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Territory, Legitimacy and Liberalism in World Politics

Loren A. King

MIT, Department of Political Science

International Studies Association
March 1998

Prepared for presentation to the annual meeting of the International Studies Association in Minneapolis, MN, March 1998. The author is grateful to Karen Rothkin for helpful discussions and suggestions.

Abstract

Could world politics ever be governed by liberal values and genuinely representative democratic institutions? It has been suggested that the United Nations system is inadequate in part because of conflicting liberal commitments: to universal human rights, on the one hand; and a principle of national sovereignty and self-determination, on the other. I show how this tension arises in theory and practice, and I argue that a resolution depends on discarding the notion that the territorial boundaries and historical traditions (language and culture, race and ethnicity) of existing groups ('peoples,' 'nations') have anything other than instrumental importance. A consistent and desirable normative ideal that emerges from this analytic stance is, I argue, liberal and deeply individualistic. In world politics, the consistent liberal believes that a commitment to the equal basic rights of persons can, under reasonable conditions, override the commitment to member state sovereignty and the principle of noninterference. I frame the argument against the charge that a concern with basic human rights amounts to a form of cultural imperialism; and I show how a postmodern analytical stance with respect to the ontological and ethical contingency of the territorial nation-state can lead to a very modern liberalism in world politics.

The mystique of nations is to appear eternal, to seem like elemental features of the landscape itself. Yet the borders of a nation lay the mystique bare. There, you realize how unnatural, arbitrary and even absurd the division of the world into nations actually is.
- Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging

Introduction

Could world politics ever be governed by liberal values and genuinely representative democratic institutions? The United Nations system aspires to both, but falls far short of either ideal in practice. Recognizing this, a recent commentator (Wallerstein 1995) has argued that the present United Nations system is inadequate in part because of a deep conflict between two orienting liberal principles. On the one hand, the UN claims to be committed to a universal standard of human rights. But on the other hand, the UN charter also gives a great deal of weight to national sovereignty and to the right of peoples to self-determination (and much effort has been devoted lately to demonstrating that a concern with the rights of groups, and attention to their distinctive features, is in accord with liberal values 1 . But these two commitments will, it seems, conflict in just those cases where principled and coordinated inter-state cooperation is needed, to address threats to basic human rights in places where sovereignty is contested, and where competing claims to sovereign authority may be the very cause of profound human misery. A commitment to equal personal rights can, under reasonable conditions, conflict with a commitment to nation-state sovereignty.

Add to this conceptual tension the tendency of governments to pursue shortsighted perceptions of their own interests in foreign relations, and there is little reason for confidence that world politics could ever be guided by a shared standard of justice and attendant institutions. Rather, the history of the United Nations has often been a history of cooptation by powerful national interests, making the UN little more than a tool for the foreign policies of the United States and, to a lesser degree, European members of the security council. This is why, for instance, the Korean war in the 1950's, and more recently Iraq's annexation of Kuwait, both became prominent UN issues demanding decisive and forceful action; while China's activities in Tibet, Indonesia's invasion of East Timor (and subsequent acts of brutal suppression and ethnic discrimination), and Kurdish resistance in Northern Iraq did not. The historical persistence of institutional capture since the UN's inception hints at the primacy of national self-interest, not liberal norms, in world politics. And this in turn buttresses the realist observation that fundamental interests in national security and considerations of military capabilities are the principal motivations of states.

The realist observation serves as a vital reminder that the traditional nation-state has very real powers and interests. Security and relative power are vital concerns, and they explain a great deal of what governments in fact do. My aim, however, is not explanatory, but normative. And the primary task of normative theory is not to explain, but to clarify and prescribe, within the bounds of what is reasonably possible. 2 Prescriptive argument demands commitments of an explanatory nature, to be sure: for instance, liberal arguments about justice and citizenship often appeal to assumptions and explanations drawn from decision and game theory in making a case for the desirability and feasibility of the principles and institutions being prescribed. 3 A normative theory of justice that is wildly at odds with our understandings of cause and effect in the world will be of little prescriptive value.

And I hope to show that some basic ethical principles can in fact govern the relations of states; that a normative model of inter-state cooperation through liberal norms and democratic governance is reasonably possible to formulate and implement. A venerable realist charge against liberalism in world politics is that its prescriptions are unrealistic and utopian, confusing the relationship between ethical and political through excessively abstract rationalism (Carr 1946), and proceeding from incorrect assumptions about human motivation, the structure of the state, and the causes of war (Waltz 1959, 85-120). I want to argue here that such realist scepticism, although justified, is nonetheless overstated.

To make a case for liberalism as a distinctly normative ideal of world politics I will address the conceptual problem detailed at the outset, i.e. of conflicting liberal principles in the UN system. And this conceptual issue is not without practical relevance: if we are clearer on just what our ethical commitments are, we will be better able to implement policy and design institutions that secure these commitments, binding their members to common goals and interests, and preventing self-interested institutional capture by powerful members. A crucial step towards such understanding is sorting out what principles a liberal can consistently hold and reasonably expect others to accept in world affairs, particularly in light of economic realities and considerations of national and regional security.

In the next two sections I show how the conflict between liberal principles emerges in theory and practice. I then argue in the remaining sections that resolving the conflict between liberal commitments in world politics requires discarding the prevailing explanatory commitment to the idea that territorial boundaries and historical traditions (i.e. language and culture, race and ethnicity) of existing groups (i.e. 'peoples,' 'nations,' nation-states) have anything other than instrumental importance.

In an important sense the realist shares this critical stance, doubting any deep ethical significance to nation-states, but giving them causal significance chiefly by virtue of military and economic capabilities. But the realist then goes on to deny (or at least strongly doubt) that deliberations of an ethical sort can have much relevance in inter-state affairs more generally. It is this move that the liberal finds problematic. The liberal -- while accepting the realist position that the importance of the nation-state is contingent on economic and military power and historical outcomes -- is not so quick to dismiss the relevance of this sceptical position to ethical prescription in world politics. Instead, the liberal believes that, because the existing boundaries of nation-states have no intrinsic and unconditional ethical significance, the distinction between domestic and external affairs cannot be determined prior to considering the specific issues and circumstances at hand.

