Theorist as a Separate Social Role

The first step in developing a general theory of social responsibility for social science theorists is establishing its necessity. One has to demonstrate that theorists or their theories have in common some distinct characteristics that affect their dealings with the real world, giving them a special responsibility. The first is the nature of the theorist's social role, the second relates to the extent of this role's institutionalization and the content of the theorist's occupational ethic.

Social science theorists share a social role with intellectuals and experts as producers of social ideas. However, there are differences between those three groups.Footnote ⁴ Intellectuals possess and produce both general and unspecific knowledge, sometimes reputed cynically as non-required knowledge. As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “Now, it is a fact that an intellectual is someone who fails to mind his own business.”Footnote ⁵ Experts, on the other hand, possess and produce definite, concrete, and applicable knowledge of particular subject matter. On this continuum theorists occupy the middle ground. They are experts, but their expertise is in producing theories, intellectual constructions committed to the explication and explanation—following strict methodological rules—of the patterned relations between different phenomena. In essence, theories are general and abstract. Accordingly, they do not offer specific and concrete knowledge nor are they suggestions to be applied off the shelf in the real world. Theories need some kind of mechanism to translate them into policy guidelines applicable to specific phenomena.

This translation can be made by experts (in the conventional sense), be they policy or regional experts who, to use Joseph Lepgold's apt phrasing, act as a transmission belt between the abstract general world of theory and the specified kind of knowledge required by policy makers.Footnote ⁶ Theorists can also perform such translation themselves as mediators, by taking the more public role of public intellectual, leaving their usual social role and taking momentarily that role of the intellectual with its specific characteristics.Footnote ⁷ And sometimes it is ideologues or policy makers who translate the theories into policies. For instance, from the theoretical, abstract proposition that democracies do not (or rarely) fight each other, the neoconservative pundit Max Boot did not hesitate to infer that “therefore, the United States has a vital stake in fostering the spread of representative government.”Footnote ⁸ With that, Boot the ideologue took a leap of application, and cast the abstract theory as a concrete policy guideline. This middle ground between intellectuals and experts casts theorists in the unique role of those who contribute in an indirect, though sometimes substantial, manner to the policy making process.

A second occupational character of the theorists that sets them apart from other producers of social ideas (mainly intellectuals) is the extent to which their activities are institutionalized. Contrary to the fuzziness that shrouds the intellectual, the theorist works usually in an academic institution and more importantly, is committed to a relatively strict occupational ethic. One of the main tenets of this ethic is the declared commitment to the principal of objectivity. Hence it is one thing to ask the intellectual to be committed to morality; it is altogether different and counter-intuitive to demand the theorist to commit her theorizing—contrary to the established ethic—to moral standing. It is against this background of occupational ethic which commits the theorist to objectivity that I advance my argument.

Two Common Views and Exploration of an Alternative View

The stories are familiar: evolutionary theory justifying genocides; modernization theories fostering military dictatorship; realist theories of international relations framing Cold War policies; democratic-peace theory—the paradigmatic example taken up here—legitimating aggressive policies of forceful democratization. As these examples—and many others—demonstrate, theories appear to affect the world they purport to explain. Theories may have real world ramifications. Are we to ascribe responsibility to theorists for the real-world ramifications of their theorizing? In the study of International Relations—the parent discipline of the democratic-peace theory—the replies span from a univocal yes from critical theorists to a univocal no from adherents of positivism, especially neorealists. Immanuel Wallerstein, for example, is the exemplar of critical theorists. Applying Marxist critique to the contemporary capitalist World-System, Wallerstein assigns theorists the Gramscian role of Organic Intellectuals. He assumes that social science theories have emancipatory potential: “The process of analysis and the process of social transformation are not separate. They are obverse sides of one coin. Our praxis informs, indeed makes possible, our analytical frameworks. But the work of analysis is itself a central part of the praxis of change.”Footnote ⁹ The responsibility therefore lies with the theorists to fulfill this potential: “The intellectual tasks before us are important ones, that our intellectual responsibilities are moral responsibilities.”Footnote ¹⁰ Other IR critical theorists turn their focus to the flipside phenomenon of emancipation and change. They accuse mainstream IR theories and theorists—mainly realists and neorealists—of serving the status quo and fostering a conflictual world dominated by powers and superpowers. This accusation is advanced most forcefully by Richard Ashley: “Neorealist structuralism lends itself wonderfully well to becoming an apologia for the status quo, an excuse for domination.”Footnote ¹¹ And more recently, Steve Smith declared in his International Studies Association 2003 Presidential Address that “International Relations has been one voice singing into existence the world that made September 11 possible.”Footnote ¹² The theoretical accounts of both Ashley and Smith are based on the assumption that theories (and ideas more generally) have a real and substantial impact on world reality; they have actual power. Under these assumptions it makes sense for Wallerstein to ascribe moral responsibility with theorists.

