Enzo Rossi

This paper conceptualises a historically significant but under-theorised political tactic: direct action. On our account, an agent takes direct action if and only if they seek to attain their purposes through actions that deploy their own powers, without depending on uncontrolled intermediaries. We maintain that this account better captures salient features of important social movements than the broadened conceptions of (un)civil disobedience found in the recent literature. This is especially true if we focus, like most scholars, on disruptive tactics: the direct action lens reveals the relative importance of disruption over disobedience and communicative intent. Bringing together distant empirical findings, we argue that disruptive tactics typically work by imposing costs—and therefore perceived risks—on elites. This yields a new analysis of what makes these tactics effective for both local and systemic change. We outline the consequences of this result for how direct action can be studied.

What is the point of ideology critique? Prominent Anglo-American philosophers recently proposed novel arguments for the view that ideology critique is moral critique, and ideologies are flawed insofar as they contribute to injustice or oppression. We criticize that view and make the case for an alternative and more empirically-oriented approach, grounded in epistemic rather than moral commitments. We make two related claims: (i) ideology critique can debunk beliefs and practices by uncovering how, empirically, they are produced by self-justifying power, and (ii) the self-justification of power should be understood as an epistemic rather than moral flaw. Drawing on the recent realist revival in political theory, we argue that this genealogical approach has more radical potential, despite being more parsimonious than morality-based approaches. We demonstrate the relative advantages of our view by discussing the results of empirical studies on the contemporary phenomenon of neopatriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa.

Do salient normative claims about politics require moral premises? Political moralists think they do, political realists think they do not. We defend the viability of realism in a two-pronged way. First, we show that a number of recent attacks on realism, as well as realist responses to those attacks, unduly conflate distinctively political normativity and non-moral political normativity. Second, we argue that Alex Worsnip and Jonathan Leader-Maynard’s recent attack on realist arguments for a distinctively political normativity depends on assuming moralism as the default view, which places an excessive burden on the viability of realism, and so begs the question. Our discussion, though, does not address the relative merits of realism and moralism, so its upshot is relatively ecumenical: moralism need not be the view that all apt normative political judgments are moral judgments, and realism need not be the view that no apt normative political judgments are moral judgments.