The liberal, although conceding the practical importance of the territorial nation-state, does not assume that this importance leads to the conclusion that states must always (or even typically) be treated as unitary moral actors, demanding a strong presumption of respect. But this scepticism with the ethical status of the state does not exhaust the liberal's interests in ethical argument. The liberal moves to consider conflicting claims of groups and persons within certain territories and traditions (cultural, ethnic, linguistic) on a case-by-case basis, guided by a liberal concern with the dignity and autonomy of persons, and only derivatively groups, such as cultures, 'nations' and states.

In world politics, the consistent liberal believes that a commitment to the equal basic rights of persons can, under reasonable conditions, override the commitment to member state sovereignty and the principle of noninterference. I frame the argument against the charge that a concern with basic human rights amounts to a form of cultural imperialism, and conclude by considering some of the institutional proposals that might follow from the liberal stance I defend.

If liberalism is to be institutionalized in something like the United Nations, it must accept a scheme of basic human rights as binding across particular political, economic and cultural boundaries. This is arguably a form of political and cultural imperialism; however, this is the gambit consistent liberals must accept if they are to institutionalize their political values beyond their own particular communities and associations. But the possibilities for interpreting the basic rights of persons are broad and inclusive, and so the imposition on other cultures and traditions is minimal, and may in fact be necessary to further a deeper mutual respect among the bearers of different cultures and traditions.

Or so I shall argue, showing how a postmodern concern with the ambiguous and contested relationships between territory, legitimacy and identity can lead to a very modern liberalism as a normative ideal of world politics.

Liberalism

What is liberalism? The term is open to many interpretations, both philosophical and historical. In the most abstract terms, liberal thought and practice are united by a concern for the equal freedoms of autonomous agents; persons who can reason about the goals and aspirations they adopt or formulate; and then pursue these ends given their knowledge of the world, and the presence of other, similarly endowed and motivated agents.

If personal freedom is a basic liberal ideal, some form of equality is both a motivating assumption and complimentary ideal: equal freedoms of persons are a motivation for persons to agree upon the forms of political association they will share, and a rough equality of freedoms is itself an end of political associaton. Modern political theorists have characterized the existent and/or desirable equality of politically relevant freedoms in different ways: for Hobbes, it is a feature of his hypthesized state of nature that a rough equality of physical and mental powers prevails; similarly for Locke, the state of nature is characterized by an equal freedom to interpret and execute the natural laws, which reason allows us to grasp (Locke 1690, sections 4-8, 61, 63, and 87-88). For Rawls (1971), as for Locke, the empirial fact of equality that matters to politics is the equal potential of all persons to possess a minimum power of reason suitable to the duties of citizenship. For Rawls and other modern liberals, recognition of this basic equality of persons butresses the normative ideal of realizing, in governing institutions and attendant distributions of resources and opportunities, the roughly equal powers of citizens to pursue goals and aspirations that they freely affirm; this might be described as the equal capabilities of people to live their lives 'from within' (Kymlicka 1989). Beginning from the presumed fact of politically relevant equality of persons -- and the attendant aspiration of realizing equal freedoms of citizens to form and pursue interests and attachments in the world -- liberal theories of the state attempt to show how cooperation can be achieved, and conflict between competing parties mediated in terms of values and rules that each agent could reasonably be expected to agree to.

Beginning with the contract theories of Locke and Rousseau, and particularly in Locke's account of the conditionality of political authority upon the consent of the people (Locke 1690, sections 95-104 and 119-131), the idea of democracy begins to emerge as a distinctly liberal institution to coordinate the mutual forfeitures of certain individual freedoms in pursuit of collective benefits which require social order and cooperation. These benefits arise from institutions the legitimacy of which is somehow linked to the wills of free and equal individuals.

The question of how some individual freedoms are to be balanced against majority sentiments is a central theme in liberal democratic theory. Rousseau tried to resolve the matter by positing a general will which could be identified by the deliberations of individuals about public matters, arriving at their judgments concerning the common good in their capacities not as private citizens with particular interests, but as legislators of laws working towards the common good, laws to which all citizens (including themselves) would be bound. Rawls, following Kant, has developed the idea further by conceiving of legitimate institutions as those which follow from principles of justice which any rational agent would assent to, without reflection upon their particular abilities, interests and desires.

To summarize: 'Liberalism' thus denotes a set of principles and institutions oriented towards the needs and interests of rational and reasonable individual agents. By 'agents' I mean persons who have some minimum capability to recognize their own needs, to formulate or adopt values and aspirations of their own, and to recognize and interact with others. By 'rational' I mean that these agents are capable of observing and learning; and, given the knowledge they gain about their world, and about the interests and actions of others therein, these agents plan their own actions in pursuit of their needs and interests. And finally, by 'reasonable' I follow Rawls in describing a recognition, by rational agents, of their social embeddedness (Rawls 1993, 48-54; also, Sibley 1953). For Rawls, the reasonableness of agents describes their commitment to some form of social cooperation. The problem for rational agents who are reasonable is not whether to form a social union. Rather, the necessity of some sort of social order is accepted by reasonable agents, and the question is instead how such agents, if they are rational, should structure their relations with each other. What is to be the form of the state? What are to be the constraints we place upon our personal liberties in the interests of equality and mutual security? These are the central political concerns of liberal democracy, and the condition of reasonableness suggests the importance of justification in public life: citizens advance claims with the expectation that they may be called upon by others to justify themselves in terms that others could reasonably accept as legitimate, others who may disagree deeply with our specific beliefs and aspirations (Cohen 1989; and Gutmann and Thompson 1996, chapters 1-2).

