important to keep this distinction clear. Extremeness of policy is highly
relative. To deal with a crime wave by increasing the number of offences for
which the state might execute someone would not have been extreme in the
early 19th century, but to introduce a probation service would have been.
Neither policy would have been ‘radical’, though reacting to a crime wave in
1825 by introducing unemployment benefit would have been both radical and
extreme.
A secondary meaning of radical as signifying someone on theleftof the
political spectrum has developed. It makes perfect sense, however, to talk of the
radical centre or even the radical right. In some political cultures the word does
not have the rather emotive connotations it has in English: the French Radical
Party of theThird Republicwas a moderate and traditional liberal party.
Raison d’e ́tat
Raison d’e ́tatis used to describe an overwhelmingly important general social or
state motive for an action. There may be, it is argued, problems of such utter
importance to the entire well-being of a state, or interests so vital to the entire
population, taken as a whole, that all ordinary moral or political restrictions on
government actions must be dropped. It derives from debates oninterna-
tional lawin the 17th century, and has become somewhat discredited. It is not
so much that the general idea has been discarded, but rather that the way of
stating the claim creates unease.
In a sense, of course, it is only an extreme version of the idea that some
policy or other is in thepublic interest, or is for thecommon good. But
there are two differences between public interests andraisons d’e ́tat. Firstly, most
liberal political theory maintains that there are somenatural rightsor free-
doms that cannot be curtailed for the common good. The doctrine ofraison
d’e ́tat, if adopted, would deny this. It might, for example, be held that in
general an absolute right todue processof law existed, yetmartial lawmight
be declared on the grounds that the threat to security was so intense that, for
raison d’e ́tat, the right had to be abrogated.
Secondly, the ‘state’ itself is very much to the forefront when araison d’e ́tat
argument is invoked—it is the continued existence of the very basic structure
of authority and legitimacy that is at stake. This argument has arisen, even if the
language has not been used, when the restoration of the death penalty has been
urged in Britain for terrorist crimes only.
By its nature the argument is more often used and found in international
politics than in domestic politics, and its slight discredited feeling probably has
to do with the undue ease that nations have experienced in findingraisons d’e ́tat
for abrogating international agreements (for example, President George W.
Bush’s desire to abandon US participation in nuclear proliferation treaties in
Raison d’e ́tat