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Liberal Realism: A Liberal Response to the Realist Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2011

Matt Sleat
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Abstract

In recent years a powerful body of literature has emerged that challenges contemporary liberal thought on a series of related fronts, which can usefully be described as “realist.” This article focuses on the realist criticism of the dominant liberal account of legitimacy and explores the possibility of developing a political theory that can overcome this challenge while remaining distinctively liberal (hence “liberal realism”). Drawing on the work of a wide range of thinkers who fall outside of the standard Rawlsian tradition in contemporary liberal thinking, the article pursues three different directions in which a theory of liberal realism might be developed—negative, minimal, and partisan—and explores the advantages and shortcomings of each. It attempts to further demonstrate the salience and force of the realist challenge to liberal legitimacy and the need for liberalism to develop an adequate response to it, and offers some proposals concerning the appropriate theoretical framework for doing so.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 73 , Issue 3 , Summer 2011 , pp. 469 - 496
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2011

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References

1 It should be noted at the outset that the “realism” and “realists” that I am discussing in this article are not those who will be familiar to international relations theorists (i.e., Hans J. Morgenthau, E. H. Carr, et al.). Undoubtedly there are similar concerns and themes that might link their work, and the connection between the two bodies of literature could prove to be an interesting study. However, none of the authors I am concerned with here see themselves as developing or drawing upon this existing literature. More importantly, the target of the realists I shall discuss here is different from those of international relations theory, as the latter's concern is with the nature of the political relationship between persons of the same state as it features in contemporary liberal theory rather than between states.

2 Williams, Bernard, In the Beginning Was the Deed (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

3 Stears, Marc, “Liberalism and the Politics of Compulsion,” British Journal of Political Science 37 (July 2007): 533–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Galston, William, “Realism in Political Theory,” European Journal of Political Theory 9 (Oct. 2010): 385–411CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 The only other attempt to engage directly with the realist challenge and defend liberalism against it (that I am aware of) can be found in Kelly, Paul, Liberalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2005)Google Scholar, chap. 6.

5 Two exceptions to this are Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed, and Geuss, Raymond, Philosophy and Real Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, both of whom describe their theories as “realist.”

6 Waldron, Jeremy, “Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism,” Philosophical Quarterly 37, no. 147 (1987): 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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9 See, for example, Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political, trans. Schwab, George (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Mouffe, Chantal, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 2005)Google Scholar; Mouffe, Chantal, On the Political (London: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar.

10 Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed, 17.

11 Newey, Glen, After Politics: The Rejection of Politics in Contemporary Liberal Philosophy (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 7–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Stears, “Liberalism and the Politics of Compulsion,” 545.

13 Ibid., 542.

14 Honig, Bonnie, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (New York: Cornell University Press, 1993), 7Google Scholar. Newey likewise writes that political theory is “anti-political, to the extent that it aims at deriving philosophically a set of principles, enacted through institutions and procedures, which if implemented would herald the end of politics” (Newey, After Politics, 7). And Philp states that “institutional design is a matter of politics; it is not an activity insulated from it. As such it cannot provide an Archimedean point for structuring the political domain” (Philp, Mark, Political Conduct [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007], 95Google Scholar).

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21 One possible reason why this might be is that the relationship between reasonable and unreasonable persons is not, strictly speaking, a political one in contemporary liberal theory insofar as the latter individuals do not endorse the constitutional essentials that are the subject of widespread agreement. If this is right, then the relationship between the reasonable and unreasonable is not a concern that falls within the remit of a political theorist.

22 A separate (nonrealist) reason for thinking that political liberalism's abandonment of unanimity and move to majoritarianism is problematic is provided by Bernard Manin. Though one can certainly identify a strand of liberal thought that seems to take a majority decision to be the basis of legitimacy rather than unanimity (e.g., Sieyès or Rousseau), Manin persuasively argues that this strategy only succeeds by assuming that majority be considered equivalent to unanimity for the purposes of political legitimacy. As such, unanimity remains the true source of legitimacy despite the outward appearance that majoritarianism is sufficient (Manin, Bernard, “On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation,” Political Theory 15 [1987]: 341–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

23 Stears, “Liberalism and the Politics of Compulsion,” 552.

24 This means that in what follows I am seeking to identify resources for responding to the realist challenge that will require me to sometimes make the theorists I discuss speak to problems that they themselves were not necessarily addressing. This is most evident in the case of Shklar's liberalism of fear, which is certainly not an attempt to solve this (or any) problem with liberal legitimacy, but is probably best described as an attempt to redescribe the basis of our commitment to liberal institutions. (I am grateful to Dr. Derek Edyvane for this point.)

25 Shklar, Judith N., “The Liberalism of Fear,” in Judith N. Shklar: Political Thought and Political Thinkers, ed. Hoffman, S. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 3Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., 10–11.

27 Rorty, Richard, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, xv.

28 Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed, 59.

29 Shklar, “Liberalism of Fear,” 11. See also Shklar, Judith N., Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1984), 8Google Scholar, where she describes cruelty as “the willful inflicting of physical pain on a weaker being in order to cause anguish and fear.”

30 Shklar, “Liberalism of Fear,” 11.

31 Ibid., 11.

32 Ibid., 3.

33 Ibid., 18–19.

34 See, for example, Walzer, Michael, “On Negative Politics,” in Liberalism without Illusions: Essays on Liberal Theory and the Political Vision of Judith N. Shklar, ed. Yack, B. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 17–24Google Scholar; and Amy Gutmann, “How Limited Is Liberal Government?,” in Liberalism without Illusions, 64–81.

35 See Shklar, Ordinary Vices.

36 Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 88–95.

