Habermas on Strategic and Communicative Action

Habermas on Strategic and Communicative ActionAuthor(s): James JohnsonSource: Political Theory, Vol. 19, No. 2 (May, 1991), pp. 181-201Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/191661 .

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HABERMAS ON STRATEGIC

AND COMMUNICATIVE ACTION

JAMES JOHNSON Northwestern University

L INTRODUCTION

In The Theory of Communicative Action, Jurgen Habermas articulates an expansive critical social theory.' He anchors his project in a "comprehensive concept of communicative rationality" intended to remedy what he takes to be limitations in the "concept of cognitive-instrumental rationality" inform- ing much of traditional social and political thought.2 I wish to question whether Habermas's project is conceptually well-founded. My concerns are analytical.3 Although it is only one of the three interrelated themes that Habermas pursues in TCA, I focus exclusively on the typology of action that he constructs around the concept of communicative rationality.

Habermas's discussion of rational action is the fulcrum for his broader empirical and normative concerns. If his conceptual analysis of rational action is faulty, his larger theoretical project, at least as it currently is formulated, is jeopardized. I adopt as my point of entry the place Habermas assigns to strategic action in his typology. This issue typically is neglected in treatments of Habermas's work.4 I then scrutinize more directly his concept of communicative action.

My approach to Habermas proceeds from what I see as theoretical commitments and aspirations that he establishes for his work. He correctly claims that strategic interaction is an ineliminable aspect of the social and political world.5 And he aspires to accommodate strategic and communicative action -as "two equally fundamental elements of social interaction" -

AUTHOR'SNOTE: Iwould like to thank JackKnight, Thomas McCarthy, Debra Satz, and Tracy Strong for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay, initial work on which was supported by a grant from the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation.

POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 19 No. 2, May 1991 181-201 ) 1991 Sage Publications, Inc.

181



182 POLITICAL THEORY / May 1991

into his theory.6 I do not think Habermas realizes this aspiration. In arguing this point, I use as a counterpoint to Habermas's concept of communicative action some elementary concepts drawn from game theoretic analyses of strategic action. Here again, I take a cue from Habermas who himself concedes the fruitfulness of game theory for studying strategic interaction.7

In using game theoretic concepts, however, I am seeking to do more than merely articulate my criticism of Habermas more sharply. Given their appar- ently divergent approaches to the question of rationality, I think it useful to view critical theory (of which the theory of communicative action is one variant) and rational choice theory (of which game theory is one variant) as competing research traditions.8 This essay is an effort to encourage construc- tive exchange between advocates of each tradition.9 There are at least three reasons why such an exchange is both important and plausible.

First, research traditions can only be assessed comparatively.10 Like Habermas, game theorists are preoccupied with rational action. They analyze the ways by which the strategic interactions of rational actors generate (often perverse) outcomes. In their models, they investigate the vicissitudes of what Habermas classifies as "teleological" action. Habermas sees "teleological" and particularly strategic modes of action as the paradigmatic embodiments of the traditional "cognitive-instrumental" concept of rationality. He consid- ers this view of rational action overly circumscribed and hence inadequate. And he endeavors to construct a typology, focused around the concept of communicative action, that both displaces strategic action from the center of theoretical attention and continues to grant it theoretical importance."

If successful, Habermas's theory of communicative action could establish a systematic alternative to the "teleological" concept of action central to rational choice theory. To be successful -to persuade us to jettison the traditional view - Habermas minimally must offer a compelling alternative conception of rational action. It is not enough to point to shortcomings in the traditional view. Others, including some rational choice theorists, are similarly aware and wary of many of its limitations." The burden of argument falls on Habermas.

Second, Habermas's aims are not narrowly philosophical. He explicitly distances his work from the analytical philosophy of action. Whereas the latter explores primarily "metatheoretical" issues, Habermas claims to be concerned with "empirical usefulness," with contributing to "concept forma- tion in the social sciences."13 He thus is engaged in much the same undertaking as rational choice theorists who either are skeptical or despairing of the prospects for elaborating a "positive political theory" in the standard sense. They instead identify the value of rational choice theory as lying more



Johnson / HABERMAS ON ACIION 183

modestly in the heightened analytical purchase and conceptual clarity that it affords.'4

Finally, there is a more substantive point of contact between rational choice and critical theory. Game theorists typically concentrate on interactions between rational actors within a prespecified context. Habermas focuses on a conceptually prior level of analysis. He focuses on the efforts of agents to define the context within which their ongoing interactions will transpire. Habermas thus is addressing a conceptual issue that notoriously is problematic for rational choice theory.

The remainder of this essay consists of four sections. In the next section, I reconstruct Habermas's views largely without criticism. I first present in broad strokes his typology of social interaction. I then depict his views in a more fine-grained manner by addressing a number of specific aspects of his work that require clarification or elaboration.

In sections 3 and 4, I criticize Habermas on several scores. In section 3, I argue that he displaces strategic action from the center of theoretical attention only to replace it with an analogously privileged conception of communicative action. I then argue that this leads Habermas to misconstrue strategic action. In section 4, I argue that Habermas fails to adequately explain the mechanism underlying communicative action. In the final section, I briefly consider the implications of my arguments for assessing the relation between critical theory and rational choice theory.

IL HABERMAS ON SOCIAL INTERACTION

Within the broad category of rational action Habermas differentiates between action oriented to success and action oriented toward reaching understanding. Success is evaluated relative to states of affairs purposefully generated by intervention in the world. Reaching understanding is a process by which participants seek agreement concerning the nature of their interaction. Such an agreement defines the context within which actors pursue their individual plans.

Habermas uses this basic distinction between orientations to generate a complex typology of action.15 He first sets off a range of social action from instrumental intervention in the physical environment. Instrumental action is oriented to success, but it is not unique in that regard. Strategic action is social action oriented to success in influencing the actions of other rational actors.

