POLI 342:
Modern Political Thought: John Rawls and his Critics
Professor Michael Lakatos
Paper:
The notion of global toleration
and its contentious role for Rawls’s
‘Law of Peoples’
By Jan Kercher (International)
SN: 11672037
Index of Contents
1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................2
2 Rawls’s Law of Peoples .................................................................................................................2
3 Justifying the Toleration of Decent Non-liberal Peoples ...............................................................5
3.1 Rawls’s Justification of Toleration - A Valid Analogy?.........................................................6
3.2 Rawls’s Justification of Toleration - A Stringent Analogy? ...................................................9
4 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................................14
5 Bibliography.................................................................................................................................17
1
1 Introduction
Liberal toleration plays an important role in Rawls’s ‘Law of Peoples’. As in the domestic part of
his theory of justice, the right kind of tolerance, for Rawls, is one of the main requirements for
stability. Thus, many of the striking alterations that Rawls undertook when he applied his theory to
the international arena seem to go back to his concern for this important liberal idea.
Since Rawls’s first sketch of his international relations theory, numerous critics have
disapproved of his peculiar notion of liberal toleration and its consequences for his theory. One
strand of criticism holds that, even if one acknowledges the Rawlsian justification of tolerance,
many of the conclusions he draws in connection with it cannot be maintained. Another strand of
criticism sees Rawls’s whole concept of justification as deeply flawed because of too many
disanalogies to his own domestic theory.
In this paper, I want to show that a great deal of this criticism is legitimate. In order to do
this, I will first give a brief overview of Rawls’s ‘Law of Peoples’ and its most important
differences to his domestic theory of justice. Afterwards, I will reconstruct Rawls’s justification
for the toleration of certain non-liberal peoples. Finally, I hope to show that this justification is
highly problematic and a weakness that deeply influences the construction of Rawls’s whole
international theory.
2 Rawls’s Law of Peoples1
Rawls’s aim in ‘The Law of Peoples’ (LP) is to extend the conception of justice as fairness,
elaborated in ‘A Theory of Justice’ (TJ) and ‘Political Liberalism’ (PL), in order to cover relations
between societies (LP, p. 9). This problem becomes pressing as many issues of justice remain to
1
In this overview, I concentrate on the aspects of Rawls’s theory that are relevant for this paper, omitting, as any
summary must, a good deal of his original reasoning. This also presupposes a certain knowledge of Rawls’s theory of
justice elaborated in ‘A Theory of Justice’, ‘Political Liberalism’ and ‘Justice as Fairness: A Restatement’. For a brief
overview of the basic ideas of Rawls’s political liberalism, see Tan, pp. 276-279.
2
be resolved after the principles of domestic justice have been decided on. Most importantly: How
should a domestically just society interact with other societies? Here, Rawls’s concern for liberal
tolerance becomes apparent for the first time. His main goal is to develop liberal principles of
global justice that are also acceptable from a “decent non-liberal point of view” (LP, p. 10). The
best way to achieve this, according to Rawls, is to run a second session of the original position (the
first one being the domestic one described in TJ and PL). This second session includes a major
change to the first one: The parties in this international original position no longer represent
persons but peoples. How does Rawls justify this change?
Persons are no longer the relevant “moral (actors)”, Rawls explains, as their claims to justice
have already been taken into account in the domestic original position (LP, p. 10). As Kuper (p.
641) works out, “[t]his is the methodological heart of LP: Rawls works upward and ‘outward’
from sufficiently just societies (peoples) to a just Society of Peoples”. As a consequence, Rawls’s
procedure models conditions for arriving at terms of cooperation that are “fair to peoples and not
to individual persons” (LP, p. 17, n. 9). A second important reason for choosing peoples and not
persons as representatives in the international original position, again, is Rawls’s concern for
tolerance. A so-called ‘cosmopolitan’ procedure that would construct a global original position of
all individuals of the world, according to Rawls “simply assumes that only a liberal democratic
society can be acceptable” (LP, p. 82-83). It would go beyond the scope of this paper to evaluate
this statement here2. Therefore, I take it as a given part of Rawls’s reasoning. We can also omit a
detailed exploration of the exact meaning of Rawls’s term “peoples”. For our purposes, it suffices
to assume with Moellendorf that in LP “peoples are in fact states” (Moellendorf, p. 135)3.
