Recognition, Equality and Democracy

Theoretical Perspectives on Irish Politics

Jurgen De Wispelaere, Cillian McBride, Shane O'Neill, Jurgen De Wispelaere, Cillian McBride, Shane O'Neill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317968566
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Foreign Exchange
• Index: Business

This volume brings together a range of theoretical responses to issues in Irish politics. Its organising ideas: recognition, equality, and democracy set the terms of political debate within both jurisdictions. For some, there are significant tensions between the grammar of recognition, concerned with esteem, respect and the symbolic aspects of social life, and the logic of equality, which is primarily concerned with the distribution of material resources and formal opportunities, while for others, tensions are produced rather by certain interpretations of these ideas while alternative readings may, by contrast, serve as the basis for a systematic account of social and political inequality. The essays in this collection will explore these interconnections with reference to the politics of Northern Ireland and the Republic. The Republic has gone through a period in which its constitution was the focus for a liberal politics aimed at securing personal autonomy, while Northern Ireland's political landscape has been shaped by the problem of securing political autonomy and democratic legitimacy. While the papers address key questions facing each particular polity, the issues themselves have resonances for politics on each side of the border.

Introduction: Theorising Politics

CILLIAN MCBRIDE, JURGEN DE WISPELAERE & SHANE O'NEILL

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.

Of course, within political theory itself, there has been considerable disagreement over the years as to the precise nature of the relationship between theory and context, and it is possible to discern at least three main accounts of this relationship – there may, of course, be more; there are certainly nuances in each of those we have identified that we cannot do justice to here. First, there is the view that political theory is necessarily impractical. One popular source of this view has been the idea that the basic currency of political theory, ideas, are little more than reflections of an underlying political reality (Macpherson, 1962; Larrain, 1979). This view is recognisable as the main plank in the now largely defunct enterprise of historical materialism, and it places theory firmly on the sidelines to the extent that the most we could hope for from the study of ideas is to see them debunked as mystifications of underlying social and political realities (Skinner, 1988). Marxism always struggled with the issue of whether or not to include itself within this analysis (Lukács, 1971), an analysis which may perhaps draw some empirical support from the speed with which revolutions in the political landscape ultimately rendered Marxism itself redundant.

Naturally, there have also been versions of this view to be found on the right of the political spectrum, notably in the work of Oakeshott, for example, who argued that the work of political philosophy was fundamentally impractical, being essentially concerned with the analysis of the fundamental presuppositions underlying our practices (Oakeshott, 1990). Having identified these presuppositions, the work of the philosopher was done, and to suppose otherwise was to fall prey to the insidious disease of rationalism, of which no good could come (Oakeshott, 1991). The ‘impotence’ view political theory was also exemplified in the mercifully short-lived project of conceptual analysis which was briefly in vogue in Oxford 1950s and 1960s. This notoriously saw the business of mapping our use of political concepts as an end in itself, a study held to be philosophically interesting but not in any way relevant to politics. From this apparently barren soil, however, was eventually born a much more engaged, political philosophy of which more in a moment (Weldon, 1953).

The second version of the theory-context relationship is represented by a range of thinkers who came to prominence in the 1980s under the banner of ‘communitarianism’ (MacIntyre, 1981; Sandel, 1982; Taylor, 1985; Walzer, 1985). Communitarians reject the impotence view in favour of an altogether more engaged view of political theory as absolutely central to the cultural self-understanding of political communities. Michael Walzer famously set out this view of political theory as social criticism in his re-reading of Plato's cave analogy(Walzer, 1987). For Plato the business of the philosopher is to ascend out of the gloomy cave of common opinion into the light of the eternal verities, but for Walzer, the key move in this story is the philosopher's return to the cave in order to offer his fellow cave-dwellers the fruits of his reflections. Walzer points out the persistence of metaphors such as the ascent from the cave, or of prophets ascending mountains, all of which link philosophy to separation from everyday life, and he rejects them as representing an incoherent desire to occupy a disengaged ‘view from nowhere’ (Walzer, 1987). Instead we must embrace the fact that we are all situated in particular communities whose traditions of interpretation and particular values are what makes philosophy possible in the first place and gives it a purpose. Rather than aspire to universal truth, the role of the political philosopher is that of social critic, moving in the medium of a particular community's ethical and political tradition and offering to his fellow citizens not truths from on high, but better, richer, interpretations of that community's own practices so that the community might better live up to its own best view of itself. To do otherwise is not only mistaken, but also does violence to the ethical life of communities through the imposition of alien values and principles (Walzer, 1994).

