Political Feasibility: An Interpretive Approach

Political theorists study the meaning of political feasibility in part to better understand the role of empirical political science in normative political theory. In the conventional understanding, political feasibility refers to the ability of an individual or collective agent to bring about a certain political state of affairs. This way of thinking about political feasibility corresponds with the ordinary language use of the term, but it asks empirical political science to carry the very heavy burden of assessing the likelihood that a plan of action will bring about a particular future state of affairs. In this article I develop a different way to think about political feasibility as part of a conversation about the meaning of the future. Building on Gadamer’s view of historical interpretation, I argue that empirical political science can be understood as creating “history of effects” towards possible futures as a way to enable understanding of future meanings. I use this framework to examine the place of arguments about feasibility in the processes of reason giving that take place in the public sphere. I do so by interpreting the “can” in the principle of “reasons that all can accept” as referring to an interpretive horizon of what can become feasible.