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Corruption and Partisanship: Rousseau, Ferguson and Two Competing Models of Republican Revival

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2016

Robert A. Sparling
Robert A. Sparling*
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
*
School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa, 120 University (7078), Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5, [email protected]
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Abstract

Partisanship inspires a degree of ambivalence. There is a widespread tendency—which has a long history in republican political thought—to decry division and partisanship as corrupting, undermining individual judgment, and promoting clientelism, dependencies and loyalties antithetical to the common good. Yet there is an equally widespread intuition that excessive unity is corrupting, undermining the vigour of civic life. Contemporary political theory remains divided on the normative implications of division and unity—witness the battles between agonistic and consensus-oriented schools of democratic theory. In this article I examine the thought of two eighteenth-century writers who, while often treated as contributing to a common intellectual project of reinvigorating classical civic virtue, took opposite positions on the desirability of division. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Ferguson offered competing accounts of what corrupts civic virtue, one decrying party divisions and the other lauding them. The article examines the underlying philosophical presuppositions of Rousseau and Ferguson's competing claims and suggests, ultimately, that both positions suffer from neglecting to attend to an important distinction between salutary and harmful divisions.

Résumé:

L'esprit de parti inspire une certaine ambivalence. La pensée politique républicaine a souvent dénoncé les divisions et l'esprit de parti comme des phénomènes corrupteurs qui portent atteinte au jugement individuel et qui promeuvent un clientélisme, des dépendances et des loyautés contraires au bien public. Mais il existe également une intuition – aussi très répandue – voulant que l'unité excessive soit corruptrice, portant atteinte à la vigueur de la vie civique. La pensée politique contemporaine demeure divisée à l'égard des implications normatives de la division et de l'unité (pensons, par exemple, aux débats dans la théorie démocratique entre les champions de l'agonisme et ceux du consensus). Dans cet article, nous considérons la pensée de deux écrivains du dix-huitième siècle qui, quoique souvent traités comme des alliés dans le projet de faire revivre une vertu civique ancienne, prirent des positions opposées sur la désirabilité de la division sociale. Jean-Jacques Rousseau et Adam Ferguson offrirent deux conceptions distinctes de ce qui corrompt la vertu civique : l'un déplora les divisions partisanes tandis que l'autre les loua avec enthousiasme. L'article examine les présupposés philosophiques sur lesquels reposent leurs positions divergentes et suggère que ces deux positions négligent de considérer une importante distinction entre les divisions salutaires et les divisions néfastes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 107 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 2016 

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