This book addresses a persistent gap in the political ethics literature: the disconnect between political ethics as a theoretical discipline and the ethical dilemmas that politicians face in political practice. It highlights how elected officials navigate ethical challenges in their representative roles, providing readers with an accessible view of the ethical landscape that underpins political decision-making.
The book features a novel integration of ethical theory and political practice. Through extensive interviews with Swedish parliamentarians, the book captures how politicians reason about key aspects of political ethics, including transparency, honesty, and compromise, as well as their views on virtues, vices, and the most challenging political dilemmas. By examining ethical challenges from parliamentarian’s own perspectives, the book reveals under-theorized aspects of political ethics and introduces new analytical categories, such as perceived powerlessness, dual ethical spheres, and the role of judgment in everyday decisions. In doing so, it tackles foundational challenges in political ethics and opens pathways for normative analysis, primarily in offering an empirical basis for discussions on whether this is indeed how politicians’ ought to reason about politics, ethics, and democracy.
The Everyday Ethics of Politics will appeal to researchers and graduate students working in ethics, political philosophy, and political theory.
This book addresses the disconnect between political ethics as a theoretical discipline and the ethical dilemmas that politicians face in practice. It highlights how elected officials navigate ethical challenges, providing readers with an accessible view of the ethical landscape that underpins political decision-making.
1 Introduction PART 1 From Theory to Practice 2 Toward a Theory of
Everyday Political Dilemmas 3 A New Method for Studying Everyday Political
Dilemmas PART 2 Dilemmas, Virtues and Vices in the Swedish Parliament 4
Virtues in the Swedish Parliament 5 Vices in the Swedish Parliament 6 The
Transparency Dilemma, or the Role and Limits of Transparency 7 The Honesty
Dilemma, or How to Avoid Lying 8 The Compromise Dilemma, or the Spirit of
Compromise and Its Challenges 9 The Most Challenging Dilemma, or Dilemmas
of Powerlessness PART 3 From Theory to Practice, and Back Again 10 Political
Ethics From a Political View: The Importance of Spheres, Optics and
Boundaries 11 Political Ethics From a Democratic View: How to Navigate
Everyday Political Dilemmas to Preserve Democracy Without Getting Dirty Hands
12 Conclusions
Joel Martinsson is Assistant Professor in political science at Linnaeus University, Sweden. His work has been published in the British Journal of Political Science; Governance; Politics & Governance; Journal of Political Science Education; and Crime, Law and Social Change.
