Non-liberal Societies Research Articles

When political liberalism meets a communalist worldview: John Rawls and African view of human rights

Since the publication of his A Theory of Justice (TJ), John Rawls has revolutionized political philosophy in many ways, including the understanding of human rights. His theory of rights in TJ is drawn from a comprehensive liberal doctrine and is limited to the domestic society. However, his account of human rights developed in his last major work, The Law of Peoples, claims to be politically free standing, following the model of his Political Liberalism. For Rawls, human rights are necessary conditions for social cooperation. They are meant to serve as one of the principles of foreign policy of the reasonable liberal peoples, in their relations with non-liberal societies. Rawls believes that his category of human rights cannot be rejected by non-liberal peoples as parochial or particular to the Western tradition, because they are not based on any comprehensive doctrine. On the other hand, however, many African scholars have dismissed the current international human rights regime on the account of being too liberal, and not corresponding to the African communalist worldview. It is in that regard that The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and subsequent African human rights instruments were adopted to dress a list of human rights that take into account African history, civilization, and values. Thus, in three main sections, this article examines whether the Rawlsian account and the African view of human rights can enrich each other, or whether they are completely opposed.

Conspiracy Theories, Scepticism, and Non-Liberal Politics

ABSTRACT There has been much interest in conspiracy theories (CTs) amongst philosophers in recent years. The aim of this paper will be to apply some of the philosophical research to issues in political theory. I will first provide an overview of some of the philosophical discussions about CTs. While acknowledging that particularism is currently the dominant position in the literature, I will contend that the ‘undue scepticism problem’, a modified version of an argument put forward by Brian Keeley, is an important general objection to many CTs. This in turn leads to some substantial conclusions for liberal political philosophy, as the undue scepticism problem sets up a strong argument against non-liberal alternatives to liberal thought. I shall argue that we are justified in having far more doubt about the reliability of official sources in non-liberal societies, and it is legitimate to be more sceptical about claims designed to bolster non-liberal politics. Moreover, because scepticism is often more warranted in non-liberal societies, this may provide the possibility for the state to be stable, even if it is highly tyrannical or ineffective. These considerations are not intended to be decisive, but raise unresolved questions about the viability of non-liberal politics.

Unveiling the quasi-public-private partnership (QPPP): evidence from China’s environmental service sector

ABSTRACT Originating in neoliberal democracies, the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) is a common policy tool allowing governments to provide public service through collaboration. In some non-liberal societies, PPPs may take different forms and not squarely fit into the classic PPP category, which we label as ‘Quasi-PPPs’ (QPPPs). QPPPs provide important functions especially in economies in transition yet have received little academic attention. Here we propose a general definition of QPPPs as ‘partnerships between a government entity and a not-fully private entity’, and explore factors that influence the PPP-QPPP transition in non-liberal contexts, using the nascent Chinese eco-environmental service partnerships for a case analysis. Drawing on insights from a self-established dataset and interviews, we find that the PPP-QPPP transition involves two-steps: (1) the eco-environmental service partnerships, initially established as PPPs, became inoperable with inexperienced partners and unsupportive markets; (2) with state bailout, the private partner became a subordinated partner in an ‘SOE-private consortium’, and PPPs transitioned to QPPPs. QPPPs brought about two outcomes: hidden debts for the government and the private sector’s nationalization. We conclude that in a non-liberal society, when three critical PPP assumptions, namely competent partners, supportive market, and horizontal structure are violated, PPPs are more likely to transition to QPPPs.

Should a Decent Society become Liberal?

In a particular view, John Rawls’ theory has two components. First is “Political Liberalism” which applies to western societies that over the past centuries have established a democratic structure and adhere to the rule of law. However, this theory is not a “comprehensive conception” and not for every society, but it is associated with them in the second component of Rawls’ theory. This is presented in The Law of Peoples. In this book Rawls elaborates his theory regarding societies which lack a democratic heritage, yet are regarded as “Decent Societies” and have the potential to become liberal societies. In his view, by accepting a non-liberal societies into the Society of People, the non-liberal society will be encouraged to become liberal. In this article we consider the theory proposed in The Law of Peoples with reference to Iranian society.