At the other end of the spectrum are the neorealist theorists who deny that theories have influence and power or that theorists have responsibility for world problems. First, neorealists adopt a stance of positivist detachment that sees theorists as distanced from the subject matter—the social world—of their theorizing. Theorists, they insist, do not and should not be involved in shaping this world.Footnote ¹³ Add to this the neorealist assertion that what matters in global politics is the division of material capabilities and resources, and what we get is a total dismissal of theories (and ideas more generally) as agents of change or the status quo. Theories, in neorealism, have no real consequences outside of academia, no substantial real-world ramifications. Consequently, theorists have nothing (outside academia) to be accountable for. The question of responsibility is solved by being sidestepped. Kenneth Waltz, the godfather of neorealism, represents this stand in his defense against Ashley's charges, “How can any theory have these effects? Ashley has a higher regard for the power of theories than I have.”Footnote ¹⁴

However, this IR dispute is inclined to be emotional and accusatory. Each party tends to define itself through its disagreement with the other party, creating ill-defined manifestos rather than clear, precise argumentation. There are, however, theorists from other disciplines, mainly philosophy, who articulate the question of theorists' responsibility in more refined terms. Two paradigmatic responses warrant analysis. The first, by William Connolly, takes a positive stance. Connolly believes theorists responsibe for overseeing consequences of their research. The other response, including Marc Fleurbaey and J.R. Lucas, takes a negative view of the theorist's responsibility. While Lucas undermines the powers of theorists altogether, Fleurbaey ascribing the blame to the politicians who so use and abuse the theories.

Connolly states:

Fleurbaey, dealing with political philosophers but to the same affect, answers the question of responsibility negatively: “But theorists, admittedly, are not liable for the world events, nor, to some extent, for the use and misuse of their concepts in the public debate.”Footnote ¹⁶ Lucas joins forces and states—lumping together poets, philosophers, scientists, and artists—that they “are in no position to do anyone great harm by a bad decision, and are not much good either if they merely keep their noses clean, and take care not to stray from the path of rectitude.”Footnote ¹⁷ Both of these stands are erroneous: Connolly is demanding too much of theorists, while Fleurbaey and Lucas are too quick in absolving them of any responsibility.

Looking first at Connolly's stand, we see that his thesis is saddled with three shortcomings. First, he ignores the political process by which theories are manipulated. Second, he ascribes too much power to theorists. Finally, he demands too much from theorists.

More often than not, theories do not affect reality in their own terms. At times, the real world consequences of theories run contrary to the theoretical—and moral—intentions of the theorists who constructed them. That is what happened with the theories of democratic peace, which were used by neoconservatives to reason and legitimize their plan for forcefully democratizing the Middle East. In an ironic twist, academic theories that identified a force for peace—democracyFootnote ¹⁸—are being used politically to advance the cause of war. As this example demonstrates, theories do interact with reality, but they might do so contrary to the original intentions of those who originally conceived them. Therefore it is more accurate to argue that it is the public and political representations of theories that affect reality. Those representations are the result of alternations that theories undergo by being mistakenly misinterpreted or deliberately abused. The former might be termed public representation, as it takes place in the public realm; the later might be termed political representation, as it takes place in the political arena and is being carried out consciously by politicians and for political reasons. While theorists present politics in abstract terms, theories, too, undergo a process of politicization. Theories and theorists are captives of politics. Connolly fails to account for the way theories are politicized prior to their impact on real world.

The second shortcoming, attributing too much power to theorists, is the result of the first. As Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann wrote, “Theoretical thought, ‘ideas,’ Weltanschauungen are not that important in society.”Footnote ¹⁹ Connolly readily admits that social scientists are not overly influential. He fails, however, to asses how theoretical thought is only one component in what Berger and Luckmann call “commonsense ‘knowledge,’”Footnote ²⁰ which according to them—and correctly so—is the central force of social construction, i.e., of the impact ideas have on social and political reality. It is not only that theoretical ideas comprise a relatively small portion of the world of ideas. It is also the way they are being integrated into the world of ideas; how they are understood, interpreted, politicized, disseminated, and socialized into. The migration process that determines how they influence reality is conditioned by many factors, both material and ideal, so much so that their independent influence is significantly diminished. Only by acknowledging that the practical influence of theory is highly conditional can one really assess the impact of theories on reality. It follows that one can only assess responsibility of theorists in that light.

