As an occasional feature on TELOSscope, we highlight a past Telos article whose critical insights continue to illuminate our thinking and challenge our assumptions. Today, Maja Sidzinska looks at Alessandro Pizzorno’s “On the Rationality of Democratic Choice” from Telos 63 (Spring 1985).
To presume that individual interests precede political action is not only to place the proverbial cart before the horse, it is to formulate a theory of social agency based on a belief in sequential phenomena sans justification for the particular sequence proposed. In “On the Rationality of Democratic Choice,” Alessandro Pizzorno argues that the system of political actions and interests is an annular one, which is why utilitarian and rational choice theories lack sufficient explanatory value. He proposes the goal of affirmation of socio-political identity is an alternative explanation of political action that does not speak the traditional language of costs and benefits, as that language is housed within a universalizing framework that doesn’t reflect reality.