I will take this as an uncontroversial (if exceedingly abstract) formulation of a normative ideal of liberalism: associations of rational and reasonable agents, who recognize one another's basic equality with respect to politically relevant powers of reasoning; who cooperate in formulating laws and constructing institutions for mutual gain, including the mediation of conflicts among private citizens, and the provision of personal security and necessary public goods. Within this abstract framework, there are classes of basic rights to which all citizens ought to have an equal claim. First, this liberal ideal demands an equality of basic material and psychological needs, such as adequate nutrition, shelter and basic education. 4 Second, equal freedoms of association, expression, and belief. And third, a fair equality of access to the institutions of public life. 5

Conflicting Liberal Commitments

The United Nations has, since its inception, imperfectly reflected this abstract and multifaceted liberal ideal, and at least the first of the three classes of attendant basic rights, i.e. the right of all persons to fundamental material and social needs. But the UN charter proceeded from the contestable supposition that nation-states could be treated as agents ('citizens' of a sort) in a political association of states, coordinating activities and mediating disputes in a shared world where many pressing problems (military conflicts, poverty, migration and environmental change) are not limited to any one country or geographic region.

Universal human rights were clearly important under the UN charter, but the concern for personal rights coincided historically with a concerns that groups of people be allowed to choose their own destinies, without interference from other peoples or governments. After all, if we are concerned with the basic equality of persons to live freely according to their own beliefs and traditions, then the right of these persons to govern themselves as they see fit follows directly from this committment. And historically this progression in public attitudes (if not often government policies) -- from the basic rights of persons to the right of self-determination for peoples -- was motivated by the collapse of colonialism.

Throughout the nineteenth century up until after the second world war, European powers controlled populations and resources throughout Africa and Asia, imposing institutions and extracting labor and materials in ways that were at odds with liberal concerns for equal personal freedoms and the consent of the governed. The writings of Joseph Conrad (1902) and Frantz Fanon (1961), among others, made clear the hypocrisy of supposedly liberal states holding foreign colonies, demonstrating how imperial institutions in Africa and Asia worked against the interests of those ruled, subverting their traditions and values, and denying them genuine freedom to decide on their own ways of life. Soon after its institution, and with the oppressive legacies of colonialism apparent to all, the United Nations made the principle of national sovereignty a powerful constraint upon the ability of member states to impose their collective decisions on other states.

But this dual commitment to individual rights and state sovereignty privileges the political status quo in many states to the detriment of other groups therein, which may find themselves severely and systematically disadvantaged by current political arrangements, or oppressed by the dominant ethnic, religious or linguistic traditions privileged by the prevailng regime. But if challenged on their abuses of dissenting citizens or minority groups within their borders, existing governments can appeal to the importance of state sovereignty, and their right to self-determination without external interference. It may also be argued that the moral weight attached to statehood under the UN charter distorts political incentives in ethnically, racially and culturally plural regions. Because sovereign states are granted a privileged status under the UN charter, rival groups in a region have an incentive to demand recognition as a 'people' deserving a state, rather than seeking out alternative political solutions for regional coexistence. On this argument, even the politics of relatively durable federal systems in plural societies -- such as Canada and Belgium -- are affected by the privileging of sovereign statehood in the world system, as linguistic and ethnic groups vie for secession and independent statehood rather than working towards more equitable and responsive federal arrangements. And in poor and divided post-colonial states, the principle of sovereignty underlying the UN system has arguably subsidized inept, inefficient and often-brutal regimes by treating them as more unified and self-sustaining than they in fact are (Jackson 1990).

The difficulty, of course, is that nation-states are never really homogenous actors, no matter how hard they try to be. In times of peace and prosperity, some nations can do a passable job of achieving (or conveying the appearance of) social and political homogeneity, at least so far as their role in international affairs is concerned. But for poor nation-states under less than stable conditions, the pretence of national unity often breaks down, and it is just these cases that often invoke UN concern. Indeed the most conspicuous failures of the UN in recent times (Somalia, Bosnia), and one of its modest, if now-ambiguous successes (recent Cambodian elections), have involved 'nations' which are heterogenous on several politically volatile dimensions, such as religion, ethnicity and language.

Clearly, rights of 'nations' and 'peoples' to self-determination can, under reasonable conditions, conflict with a universal standard of basic human rights. In the face of these sorts of conflicts, I want to argue in the remaining sections that a consistent and desirable (liberal) course of action for the UN system is to accept the gambit of cultural and political imperialism by endorsing and, when necessary, defending some minimal standard of universal human rights as binding in world politics.

The tensions in the present system should lead the consistent liberal to endorse certain basic human rights as attaching to persons regardless of the groups they are bound up in. Which is to say that, when faced with a tension between claims of basic human rights and the rights of existing states not to be interfered with in their domestic affairs, the consistent liberal should not be averse to putting aside the principle of national sovereignty, and advancing a universal standard of basic human rights. This normative stance needn't warrant explicit intervention in every or even most cases of apparent conflict between individual rights and group claims; but it should be the unambiguous ethical position of the consistent liberal in world politics. I will make the argument by engaging with the issue of whether human rights are an objectionable form of cultural imperialism.

Are 'Human Rights' Cultural Imperialism?

Some scholars and politicians are nervous with any such move towards the primacy of individualist 'rights talk' in inter-state affairs, believing that human rights are a distinctly 'Western' cultural construct, resting uneasily with the cultural histories of non-Western communities. Nor are the motives of governments necessarily benign when they appeal to human rights, especially when they see the possibility of economic and political gain from interfering in the affairs of other countries. Human rights are, on this view, just one more excuse for Western imperialism --- cultural, economic and military.