Communicative action consists of attempts by actors to cooperatively define the context of their interaction in such a way as to enable them to



184 POLITICAL THEORY/ May 1991

pursue their individual plans. It is the paradigmatic form of social action oriented toward reaching understanding. Yet there are two further subsidiary categories of social action oriented to understanding. In normatively regulated action, participants conform to socially expected modes of behavior. In dramaturgical action, agents constitute a public for one another before whom they can present their selves.16

Habermas views all five types of action as rational in a specific sense. To be rational an action minimally must be capable of being "defended against criticism.""7 Habermas argues that each type of action is tied to a character- istic "validity claim" in light of which particular actions of that type, in principle, can be criticized, defended, and hence regarded as potentially rational. Moreover, he treats the connection between rational action and validity claims as a matter of conceptual necessity."8 Instrumental and strategic action raise claims to truth or effectiveness. Normative action raises a claim to rightness. Dramaturgical action raises a claim to sincerity or authen- ticity. Parties to communicative action can - whether implicitly or explicitly -raise validity claims of each sort.

Validity claims are grounded, in tum, in what Habermas calls, for analytical purposes, "formal world-concepts." These concepts, shared by participants to an interaction, specify the character of the objective, social, and subjective world. Habermas contends that in contrast to action oriented to success, normative and dramaturgical action presuppose "increasingly complex" relations to the world.'9 Instrumental and strategic action presuppose only an objective world constituted by preexisting states of affairs. In addition to this objective world, normative action relates to a social world of legiti- mately ordered relations. Dramaturgical action publicly expresses an inner or subjective world of desires and feelings to which an agent has privileged access. This world can only be conceptualized as set off from the external world constituted by both objective and social components. Parties to communicative action potentially relate to all three "worlds."

It now is possible to be more precise about what Habermas means by communicative action. It involves participants in "the cooperative negotia- tion of common definitions of the situation" in which they are interacting.20 In everyday communicative practice, this process of mutual interpretation remains implicit. In more reflective forms of communicative action -what Habermas refers to as discourse or argument-it is made explicit. At both levels, participants in communicative action seek an agreement which can "admit of consensus." In so doing, they advance and respond to validity claims, using the formal world-concepts as a "commonly supposed system of coordinates."21



Johnson / HABERMAS ON ACflON 185

Parties to communicative action seek to reach an understanding regarding the situation within which they pursue their individual plans in one or another "direct" operation on the objective, social, or subjective world. Actors have two options when the process of reciprocal interpretation implicit in everyday interaction deteriorates. They can have recourse to discourse or argument "as a court of appeal that makes it possible to continue communicative action with other means when disagreements can no longer be repaired with everyday routines." Alternatively, they might resort to strategic action, abandoning in the process, their joint endeavor after consensus.22 In short, they can orient their action either to understanding or to success. The resulting interactions will be coordinated by quite distinct "mechanisms"- by "consent" in the case of communicative action and by "influence," "arbitrary choice," or "complimentarity of interest" in the case of strategic action.23

For Habermas, this is not simply an academic issue. It has grave political implications. He claims that

to the degree that interactions cannot be coordinated through achieving understanding, the only alternative that remains is force exercised by one against others (in a more or less refined, more or less latent manner). The typological distinction between communicative and strategic action says nothing else than this.24

This, in broad outline, is Habermas's typology of action. I now want to amplify six aspects of his position relevant to the criticisms I advance in subsequent sections.

First, Habermas occasionally refers to "analytically distinguishable" types of action. He does not, however, present his typology of action as merely analytic. The distinctions he draws are, in his view, categorical according to whether action is oriented to success or understanding.25 Actual interactions might incorporate a complex mix of different types of action. But in any given case, competent participants in principle can intuitively grasp whether their action is oriented to success or toward reaching understanding.

Second, for Habermas, types of action are differentiated by their orientation and not according to whether they are goal oriented. He insists that "the teleological structure is fundamental to all concepts of action."26 That includes communicative action. What is crucial, in his view, is whether participants coordinate their individual goal-oriented action through consent or through influence.

The teleological character of communicative action derives from its "instrumental role of serving as a mechanism for coordinating individual




actions." Thus Habermas sets communicative action off from both "conversation that becomes an end in itself' and from nonpropositional "symbolic forms like dance, music, painting, etc."27 Since neither of these sorts of activity fill such an instrumental role, he excludes them from the category of communicative action proper.

This point too is obscured somewhat by Habermas's own language. He tends to couch the contrast between action orientations in terms of a broad disjunction between communicative and "teleological" action, where the latter category encompasses only instrumental and strategic action. He thereby inadvertently risks fostering the impression that communicative action does not conform to the standard teleological structure.'2

Third, there is yet another point on which it is possible to be misled by Habermas's language. He includes within the category of communicative action both "everyday communicative practice"29 and discourse or argument. Typically, Habermas portrays the two levels of communicative action as intimately intertwined. In everyday communicative practice, actors cooperatively negotiate definitions of their situation. This process of mutual interpretation remains largely implicit, transpiring against the assumed backdrop of common "cultural tradition" that comprises what Habermas calls the "lifeworld."30 By contrast, in discourse or argument, validity claims normally implicit in everyday communicative practice explicitly are thematized and contested. And though Habermas regards discourse or argument as "improb- able forms of communication," he insists that they are implied in everyday communicative practice.3'

Habermas, however, also differentiates sharply for conceptual purposes between the two levels of communicative action. He claims that parties to discourse or argument operate on the world "not only directly," as in everyday communicative practice, "but in a reflective way."32 In fact, he goes so far as to insist on "the strict distinction" between everyday communicative practice and discourse, "between communicative action in the naive attitude and reflectively achieved understanding in regard to hypothetical validity claims."33 Habermas thus clearly suggests that it is via discourse or argument rather than through everyday "naive" forms that parties to communicative action operate reflectively. It is through discourse or argument that actors oriented toward reaching understanding seek explicitly and reflectively to define the context, to reach an understanding regarding the situation, within which they pursue their individual plans.

