Cillian McBride

Deliberative Democracy and the Politics of Recognition

It is commonly supposed that deliberative democracy and the politics of recognition are natural allies, as both demand a more inclusive politics. It is argued here that this impression is misleading and that the politics of recognition harbours significant anti-deliberative tendencies. Deliberative politics requires a public sphere which is maximally inclusive of diverse beliefs and perspectives, including those which dissent from orthodox understandings of group indentities. By contrast, the politics of recognition typically seeks to insulate such identities from challenge, both from within and without. Devices such as special group representation, while apparently inclusive, risk incentivising an anti-deliberative culture of deference to identity claims. An alternative model of inclusive politics, which involves a more contestatory political culture and a multiplication of deliberative opportunities, is sketched.

Introduction Recognition: Philosophy and Politics

In 1992 two hugely influential works on recognition were published.1 These are Charles Taylor’s essay ‘The Politics of Recognition’ and Axel Honneth’s more overtly philosophical The Struggle for Recognition.2 Both works inaugurated new paradigms for assessing injustice in contemporary liberal democracies, and both were the subject of much commentary, criticism and debate – the theory of recognition being revised and reconstructed in the process. These debates, however, largely advanced along parallel lines, producing little constructive interplay between them. Taylor’s work is central to the communitarian critique of AngloAmerican liberalism, while Honneth’s is firmly located within the critical theory tradition. The aims of this collection are to compare these two frameworks of recognition, to explore the relationship between the philosophical theory of recognition and its political aims, and to take an overview of the debate just over 15 years on.3 Here we briefly explain the main protagonists’ concerns and outline some key themes which animate the examinations of the philosophy and politics of recognition which follow. Taylor’s striking narrative of the emergence of the politics of recognition as a reaction to the oppressive assimilationism of Enlightenment universalism did much to set the terms of the debate within Anglo-American political theory about the politics of multiculturalism.4 According to Taylor, the Enlightenment ideal of a world ordered by the notion of equal respect, or dignity, successfully undermined the rigid feudal status order. In doing so, however, it also entrenched a deep-seated antagonism within our modern conceptions of citizenship, between those universal features which are common to humanity, and those particular features which distinguish us from others. The universalist paradigm accords the latter, at best, no moral significance, and, at worst, regards them as threats to the status of equal citizenship, threats which must be suppressed in the name of equality. Taylor argues that the sort of identity politics which began to emerge in the

Democratic Participation, Engagement and Freedom

It is commonly supposed that democracies should encourage greater political participation and civic engagement. This article identifies two distinct perspectives on political participation and civic engagement: a ‘freedom-centred’ model and an ‘ethical’ model. The ‘freedom-centred’ model defended here draws on the republican concept of freedom as non-domination, together with the political liberal notion of fair deliberative proceduralism, while the ethical model draws on Aristotelian, perfectionist, sources. It is argued that the ‘ethical’ model is overly concerned with the ‘moral renewal’ of modern social life, and is insensitive to problems of domination posed by its account of civic reciprocity and trust. By contrast, the ‘freedom-centred’ model developed offers a systematic account of personal and political freedom, which provides qualified support for deliberative modes of participation and engagement.

Self-Transparency and the Possibility of Deliberative Politics

I argue against the notion of self-transparency which underwrites the politics of presence. This connects situation, identity, and perspective in such a way as to be incompatible with deliberative politics and treats self-understanding as authoritative, rendering it insensitive to the possibility that our self-under standings may be distorted. I propose a hermeneutic, narrative, conception of selfhood on which we relate to our lives as authors, constructing our identities by employing the linguistic and narrative resources which our respective situations make available to us. This admits the possibility that others may provide us with superior interpretations of our lives, which is a precondition of deliberative politics. Given the possibility that our self-understandings may be distorted, deliberative citizens have a duty to challenge problematic self-under standings. Anchoring criticism to public deliberation, together with the her meneutic premise that a measure of self-opacity is universal, secures such challenges against the charge of authoritarianism levelled at traditional ideol ogy-critique.

Communities of Inquiry and Democratic Politics

This contribution raises two questions about Talisse’s strategy of grounding democratic norms in a perfectionist account of epistemic agency: first, whether a perfectionist account of epistemic agency is plausible in itself, and second, whether Talisse is right to posit such a close relationship between communities of inquiry and democratic community? Epistemic perfectionism is rejected in favour of a more pluralist view of epistemic agency which starts from an account of the agent’s particular responsibilities. Next it is argued that communities of inquiry are neither democratic, nor is democratic government a condition of their flourishing. Against the grounding strategy, it is argued that those epistemic responsibilities pertinent to the practice of democratic politics can only be determined once we are in possession of a prior account of our civic responsibilities.