The Second Part of the Ideal Theory of John Rawls in The Law of Peoples Transplanted and Revisited

John Rawls in the second part of his Ideal Theory as it is developed in the Law of the Peoples, argues that both liberal and non-liberal but decent people can still be considered to be people in good standing in a reasonable society of people and proposes the toleration of non-liberal but decent societies by the liberal ones. Within this framework, the current proposal will focus on the relationship between the ‘West’ and the Russian Federation as it has evolved after the collapse of the Soviet regime through recent developments on human rights protection and the regulation of the use of force or the “law of peace” as Rawls claims. The aim of this endeavor is twofold. First, to provide a critical assessment of liberal theories such as cosmopolitan constitutionalism, which promote a particular liberal understanding of global governance based on common values and universal goals. Second, to examine the potential but also limits of the Rawlsian theory of toleration towards the development of a more pluralistic normative analysis of the global order which will be neither utopian nor apologetic but one that will contribute into the realization of a “realistic utopia” between pure liberal and non-pure liberal states.

Reframing the Intercultural Dialogue on Human Rights: A Philosophical Approach by Jeffrey Flynn (review)

Reviewed by: Reframing the Intercultural Dialogue on Human Rights: A Philosophical Approach by Jeffrey Flynn Eva Erman (bio) Jeffrey Flynn, Reframing the Intercultural Dialogue on Human Rights: A Philosophical Approach (Routledge, 2013), 234 pages, ISBN 978-0-415706025. While questions of pluralism and toleration have impregnated almost all debates in political philosophy over the last decades—not least in relation to discussions about global justice and global democracy—the question of intercultural dialogue has received far less attention in comparison. Indeed, deliberative democracy has a stronger position than ever before. But focus among political theorists has been redirected from deliberation as dialogue and mutual understanding towards deliberation as contestation. In light of this change of focus, Jeffrey Flynn’s book Reframing the Intercultural Dialogue on Human Rights is a refreshing exception. Even if we tend to forget, individuals across the globe agree on norms and ways of conduct and this is as much a fact about our world as is pluralism. If there is one area of global affairs in the last sixty years that bears witness to this, it is the area of human rights. Still, among conceptions of human rights that are broadly labeled “political,”1 not much has been said about the role of intercultural dialogue for theorizing human rights. Working within this “political” human rights framework, Flynn sets out to do just that. According to Flynn, to the extent that theorists have stressed the need for intercultural dialogue to meet the challenges posed by cultural and religious pluralism, they have tended to presume an already developed theory of human rights. In his view, the problem with such an approach is that the question about intercultural dialogue immediately turns into a question about convincing others of a set of ready-made human rights. Instead, Flynn’s ambition is to make the very dialogue on human rights the object of philosophical inquiry. From this starting-point, it is not at all strange that Flynn finds a Habermasian framework attractive. He aims to demonstrate the strengths of Jürgen Habermas’ discourse theory for developing a dialogical approach to human rights over other contemporary approaches. Against the backdrop of a reframing of the so-called compatibility debates—i.e., the debates about how human rights can be made compatible with different religious doctrines—through a re-reading of the question of compatibility in contextualist and pragmatic terms, Flynn analyzes two attempts to accommodate [End Page 966] a non-ethnocentric perspective in providing a framework for an intercultural discussion of human rights, those of John Rawls and Charles Taylor. One of the merits of The Law of Peoples, according to Flynn, is Rawls’ effort to engage with non-Western perspectives in constructing an account of human rights. Motivated by a principled idea of toleration implied by the ideal of equal respect, Rawls primarily does so by exploring how willing liberal societies are to tolerate non-liberal societies, thus recognizing them as equal members of the Society of Peoples. In Flynn’s view, Rawls’ theory could be described as dialogical in at least one important respect: the second-level international original position is not only seen as a device for justifying principles of the Law of Peoples, but also as the point of view from which those principles are to be further interpreted and discussed among well-ordered societies.2 However, the problem for Flynn is that these deliberations are not targeted at the content and justification of human rights but only at different interpretations of a set of already defined human rights (indeed, as pointed out by Flynn, Rawls needs a detailed account of such rights in order to define what constitutes a “decent people” in the first place and thus be able to make the argument that liberal peoples ought to tolerate it). For this reason, Flynn argues, Rawls does not really engage non-Western perspectives, even though he takes them into consideration. Instead, he adopts what Flynn calls “the method of avoidance,” sweeping deeply disputed matters under the carpet. However, a genuinely dialogical approach to human rights must interpret equal respect not primarily as toleration in terms of passive acceptance of the other, according to Flynn, but in terms...

