Hall, E. (2022) Political compromise and dirty hands. The Review of Politics, 84 (2). pp. 214-237. ISSN 0034-6705
Abstract
In this article, I offer a novel account of why compromising in politics is likely to involve the kind of politically admirable but morally wrongful behavior at stake in the dirty hands thesis. On the view I defend, politicians do not dirty their hands just because they compromise on matters of principle. Rather, when forging a political compromise, negotiators can either comply with the requirements of ethical compromise-making or abide by the special obligations they have to their representees, but will struggle to satisfy both demands. As a result, subsequent to such compromises, residual moral claims about how the compromise was negotiated will almost inevitably emerge and compromise-makers will not be able to explain their conduct in a way that can cancel these grievances. It is in this sense that forging political compromises can be “dirty” even if choosing to compromise is the politically responsible thing to do.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of University of Notre Dame. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 29 Sep 2021 15:01 |
Last Modified: | 25 Nov 2022 15:17 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | University of Notre Dame |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1017/S0034670522000018 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:178409 |