Adrian Little: Liberal democracy, ethics and the politics of disagreement
Liberal democracy, ethics and the politics of
disagreement
Dr. Adrian Little
Department of Political Science
University of Melbourne
Refereed paper presented to the
Australasian Political Studies Association Conference
University of Adelaide
29 September - 1 October 2004
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Adrian Little: Liberal democracy, ethics and the politics of disagreement
Abstract
This paper examines contemporary debates on the pursuit of consensus in
liberal theories of democracy. In recent years the radical democratic critique
of liberal models of consensus developed by authors such as Chantal Mouffe
(2000) has achieved growing currency in contemporary theoretical debates. In
the light of this type of argument, some contemporary normative political
philosophers have attempted to incorporate a model of dissent and
disagreement into their conceptions of democracy. Notable here is the work of
Cass Sunstein (2003) who has argued that whilst dissent is fundamental to a
healthy liberal polity, it must be contained through the traditional political
and legal institutions of liberal democracy. A more persuasive account is
evident in the work of Stuart Hampshire (2000) who recognizes that these
institutions themselves may be sources of political conflict. As such justice can
only be maintained through constant assessment of whether democratic
mechanisms reflect procedural fairness. Against these normative political
models, the paper goes on to analyze the alternative perspectives that have
emerged from the tradition of continental philosophy. In particular it
examines the work of Jacques Rancière (1999) and his claim that disagreement
is constitutive of politics and thus that attempts to manufacture consensus
inevitably depoliticize these conflicts. The paper concludes that the latter
perspective is a more useful way of conceptualizing modern political conflicts
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and understanding the increasing shift of political debates onto the terrain of
ethics. Where liberals tend to want to police the ethical discourses that emerge
in contemporary politics, radical interpretations of democracy encourage the
opening out of political space to enable ethical conflicts to emerge.
Introduction
The pursuit of consensus is a fundamental element of contemporary liberal
theories of democracy especially those concerned with reconciling different
moral viewpoints in pluralistic societies. Consensus here can be viewed in
numerous ways although increasingly liberals are less concerned with
agreement about substantive moral beliefs and more focused on consensus
around democratic procedures. From this perspective liberal democracies
should be constructed around the idea that everyone in a society can have
faith in the procedures for political engagement and democratic decisionmaking. Thus it does not matter if political actors disagree with each other on
substantive issues as long as they have faith in the fairness of the mechanisms
through which conflicts are resolved.
The pursuit of consensus is also evident in recent theories of civil society and
social capital where it is envisaged that the strengthening of intermediate
institutions between the individual and the state can lead to the strengthening
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of democracy against difference. Here individuals and groups are encouraged
to engage with one another despite their differences in the spirit of mutual
understanding. Rather than focusing on the formal political mechanisms and
procedures for settling conflicts, theories of civil society promote greater
engagement and deliberation in everyday life. Where the former can be seen
as somewhat formal and legalistic, the latter viewpoint is generally more
bottom-up and associational. In any case, what these various perspectives in
normative political theory share is the belief that the greater the levels of
consensus that can be generated in a society, the more stable that society will
be. Consensus, then, is regarded as an inherently positive phenomenon in
most contemporary forms of liberalism.
In roughly the last ten years the consensual model of liberalism has come
under increasing challenge from radical theories of democracy (Mouffe 2000).
Essentially these challenges reject the ease with which liberals assume that
substantive moral differences can be reconciled with one another. Whereas
some liberals have attempted to incorporate a model of value pluralism into
their normative philosophy (Crowder 2002), others have responded to the
ideas of radical democracy by arguing that dissent is a fundamental feature of
liberal democratic polities. This paper analyses this perspective with a
particular focus on the recent work of Cass Sunstein (2003). It contends that
Sunstein's thesis has a rather thin, limited understanding of dissent and its
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ramifications for democratic politics. Similarly even normative political
philosophers who understand the ineradicable nature of political
disagreement like Hampshire (2000) believe that the only mechanisms that
can deal with such conflicts are fair procedures. These approaches will be
contrasted with recent ideas on disagreement emanating from continental
philosophers such as Jacques Rancière who contend that what 'makes politics
an object of scandal is that it is that activity which has the rationality of
disagreement as its very own rationality' (Rancière 1999: xii). The paper
argues that this line of argument which sees disagreement as constitutive of
politics provides a much more dynamic understanding of political
disagreement than dominant forms of liberalism and provides a much more
useful basis on which to understand ethical conflicts in contemporary
democracies.
