Liberal Legitimacy Research Articles

Liberal legitimacy in global politics: Navigating toleration and cooperation.

Liberal legitimacy in global politics: Navigating toleration and cooperation.

Religious Reasons and Liberal Legitimacy

Abstract This article addresses the exclusivism–inclusivism debate about religious reasons in law within a justificatory liberal framework. The question of whether religious reasons have justificatory capacity for attaining public justification has increasingly been seen as a matter of how public justification is understood between two rival models: the consensus model being aligned with exclusivism, the convergence model with inclusivism. More recently, however, that alignment has been challenged with attempts to show that consensus can reach an equivalent degree of inclusivism as convergence. Against this, I contend that the purported equivalence is misplaced. First, I identify a crucial ambiguity about public justification and two corresponding domains. Upon demonstrating these to be mutually independent and severable, I conclude that the moves to equalize the models are confined within the more narrow domain while, in the more fundamental domain, the choice of model continues to prove determinative as to the exclusivist or inclusivist valence of justificatory liberalism.

Against insular liberalism: Sayyid Qutb, illiberal Islam and the forceless force of the better argument

Political liberals claim that liberal polities may legitimately dismiss the objections of ‘unreasonable’ citizens who resist political liberals’ favored principles of justice and political justification. A growing number of other political philosophers, including post-colonialist theorists, have objected to the resulting insularity of political liberalism. However, political liberals’ insularity also often presents them from being sensitive or responsive to these critics’ complaints. In this article, I develop a more efficacious internal critique of political liberalism: I show that political liberals’ own core principles of liberal legitimacy sometimes require liberal polities to engage with the objections of those who hold ‘unreasonable’, and even illiberal, views. First, I draw on the work of Sayyid Qutb, an illiberal Islamic political thinker, to argue that – contrary to what political liberals often imply – even ‘unreasonable’, illiberal citizens may be fair-minded: that is, they may be actively concerned to cooperate with others on fair and mutually endorsable terms. Second, I contend that a liberal state’s own core commitment to treating citizens as free and equal requires it to offer fair-minded illiberal citizens like Qutb deep reasons – that don’t presuppose agreement on liberal principles of justice and so can speak to them in the dialectical position they start from – for why they should accept the liberal laws with which the state coerces them to comply. By showing how political liberals’ own commitments oblige them to address even ‘unreasonable’ political perspectives, I open the door to their more robust engagement with their critics, including not only comparative political theorists but also the growing number of illiberal citizens who challenge democratic regimes.

Freedom, Equality, and Justifiability to All: Reinterpreting Liberal Legitimacy

According to John Rawls’s famous Liberal Principle of Legitimacy, the exercise of political power is legitimate only if it is justifiable to all citizens. The currently dominant interpretation of what is justifiable to persons in this sense is an internalist one. On this view, what is justifiable to persons depends on their beliefs and commitments. In this paper I challenge this reading of Rawls’s principle, and instead suggest that it is most plausibly interpreted in externalist terms. On this alternative view, what is justifiable to persons is not in any way dependent on, or relativized to, their beliefs and commitments. Instead, what is justifiable to all in the relevant sense is what all could accept as free and equal. I defend this reinterpretation of the view by showing how it is supported by Rawls’s account of the freedom and equality of persons. In addition, a considerable advantage of this suggestion is that it allows for an inclusive account of to whom the exercise of political power must be made justifiable.

What Good is Abstraction? From Liberal Legitimacy to Social Justice

The stakes could not be higher. Post-World War II political and economic institutions are under unprecedented pressure. The social coalitions that have sustained them are crumbling. Welfare-state capitalism is in retreat, and liberal institutions are besieged. Right-wing populists are cementing their power and consolidating their grip on political and legal institutions around the globe. The answer to these historical changes cannot be a return to the very status quo that led to them in the first place. This Article argues progressive liberal theoretical frameworks are unfit for purpose. They betray a loss of conviction and commitment to the very egalitarian ideals that progressive liberals advocate for. Specifically, it critiques abstraction as a mode of argumentation in political and legal theory in which there is a retreat from controversial political and moral territory to establish a consensual political regime and binding legal order. It is an internal critique to liberal theory that illustrates that this abstraction does not meet the theory’s own standards and fails to achieve its declared objectives. The main family of theories that betray this lack of conviction is “political liberalism,” as developed by eminent scholars such as John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. Political liberalism draws a clear distinction between the ambitions of liberal justice and the institutional commitments of liberal legitimacy. Progressive liberals allow as legitimate policies and practices, such as welfare-state capitalism and neo-liberalism, that are detrimental to the very goals that they aspire to. Therefore, the egalitarian bark of progressive liberal theory is louder than its egalitarian bite. Ultimately, liberal legitimacy is not merely different from justice but it also defers justice and legitimates injustice.

