Can political realism be action-guiding?

Various political realists claim the superior 'action guiding' qualities of their way of approaching normative political theory, as compared to 'liberal moralism'. This paper subjects that claim to critique. I first clarify the general idea of action guidance, and identify two types of guidance that a political theory might try to offer - 'prescriptive action-guidance' and 'orienting action-guidance' - together with the conditions that must be met before we can understand such guidance as having been successfully offered. I then go on to argue that if we take realist understandings of political psychology seriously, then realist attempts to offer action guidance appear to fail by realism’s own lights. I demonstrate this by means of engagement with a variety of different realist theorists.