Liberalism, dissent and the pursuit of consensus
As noted above, the dominant trend in liberal theorizing when dealing with
matters of pluralism has been to demonstrate the ways in which liberalism of
all ideologies is best equipped to contain a multiplicity of political viewpoints.
Whether in terms of the principles that underpin liberalism such as toleration
or state neutrality, or the types of legal and political institutions that should
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be the basis of liberal societies such as deliberative procedures, it is argued
that liberalism provides a shell which can manage, accommodate or contain
the numerous moral discourses of diverse, complex societies. In recent years
we have witnessed a sustained attack on these assumptions from, amongst
others, a range of radical democratic commentators who believe that liberals
underplay the extent of conflict in the contemporary world (Mouffe 2000;
Connolly 1995; Little 2002c). In response to these criticisms, some liberals
have attempted to deal with the implications of dissent and disagreement in a
more thorough way. Notable here has been the recent work of Cass R.
Sunstein in his book Why Societies Need Dissent (2003).
Sunstein’s aim is to demonstrate the ways in which liberal societies need
forms of dissent and opposition to flourish. Once a society attempts to clamp
down on disapproved views through limiting freedom of speech for example,
then it inevitably becomes more likely to face violence and upheaval.
Sunstein, then, defends the ‘open society’ where there is an established
tolerance of dissenting viewpoints and political actors. It is in dealing with
these perspectives through legal and political mechanisms that we prevent
outbreaks of violence and other types of extremism. Sunstein marshals a
range of legal and psychological evidence to advance his claim that
conformity is dangerous and that we should encourage dissenters to make
their voices heard. Moreover he contends that we need to listen to minorities
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who are trying to convert the way of thinking of majorities and be prepared to
change laws and institutions where necessary:
When a law no longer reflects citizen’s values, people are unlikely to
obey it without a great deal of enforcement activity. And when a law is
so inconsistent with people’s values that it cannot, in a democracy, be
much enforced, it loses its legitimacy. It has no claim to regulate conduct
at all. (Sunstein 2003: 43)
The problem here is that Sunstein is concerned primarily with majorities. It is
not particularly contentious to argue that laws which contravene the
behaviour or mores of a large majority of society should be subject to political
scrutiny and a case be made for changing them. However, what this
argument ignores is that fact that contemporary Western liberal societies are
comprised of substantial minorities with values and arguments that
consistently oppose the established laws and institutions. On these issues,
there is frequently a clash of moral values in which minorities rarely prevail.
It is not just a fact that a majority and a minority disagree on a particular
issue. Rather minorities may find themselves consistently struggling with
systems and institutions which contravene their deep-seated moral
viewpoints. The problem here is not that there is dissent but that there is little
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hope for these minorities that majorities will take on board their arguments
on what may be fundamental issues.
Sunstein suggests that often laws and moral viewpoints emanate from
cascades of information that can act in a positive or negative fashion. Thus,
ideas and opinions enter the public sphere and then filter into the
establishment of legal institutions and moral positions. Arguably Sunstein
neglects the difficulties that minorities and critics of political systems face in
establishing cascades of information in their favour. For example, he might
point to a movement such as the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s (there
are several positive references to Martin Luther King in Sunstein’s book) that
was eventually able to achieve some of its objectives through the expression
of dissent. But what this example fails to demonstrate is the problems facing
those who actually disagree with the structure of a particular political system.
What the Civil Rights Movement rejected was the way in which basic rights of
citizenship were not experienced by black communities in the United States
on an equal footing to whites. The rights of citizenship themselves were not
the target of the campaign; rather the focus was on their unequal distribution.
This is rather different to the campaigns of minorities who reject the very
moral principles on which liberal institutions are based. Rather than wanting
to experience these institutions, minorities in contemporary societies may
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want absolutely nothing to do with them. Sunstein offers us little in trying to
deal with such demands.
Dealing with dissent will always be a matter of subjective judgment too. In
reference to Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden, Sunstein himself recognizes
that ‘dissenters are often wrong or unreasonable, and they might start
unjustified movements of their own. Conformity pressures and bad
informational cascades are often a product of such dissenters’ (Sunstein 2003:
89). What this doesn’t do is tell us how we are to adjudicate between ‘good’
and ‘bad’ forms of dissent or what is valuable and valueless. Here we reach
the nub of Sunstein’s argument because ultimately he is forced to admit that:
many dissenters are speaking nonsense, and what they say is unhelpful
or even harmful. What we want to encourage is not dissent as such but
reasonable dissent, or dissent of the right kind. In terms of producing
good decisions and counteracting the risk of bad cascades, this should
be the fundamental goal. (Sunstein 2003: 91)
It is at this point that we have evidence that Sunstein’s attempt to resurrect
the place of dissent within liberal democratic thinking is predicated upon
rather traditional liberal concerns for reasonableness. Indeed it is demands
such as reasonableness that provided part of the original radical democratic
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critique of theorists such as Rawls and Habermas. The same question remains
unanswered then: why should I act ‘reasonably’ in a society that excludes me
or where the established procedures run contrary to my moral principles?
