Utilità e principi nella razionalità politica. Riflessioni su Political Argument di Brian Barry

This paper looks at how different strands of political theory have looked at the problem of the nature of political rationality. Starting from the historical context of the debate over the “death” of political philosophy in mid–20th Century, two methodological paradigms are considered: the economic theory of politics and the theory of value pluralism in Brian Barry’s Political Argument. It is held that these two paradigms start from different premises as to what is the dominant element of political rationality – utility and principles – but end up on similar conclusions in the framework of decision theory.