Crash Algorithms for Autonomous Cars: How the Trolley Problem Can Move Us Beyond Harm Minimisation

The prospective introduction of autonomous cars into public traffic raises the question of how such systems should behave when an accident is inevitable. Due to concerns with self-interest and liberal legitimacy that have become paramount in the emerging debate, a contractarian framework seems to provide a particularly attractive means of approaching this problem. We examine one such attempt, which derives a harm minimisation rule from the assumptions of rational self-interest and ignorance of one’s position in a future accident. We contend, however, that both contractarian approaches and harm minimisation standards are flawed, due to a failure to account for the fundamental difference between those ‘involved’ and ‘uninvolved’ in an impending crash. Drawing from classical works on the trolley problem, we show how this notion can be substantiated by reference to either the distinction between negative and positive rights, or to differences in people’s claims. By supplementing harm minimisation with corresponding constraints, we can develop crash algorithms for autonomous cars which are both ethically adequate and promise to overcome certain significant practical barriers to implementation.

The Reciprocal Translation Proviso: An Alternative Approach to Public Reason

AbstractThe role of religion in politics is problematic for liberal legitimacy. Religion is often restrained by a public reason requirement, but this creates cognitive burdens that asymmetrically impact religious citizens creating unequal barriers to accessing the political system, which is itself problematic for liberal legitimacy. Habermas’ institutional translation proviso balances the competing concerns of liberal legitimacy, which aims to offset the asymmetry disadvantaging religious citizens. This paper analyzes the problem and Habermas’ solution. It concludes that Habermas does not alleviate the asymmetry created by the public reason requirement to the greatest extent possible and so does not equalize the barriers to accessing the political system as much as he might. The reciprocal translation proviso provides an alternative that balances the competing components of liberal legitimacy more fully and alleviates the asymmetry and inequality of barriers to political access to the greatest extent possible while preserving the public reason requirement.

Political liberalism and autonomy education: Are citizenship-based arguments enough?

Several philosophers of education argue that schooling should facilitate students’ development of autonomy. Such arguments fall into two main categories: Student-centered arguments support autonomy education to help enable students to lead good lives; Public-goods-centered arguments support autonomy education to develop students into good citizens. Critics challenge the legitimacy of autonomy education—of the state imposing a schooling curriculum aimed at making children autonomous. In this paper, I offer a unified solution to the challenges of legitimacy that both arguments for autonomy education face. I first defend a particular construal of liberal legitimacy, and then consider each legitimacy challenge in light of that construal. I argue that the legitimacy challenges confronting both types of argument can be overcome. Further, I explain why we should pursue both arguments, rather than resting the entire case for autonomy education on one or the other. I conclude that each argument—if it can justify autonomy education at all—can justify autonomy education consistent with the requirements of liberal democratic legitimacy.

How Should Liberal Perfectionists Justify the State?

AbstractLiberal institutions should respect citizens as autonomous agents. But what does this mandate require and how should it shape the demands of liberal legitimacy? I trace the contemporary disagreement between liberal perfectionist and anti-perfectionist accounts of legitimacy back to this requirement to respect the autonomy of citizens in order to weigh up how well each approach fulfils this mandate. I argue that further reflection over the nature of respect for the value of personal autonomy gives liberals reason to favour moderate forms of perfectionism and be sceptical of criticisms of perfectionism grounded in concerns over respect.

Consensus and Liberal Legitimacy: From First to Second Best?

In this article, consensus, defined as the consent of all citizens, is argued to be the first best for part of the liberal tradition on political legitimacy. Consensus would be the foundation of the liberal society that, when out of reach, needs to be approximated through, for instance, voting (majority rule). I build on the timid attempts in political theory at using the theorem of the second best as a tool to settle difficult decision making in applied political theory. More precisely, I defend the view that consensus would be the first best for part of the liberal tradition on political legitimacy. Furthermore, I illustrate how moral, factual, (and, incidentally, epistemological) disagreements may create second-best problems, especially in terms of stability. Finally, I spell out some reasons why such problems directly affect a liberal order, on pragmatic grounds. The final purpose is to contribute to the literatures on legitimacy and on the application of the theorem of the second best outside economics. The key idea is to stress that much more work has to be done for “importing” the theorem of the second best into political theory.

Basic Capacities, Coercion, and Liberal Legitimacy

Basic Capacities, Coercion, and Liberal Legitimacy

EU Legitimacy in a Realist Key

This paper provides a conceptual analysis of the EU’s legitimation status through the lens of a realist account of legitimacy. We propose a modification of Bernard Williams’ theory of liberal legitimacy, and use it to make sense of the widely perceived legitimation crisis of the EU. In Williams’ well-known formula, “Basic Legitimation Demand Modernity = Liberalism”. Drawing on that model, we put forward three main claims. (i) The right side of the equation is insufficiently sensitive to the importance of popular sovereignty in Western constitutional traditions; (ii) The left side of the equation is best thought of as a ‘legitimation story’: an account of what plausibly sustains belief in legitimacy. This is, however, not a purely descriptive notion: attending to the meaning of politics in the relevant context rules out both violent domination and ideologically distorted legitimation stories, thus providing a non-moralised normative component for the position. (iii) While most EU member states ostensibly support the Union, the legitimation story offered by the member states to its citizens draws upon a tradition of popular sovereignty that sit badly with the supranational pooling and delegation of sovereign powers that characterises the EU rule. That, we maintain, explains the current legitimation crisis of the EU. Further, we argue that the realist framework requires a solution to the legitimation problem before any advances can be made on the front of social justice.

