Does Liberal Democracy Presuppose a Cultural Nation? Four Arguments

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARASH ABIZADEH
Keyword(s):  
Social Integration ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Public Culture ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Shared Norms

This paper subjects to critical analysis four common arguments in the sociopolitical theory literature supporting the cultural nationalist thesis that liberal democracy is viable only against the background of a single national public culture: the arguments that (1) social integration in a liberal democracy requires shared norms and beliefs (Schnapper); (2) the levels of trust that democratic politics requires can be attained only among conationals (Miller); (3) democratic deliberation requires communicational transparency, possible in turn only within a shared national public culture (Miller, Barry); and (4) the economic viability of specifically industrialized liberal democracies requires a single national culture (Gellner). I argue that all four arguments fail: At best, a shared cultural nation may reduce some of the costs liberal democratic societies must incur; at worst, cultural nationalist policies ironically undermine social integration. The failure of these cultural nationalist arguments clears the way for a normative theory of liberal democracy in multinational and postnational contexts.

scholarly journals The Instrumental Value Arguments for National Self-Determination

Dialogue ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-89
Author(s):  
HSIN-WEN LEE
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Instrumental Value ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Instrumental Values ◽  
Civic Duties

David Miller argues that national identity is indispensable for the successful functioning of a liberal democracy. National identity makes important contributions to liberal democratic institutions, including creating incentives for the fulfilment of civic duties, facilitating deliberative democracy, and consolidating representative democracy. Thus, a shared identity is indispensable for liberal democracy and grounds a good claim for self-determination. Because Miller’s arguments appeal to the instrumental values of a national culture, I call his argument ‘instrumental value’ arguments. In this paper, I examine the instrumental value arguments and show that they fail to justify a group’s right to self-determination.

Liberal Democracy: One Form or Many?

1992 ◽  
Vol 40 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 130-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Ware
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Subsequent Section ◽  
The One

This article examines whether there are significant differences between liberal democracies which warrant them being classified as different forms of democracy. The article begins by outlining six features of liberal democracy which are crucial in understanding how this type of government works. The subsequent section examines the origins of liberal democracy and considers the relevance of arguments derived from American ‘exceptionalism’. Attention is then focused on liberal democratic governments today – by reference to Lijphart's distinction between ‘majoritarian’ and ‘consensus' democracies. Finally, the article looks at whether the form of liberal democracy is changed substantially when it is transplanted into a cultural context different from the one in which it originated. The general conclusion is that there is no case for identifying different forms of liberal democracy.

Liberal Democratic Torture

2005 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEVEN LUKES
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Dirty Hands ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Law ◽  
Torture Memos ◽  
Lesser Evil

Liberal democracies have long practised torture, but should they ever permit their officials to torture (and, if so, when?), how should their citizens think and talk about it, and how should the law treat it? Is it just another instance of ‘dirty hands’ in politics? If it averts some terrible harm, can resorting to it be seen as choosing the ‘lesser evil’? What, then, is torture? The ‘torture memos’ of the Bush administration's legal advisers are reviewed and their attempt to narrow its definition criticized, as is Judge Posner's attempt to confine it to physical coercion. Attempts to evade the questions above (on the grounds that torture is never effective in averting disaster) are rejected. It is suggested that torture, unlike other cases of dirty hands considered, cannot be rendered liberal-democratically accountable, in the sense that it will sometimes be legitimate and, when not, punished, because its practice cannot be publicly recognized without undermining both the democratic and liberal components of liberal democracy. This suggestion is supported by adducing a ‘Durkheimian argument’ to the effect that our institutions and customs have been so penetrated by core elements of an egalitarian ‘religion of individualism’ that violating them threatens a kind of ‘moral disintegration’. This, it is argued, requires liberal democracies to reject the very idea of a scale that can allow comparison of the benefits against the costs of torturing. The absolute prohibition serves to maintain inhibitions, though these are currently being eroded by the fear of terrorism.

Interview

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Stanley ◽  
John B. Min
Keyword(s):  
Real Life ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic Societies

Stanley and Min discuss how propaganda works in liberal democratic societies. Stanley observes that the inability to address the crisis of liberal democracies can be partially explained by contemporary political philosophy’s penchant for idealized theorizing about norms of justice over transitions from injustice to justice. Whereas ancient and modern political philosophers took seriously propaganda and demagoguery of the elites and populists, contemporary political philosophers have tended to theorize about the idealized structures of justice. This leads to a lack of theoretical constructs and explanatory tools by which we can theorize about real-life political problems, such as mass incarceration. Starting with this premise, Stanley provides an explanation of how propaganda works and the mechanisms that enable propaganda. Stanley further theorizes the pernicious effects that elitism, populism, authoritarianism, and “post-truth” have on democratic politics.

Commentary on “Democracy and Scandal: A Research Agenda”

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 863-871 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Brenton
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Safety Valve ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Positive Feature

Abstract In my original article “Scandals as a Positive Feature of Liberal Democratic Politics: A Durkheimian perspective” (2012b), I argued that scandals are actually a positive feature of liberal democratic politics, and rather than representing a threat to political stability serve an important function. Scandals provide a “safety valve” for the expression of negativity towards political actors while reinforcing collective values and ultimately strengthening the system, consistent with Durkheim’s ideas. The response to this article certainly contains some thought-provoking examples, but they do not contradict my argument that scandal can only occur in liberal democracies due to the necessity of freedom of speech, an open and aggressive media and strong political competition.

