The Credibility of Political Projects

In a community one could properly call political, rather than a cultural community with political features or a thinly tied assembly of individuals, the noteworthy allegiances would be those inspired by the sense of shared predicament. We have explored this claim in terms of the allegiances of citizens to other citizens. A similar proposal can now be made on the related question of allegiances towards the institutions of the polity. Attachments to these institutions would depend on them and their demands making sense to people in problem-related terms, expressed in the appreciation that they provide significant opportunities for the pursuit of common purposes. This need not prompt the image of citizens devoted to the fulfilment of all goals by political means: nothing so grand is intended. But there would need to be some sense that political institutions can answer to at least some of the concerns of ‘people like us’. This is what one wants to express by referring, as the third element of a political bond, to the credibility of political projects. Seeking to address common problems in an organised, collective fashion would need to be treated as a sensible and feasible proposition. If the sense of shared predicament in the face of common problems is what could bind citizens to their ‘counterparts’ further afield, it is a sense of the worth of a political project which could both augment this and couple it with allegiance to the institutions of the polity.