David Runciman - Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power, from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond

Praise for

POLITICAL HYPOCRISY

A deep and thought-provoking work.

Tim Dunne, Times Higher Education

A subtle, impressively intelligent discussion of a topic thats on just about everybodys mind.

New York Observer

Political Hypocrisy is not just another denunciation of politicians as liars. Instead, it offers us a tour, from Hobbes and Mandeville to Bentham and Orwell. Runciman is best on the American revolutionaries and our eminent Victorians, perhaps because both the US war of independence and British empire required self-aware democratic politicians to gloss over the gaps between their proclaimed beliefs and their actual behaviour.

David Willetts, Prospect

In the excellent Political Hypocrisy, British journalist David Runciman uses the 2008 campaign to test his thesis that hypocrisy and anti-hypocrisy are joined in a discrete system and that our obsession with this antagonistic tango is making modern politics impossible.

Richard King, Australian Literary Review

In a masterly survey of political philosophers, practitioners and writers, [Runciman] has brought out how they have dealt with hypocrisy in politics and addressed the question of when it is worth worrying over and when it is not worth worrying.

D.N. Ghosh, Economic and Political Weekly

It seems like a no-brainer, right? Hypocrisy is always a bad, bad thing. Not so, says David Runciman. In this subtly argued, historically grounded look at the utilitarian usesand varying definitions ofhypocrisy, some of the biggest thinkers in political theory throughout the centuries are explored. A surprisingly brisk read for a work with such weight to it by all means, give it a go.

Daily Kos

DAVID RUNCIMAN

David Runciman is professor of politics at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Trinity Hall. His books include The Confidence Trap and The Politics of Good Intentions (both Princeton). He writes regularly about politics for the London Review of Books.

POLITICAL
HYPOCRISY

Copyright 2008 by Princeton University Press

Afterword to the revised paperback edition

Copyright 2018 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6

Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR

All Rights Reserved

First published in 2008

First paperback edition 2010

Revised paperback edition, with a new afterword by author, 2018

New paper ISBN: 978-0-691-14815-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017961435

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Palatino

Printed on acid-free paper.

press.princeton.edu

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

The Mask Hypocrisies flung down,

From the great Statesman to the Clown;

And some, in borrowd Looks well known

Appeard like Strangers in their own.

Mandeville, The Grumbling Hive, 1705

Contents

Preface

T his book is based on the Carlyle lectures that I delivered at Oxford University during February-March 2007. Each of the chapters is a substantially revised and expanded version of the original lectures, but I have tried to retain the style of the lectures in the written version, and have kept references to the scholarly literature to a minimum. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of the problem of hypocrisy in modern politics: respectively power, virtue, freedom, language, party politics, empire and contemporary democracy. The subjects of these chapters are connected by a number of inter-related themes, but I hope that they can also be read as separate essays in their own right. It is one of the central claims of this book that there is a tradition of thinking about the problem of hypocrisy in politics that runs from Hobbes to Orwell, and connects to the problems of the present day. I do not claim that this is an entirely unified or coherent tradition, nor that these authors were necessarily worrying about the same things as each other, never mind the same things that we are worried about now. But I do believe that there is enough of a connection between them to suggest that there is an alternative way of thinking about the problem of political hypocrisy to the counsels of cynicism or despair that we so often hear. My hope is that this connection emerges over the course of the book as a whole.

The chapter on Jefferson and American independence was not part of the original lecture series. The focus of the final chapter on the lessons of this story for contemporary politics has tried to take account of the shifting political scene both in Britain and the United States (it has only been a few months since I delivered the lecture on which it is based, but a few months is a long time in politics). Political hypocrisy is a difficult subject to pin down, because there is so much of it about, and because hypocrites, being hypocrites, cant be relied on. That is why a historical perspective is so important.

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to the Carlyle Lectures committee for the invitation to give the course of lectures on which this book is based, and I would particularly like to thank George Garnett for all his encouragement and support. While in Oxford, Nuffield College provided me with a quiet and comfortable room in which to work. Kinch Hoekstra, Noel Malcolm and Patricia Williams were very generous with their time and hospitality. Between them they made what might have been a daunting experience an extremely enjoyable one.

At Princeton University Press, Ian Malcolm has been a superb and tireless editor and I am very grateful for all his hard work, as I am for the support of Caroline Priday and the rest of the Princeton UK office; Jodi Beder offered much useful advice during the copyediting stage. I would also like to express my thanks to two anonymous readers for their very helpful comments, to Richard Tuck for his pointers about Hobbes and sincerity, and to Miranda Landgraf, for kindly agreeing to read and comment on the bulk of the manuscript. My colleagues in the Politics Department at Cambridge and at Trinity Hall generously covered for me during the terms leave I took to write and deliver the lectures. I would particularly like to thank Helen Thompson for her friendship and conversation over the years, about hypocrisy and much else besides.