Liberal Rights and Political Culture

Envisioning Democracy in China

Zhenghuan Zhou

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135468354
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book argues that the liberal concept of rights presupposes and is grounded in an individualistic culture or shared way of relating, and that this particular shared way of relating emerged only in the wake of the Reformation in the modern West.

Chapter One

Introduction

This study, broadly speaking, is about political theory, political culture and democratic development in China. Its main concern is about how the three topics relate to one another, and about how this relationship may further our understanding of political theory in terms of both form and substance. It addresses the questions of how Western political theory, or certain parts of it, may be applied to provide guidance for democratic development in a non-Western political and cultural context, and of how this application may in turn help extend the limits of our conception of political theory. More specifically, it focuses on how the liberal concept of rights might fare in the Chinese political and cultural setting, and how this concept, viewed from a comparative perspective, might be able to offer a guiding hand in defining the nature and direction of democratic change in China.

There are two theses, one primary and the other secondary, that the study explores. The primary thesis is that the liberal concept of rights as a moral and political doctrine presuppposes and is grounded in a particular culture or shared way of relating. In China, where such a cultural grounding is radically lacking, the liberal notion of rights as we know it would be unlikely to provide a viable language for articulating visions of political change vis-à-vis democratization. The secondary thesis is that for a rights-based argument to bear on democratic change, a redescription of liberal rights is required. This redescription should take into account some of the most important characteristics that structure the Chinese politico-cultural tradition.

THE STATUS OF POLITICAL THEORY

The controversy over the nature and uses of political theory which was initiated more than four decades ago is widely known. While it should be clear by now that the case stacked by the behavioralists against political theory has been overstated and normative reflections on politics remain profoundly relevant to contemporary political analysis, the future path of political theory is once again uncertain. The traditional mode of theorizing, which carried the day up till the first half of the last century, has shown some weaknesses. In order to sustain vigorous growth, it must meet challenges from both inside and outside the field. Under the circumstances, there is a perceived need among political theorists to reappraise and renovate political theory.

In fact, the task of reappraising and renovating has been under way for some time now.¹ But except for a few notable cases in which synthetic efforts did broaden our understanding of some of the important theoretical issues and accordingly our conception of political theory,² reappraisal and renovation have seldom ventured beyond the familiar path set by the traditional mode of theorizing in terms of method as well as substance. It may be argued that this is not particularly unfortunate because political theory has its own logic, form and subject matter. To defend the identity of political theory solely on this ground, however, seems less than convincing, especially when we are confronted with an increasingly pluralistic world. This kind of regressive theorizing—regressive in the sense of staying within the confines of the much studied “canon”—is at least incomplete. One is tempted to say that it perhaps requires a progressive mode of thinking to return political theory to “its rightful role.” This can be conceived as attempts to venture into the unfamiliar and unknown, whether it is new issue, new vocabulary, or new method, and these attempts may be a first step to the restructuring of a dynamic political theory.

The reconstruction of a dynamic political theory may be construed on two broad levels. The first is substantive and the second methodical. On the substantive level, political theory should and can reach beyond the much interpreted “canon,” suspend received judgments on frequently written topics, and embrace rarely touched issues that are typically considered to lie beyond the purview of mainstream political theory. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent, moreover, there is perhaps another need to go across the borderline of Western political theory and delve into non-Western political traditions for additional sources and novel perspectives. In the past, non-Western political thought has remained largely a domain of international relations or comparative politics. Mainstream political theorists have had little incentive to explore it for various reasons. But even if we sup-pose—and here I risk assuming too much—that non-Western political thought were of little relevance to the West for addressing its urgent concerns, an adequate understanding of the former could better equip Western political theory to furnish a model or models of political change, as the language of human rights is attempting to do, for developing countries. This model-building is valuable because, among other things, it may help political theorists establish a special perspective from which to assess and hone their own arguments.³

