Liberal realism

A realist theory of liberal politics

Matt Sleat

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780719088902
• eBook ISBN: 9781526102553
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The first comprehensive overview of the resurgence of interest in realist political theory, and a defence of liberal politics in realist terms

1

The liberal vision of the political

Consensus, freedom, and legitimacy

It could quite plausibly be thought that liberalism has little to say about politics itself. Certainly liberal theorists in the latter part of the twentieth century were more occupied with questions regarding the demands of distributive justice or the requirements of citizenship in multicultural societies, for instance, than abstract reflection upon the nature of the political or politics as a human activity. But liberalism is a political theory and hence must employ some notion of politics, even if it is more often than not implicit or assumed. What I want to do in this chapter is try to bring what is actually a rather distinctive and substantive vision of the political at the heart of contemporary liberal theory to the surface, and in doing so set out its fundamental features.

One of the most familiar characteristics of liberalism is its commitment to placing normative and practical constraints on political power, and moral limits on permissible political action. It is a theory of politics in which political power is controlled and directed in a manner that ensures the ruled are not oppressed or tyrannised at the hands of those who rule over them. The state, and the officers of the state who control its coercive mechanisms, are often viewed in liberal theory as a threat to individual freedom and therefore political power stands in need of restraint. Central to its strategy of restraining power is a particular vision of politics, the normative ends that it should pursue and its rightful limits. This vision, which I call a ‘consensus’ vision of the political, views political activity and political relationships as taking place within and with reference to a set of principles that are universally endorsed by those subject to them, or can be represented as such. By making such consensus a condition of politics, liberal theory’s vision of politics ensures that political associations are regulated by principles and employ their power in ways that respect the freedom and moral equality of each and every person over whom they rule. This requires, as we shall see, a particular theorisation of the relationship between human freedom and law or authority that reconciles what have often been seen as two irreconcilable concepts. And legitimacy is reconceived as a criterion that ensures that such reconciliation holds for all members of the political association, not merely some subset of them, and hence is in an important sense the test for whether liberalism’s foundational normative concern of respecting the freedom and moral equality of all persons is met. In short, liberalism imagines a non-oppressive or non-tyrannical form of politics, a politics that allows each and every person to live according to principles that can meaningfully be said to represent their own will rather than the coercive imposition of someone else’s. Liberalism is therefore nothing short of a magnificent achievement of human imagination.

Legitimacy and autonomy

All liberals share a commitment to individual freedom of some sort. An important question for liberals will therefore always be how we reconcile this individual freedom with our evident need to live together under a single political authority with the necessary capacity to enforce, when required, compliance with its laws through the threat or actual use of physical coercive power. This problem is further complicated by the fact that, at least in modern societies, people hold and seek to pursue a variety of different and often conflicting moral and religious life plans. The question then becomes one of how people can remain free to follow their diverse range of conceptions of the good yet be subject to the laws of the same political authority.

This is far from a question of merely theoretical interest. Early liberals were gravely concerned by the development of the centralised modern state (as we now call it) and the fact that it possessed an unprecedented and immensely unequal degree of power compared to not only the individual but also the local barons and landowners who had up to the seventeenth century represented the main source of security for the majority of subjects against a potentially tyrannical monarch. On numerous occasions during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, European monarchs proved to be both willing and able to impose their own particular set of religious beliefs upon their subjects, even if these were not widely shared, and often with horrific and bloody consequences. There was therefore felt to be a pressing need for an effective defence of the individual against those agents of the state who had the means to employ overwhelming and irresistible coercive power to force them to live according to moral and religious principles that they rejected. And insofar as the power of the state has only exponentially grown since this period, with developments in technology, bureaucracy, military and surveillance capability, etc., this general concern about how we protect the individual from the potential oppressive use of state power is one that remains with us today.

So liberals are adamant that political order cannot simply be based on the successful rule of one group of people over another via force. That would make politics no more than tyranny, right no more than might. They strive, rather, to provide an account of political community in which its members must be able to recognise its fundamental political principles as expressions of their own will rather than the forceful imposition of someone else’s.¹ Political rule and law are reconceived as coercively enforceable but nevertheless voluntarily and freely imposed bonds. As Jeremy Waldron summarises their approach, liberals ‘concede that the enforcement of social rules involves actions which characteristically and in familiar circumstances threaten freedom and threaten it seriously. But since it is possible for an individual to choose to live under a social order, to agree to abide by its restraints, and therefore to use his powers as a free agent to commit himself for the future, the enforcement of such an order does not necessarily mean that freedom as a value is being violated’.² This influential response, one which drew upon theoretical innovations introduced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, hinged on the development of a novel normative view of the relationship between human freedom and law such that persons are only free if they obey laws, moral or political, that they made for themselves. As Rousseau famously put it, ‘obedience to a law one prescribes for oneself is freedom’.³ But it is in the work of Immanuel Kant that we get the most developed and influential articulation of this idea of moral and political laws as self-imposed bonds.