2
We will, however, touch some cosmopolitan issues in the context of our arguments about liberal toleration. For good
examples of a cosmopolitan criticism of Rawls’s theory see Pogge (1994), Caney, Kuper, Beitz or Buchanan.
3
For similar evaluations, see, for example, Buchanan, pp. 698-699, Caney, pp. 99-104, Kuper, pp. 641-645, Tan, p.
276
3
More important for us is a focus on the second main difference between the domestic and the
international original position: not all states are represented in this second original position and the
represented peoples are divided into two groups4. Rawls grants representation selectively, only to
peoples who are well-ordered by having either a liberal or a ‘decent’ institutional order (pp. 4,
63)5. This, in fact, means that the international original position is restricted by a precondition of
entry, as Naticchia (pp. 359-363) points out. Although these parties in the original position are
subject to a veil of ignorance that excludes knowledge of their size of territory, population,
military strength, natural resources, and economic development, some specific knowledge is left
unveiled: the parties know whether they are representing a liberal or a decent hierarchical people
(LP, pp. 32-33). This fact represents a second major change to the domestic original position
where any specific knowledge is excluded.
What distinguishes these two groups of peoples in the international original position? To
count as liberal, a state has to fulfil three criteria: (1) basic rights and liberties of the kind familiar
from a constitutional regime; (2) a priority to these rights, liberties and opportunities over the
claims of the general good and perfectionist values; (3) access for all citizens to the requisite
primary goods to enable them to make intelligent and effective use of their freedoms (LP, p. 14).
The category of decent peoples is broader and encompasses all societies that satisfy the following
two conditions (of which the second one is three-fold): (1) no aggressive aims in foreign policy
and respect to the independence of other societies; (2) a “common good conception of justice”
which takes each person’s interests into account in public decisions (though not necessarily on an
equal basis) and secures basic human rights for all; all persons are treated as subjects of legal
rights and duties; and judges and other officials accept and apply the common good conception of
4
For our analysis, it suffices to know that Rawls excludes certain peoples from the international original position.
Thus, we do without a more detailed description of the excluded groups and concentrate on the included ones.
5
Note that this notion of „well-ordered“ is not synonymous with the well-ordered society defined in PL.
4
justice in carrying out their public responsibilities (LP, pp. 64-67)6. Rawls adds that all these
societies are “associationist” in form which means that individuals hold their rights not as
individuals but as members of different groups, each of which is represented in the legal system by
a body in a decent “consultation hierarchy” (LP, p. 64). In spite of these defining aspects, one can
see that Rawls’s descriptions of liberal and non-liberal peoples stays (probably intentionally)
vague and encompasses a vast range of possible state forms7.
Finally, Rawls believes that after applying these preconditions to the international original
position, the representatives of both groups will come to agree on eight common liberal principles
for the Society of Peoples8. For the purpose of this paper, however, we can dispense with the
actual content of these principles as they will not be relevant for our analysis9.
3 Justifying the Toleration of Decent Non-liberal Peoples
Rawls’s notion of global liberal toleration relies on an analogy between reasonable comprehensive
doctrines in a liberal state and decent hierarchical states in the Society of Peoples (LP, pp. 59-60).
Thus, a liberal people, for the sake of global stability, has to tolerate decent hierarchical (nonliberal) peoples, like a liberal state that has to tolerate reasonable10 non-liberal doctrines among its
citizens. To understand this analogy, we should first briefly review the idea of toleration in PL.
To maintain legitimate stability in a liberal-democratic society with deep and irreconcilable
moral, religious, and philosophical diversity, Rawls tells us in PL, liberalism has to be restricted to
the political realm. The liberal ideas of autonomy and equality are, in this view, applicable only to
6
As one can see, liberal peoples can thus also be regarded as being ‘decent’. To clearly distinguish non-liberal
peoples, I will therefore refer to them as ‘decent hierarchical’ or ‘decent non-liberal’ in the following sections.
7
I will come back to problems related to this vagueness later.
8
To avoid confusion: If the two groups of people come to these principles in two separated sessions of the original
position, as many critics maintain and as Rawls somehow suggests but never definitely clarifies, is also not relevant
for our analysis here.
9
The interested reader, however, can find them in LP, p. 37.