On the methodical level, the way in which political theory has been studied is also in need of modification. Traditionally, political theory relies on interpretation as the basic method of inquiry. Although empirical observation was from the very beginning an integral part of political theorizing, it seems to have become less and less pertinent to normative thinking in the last few centuries. The introduction of the modern method of data-collecting and explanation has provided an additional pattern of thinking which may prove useful to political theorists. It is commonly acknowledged that being empirical does not mean being quantifiable. If ideas and values cannot be quantified because of their constitutive and meaning-laden nature, they certainly can be investigated in an empirical manner—empirical in the sense of being observable and intersubjectively verifiable. Empirical investigation is important insofar as it enables political theory to purge itself of assumptions having little bearing on political reality, to find out how the meaning of a given idea or value changes under different circumstances and over time, and to search for a pluralistic way of looking at things which helps us minimize the possibility of misjudgment.

Of course, these two levels of consideration do not exhaust the ways in which a dynamic political theory may be reconstructed. But they do constitute a metatheoretical starting point for this study. Put another way, this study is epistemologically predicated on the assumption that political theory should stretch its limits as far as possible to synthesize the unfamiliar and unknown, in terms of both substance and method. Only by doing so can it revitalize itself and recapture the crowning moment it enjoyed in the past. Built on this assumption, this study can be read as a modest attempt to experiment with such limits. It proceeds by reexamining one of the crucial notions in modern Western political thought, namely the liberal concept of rights. This reexamination will be conducted from a comparative perspective, with a view to applying it to a different political and cultural context.

RIGHTS AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

The importance of the notion of rights to liberal democracy and, for that matter, to Western politics in general is too fundamental to ignore. A brief review of modern political history, Anglo-American modern political history in particular, reveals a distinctive pattern of struggles for the individual's personal and political rights. This pattern has been well documented not only in the works of political theorists such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Paine, and Jefferson; it was also expressed through political actions such as those leading to the English Petition of Right and the American Bill of Rights. Contemporary political theorists and jurisprudents alike have observed that the notion of rights lies at the core of the Western political tradi-tion.⁴ To paraphrase d’Entreves, it may be said that the entire tradition of Western political thought is natural rights writ large.⁵ Bentham's assertion that natural rights are “nonsense upon stilts” has never been the orthodox political tradition, particularly in England and the United States.⁶ In both a chronological and an intellectual sense, later arguments for rights, including the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the two subsequent Covenants on rights, are all beneficiaries of this Western, largely Anglo-American, legacy.⁷

To say that the idea of rights as we know it today is largely an Anglo-American political heritage is to consider liberalism. It is generally agreed that liberalism has been a permanent structure of Western thought at least since the Reformation. But disagreements abound as to the character of liberalism. To be sure, as both defenders and critics have pointed out, pure liberalism has never actually occurred in history. One may be more justified in saying that it consists only of a set of principles and ideals which aim at creating a haven for the exercise of individual freedom.⁸ If the nature of liberalism indeed lies in its fundamental concern with the individual's personal and political freedom—in the sense that she or he has an autonomous sphere of activity insulated from the interference of society and government—it is by no means clear what form or forms it takes in pursuit of that goal. There are as many types of liberalism as there are political theorists. Contemporary liberalism is just as colorful as its predecessors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We now have the liberalism of rights, of equality, of neutrality, of fear, of self-expression, and of humanism.⁹

Despite this blinding colorfulness, a commonality running through different understandings of liberalism is unmistakable. It is the notion of rights. The liberal concept of rights is so entrenched in universal terms that it is virtually impossible to talk about liberal politics without talking about individual rights. It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that this notion has become so deeply embedded in the language and practice of liberalism. Neither should it come as a surprise that, when democracy found its way into the modern era, it became an intimate partner in a seemingly perfect marriage which we come to call liberal democracy.

