1] Introduction to Normative Theory
The fundamental principle of human understanding is to interpret how and why various
aspects of the world operate. Both natural and social sciences utilize this method of
understanding to interpret the answers to empirical questions; which results in competing
empirical theories.
Normative theories are based on empirical assumptions to interpret how or what the world
(or country) should be. Along with empirical assumptions, normative theories also
encompass the social value systems or morals judgments of a mass to base their normative
questions. For instance, many normative theorists question the phenomenon of war. Not
only are empirical assumptions used to explain why war occurs or how to ascertain peace,
but they also utilize normative judgments on whether or not the means of war are ever
really justified.
Normative statements make claims about how things should or ought to be, how to value
them, which things are good or bad, and which actions are right or wrong. Normative claims
are usually contrasted with positive (i.e. descriptive, explanatory, or constative) claims when
describing types of theories, beliefs, or propositions. Positive statements are (purportedly)
factual statements that attempt to
describe reality.
For example, "children should eat vegetables", and "those who would sacrifice liberty for
security deserve neither" are normative claims. On the other hand, "vegetables contain a
relatively high proportion of vitamins", "smoking causes cancer", and "a common
consequence of sacrificing liberty for security is a loss of both" are positive claims. Whether
or not a statement is normative is logically independent of whether it is verified, verifiable,
or popularly held.
There are several schools of thought regarding the status of normative statements and
whether they can be rationally discussed or defended. Among these schools are the radition
of practical reason extending from Aristotle through Kant to Habermas, which asserts that
they can, and the tradition of emotivism,which maintains that they are merely expressions
of emotions and have no cognitive content.Normative statements and norms, as well as
their meanings, are an integral part of human life. They are fundamental for prioritizing
goals and organizing and planning thought,belief,emotion and action and are the basis of
much ethical and political discourse; indeed, normativity is arguably the key feature
distinguishing ethical and political discourse from other discourses (such as natural science).
2] Comparative Analysis of approaches to political theory – normative and empirical
Empirical Theory
Normative Theory
1]Empirical approach seeks to discover and 1] Normative approach seeks to determine
describe facts
and prescribe values
2] The empirical approach aims at making an 2] Normative approach aims at making a
empirical statement which is concerned with normative statement which is concerned
‘is’
with what ‘ought to be’ or ‘ should be’.
3] The crucial point is that empirical 3] Normative statement tends to express
statement is concerned with a situation
which can be observed by our senseexperience, which can be verified by
repeated observation and whose accuracy
can be tested.
preference for a particular type of order as
dictated by a sense of duty or universal need
or by commitment to moral principle or
ideal. Normative statements are not capable
of being discovered, described or verified by
our sense-experience
4]Empirical Statement requiring something 4]
A normative statement requires
to be done is intended to serve an something to be done in order to serve an
instrumental value – which is a means to intrinsic value-which is an end-in-itself (eg.
some higher end
the truth, the good, the beautiful)
5] The empirical approach remains largely 5]
The normative approach is mainly
prescriptive.
descriptive.
6] Empirical approach seeks to discover laws 6] Normative approach is concerned with
that are unalterable (eg. Law of gravitational laws and conditions largely created or
force).
adopted by human society, which are
alterable (eg. Laws governing property and
public order)
The Issue
Empirical Approach
Normative Approach
Chief Concern
FACTS
VALUES
(It is so)
(It “should be” or “ought be”
Scientific & Descriptive
Critical & Perspective
(Instrumental Values)
(Intrinsic Values)
Based on
Sense, experience & logic
Speculation & logic
Criterion of Validity
True or False
Right or Wrong
Nature
3] (A)Normative and Analytic Jurisprudence:
Normative jurisprudence


seeks to understand the moral basis for the law
what moral factors properly underlie the law and how should they shape it?
The first part of this entry characterizes the standard distinction between questions about
what law is and questions about what it ought to be. The second part considers two
alternative ways of understanding how morality could be more closely integrated with law.
These different views turn on different conceptions not only of law, but also of morality.
(B) Normative and Analytic Jurisprudence: Austin’s Distinction




Analytical jurisprudence is the study of the concept or nature of law, considered in
its most general and abstract level .Normative jurisprudence works with the already
determined concept of law, and asks what the law should be, considering whether
particular areas of law or doctrine are as they should be.
The Austinian picture rests on the thought that normative jurisprudence is just the
study of what the law should be, where law is conceived broadly as a tool for
bringing people into compliance with their moral obligations
This Austinian picture of normative jurisprudence can be found even in many broadly
speaking "deontological" approaches to legal issues that understood morality in
terms of rules.
The focus on what the law should be makes normative jurisprudence look like a
special branch of applied ethics. Such questions are often supplemented by further
questions about the ability of various institutions to do various jobs: suppose we
want to protect individual rights, are courts or legislatures likely to do a better job?