Yet another shortcoming results from the previous two. Connolly demands too much of theorists. Once we accept that the influence theories have on reality is conditioned by other factors (and primarily their politicization), we ought to ask whether theorists forecast the practical influence their work might have. How can a theorist decide which theoretical ideas can “nourish a politics of responsibility”? In a way, the fate of theories is beyond the control of the theorists, and it is hard to conceive how they might fulfill the demands Connolly makes of them. Unless one might, of course, insist that theorists exercise what John Lyne has called “moral imagination,” defined as “the capacity to envision how a situation can admit of other descriptions and perspectives, how others may be affected, how attributes may be claimed or rejected as part of ‘us,’ how we understand who is part of our community, how the course of language we unleash may do its work over time.”Footnote ²¹ In our context, an important aspect of the moral imagination is the capacity to envision the various ways in which a theoretical idea can be integrated into the commonsense knowledge of society, can form part of the world of ideas, and even more so, might be altered to a politically distorted representation and be abused politically. Taking into account the complexity of the migrating process, the number of factors involved, and the skillful way politicians harness whatever they deem helpful to their agendas, it seems utterly unreasonable to expect theorists to imagine the fate of their theories. It is unreasonable to expect them to be able to construct theories intended to bring about designated political and social desired outcomes. Moral imagination would not help us here. The demands Connolly presses on theorists are unreasonable, and his attribution of responsibility to theorists is thus flawed.

We should, though, make one distinct category of cases to which Connolly's strictures apply. Most times, theorists are not actively engaged in the processes by which their work is politicized. They might view the process as spectators and potentially they may criticize the process, but they are not in control of it, and more so, they do not initiate it. Most cases fall into this category, and therefore fall out of Connolly's understanding of the responsibility of theorists. There are occasions, however, where theorists are not passive actors, but rather perform an active, even entrepreneurial role, as political agents mobilizing their theories. There are theorists who consciously and for various reasons initiate a process in which their theories are introduced into the world of politics with a deliberate and calculated intent of affecting it. Examples are Henry Kissinger, Anthony Giddens, Robert Putnam, and Walt Rostow. At times, such theorists are motivated by a desire to improve the world. At other times, they are driven by a desire for personal power, or by a longing for fame and prestige. By deliberately initiating the process, and by trying to supervise the process and determine its results, such theorists form a separate category. Those theorists who fall into this category assume responsibility of the kind Connolly proposed. One ought to note, however, that because the world of politics tends to intervene and spoil intended actions, even in cases where a theorist operates as a political entrepreneur it is unlikely that he will retain the consequences his work generates. However, this is a typical and inherent phenomenon resulting from the complexity of the social and political world. We generally ascribe responsibility to agents even though consequences are not necessarily the perfect result of their calculated efforts. Except for those who hold the purest and crudest version of consequentialism, there is a moral intuition that we should hold people responsible for consequences that any reasonable person in their position would have foreseen. As Lucas aptly remarks, “We hold a man responsible not only for the actually foreseen, but for the reasonably foreseeable, consequences of his action, and will not automatically excuse him if he pleads that he did not know that his action would be likely to engender them.”Footnote ²² This is doubly so in cases of those who voluntarily sought executive offices. By taking those offices they assume responsibilities for the planned and unplanned consequences of their scheming; it is after all the merits we expect from those who hold high office. Again Lucas' formulation is useful: “Those who undertake office have to consider not only what ought to be the consequences in an ideal world, but what will be the consequences in this actual world, of what they do or do not do.”Footnote ²³ This moral intuition is not limited to theorists turned political entrepreneur, and it does establish that moral responsibility for their actions is not to be rejected (though in certain circumstances it can be mitigated).

Returning from this detour to the main thesis of the article, it might seem that by refuting Connolly's argument I have confirmed Fleurbaey's or Lucas' case for not ascribing responsibility to theorists for the ramifications of their theorizing. I claim, however, that Fleurbaey's or Lucas' arguments are also flawed. There ought to be a sense in which theorists do bear responsibility for the consequences of their work. It is true that we only attribute responsibility to agents. And in as much as I have argued that theorists are passive actors rather than active agents in the process of politicizing theories, it would seem that we can neither blame nor praise theorists for the ways their work is politicized. Whatever is beyond one's control, is also beyond one's responsibility. In that sense, although theorists are the creators of theories, they are neither to be blamed nor praised for the outcomes of their theorizing in the real world.

But this kind of responsibility does not cover the whole span of responsibilities, and it is not what I mean by ascribing responsibility to theorists. Fleurbaey is right to stress the place of political abuses in the translating of theories into publicly debated items, of distorting them into political representations. I argue, however, that these abuses are a recurrent pattern in the interaction of theory and politics, and hence the sources of this pattern ought to be explored. It might actually be the case that some intrinsic features of theorizing render theories susceptible to political abuse. This possibility brings to the fore another kind of responsibility. What Fleurbaey probably has in mind in denying the theorists' responsibility is the backward-looking responsibility that deals with allocating blame or praise for actions. It is the kind of moral responsibility that T.M. Scanlon calls “responsibility as attributability,”Footnote ²⁴ and that Robert Goodin calls “blame-allocating sort of responsibility.”Footnote ²⁵ Within the bounds of blame responsibility, it is the politicians who have abused or used the theories who are to be blamed or praised for the consequences of the politicization process. Yet the question remains to what extent intrinsic features of theory and theorizing contribute to making theory vulnerable to political abuses. This possibility requires examining a forward-looking responsibility, what Goodin calls “task-oriented sort of responsibility”Footnote ²⁶—the responsibility to tackle problems with the intention of amending them.Footnote ²⁷ That is to say, it is the type of social responsibility produced by an ethical obligation to try to address present social and political problems so to avert future undesired outcomes, or the complimentary ethical obligation to maintain some existing-good state of affairs, and to produce future desired outcomes.Footnote ²⁸

