Marc Stears

Bridging autism, science and society: moving toward an ethically informed approach to autism research.

Recent developments in the science of autism have provoked widespread unease among autism activists. Drawing on the findings of a major international gathering of researchers, ethicists, and activists, this paper presents the first major analysis of the ethical questions arising from this unease. We outline the scientific developments that have provoked the most discomfort, analyze the response to these developments from within and without the autism community, and trace the current state of the ethical debate. Having done so, we contend that these ethical questions are unlikely to be resolved as they depend on fundamentally conflicting assumptions about the nature and desirability of neurocognitive difference. We conclude by arguing for a new range of democratic mechanisms that could enable the scientific community, autistics, and other concerned parties to respond collectively to such entrenched ethical disputes. Autism Res 2011,4:271–282.

The Vocation of Political Theory: Principles, Empirical Inquiry and the Politics of Opportunity

What is the purpose of political theoretical endeavour and what methods should the early 21st-century political theorist employ? These questions – which touch on issues which go to the very heart of the vocation of political theory – have become increasingly contentious in recent years. The period since the late 1980s has been one in which theorists have increasingly disagreed not only about conventional matters of normative contention but also about the means by which to seek to resolve them. This article examines a central tension that has characterized that general methodological disagreement, namely the place of empirical inquiry within the repertoire of the professional political theorist. Having carefully examined the contentions of an eclectic range of contributors to the debate, including G.A. Cohen, Alasdair MacIntyre and David Miller, this article argues that efforts either wholly to separate empirical investigation from normative enquiry or to bind the two ever-closer together are fraught with difficulties. It concludes by contending that political theorists ought to take aspects of the empirical political and social sciences extremely seriously while avoiding the temptation to have their normative agenda dictated to them by the contingent pressures of the here and now.

Animal rights protest and the challenge to deliberative democracy

Abstract Political theorists are increasingly investigating the tensions between the ideal of deliberative democracy and the practices of radical political activists. This paper seeks to contribute to that debate by analysing deliberative democrats’ disagreements with one particular group of political protestors – animal rights activists. The paper concentrates on two major areas of contention between these two groups: the idea of politics as a process of levying costs on opponents and the idea of a moral economy of disagreement. We then examine the circumstances of deliberation, suggesting that problems with the use of ideal theory as a standard against which to judge existing practice. The paper concludes by arguing that, despite recent amendments by its proponents, deliberative democracy remains an overly prescriptive approach to democratic politics.

Beyond the logic of liberalism: Learning from illiberalism in Britain and the United States

This paper analyses recent discussions of the role of illiberal ideologies in Britain and the United States in an attempt to tease out their implications for our understanding of contemporary liberalism. The paper suggests that these accounts present compelling reasons for conceiving of liberalism not as a dominant political culture but rather as an ideology that has often struggled in competition with powerful rivals. The paper further contends, however, that the available accounts of that struggle present an over-polarized account of the dichotomy between liberalism and illiberalism, an account that entails misunderstanding the political positions which liberals have adopted in order to survive in ongoing ideological competition.

How the U.S. State Works: A Theory of Standardization

Many existing accounts of the American state search for identifiable features of stateness recognizable from the comparative politics of state theory. These are less present in the US because of a distinct history, institutional separation of powers, and an ideological populism based in opposition to public sector expansion. Despite these constraints the American state is a powerful actor in US politics and has been since the nineteenth century engaged in familiar revenue raising, regulatory, public order, coercive, military, and distributive functions. To understand these we propose a framework based on how the endogenous drive to standardize shapes these functions and gives a distinct character to the American state. We identify impulses to standardize, instruments of standardization, and enduring obstacles to this agenda.

Ideology, socialism and the everyday: forgotten lessons from the inter-war years?

Abstract One of the great contributions of the Journal of Political Ideologies to the study of politics has been the emphasis it has given to recovering lost ideological traditions or subtraditions. With regard to the recent history of the United Kingdom, contributions to the Journal have long argued that there is far greater ideological complexity in British politics than is usually credited and that analysis of this complexity might throw up powerful arguments for contemporary political argument. In this essay, I take inspiration from that notion in order to establish whether a lost tradition of twentieth century British socialist thinking – that associated with a series of inter-war and mid-century thinkers who were sceptical of both modernism and the state – might throw new light on the failings of recent British Labour ideology, especially that associated with Ed Miliband’s failed attempt to secure victory in the 2015 general election. The essay contends that the arguments of these earlier thinkers – and especially their obsession with crafting a ‘socialism of the everyday’ – could have provided a vital warning to Miliband’s Labour, had it chosen to heed it.