Like other liberals, Sunstein provides no persuasive answer. Indeed his
position merely generates a further range of questions which can only be
answered subjectively:
It is proper for social pressures to discourage senseless, hysterical or
paranoid forms of dissent. It is also proper for norms of civility to
discourage dissent’s most hateful and dehumanizing forms. When
conformity and cascades lead people in good directions, society has no
particular need to encourage dissent. (Sunstein 2003: 91)
The questions this begs include: who is to decide what is ‘senseless, hysterical
or paranoid’? How do we define civility? How are we to know when
information leads us in ‘good’ directions? All of these are subjective
judgments and it is not difficult to imagine powerful political actors
dismissing the voices of opponents or critics as senseless, uncivil or paranoid.
As usual, we are left with the usual liberal filters of reasonableness,
rationality, and so forth. The limitations of these filters are well documented
in terms of marginalizing the views of those who are critical of the liberal
order (Little 2004).
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This is not to say that Sunstein is unaware of the difficulties that some groups
face in engaging with the decision making process in liberal democracies.
Thus, for example, he notes how the legal principle of freedom of speech is
not always experienced equally by ‘low-status groups’ and that there needs to
be an extension of the legal principle to the broader socio-cultural domain. To
this end he contends that a ‘well-functioning democracy has a culture of free
speech, not simply legal protection of free speech … In a culture of free
speech, the attitude of listeners is no less important than that of speakers’
(Sunstein 2003: 110). This may well be the case but Sunstein offers no remedy
to the absence of this culture in established democracies or the cultivation of
this culture in other types of society. Instead all we are given is a justification
of the dominant values of liberal democracy accompanied by a realization
that these cultural values rarely prevail. In the light of the justification of key
aspects of American liberal democracy in the book, this seems a somewhat
blasé approach to the democratic deficit exacerbated by inequalities of power
experienced by many marginalized groups. When this is coupled with the
deep entrenchment of the cultural attitudes that generate this marginalization,
then there would appear to be a serious schism between Sunstein’s idealized
liberal democracy and the practical reality of existing liberal democratic
regimes.
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Ultimately, Sunstein pays lip service to the notion of dissent insofar as he
encourages it within the existing frameworks of liberal democracy without
encouraging thorough criticism of the nature of liberal democratic regimes.
His work is characterized by subjective value judgments between what is
good and bad dissent and the best ways for dealing with dissent. The way in
which he notes but then glosses over forms of exclusion and conflict within
existing liberal democracies is worrying and problematic. Ultimately we are
left with the rather weak claim that ‘at least it can be said that a society which
permits dissent and does not impose conformity is in a far better position to
be aware of, and to correct, serious social problems’ (Sunstein 2003: 149). The
cynic may well ask why - if this is the case - so many social problems continue
to exist in contemporary liberal democracies. In the end Sunstein establishes
an argument for a liberal version of democracy that theoretically corresponds
to an idealized American polity but it contains an extremely thin, limited
understanding of dissent that offers little to those who are effectively
excluded from decision making processes in contemporary liberal democratic
polities.
Within the domain of normative political philosophy, there have been some
more critical analyses focused on the ineradicable nature of disagreement.
Such an approach is evident in Stuart Hampshire's book, Justice is Conflict.
Hampshire improves upon the dominant liberal perspectives by pointing to
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the centrality of political conflict to democracies and the fact that political
justice is founded upon how we mediate these disagreements. As such he
questions the traditional pursuit of rationality in political philosophy and
recognizes the problematic nature of demands for a singular reason and
liberal advocacy of reasonableness as the basis of political engagement across
difference.1 Against Rawlsian liberalism, Hampshire contends that
reasonableness places a heavy burden on some groups in society especially in
situations such as divided societies where groups define themselves in terms
of their opposition to other groups.2 Where many liberals have tried to
construct substantial, universal models of justice, Hampshire recognizes that
fragile settlements to political conflicts should more properly be regarded as
the products of compromise. This is a practical perspective he contends
because the 'desires and emotions [of individuals] are usually ambivalent and
always in conflict with each other' especially where 'the tension between
contrary forces and impulses [in society], pulling against each other, is
perceptible and vivid ...' (Hampshire 2000: 32). Diversity in society inevitably
leads to competition and conflict in complex societies and this suggests that
we should be sceptical of models of consensus (which usually reflect the
predilections of their advocates). Quite simply, there 'is no end to conflict
within and around the civil order' (Hampshire 2000: 39).