10
Reasonable here means reasonable in the sense of PL, i.e. doctrines that accept the liberal basic structure of the
society.
5
individuals as citizens, concerning only their public rights and duties. Other, non-political
associations like the home, the church, or cultural associations do not have to follow these ideas in
their internal organization. The state has to accept these possibly non-liberal comprehensive (i.e.
non-political) doctrines as long as they tolerate the liberal-democratic basic structure with its
toleration of all reasonable comprehensive doctrines. Reasonable doctrines are those that are
tolerant of different comprehensive doctrines and accept the state as being neutral towards all these
comprehensive doctrines. Unreasonable doctrines are those that are intolerant of different
comprehensive doctrines or violate the public political rights of citizens (e.g., the right to exit
associations). Only with such a political liberalism can we reach a stable overlapping consensus,
i.e. a consensus between all reasonable citizens.
3.1 Rawls’s Justification of Toleration - A Valid Analogy?11
With these remarks in mind, we can now evaluate Rawls’s analogy. My assessment will proceed
in two steps. First, I will work out arguments against Rawls’s stipulation that reasonable
comprehensive doctrines and decent hierarchical states really can be seen as equivalents. In a
second step, then, I will try to show that, even if one accepts the validity of Rawls’s analogy,
Rawls himself does not follow it in a stringent way. If only one of these two steps succeeds,
Rawls’s account of liberal toleration is in trouble.
Let us then consider some arguments against the alleged analogy between reasonable
comprehensive doctrines in a liberal state and decent hierarchical states in the Society of Peoples.
There are at least six important problems with this analogy. First, what is permitted in the domestic
11
As one will remark, some of the articles cited in this and the next section are written before the publication of
Rawls’s ‘The Law of Peoples’ (1999). Those articles refer to an article of Rawls that was based on a lecture for
Amnesty International and was published in 1993 in ‘John Rawls: Collected Papers’. Though Rawls considerably
extended and modified his theory in his final book, the criticism cited here can be regarded as valid for both his article
and his book.
6
stage are moral, religious, or philosophical differences. Not permitted are different political
doctrines regarding the basic structure of society. These doctrines would be denounced as
unreasonable views. Otherwise, political liberalism would undermine itself. “Liberal tolerance
expresses ethical neutrality by remaining impartial between particular moral conceptions of the
good; for this very reason, liberalism must reject any political neutrality, that is, neutrality in
respect for justifications for coercion” (Kuper, p. 649, emphasis in original). But in LP, Rawls
explicitly advocates tolerating regimes with non-liberal political institutions. This disanalogy is
further shown by the fact that “nonliberal politics, unreasonable in the domestic context, becomes
reasonable in the international context” (Tan, p. 283).
A second problem with Rawls’s analogy is that in the domestic stage of his theory, citizens
have recourse to democracy in the political sphere. They are not only members of non-liberal
communities but also of a liberal state that guarantees certain public political rights. They can, for
example, always make use of their (public) exit rights. The same does not apply to citizens of
decent non-liberal peoples. The problem of Rawls’s theory is that these citizens are not
acknowledged in his second run of the original position as only peoples are represented here. Now
we can see that Rawls’s argument that persons are not represented in the second run of the original
position as “their claims to justice have already been taken into account in the domestic original
position” (LP, p. 10) is highly problematic: this is only true for individuals within the liberal
states. Though Rawls requires a right to emigrate for all decent peoples (LP, p. 74), it should be
clear that this right can not be seen as an equivalent to exit rights within liberal states (Tan, p. 292293). First, a right to emigrate does not include a right to immigrate. Whereas an individual in a
liberal state will at least fall back on the membership in his own state, an emigrant from a nonliberal state is stateless after his emigration. Second, leaving one’s country is a far more severe
step than leaving a certain community within one’s own state. This fact is even acknowledged by
7
Rawls himself in PL: “normally leaving one’s country is a grave step: it involves leaving the
society and culture in which we have been raised, the society and culture whose we use in speech
and thought to express and understand ourselves, our aims, our goals, our values” (PL, p. 222).
A third problem of Rawls’s analogy relates to his notion of the ‘fact of reasonable pluralism’.
Rawls repeatedly uses this idea, elaborated in PL, to defend his justification of toleration in LP.
