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The Modern and the Political Pluralist Perspectives on Political Authorities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2018

Yann Allard-Tremblay
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Abstract

I contrast two perspectives adopted to theorize political authorities. The first is the modern perspective. It conceives of political society as a civic union of free and equal citizens and regards the state as the political organization of this society. This perspective is primarily concerned with the principles that should govern the use of state power. The second is the political pluralist perspective. It recognizes a multiplicity of normative orders as equally legitimate. The focus is put on the civic processes by which a diverse citizenry should negotiate its interactions. I illustrate these perspectives by considering how they approach diversity, and more specifically the political claims of indigenous peoples. The pluralist perspective is argued to be normatively motivated by a consideration for the actual freedom of citizens to sustain diverse normative orders, to negotiate the structure of political society, and to jointly search for justice.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 80 , Issue 4 , Fall 2018 , pp. 675 - 700
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2018 

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Footnotes

This work was supported by the financial support of the Fonds de Recherche du Québec—Société et Culture. I would like to thank Victor Muñiz-Fraticelli and Daniel Weinstock, and especially Jacob T. Levy for his support.

References

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17 I follow Tully in using the term “modern” to describe this perspective, but this usage is independently supported when we consider the extent to which modern thinkers have vilified what they called “irregular republics” in which unsubordinated political authorities are “like wormes in the entrayles of a naturall man” (Hobbes, Thomas, Hobbes's Leviathan [Oxford: Clarendon, 1929], 257Google Scholar). See also Pufendorf, Samuel, On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 142, 144Google Scholar.

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29 Patten, Equal Recognition, 9. See also Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 116–17, 120.

30 Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 118; Owen, David and Tully, James, “Redistribution and Recognition: Two Approaches,” in Multiculturalism and Political Theory, ed. Laden, Anthony Simon and Owen, David (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 283Google Scholar; Tully, James, “The Struggles of Indigenous Peoples for and of Freedom,” in Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ed. Ivison, Duncan, Patton, Paul, and Sanders, Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 36–60Google Scholar.

31 Iris Marion Young, “Structural Injustice and the Politics of Difference,” in Laden and Owen, Multiculturalism and Political Theory, 86–87.

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36 Owen and Tully, “Redistribution and Recognition.”

37 Ibid., 266.

38 Honig, Bonnie, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

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54 Weinstock, “Liberalism,” 261. Note in passing the use of the possessive “its.”

55 I wrote those two last sentences before encountering this one: “in the pluralistic view of the State, there are … ‘real losses and real losers,’ in the clashing of its parts; nor do these add mysteriously to the splendour of the whole” (Laski, Studies, 11).

56 Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 181–82; Young, “Self-Determination,” 140.

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59 This manner of extending the case of indigenous peoples to make sense of issues of diversity may seem problematic: indigenous peoples typically appeal to decolonization as a ground for their distinct political status. It is because they were forcefully and unjustly incorporated that they demand and would be entitled to self-government. In affirming that what matters is the strength of their present-day attachment, I would be at odds with the strategies they themselves adopt.

Yet decolonization without present-day attachments is meaningless: self-government to a colonized people that does not form a distinct normative order and that does not attract normative commitment is like extending self-government to a people that does not exist. It is because indigenous peoples have present-day attachments that sustain their distinct normative orders, and because colonialization was and is still an attack on the ability of indigenous peoples to live in accordance with their own normative orders, that we can make sense of their political claims to decolonization and that it may give rise to a right to self-government.

But once decolonization is no longer seen as sufficient or necessary to support the claims of indigenous peoples, religious groups and other associations having strong present-day attachments are on par with indigenous peoples for political standing. This might seem odd, but it is a consequence of the pluralist assumptions. Political authority is no more than the authority exercised by an entity, or settlements achieved following the interactions of such entities, that attracts normative commitments extending to the authoritative direction of human conduct.

60 Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 184.

61 It can also be concerned with offering suggestions that will themselves be the object of a political assessment. See Owen and Tully, “Redistribution and Recognition,” 266.

62 Laden, “Negotiation,” 201.

63 Owen and Tully, “Redistribution and Recognition,” 266.

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66 See the notion of jurisgenerative communities in Cover, “Nomos and Narrative.” See also Tully's discussion of freedom based on Arendt in Tully, “Agonic Freedom,” 162.

67 Cover, “Nomos and Narrative,” 18.

68 Coulthard, Glen, “Beyond Recognition: Indigenous Self-Determination as Prefigurative Practice,” in Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence, and Protection of Indigenous Nations, ed. Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake (Winnipeg: ARP Books, 2008), 194Google Scholar.

69 Ibid., 195. See also Alfred, Taiaiake, Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (Peterborough: Broadview, 2005)Google Scholar; Corntassel, Jeff, “Toward Sustainable Self-Determination: Rethinking the Contemporary Indigenous-Rights Discourse,” Alternatives 33 (2008): 105–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Corntassel, Jeff, “Re-envisioning Resurgence: Indigenous Pathways to Decolonization and Sustainable Self-Determination,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 86–101Google Scholar.

70 Krog, Antjie, Begging to Be Black (Cape Town: Penguin Random House South Africa, 2009), 156Google Scholar.

71 Williams, In the Beginning, 71.

72 Young, “Self-Determination”; Tully, “Agonic Freedom”; Tully, “On Global Citizenship.”

73 A referee raises this relevant worry: following people's actual freedom, we might have to consider the self-government rights of indigenous peoples as on par with those of the Ku Klux Klan. Putting aside that the KKK seeks domination, this worry nevertheless misinterprets the point advanced here. The point is not that we should, as the modern perspective would have it, exercise authority so as to extend self-government rights. It is that we better account for people's freedom and thus make better sense of the political world by interpreting these groups as already self-governing. What this entails is that if Klan members are coercively prevented from living in accordance with their normative commitments, we should recognize that this is a loss for them in terms of freedom. It also means that were negotiations on terms of governance to take place, again ignoring the dominating nature of the group, the resulting arrangements may be an expression of people's freedom while most imposed arrangements, following, say, a theoretical conception of liberty of association, would be coercive. An appeal to liberty of association to legitimately coerce the KKK divides freedom from the ways in which people actually exercise their freedom; it seems to entail that people can be forced to be free. We make better sense of the situation by recognizing forced compliance for what it is.