The alliance between liberalism and democracy is a historical, not logical, one. But it is so taken for granted that few seem to believe now that democracy could survive a day without individual rights. With possible exceptions, democracy is held, implicitly and explicitly, to be synonymous with a particular arrangement of rights in a political system. The extent to which that system is democratic is measured at least in part by its record for protecting and promoting individual rights.¹⁰ Thus, Robert Dahl, a leading democratic theorist, develops seven institutional guarantees for democracy (or what he calls polyarchy) on the basis of his familiarity with Anglo-American liberal democracy. These guarantees are nothing more than a set of rights. It is these rights, according to Dahl, that define a given political system as being actually, not nominally, democratic.¹¹

No doubt, the relationship between rights and democracy is a close and important one. This is particularly true of the modern age in which preoccupation with the idea of the individual has become a staple of social and political life in the West. But just like the contingent nature of the alliance between liberalism and democracy, the relationship between rights and democracy is historical rather than logical. Athenian democracy, for example, did not have an extensive list of rights at the disposal of its citizenry. In fact, as Socrates’ trial shows, individual rights—if the term is appropriate here—were poorly protected. All this, however, is not meant to deny the central role of the rights-based argument in democratic development. Rather, it calls attention to the fact that the idea of rights is closely linked with the historical, cultural, and political context in which it has slowly and tortuously moved into our consciousness, vocabulary and practice. Without a clear understanding of this context, the liberal concept of rights may be of limited use in providing guidance for political change vis-à-vis democratization in a nonliberal setting. Of course the historicity of liberal rights does not necessarily preclude its universal validity. But if this presumed universal validity keeps meeting resistance in application, and if its legitimacy is enshrouded in controversy, it would be beneficial for us to pause and look for explanation and possible alternatives.

For the same reason, there must also be a clear understanding of the cultural context to which the liberal concept of rights is to be transplanted. A “culturally sensitive” approach to the question of political change in non-Western countries is needed on both moral and strategic grounds. Morally, respect for values different from one's own is, at least in principle, one of the basic virtues on which liberal society is founded. Strategically, respect for different values or different emphases on a particular set of values is more likely to win respect and hence open the door to dialogue.¹²

FRAMEWORK AND ARGUMENTS

This study contains six chapters. While the first chapter briefly identifies the rationale or what I call metatheoretical concerns behind my endeavor, the second seeks to retrieve and redefine one central concept of this study, namely political culture. Under the influence of the modern philosophy of language, conceptual analysis has taken on a critical role in political discourse.¹³ This is not simply because, as Wittgenstein argues, the meaning of a concept involves rules, purposes, context, and interpretations thereof in the language game in which the concept is implicated. It is also because meaningful discourse can be achieved only by using and sharing concepts with delimited boundaries of meaning. Clarification and definition, thus, serve the twin purpose of unveiling the meaning of a concept as constitutive of our experience of social and political reality, and providing a moderate amount of order to the “prodigiously diverse” uses we make of our language.

The concept of political culture is believed to be a treacherous ground on which to tread. Some reject it as a useless explanatory tool, while others remain silent on its viability in the study of politics. Among those who embrace this concept, attempts to define it have so far met limited success. Part of the reason for this perhaps lies in the fact that each definition is tailored specifically to satisfy the requirements of a specific research methodology. I begin the chapter by providing a brief account of the impact of three major areas of study, namely political theory, cultural anthropology and political sociology, on the concept. Next, three influential conceptions of political culture will be delineated and evaluated. Finally, a modified alternative definition suggested by Chilton will be proposed and adopted.¹⁴

Political culture will be defined as the shared way of relating among a group or groups of people pertaining particularly to the ordering of their collective affairs. Two general comments need to be made here. First, this definition is chosen with a clear goal in mind. For example, one of the main premises of this study is that the liberal concept of rights as a moral and political doctrine is undergirded by important cultural groundings. The definition of political culture as the shared way of relating brings into focus what it is meant by cultural groundings, and this in turn enables us to see that behind the veil of its universal claim, the liberal concept of rights tacitly espouses a particular vision of a shared way of relating, namely one which privileges the individual. It is this shared way of relating that provides comfortable bedding for the legitimacy of liberal rights. But what makes this definition better than previous ones is not an a priori consideration of goals; rather, its superiority lies in its ability to repair the deficiencies of earlier conceptions and present itself as a more robust concept.

Secondly, political culture is at once a subordinate part of and a dominant influence over general culture. Hence it is difficult if not altogether impossible to draw a distinct line between the two. By adding “pertaining particularly to the ord...