The shared pasts of solitary readers in China: connecting web use and changing political understanding through reading histories

This article complicates our understanding of the cultural and political impact of the internet in non-liberal societies by foregrounding people’s socially constituted reading practices across print and cyberspace. It places internet use in the context of both social and personal reading histories, as well as in the evolving cultural field across media. I examine the reading practices of 26 Chinese individuals, who developed alternative political understandings through their internet use. Their alternative views, I found, emerged not just through their engagement with the web but as a result of a longer history. Their distinct web use patterns have roots in their pre-internet reading practices. A specific reading disposition for ‘self-development’ may have led to their continuing divergence to niche reading materials as the domestic cultural field diversified. This reading disposition, I argue, prepares people to later engage with the internet in ways that facilitate changes in their political understandings.

Are Decent Non-Liberal Societies Really Non-Liberal? – A Critical Response to John Rawls’s The Law of Peoples

Are Decent Non-Liberal Societies Really Non-Liberal? – A Critical Response to John Rawls’s The Law of Peoples

Beyond Sectarianism? On David Miller’s Theory of Human Rights

In his most recent book, National Responsibility and Global Justice, David Miller presents an account of human rights grounded on the idea of basic human needs. Miller argues that his account can overcome what he regards as a central problem for human rights theory: the need to provide a ‘non-sectarian’ justification for human rights, one that does not rely on reasons that people from non-liberal societies should find objectionable. The list of human rights that Miller’s account generates is, however, minimal when compared to those found in human rights documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. This article argues that contrary to what Miller claims, his account is ‘sectarian’, since it relies on reasons that some non-liberals should find objectionable given their divergent values. It goes on to question whether ‘sectarianism’, as Miller defines it, is, in any case, a problem for human rights theory. The article concludes that Miller provides us with no reason to abandon commitment to a more extensive list of human rights.

"We have to transform ourselves first"

Multiculturalism has often been articulated through imperial and civilizational discourses that identify tolerance with the liberal West and intolerance with nonliberal societies and cultures. This article explores how the focus of the civilizational gaze is turned on the allegedly “not yet tolerant self“ in the neoliberal developmental state of South Korea. The mode of the liberal government that recently emerged in South Korea has been shaped not in the self-celebratory rhetoric of “what we are“ but in the self-critical, developmentalist rhetoric of “what we lack.“ Drawing from my fieldwork among local civic actors working in the field of migration, I discuss how the civic discourse of damunhwa, or “multiculturalism,“ that emerged in opposition to the “governmental objectification“ of migrant groups redirects the focus onto the ethical improvement of the general population, relying on another form of reified otherness that captures migrants and their presence in the country as “opportunities“ for South Korea's moral ventures.