There is certainly something to the charge that human rights appeals by affluent Western countries may be insincere, concealing economic and political agendas quite independent of a liberal concern for freedom and equality. While affluent and purportedly liberal governments cite lofty principles, they are sometimes simultaneously subverting other less-powerful and less-wealthy regimes. For instance, U.S. concerns over human rights abuses have never appeared strong enough to hinder lucrative trading relationships (in weapons, oil and other goods) with oppressive governments in Indonesia, China and Saudi Arabia. And despite a stated concern for fostering freedom and democracy overseas, U.S. interventions in the Americas do not appear to have been guided by these liberal concerns, but rather with a singleminded resolve to protect American investments, and to subvert socialist policies in the Americas, even if these policies emerge from democratic procedures. To this and related ends, the U.S. has subverted democratically elected governments, and ignored the brutality and incompetence of the regimes they have helped to put in power. 6

However, an integral part of institutionalizing a consistent liberal ethic in world politics is to provide mechanisms to monitor all member states and groups, and to ascertain the sincerity of complaints by some parties based on alleged human rights abuses by others. The issue of sincerity requires practical attention to institutional design and performance, not philosophical reflection on basic principles.

But consider the first part of the objection, namely that liberal 'rights-talk' is a cultural construct of 'the West,' ill-suited to other cultural traditions. What is the liberal to make of this charge?

The liberal is sceptical of the implied assumption that cultural traditions and political norms and institutions somehow 'fit together' in ways that cannot be challenged from outside of these traditions and institutions. The liberal accepts that her strong valuation of personal freedoms of belief, expression and association commits her to a presumption that some governments ought to be respected as speaking on behalf of their citizens. But the simple fact that a government holds power over its citizens does not necessarily entitle it to unconditional respect in this way. A government's authority is legitimate to the extent that it arises out of the free consent of its citizens, although this consent may be mediated through institutions that are not directly consensual, but which are themselves such that citizens do (or would reasonably be expected to) accept their legitimacy. Mere claims to a tradition of authority over peoples and territory is not sufficient to earn the liberal's respect. Important (to the liberal's assessment of claims to sovereignty and a right to noninterference) are: how these traditions of authority arose, how they maintain the privileged positions of those who rule, and what their consequences are for the well-being of those ruled.

Furthermore, the liberal doubts that the boundaries of many social groups -- especially 'nations' and states -- are intrinsically significant from an ethical point of view. And so the liberal is doubtful of the utility, in most cases, of conceiving of territorial nation-states as 'moral agents' in the sense that liberal principles require. The liberal may believe in some deep ethical constants, but the unity, stability and unconditional desirability of particular nation-states are not among them. 'Nation-states' are, instead, mere accidents of history, without much more ethical significance than the color of one's hair, the religious and cultural attachments we hold to be valuable, or the economic arrangements we find to be most effective in meeting our needs and wants.

This is not to say that these accidents of history cannot be of profound importance; nor that they cannot be defended on instrumental grounds; but they are important to the lives of individuals, shaping the identities of particular persons -- their interests, beliefs and aspirations.

If asked to defend this view of the nation-state, its origins and significance, the liberal (versed in political philosophy, and historical work on European state-formation and the origins of nationalism) would likely reply by first citing Rousseau's idea that accidents of history -- and the habits of day-to-day life that proceed from them -- give rise to the deep significance placed on differing traits, habits, social roles, languages and attachments to specific places (Rousseau 1754). She might then refer to Charles Tilly's historically nuanced work on the economic and politico-military tensions that gave rise to the rough form of modern European states, and their justifications in terms of national identities (Tilly 1992 and 1994). Perhaps also the liberal would mention Benedict Anderson's study of the material-organizational, technological and conceptual-intellectual preconditions of national identity and corresponding political organization (Anderson 1983); and she may cite as a case in point the political construction of the unitary French 'nation' and state, as detailed by Eugen Weber (1976). 7

A few words about what isn't being argued here. Most importantly, the liberal, in presenting a normative ideal of world politics, does not dispute the practical importance of territorial states in providing public goods (i.e. roads, currency, regulation of products and services), including security against both external and internal threats (i.e. military and police forces). Nor does the liberal dispute that the historical and cultural contingencies of state- and identity-formation may lead to personal values and attachments that matter a great deal to those situated within these territories and traditions. Cultural heritage and national identity certainly matter to many of those raised within specific cultures and nations, and the liberal does not deny the value of these traditions and attachents to those who do in fact value them.

But the liberal does not reify the nation-state on account of its expedience, and she is committed to the view that contingent histories and cultural heritages matter most for individuals rather than for groups. The liberal is here simply asserting her working assumption that the human individual is the basic unit of ethical and political deliberation and action. And however strong national, cultural and religious attachments may be, they are still the attachments of individuals. Their strength and persistence alone do nothing to challenge the liberal's individualist stance.

Rights, Cultures and Irreducibly Social Goods

Now before continuing I want to consider a strong challenge to the generality of the individualist posture I've taken here. Charles Taylor (1990) cites the pervasive contextual character of linguistic and cultural traditions as making them irreducibly social goods. It doesn't make sense, he argues, to view the background of historically constructed meanings and conventions -- as embodied in language and cultural traditions -- as things which can ultimately be decomposed into the goods of specific persons. Rather, they are indivisible and irreducibly social, not only in practice, but in principle.

The distinction between irreducibility in practice and in principle is critical: in the literature on public goods (against which Taylor frames his argument) there are many sorts of shared resources and services that are in principle divisible, and to which access could conceivably be limited, but which in practice can be jointly used and from which exclusion is difficult or impossible. Taylor considers one such good: a dam blocking a river, perhaps also providing hydroelectric power. Once the dam is provided, there are positive externalities that are difficult to regulate access to: for instance, everyone downstream is protected from seasonal flooding, whether or not they actually contribute to the cost of the dam's construction. Now in principle, each individual could provide this good for themselves. In practice, however, this may be difficult or impossible (i.e. buttessing a single house against a raging torrent), or woefully inefficient (i.e. each household along the river drawing electrical power through their own turbine systems).