This distinction between naive and reflective levels of communicative action is theoretically crucial. As Habermas himself insists, "the concept of communicative rationality ... can be adequately explicated only in terms of



Johnson / HABERMAS ON ACTION 187

a theory of argumentation."34 His project depends on his capacity to explicate how reflective forms of communicative action coordinate social interaction.

Fourth, Habermas explicitly distances the pursuit of understanding in communicative action -as a cooperative process of negotiating definitions of the situation -from bargaining as commonly understood. But he also dissociates the force of such rationally motivated agreement from the standard model of social norms. Communicative action is goal oriented, aimed toward reaching understanding. Social norms operate as prior constraints on action.35 So, communicative action relies on neither strategic compromise nor on normative consensus. According to Habermas, it draws its force from consent.36

Fifth, Habermas employs the theory of speech acts to explicate what he means by action oriented toward understanding and to differentiate it from action oriented to success. Speech act theory investigates the ways in which saying something, using language, also is doing something.37 It distinguishes between three basic sorts of speech act: locutionary acts which convey meaning, illocutionary acts which have force, and perlocutionary acts that generate consequences. Habermas concentrates on the distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. In an illocutionary act, we do something in saying something. With our utterance, we, for example, inform or wam someone. In a perlocutionary act, we do something by saying something. For instance, we surprise, mislead, convince, or persuade another.

According to Habermas, participants in communicative action, those oriented toward reaching understanding, exclusively engage in illocutionary acts. He claims that illocutionary force consists in the potential "establish- ment of interpersonal relations" of a sort justifiable by reasons.38 By contrast, Habermas posits an "internal relation" between perlocutionary acts and strategic action.39 Perlocutionary acts generate consequences in the world. As such they are a sort of linguistically mediated "teleological" action. In this regard perlocutionary acts presuppose the existence of illocutionary force. But they assimilate that force into settings of strategic interaction. They both presuppose and distort "the inherent telos" of communication, the search for understanding.40

Finally, although Habermas explicates the distinction between action oriented to success and action oriented toward reaching understanding by means of speech act theory, he does not reduce either type of action to speech acts. In particular, he resists identifying communicative action with communication.41 Rather, he characterizes communication (speech acts) as the "medium" or "mechanism" through which participants in communicative action coordinate their interaction. Actors oriented toward reaching under-




standing employ speech acts to make "offers," to advance a definition of the situation. Such offers potentially can be contested in light of any of the three basic validity claims. If accepted, they afford the basis for "rationally motivated" agreement.42

III. HABERMAS ON STRATEGIC ACTION

Habermas aspires to articulate a comprehensive concept of rationality that will dislodge "teleological" action from the central role it traditionally is accorded by social and political theorists. He suggests that the preeminent social scientific reflections on rational action are found in the writings of Max Weber. But he criticizes Weber for privileging "teleological" action, thereby classifying "all other actions . . . as specific deviations from this type."43 Habermas seeks to overcome this one-sidedness in his own typology of action.

This objective is difficult to reconcile either with explicit statements that Habermas makes in earlier writings or with the implicit thrust of his analysis in TCA. For example, Habermas begins one early exposition of his theory by assuming without argument that "other forms of action," and "strategic action" in particular, are "derivatives of action oriented to reaching understanding."44 A significant portion of TCA is devoted to substantiating that assertion.

Habermas characterizes reaching understanding as the "inherent telos" of human communication. Yet he also recognizes that not all "linguistically mediated interaction" in fact manifests that telos. Theoretical commitments thus compel him to demonstrate that these other sorts of interaction are "parasitic" on the "original mode of language use" (i.e., that oriented toward reaching understanding).45 This is one crucial juncture where Habermas deploys speech act theory. He argues that perlocutionary acts (oriented to success) presuppose the existence of illocutionary force (oriented toward reaching understanding). If, as Habermas claims, strategic action is internally related to perlocutionary acts, this seems clearly to imply that it must be derivative of action oriented toward reaching understanding which is animated solely by illocutionary aims.

In attempting to surmount what he perceives to be the one-sidedness of traditional social and political theory, Habermas thus commits an analogous error. He dislodges "teleological" action from its privileged theoretical position only to replace it with a similarly privileged concept of communicative action. But Habermas not only presents strategic action as derivative of communicative action, he is committed to viewing it as peripheral insofar



Johnson / HABERMAS ON ACI1ON 189

as strategic action neither potentially relates to all three "worlds" nor operates reflexively as does communicative action. It thus is difficult to see how he might incorporate it as other than a residual category in his typology of action.

This shift in theoretical focus, by itself, is not a major failing. It is problematic only if (1) it produces conceptual distortions parallel to those Habermas decries in traditional accounts of rational action, or (2) Habermas is unable to persuasively explain the force of the now privileged concept of communicative action. I believe that Habermas encounters problems on both scores. I address the first point in the remainder of this section and take up the second in the next section.

By privileging communicative action as he does, Habermas distorts the concept of strategic action. He depicts it not only as derivative but as unsavory. Recall that Habermas defines strategic action as, in the first instance, oriented toward success in influencing the decisions of other actors. He further insists that strategic action is oriented only to the objective world of existing or potential states of affairs. Although the environment of a strategic actor consists of "not only physical objects but decision-making systems," it is, in principle, no more complex than the objective world on which agents operate for instrumental purposes. While other forms of action raise specific validity claims (e.g., truth, rightness, and sincerity), strategic action is assessed solely in terms of efficiency or effectiveness.46

As a way of highlighting the unsavory cast that Habermas imparts to strategic action, consider the way game theorists typically understand it. Game theorists draw an analytical distinction between parametric and strategic rationality.47 Parametric actors take their environment as a constant, viewing themselves as engaged in a game with nature. They are engaged in instrumental action in Habermas's sense. Strategic actors recognize their environment as consisting, in part, of other rational, intentional actors. In the first instance, they seek to adjust their own plans to the expected actions of others.48

Habermas at times seems to subscribe to this relatively benign, minimal concept of strategic action. When first discussing strategic action, he suggests that it incorporates into individual decision making "the anticipation of decisions on the part of at least one additional goal-oriented actor."49 Yet he also almost immediately begins to include egoism and atomism as intrinsic features of strategic action.50 These features, however, largely are artifacts of his own theoretical apparatus and are not essential to the concept of strategic action.