Postnationalist Democratization: Rethinking Nationality, Trust, and Accountability

If nationalists are right to argue that there is a special link between national identity and democratic politics, then schemes for transnational, cosmopolitan democracy must be misconceived. I cannot defend a detailed blueprint of cosmopolitan democracy in this chapter for the simple reason that I do not possess such a blueprint. What I hope to do, however, is to refocus the debate about nationality and democracy away from the idea that democratic accountability requires a unified national identity and on to the idea that all democratic politics, domestic and transnational, should approach this issue with a view of the demos as plural and decentred. Far from strengthening democratic accountability and fostering civic trust, I argue that a concern with national identity embodies a misunderstanding of collective self-determination and has the potential to expose citizens to elite manipulation.

Identity, Unity, and the Limits of Democracy

Abstract Can the demos be uncoupled from the ethnos? Can there be a democratic politics of state‐boundaries, or are borders a condition of the possibility of democratic politics rather than a possible subject for those politics? The author argues for the decoupling strategy and affirms the possibility of a democratic politics about borders, anchoring the discussion in the politics of Northern Ireland. The argument turns on the analysis of public reasoning. It is argued first that culturalist accounts of self‐determination are misconceived and that political institutions, and not cultural identity, make collective self‐determination possible. Second, that the demos is constituted by acts of mutual recognition required by the practice of public reasoning, and that this practice cannot be confined with state‐boundaries. Taken together this allows us to conceive of the unity of a people as constituted by practices of public reason, given effect by institutions whose configuration is never finally fixed.

Religion, respect and public reason

Do the constraints of public reason unfairly exclude religious citizens? Two ways of framing the charge of exclusivity are examined: the burden of translation objection and the integrity objection. The first, it is argued, rests on a misapplication of the ‘distributive paradigm’ and fails to provide a convincing account of religious citizens’ relationship to their beliefs. The ‘integrity’ objection, it is argued, relies on a theologically questionable account of ‘wholeness’ and drastically overestimates the threat to personal integrity posed by the duty of civility. It is argued here that it is a mistake to interpret the ideal of public reason as inimical to recognising religious citizens as co-deliberators and that, on the contrary, only a public-reason-centred account of democratic citizenship can ensure that religious citizens will be appropriately recognised. A rival, convergence, account of public reason, which seeks to relax the constraint of public reason and eliminate the duty of civility is rejected on the grounds that it fails to underwrite the appropriate recognition of citizens.

Freedom as non-domination: radicalisation or retreat?

Key challenges for contemporary neorepublicans are identified and explored. Firstly, the attempt to maintain a sharp line between neorepublicanism and the wider family of liberal–egalitarian political theories is questioned. Secondly, in response to challenges from democratic theorists, it is argued that republicanism needs to effect an appropriate rapprochement with the ideal of collective political autonomy, on which it appears to rely. Thirdly, it is argued that freedom as non-domination draws so heavily on the idea of equal respect that it is hard to maintain that freedom is the sole value grounding the theory. Finally, it is suggested that the consequentialist framework of Pettits theory imposes significant limitations on republican social justice. How republican political theorists respond to these challenges will determine whether the neorepublican revival will be seen as enriching contemporary debates about democracy and social justice or as a retreat from more ambitious accounts of freedom and justice.

Introduction: Theorising Politics

The aim of this collection is to bring theoretical perspectives to bear upon a range of issues within the politics of Northern Ireland and the Republic. This may seem to some to be a distinctly quixotic enterprise to the extent that theory is supposed to aspire to a high level of abstraction in order to discern universal truths and avoid becoming too entangled in particular political contexts and local political disputes. The tendency to see the work of theory and the work of empirical social science as polar opposites is perhaps stronger still in Ireland where the prevailing intellectual culture has a distinctively literary-historical flavour (Kearney, 1997) rendering it somewhat inhospitable to philosophical concerns. This view of political theory as a utopian, platonic, enterprise floating above the world of real politics may still have some currency, albeit less amongst contemporary political theorists themselves than amongst non-theorists, but it is one which is firmly rejected by the contributors to this collection, who have sought to illuminate practical issues in Irish politics with a variety of theoretical tools, drawn from a range of theoretical traditions.