Taylor argues that the goods of cultural and linguistic traditions are not really goods of this sort. For most people, most of the time, these goods are irreducibly social. Which is to say that they only exist as shared goods, so much so that even the language of 'goods' seems awkward in referring to them. They form a background context of shared symbols, conventions and meanings against which so much of our lives -- our ambitions, our beliefs, even our most casual conversations with friends and strangers -- make any sense at all. To make this point clear Taylor follows Wittgenstein in asking us to imagine the genesis and evolution of a private language, and points out the futility of the exercise. Specific speech acts are carried out by individuals, to be sure; but they draw upon a web of conventions that are cumulative: they arise over long stretches of time, and through repeated encounters among many speakers. As such, the 'good' of a linguistic tradition cannot be mapped onto the thoughts, actions and interests of any one speaker. Such contexts of meaning are irreducibly social, and Taylor thinks that, insofar as much of culture is bound up in language, so are cultural contexts.

Does Taylor's argument challenge the position I've been advancing here? If cultural traditions are largely irreducible to the terms of individual rights claims, doesn't this make it difficult to argue that cultural and related nationistic claims only matter insofar as they respect individual rights? And if irreducibly social webs of background meanings, symbols and conventions are established through long and complex historical processes, surely their relevance to politics shouldn't be dismissed lighty. After all, if language and culture are as Taylor says they are, then changing from one set of background conditions to another is rather more different than, say, moving from one toll road or police jurisdiction to another.

Cultural and linguistic traditions are built over long stetches of human history. And our beliefs, interests and aspirations are framed in language and often in terms of our cultural traditions. For these two reasons, we might expect specific political institutions, traditions of right and authority, to emerge naturally from these embedded traditions, but in ways that cannot easily be changed to conform with liberal sensibilities. In short, culture and politics may be bound up in ways that the liberal misunderstands: just as culture and language are bound together in rich and historically conditioned ways, so are culture and political norms and institutions.

Although I find much to agree with in Taylor's analysis of language and its irreducibly social character, his argument doesn't really challenge the individualistic ethical stance I've been presenting. Rather, it simply confirms what the historically-aware liberal suspected was true anyways, namely that there are very strong reasons why individuals value their language and culture, and these count as reasons why we should -- if we respect others as deliberative and potentially reasonable moral agents -- take very seriously their professed attachments to particular places, practices and traditions. As Taylor himself implies, taking seriously the (irreducibly social) ties of others doesn't necessarily preclude the possibility (or desirability) of mutual exchanges of ideas, opinions and traditions, although it does seem to commit us to the probability that our own horizons of meaning and value may be transformed significantly through this process of mutual exploration and exchange (Taylor 1992, 67-73; also, see Beitz 1979, 17-19). 8 That some features of cultural traditions may, for many people, be irreducibly social and not amenable to a calculus of individual interests and rights claims, doesn't make them ontologically fixed or ethically sacrosanct in their present forms.

What the liberal wants to guard against is the use of this empirical fact (i.e. of the irreducibly social character of some shared practices and experiences, and the deep embeddedness of many persons in the traditions, values and language they are born and raised into) to justify particular power relations as being outside the bounds of reasonable debate. And this stance follows from a scepticism that specific power relations ever really flow naturally from cultural traditions or the basic constitutive social practices (such as language) that we are embedded within, rather than from the self-serving interests of elites. 9

But is this scepticism warranted? After all, doesn't the ubiquity of ethnic, religious and linguistic identities in political movements and conflicts around the world suggest that these identities (and the 'nations' they are bound up with) are intrinsic to politics, and so to world affairs? Indeed, the resurgence of identity-based conflicts -- for instance, ethnic and religious nationalisms in former Soviet and Yugoslav republics, and in post-colonial states throughout Africa and Asia; and persistent conflicts over language and sovereignty in Canada, Belgium, Slovakia and Romania -- seems to suggest that forces of modernization do little to undermine the political salience of what one prominent anthropologist has referred to as 'primordial sentiments,' i.e. affective solidaristic ties of ethnicity and culture (Geertz 1963).

In his early work on modernization, Geertz was voicing a popular view of the day: modernization was understood in the post-war years as a tendency towards liberal values, democratic institutions, and industrial, market-based forms of economic activity. And it was widely believed that forces of modernization would work to reduce the political salience of ties to race, ethnicity, language and religion (e.g. Lerner 1958). But these traditional forms of group solidarity remain important features of politics throughout the modern world (Horowitz 1986; Diamond and Plattner, eds. 1994; Spinner 1994; Kymlicka 1995). And scholars continue to debate the sufficiency of liberal political thought and practice to account for and accomodate these and related forms of identity and solidarity. 10

Scepticism about Identity Politics

Is the ubiquity of identity-based politics and attendant nationalisms enough to render plausible the assertions that: (a) some form of nationalism (ethnic, cultural or linguistic) is a necessary feature of politics; and (b) ethical principles may not be portable across cultural traditions and their distinctive politics? 11

I remain agnostic on the truth of each of these assertions. But what conflI will argue is that the mere persistence of identity politics does not support either assertion. Rather, both propositions are undermined by the fact that languages, religions and shared symbols and stories are, in important ways, constructs of politics. And the political demands of specific 'national' groups can, in several prominent cases, be in large part attributed to elite sub-groups playing at state-building and rent-seeking. This vindicates at least one reading of the modernization thesis: in an increasingly global, market-led industrial system, the political imperatives of economic interests will overshadow the political importance of ethnic and cultural ties. This in turn undermines the strength of arguments that appeal to the presence of a shared language, religion and/or ethnicity in calling for a strong presumption of legitimacy attending to noninterference demands of existing governments.

One recent commentator on the political relevance of cultural ties, Will Kymlicka, presents the case of Quebec as refuting the modernization thesis. In Quebec, far-reaching changes in the economic structure of Quebec society and political leadership have coincided with increased separatist sentiments based upon Quebec's distinctive language and culture. And Kymlicka also notes the similar coincidence of liberalization and nationalism among Belgium's Flemish population. Kymlicka takes these two cases to be evidence that ties of language and culture are not diminished by the forces of liberalization and industrialization in the modern world (Kymlicka 1995, 86-106).