This ethical obligation, I maintain, ascribes task responsibility to theorists. While they are not liable, guilty, or blameworthy for the outcomes of their theorizing, they owe a measure of self-examination to themselves and to other members of society. Theorists must determine if indeed some intrinsic features of theory and theorizing share responsibility for the political abuse of theories, having rendered them vulnerable to such abuses, by being, so to speak, an enabling factor to the political abuse. Thus theorists bear task responsibility.

The Structure of Theory

Three stages are required of theorists to discharge their task responsibility. These stages are sequenced and each depends on the previous one. The first is to determine if intrinsic features of theory act as enabling factors of the political abuses. If such intrinsic features do exist then a second stage is required: looking for corrective measures to these intrinsic features that can alter the vulnerability of theories and diminish the possibility of future political abuses. Theorists should also consider if those corrective measures can be borne. The third stage would be to try to implement the corrective measures to amend the vulnerability of theories to politicization and political abuse.

The first stage is the least controversial of all the stages. It seems unobjectionable to assess a theory in terms of whether it might contribute to political abuse. Some, though, might object to my claim that this is an ethical requirement, an obligation that ascribes social responsibility. Nevertheless, in so far as intrinsic features of the way we theorize are to some extent accountable for the political abuse, the request for self-examination arises ethically out of what Scanlon calls “substantive responsibility,”Footnote ²⁹ the things people are required to do for each other. Theorists are, allegedly, accountable to the wider public for the vulnerability of theories to political abuse, and as such it is a social responsibility—a task responsibility—to engage in such self-examination. It becomes an ethical requirement bearing a social responsibility to conduct such a self-examination.

A look into the structure of theory will disclose intrinsic features that are accountable for a theory being vulnerable to political abuse. Theories have rhetorical capital—their inherent aggregate persuasive resources. This vulnerability depends upon the structural duality of accessibility and incomprehensibility, overlaid with the prestige of objectivity.Footnote ³⁰

Theories offer explanations (usually causal explanations) of regularities. Thus function lies at the center of the structure of theory: relating explanans to explanandum. Around this center auxiliary structural and procedural features arise. First, there is the principle of objectivity by which, according to conventional positivistic wisdom, theorizing is being conducted. Supposedly, theory is pursued for the sake of scientific knowledge, and as such, is innoculated from political partisanship, moral convictions, and ideological persuasions. The function of explanation and the prestige of objectivity affect the attractiveness of theories in politics.Footnote ³¹ Policy makers need to identify causal mechanisms that help them devise efficient policies and, perhaps more importantly, to help assure that policy can be accepted as legitimate by the public. By offering causal mechanisms credited with objectivity rather than tainted by partisanship and ideology, theories are a perfect apparatus to fulfill both of these needs.Footnote ³² The features and sources of the rhetorical capital of theories are dependent on their being accessible to the public. Absent such accessibility a theory, no matter its real-world implications and their attractiveness to policy makers, will remain obscure, secluded in ivory towers. As theorizing is carried out in the public sphere and as theories are circulated freely, they become highly accessible to the public. This accessibility enables the theories' migration to the public sphere and is a major source of rhetorical capital.Footnote ³³

Yet a distinction should be made between theory as product and theorizing as an intellectual process. Accessibility is a feature of theory as product—theory that migrates well. However, theorizing as the producing process does not migrate well. Some of the technicalities and subtleties of theorizing remain far from accessible to the wider public, failing to migrate well from academia to the public sphere and rendering theories incomprehensible. In particular, four requisites of theorizing fare poorly in the public sphere after getting lost in the process of migration. To demonstrate, I use the example of democratic-peace theory, which came to prominence among political elites of the democratic world.Footnote ³⁴

The first requisite of theorizing lost in migration is the cautiousness and sense of criticism that is built into academic discourse and conduct. When propounded by politicians and ideologues, democratic peace is read as a well known, undisputed, and uncontested fact. Hence peace among democracies is taken for granted. This is how George W. Bush treated the phenomenon of peace among democracies: “We know from history that free nations are peaceful nations. We know that democracies do not attack each other.”Footnote ³⁵ The phenomenon, according to Bush, is uncontested; there is no need for a complicated and subtle theoretical apparatus to infer conclusions from compound reality. We can simply induce from observing history and obviate academic caution.