Clearly, this communitarian view of the political philosopher as situated social critic is attractive in that it weaves the work of the philosopher into the public affairs of particular political communities, but it is also clear that it is not just a view about the relationship between philosophy and its context, but also, primarily indeed, a normative view about the value of community and tradition, a view at odds with liberal, impartialist, cosmopolitan outlooks (Taylor, 1995). While communitarian-inclined philosophers have reflected more thoroughly than most on issues of context and situation then, their reflections are not ultimately innocent, but are rather premised on particular, controversial, views about politics and morality.

Is there a way to think about the relationship between political philosophy and its social and political contexts, that does not rob of it practical application or commit us to a communitarian politics, a view that might be both engaged, but also more hospitable to universalist moral and political argument? There are two main sources of this sort of view in contemporary political theory, one taking its lead from the Critical Theory formulated by the unorthodox Marxists of the Frankfurt School (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1979; Marcuse, 1987), but which now embraces a range of approaches from the work of Habermas to that of Iris Young and Nancy Fraser (Young, 1990; Fraser, 1996; Habermas, 1996), and the other a more narrowly focused analytical political philosophy of a broadly liberal egalitarian character (Barry, 1995; Rawls, 1999b; Dworkin, 2000). Both share a broadly universalist, egalitarian, cosmopolitan outlook and view political theory as essentially engaged with the business of politics. For those working in the Critical Theory tradition, the goal of the critical theory of society is to identify structural obstacles to human emancipation as an essential pre-requisite of the project of social transformation, a project which has a distinctively interdisciplinary character and which may arguably also embrace elements of post-structuralist social criticism, such as that of Foucault (Foucault, 1995; Butler, 1997, 2006). The ‘Rawlsian’ current in contemporary political theory seems, by contrast, aridly abstract to many, but, while it is true that it eschews the sort of sociological analysis on which Critical Theory is founded, this unpromising appearance is misleading for philosophers working in this stream have, more than any other, sought to bring philosophical analysis to bear upon issue of public policy, with a particular focus on the question of distributive justice.

For this group of theorists, which is engaged with its social and political context but also is moral universalist, the business of philosophical argument is inextricably tied to political dispute, for normative issues are seen not as eternal truths to be pursued at the expense of political engagement, but as arising directly from the day-to-day business of politics. To see politics as nothing more than a sphere in which self-interest is ruthlessly pursued without reference to ideas about justice and fairness is, for these theorists, wholly misconceived, for while we may all be tempted from time to time to pursue our own self-interest at the expense of others, it is also the case that we have an interest in others abiding by the same normative principles we may occasionally wish to bend (Hume, 1960). Anyone who has ever felt resentment at what they view as unfair treatment at the hands of another has manifested this implicit commitment to some notion, however vague and ill-defined, of justice (Strawson, 1974; Habermas, 1990). While rule bending and rule breaking are all too common, the central stuff of political life is constituted by the clash between differing conceptions of justice, whether between neo-liberals, egalitarians, and communitarians, between nationalists and cosmopolitans, or between secularists and religious adherents. The task of political theory then is to make sense of these clashes and to offer some guidance as to how to resolve the underlying normative conflicts which drive them.