But others interpret the Belgian and related cases differently. In the case of Flemish and Walloon nationalism, one commentator argues that different rates of industrialization and comparative affluence are behind changes in the strengths of nationalist sentiment among Belgium's two major linguistic and cultural groups (Mughan 1979; and also Zolberg 1974). This resonates with Peter Gourevitch's argument that increases in the political salience of ethnic features (religion, language) in the politics of plural societies can in large measure be accounted for by regional disparities in economic affluence and dynamism, paired with weak central political authority over the regions (Gourevitch 1979). 12

Which interpretation is correct? Does the persistence of nationalism in the face of modernizing forces suggest that certain forms of group identity are intrinsic to politics? Or is this simply evidence that regional elites can be remarkably effective in manipulating public sentiments? Both interpretations are plausible. Elite claims must have some basis in the actual experiences of those whom they hope to persuade. This is especially so in countries where freedom of expression and a vigorous independent press help to identify and correct flagrant misrepresentations. And elite power and coherence are tempered by any number of factors, including prior public opinions and prevailing norms and institutions.

And the political demands of distinct groups, although perhaps arising out of elite interests and activities, are still important. Elites can lead mass movements towards more responsive political institutions and greater regional affluence, to the benefit of region at large. But of course the opposite is also true: elite manipulation of popular sentiments can undermine and abuse democratic institutions, and can generate the sorts of senseless and bloody conflicts we have seen recently in the former Yugoslavia.

The relationships between various dimensions of identity and political interests are complex and contested: language and religion, race and ethnicity, culture (understood broadly) are obviously not irrelevant to politics; but nor do these domains of identity necessarily have a value that can be divorced from the political interests of regional elites.

Which is not to undermine the importance of continuing efforts to identify and explain the ways in which group identities are constructed and given coherent voice, often against political arrangements that ignore or undervalue specific features of the group in question. Liberals should applaud emancipatory uses of cultural and other identities, even if they can be attributed in part to the self-interested actions of elites.

But although political and economic interests can shape group identities in ways that the liberal supports (i.e. social movements against racist or authoritarian regimes), these interests can also manipulate identities in ways that undermine liberal intentions and imperil fair democratic politics (i.e. the use of cultural symbols and ethnic identities to foster hatred and brutality in the service of narrow political and economic interests of regional elites, as in the former Yugoslavia). The fact that certain forms of group identity remain prominent throughout the world should not lead us to underestimate the degree to which elite interests in economic advantage and legitimate authority can determine the content of nationalist appeals to linguistic, ethnic and cultural identities.

And if the relationship between features of group identity (language, ethnicity, religion) and politics is historically contingent, causally ambiguous, and often contested, then the move to defend the sovereignty of particular political practices against external criticism -- on the basis of the unique and privileged connection between historical traditions and political arrangements -- is itself open to serious doubt.

Needs, Priorities and Rights

But a critic of universal human rights could reasonably argue that some personal rights (for instance, rights to freedom of expression and association) only make sense given a certain level of material affluence. And in less-affluent countries, it may be necessary to curtail the personal rights of citizens so as to ensure economic reform and growth. With affluence will come the freedoms that more stringent rights-schemes can protect; but until then, governments interested in the welfare of their citizens ought to curtail personal freedoms where necessary to secure the means to sustained economic development. And Western governments seem to acknowledge this tacitly: when economic interests have conflicted with human rights concerns, the latter have rarely prevailed in the foreign policies of North American and European nations. What western states have tended to stress are distinctly economic rights of individuals, such as rights to ownership and exchange of private property. Human rights abuses are acceptable to Western governments, it seems, so long as they are (a) in some other country (although this condition is rather flexible), and more importantly, (b) do not interfere with mechanisms of industrial production and market exchange.

This argument raises the contentious empirical issue of whether authoritarian governments are in fact more adept at achieving and sustaining economic development than regimes with liberal and democratic inclinations. Little conclusive evidence has been amassed in support of the 'authoritarian development' conjecture. 13

Indeed the liberal thinks that, regardless of its stated goals, an oppressive state will develop vested interests in maintaining its coercive power, and will then seek to maintain its position of authority. The very coercive mechanisms by which these states achieve their economic goals insulate them from the political demands that follow from the economic freedoms they allow. The separation of economic and political freedoms by means of state force makes transition from economic freedoms to political freedoms unlikely without catastrophic internal rebellion or external intervention.

Given these uncertainties about the capabilities and agendas of authoritarian states, the issue here for the liberal is whether other states should listen to, and act upon, internal calls for political and cultural freedoms from within authoritarian states (such as China and Myanmar); or instead respect the sovereignty of the states that suppress these internal voices, ostensibly in the long-term interests of all of their citizens.

The liberal we have been considering need not take a principled stand on the claim that personal freedoms are in important ways contingent upon economic circumstances. Nor, as we saw in the previous section, does the liberal deny that specific cultural traditions can and often do matter deeply to the people raised into them; nor that the value of these traditions may not be readily amenable to a calculus of individual interests.

But the liberal is deeply sceptical of any government which uses either the controversial empirical conjecture considered here (i.e. that personal freedoms of conscience, expression and association presuppose economic affluence), or the irreducibly social character of culture (considered in the previous section), as justifications for suppressing individual freedoms, in the interest either of overall improvements in citizens' quality of life, or the preservation of specific features of a given culture.

The liberal, remembering the inconsistencies of purportedly liberal regimes such as France and England in the eighteenth and ninetheenth centuries, and the United States in its subversive covert activities in the Americas in this century, will be wary of any argument by which government representatives claim to know what is best for their citizens. And since the liberal knows that, although irreducibly social, cultures are nonetheless dynamic and internally contested, the second argument (that suppression of freedom is required for cultural integrity) will also fail to persuade.

Concluding Remarks

If the idea of the United Nations is to be salvaged as useful for furthering peace and well-being among the world's peoples, then it must rest upon strong individualist liberal foundations; a liberalism that is sensitive to the nuances of specific histories (cultural, ethnic, linguistic, religious), but which nonetheless takes the rational and reasonable person -- not the 'nation,' 'culture,' or 'peoples' -- as the ultimate locus of moral agency.