From this perspective, the fact that the questions concern the structure of a legal
system enters the analysis only indirectly, by way of structural concerns about the
ability of ordinary citizens to know what the law requires in particular circumstances,
or the competence of officials such as police officers and courts to bring moral
factors to bear on particular cases.
[C] Alternatives to Austin's formulation of the distinction
There are two available strategies for blunting Austin's sharp distinction between analytical
and normative jurisprudence. The first (though more recent) of these can be found in the
work of Ronald Dworkin, who argues that we cannot know what the law requires in a
particular case without considering what it ought to be.
On Dworkin's view, the posited aspects of the law, such as statutes and past judicial
opinions, need to be interpreted in terms of the best moral account that would justify them
as official acts that justify the more general use of coercive power against citizens. That
justification, in turn, focuses on what would justify the legal system as a whole, rather than
the specific official act that is being interpreted.
On this view, the central question of analytical jurisprudence, "what is law?" does not
receive a general answer, but only a method for generating particular ones: the law on any
question is whatever the morally best interpretation of official acts and the exercise of
coercive power says it is.
Dworkin thus reject Austin's claim that the law in the jurisdiction can be identified through a
series of purely factual, historical inquiries, in favor of the claim that the theory of law is
always a normative theory.
Although Dworkin's conception of the proper approach to legal interpretation draws on
normative theory, and the normative theory he defends is adamantly non-utilitarian, his
conception of normative theory bears one important similarity to Austin's. By starting with
abstract concepts such as equality, and trying to develop the best interpretation of them
through first-order moral argument. Dworkin understands the role of legal rules as one of
approximating a moral result that is articulated in terms of a very different vocabulary of
competitive bidding in an impartial auction through which resources are transferred to their
most valued uses. Thus the normative theory against which law is evaluated and interpreted
takes makes no reference to institutions. As for Austin, so for Dworkin institutions enter
normative jurisprudence as effective tools which those exercising power should use achieve
their moral purposes. The role of those institutions, then, is largely to coordinate conduct to
bring about various goods, whether happiness, social equality, or a proper sense of
community.
A second alternative model of normative jurisprudence incorporates normative concepts in
its conception of law from a different direction.
The morality is taken to be normatively defensible in more or less the terms on which it
presents itself. The morality of interpersonal interaction includes such familiar requirements
include taking care not to injure other people, keeping off their property, honoring your
contracts, and avoiding self-dealing while administering the affairs of others, as well as
making up any wrongs you have committed. Such requirements both form the abstract
structure of private law and, at the same time, are familiar to ordinary moral thought, even
though there may be widespread disagreement, both among ordinary people and theorists
in the natural law tradition, with respect to their fundamental moral basis. The rules are, at
the same time, too abstract to provide guidance in cases of dispute.
Because these legal concepts are highly abstract, normative jurisprudence understood in
this way will not generate detailed recommendations to every question about what the law
should be. Instead, its distinctively philosophical task is to articulate the formal structures
within which legal questions are framed. On the traditional natural law view, positive law
serves to make these familiar requirements sufficiently determinate and impartial in their
application, so that they can in fact provide adequate guidance to action.
The natural law tradition is hardly monolithic; for Aristotle, Aquinas, and Finnis the basic
negative prohibitions of law and morality are generated in relation to the goods most basic
to practical reason; for some later thinkers within this same broad tradition, they are
structured by the systematic requirements of human freedom. The natural law view of
normative jurisprudence rejects each of the Austinian residues: it supposes that morality is
fundamentally rule-governed, that moral concepts require judgment to make them apply to
particulars, and that legal concepts are morally basic. Without institutions, charged with
applying familiar legal concepts, people could not live together on morally acceptable terms,
because morality's demands would be indeterminate, and each would have no choice but to
do what seemed right in his or her eyes.
At the same time, it preserves Austin's distinction between what the law is and what the law
should be: without positive law, as laid down, by officials, morality is incomplete. The only
way to know how morality has been completed in a given jurisdiction is by looking at the
acts of those officials. Many of those official acts will be indifferent in relation to the
requirements of morality, and some may be openly inconsistent with them. It is only by
considering those acts that it is possible to find out what the law is. At a suitable level of
abstraction, you can figure out what the law should be on a subject, without knowing what
it is in a given jurisdiction. Abstract reflection on the relation, say, between property and
contract might lead to a principled argument about what the law should be, or how it
should change. What cannot be done, however, is reflect on what the law either is or should
be without appeal to familiar juridical concepts.
The natural law approach is most developed in the context of private law, but a parallel
strategy can be made to apply to public law. Although the natural law tradition is even more
divided on this question than on the fundamental basis of private law, a single theme
animates its approach: public legal rules are supposed to govern everyone, and govern the
"vertical" relation between the state and individual citizens, rather than "horizontal"
relations between private persons. The requirement that the state be even-handed, and
that it restricts itself to public purposes – however these are properly understood – act as
restrictions on the way in which any question of public law can be framed. Like the
organizing categories of private law in the natural law tradition, these are highly abstract
distinctions, which serve to frame questions, rather than to answer them in detail. Yet these
abstract distinctions are not without content or force. The core ideas make sense of the
ways in which wicked or corrupt legal systems seem to be not merely immoral, but a sort of
perversion of the distinctive moral demands of legality. In order to answer more specific
questions about such things as the proper way to characterize purposes as public, this
framework of thought cannot avoid first-order moral argument. The distinctive feature of
the natural law approach is not that it provides a template for answering everything, but
rather that it provides the categories within which the questions make sense.