Habermas rightly observes that the strategic actors who populate standard game theoretic models are egoistic in the sense of being narrowly self-




interested. This said, however, the concept of self-interest employed in most game theoretic analysis is fairly innocuous. It simply means that individual actors are concerned primarily with their own payoffs and unconcerned with the payoffs received by others whether through envy, malice, or solidarity.5" Moreover, game theoretic models do not presuppose narrowly selfish moti- vation.52 Neither does the concept of strategic action more generally. Strate- gic problems can arise even in situations where actors are not narrowly self-interested.53

Habermas, however, is preoccupied with subsuming strategic action under the category of action oriented to success. He consequently erects an assumption that game theorists adopt for methodological purposes into a conceptual connection. Strategic actors might be preoccupied with their own plans or goals. That does not imply that their plans need be egoistic, and Habermas provides no argument to the contrary.

Habermas also depicts strategic action as "atomistic." He claims that strategic actors are isolated. This is because, being oriented to success, strategic actors regard others solely as either resources to be exploited in or constraints on the pursuit of their own plans.54 Here again, however, Habermas's basic distinction between action orientations proves too coarse and contributes to a distorted view of strategic action.

Precisely because strategic actors mutually recognize one another as equally rational and goal oriented they can grasp that the pursuit of their individual plans is entangled in a web of social interdependencies. This grasp potentially allows them to avoid the sorts of unintended, typically distasteful consequences that strategic interdependence can engender. It is in this sense that the ability to think strategically rather than in simple parametric terms is a necessary but insufficient basis for collectively rational outcomes.55

Habermas might respond that simply because actors take strategic interdependencies into account when formulating their plans does not mean their action is social.56 Yet such a response serves mainly to highlight recurrent ambiguities in Habermas's theory of action.57 On one hand, he insists that strategic action is a type of social action, while on the other, he defines the social world as constituted by the existence of and conformity to social norms.58 Thus strategic action by definition is not social. Again, because Habermas is intent on defining strategic action in terms of an orientation to success (hence related to only one "world"), his typology does not adequately integrate its social dimensions.

Habermas, however, cannot sustain so narrow a specification of the social world. For if he defines social exclusively in terms of normative order, and if the force of communicative action is irreducible to normative constraint,




he faces the very disquieting predicament of excluding even communicative action from the sphere of social action. The social world thus must be expanded to encompass other than normatively regulated interaction. And since Habermas himself insists that strategic and communicative action are equally fundamental forms of social action, he must specify how both are properly social.

My intent here is not to sanitize the concept of strategic action. What I have sought instead is to highlight how, in the effort to privilege communicative action, Habermas advances an unnecessarily malign view of strategic action. I am not suggesting that strategic actors cannot be atomistic or egoistic, only that they need not be so. To claim otherwise is to misconstrue the nature of strategic action. This is precisely what Habermas's typology of action encourages us to do.59 Nor am I suggesting that strategic interaction exhausts the range of properly social action. Rather, I am pressing advocates of critical theory to more adequately accommodate the strategic dimensions of social and political interaction in their work.

rV HABERMAS ON COMMUNICATIVE ACTION

Rational choice theorists distinguish broadly between "economists" and "sociologists," between theorists who ground their analyses in the strategic choices of rational actors and those who view social action as primarily governed by internalized normative constraints.60 They typically present this distinction as exhausting the available options. And they typically dismiss theories of action animated by norms while populating their models with strategically rational actors. The potential innovation of the theory of communicative action resides, in part, in the attempt to identify a mode of social interaction that draws its motivating force from neither strategic rationality nor social norms.

Given this ambition, Habermas rightly observes that the "concept of communicative action stands or falls with the proof that a communicative agreement ... can fulfill functions of action coordination."6' As opposed to strategic action which coordinates interaction by force or influence, communicative action coordinates social interaction via consent. Habermas thus must provide an account of how consent, operating in the medium of language, can coordinate social interaction. And he must do so without reducing the force of consensual agreement to either strategic calculation or social norms. In this regard, it is not enough to refer to "the telos of consent,




inherent in language itself." That would be to assume what needs to be argued.62

The argument that Habermas offers, however, does not go terribly far beyond this assumption. He begins by distinguishing between validity claims and the "redemption" of validity claims. Parties to communicative action do not rely for the force of their acts on the validity claims that they raise. The force of each participant's communicative action derives instead from "the coordinating effect of the warranty that he offers: namely to redeem, if necessary, the validity claim raised with his speech act." Habermas thus attributes the coordinating force of communicative action to the "guarantee" that participants offer to defend their action if its validity is contested.63 This warranty or guarantee is not a matter of contingent choice, a policy that can be extended or withdrawn at will by parties to communicative action.' It is intrinsic to illocutionary speech acts deployed with an orientation toward reaching understanding. Habermas thus reverts to the "telos of consent" to explain the mechanism by which consent can coordinate social interaction.

Habermas insists that the guarantee that binds parties to communicative action can operate only under appropriate conditions. He currently explicates those conditions in terms of the theory of argumentation.65 In argument or discourse, participants contest and respond to validity claims. This is the explicit, reflexive mode of communicative action through which "different participants overcome their merely subjective views and, owing to the mutuality of rationally motivated conviction" pursue a consensual understanding of their situation.' Habermas does not, however, explain how parties to discourse or argument overcome their merely subjective views and bracket what he calls their "nongeneralizable interests."67 This is the point where the need for an adequate account of how consent operates as a coordinating mechanism for social interactions makes itself felt.68

In opting to enter reflectively into negotiations over the definition of their situation, to partake in discourse, actors are not motivated solely by pursuit of understanding. In part, they also are motivated by a desire to "pursue their particular aims."69 As a result, they find themselves in ambiguous circumstances:

Once participants enter into argumentation, they cannot avoid supposing, in a reciprocal way, that the conditions for an ideal speech situation have been sufficiently met. And yet they realize that their discourse is never definitively 'purified'of the motives and compulsions that have been filtered out.70

In this setting, the question arises of how actors partially motivated by their own individual aims might be assured that the conditions for potentially




successful discourse are "satisfied to a sufficient degree."71 How are actors convinced that the interaction they are entering is, in fact, oriented toward reaching understanding? Consider the following three plausible scenarios:

First, in discourse or argument, validity claims normally implicit in everyday interactions explicitly are "contested." Disagreements over validity claims are likely to be symptomatic of deteriorating situations, that is, those incapable of sustaining the simultaneous pursuit of individual plans by relevant actors.72 Habermas encounters theoretical difficulties in such circumstances because he fails to specify how consent operates as a mechanism for coordinating social interaction more generally. He cannot persuasively explain why individuals sufficiently concerned with the success of their individual projects to contest the existing definition of the situation would adopt an orientation to understanding.

Second, communicative action aims at a shared definition of the context of interaction. According to Habermas, a "definition of the situation establishes an order."73 In this sense, agreements negotiated via communicative action impose constraints on individual action.74 It is highly unlikely that such constraints would operate impartially. Thus, given the ambiguous circumstances of discourse, what is to motivate an actor at least partially concerned with his individual goals to submit to such constraints?

Third, temporal considerations impinge on the quest for understanding. While Habermas contends that agreement between actors oriented toward reaching understanding always is possible "in principle," he acknowledges the constraints that time imposes on the actual prospect of their achieving consensus. Discussion must come to an end sometime if communicative action is to fulfill its role of coordinating interaction.75 Yet time constraints might compound the uncertainty of actors embarking onto the terrain discourse. For if argument necessarily has some termination point, then it would become exceedingly difficult for participants to determine how to interpret failed attempts at consensus.76 Each individual would be left in a position of asking whether the failure actually was due to insufficient time for ironing out differences or whether others perhaps were not truly oriented toward reaching understanding.

Habermas might reply to objections such as these that simply because actors engage in communicative action, there is no guarantee that pursuit of understanding will necessarily produce consensus. In taking up discourse, actors are committed only to acquiesce to "the peculiarly constraint-free force of the better argument."77 Here, too, Habermas encounters problems. Arguments derive force from their capacity to convince or persuade others. But to convince or persuade someone is to perform a perlocutionary act.78



194 POLMCAL THEORY / May 1991

Action oriented to success thus emerges at the heart of the theory of communicative action. For this reason, Habermas should perhaps adopt a less sanguine view of argumentation. Minimally, he must clarify how argument, in his sense, is oriented toward understanding rather than to success.79

In sum, Habermas does not adequately account for the force of consent as a coordinating mechanism for social interaction. As a result, his concept of communicative action is susceptible to various sorts of objection. He does not explain why actors in a deteriorating social setting would engage in action oriented toward reaching understanding. Similarly, he does not explain why those same actors would consent to the order imposed by a new definition of the situation. Nor does he explain how, given real temporal constraints, actors might differentiate between individuals oriented toward reaching understanding and those who are not. And finally, he explicates the force of argument in terms of perlocutionary speech acts, which, by his own definition, are excluded from the purview of communicative action.

V CONCLUSION

Where does all of this leave discussion of the relative merits of rational choice and critical theory?

First, partisans of rational choice theory should not derive undue solace from the arguments advanced in this essay. Ultimately, Habermas has not presented a convincing case for abandoning the standard view of rational action in favor of his more comprehensive conception. But he nonetheless addresses an analytical problem - the question of how and on what basis social actors define the context within which their interactions transpire - for which rational choice theorists currently have no satisfactory solution.80 So, while Habermas's discussion of the problem perhaps is not persuasive, the problem itself remains. Moreover, though I draw on the standard game theoretic concept of strategic action in criticizing Habermas, my arguments here do not presume an orthodox interpretation of rational choice as a "positive" political theory. Indeed, there is ample reason to suggest that that interpretation is itself not conceptually well founded.81

Second, and more obviously, my arguments pose challenges to advocates of critical theory. I have argued that as currently formulated, Habermas's theory encounters a number of serious internal conceptual problems. It displaces "teleological" action from the privileged position traditionally ascribed to it by social and political theorists. But it does so only to elevate communicative action to a similarly privileged status. This, in turn, leads



Johnson / HABERMAS ON ACIION 195

Habermas to a distorted view of strategic action. More important, Habermas does not specify the source from which communicative action derives its force as a mechanism for coordinating social interaction. His theory is animated by the "telos of understanding" that he presumes to be inherent in human language. But he provides no compelling argument for that presumption.

It is difficult to see how these conceptual problems might be remedied given Habermas's theoretical ambitions. Yet absent a more convincing argument for his typology of rational action, those theoretical ambitions simply cannot be sustained. Advocates of critical theory thus face two crucial tasks. They must explicate more fully the coordinating force of communicative action. And they must elaborate a typology of rational action that adequately incorporates strategic action. The first of these tasks obviously requires either specifying further what the "telos of understanding" inherent in human communication involves or identifying some compelling alternative basis for the force of communicative action. Either of these options obviously is a daunting project. I leave them to proponents of critical theory. I instead will sketch how critical theorists might approach the second task, that of providing a more satisfactory treatment of strategic action.

Perhaps the most obvious way to proceed is to take seriously Habermas's claim that strategic action is a type of social action. Strategic action can be seen as social precisely insofar as it requires actors to recognize others as rational agents and to accommodate the anticipated actions of others when formulating their own plans. Strategic actors must be capable of grasping the web of social interdependencies in which their plans are embedded.