This does not mean that UN-sanctioned forces should intervene whenever there are perceived abuses of one person's or group's interpretation of basic human rights; but it does mean that, in its role as a more or less impartial arbiter of disputes between groups of people, the individual -- rather than the community or state -- should be considered as the primary bearer of rights and freedoms.

Which is not to say that groups (communities, firms, 'nations') cannot claim and possess rights to freedoms and resources. It is to say, however, that such group rights must be framed in terms of the well-being of human individuals. 14 Under the proposed liberal scheme, claims to group or national rights will come under the scrutiny of democratic inter-state agencies and fora that will dismiss as invalid any claim to group rights that cannot ultimately be framed with reference to the well-being of the persons that make up the group in question.

This may seem to be a weak and easily exploitable condition, but it can be rendered much stronger with provisions for effective and independent monitoring agencies to ensure that claims to group rights do not end up exploiting or oppressing some individuals within the group to the systematic advantage of others. Genuinely proportional representation is essential to this end, where proportionality may be determined in terms of either population or, for regional issues, intensity of vested interests in the matter at hand, which could in turn be determined by a democratically-appointed impartial review committee. Clearly the issue of fair representation raises the likelihood of intractability, but as with existing federal democracies in Canada and Europe, authority could be devolved to quasi-autonomous regional bodies, for which more equal and effective representation will not threaten deadlock as often as a more authoritative and democratic general assembly might.

Also necessary would be a mandate to intervene -- either through sanctions or indirect military involvement -- if claims to national sovereignty or group rights are (in the democratically determined opinion of other UN member states and groups) serving as a shield for internal oppression and self-serving tyranny. It is here that issues of representation and intractability seem most critical, and most difficult to address. If a simple majority vote in the general assembly would seem to be the most democratic way of deciding on interventionist activities, it is also the most likely to be fraught with dispute, as some parties question the authority of a majority decision over issues on which interests may be more intense for one or several member states. Traditionally, however, limiting intervention decisions to a security council of powerful and influential member states has instead led to interventions that would clearly not have been sanctioned, or at least not pursued in the same way, by a more representative security council. A possible solution might be a system whereby security council membership is not fixed, but is rather determined, on an issue-by-issue basis, through regional committees which are themselves approved by the general assembly.

And perhaps most importantly, these impartial monitoring and limited enforcement capabilities, in order to avoid excessive capture by influential members, must have an independent and secure source of funding, such as a modified Tobin tax on global air traffic or financial transactions -- however controversial -- would ensure.

These are, of course, proposals with far-reaching implications, and some groups or governments may argue that as such they have no place being imposed upon those who do not accept them, whether or not we agree with their reasons for dismissing them. To this the liberal can only respond that proposals of this sort follow from her normative stance, and that values -- whatever they may be, and even if they are, in important ways, bound up with irreducibly social features of communities -- in the end only really make sense to individuals, who inherit them from previous generations, interpret and articulate them, and act with respect to them. And if interventionist consequences follow from assuming that the well-being of individuals matters regardless of the specific content of their cultures or beliefs, then this is a consequence that liberals must accept.

I stress that this does not mean liberals should advance policies and interventions without due sensitivity to the historical, cultural contingencies of those involved, nor in ways that threaten to mock a liberal concern with the dignity and autonomy of persons. For instance, Michael Ignatieff has (invoking Conrad) argued recently that a lesson to be drawn from the North American and European responses to the crisis in the former Yugoslavia is that contradictions -- between liberal pretenses of multiethnic unity, and the severe economic climate and divisive political legacies of the Balkan region -- were glossed over by the 'seductiveness of moral disgust.' This in turn prompted ill-conceived and ambiguous UN efforts, doomed to failure and frustration, much as Conrad's Kurz was driven to madness and horror when the realities of his circumstances conflicted so obviously with his abstract (but internally inconsistent) ideal, i.e. of imperial domination as the betterment of uncivilized peoples. This is the captivating and troubling image with which Ignatieff begins his argument:

The ferocious rapacity of Kurz' search for ivory is ennobled in his own eyes by his plans to bring civilization to the savages. In the end of course, this ideal redeems nothing at all. When Marlow finds Kurz, at the final bend of the river, all there is to show of Kurz' civilizing mission is a row of native heads stuck on pikes and the tattered remains of Kurz' concluding report to the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs, on the final page of which the delirious Kurz had scribbled, 'Exterminate all the Brutes!' (Ignatieff 1995, 77).

There is here a basic lesson which liberals must never forget: a commitment to moral universalism can easily degenerate into contemptuous and illiberal imposition of ideas, values and traditions upon others, without due regard for the autonomy and dignity of persons that was the original intent of the universalist stance in the first place. 15

But I've argued here that the liberal's commitment to moral universalism needn't demand ignorance, the distortion of history, or smug ethnocentrism. The liberal accepts that her move to ground inter-state liberalism upon individualistic assumptions will involve, however indirectly, the imposition of a particular scheme of values on other persons, other traditions. But she also believes that some values must be agreed upon if meaningful cooperation between groups of persons can ensue, and as such she sees the individualistic assumption (of moral agency inhering primarily in human persons, and only contingently in groups) as being a very minimal imposition. And for the purposes of inter-state cooperation, this is as inclusive and impartial as liberals can hope to be. Without this first step, this initial convergence on a basic scheme of values, deeper shared understandings and cooperation simply cannot be sustained.

References

Notes:

Note 1: For instance, see Kymlicka 1989 and 1995; the contributions to Baker 1994; and also, see Tamir 1993. Back.

Note 2: Despite an interesting recent attempt to formulate a distinctly explanatory liberal theory of international relations (Moravcsik 1997), I think such efforts miss the point: liberalism has always has been at its most powerful when it draws upon empirical assumptions and causal models in the service of ethical evaluation and prescription. There is no need to demand of liberal theory that it subsume and extend the explanatory theories it draws upon. Back.