Rawls, reasonableness, and international toleration

Rawls’s account of international toleration in The Law of Peoples has been the subject of vigorous critiques by critics who believe that he unacceptably dilutes the principles of his Law of Peoples in order to accommodate non-liberal societies. One important component in these critiques takes issue specifically with Rawls’s inclusion of certain non-liberal societies (‘decent peoples’) in the constituency of justification for the Law of Peoples. In Rawls’s defence, I argue that the explanation for the inclusion of decent peoples in the constituency of justification is not, as is standardly assumed, that they are the kind of societies that ought to be tolerated in that way on some prior conception of which kinds of societies ought to be tolerated in that way. The real explanation appeals to a methodological principle underlying Rawls’s approach to political justification, according to which liberals owe justification, as a matter of liberal principle, to those who comply with liberal principles for political institutions that apply to them. If such liberal principles can be complied with by agents who nevertheless cannot accept fully liberal justifications for those principles, then liberalism itself requires liberals to seek justifications which they can accept. This approach gives us a new way to view decent peoples: as just such agents, who are therefore owed a justification for the Law of Peoples that they can accept. Decency is thus a concept that is internal to liberal political justification at the international level. Reading Rawls in this way permits a coherent and attractive defence of his strategy of toleration and of his international theory as a whole.

Consensus not Constitutionalism: Fundamental Rights in EU law after Kadi

John Rawls in the second part of his Ideal Theory as it is developed in the Law of the Peoples, argues that both liberal and non-liberal but decent people can still be considered to be people in good standing in a reasonable society of people and proposes the toleration of non-liberal but decent societies by the liberal ones. Within this framework, the current proposal will focus on the relationship between the ‘West’ and the Russian Federation as it has evolved after the collapse of the Soviet regime through recent developments on human rights protection and the regulation of the use of force or the “law of peace” as Rawls claims. The aim of this endeavor is twofold. First, to provide a critical assessment of liberal theories such as cosmopolitan constitutionalism, which promote a particular liberal understanding of global governance based on common values and universal goals. Second, to examine the potential but also limits of the Rawlsian theory of toleration towards the development of a more pluralistic normative analysis of the global order which will be neither utopian nor apologetic but one that will contribute into the realization of a “realistic utopia” between pure liberal and non-pure liberal states.

International Toleration: Rawlsian versus Cosmopolitan

How should liberal societies respond to nonliberal ones? In this paper I examine John Rawls's conception of international toleration against what is sometimes called a cosmopolitan one. Rawls holds that a just international order should recognize certain nonliberal societies, to which he refers as decent peoples, as equal members in good standing in a just society of peoples. It would be a violation of liberalism's own principle of toleration to deny the international legitimacy of decent peoples who, among other things, affirm human rights and accept peaceful coexistence with other societies. According to the cosmopolitan idea of international toleration, on the contrary, only societies that are liberal in character meet the criteria for toleration. I suggest that, against the Rawlsian conception of international toleration, the cosmopolitan idea is more consistent with the fundamentals of liberal political morality. I then clarify the ways in which cosmopolitan toleration is not worryingly interventionist even as it is not altogether toothless; and I end with some reflections on why cosmopolitism is not morally imperialistic.

Civic respect, political liberalism, and non-liberal societies

One prominent criticism of John Rawls’s The Law of Peoples is that it treats certain non-liberal societies, what Rawls calls ‘decent hierarchical societies’, as equal participants in a just international system. Rawls claims that these non-liberal societies should be respected as equals by liberal democratic societies, even though they do not grant their citizens the basic rights of democratic citizenship. This is presented by Rawls as a consequence of liberalism’s commitment to the principle of toleration. A number of critics have claimed that Rawls’s treatment of these non-liberal societies is symptomatic of a more general problem with political liberalism, namely, its reliance on toleration as its ‘fundamental principle’. Against this view, I argue that the principle of toleration should not be understood as political liberalism’s ‘fundamental principle’. This is revealed through a consideration of the normative basis of what Rawls calls the ‘Liberal Principle of Legitimacy’. A correct understanding of political liberalism’s ‘fundamental principle’, which I claim is a principle of equal ‘civic respect’ for citizens, shows that Rawls’s toleration of non-liberal societies is in fact a misapplication of political liberalism to the global domain. Moreover, I explain that political liberalism must assert that the principle of equal civic respect for citizens is the correct principle to govern the public political relations of citizens in all pluralist societies, and that most ‘decent hierarchical societies’ are pluralist in nature. Identifying political liberalism’s fundamental principle as that of equal civic respect for citizens helps to render political liberalism, in both the domestic and international domains, a more coherent and compelling approach to thinking about fundamental political issues.