Freedom, as Kant understood it, is ‘independence from being constrained by another’s choice’ and is ‘the only original right belonging to every man by virtue of his humanity’.⁴ Freedom is the right that everyone possesses to be independent from coercion by another’s will. In the Groundwork of a Metaphysics of Morals Kant argued that man is not a means for the arbitrary use of others’ wills, but rather ‘must in all his actions … be regarded at the same time as an end’.⁵ From this postulate follows Kant’s (second) formulation of the categorical imperative: ‘So act that you use humanity, whether in your person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means’.⁶ It is a unique capacity of free agents, Kant believed, that they are able to set goals for themselves and decide how best to pursue them.⁷ Insofar as people are free in this sense, they will inevitably have different views on what the end of happiness will consist of. As such, ‘No-one can compel me to be happy in accordance with his conception of the welfare of others, for each may seek his happiness in whatever way he sees fit, so long as he does not infringe upon the freedom of others to pursue a similar end which can be reconciled with the freedom of everyone else within a workable general law – i.e. he must accord to others the same rights as he enjoys himself’.⁸ Each must have the freedom to pursue their own ideas of the good consistent with others having an equal degree of freedom to do so also.

This is the role that public law, or principles of right as Kant called them, must play in a political community: they must be directed towards restricting those actions which would violate the freedom of others. ‘Right is’, as Kant put it, ‘the restriction of each individual’s freedom so that it harmonises with the freedom of everyone else’.⁹ In effect, right makes explicit the normative conditions which must obtain between two or more people’s wills if their freedom is to be respected.¹⁰ And the universal principle of right states that ‘Any action is right if it can co-exist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can co-exist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law’.¹¹ Kant was thus adamant that a political community is a relationship between individuals who are free and retain their freedom even though they are subject to coercive laws.¹²

This reconciliation between law and individual freedom is made possible by defining freedom, at least in the political sphere, as ‘the attribute of obeying no other law than that to which he [the individual] has given his consent’.¹³ An important ramification of this is that the legislative will of the political association must somehow represent the will of all. If it does not, then the law, and the coercive enforcement of that law, will effectively signify the imposition of the will of one particular individual or group of individuals on all others. Individuals must be their own lawgivers. As Kant wrote, ‘the will of another person cannot decide anything for someone without injustice … Thus an individual will cannot legislate for a commonwealth. For this requires freedom, equality, and unity of the will of all the members’.¹⁴ And this will must be based on an end that all necessarily share: ‘a unilateral will (and a bilateral but still particular will is also unilateral) cannot put everyone under an obligation that is in itself contingent; this requires a will that is omnilateral, that is united not contingently but a priori and therefore necessarily, and because of this is the only will that is lawgiving. For only in accordance with this principle of the will is it possible for the free choice of each to accord with the freedom of all’.¹⁵ The legislative authority can therefore only belong to the united will of the people.¹⁶

At the empirical level, it might look initially very difficult to identify ends that all are committed to in conditions where people endorse a variety of different and often conflicting moral and religious views. Indeed, Kant’s recognition of this deep pluralism might seem to undercut the grounds for thinking that such a united will is plausible. But for Kant, what distinguishes political unions from any other form of community is that the former is directed towards ends that all persons ‘ought to share and which is thus an absolute and primary duty in all external relationships whatsoever among human beings’ rather than towards contingent ends to which they happen to be jointly committed.¹⁷ This end which unites the will of all turns out to be the right of persons to live together under coercive law yet with the liberty to pursue their own conception of the good life free from (illegitimate) infringements from others. In other words, all persons ought to be committed to individual freedom and it is this end, which might not be shared by all but ought to be, that provides the normative foundation for civic unions.

Though Kant believed that the dignity of human freedom as expressed in the universal principle of right does impose an obligation upon us, it is not one that he expects us to naturally or voluntarily act in accordance with. Rather, because it is morally necessary, indeed an absolute and primary duty, for us to realise human freedom, we can be compelled by others to carry out our duty of entering civil society and living according to the principles of right which maintain it if we do not voluntarily do so ourselves.¹⁸ It was on these grounds that Kant justified the legitimacy of using coercive power over those that violate principles of right. As he put it,

Resistance that counteracts the hindering of an effect promotes this effect and is consistent with it … But coercion is a hindrance or resistance to freedom. Therefore, if a certain use of freedom is itself a hindrance to freedom in accordance with universal laws (i.e. wrong), coercion that is opposed to this (as a hindering of a hindrance to freedom) is consistent with freedom in accordance with universal laws, that is, it is right. Hence there is connected with right by the principle of contradiction an authorisation to coerce someone who infringes upon it.¹⁹

Stated differently, freedom is freedom from any constraint other than coercion by law consistent with the universal principle of right, which is a freedom that allows all individuals to pursue their own ends provided that this pursuit leaves the same freedom available to all others.²⁰ And so on these grounds Kant believed it is legitimate to coerce people in order to prevent them from reducing the freedom of others via their own...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The resurgence of realist political theory
• 1 The liberal vision of the political: Consensus, freedom, and legitimacy
• 2 The realist vision of the political: Conflict, coercion, and the circumstances of politics
• 3 The realist challenge to liberal theory
• 4 Liberal alternatives: The liberalism of fear and modus vivendi
• 5 Bernard Williams and the structure of liberal realism
• 6 The partisan foundations of liberal realism
• 7 The moderate hegemony of liberal realism
• Bibliography
• Index