Decency and the Liberal International (Dis)Order: Moral Limits and the Possibilities of a Global Pluralist Politics

Abstract

This article analyzes the tension between the liberal ideals of freedom and equality and cultural difference. It argues that decency has become intertwined with the fragility of the liberal international order by providing a problematic threshold of international justice. The idea is that as global pressures mount for protecting the human dignity of persons/peoples, they also congeal or harden decency’s political and social constraints (impartiality, neutrality, and basic rights enforcement) on engaging others. Decency as a moral threshold of international justice, the article claims, has become static or a self-reinforcing limitation. This contradictory decency/dignity dynamic of the liberal international order not only explains how states have aggressively asserted their interests by absorbing these constraints, but also how politics can limit the pragmatic potential to bridge the various social gaps in values and belief systems. This article seeks to conceptualize a pluralist ethos that shows how such constraints can be reimagined as, or turned into, the conditions of possibility/freedom that transition us to a global pluralist politics. It concludes with a discussion of the refugee crisis and Islamism, showing how both cases resonate the felt stigmatization and alienation within the liberal international order.