The key idea is that reasonable persons (i.e. persons that tolerate reasonable comprehensive
doctrines of other individuals) will not reach agreement about the good life. This disagreement
should be respected as it is “the outcome of the free exercise or free human reason under
conditions of liberty” (PL, p. 144). As Simon Caney points out, however, the ‘fact of pluralism’ at
the global level is strikingly disanalogous from the ‘fact of pluralism’ at the domestic level:
“Pluralism at the global level cannot, in Rawls’s terms, be said to be ‘reasonable’ pluralism
because it is not the product of the exercise of reason in conditions of liberty” (Caney, p. 106, my
emphasis). In the absence of a liberal basic structure that secures such conditions of liberty through
institutions like a free press, education for all, equal rights to full freedom of conscience and
expression, freedom of assembly and public deliberation, a ‘reasonable pluralism’ cannot be
assumed to exist. Those institutions are essential for reflection, evaluation, debate and judgement
(ibid.). Recall that in the case of decent hierarchical states, such a liberal basic structure is neither
given within the state nor outside of the state, as a (supra-national) liberal basic structure of the
Society of Peoples.
Two further problems are closely connected to this latter aspect of disanalogy. As Pogge
(2000, p. 249) points out, there is no preference for any doctrine within the range of reasonable
comprehensive doctrines in Rawls’s domestic theory. Thus, by prohibiting state oppression, “this
range will not shrink in such a way that the adherents of all surviving doctrines would favour a
more restrictive accommodation” (ibid.). In the global case, however, (1) decent societies are seen
8
as morally inferior and (2) the long-term aim is that all human beings will eventually live under
liberal institutions12.
I want to add a sixth and final feature of disanalogy13. This is the fact that, different from the
reasonable comprehensive doctrines in the domestic case, decent non-liberal peoples in the global
case are allowed prior to the original position. What defines the decency of non-liberal people is
not subject to the agreement in the original position, but is, in fact, already specified in the
preconditions to the participation in the international original position14. Further, peoples in the
original position know already if they are liberal or non-liberal whereas individuals in the domestic
case do not know if they will still be reasonable once the veil of ignorance fades away. Thus,
Naticchia (pp. 359-362) shows that Rawls uses the precondition in the global case to produce an
agreement that the contract itself could not create. As one can see, this fact shows not only an
obvious disanalogy between reasonable comprehensive doctrines and decent non-liberal peoples
but also a further grave change to Rawls’s domestic theory.
3.2 Rawls’s Justification of Toleration - A Stringent Analogy?15
After having discussed the dubiety of Rawls’s analogy justification of toleration, I come to the
second step of my assessment now. Let us, the foregoing arguments notwithstanding, allow
Rawls’s analogy as a justification for the toleration of decent non-liberal states. What implications
would such an analogy bring with it? As the foregoing criticism already indicated, toleration in the
12
See LP, pp. 61-62
Surprisingly, this aspect is never explicitly mentioned by the critics cited in this paper.
14
This, indeed, changes the purpose of the whole original position considerably: In the domestic case, one important
aspect of the original position is its function to ensure rationality and reasonableness of the parties, while in the
international case the decency of the peoples is already ensures by the preconditions to the original position.
15
As one will remark, some of the articles cited in this and the next section are written before the publication of
Rawls’s ‘The Law of Peoples’ (1999). Those articles refer to an article of Rawls that was based on a lecture for
Amnesty International and was published in 1993 in ‘John Rawls: Collected Papers’. Though Rawls considerably
extended and modified his theory in his final book, the criticism cited here can be regarded as valid for both his article
and his book.
13
9
domestic stage can only be secured by a neutral and liberal state. However, as Charles Beitz
concludes: “The institutional structure of the Society of Peoples does not include an international
analog of the state – there is no ‘world government’ or superstate – but rather a network of
cooperative organizations concerned with matters of security, finance, and trade” (Beitz, p. 673).
