Currently, two elections are in my foreground: the Thai general election that is in the process of counting the votes from election day on May 14; and the Alberta provincial election that will be held on May 29. Elections are on the lips of people in both of my home communities. There are real practical arguments being had in both elections, from challenges to a weighty bureaucratic civil service and a struggling economy in Thailand to the challenges of healthcare, public education, the environment, and affordable housing in Alberta. Yet, a little further in the background there exist some other events that are also related: the American election in 2024, the coronation of King Charles III in the UK, Turkey’s election completed on May 14 also, and Canada’s own minority government which is composed of the centrist Liberal Party and the mildly progressive New Democratic Party. There is a new spirit of engagement of pragmatic engagement. In the UK, the practicality of financing a monarchy (whose King is still the head of the Church of England [Anglican]) that has lost its colonial legitimacy is certainly on the table. In Turkey, a weakened parliamentary institution has put Erdogan’s leadership under the microscope. In America, the spectacle of Donald Trump has grown tiresome, and the dismissals of Tucker Carlson from Fox News and Don Lemon from CNN indicate the general sentiment that ideological and sensational political life has lost some of its glimmer.
What has emerged in all of these contexts is what I will call a pragmatic swing. In political terms, a pragmatic approach is often couched in the following language:
- It is centrist rather than strongly ideological, either to the left or to the right.
- It is practical and seeks steady reform, rather than dramatic in fiscal, foreign or economic policy.
- It often relies on agreement-building rather than by executive power decree.
- It is often accused of being a status quo political standpoint because it has a tendency to shy away from particular political conflicts – often to the point of disregarding claims of minority groups that are ideologically motivated.
- It tends to form highly cooperative relationships with powerful groups in a social structure such as big business, the military, or embedded lobby groups.
In other words; pragmatism is kind of an operating procedure rather than an outlook grounded in firm principles or ideological beliefs.
For those familiar with the Canadian context, for example, the current Liberal government could be called pragmatic – especially on points 1, 4, and 5. More recently, since the Liberal Party numerically needs the help of the NDP to form a coalition minority government, one could say that the Liberals are also pragmatic on 3 as well. On point 2, the Liberals may not even be living up to their own pragmatic standards.
More historically focused, Thailand seems to be rejecting Gen. Prayut who has headed a regime that emerged after the last coup d’etat. Prayut is pragmatic in senses 1, 2, 4, and especially 5. It has not been pragmatic in sense 3. In Alberta, the existing conservative government (UCP) has been pragmatic in senses 4 and 5, but in none of the other ways.
This gives a general sense of what a pragmatic swing in democracies looks like. It is inconsistent and tends to be hostile to principled arguments in favor of operational practicality. Given the varied socio-cultural-historically unique factors in each of these places, the inconsistency makes sense; without a commitment to the character of argument that it should be based on principles and should be instead expedited via social-cultural contingencies, inconsistency is bound to happen.
However, is it possible that being pragmatic can have principled reasons? And why should we seek reasons for a type of pragmatic political orientation? (If you want to avoid the philosophical discussion of pragmatism, skip ahead 2 paragraphs)
Philosophically, pragmatism has been hostile to principled reasons because pragmatism shied away from normative demands made by overarching concepts like God, freedom, beauty, or truth. In certain cases of pragmatic thinkers (like John Dewey, William James, or C.S. Pierce) it wasn’t that there was no such thing as a historical truth or beauty, it was just that these principles were politically irrelevant. Some philosophical pragmatists have gone further: W.V.O. Quine and Richard Rorty suggested that the activity of grounding politics on anything ahistorical was misguided. In their terms, we are democratic because that is what we happen to want, in other words, because of felt solidarity (p. 82).
What philosophical pragmatism in the Rortyian sense declines to address are the constitutive principles for such solidarity. Even more poignantly, Rorty would say that the effort to find the principles is altogether a pointless activity. I am not a philosophical pragmatist. However…
I am a political pragmatist and for good reason. There is a perfect storm of historical factors that presses a pragmatic political orientation upon us. To begin with, people have a hyper-sensitivity to totalitarian forces around us – including the prominence of surveillance capitalism, and perceived threats to freedom of speech. We also have the contestable identity issues of marginalized groups in North America including Indigenous peoples, LGBTQ+ people, the black population, and Hispanic and Asian / Canadian- American people. Contested legal issues of abortion and same-sex marriage have risen to prominence as well. We further have rising economic inequality and rapid inflation. The convergence of these issues has often been caused by an over-reliance on ideologies. A pragmatic approach to politics seems, well, politically expedient, so to speak.
But more seriously, political pragmatism has more than political expediency going for it. A sufficiently pragmatic orientation is constituted strongly against ideological pitfalls. For instance, political pragmatism holds onto a certain kind of argument that does not purport to have the final truth but is instead intellectually meek. Political pragmatism also incorporates diversity, not because the mainstream is bad or evil, but because including minority groups in our decision-making produces decisions that better achieve the kind of polity we strive to be. The principles of decision-making in pragmatic politics are about what we are striving to be, and not so much about preserving a status quo. A pragmatic politics will serve, in part, to constitute a good life.
The constitutive role of pragmatics cannot be understated. The constitution of a political space where an assured space of political action and dialogue facilitates it healthy production. But healthy political speech also works cyclically to maintain and sustain the political space of dialogue. The two feed off each other.
Further, such a constituted space is a space for flourishing, politically speaking. Political pragmatism is, in effect held onto for reasons of the good life. And unlike philosophical pragmatism – it is done so for good reasons.
Such an understanding of political pragmatism wards off the trappings in the five ways I talked about it earlier.
- It is centrist rather than strongly ideological, either to the left or to the right. Now, with our richer understanding of pragmatism, we understand that being centrist is a principled position – one that refuses to align with extreme left or right because that is the way to effectively be political.
- It is practical and seeks steady reform, rather than dramatic in fiscal, foreign, or economic policy. In this case, reform would be actively pursued, one would think, rather than reforming as a band-aid solution.
- It often relies on agreement-building rather than by executive power decree. But being pragmatic is more iterative rather than heroic – and that takes a lot of patience.
- It is often accused of being a status quo political standpoint because it has a tendency to shy away from particular political conflicts – often to the point of disregarding claims of minority groups that are ideologically motivated. However, a pragmatic outlook will indeed constitute procedural and non-violent means for resolving conflicts.
- It tends to form highly cooperative relationships with powerful groups in a social structure such as big business, the military, or embedded lobby groups. In the kind of constitutive pragmatism I am advocating, this potential corruption will be identified as the biggest enemy. It will cultivate a kind of hyper-individualism that is a moral ideal, and that acts as a check to unwieldy mass society. Well-constituted individuals will indeed need to be shielded from the totalitarian impulse of technocratic rationality and mass society.
The pragmatic swing cannot swing too far. It needs principles.
Raymond Klassen - Ideals and Identities 