1
Of course this is a key feature of John Rawls’ argument. See Rawls (1993).
2
A good example of this problem is the case of Northern Ireland. See Little (2003, 2004a, 2004b).
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However ultimately Hampshire's prescription is for fair procedures as the
basis of justice. He openly argues that 'fairness in procedures for resolving
conflicts is the fundamental kind of fairness, and that it is acknowledged as a
value in most cultures, places and times: fairness in procedure is an invariable
value, a constant in human nature' (Hampshire 2000: 4). Leaving aside the
questionable appeal to human nature in this statement, Hampshire does
employ a more critical version of proceduralism than is the case with
influential strands of liberalism such as in the work of Rawls. Instead
Hampshire sees any such procedures which form the basis of justice as
contingent to some extent. He recognizes that compromises ensure that the
element of fairness will always be imperfect and open to challenge. However,
this immediately raises the question of why members of a polity will assent to
the fairness of procedures where such fairness is perceived to be imperfect.
Indeed Hampshire appears to be endorsing a rather strong proceduralist
perspective when he contends that there is 'one overriding moral principle
that every citizen has good reasons to accept and to honor in practice: that is
the principle of institutionalized fairness in procedures for the resolution of
these conflicts' (Hampshire 2000: 79). This is not just established as a 'moral
principle' that we should accept even if we disagree with the practical
workings of procedures, but it is an overriding principle. This leaves rather
limited scope for the expression of disagreement with the democratic
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mechanisms of a given polity especially as engagement within these
procedures will not reflect rational decision making according to Hampshire.
Whilst it is important to recognize the conflicting rationalities that are brought
to bear in ethical debates in complex, diverse societies, this fails to explain
why we should accept the moral principles underpinning political
mechanisms if we adhere to different or oppositional ethical rationalities. For
Hampshire, the rather limited answer to this dilemma lies in the 'institutional
loyalties and in deep-seated habits of living together and arguing together'
(Hampshire 2000: 94). The question remains as to how we are to establish
such loyalties and habits when they do not already exist. Moreover, just as
such habits and loyalties are difficult to create, once they are established that
does not mean that they will not regress and disintegrate. Our perceptions of
fairness are not set in stone but will wax and wane over time and vary
according to the specific political or ethical debates in hand.
One further important point that differentiates Hampshire's argument from
other forms of liberal proceduralism is his belief that there is not a universal
set of procedures that he sees as applicable to guarantee justice. Liberals like
Rawls, not surprisingly, see their preferred vision of liberalism as the most
appropriate ideology to underpin a universal model of fair procedures. For
Hampshire, on the other hand, there will be considerable variations between
the procedures which guarantee justice in different societies. As long as they
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guarantee fair opportunities for individuals and groups to express their
discontent, then the procedures for justice may differ considerably between
different polities:
The local institutions, each with its peculiar history, customs, and
conventions, will specify the typical forms of fairness and evenhandedness established in the particular institutions. The plurality of
forms of institution extends across the plurality of types of conflict.
Therefore the requirements of procedural justice vary immensely in
different places and at different times in virtue of local customs and
rules. All the diverse customs and conventions are recognized to be
subordinate to a common and very general purpose - the just and fair
weighing of conflicting policies, proposals, or opinions. (Hampshire
2000: 55)
As a universal principle this is a weak and generalized guide to the efficacy of
democratic procedures. Nonetheless it makes it all the more practical
compared to the universal proceduralism of Rawlsian liberalism or the highly
regulated deliberative democracy of Habermas. For Hampshire, the only
principle that claims universal applicability is that of fairness in procedures
but, in practice, that will vary considerably. Without such a basic principle of
fairness, conflicts in diverse societies are more likely to be resolved (or not
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resolved) in violent fashion. The outcomes of an absence of agreed procedures
are an unpalatable thought for Hampshire: 'If either the rational requirement
or the respect for custom breaks down and ceases to operate, we should
expect catastrophe. Conflicts will then no longer be resolved within the
political domain but will be resolved by violence or the threat of violence, and
life will become nasty, brutish, and short' (Hampshire 2000: 98).