Rawls rejects such a supra-national order, based on two Kantian ideas (ibid.). First, he fears that a
unified global regime with its own systems of law and law enforcement “would either be a global
despotism or else would rule over a fragile empire torn by frequent civil strife as various regions
and peoples tried to gain their political freedom and autonomy” (LP, p. 36). Second, Rawls thinks
that a world government is not only undesirable, but will also become increasingly unnecessary,
assuming that liberal democratic peoples are unlikely to go to war with each other16. However, as
convincing as these two arguments may appear, they do not succeed. First, as shown in the last
section, the question of war or peace between peoples is not the only possible reason to favour a
supra-national structure. Second, Rawls’s decent non-liberal peoples do not fall under the second
idea of “democratic peace”. Third, and most importantly, both arguments are not compatible with
Rawls’s analogical justification of international toleration. If this is to be a valid and stringent
analogy, Rawls has to make for analogical conditions on the international stage. He cannot simply
justify certain conditions by an analogy to the domestic case and at the same time maintain that an
important part of this analogy is not appropriate for the global case. Either he is to follow his
analogy in a stringent and complete way or he has to drop it entirely17. A middle course is not
possible here.
Interestingly, Pogge, in contrast to Tan (see last section), accepts Rawls’s view that a liberal
world order has to leave room for certain kinds of non-liberal national regimes. However, he
16
This is, as Beitz shows, a reference to Kant’s “pacific federation” of republican states, though Rawls himself (LP, p.
44-54) mainly argues with the “democratic peace” theory developed by Michael W. Doyle (Beitz, p. 673).
17
A step which would, of course, lead to a lack of any justification for the tolerance toward decent non-liberal people.
10
strongly criticizes Rawls’s reluctance to impose a liberal world order on a world that contains
peoples who do not share our liberal values: “If the Algerians want their society to be organized as
a religious state consistent with a just global order and we want ours to be a liberal democracy, we
can both have our way. But if the Algerians want the world to be organized according to the
Koran, and we want ours to be a liberal democracy, we can not both have our way” (Pogge, 1994,
p. 217, emphasis in original). Though different liberal thinkers obviously seem to disagree over the
level on which liberalism has to be enforced internationally (national or supra-national), both
strands strongly disagree with Rawls’s view that it should not be enforced on either of those two
levels. For Rawls, however, the imperative of toleration of other peoples only allows for a set of
liberal rules of foreign policy between peoples (the eight principles of the Society of Peoples).
This leads us to second problem in the stringency of Rawls’s analogy18. As Rawls rejects the
imposition of liberal regimes on other states and even the imposition of a liberal world order, one
should at least expect some notion of mutual criticism that could lead non-liberal peoples
gradually and peacefully to the acceptance of liberal values19. First, because Rawls’s Society of
People rests on liberal rules of conduct (the eight principles) between the states. As debate,
criticism and justification are important liberal features, one would expect features that stimulate
(and regulate) such aspects. Second, and again more importantly, it would seem to be an
indispensable part of Rawls’s analogy. Let me elaborate.
There is nothing in PL or ‘Justice as Fairness: A Restatement’ (JFR) that prohibits
‘reasonable disagreement’ among the citizens of a liberal state20. People are allowed (and even
encouraged) to argue about religious or philosophical matters (i.e. comprehensive doctrines) or
18
In the next paragraphs, I will be referring to a criticism voiced by Simon Caney (pp. 109-112).
It is obvious that Rawls favours a society of democratic peoples as a long-term ideal. Note, for example, his reliance
on the “democratic peace” theory (see above) and his belief in the superiority of a liberal constitutional democracy to
other forms of society (LP, p. 62).
20
See, for example, JFR, pp. 35-38
19
11
even political issues. Rawls is a fierce opponent of scepticism21. That means that he does not
exclude the possible truth of a comprehensive doctrine. However, as there are “many difficulties in
reaching agreement arising with all kinds of judgement” (JFR, p. 36), we cannot impose any
comprehensive doctrine on individuals, even if we are convinced that it is true. Yet, as
comprehensive views are outside of the political realm, individuals in a liberal society can
influence others as much as they want to (as long as they do not impose their own views on them).
Here, they are even allowed to use irrational and parochial justifications for their views if they
wish to. When it comes to political debates, however, individuals have to justify their views
publicly, as political decisions affect everyone in society (JFR, pp. 26-29). A public justification
must be “acceptable, not only to our own considered convictions, but also to those of others, and
this at all levels of generality” (JFR, pp. 27-28). In conclusion, only two things are forbidden
according to Rawls’s theory: imposing comprehensive views on individuals (through the state or
other individuals), and implementing public policies without (publicly) justifying them.