Second, as theories migrate from the academy to the public sphere, they often are stripped of their conditional character. Most theories are explicit about the conditions of their validity. For example, most democratic-peace theorists insist that peaceful democratic relations are dyadic in natureFootnote ³⁶ and valid only between pairs of democracies. Moreover, it is now widely acknowledged that these peaceful relations only hold true between pairs of consolidated democracies.Footnote ³⁷ Such conditionality disappears in the political sphere where theoretical claims become totalistic assertions. Boot, for example, defines the democratic-peace theory as “the notion that liberal democracies are unlikely to use weapons of mass destructions, sponsor terrorism, and undertake other activities that threaten their neighbors and the United States.”Footnote ³⁸ Similarly, Benjamin Netanyahu—the prominent Israeli politician and former Israeli prime minister—learns from history that “modern democracies do not initiate aggression. This has been the central lesson of the twentieth century.”Footnote ³⁹ Outside academia it seems democracies are peaceful not only among themselves; they are peaceful overall.

Third and closely related, as theories migrate they lose their probabilistic nature and become absolute, law-like statements. This can be seen, for example, in the pronouncement by two neoconservative pundits, Lawrence Kaplan and William Kristol, that the democratic peace is “a truth of international relations.”Footnote ⁴⁰ The above statements by Bush and Netanyahu exude a similar absolute and law-like quality. They do not deal with probabilities: democracies are not less likely than other regimes types to be involved in war; democracies do not initiate war, period.

Finally, and again related to this question of conditionality, is the role of the laws of logic that stipulate what can validly be inferred from a theory and what cannot. When there are no terms of conditionality, the rules of deducing conclusions from theory, and more relevant in the public arena, deducing policy guidelines from theory, can hardly function. For example, we cannot infer from the theory that consolidated democracies never (or rarely) fight each other that other kinds of dyads (e.g., democracy vs. nondemocracy, or nondemocracy vs. nondemocracy) are necessarily war prone. And thus we cannot deduce—which the Bush doctrine does and which it used to legitimize the war in IraqFootnote ⁴¹—that democratizing Iraq will bring immediate regional stability, at least not as long as we are unwilling to democratize the rest of the region. And even if we did democratize the rest of the region, we would still face a long period of regional destabilization while the newly democratized states struggled through the long and arduous process of consolidating their democracies.

Discarding these four requisites of theorizing diverts attention from the threat of regional destabilization, producing a distorted reading of theories in the form of political representations and misrepresentations. This simplistic yes/no reading of theories is highly susceptible to rhetorical excess and political mobilization.

It is this structural duality of accessibility and incomprehensibility that serves as the enabling factor of the politicization of theory. The coupling of this structural duality with the declared objectivity of theorizing, or prestige of objectivity amplifies its political ramifications. As mentioned earlier, the prestige of objectivity increases the attractiveness of theories to politicians who are in endless quest for rhetorical assets. The objectivity allows politicians to portray their policies as non-ideological in nature, and more so, as non-partisan and non-sectarian. The politicians try to draw on the prestige of objectivity to portray their policies as benefiting the general good of society, rather than some sectarian good. Furthermore, the purported objectivity of theories operates to relieve theorists of the sense of social responsibility needed to get a hold on the political fortunes of their theories. The principle of objectivity shields the theorists in their ivory towers, where they analyze and theorize on society, unaccountable by any means whatsoever to the wider public. Hence, they allegedly are not expected to be tainted by politics, and they may abandon their theories to political abuse. Theorists do not feel obliged to stand up against this kind of political abuse, and so the abuses can go un-criticized.

But in so far as the analysis presented here is correct, theorists bear task responsibility, and are obliged to examine the features of their theory and those which comprise its rhetorical capital; they are also responsible for finding a way to diminish as much as possible the possibilities of political abuse. We cannot reasonably expect political abuses to disappear totally, but we must do our best to reduce them. This follows from the theorists' task responsibility.Footnote ⁴²

Discharging the Theorists' Task Responsibility

After establishing that theorists are responsible for taking measures against political abuse of their work, we need to undertake the second task, identifying the measures theorists are to take to disable the enabling factor. We ought to identify the Achilles heel of theorizing that renders theory vulnerable to abuse. The analysis offered in the previous section points to the rhetorical capital inherent in theories as the enabling factor of political abuse. I now confront the task of examining the three components of rhetorical capital that one might amend in order to diminish the chance a theory will be politically abused. Up to this point I have walked a relatively secure path; it is not too contentious an argument to identify a problem. It is now—in trying to devise and advance a remedy—where most difficulties and controversies will arise. It is here where I start walking more difficult terrain. It is even more so, as the depiction of the remedy being advanced is not comprehensive.