The Law of Peoples: The Old and the New

AbstractJohn Rawls produced two versions of the law of peoples: an article, published in 1993, and a book, published in 1999. Both versions defend basic human rights as a minimum requirement of a just law of peoples. However, in an apparent effort to strengthen his defense of this requirement, the argument changed. This paper examines the apparent difficulties that forced the changes and maintains that they still do not succeed in justifying basic human rights. The source of the difficulty, I argue, is Rawls’s reluctance to impose liberal values on nonliberal societies, and the imposition of such values, I suggest, is unavoidable if basic human rights are to be justified. Hence, if our best attempts to justify basic human rights ultimately show that appeals to liberal values are unavoidable, then we should regard such appeals as no more of an imposition than the expectation that all societies must protect basic human rights. Even more significantly, if such appeals justify liberal freedoms that go beyond basic human rights, then arguments in support of basic human rights would also justify international efforts to advance further liberal reforms within nonliberal societies.

Liberal Despotism: Population Planning, Subjectivity, and Government in Contemporary China

My title, Liberal Despotism, is a trope for oriental despotism. The image of oriental is a familiar one. As Hegel writes of oriental forms of government, the nations of the East knew only that one is free--that is, the sovereign. All others are subjects of sovereign power who must be governed through force and coercion. The hallmark of in this instance is that one is governed by others and not by oneself. The subject is at the mercy of caprice and not self-will. Whether for reasons of geography, culture, race, or a combination thereof, these subjects are considered to be either lacking the qualities for the practice of freedom or subject to oppression that inhibits the realization of that freedom. Indeed, it is possible that both situations may coexist; that is, due to oppression a subject may have no possible recourse to develop the capacity for freedom, but given appropriate opportunity, education, and training is nonetheless capable of becoming free (that is, an autonomous and rational individual) at some later point in time. Yet the notion of despotism appears oxymoronic. How can a doctrine that claims to uphold individual liberty and freedom possibly be construed as despotic? Recent studies that take as their point of departure Michel Foucault's notion of have argued that this duality (that is, the bifurcation of the population into subjects who govern themselves and those who are governed by others) within liberal reasoning is neither contradictory nor hypocritical. (1) Rather, they argue that the process of compartmentalizing populations into those that are expected to govern themselves and those that require some form of tutelage or coercion is constitutive of liberal reasoning itself. This article examines how governmentality studies and recent analyses of authoritarian modes of government both within liberal and nonliberal societies might relate to the study of the arts of government in contemporary China. The article takes as its primary focus of analysis recent developments in China's population-planning program. This program is an exemplary instance of the complexities of government and subjectivity in China insofar as it highlights how important aspects of the relationship between the state and the population have been conceived within Chinese governmental reasoning during the Maoist and Dengist eras and how, in the new circumstances of the market economy, that relationship is undergoing a process of conceptual and institutional reconfiguration. Since the early 1980s, the Chinese state itself has accorded the population-planning program the status of a fundamental state policy (jiben guoce) and regards the tasks of the program as crucial to the overall realization of development strategy for China. Given also that it touches upon the reproductive and familial lives of almost every subject in China, the population-planning program is well worthy of consideration as an instance of how Chinese subjects are both governed and resist being governed in the contemporary period. Furthermore, as the policy emphasis is explicitly placed upon rural China, the population-planning campaign also offers an opportunity to examine the crucial question of party/people relations (dangqun guanxi), (2) which goes to the heart of government concerns with maintaining social stability. The population-planning program has been the subject of much controversy primarily because it is seen as an imposition of state will upon target subjects without their consent. In so doing, critics of the population policy would seem to concur with Hegel's assessment that the central problem in this instance is the absence of self-determination upon the part of the target subject. The use of the term subject in this article carries two connotations. The first is the subject in the sense of one who is under the dominion or rule of a sovereign. (3) The second refers to the self-determining subject. …