This brief elaboration makes one thing very clear: If we strictly follow Rawls’s analogy (that
decent non-liberal peoples correspond to reasonable comprehensive doctrines in the domestic
case), then we have to allow mutual exertion of influence between the peoples. Justification on
both sides would not have to fulfill the criterion of public justification. Both sides could argue
based on their own convictions. Here, another weakness of Rawls’s analogy becomes obvious.
The absence of a supra-national organization (that could function as a kind of referee) makes
it unlikely that such a debate would not wound the self-respect of the involved peoples. The
protection of this self-respect, however, is one of the main features of Rawls’s notion of toleration.
The violation of a people’s self-respect, he maintains, “may lead to great bitterness and
resentment” (LP, p. 61). Consequently, he does not follow his analogy stringently. Surprisingly, he
21
See, for example, JFR, p. 36, TJ, p. 188
12
does not implement the next best alternative, an obligation to public justification in the conduct
between peoples (based on the fact that debates between states are self-evidently political)22. How
then, according to Rawls, are states allowed to voice their disagreement with other (decent) states?
Here, a very strong and restrictive notion of Rawlsian tolerance becomes apparent. Global
tolerance, thus, commands of liberal people: first, to recognize decent non-liberal peoples as equal
participating members in good standing of the Society of Peoples; second, to refrain from any
political sanctions (military, economic, or diplomatic) to make decent non-liberal peoples change
their ways (LP, p. 59). Finally, liberal states should not offer incentives to non-liberal states to
make them develop a more liberal democratic constitution (LP, pp. 84-85). The reason for those
rigid limitations on a liberal people’s conduct toward decent non-liberal states is the high value of
“mutual respect” which, if granted, leads to self-respect and self-determination of all peoples. As
Rawls states: “[M]utual respect among peoples in the Society of Peoples constitutes an essential
part of the basic structure and political climate of that society” and “[l]apsing into contempt on the
one side, and bitterness and resentment on the other, can only cause damage” (LP, p. 62). At the
same time, this mutual respect is seen by Rawls as the most effective way to transform non-liberal
peoples to liberal ones: “By recognizing these societies as bona fide member of the Society of
Peoples, liberal peoples encourage this change. They do not in any case stifle such change, as
withholding respect from decent peoples might well do” (LP, .p 61).
We do not have to evaluate the empirical validity of Rawls’s assumptions here. Important for
our purpose is the fact that Rawls’s imperatives for liberal states are inconsistent with his analogy.
As Caney points out, the “commitment to mutual respect [..] establishes a complete ban on any
attempt – coercive or non-coercive – to move decent non-liberal societies toward liberal values”
22
Note that the possibility of public justification is not excluded by the fact that Rawls dismisses a world government:
public justification in Rawls’s domestic theory refers to the other citizens, not the state (JFR, pp.26-29).
13
(Caney, p. 109). To be consistent, however, “Rawls should […] conclude that liberal peoples may
try to convert other types of societies to liberalism” (ibid., p. 110).
4 Conclusions
At the very least, my foregoing arguments should make clear that Rawls’s justification of the
toleration of decent non-liberal peoples, the analogy between reasonable comprehensive doctrines
in a liberal state and decent hierarchical states in the Society of Peoples, is problematic. First, there
are too many dissimilarities between the domestic and the global case to make for a valid analogy.
Second, if one accepts the analogy nevertheless, another problem arises: Rawls misses the chance
to develop the analogy in a stringent manner. As a conclusion, I will first try to briefly show the
vertices of a more stringent alternative to Rawls’s construction. Finally, I hope to demonstrate that
the implications of Rawls’s own international theory make the full development of such an
alternative a very desirable project for the future.
As Rawls sees the construction of domestic justice as already completed, the only way to do this as
a part of his ‘Law of Peoples’ is in the global stage. To save Rawls’s analogy justification, his
international theory would then have to include a more prominent role of the basic structure of the
Society of Peoples as a first step. Because of Rawls’s rejection of a world government or any
similar supra-national organizations, the global basic structure in LP simply stands for the values
of mutual respect, fairness and equality between peoples (LP, pp. 61-62, 114-115). This is not
enough for his analogy to be stringent. Michael Dusche shows that a stronger international basic
structure does not have to be a world government: “The literature abounds with attempts to
conceptualize something in-between a world state and a mere set of rules with no authority to
interpret and no power to enforce them. […] Rawls’s failure to do so [to develop such an
approach], I fear, weighs heavier against his proposed concept of the Law of Peoples than the
14
earlier observations regarding incoherence and arbitrariness of his concept of tolerable, non-liberal
societies” (Dusche, online).