Note 3: An example: in arguing for the difference principle in his Theory of Justice, Rawls draws on results and ideas in the theory of rational choice under uncertainty. He does so to make his case for maximin, the risk-averse choice rule which, Rawls argues, would guide deliberation of rational parties who must decide, together, on the basic institutional structure of society, but under conditions which make it impossible for any one of them to reliably estimate the likelihood of their ending up in a given social position; see Rawls 1971, 150-83. Back.

Note 4: See Rawls (1971). On the ubiquity of certain basic material and social needs, and the importance of rights to their satisfaction, another formulation is Dasgupta's (1993, chapters 1-3). Nussbaum (1992) offers a rich and persuasive account of what a culturally nonspecific theory of basic human needs might look like, and how it may be framed in ways attentive to, and able to accomodate, the richness of human diversity, biological and social. Back.

Note 5: For instance, in his influential Theory of Justice, Rawls offers two principles for the just ordering of society. The first principle requires a fundamental equality of the sorts of basic material and social goods just described. The second principle allows inequalities in resources and opportunities only if they are arranged such that ``they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity'' (Rawls 1971, 83). Condition (b) ensures that background conditions of inequality do not forclose opportunities to those well-qualified for them, while condition (a) ensures that political and economic arrangements do not ``establish and secure the more attractive prospects of those better off unless doing so is to the advantage of those less fortunate'' (1971, 75). For another account of the sorts of equal rights appropriate to a just liberal order, see Sen (1994), who doesn't think that Rawls's characterization of equality (i.e. in terms of our access to primary goods) is sensitive enough to myriad factors which may limit our command over the resources and opportunities that are in principle available to us. And so Sen outlines an account of equality more attentive to the distinction between formal means and actual capabilities. But see Cohen (1995) on the practical difficulties with Sen's `capabilities' approach as an alternative to the equality of primary goods which Rawls's theory demands. Back.

Note 6: I have in mind U.S.-funded or otherwise-supported operations to subvert elected representatives in the Honduras in 1954; in Chile, culminating in the fall of the Allende government to Pinochet's bloody coup in 1973; Nicaragua since the mid-nineteenth century, and most recently through the 1980's, as the Reagan administration supported the Contra resistance to the socialist Sandinista government (an interesting analysis of the latter two cases, from a deliberative-democratic perspective, is provided by Gutmann and Thompson 1996, 117-21); and the extended history of U.S. interferences in Panama, most recently culminating in `Operation Just Cause' in 1989, a U.S. invasion which cost thousands of civilian lives and resulted in extensive property damage, despite repeated denials and underestimates by the U.S. Department of Defense. Back.

Note 7: Also, see Friedman 1979; and North 1981 for similar sensitivity to the material-economic correlates of state formation. Back.

Note 8: This resonates with recent arguments about the linkages between deliberation and legitimacy, and the role of deliberative exchanges in shaping interests and expectations of citizens; see Habermas 1976, chapter 5; Cohen 1989; and Bohman 1990. Back.

Note 9: Indeed, as an aside: it could be argued that language and culture are genuinely public goods, over which private property rights can be neither meaningfully defined or enforced (Dasgupta 1993, 143 implies this position). Consumption of these goods really is such that the benefits derived by any one user do not alter the quantity or quality of the good for others. And exclusion from a language or culture doesn't seem plausible, unless some authority structure is intrinsic to a language or culture, authority to decide on who may or may not have access. But this would involve defining and enforcing access rights, which Taylor suggests is incoherent. So one might be inclined to think that Taylor's argument, although not really supportive in any way, is at least consonant with the liberal's suspicion that that languages and cultures do not have authority structures that flow naturally from them, rather than by historical convention and contestation. Back.

Note 10: That liberals misunderstand the political salience of personal attachments to communities and their distinctive traditions, has been argued by MacIntyre 1981; Sandel 1982; and Taylor 1989, chapter 3. Others point out that, in spite of ideals of impartiality and equality, liberalism ends up privileging some traits, symbols and practices over others, and thus reconstitutes historical privileges that are, according to liberals themselves, ethically and politically arbitrary; see Young 1990; and Mehta 1990. And in failing to understand the origins and depth of certain identities, some critics worry that liberal toleration of illiberal beliefs and practices may undermine liberal intentions and imperil fair democratic procedures; see Mouffe 1993. Liberal political theorists have engaged each of these concerns to varying degrees: see Okin 1989; Kymlicka 1989 and 1995; Moon 1993; Rawls 1993; and Spinner 1994; each of whom try to extend liberalism to accomodate various forms of personal and group difference. Back.

Note 11: This section draws heavily on a companion article (King 1997) which examines these issues in more detail. Back.

Note 12: Also, see Laitin (1989), who puts Gourevitch's model to use in accounting for elite efforts to revive Catalan language and culture in Spain. Back.

Note 13: See Przeworski and Limongi 1993 for a critical review and assessment. Furthermore, there is the obvious concern that, even if some measure of affluence and sustainable economic development is acheived by a regime that curtails personal freedoms, a government accustomed to extensive authority over citizens may not wish to forfeit that power, even once it has achieved its explicit or implicit mandate of achieving widespread affluence for its citizens. Instead the regime will, in the interests of maintaining its authority, work hard to sustain the separation it has created and enforced between economic and political freedoms.\footnote Recent developments in China seem to support this suspicion, where slowly expanding economic freedoms for firms and workers rest uneasily with continued suppression by the communist regime of unapproved political expression and association. Back.

Note 14: This is, incidently, the position advanced in a prominent recent liberal argument for group rights, i.e. that they ought typically to be rights of persons by virtue of membership in a specific group, not rights of groups distinct from their members; see Kymlicka 1995, 34-48. Back.

Note 15: This concern resonates with Waltz's critique of interventionist liberals such as Guiseppe Mazzini and Woodrow Wilson; see Waltz 1959, 103-14. Back.