Security and democratic equality

Brian Milstein

doi:10.1057/s41296-020-00446-w

Abstract

After a recent spate of terrorist attacks in European and American cities, liberal democracies are reintroducing emergency securitarian measures (ESMs) that curtail rights and/or expand police powers. Political theorists who study ESMs are familiar with how such measures become instruments of discrimination and abuse, but the fundamental conflict ESMs pose for not just civil liberty but also democratic equality still remains insufficiently explored. Such phenomena are usually explained as a function of public panic or fear-mongering in times of crisis, but I show that the tension between security and equality is in fact much deeper and more general. It follows a different logic than the more familiar tension between security and liberty, and it concerns not just the rule of law in protecting liberty but also the role of law in integrating new or previously subjected groups into a democratic community. As liberal-democratic societies become increasingly diverse and multicultural in the present era of mass immigration and global interconnectedness, this tension between security and equality is likely to become more pronounced.

Highlights

After a spate of terrorist attacks in European and American cities, the politics of counterterrorism are again high on the agendas of liberal democracies, with several reintroducing a variety of emergency securitarian measures, or ESMs
More than just a central ideal, democratic equality is a necessary condition for members of liberal democracies to understand themselves as co-participants in a community of citizens
It is what enables citizens to join together in a democratic ‘we,’ and its maintenance is dependent on the establishment and preservation of the necessary distribution and quality of liberal and political rights

Summary

Introduction

After a spate of terrorist attacks in European and American cities, the politics of counterterrorism are again high on the agendas of liberal democracies, with several reintroducing a variety of emergency securitarian measures, or ESMs. The purpose of this article is to show, first, that ESMs are not just collaterally but intrinsically and structurally inegalitarian, in ways that undermine not just liberal and democratic ideals, by undermining the very conditions that make democratic equality among citizens possible. It will show how the security/equality tension follows a different logic and poses different challenges than the more familiar security/liberty tension, and these challenges are bound to intensify as democracies become more and more pluralistic. ESMs undermine equality in a very general way: they deprive laws of their capacities to establish equality and citizens of their capacities to claim it

Objectives

Conclusion