Conceptualizing strategic action in this way would allow critical theorists to approach it as susceptible to the sort of reconstructive understanding that Habermas proposes for other types of social action. In the theory of communicative action, Habermas assumes that actors are competent language users. Analogously, game theorists implicitly assume that actors are capable of proceeding in strategic rather than simply parametric terms. This capacity can be interpreted as a variety of the "interactive competence, . . . the ability to take part in interactions" that Habermas attributes to social actors.82 On this interpretation, the capacity for strategic action itself appears as a rather precarious achievement. And critical theorists might investigate the sorts of "learning processes" involved in moving from parametric to strategic action.83

In pursuing this task, critical theorists could reinterpret many of the conceptual insights generated by rational choice theory.84 In the process they could appropriate game theory as a potential resource for practical reason.85 On this interpretation, many of the troublesome results generated by game theoretic models (e.g., inefficient equilibria, multiple equilibria, and disequi-




libria) help to identify the general limits of strategic action.86 In many instances, these limits result as much from constrained knowledge and communication as from conflicts between the "nongeneralizable interests" of individuals.87 This point provides a clear and potentially fruitful intersec- tion between rational choice theory and critical theory.

All of this may seem only slightly more tractable than the task of clarifying the force of communicative action. It likely will render that task more complicated. But it also offers critical theorists the opportunity to explore rather than caricature the strategic dimensions of practical reason. A rehabil- itated concept of strategic action combined with a revised concept of communicative action might enable critical theorists to investigate the various factors that threaten to derail social interaction. It might lead them to inquire more generally into the different modes of action in which social and political actors engage when negotiating shared definitions of their situation. And finally, it might prompt critical theorists to reflect on whether and to what extent we can expect that these different modes of action can be encompassed by even a more comprehensive concept of rationality.'

NOTES

1. Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Boston: Beacon, 1984) and The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 11: System and Lifeworld: A Critique of Functionalist Reason (Boston: Beacon, 1987). All references to this work are hereafter cited as TCA followed by volume and page number.

2. TCA 1:14, 66. 3. On the notion of "conceptual well-foundedness," see Larry Laudan, Progress and Its

Problems (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 100. 4. With the exception of Stephen White, nowhere in the secondary literature can I find a

sustained, critical discussion of the place of strategic action in Habermas's broader project. And even White remains largely uncritical of the way that Habermas treats strategic action. See Stephen White, TheRecent WorkofJurgenHabermas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 10-13, 37, 44-47.

5. See, for example, Habermas's remarks on the way Arendt derides strategic action in Jurgen Habermas, Philosophical-Political Profiles (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), 180, 181.

6. Jurgen Habermas, "A Reply to My Critics," in Habermas: Critical Debates, edited by John B. Thompson and David Held (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), 237.

7. TCA 1:86, 88 n. 23. 8. In contemporary American political science, rational choice theory surely is among the

most firmly established research traditions. Terence Ball, "Is There Progress in Political Science?" in Idioms of Inquiry, edited by Terence Ball (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987). "A research tradition . . . is a set of assumptions: assumptions about the basic kinds of entities in the world, assumptions about how those entities interact, assumptions about the




proper methods to use for constructing and testing theories about those entities" (Laudan, Progress and Its Problems, 97). Research traditions are not monolithic entities. They typically sustain several not entirely compatible theories. For example, game theory and social choice theory represent divergent theories of rational choice. See Russell Hardin, "Rational Choice Theories," Idioms of Inquiry, edited by Terence Ball (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987). For representative examples of rational choice theories, see Rational Man, Irrational Society? edited by Brian Barry and Russell Hardin (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1982), and Rational Choice Theory, edited by Jon Elster (New York: New York University Press, 1986).

9. Although Habermas does not directly address the issue himself, other theorists challenge rational choice theory under the banner of communicative action. See Claus Offe and Helmut Wiesenthal, "Two Logics of Collective Action," Political Power and Social Theory (1980); Jean Cohen, "Strategy or Identity: New Theoretical Paradigms and Contemporary Social Move- ments," Social Research (1985); and Stephen White, "Toward a Critical Political Science," Idioms of Inquiry, edited by Terence Ball (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987). Similarly, rational choice theorists of various persuasions have begun to explore Habermas's work. See Jon Elster, "The Market and the Forum," in Foundations of Social Choice Theory, edited by Jon Elster and Aanund Hylland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), and Viktor Vanberg and James Buchanan, "Interests and Theories in Constitutional Choice,"Journal of Theoretical Politics (1989).

10. Laudan, Progress and Its Problems, 120. 11. "The central problem of Habermas's thought has been to demonstrate that an exclusively

instrumental or strategic understanding of rationality is somehow inadequate" (White, The Recent Work of Jurgen Habermas, 25).

12. See Brian Barry and Russell Hardin, "Epilogue," in Rational Man, Irrational Society? edited by Barry and Hardin; and Jon Elster, Sour Grapes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1-43.

13. TCA 1:274, xxix. 14. See Jon Elster, "Marxism, Functionalism and Game Theory," Theory andSociety (1982),

477; Russell Hardin, "Rational Choice Theories," 88; and James Johnson, "Rational Choice as a Reconstructive Theory," The Economic Approach to Politics, edited by Kristen Monroe (forthcoming 1991). White seeks to draw a contrast between critical theory and rational choice theory. But he does not question the positivist interpretation of rational choice. Moreover, he is primarily concemed with "the normative implications" of competing research traditions rather than with their conceptual coherence or empirical plausibility. See White, The Recent Work of Jurgen Habermas, 11, 7.

15. TCA 1:285-87, 85f. 16. Habermas refers to normative and dramaturgical action as "limit cases" of action oriented

toward understanding (TCA 1:95, 328). He pays relatively little attention to either type. Similarly, I refer to these types of social action primarily in order to highlight the contrast between strategic and communicative action.

17. TCA 1:16, 8. 18. Ibid., 38, 301f., 9, 19, 42. 19. Ibid., 80, 82, 87f. 20. Ibid., 137. 21. Ibid., 86, 69-70; 2:120. 22. TCA 1:17-18. A third option is that they might simply terminate their relationship. Jurgen

Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston: Beacon, 1979), 3-4. 23. TCA 1:38, 101 and Habermas, "A Reply," 237, 264-65. 24. Habermas, "A Reply," 269.




