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Interests in Political Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Andrew Reeve  and
Alan Ware
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Extract

This article examines the concept of interests in politics which has been the subject of major debate in recent years. It makes two proposals: one concerns the elucidation of the concept of interests; the other concerns the relative status of an agent's perception of his or her own interests and an observer's specification of them. For brevity, statements of the form ‘x is in A's interest’ are referred to as interest-statements.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , October 1983 , pp. 379 - 400
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

1 Balbus, Isaac D., ‘The Concept of Interest in Marxian and Pluralist Analysis’, Politics and Society, 1 (1971), 151–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barry, Brian, Political Argument (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), pp. 173–86Google Scholar; Benditt, Theodore M., ‘The Concept of Interest in Political Theory’, Political Theory, III (1975), 245–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benn, Stanley I., ‘Interests in Politics’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LX (1960), 123–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Connolly, William E., The Terms of Political Discourse (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1974)Google Scholar; Gray, John, ‘Political Power, Social Theory, and Essential Contestability’, in Miller, David and Siedentop, Larry, eds, The Nature of Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) at pp. 78–90Google Scholar; Lively, Jack, ‘Paternalism’, in Griffiths, A. Phillips, ed., Of Liberty (Cambridge: Royal Institute of Philosophy/Cambridge University Press, 1983) at pp. 162–3Google Scholar; Lukes, Steven, Power (London: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 34–5Google Scholar; Miller, J. D. B., The Nature of Politics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965)Google Scholar; Oppenheim, Felix, Political Concepts (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), pp. 123–49Google Scholar; Swanton, Christine, ‘The Concept of Interests’, Political Theory, VIII (1980), 83–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wall, Grenville, ‘The Concept of Interest in Politics’, Politics and Society, V (1975), 487–510CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ware, Alan, The Logic of Party Democracy (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 11–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Oppenheim, , Political Concepts, p. 129.Google Scholar

3 Ware, , The Logic of Party Democracy, pp. 25–9.Google Scholar

4 Barry, , Political Argument, p. 177Google Scholar, suggests that principles can override interests, but his conception of principles as ultimate considerations places less weight on the moral component (cf. Political Argument, p. 35).Google Scholar

5 Swanton, , ‘The Concept of Interests’, p. 88.Google Scholar

6 The term which best conveys what is meant here is (the now old-fashioned) ‘weal’.

7 Swanton, , ‘The Concept of Interests’, p. 89.Google Scholar

8 In Political Argument Barry's first approximation to a definition of interests is that ‘an action or policy is in a man's interests if it increases his opportunities to get what he wants’, p. 176. The problem of uncertainty about future wants in part leads to a modification to this first approximation, pp. 184–5. See footnote 22, below. Barry's latest contribution identifies three versions of interests – as the satisfaction of (some?) preferences; as happiness; as opportunities to act and access to material advantages. See ‘Self Government Revisited’ in Miller, and Siedentop, , eds, The Nature of Political Theory, at pp. 124–6.Google Scholar

