Tanja Pritzlaff

The implicit normativity of political practices. Analyzing the dynamics and power relations of committee decision-making

If one understands political decisions as normatively binding, the question arises as to how bindingness in this sense is produced. Political decisions are not only binding for the citizens concerned. First of all, mutual bindingness has to be achieved between the political agents involved. This paper aims to present a process-oriented analysis of the normative forces at work in political face-to-face decision interactions. In this context, we introduce a two-dimensional conception of political normativity. The dimension of implicit, in-process normativity complements the dimension of explicit, rule-following normativity. The second part of the paper provides an empirical illustration of a typical political practice of decision-making, taken from an analysis of actual committee meetings. This illustration serves to exemplify the processual character and the dynamics as well as the internal power relations of bindingness-production.

Freedom is a Matter of Responsibility and Authority: An Interview with Robert B. Brandom

The philosophical work of Robert B. Brandom is one of the most widely discussed approaches in contemporary American philosophy. In his groundbreaking book Making it Explicit (1994), and recently in his John-Locke-Lectures Between Saying and Doing,1 held at the University of Oxford in 2006, Brandom presents his philosophical project of Analytic Pragmatism.2 Although Brandom’s complex work doesn’t contain an explicit political theory, assumptions and expectations regarding the political consequences of Brandom’s work have grown, especially since his debate with Jürgen Habermas.3 In the following interview,4 Brandom points out for the first time important links between his work and central questions of political theory.