The third way: a reconciliation of political imagination with political feasibility through a multiple-models idealisation approach

Normative political theory seeks to reduce the gap between the possibilities of political imagination and the realities of political existence. How is this difficult mission accomplished? Relying on an analysis of modelling theory, this paper reconstructs the dilemma of balancing political imagination and feasibility, as attempted by J. Rawls (2001) and S. Wolin (2004). It addresses the dilemma by introducing a multiple-models idealisation approach (Weisberg, 2013), which allows for the coexistence of models with different objectives and thus offers both a framework for idealistic and realistic arguments to coexist in political theory and an approach to using empirical methods and data in normative arguments. Specifically, this paper raises the epistemic democracy debate over the incompatibility of ideal and realistic models (Brennan and Landemore, 2021) and the debate over ideal and non-ideal theories of justice (Valentini, 2012) as acute examples of the dilemma in normative political theory, arguing that these debates can be reconciled through multiple-models idealisation. Inspired by H. Lanfemore (2020) and in direct response to the question of how political theory can be informed by other disciplines, this paper argues that the methodologies of other disciplines can be incorporated into normative political theory through the institutional translation of political concepts/values (ideal democracy or ideal theory of justice). Political theorists can thus apply various methods and data from empirical, philosophical, historical and model studies and from counter-factual imagination because political institutions have multi-faceted characters and are suitable tools for the exploration of political concepts. Dichotomous debates, such as ideal/non-ideal theory (Stemplowska, 2008) and moralism/realism (Williams, 2005), are part of political theory, and this paper offers a third strategy for research that positions political imagination and feasibility as mutually complementary, rather than antagonistic, through multiple-models idealisation and the institutional translation of political concepts/values. Section I of this paper clarifies how model analysis has been used as a tool for imagination and conceptual exploration in political theory (e.g., Rawls, Foucault, and Landemore) and reconstructs the dilemma of the incompatibility of political imagination and feasibility in the context of model analysis. Section II focuses on the controversy over mathematical model analysis of epistemic democracy (Brennan and Landemore, 2021) and argues that criticism based on the ‘standard interpretation of empirical verification’ (Johnson, 2021) reduces aspects of political imagination in normative political theory. Section III discusses the controversy over Rawls’ ideal/non-ideal theory and notes that a critique of feasibility is not a critique of political imagination, while Section IV argues that political imagination and the debate over feasibility can be interpreted as complementary rather than antagonistic based on multiple-models idealisation. The final section argues that the institutional translation of normative concepts/values can incorporate methodologies from various research fields, including empirical, historical, and philosophical analysis, into normative political theory.