The first feature of theory to be explored in the current context is its accessibility to the wide public. Accessibility, however, is the inevitable outcome of how science is conducted, of science's infrastructure. Science, by its nature, is democratic and as such it is inclusive; it is open not only to its practitioners but also to the wider public that can itself, or more likely through intermediaries, assess scientific findings. The problem, as will be discussed, is the nature of those intermediaries. Furthermore, accessibility is a positive quality of theory, and we should not give it up. Accessibility is what connects theorists and theories to the public and, as such, it is that which legitimates the public funding of science. Most importantly, it is accessibility that allows academia to contribute positively to public deliberation, and thus to a well-governed polity. We ought not to give up this capacity of academia.

The difficulty with the second intrinsic feature—the incomprehensibility of theorizing—is that it is an unavoidable outcome of the complexities, technicalities, and subtleties of theorizing. One cannot mitigate these “obstacles” simply by deciding to simplify theorizing, as those complexities, technicalities, and subtleties are the bedrock of good theorizing. They constitute the procedural mechanisms and methodologies that allow and guarantee good science. And though they cause theorizing to be incomprehensible to the general public, they are necessary and indispensable element of theorizing. Consequently, as long as academic education remains limited in reach, theorizing is almost bound to continue being incomprehensible to the wider public.Footnote ⁴³ What theorists can and ought do is to facilitate the understanding of the wide public by establishing routes of intermediation that will allow popularization of theories (for example by acting as public intellectuals and by lending a hand to science correspondents and popular writers), and at the same time will diminish the likelihood that it will be trivialized or abused by politicians.

We are thus left with the third intrinsic feature of theories, the declared objectivity of theorizing, or the prestige of objectivity. Objectivity means several things, from detached and impartial conduct (including the conduct of inquiry), to an external object-like truth unconditioned by the epistemological queries of humans, to the more mundane use of aloofness from the political party-system squabbles. As John Searle rightly indicates, objectivity is used in both an ontological and an epistemological sense.Footnote ⁴⁴ This is an important point to which I will return. The common denominator of all these understandings is that objectivity stands for disengagement of some sort, and in our context, the disengagement of theorists and of theorizing from the political and the ideological belief systems represents an epistemological disengagement that supposedly makes possible discovering an external ontological truth. The epistemological implication of this understanding is that theories are politically neutral and, not less so, morally neutral—that a distinction exists between fact and value. Allegedly, theories do not rise from values, nor do they have a moral say, nor moral implications. An ontological upshot of this understanding is that the truth that theories establish does not depend on values and is external to the mode of theorizing. Hence, the ethic of objectivity (and the accompanying prestige of scientific objectivity) encompasses both the epistemic and ontological senses of objectivity: social science's vocation is the objective quest for the objective truth. This is the heritage of positivism which advocates the principle of objectivity as the warranted method of theorizing.

This positivist understanding facilitates the political and rhetorical abuse of theories by politicians who can expediently present a distorted reading of any theory to support any ideological and political program. Objectivity shields theorists from the need to involve themselves in politics; it supposedly relieves them of the kind of social responsibility that arises from being accountable ethically for their theories' ramifications in the real world. Moreover, by being relieved of social responsibility, theorists are not obligated to unveil the political abuses of their theories, precisely because, if they subscribe to the principle of objectivity they are supposed to remain aloof from the political world. They hold the theoretical high ground. Therefore, it is not surprising that there have been no public protests from prominent democratic-peace theorists at the political uses, misuses, and abuses of democratic-peace theory by the neoconservatives and Bush administration. However, in so far as theorists bear social task responsibility, this will not do. Theorists are accountable to the wider public and are ethically obligated to address the political ramifications of their theories, including those stemming from the political abuses of their theories, as in the case of democratic-peace theory and the war in Iraq.

There are several preliminary and limited measures that theorists can take properly to assume their social obligations to the public. First they can follow the advice of Max Weber and devise their research agenda according to pressing social dilemmas.Footnote ⁴⁵ Or as Ward Jones argued concerning philosophers, they should have responsibilities to their contexts: “Philosophical communities and individual philosophers should be sensitive to—attuned to and concerned with—the practically and theoretically relevant issues that are salient in their nonphilosophical surroundings, and at least some of their work should be motivated by a concern for those issues.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Failing to be motivated by the issues raised in their surrounding may result in justified accusations of neglect. A second possible measure is offered by Connolly in an early paper. When the evidence needed to decide between several alternative theories is inconclusive, theorists may opt for the more moral alternatives.Footnote ⁴⁷ A third preliminary measure as suggested by Wesley Widmaier is that theorists should act as public intellectuals and clarify the theories in their own voice.Footnote ⁴⁸ However, this measure is good as far as it goes. Many theorists are reluctant to act in this way, nor are all of them good doing so. In a media environment that calls for sound bytes to explain profound theoretical ideas, probably the most able articulators among the theorists will fall short next to the oratorical capabilities of able politicians.Footnote ⁴⁹ This media environment probably led to the failure of several initiatives by theorists to prevent the war in Iraq. Two prominent groups, the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy attempted what Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Stuart Kaufman called Weberian Activism.Footnote ⁵⁰ Yet, in a media environment that rewards short sound-bytes and oratorical capabilities such scholarly Weberian Activism proved insufficient.