Utilitarianism and Human Rights

1984 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Gibbard
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Freedom Of Action

INTRODUCTIONWe look to rights for protection. The hope of advocates of “human rights” has been that certain protections might be accorded to allof humanity. Even in a world only a minority of whose inhabitants live under liberal democratic regimes, the hope is, certain standards accepted in the liberal democracies will gain universal recognition and respect. These include liberty of persons as opposed to enslavement, freedom from cruelty, freedom from arbitrary execution, from arbitrary imprisonment, and from arbitrary deprivation of property or livelihood, freedom of religion, and freedom of inquiry and expression.Philosophers, of course, concern themselves with the theory of rights, and that is partly because of the ways questions of rights bear on fundamental normative theory. By far the most highly developed general normative theory has been utilitarianism. Now many opponents of utilitarianism argue that considerations of rights discredit utilitarianism, that utilitarianism yields conclusions about rights that we would normally regard as faulty, and that moreover, the reasons for regarding those conclusions as faulty turn out, upon examination, to be stronger than the reasons forregarding utilitarianism as valid. A valid theory cannot have faulty conclusions, and so thinkingabout rights shows utilitarianism not to be a valid normative theory.Jeremy Bentham, the founder of the utilitarian movement in nineteenth century England, accepted the incompatibility of utilitarianism and “the rights of man, ” and rejected talkof the latter as “anarchical fallacies”. His great successor John Stuart Mill, however, argued that a perceptive and far–sighted utilitarianism supports strong rights both of democratic participation and of individual freedom of action.

Hubris, constitutionalism, and “the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation”: The repression of Catalan secessionist referenda in Spanish constitutional law

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 943-969 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hèctor López Bofill
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Spanish Constitution ◽  
Liberal Democratic

Abstract This article analyzes the struggles of the Catalan government to organize a referendum on secession and the constitutional framework invoked by the Spanish central authorities to prohibit it. The repression of secessionist referenda within the Spanish constitutional framework triggers several problematic questions concerning the role of constitutional supremacy in handling subnational secessionist challenges developed under a pacific and democratic framework. The article offers a comparison between the Spanish-Catalan case and other examples of secessionist referenda within liberal democracies, underscoring that the Spanish solution of repressing such referenda through criminal law is unique in the liberal democratic context. The article also offers a description of the political, historical, and legal circumstances surrounding the Spanish central authorities’ actions that explains the Spanish constitutional response to both the Catalan Consultation held on November 9, 2014, and the referendum on Catalan independence held on October 1, 2017. The article concludes by arguing that the prohibition of the Catalan referendum initiatives on independence and their subsequent prosecution through criminal law may cripple the basic pillars of the Spanish liberal democracy designed under the 1978 Spanish Constitution.

Group-Differentiated Rights and the Liberal Democratic State: Rethinking the Headscarf Controversy in Turkey

2001 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 31-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeşim Arat
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Clifford Geertz ◽  
Ethnocultural Groups ◽  
Special Rights ◽  
The Relationship

The development of liberalism with both the courage and the capacity to engage itself with a different world, one in which its principles are neither well understood nor widely held, in which indeed it is, in most places, a minority creed, alien and suspect, is not only possible, it is necessary.-Clifford Geertz. 2000.Available Light.Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, p. 258.Over the past two decades, the debate over multiculturalism challenged the justice of neutral, “difference blind” rules in liberal democracies. Allegedly neutral institutions were shown to be implicitly biased toward the priorities, experiences, or interests of the dominant groups in the society. Criticism of difference-blind rules and claims for justice to minority groups defined the relationship between government and opposition in many contexts. Arguments for special rights to protect minorities, women, or ethnocultural groups gained legitimacy (Young 1990, Jones 1990, Phillips 1991, Taylor 1994, Kymlicka 1995, Kymlicka and Norman 2000).

Recalling and/or Repressing German Marxism? The Case of Ernst Fraenkel

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
William E. Scheuerman
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Tony Blair ◽  
Political Theorist ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Us ◽  
Judith Shklar ◽  
Third Way Politics

I spent a few unseasonably hot summer days in 1996 digging around in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz for what later became a lengthy essay on Ernst Fraenkel (1898–1975), the neglected German socialist political and legal thinker. I still recall struggling to justify my efforts not simply as an historian of ideas but also as a political theorist who, at least in principle, was expected to make systematic contributions to contemporary debates. The problem was that Fraenkel had focused his acumen on investigating liberal democratic instability and German fascism, matters that did not seem directly pertinent to a political and intellectual constellation in which political scientists were celebrating democracy's “third wave.” With Tony Blair and Bill Clinton touting Third Way politics, and many former dictatorships seemingly on a secure path to liberal democracy, Fraenkel's preoccupations seemed dated. Even though Judith Shklar had noted, as late as 1989, that “anyone who thinks that fascism in one guise or another is dead and gone ought to think again,” political pundits and scholars in the mid-1990s typically assumed that capitalist liberal democracy's future was secure. When I returned to the US and described my research to colleagues, they responded, unsurprisingly, politely but without much enthusiasm.

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