37 See, for example, Rorty, Richard, “Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality,” in Philosophical Papers, vol. 3, Truth and Progress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 167–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Shklar, “Liberalism of Fear,” 8. In Ordinary Vices Shklar says that “liberal democracy becomes more a recipe for survival than a project for the perfectibility of mankind” (4). Cf. Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed, 61: “It [liberalism of fear] asks … how secure what has been secured is. It is disposed not to be too sanguine about that, particularly since it remembers to look beyond national boundaries. It is conscious that nothing is safe, that the task is never ending. This part of its being, as Judith Shklar said, is resolutely nonutopian. But that does not mean that it is simply the politics of pessimism which has not collapsed into the politics of cynicism … it can be, in good times, the politics of hope as well.”

39 Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed, 3.

40 Ibid.

41 See Sleat, Matt, “Bernard Williams and the Possibility of a Realist Political Theory,” European Journal of Political Theory 9 (Oct. 2010): 485–503CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 This way of distinguishing between the negative and minimal justificatory strategies might lead to the suspicion that the resources I have drawn upon to develop the former, the liberalism of fear, could equally be employed in the service of developing the latter also. This might indeed be possible with Shkalr's theory and certainly is with Williams's insofar as he seeks to connect what he calls the basic legitimation demand, that the state secure the preconditions of peace, trust, cooperation, and so forth, with an account of the liberalism of fear. However, my intention here is not to set out a new typology of liberalisms (negative, minimal, and partisan) that enables us to organize all existing liberal theories into distinct and discrete categories. Rather the aim is to explore three different general theoretical strategies for a theory of liberal realism and, as such, it may indeed be the case that certain theories could provide resources for reflecting upon and developing more than one of these approaches. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for encouraging me to clarify this point.

43 Hampshire, Stuart, Justice Is Conflict (London: Duckworth, 1999)Google Scholar.

44 See, for example, Mouffe, The Return of the Political and On the Political.

45 Bellamy, Richard, Liberalism and Pluralism: Towards a Politics of Compromise (London: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar.

46 For other favorable liberal accounts of modus vivendi see McCabe, David, Modus Vivendi Liberalism: Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Neal, Patrick, “Vulgar Liberalism,” Political Theory 21, no. 4 (1993): 623–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Gray, John, Two Faces of Liberalism (New York: New Press, 2000), 2Google Scholar.

48 Ibid., 6.

49 Ibid., 6.

50 Patrick Neal does something similar although he seeks to differentiate modus vivendi, or what he calls “vulgar,” liberalism from the neutral liberalism exemplified by Rawls, Larmore, Dworkin, and Ackerman and the ideal-based model of thinkers such as Raz and the earlier work of William Galston. See Neal, “Vulgar Liberalism.”

51 Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism, 134. See also Gray, John, “Where Pluralists and Liberals Part Company,” in Pluralism: The Philosophy and Politics of Diversity, ed. Baghramian, M. and Ingram, A. (London: Routledge, 2000), 85–102Google Scholar.

52 Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism, 34.

53 Ibid., 5–6.

54 McCabe, Modus Vivendi Liberalism, 126.

55 McCabe asks, “what ensures that the liberal state will result from this approach [sc. the actual deliberations of citizens seeking to reach a mutually acceptable compromise]? The answer is: nothing” (ibid., 160).

56 Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism, 133.

57 Ibid., 20.

58 Ibid., 8. McCabe likewise believes that modus vivendi is committed to what he calls “minimal moral universalism,” though for him this is given by “a core set of human rights which the MVL [modus vivendi liberal] state is committed to protect and which draw the limits of the tolerable” (Modus Vivendi Liberalism, 138).

59 Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism, 8.

60 Ibid., 111.

61 See, for example, ibid., 21.

62 Hardy, Henry, “Taking Pluralism Seriously,” in The One and the Many: Reading Isaiah Berlin, ed. Crowder, G. and Hardy, H. (New York: Prometheus Books, 2007), 289Google Scholar.

63 Ibid., 292.

64 See Horton, John, “John Gray and the Political Theory of Modus Vivendi,” in The Political Theory of John Gray, ed. Horton, J. and Newey, G. (London: Routledge, 2007), 47Google Scholar.

65 William A. Galston, “Must Value Pluralism and Religious Belief Collide?,” in The One and the Many, 251–62; Michael Jinkins, “Pluralism and Religious Faith,” in The One and the Many, 263–78.

66 Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism, 135.

67 See, for example, Larmore, Charles, “The Moral Basis of Political Liberalism,” Journal of Philosophy 96 (1999): 599–625CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Though Rawls goes further than Larmore in dismissing such disagreement as “unreasonable” and therefore not of a kind that liberalism need concern itself with.

69 Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, chap. 4.

70 See, for example, Rorty, Richard, “Relativism: Finding and Making,” in Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin, 1999)Google Scholar, xvi–xxxii; Rorty, introduction to Truth and Progress, 1–15.

71 See, for example, Kelly, Erin and McPherson, Lionel, “On Tolerating the Unreasonable,” Journal of Political Philosophy 9 (2001): 38–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Friedman, Marilyn, “John Rawls and the Political Coercion of Unreasonable Persons,” in The Idea of a Political Liberalism: Essays on John Rawls, ed. Davion, Victoria and Wolf, Clark (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 16–33Google Scholar.

72 Quong, Jonathan, “The Rights of Unreasonable Citizens,” Journal of Political Philosophy 12 (Sept. 2004): 314–335CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 Stears, “Liberalism and the Politics of Compulsion,” 535.

74 I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting the term “mixed mode” for this account.