Moreover, as was discussed earlier, the social roles of theorists and intellectuals are distinct and separate, each with its own characteristics. The proposal presented here relates to theorists as theorists. When adopting the role of intellectuals, theorists abandon some of the specific characteristics that render them unique. Those instances can occur momentarily, on an ad hoc basis only, otherwise the role of theorist loses its distinctiveness. There is no inherent wrong in acting as a public intellectual—so long as the theorist understands that it is an altogether different role that requires different qualities (oratorical ones, for example) for it to succeed and can, if conducted on a routine basis, harm her qualities as theorist. A fourth limited measure is that theorists will contribute to public understanding by helping science correspondent explain theories by simplifying them rather than trivializing them. A fifth limited measure is that theorists will take notice when their theories are being used politically, evaluate the moral implications of these uses, and, if necessary, act as whistleblowers, warning the public of the dangers posed by the misrepresentations of their theories.Footnote ⁵¹

All these measures entail rejection of neutrality in favor of moral commitment by theorists, and are an improvement on the positivist position of maintaining neutrality. Yet they are preliminary and limited as they answer only the epistemological aspect of objectivity. They fail to acknowledge the ontological aspect of objectivity. Avner de-Shalit, an advocate of this stance, claims, “objectivity is the ability to reach a position where I realize that the world does not center on me; neutrality, if it is possible, is the ability not to be motivated by matters that are politically important to me when I write and teach.”Footnote ⁵² What is important to note is that de-Shalit focuses on “me.” The world, according to de-Shalit, is not centered on the individual. Or put differently, the world is not the product of subjective acts. I happily endorse this claim. Yet, this individualist option does not encompass the whole range of alternatives available to objectivity. Rejecting subjectivity does not automatically leave us with objectivity, as de-Shalit assumes. Rather, we are left with a third option, that of intersubjectivity as advanced by phenomenology, as well as by social constructivism. It is the understanding that while there is around us something that is real, the significance of that “something” depends on how we interpret it. The social world, to a degree, is socially constructed. Thus, and contrary to de-Shalit's stance, understanding that “the [social] world does not center on me,” does not lead automatically to the endorsement of objectivity. It still leaves us the option of rejecting objectivity and endorsing intersubjectivity. This option is more appropriate to the understanding that objectivity, or the lack of it, is an attribute of the social world (ontological objectivity) as well as it is an attribute of the human mind (epistemological objectivity). And what is more, rejecting objectivity is not only philosophically suitable, it is also the sound inference from the analysis of the rhetorical capital of theory that enables it to be abused politically. Hence, rejecting neutrality will not suffice, and I advance the more comprehensive argument of the need for rejecting objectivity for the sake of normative ethic of the social science.

Committing theorists morally and explicating the moral groundwork of theory constitute what can be called a normative ethic. Such a normative ethic further includes the derivative principles of evaluating theories according to their moral standards and according to the morality of their possible ramifications in the real world (imperfect as such evaluation is). In other words, the customary evaluation of theory, which is limited to appraising theory's explanatory strength, parsimonious properties, and prospects of additional hypotheses, is not enough. It should be supplemented by moral evaluation. Moreover, a normative ethic involves the commitment of theorists to contribute to society, to guarantee that their theories benefit society.

The possibility that a theory will be abused politically will decrease to the extent that theorists renounce the principle of objectivity and acknowledge the moral groundwork as well as the moral implication of their theory. Abuses will become more evident. It is not that politicians will stop attempting to exploit the rhetorical capital of theories, but they may find it harder once the theorists openly explicate the moral groundwork of theories and their moral implications. Moreover, the overt moral groundwork will commit the theorists to stand up against a distorting abuse of their creation, i.e., the theory. They would not be shielded by moral dodging explicated, for example, by Waltz, Fleurbaey, and Lucas.

Introducing social science with this normative ethic as a substitute for the existing objective ethic will answer the theorists' task responsibility to modify theorizing so as to protect against political and rhetorical abuses of theories, and against the resulting undesired ramifications. Moralizing theory would not only diminish the possibility of political abuse, it would also enable academia to contribute more fruitfully to public deliberation. By dismantling theory's vulnerability to political abuse, academia will be able to contribute to political deliberation in more reasonable and beneficial ways. It may enable theorists to bring theoretical insights to political deliberation which, being based on rigorous research, intellectualism, scholarship, knowledge, and sound logic of inference, may help to elucidate ends and means, and hence promote rational deliberations. Moreover, and as has been explored here, objectivity is not realized (or rejected) exclusively in the epistemic realm. Objectivity stands and falls on the two senses of epistemology and ontology. Henceforth, renouncing the principle of objectivity for the sake of normative ethic carries with it an ontological equivalent. In the social world, truth is not an object-like entity. Truth is not external to the way we explore, understand, and theorize it. To some extent, truth is constructed theoretically, and to theorize about reality is to participate in reality's construction, and hence to be implicated in moral consequence. By shielding theory from misrepresentation, theorists ensure that their contribution to the construction of the social world is as close as it can be to what they intend it to be; that when identifying democracy as a “force for peace,” their theories would not be mobilized to rationalize and legitimize war—not commandeered in war's service.

