregation produce
racial inequality on a number of important social dimensions. This is the crucial causal
claim that underlies her normative argument: the very process of the segregation of the
races (with its resulting distorted social interactions) causes the systematic group inequal-
ities that lead to unjust relations as well as unjust institutions. This claim is central to both
her argument about the dictates of justice and her recommendations about how more
just relations can be institutionalized in American society. It is a compelling claim about
the requirements of justice. And it is a claim that could not be abstractly derived from
an ideal theoretical approach to questions of justice.
While there are many interesting lessons to be learned from Andersons explanatory
account, I want to highlight two that I think are especially signicant for the case for
non-ideal political theory. Both fall into the category of things that are necessary for an
adequate account of justice and that are best identied through a non-ideal approach.
The rst involves a basic tension in how we institutionalize the dictates of justice.
Anderson notes early on that there is a tension in how we address the problem of unjust
intergroup processes:
A just and democratic society must secure not only the equality of its members, but also
their liberties, including their freedom of speech and association. This requirement is in
tension with the demands of equal standing because individuals may exercise their freedom
of speech by propagating stigmatizing ideas about other groups in society, and their freedom
of association by practicing social closure (Anderson, 2010, p. 19).
This tension between freedom and equality is, of course, an old and often noted one, but
Andersons detailed analysis highlights how pervasive and deep-seeded the tension will be
in the process of creating and maintaining just social and political institutions. Unlike
ideal theoretical approaches that would either treat the tension as an issue to be resolved
by some balancing meta-principle or relegate it to the tasks of subsequent implementa-
tion, Anderson accepts the challenge and suggests that an account of the dictates of
justice must deal with the tension head on. This entails proposing a process for how we
would assess the relative merits of the conicting normative claims in those cases in
which the tension arises. She recommends a case-by-case approach that would distin-
guish (a) prejudice and stigma from ethnocentrism, (b) responsibilities of agents in
different social domains, and (c) legal from moral claims of justice (Anderson, 2010, p.
19). For me, what is most notable about Andersons approach here is the acknowledg-
ment, at least implicitly, that this is a tension that does not lend itself to theoretical
resolution. There are some problems for which there are no easy general solutions. They
are better treated as facts of social life that must be balanced in the course of everyday
experience. And the best reasoning that can be done about how to maintain that balance
in productive ways will occur in the context of non-ideal reasoning.
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The second lesson from Andersons explanatory account that I want to highlight
involves the various causal mechanisms that she identies. In her analysis of forms of
group inequality she identies material inequalities as well as other types of group
inequality related to intergroup relations. While all of these are important, I want to
emphasize the central importance of one of her mechanisms: powerlessness. She denes
the term as follows:
Powerlessness is the condition of being unable to inuence ones situation and the world
around oneself because others deny one meaningful opportunities to participate in the
decision making of the institutions especially the state under which one lives with
others. It involves the denial not just of formal rights participation, such as the vote, but of
respectability the social status constituted by others recognition of ones entitlements to
have a say [in] what is going on, to be listened to, and to receive a respectful response
(Anderson, 2010, p. 14).
Here I would expand the conception even further, especially in the context of the
practices of democratic decision making. The effects of asymmetries of power, in terms
of material resources but also in terms of the other factors that Anderson emphasizes, are
pervasive in all aspects of democratic practice. The effects most often overlooked involve
the informal factors related to access to the resources and opportunities necessary to
develop the very capacity for effective participation. It is hard to under-estimate the
implications of not being able to effectively take advantage of the formal rights to
participation that democracy promises. It should be a central target of any answer to
questions of injustice.
More generally, the reason that I put special emphasis on asymmetries of power is that
they play a special role in explaining how the other factors that Anderson identies foster
injustice. Therefore, they have an important place in the analysis of how injustice works.
Of equal importance is the role that they play in explaining how injustice is sustained and
why it may be so difcult to change. Powerlessness fundamentally affects the ability of
the disadvantaged groups to change the unjust conditions and to maintain more egali-
tarian arrangements. Attention to these issues is a necessary feature of claims about the
dictates of justice. The non-ideal theoretical approach makes this point abundantly clear.
Finally, having built up to the explicitly normative aspect of her argument in the rst
several chapters, Anderson completes that task of justication in the nal four chapters of
the book. She employs two criteria, one derived from the ideal of contractualism and the
other from democratic theory. The criteria set the standards for the analysis of what
would constitute just relations between blacks and whites. The general thrust of the
normative analysis is a justication of integration because of its implications for social
equality and democracy. The basic argument is that integration fundamentally affects the
conditions under which social equality and effective democracy can thrive in American
society.
I have two concluding points about this compelling thesis: one is about causality and
the other is about comparison. Normative claims about justice rest on a foundation of
additional claims about the world in which we live. One set of such claims is about how
the world actually works. They are not claims about what ought to be; rather they are
claims about what is. Commonly they are implicit assumptions about human nature,
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human behavior, social interactions, social institutions, and so on. More often than not
they involve causal claims, whether they are micro-level claims about effects on indi-
vidual behavior or macro-level claims about the effects of policies and institutions on
social life. The persuasiveness of any normative claim is ultimately, in signicant part, a
function of how accurate these causal claims are.
A second relevant set of claims about the world involves counterfactual claims about
policies and institutions. When we make an argument that a particular type of institu-
tional arrangement will best satisfy the dictates of justice, then we ground that argument
in the claim that other available institutional alternatives are not as well equipped to do
that. It is the same when we make claims about policies. When we make these normative
claims, we are engaging in a comparative analysis of the actual alternatives that are
available to us in the real world in which we live. The persuasiveness of the normative
claim is also a function of the persuasiveness of this kind of comparison.
Despite the signicance of these causal and comparative claims, they are often left
implicit and thus not the subject of discussion and debate in political philosophy.
Anderson does it better. In the concluding chapters of her book she clearly and
systematically lays out the foundational claims upon which her normative justication
rests: both the causal claims about integration, and the comparative claims about the
superiority of policies of integration over policies that foster segregation. This is exactly
what one would want to bolster claims about the dictates of justice. It can only be
accomplished with a non-ideal theoretical approach to these questions. Hopefully, others
will follow Elizabeth Andersons very impressive example.
(Accepted: 24 February 2014)
About the Author
Jack Knight is the Frederic Cleaveland Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University. His primary
areas of interest lie at the intersection of law and politics. His major research focuses on issues in democratic theory,
courts and judicial decision-making and the political economy of institutions. His publications include Institutions
and Social Conict (Cambridge University Press, 1992), The Choices Justices Make (with Lee Epstein, CQ Press, 1997)
and The Priority of Democracy: Political Consequences of Pragmatism (with James Johnson, Princeton University Press,
2011), as well as articles in numerous law reviews, journals and edited volumes. Jack Knight, School of Law and
Department of Political Science, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA; email: jack.knight@duke.edu
References
Anderson, E. (2010) The Imperative of Integration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Knight, J. and Johnson, J. (2011) The Priority of Democracy: The Political Consequences of Pragmatism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Wolin, S. (2004) Politics and Vision, second edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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