Liberal Legitimacy and the Question of Respect

AbstractIn a modern pluralist society, the idea of liberal legitimacy as proposed by John Rawls offers a promising foundation for the further historic advancement of democracy. However, liberal legitimacy still seems to lack one key element—a unique type of respect at its foundations—without which such democratic advancement may not be achieved. Nor, on closer inspection, could the idea of liberal legitimacy succeed without this particular type of respect. When further refined at its foundation, arguably liberal legitimacy could open doors to previously unattainable improvements in democracy and legitimacy.

Against the Asymmetric Convergence Model of Public Justification

Compared to standard liberal approaches to public reason and justification, the asymmetric convergence model of public justification allows for the public justification of laws and policies based on a convergence of quite different and even publicly inaccessible reasons. The model is asymmetrical in the sense of identifying a broader range of reasons that may function as decisive defeaters of proposed laws and policies. This paper raises several critical questions about the asymmetric convergence model and its central but ambiguous presumption against coercion. By drawing on the theory of structural coercion, a main conclusion of the paper is that the asymmetric convergence model ultimately encounters the very incompleteness problems that its proponents often associate with more familiar consensus models of public justification. The paper also develops an alternative, Rawlsian-inspired account of public justification that includes elements of both convergence and consensus but not asymmetry. The Rawlsian model enables us to understand how democratic decisions may possess a degree of procedural, but still morally significant, liberal legitimacy under conditions of pluralism even when citizens fail to agree fully about either the premises of or conclusions to their political arguments.

Liberal nationalism and the Australian citizenship tests

Scholars have debated whether citizenship regimes in Western democracies are tracking a liberal universalistic path or continue to follow distinctive national traditions. This essay argues that the Australian case does both through a distinctive liberal nationalist architecture. Increasingly since the 1970s, Australian citizenship acquisition and status have largely followed a civic nationalist or liberal universalist formulation. However, this has been executed within a broader liberal nationalist approach to national identity and culture that accommodates these aspects of national life. The essay discusses the idea of liberal nationalism as a political architecture of differentiated domains, Australia's construction of this architecture, and how Australia's two recent citizenship tests illustrate this framework in action. It concludes with some thoughts on the symbolic significance of citizenship tests for liberal legitimacy and the future of the liberal nationalist project.

What Does Liberal Legitimacy Really Require?

What Does Liberal Legitimacy Really Require?

Legitimacy, Democracy and Public Justification: Rawls’ Political Liberalism Versus Gaus’ Justificatory Liberalism

Public justification-based accounts of liberal legitimacy rely on the idea that a polity’s basic structure should, in some sense, be acceptable to its citizens. In this paper I discuss the prospects of that approach through the lens of Gerald Gaus’ critique of John Rawls’ paradigmatic account of democratic public justification. I argue that Gaus does succeed in pointing out some significant problems for Rawls’ political liberalism; yet his alternative, justificatory liberalism, is not voluntaristic enough to satisfy the desiderata of a genuinely democratic theory of public justification. So I contend that—pace Gaus, but also Rawls—rather than simply amending political liberalism, the claims of justificatory liberalism bring out fatal tensions between the desiderata of any theory of liberal-democratic legitimacy through public justification.

Coercing non-liberal persons: Considerations on a more realistic liberalism

The central contention of this article is that contemporary liberal theory is without an account of what legitimates coercing those who reject liberalism that is consistent with its own stipulations of the conditions of political legitimacy. After exploring the nature of the liberal principle of legitimacy, and in particular how it is intended to function as a way of protecting individuals from domination and oppression by reconciling freedom and public law, the article considers four different possible accounts of what might legitimate coercing non-liberals. While some of them have independent plausibility, the article argues that none of them meets the requirements of liberal legitimacy. The final section of the article considers the implications of this theoretical gap for liberal theory more widely. The argument is made that liberalism must accept that even liberal politics will necessitate the oppressive use of coercive power, i.e. compelling people to live according to wills other than their own, and that insofar as this is a position central to the recent burgeoning literature on political realism, liberalism ought therefore to be more realist.

Assessing the global order: justice, legitimacy, or political justice?

Which standards should we employ to evaluate the global order? Should they be standards of justice or standards of legitimacy? In this article, I argue that liberal political theorists need not face this dilemma, because liberal justice and legitimacy are not distinct values. Rather, they indicate what the same value, i.e. equal respect for persons, demands of institutions under different sets of circumstances. I suggest that under real-world circumstances – characterized by conflicts and disagreements – equal respect demands basic-rights protection and democratic participation, which I here call ‘political justice’. I conclude the article by considering three possible configurations of the global order – the ‘democratic world-state’, ‘independent democratic states’, and ‘mixed’ models – and argue that a commitment to political justice speaks in favour of the latter.

Reciprocity as Mutual Recognition

Reciprocity as Mutual Recognition