We need to consider one more point before establishing that theorists' task responsibility indeed necessitates substituting morality for objectivity as the proper way to theorize. Even supposing that moralizing will bring all the benefits that I claim it does, is it a price worth paying? It may well be that by abandoning objectivity as the foundation of theorizing we will bring science to an end. If objectivity is an essential part of theory, it is indispensable and any attempt to rid ourselves of it will end up substituting theory with ideology. And if this is indeed the cost of moralizing theory, we indubitably cannot allow it. We had better pay the price of being vulnerable to political abuse than take apart science and ourselves become ideologues.

Surely this is the position of positivists who perceive objectivity as the defining quality of science. Yet this perception is misguided. As Hilary Putnam, among others, effectively demonstrated, the distinction between fact and value is metaphysically inflated. Science is entrenched with values and with norms, and facts are entangled with values.Footnote ⁵³ I would also add that every human thought is also so entrenched with values and norms. We ought not to try to remove morality to a secluded domain where its influence would be limited. We ought to celebrate the existence of moral reasoning in other forms of human thought, theoretical thought included. Furthermore, social reality is not an object-like entity that passively waits to be discovered by an external observer. It is a realm that is being actively and continuously constructed and reconstructed by those who participate in it, including social scientists (along with their values). Positivism and the endorsement of the ethic of objectivity are just not equipped to understand social reality.

Nevertheless, science is not ideology and theorists should take great pains to guard against ideologizing science and theory. Yet to do so they should not disregard their moral commitments; rather, they are obligated to follow the procedural mechanisms that guarantee that those moral commitments will enrich rather than trivialize theory into ideology. They should maintain the scientific culture of questioning and self-critique, and they should uphold the laws of inference. Norms and values are among the constitutive building blocks of theory, but the laws of inference dictate how to theorize from those building blocks so as to maintain academic rigor. On top of the warranted academic rigorousness, intellectualism, scholarship, and knowledge, the normative ethic obligates social science theorists to be active participants in the moral construction of society.

It should by now be clear that this task responsibility is a collective one; it belongs to the social scientists as a whole.Footnote ⁵⁴ There are couple of reasons for this collective responsibility. The first is practical. It is beyond the capacity of any individual theorist to single-handedly invalidate the principle of objectivity. Nor is it within the authority of individual theorists to do so. Neither it is a simple act of individual volition to discredit the prestige of objectivity. Introducing a new scientific ethic, a normative one, is a collective endeavor that requires tremendous collective efforts and time. In the terminology used here, it is a collective effort of reaching a new intersubjective understanding of the meaning of social science. As the required measures are collective in essence, so is the social responsibility that necessitates those measures. It is especially so as task responsibility is forward-looking.

Theories are at present portrayed as objective and even though it is preferable for each theorist to disclose her theory's moral groundwork this is not required by collective social task responsibility. It is preferable for each theorist to disclose her theory's moral groundwork for two reasons. First, the original articulators of theories are best situated to reveal the moral groundwork, as they are most familiar with their theories. Second, theorists are most likely to be publicly identified with the theories. Therefore, they may be acknowledged as the legitimate authority to renounce the presumably objective nature (and additionally to disclose the political abuse of) their theories. Yet, though preferable at times, we should also qualify the claim that it is desirable for the individual who initially articulates a theory to assume the task of disclosing its moral groundwork. First, in any given case that individual may be unconvinced by the arguments presented here. They may well remain die-hard positivists advocating objectivity. The community of theorists should not be held hostage by positivists in its quest to discharge its task responsibility. Second, many theories are the collection of joint products that emerge and are refined over several generations. There might not be a single identifiable theorist to be assigned the task of disclosing the moral groundwork of the theory. Third, some original theorists are long past dead and it is absurd to ascribe them with task responsibility of reforming the ethic of social science. Finally, disclosing the moral groundwork of theory is only one—though crucial—component of the new normative ethic advocated here (instrumental, let us be reminded, in discharging our task responsibility). Other components of a normative ethic such as examining the normative ramifications of theories, exposing and struggling against political abuses of theories and in general a more active participation in the public arena cannot be located in a single theorist. It is a collective endeavor springing out of collective responsibility. For these reasons, task responsibility as discussed—including the struggle against the political abuses of theories—is a collective one.