25. TCA 1:85, 286. 26. Ibid., 101. 27. Ibid., 327; Habermas, "A Reply," 270. Although he does not refer to the textual support

provided here, White correctly dismisses critics such as Dallmayr who call for a turn to "conversation" or other allegedly noninstrumental uses of language as a basis for social and political theory. See White, The Recent Work of Jurgen Habermas, 46-47; Fred Dallmayr, Polis and Practice (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984), 239-40 and "Habermas and Rationality," Political Theory (1987).

28. Throughout the paper, I, like Habermas, sometimes refer to "teleological" action in this shorthand sense to encompass only types of action oriented to success. When doing so, I will employ quotation marks as a reminder that communicative action, too, is teleological.

29. TCA 2:125. 30. More precisely, Habermas conceives the lifeworld as both providing resources for and

as being reproduced through communicative action (TCA 1:100; 2:255). 31. Jurgen Habermas, "Remarks on the Theory of Communicative Action," in SocialAction,

edited by G. Seebass and R. Toumela (Amsterdam: D. Reidel, 1985), 235. See also TCA 1:42 and Habermas, "A Reply," 235.

32. TCA 1:98. Discourse, then, does not relate, as Habermas variously puts it, "directly," "straightaway," or "point-blank" to the world. See Habermas, "Remarks," 163; TCA 1:99,2:120.

33. Habermas, "A Reply," 235 (emphasis added). See also Jurgen Habermas, The Philosoph- ical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 323. The hierarchal metaphors I employ to describe the relation between everyday communication and discourse are warranted by Habermas himself who refers "to the stratification of action oriented to understanding into naive and reflexive forms of communication" (TCA 2:74).

34. TCA 1:18 (emphasis added). In what follows I try to maintain the distinction between these levels when necessary. I reserve "communicative action" for situations where my arguments apply to both levels of interaction.

35. TCA 1:35, 287, 296-97. Habermas largely conforms to the way in which rational choice theorists distinguish between normative behavior and rational action. See Jon Elster, The Cement of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 97-107.

36. "Consent means that participants mutually share knowledge of something as valid, that is, as intersubjectively binding" (Habermas, "Remarks," 153).

37. The following draws on J. L. Austin, How To Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 109, 121. See also John Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). Although sympathetic to Habermas's project, Alan Wood advances a number of incisive criticisms of the way he appropriates speech act theory. See Alan Wood, "Habermas's Defense of Rationalism," New German Critique (1985).

38. TCA 1:293, 295-96. Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, 49, 59. 39. TCA 1:328. Thus Habermas claims that strategic actors engage exclusively in per-

locutionary acts (Habermas, "Remarks," 157). But he also includes certain illocutionary acts (such as imperatives) that cannot be justified via reasons in the class of speech acts internally related to strategic action. For Habermas, an internal relation is like the "logical relation between ground and consequence" rather than the external relation of cause and effect (TCA 1:49).

40. TCA 1:287, 289, 292-93. 41. Ibid., 101, 295. There are two reasons for this, both noted above. First, communication

can be used strategically. Second, there are types of communication that typically do not fulfill the role of coordinating action.

42. TCA 1:99, 295. Habermas, "A Reply," 269.



Johnson t HABERMAS ON ACMION 199

43. TCA 1:6, 279, 332. 44. Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, 1. 45. TCA 1:288. 46. Ibid., 88, 285. "Teleological" action raises claims to truth in addition to effectiveness.

But in cases of specifically strategic action the claim to truth is "suspended" (Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, 41). Thus in another essay, Habermas defines "strategic action as the capacity to keep other individuals or groups from perceiving their interests" (Philosophical-Political Profiles, 181).

47. Jon Elster, Ulysses and the Sirens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 18-19, 117-18.

48. Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 15.

49. TCA 1:85. 50. Strategic actors, in his view, have two salient features. They are motivated solely by

"egocentric calculations of utility" insofar as they "have only the realization of their own ends in view" (TCA 1:88, 94-95, 101). And they are "isolated," "solitary" or "atomistic" (TCA 1:10, 85, 273-74).

51. Game theory thus does not presume "misanthropic or vindictive selfishness." See Martin Shubik, Game Theory in theSocial Sciences (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), 217. See also Anatol Rapoport, Two-Person Game Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966), 130. It is instructive to contrast this notion of self-interest with the stronger assumption of "opportun- ism" or "self-interest seeking with guile." The latter entails "incomplete or distorted disclosure of information, especially to calculated efforts to mislead, distort, disguise, obfuscate, or otherwise confuse." See Oliver Williamson, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism (New York: Free Press, 1985), 47.

52. Martin Shubik, Game Theory in the Social Sciences, 81. On this same point with respect to social choice models, see Aanund Hylland, "The Purpose and Significance of Social Choice Theory," Foundations of Social Choice Theory, edited by John Elster and Aanund Hylland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 53. For rational choice theory more generally, see Elster, Ulysses and the Sirens, 116.

53. This is the case, for example, in assurance and coordination games. See Elster, "Marxism, Functionalism and Game Theory" and Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, respectively. It is true as well in strategic interactions between actors with heterogenous motivations. See Jon Elster, "Rationality, Morality and Collective Action," Ethics (1985).

54. Habermas, "Remarks," 154. 55. Elster, Ulysses and the Sirens, 18. 56. In fact, he criticizes Weber for defining social action in terms very much like those I have

just used (TCA 1:280). The passages Habermas quotes are from Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 4, 26.

57. These ambiguities recur from Habermas's earlier distinction between labor and interaction. See Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978), 23f.

58. TCA 1:285, 88; 2:138. 59. Commentators tend to accept Habermas's view of strategic action uncritically. See, for

example, Cohen "Strategy or Identity," 706 and White, "Toward a Critical Political Science," 115. Benhabib best brings out the unsavory implications in Habermas's view of strategic action when she claims that its primary "purpose is .. . to have others act or speak in ways that fulfill our purposes and ends." It is "characterized by non-mutuality and non-reciprocity. I can convince




you through political propaganda, brainwash you through advertising, force you into deterrence through military planning so long as you and I do not share equal chances, opportunities, resources and knowledge." See Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 139.

