What can political freedom mean in a multicultural democracy? On deliberation, difference, and democratic governance

Political Theory

Volumn 39, Issue 4, 2011, Pages 468-497

  Hayward, Clarissa Rile ^a  

^a WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Deliberation; Democracy; Domination; Freedom; Recognition

Indexed keywords

EID: 79960475144     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: 15527476     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591711408245     Document Type: Article

References (102)

1. Face-to-face deliberative fora, e.g., or rights to group self-government.
2. Literary traditions, e.g., linguistic practices, and black churches and educational institutions. On "linked fate, " see Michael Dawson, Behind the Mule: Race and Class in American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
3. On being identified by others, see Iris Marion Young, "Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship, " Ethics 99, no. 2 (January 1989): 250-74.
4. Every identity group is characterized by internal differentiation, not only because members are unique individuals, but also because they are members of other identity-groups. The experiences, perspectives, and needs of middle-class African American men thus differ from those of poor African American women, e.g., notwithstanding the fact that African Americans as a group-regardless of gender, social class, and other forms of internal differentiation-share the experience of being subjected to racial discrimination.
5. Hawley Fogg-Davis, "The Racial Retreat of Contemporary Political Theory, " Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 3 (September 2003): 555-564, here 557.
6. See Clarissa Hayward, "Making Interest: On Representation and Democratic Legitimacy, " in Political Representation, ed. Ian Shapiro, Susan Stokes, Elizabeth Jean Wood, and Alexander Kirshner (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 111-35, on which this discussion draws.
7. For a comprehensive treatment of this understanding of democratic politics, see Robert Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
8. Important statements of this position include Seyla Benhabib, "Toward a Deliberative Model of Democratic Legitimacy, " in Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. Seyla Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 67-96.
9. Jon Elster, "The Market and the Forum: Three Varieties of Political Theory, " in Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, ed. James Bohman and William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 3-34.
10. Jürgen Habermas, "Three Normative Models of Democracy, " in Democracy and Difference, 21-30.
11. and Bernard Manin, "On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation, " Political Theory 15, no. 3 (August 1987): 338-68.
12. This principle is sometimes called the "principle of affected interest. " Dahl's early formulation of the principle reads, "Everyone who is affected by the decisions of a government should have the right to participate in that government. " Robert Dahl, After the Revolution? Authority in a Good Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 49.
13. His later "principle of equal consideration of interests" emphasizes that equal weight should be given to the interests of all affected by a collective decision. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, 85-86.
14. For a critical discussion of various interpretations of the principle, see Robert Goodin, "Enfranchising All Affected Interests, and Its Alternatives, " Philosophy and Public Affairs 35, no. 1 (2007): 40-68.
15. Elster, "The Market and the Forum. "
16. Of course, the American metropolis is home to more than two racialized groups, none of which is internally homogenous. Although I illustrate with this simplified example, the logic of the argument can be extended to multiple groups structured around racial (and other) relations of power.
17. The term "descriptive representation" is from Hanna Pitkin, who is famously ambivalent toward this form of representation. See Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967), chap. 4.
18. For compelling arguments in favor of descriptive representation, see Suzanne Dovi, "Preferable Descriptive Representatives: Will Just Any Woman, Black, or Latino Do?" American Political Science Review 96, no. 4 (December 2002): 729-43.
19. Jane Mansbridge, "Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent 'Yes,'" Journal of Politics 61, no. 3 (August 1999): 628-57.
20. Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
21. Melissa Williams, Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).
22. and Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), chap. 6.
23. See Williams, Voice, Trust, and Memory.
24. Mansbridge, "Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women?".
25. Mansbridge, "Rethinking Representation, " American Political Science Review 97, no. 4 (November 2003): 515-28.
26. and Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference.
27. Charles Taylor, "The Politics of Recognition, " in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 25.
28. See also Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 1995).
29. Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 165.
30. See also Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
31. and Joseph Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and Politics (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1994).
32. Other liberal multiculturalists emphasize other liberal values. For Chandran Kukathas, e.g., not autonomy, but neutrality and freedom of association, are key. See Chandran Kukathas, "Are There Any Cultural Rights?, " Political Theory 20, no. 1 (February 1992):105-39.
33. and Chandran Kukathas, The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007).
34. See Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference.
35. and Young, "Polity and Group Difference. "
36. E.g., in the case of the 1987 proposed Meech amendment to the Canadian Charter of Rights, Charles Taylor makes the case for recognizing the French-speaking linguistic minority by permitting Quebec to restrict some of the individual freedoms granted by the Charter to all Canadian citizens. See Charles Taylor, "The Politics of Recognition. "