This view of political theory as engaged with issues at the heart of political struggles may seem to be at odds with the sort of abstract, seemingly apolitical view of theory exemplified in John Rawls's notorious idea that we should choose principles of social justice from behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ which deprives us of all knowledge of our identity, commitments, and social location; all of the things, surely, which make us who we are (Rawls, 1999b). This is taken by many as the very epitome of the unrealistic, abstract, quality of contemporary political theory, but whatever the precise merits of Rawls's metaphor (Barry, 1995; O'Neill, 1996) this view is entirely misleading, both with respect to Rawls, and to contemporary political theory more generally. Another of Rawls's ideas, reflective equilibrium, provides a more useful model of the relationship between theory and its context. Rawls suggests that the ordinary moral agent is engaged in an ongoing attempt to establish a ‘reflective equilibrium’ between his avowed moral principles, and his particular political judgements about the world (Rawls, 1999b). This is not a matter of simply imposing principles willy nilly on the real world, or of tailoring one's principles to fit the world as one finds it (Miller, 1992), but is rather a more delicate process of mutually adjusting principles and judgements until they cohere in such a way as to achieve equilibrium. The device of the veil of ignorance is just a thought experiment performed as part of this larger process and it is not meant as description of how we might actually converge on principles of social justice.

The significance of the notion of reflective equilibrium is first of all that it illuminates how even abstract, universalist, political theory is nonetheless inevitably engaged with particular social and political contexts, not as some sort of passive reflection of these contexts, but as part of an active process of deliberative problem-solving which we bring to bear in our efforts to cope with the world.¹ Second, it is suggestive of a division of labour between normative theory proper, which takes as its subject the analysis and justification of normative principles themselves, and a more empirically grounded social criticism, which takes as its subject the analysis of the constellation of particular values, discourses and institutions of particular societies – the sort of enterprise that Walzer takes to be the whole of political theory. The model of reflective equilibrium, however, suggests a more complex process, in which our responses to our context comprise both abstract normative argument and particular judgements about particular circumstances. The model of reflective equilibrium, understood to be a process not confined to philosophers, but rather as one necessarily engaged in to some degree by all citizens, not only sheds light on the link between theorising and political deliberation, but also suggests a way of thinking about the interconnections between different styles of social and political theorising. Rather than seeing Critical Theory, analytical political theory, and poststructuralist social criticism simply as three rival approaches, it may also be possible to detect possible lines of communication between them. Where the analytical political theorist one maintains a relatively narrow focus on normative argument, others working within the traditions of Critical Theory and post-structuralist social criticism can supply the sorts of rich sociological reflection which the former lacks. Both of these enterprises seem to be necessary, however, to enrich the reflective, deliberative, engagements of the democratic citizen.²

What, then, has political theory to offer the analysis of Irish politics at this particular historical juncture? It is clear from the contributions to this volume that two broad themes can be discerned, reflecting particular political developments within Irish politics and the wider world of contemporary political theory, namely the issues of recognition and respect, and of democratisation. Where some might like to think of these as simply superceding an older politics of left and right, centred on the issue of the distribution of economic resources, we take the view that these are rather diversifications of that politics, which continue to connect in a variety of ways with questions of equality as conceived through the lens of distributive justice and that these connections will become clearer still as debates on the politics of recognition and democratic legitimacy develop in the years to come(Baker et al., 2004).

The politics of recognition, as it has come to be known in political theory circles, was first formulated by Charles Taylor in the early 90s, at a time when the political scene was still reverberating with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and, with it, of Marxism as a significant intellectual and political force (Taylor, 1994). This was simply the culmination of a process already at work for a number of years: the eclipse of traditional class politics by a more diffuse politics of identity, and of national and cultural identities in particular. Of course, this is a highly stylised account of events: the politics of identity, conceived as a politics centring on the complexities of gender, race and sexuality had been underway in various forms for a couple of decades by then (Benhabib, 1995). However, by the early 90s, it was clear that, both theoretically and in terms of practical politics, questions of identity were now occupying centre-stage. In some ways, this may not have been so immediately apparent in Ireland, neither jurisdiction having developed a particularly robust class politics, and the politics of each having been dominated, to different degrees, by questions of national identity and their intersection with religious traditions since their foundation.

The politics of recognition and its near cousin, the politics of difference, both react against the perceived inadequacies of the egalitarian ‘distributive’ paradigm (Young, 1990). For Taylor this is a matter of the insensitivity of traditional enlightenment notions of equality and of universal respect to people's attachment to their particular socia...