9 Barry, . Political Argument, p. 179.Google Scholar

10 Ware, , The Logic of Party Democracy, pp. 24–5.Google Scholar

11 Oppenheim, , Political Concepts, pp. 123–4.Google Scholar

12 Barry, , Political Argument, p. 175.Google Scholar

13 Barry, , Political Argument, p. 194.Google Scholar

14 Benditt, , ‘The Concept of Interest in Political Theory’, pp. 246–51.Google Scholar

15 Benditt, ‘The Concept of Interest in Political Theory’, pp. 254–7.Google Scholar

16 Lively, , ‘Paternalism’, pp. 162–3 discusses these problems briefly.Google Scholar

17 Barry, , Political Argument, pp. 71–2, 181–2, 297–9.Google Scholar

18 Swanton, . ‘The Concept of Interests’, pp. 88–9.Google Scholar

19 Ware, , The Logic of Party Democracy, pp. 25–7.Google Scholar

20 There is growing interest in the problem of ‘external preferences’. Apart from Barry, , Political Argument, pp. 297–9.Google Scholar see Dworkin, Ronald, Taking Righls Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 234–8Google Scholar; Hart, H. L. A., ‘Between Utility and Rights’, Columbia Law Review, LXXIX (1979), 828–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sen, Amartya, ‘Liberty, Unanimity and Rights’, Economica, XLIII (1976), 217–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sagoff, M., ‘Economic Theory and Environmental Law’, Michigan Law Review, LXXIX (1981), 1393–419CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barry, Brian, ‘Lady Chatterley's Lover and Doctor Fischer's Bomb Party: Liberalism, Pareto Optimality and the Problem of Objectionable Preferences’Google Scholar, and Goodin, Robert E., ‘Laundering Preferences’, both in Elster, Jon, ed., Foundations of Social Choice Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar and Ware, Alan, ‘External Preferences in Political Theory’ (University of Warwick, Department of Politics Working Paper No. 30).Google Scholar

21 Ware, , The Logic of Party Democracy, pp. 25–7.Google Scholar

22 Barry's treatment relies on a contrast between want satisfaction now and want satisfaction later, where a lack of opportunity to satisfy ‘whatever wants’ a person may have in the future is claimed to be against his interest (Political Argument, pp. 184–5).Google Scholar

23 Barry, , Political Argument, pp. 183–4.Google Scholar

24 Connolly, , The Terms of Political Discourse, p. 72.Google Scholar

25 Similarly Virginia Sapiro has explored Mary Wollstonecraft's argument that women's experience of oppression prevents them from pursuing their real interests in ‘Sex and Games: On Oppression and Rationality’, British Journal of Political Science, IX (1979), 385–408.Google Scholar

26 We use this A and A1 notation in cases where some basic shift in a person's judgement has occurred. In this paper we are using the terms ‘brainwashing’ and ‘programming’ in the everyday sense in which, for example, journalists reporting instances of personality or lifestyle changes induced by other people employ them. We recognize that some of the reported claims about the effectiveness of some techniques are misleading or exaggerated, particularly those associated with the period of the Korean war. Nevertheless, there are well-documented instances of the success of some techniques, as well as the partial success of others, which warrant the use of hypothetical examples in our discussion.

27 Swanton, , ‘The Concept of Interests’, pp. 84–5.Google Scholar

28 By risk we do not mean uncertainty. That is, we are considering instances in which statements of the probability of particular outcomes occurring can be made; we are not concerned with instances in which the possible outcomes are simply unknown.

29 John Gray examines the relation between autonomy, power and interests in connection with the arguments of Connolly, and Lukes, in ‘Political Power, Social Theory and Essential Contestability’, pp. 78–90.Google Scholar

30 Connolly, , The Terms of Political Discourse, p. 72.Google Scholar

31 Lukes, , Power, p. 34.Google Scholar

32 Wall, , ‘The Concept of Interest in Politics’, pp. 498–508.Google Scholar

33 Geoff Smith discusses problems of the hypothetical in relation to the interests of a slave in ‘Must Radicals be Marxists? Lukes on Power, Contestability and Alienation’, British Journal of Political Science, XI (1981), 405–25 at pp. 407–14.Google Scholar

34 Swanton, , ‘The Concept of Interests’, discusses brainwashing (pp. 85 and 94)Google Scholar and the pleasure machine (pp. 89–90). She appears to ignore the important distinction between the two examples with respect to how the wants were acquired, assimilating the ‘origin’ of a want with its ‘desirability’. ‘In the calculation of interests, wants are not weighted or eliminated by reference to factors such as their origin or desirability’, p. 90.Google Scholar

35 ‘The Concept of Interests’, p. 91.Google Scholar

36 Of course, in some cases there may be a conflict between the harmful effects produced by a substance and its usefulness in the purpose for which it was designed. The problem of glue sniffing is one such case and it produced the following response in place of a ban on sales: ‘We do not sell glue or similar products to anyone under 16 unless accompanied by an adult. We have made this decision for the safety of young people and in their own interest’, notice supplied to shops by the Hardware Trade Journal.

37 It might be argued that to allow someone to hook himself up to a pleasure machine is akin to the classic problem posed by ‘voluntary slavery’. But it is not clear that choosing the pleasure machine involves a contradiction in the notion of liberty as choosing slavery undoubtedly does. On the status of the willing slave's interests see footnote 33 and Gray, , ‘Political Power, Social Theory, and Essential Contestability’, pp. 87–8.Google Scholar