37. On "differentiated citizenship, " see Young, "Polity and Group Difference. " For Young's normative vision of a "heterogeneous public, " see Iris Young, "Together in Difference: Transforming the Logic of Group Conflict, " in Principled Positions: Postmodernism and the Rediscovery of Value, ed. Judith Squires (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1993), 121-50.
38. Young, "Together in Difference, " 135, emphasis added.
39. One of the principal differences between "national minorities" and "ethnic groups, " by Kymlicka's view, is that the former often aim to maintain their national distinctiveness, while the latter often seek to assimilate. See Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, especially chap. 2.
40. Forceful statements of this view include Margaret Kohn, "Language, Power, and Persuasion: Toward a Critique of Deliberative Democracy, " Constellations 7, no. 3 (September 2000): 408-29.
41. Lynn Sanders, "Against Deliberation, " Political Theory 25, no. 3 (June 1997): 347-76.
42. and Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, chap. 4.
43. See, e.g., Veit Bader, "The Cultural Conditions of Transnational Citizenship: On the Interpenetration of Political and Ethnic Culture, " Political Theory 25, no. 6 (December 1997): 771-813.
44. Clarissa Hayward, "Doxa and Deliberation, " Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 7, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 1-24.
45. Clarissa Hayward, "Doxa and Deliberation, " Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 7, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 1-24.
46. It is on the first and third of these points that my view departs most significantly from that of Philip Pettit and other republican theorists for whom domination obtains when (to quote Pettit) one agent has the capacity to interfere with another, arbitrarily, in a way that "makes things worse... [where] the worsening that interference involves always has to be more or less intentional in character. " See Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 52.
47. Monique Deveaux, Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1.
48. See, e.g., Seyla Benhabib, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).
49. Susan Okin, "Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, " in Is Multiculturalsim Bad for Women?, ed. Joshua Cohen, Matthew Howard, and Martha Nussbaum, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 7-24.
50. Anne Phillips, Multiculturalism Without Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
51. Ayelet Shachar, Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women's Rights (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
52. and Sarah Song, Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
53. Shachar, Multicultural Jurisdictions.
54. Richard T. Ford, Racial Culture: A Critique (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
55. An African American preference for "corn rows" was alleged by the plaintiff in Renee Rogers et. al. v. American Airlines, Inc. Black acceptance of early and single motherhood was alleged by the plaintiff in Chambers v. Omaha Girls Club. See Ford, Racial Culture, chaps. 1 and 2.
56. Ford, Racial Culture, chaps. 1 and 2, 41.
57. John Dryzek, "Legitimacy and Economy in Deliberative Democracy, " Political Theory 29, no. 5 (October 2001): 651-69, here 661. Habermas himself makes this point in his critique of Rousseauian republicanism, which centers on its reduction of legitimate politics to the discovery of collective consensus.
58. See Habermas, "Three Normative Models of Democracy, " in The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, ed. Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 244-45.
59. Important statements of this view include James Bohman, Public Deliberation: Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).
60. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).
61. and Manin, "On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation. " "Reasonable" in the Rawlsian sense means, roughly, concerned to live with others on terms they might accept. See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 48-54.
62. James Tully, "The Agonic Freedom of Citizens, " Economy and Society 28, no. 2 (May 1999): 161-82.
63. James Tully, "Struggles over Recognition and Distribution, " Constellations 7, no. 4 (2000): 469-82.
64. and James Tully, "The Unfreedom of the Moderns in Comparison to Their Ideals of Constitutional Democracy, " Modern Law Review 65 (March 2002): 204-28.
65. Other statements of this view include Seyla Benhabib, "Communicative Ethics and Contemporary Controversies in Practical Philosophy, " in The Communicative Ethics Controversy, ed. Seyla Benhabib and Fred Dallmayr (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990).
66. John Dryzek, "Legitimacy and Economy in Deliberative Democracy, ".
67. and Patchen Markell, "Contesting Consensus: Rereading Habermas on the Public Sphere, " Constellations 3, no. 3 (January 1997): 377-400.
68. See, e.g., Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox (London: Verso, 2000).
69. For them, democracy is (to borrow Sheldon Wolin's language) "fugitive, " in the sense that it appears only during those "rebellious" episodes when people use collective power to un-do some entrenched political system or some established political order. Sheldon Wolin, "Fugitive Democracy, " in Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. Seyla Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 31-45.
70. See also William Connolly, Identity\Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991).
71. Tully, "The Unfreedom of the Moderns in Comparison to Their Ideals of Constitutional Democracy, " 218.
72. Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty, " in Four Essays on Liberty, ed. Isaiah Berlin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 118-72.
73. Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty, " in Four Essays on Liberty, ed. Isaiah Berlin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 118-72.
74. Pettit, Republicanism, 56, emphasis as in original.
75. Pettit, Republicanism, 55, emphasis as in original.