D]. Conclusion
Legal philosophy is often divided into questions of analytical jurisprudence, concerned with
the nature of law, and questions of normative jurisprudence, concerned with questions
about what the law ought to be. This familiar distinction can be drawn in a number of
different ways. These differ less in their attitudes towards the significance of morality for
law – everyone agrees that law morally ought to conform to moral demands – but rather
than their attitude towards the significance of law for morality, whether basic legal concepts
are morally fundamental.
4 ]A Normative Turn in Political Science?*
Traditionally, the scientific study of politics has been associated with a value neutral
approach to politics. One seeks to uncover what is, not what ought to be, in the political
realm. This is what distinguishes a ‘‘positive’’ science from opinionizing, social engineering,
or for that matter from political philosophy. While Plato and Aristotle sought to identify the
characteristics of a good polity, most modern political scientists seek to identify the
characteristics of polities, their causes and effects, leaving aside moral judgments about
their goodness or badness.
‘‘A science cannot be a science,’’ writes Levy-Bruhl, ‘‘in so far as it is normative”
In the other corner are ‘‘normative’’ theorists, those engaged in a study of the good—
without explicit or sustained attention to empirical realities. Thus is the fact/value
dichotomy reflected in the disciplinary subdivisions of political science. Empirical research is
about facts, while normative theorizing (‘‘political theory’’) is about values.
Most of the time, political scientists approach their field of study empirically. This approach
asks why things are the ways they are in an indifferent, value-neutral manner. But the
normative approach takes another tact. Normative theory, according to Robert E. Botsch of
the University of South Carolina, Aiken, "involves questions of value, of what we should do,
or of what we ought to do. This is the stuff of political philosophy."
The traditional approaches to Political Science was widely prevalent till the outbreak of the
Second World War. These approaches were mainly related to the traditional view of politics
which emphasized the study of the state and government. Therefore, traditional approaches
are primarily concerned with the study of the organization and activities of the state and
principles and the ideas which underlie political organizations and activities. These
approaches were normative and idealistic.The political thinkers advocating these
approaches, therefore, raised questions like ‘what should be an ideal state?’ According to
them the study of Political Science should be confined to the formal structures of the
government, laws, rules and regulations. Thus, the advocates of the traditional approaches
emphasize various norms - what ‘ought to be’ or ‘should be’ rather than ‘what is’.
Characteristics of Traditional approaches:
1.Traditional approaches are largely normative and stresses on the values of politics
2.Emphasis
is
on
the
study
of
different
political
structures.
3.Traditional approaches made very little attempt to relate theory and research
4.These approaches believe that since facts and values are closely interlinked, studies in
Political Science can never be scientific.
After studying politics with the help of traditional approaches, the political thinkers of the
later stage felt the necessity to study politics from a new perspective. Thus, to minimize
the deficiencies of the traditional approaches, various new approaches have been
advocated by the new political thinkers. These new approaches are regarded as the
“modern aproaches” to the study of Political Science. Many thinkers regard these
approaches as a reaction against the traditional approaches. These approaches are mainly
concerned with scientific study of politics. The first breakthrough in this regard comes with
the emergence of the behavioural revolution in Political Science.
Characteristics of Modern Approaches
These
approaches
try
to
draw
conclusion
from
empirical
data.
These approaches go beyond the study of political structures and its historical analysis
Modern
Approaches
believe
in
inter-disciplinary
study
They emphasize scientific methods of study and attempt to draw scientific conclusions in
Political Science
Philosophical Approach: This approach is regarded as the oldest approach to the study of
Political Science. The emergence of this approach can be traced back to the times of the
Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. Leo Strauss was one of the main advocates of
the philosophical approach. He believes that “the philosophy is the quest for wisdom and
political philosophy is the attempt truly to know about the nature of political things and the
right or good political order.” This approach firmly believes that the values cannot be
separated from the study of politics. Therefore, its main concern is to judge what is good or
bad in any political society. It is mainly an ethical and normative study of politics and, thus,
idealistic. It deals with the problems of the nature and functions of the state, citizenship,
rights and duties etc. The advocates of this approach firmly believe that political philosophy
is closely linked with the political ideologies. Therefore, they are of the opinion that a
political scientist must have the knowledge of good life and good society. Political
philosophy helps in setting up of a good political order.
The various traditional approaches to the study of Political Science have been criticized for
being normative. These approaches were idealistic also as their concern went beyond how
and why political events happen to what ought to happen. In the later period, the modern
approaches have made an attempt to make the study of Political Science more scientific
and, therefore, emphasize empiricism.