60. Brian Barry, Sociologists, Economists andDemocracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). On the importance of norms from the vantage point of rational choice theory, see Elster, The Cement of Society.

61. Habermas, "Remarks," 169-70. 62. Ibid., 157. The existence of this telos is "something of which Habermas should feel the

need to convince us" (Wood, "Habermas's Defense of Rationalism," 157). 63. TCA 1:302. See also Habermas, "A Reply," 269-70. 64. TCA 1:301-2. 65. Ibid., 17, 22f. 66. Ibid., 10. 67. Ibid., 35. 68. In what follows, I specify several sorts of contingency in which consent, as the animating

feature of communicative action, encounters problems. Critics have suggested that this approach is inappropriate, that I would be more faithful to the spirit of Habermas's project were I to explore less conflictual, more cooperative types of interaction. At this point, they typically suggest academic discourse as an example of what they have in mind. I have two brief responses to this line of argument. First, Habermas himself suggests that the rationality or otherwise of action is perhaps best discemed in "difficult" or "problematic" situations (TCA 1:10; 2:125). It seems to me that the sorts of contingency to which I refer are - in contrast to the ideal of academic exchange and in keeping with most recognizable political interactions-precisely "difficult situations" in the requisite sense. Second, academic discourse simply is not so consistently a cooperative undertaking as my interlocutors suggest. Here, I can do no better than to refer to Habermas himself who admits to partaking in the "deliberate exploitation of important theories" for his own purposes (TCA 1:140).

69. TCA 1:101. Thus they are motivated by "an interest in carrying out their plans of action" at least to the extent that the ability to pursue their individual aims presupposes a shared definition of the situation (TCA 1:101, 113-14).

70. Habermas, Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 323 (emphasis added). 71. TCA 1:42. Habermas thus faces largely the same problem of knowledge encountered

by various proposed rational choice 'solutions' to collective action problems. See Norman Schofield, "Anarchy, Altruism and Cooperation," Social Choice and Welfare (1985), 207-19.

72. TCA 1:99. Here it is important to reiterate that the validity claims implicit in everyday communicative practice are explicitly thematized in discourse or argument precisely under the pressure of the "interests and aims" of individual actors (TCA 2:127). Since discourse is initiated in this way, the question arises as to the sense in which Habermas can portray it as the sort of cooperative endeavor embodied in an orientation toward understanding.

73. TCA 1:100. 74. "The interpreted action situation circumscribes. . . the conditions and means for carrying

out plans. Everything belongs to the situation that makes itself felt as a limitation on appropriate initiatives for action.... The actor ... encounters the contingent restrictions, imposed on the carrying out of his plans, as elements of the situation" (Habermas, "Remarks," 164-65).

75. TCA 1:42. This point is made by Elster, "The Market and the Forum," 115. Habermas admits to generally neglecting the role of time in his analyses ("A Reply," 172).




76. This is important insofar as the redemption of validity claims central to communicative action presupposes the capacity to learn (TCA 1:3, 18, 22).

77. TCA 1:24, 100. 78. Ibid., 18. See Austin, How To Do Things With Words, 109, 118-19, 125, 131 and Searle,

Speech Acts, 25. This point is made by Wood, "Habermas's Defense of Rationalism." 79. The problem is not simply that Habermas has an idiosyncratic view of speech act theory.

Rather, the difficulty is that Habermas claims that communicative action consists exclusively of illocutionary acts. He must explain how-despite the fundamental categories of speech act theory -persuading and convincing someone can plausibly be interpreted as illocutionary acts.

80. Some rational choice theorists do investigate strategic contests over the context of interaction. See Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, and Johnson, "Symbolic Action and the Limits to Strategic Rationality," Political Power and Social Theory (1988).

81. The orthodox interpretation is shared both by most rational choice theorists and by most of their critics. For an extended dissent from the orthodox interpretation, see Johnson, "Rational Choice as a Reconstructive Theory."

82. Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, 73. 83. On learning processes, see TCA 1: 18, 22. The scant empirical findings that exist indicate

that even in fairly simple bargaining situations, actors often do not think strategically. That is, negotiators do not recognize others as equally rational, intentional actors whose decisions must be anticipated and accommodated when formulating their own plans. Not surprisingly, this sort of parametric action often leads to outcomes that are undesirable from either a collective or an individual standpoint. But these findings also suggest that this is less a distortion caused by "nongeneralizable interests" in Habermas's sense than the product of attempts by actors to render bargaining situations cognitively tractable. This suggests that negotiators need to leam to rely more fully on their competence as strategic actors rather than reverting in the interest of cognitive economy to parametric modes of action. See Max Bazerman and John Carroll, "Negotiator Cognition," Research in Organizational Behavior (1987), 252, 258-67.

84. On this point, see Johnson, "Rational Choice as a Reconstructive Theory." On the more general possibility of combining two competing research traditions in ways that are progressive with respect to each, see Laudan, Progress and Its Problems, 103.

85. Critics tend to generally view rational choice theory merely as a highly formal tool of technical reason. But there is precedent for viewing it less as a "manipulative technique" aimed at the "enhancement of environmental control" than as "a source of ... insights into the nature of conflict based on the interplay of decisions" (Rapoport, Two-Person Game Theory, 203). I would amend Rapoport's statement to read 'insights into the nature of conflict and cooperation'.

86. For an early, frank statement of this position, see Rapoport, Two-Person Game Theory, 214. 87. Schofield, "Anarchy, Altruism and Cooperation." 88. For skeptical remarks on the ability of the concept of rationality to bear this burden, see

Brian Barry and Russell Hardin, "Epilogue," 368, 370.

James Johnson teaches political theory atNorthwestern University. His current research focuses on the ways thatpolitical actors deploy cultural resourcesforstrategic purposes. He has published articles and essays in Political Power and Social Theory, Socialist Review, and Canadian Journal of Philosophy.



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Habermas on Strategic and Communicative Action

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