76. Hence Roberto Unger's critique of what he calls "entrenchment. " See Unger, "Negative Capability and Plasticity into Power: The Core Idea, " in Politics: The Central Texts: Theory against Fate, ed. Zhiyuan Chi (London: Verso, 1997), 172-223. It is on this point that thinkers like Unger and Tully depart from republican theorists such as Pettit, who asserts that domination cannot be the product of "a system or network or whatever. "
77. Pettit, Republicanism, 52.
78. See Clarissa Hayward, De-facing Power (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), especially chap. 6.
79. Hence Habermas's comparison of an agent engaging in rational argumentation to an adolescent moving to a "postconventional" Kohlbergian moral stage. See Jürgen Habermas, "Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, " in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Nicholsen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 126.
80. This disadvantage is heightened for structurally disadvantaged minority groups that are not geographically concentrated. See the essays collected in Wilma Rule and Joseph Zimmerman, eds., United States Electoral Systems: Their Impact on Women and Minorities (New York: Praeger, 1992).
81. and Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, eds., Reflecting All of Us: The Case for Proportional Representation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1999).
82. The amended VRA of 1982 and the ensuing interpretation of that act by the U.S. Supreme Court required the review of proposed electoral institutions, including redistricting plans, to ensure they would not dilute minority voting power. But the 1990s marked a retrenchment on this matter by the Court, which ruled that race-conscious redistricting must be held to a standard of "strict scrutiny" (Shaw v. Reno 509 U.S. 630 [1993]) and that race could not be the "predominant factor" in the redrawing of district lines (Miller v. Johnson 515 U.S. 900 [1995]). (In Bush v. Vera 517 U.S. 952 [1996], however, the Court ruled that "strict scrutiny" applies only when race is the predominant factor in redistricting and race-neutral districting principles are subordinated to race-conscious principles.) On the empirical finding that race-conscious districting increases the number of African Americans elected, see David Lublin, The Paradox of Representation: Racial Gerrymandering and Minority Interests in Congress (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
83. and the essays collected in Chandler Davidson and Bernard Grofman, eds., Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press: 1994).
84. See Lublin, The Paradox of Representation.
85. and Charles Cameron, David Epstein, and Sharyn O'Halloran, "Do Majority-Minority Districts Maximize Substantive Black Representation?, " American Political Science Review 90, no. 4 (December 1996): 794-812.
86. David Canon, Race, Redistricting and Representation: The Unintended Consequences of Black Majority Districts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
87. Lublin, The Paradox of Representation.
88. For a helpful discussion of these and other critiques of race-conscious districting, see Melissa Williams, Voice, Trust, and Memory, 205-7.
89. More generally, for persuasive critiques of race-conscious districting as the best means to promote the interests of African Americans, see Lani Guinier, "The Triumph of Tokenism: The Voting Rights Act and the Theory of Black Electoral Success, " Michigan Law Review 89, no. 5 (March 1991): 1077-1154.
90. and Carol Swain, Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006).
91. There are many forms of PR, but the general idea is that electoral districts are multi-member, so seats go to candidates who win a percentage of the vote much smaller than a plurality. For this reason, PR promotes the representation of all under-represented groups: not only structurally disadvantaged minorities, but also structurally disadvantaged groups that are not minorities (such as women), and groups that are simply numerical minorities, but not structurally disadvantaged (such as minority parties). See the essays collected in Bernard Grofman and Arend Lijphart, eds., Electoral Laws and their Political Consequences (New York: Algora, 2003).
92. For arguments for PR in the United States, see Douglas Amy, Real Choices/New Voices: How Proportional Representation Elections Could Revitalize American Democracy, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
93. and Robert Richie and Steven Hill, "The Case for Proportional Representation, " in Reflecting All of Us, ed. Cohen and Rogers, 3-32.
94. Because of racial residential segregation, black representatives win more seats in single-member districts. See, e.g., Melissa Marschall, Anirudh Ruhil, and Paru Shah, "The New Racial Calculus: Electoral Institutions and Black Representation in Local Legislatures, " American Journal of Political Science 54, no. 1 (January 2010): 107-24.
95. Jessica Trounstine and Melody Valdini, "The Context Matters: The Effects of Single-Member versus At-Large Districts on City Council Diversity, " American Journal of Political Science 52, no. 3 (July 2008): 554-69.
96. and Susan Welch, "The Impact of At-Large Elections on the Representation of Blacks and Hispanics, " Journal of Politics 52, no. 4 (November 1990): 1050-76.
97. On state-enabled racial residential segregation, see Clarissa Hayward, "The Difference States Make: Democracy, Identity, and the American City, " American Political Science Review 97, no. 4 (November 2003): 501-14.
98. For the case for centralization, see, e.g., Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, chap. 8.
99. For an argument for redrawing municipal boundaries, see Richard Briffault, "The Local Government Boundary Problem in Metropolitan Areas, " Stanford Law Review 48, no. 5 (May 1996): 1115-71.
100. Richard Thompson Ford, "The Boundaries of Race: Political Geography in Legal Analysis, " Harvard Law Review 107, no. 8 (June 1994): 1843-1921.
101. On problems with territorially based constituency definition, see Andrew Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency: Political Representation, Democratic Legitimacy, and Institutional Design (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
102. For a discussion and evaluation, see Hayward, "The Difference States Make. "