Sensible Compromise as Political Resolution

Resolving Conflicts Beyond the Demand for Consensus

Abstract

This study develops the concept of sensible compromise as a viable method of political resolution under conditions of diverse and conflicting interests. Sensibility enables conflicts to be resolved without appealing to either political moralism or purely conflictual accounts. Its normative force does not derive from moral principles but consists in constraints internal to political practice itself that govern viable ways of resolving conflicts. On this account, sensible compromise expresses a distinctively liberal mode of resolution and is examined in relation to other prominent liberal theories, particularly William Galston’s comprehensive liberalism and John Rawls’s political liberalism. By critically engaging these models, the paper argues that liberal values are neither exempt from the process of compromise nor grounded in a moral or consensual foundation, but are subject to minimal compromise, demonstrating that these values function as internal political elements that sustain political relations under disagreement.