Justice and Culture: Rawls, Sen, Acile Fabreo' Neill

Is it possible, in a multicultural world, to hold all societies to a common standard of decency that is both high enough to protect basic human interests, and yet not biased in the direction of particular cultural values? We examine the recent work of four liberals – John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum and Onora O' Neill – to see whether any of them has given a successful answer to this question. For Rawls, the decency standard is set by reference to an idea of basic human rights that we argue offers too little protection to members of non-liberal societies. Sen and Nussbaum both employ the idea of human capabilities, but in interestingly different ways: for Sen the problems are how to weight different capabilities, and how to decide which are basic, whereas for Nussbaum the difficulty is that her favoured list of capabilities depends on an appeal to autonomy that is unlikely to be acceptable to non-liberal cultures. O' Neill rejects a rights-based approach in favour of a neo-Kantian position that asks which principles of action people everywhere could consent to, but this also may be too weak in the face of cultural diversity. We conclude that liberals need to argue both for a minimum decency standard and for the full set of liberal rights as the best guarantors of that standard over time.

Toleration, Diversity, and Global Justice

In his book Toleration, Diversity, and Global Justice, Kok-Chor Tan challengesthe realist tradition's popularity and its assumption that the state ofnature is essentially immoral. Instead, he points to the growing role of internationalgovernment organizations ( e.g., the UN and the EU), which he statesindicate morality's global predominance. Centered on the premise of liberalism'sprimacy- as an ideology and a practice- the book focuses on the philosophicaltensions among liberals in terms of liberalism's meaning and scope.Two questions domjnate his analysis: First, what are the limits of liberaltoleration, and should liberal states tolerate or criticize nonliberal statesin the name of furthering liberalism? Second, is liberalism, based on theidea of individualism, compatible with collectivist cultures or societies?Within this context, the author examines liberalism's domestic and globalconsequences. Tan notes that if a society is formatted along the parametersof liberalism, then toleration and individualism compliment each other.However, as such compatibility does not exist in nonliberal states, the questionbecomes one of liberals' morality and responsibility in terms ofwhether such non liberal states should be tolerated.By posing this question, it appears that the author is alluding to theimplications of liberalism in the international front, namely, whether liberalstates have the jurisdiction to intervene in nonliberal states' matters ofdomestic jurisdiction. Another question is whether such intervention - indefense of individualism, morality, and autonomy - contradicts the veryessence of liberalism, namely, its commitment to autonomy even for nonliberalstates. The author phrases the question slightly differently by askingwhether liberalism's emphasis on autonomy (defined in individual terms)defines the limits of tolerating non liberal states.ln addressing the questions surrounding the moral imperative of liberalsvis-a-vis nonliberal societies and states, Tan distinguishes between twokinds of liberalism: political liberalism with an overriding emphasis on toleration(acceptance), and a comprehensive liberalism with an overridingemphasis on autonomy and individualism. In other words, those politicalliberals restrict their concerns only to those "uncontroversial concerns ofsociety." Instead, the concern is on the design of political institutions and, ...

Dehierarchization and Sustainable Development in Liberal and Non-liberal Societies

Modern societies appear to be going through a phase of dehierarchization, that is, a change in the way of governance of nation states, from direction of, to cooperation with, civil society; and in more general terms political pluralization, the emergence of “polities” other than the nation state. The paper argues that one of the most stressing problems of political pluralization is the co-existence of mutually effacing or contradictory systems of political norms. To tackle this problem of incompossibility, it has been suggested that policy teloi, shared conceptions giving direction to cooperative political ventures, in particular sustainable development, could be helpful. This article investigates whether sustainable development as a policy telos can tackle incompossibility, both in liberal (democratic) and non-liberal (democratic) societies. The paper concludes that its best chances of being temporarily successful lie in understanding it in the broadest sense possible—particularly if one values moral pluralism.