Further, Rawls would have to include possibilities of mutual, non-coercive exertion of
influence between the liberal and decent non-liberal people to meet the analogy with his domestic
case. This would also include an influence from non-liberal to liberal states23. Curiously, Rawls’s
rules of mutual respect only mention rules of behaviour for liberal peoples towards non-liberal
peoples. This does not fit Rawls’s own notion of the basic structure of the Society of Peoples. To
be mutually respectful, fair, and equal, those rules should be valid for the foreign policies of any
people in the society towards any other people in the society. Even with disregard to the
stringency of his analogy, such an approach, as Caney points out, would show greater mutual
respect than a forced mutual ignorance. “Surely, it would be better – more respectful – to respond
to the objection to liberal values […] rather than ignore their rationale. This, indeed, points to the
need for a more dialogic response to global cultural diversity” (Caney, p. 108). In my own view,
such a notion of mutual respect is not only more respectful but also more in line with the notion of
political liberalism that Rawls developed in his earlier works.
It seems that Rawls, in order to include the toleration of non-liberal peoples in his theory,
had to rely on a flawed analogy to modify some of the basic principles of political liberalism in his
international theory. As Fernando Tesón criticizes: “A political theory cannot survive if one keeps
amending its assumptions at every turn to reach results that do not seem to match the theory in its
original form” (Tesón, p. 85). Other critics maintain that Rawls has created what he always wanted
to avoid: “It seems then that […] Rawls’s international project is beneath it all a project of modus
vivendi… The global overlapping consensus Rawls presents in “The Law of Peoples” is more a
23
Recall that in the domestic case, people holding reasonable non-liberal doctrines are not prohibited to exert (noncoercive) influence on people holding liberal comprehensive doctrines.
15
political compromise worked out between liberal and nonliberal state delegates than a consensus
around genuinely liberal values” (ibid., pp. 285, 289)24.
But even if one does not want to go so far, one thing is certain: The changes to Rawls’s
theory on the global level and their implications for his notion of political liberalism are grave. To
give one of the most striking examples: Claims of individuals in decent non-liberal are not
considered satisfyingly25, let alone the claims of individuals whose peoples are not even allowed to
enter the global original position. As most of them have neither been part of a domestic nor an
international original position, Rawls’s assertion that their claims to justice have already been
taken into account can hardly suffice. As Caney (pp. 99-104) shows, even decent non-liberal
peoples in Rawls’s theory cannot be forced to cut off practices like racial discrimination, the
political exclusion of ethnic minorities, the forcible removal of members of some ethnic
communities (that is, ethnic cleansing), and the perpetuation of grossly unequal opportunities and
political power. To justify the tolerance and the abandonment of any exertion of influence towards
such societies, Rawls would need a less controversial analogy to his own domestic theory or – at
least – a higher stringency in developing its implications for his global theory.
It is obvious that even Rawls himself realized that he had gone too far with using his notion
of toleration as a justification for modifying his own theory in his first sketch of the ‘Law of
Peoples’. As a reaction to the criticism following his Amnesty lecture, he dropped toleration as a
justification for the lack of an international distributive principle26 in his final work. Unfortunately,
he did not see the need for further changes in his toleration argument.
24
For similar arguments see Ackerman, pp. 381-383, Hoffman, p. 54, Kuper, pp. 660-661, Moellendorf, pp. 146-147
See also Ackerman, pp. 382-383.
26
See Rawls (1999b), p. 558
25
16
5 Bibliography
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Beitz, Charles R. (2000). Rawls’s Law of Peoples. In Ethics, Vol. 110, No. 4, pp. 669-696.
Buchanan, Allen (2000). Rawls’s Law of Peoples: Rules for a Vanished Westphalian World. In
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Caney, Simon (2002). Cosmopolitanism and the Law of Peoples. In The Journal of Political
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Rawls, John (1993). Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
Tan, Kok-Chor (1998). Liberal Toleration in Rawls’s Law of Peoples. In Ethics, Vol. 108, No. 2,
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