According to Hampshire's perspective justice requires that the mechanisms
for political decision making hear all pertinent arguments. From this basis we
will accept decisions which run contrary to our own perspective because we
recognize that disagreement is fundamental and that we will lose arguments
some of the time. This is a contentious claim. The idea that we will accept
decisions with which we disagree unquestioningly is a dangerous assumption
and one that runs counter to many modern polities. Quite often, losers in
political disagreements will question the procedures through which decisions
have been taken. Of course, Hampshire would reason that this does not fit his
model as not everyone agrees procedures are fair. However, in practice, many
of the losers in political conflicts will only recognize their fundamental
objections to the decision making process after the decision has been taken.
Moreover there is a continuing danger that one group in society (or more) will
constantly lose political arguments because they are always in the minority
and their beliefs differ substantially from the dominant mores.
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In this situation it is likely that a group that may assent to the fairness of
procedures at one stage may change their position over the course of time as
more political arguments are lost. Hampshire might argue that this means
that the procedures must constantly be reviewed and in this he would be
correct. For example, he explicitly states that '[p]rocedures of conflict
resolution within any state are always being criticized and are always
changing and are never as fair and as unbiased as they might be' (Hampshire
2000: 26). However, what this also means is that the procedures will never
generate complete harmony in society. Some groups will always be critical of
the unfairness in decision making mechanisms. Thus, the nature of
contemporary Western societies with their attendant inequalities and
differentials of power ensures that unanimous acceptance of the fairness of
procedures is unachievable. Once we accept, as Hampshire seems to, that
consensus is unachievable, then the advocacy of fair procedures as the basis
of justice appears to be aspirational rather than based in the practical realities
of complex, diverse societies. Whilst it might be true that '[r]espect for a
process can, as a matter of habit, coexist with detestation of the outcome of
the process ...' (Hampshire 2000: 46), frequently it does not and that is where
Hampshire’s argument fails to convince in overcoming the difficulties in
liberal understandings of democracy. In short, Hampshire's theory is an
advance on Sunstein's brand of liberalism but it is still insufficiently focused
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on the full implications of exclusions and power inequalities. Perhaps
symbolic of this problem is Hampshire's primary focus on redistributive
politics for justice. Whilst redistribution is indeed a central dimension of
theories of social justice, the production of disagreement emanates from a
much broader range of exclusions from public life (Young 1990; see also
Fraser 1997)). To address the sources of these exclusions, we need to develop
a more systematic understanding of their origins and their implications.
A radical politics of disagreement: Jacques Rancière
A more substantial theory of political contestation is provided by Jacques
Rancière who first came to prominence in Anglophone debates with the
translation of The Ignorant Schoolmaster in 1991 (Rancière 1991). Coming from
the background of continental philosophy, he built on the arguments of that
book and refined his perspective on political conflict with the later publication
of On the Shore of Politics (1995) and Disagreement (1999). In the latter he argues
that we should:
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take disagreement to mean a determined kind of speech situation: one in
which one of the interlocutors at once understands and does not
understand what the other is saying. Disagreement is not the conflict
between one who says white and another who says black. It is the
conflict between one who says white and another who also says white
but does not understand the same thing by it or does not understand
that the other is saying the same thing in the name of whiteness.
(Rancière 1999: x)
One useful way to examine this perspective is in terms of the concepts which
comprise the dominant parlance of contemporary liberalism. Conflicts in
contemporary liberal democracies are not merely between those who hold
morally incompatible perspectives on political issues (although these exist as
well). Rather the types of conflicts that are of concern here are those where
dispute is over the nature of things like justice, equality and freedom. Thus,
for example, disagreement in France regarding the rectitude of students
wearing religious symbols in a supposedly secular education system is not a
simple matter of whether such symbols are appropriate or not. Instead they
are fundamentally bound up with notions of social justice, equal treatment
and religious freedom. In other words political actors on both sides of this
particular dispute couch their claims in terms of the same concepts: notably
what is just.
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From Rancière's perspective, disagreement alludes to the way in which we
differ on what is just and fair. We appeal to the same concepts and it is
therefore difficult to even imagine the kinds of fair procedures that
Hampshire identifies emerging in a non-controversial fashion. In short,
procedures and the extent to which they are fair will be the subject of political
disagreement. Disagreement then is not just a matter of misunderstanding or
ignorance of the moral claims of others. Rather, as Rancière sees it,
disagreement can emerge even when we are fully aware of the views of others
but reject the way in which those claims relate to the higher political concepts
of freedom, equality and so forth. The dispute here is between conflicting
rationalities of how particular claims and policies relate to higher order
political concepts. In analysing any disagreement Rancière claims that there
'are all sorts of reasons why X both does and does not understand Y: while
clearly understanding what Y is saying. X cannot see the object Y is talking
about; or else, X understands and is bound to understand, sees and attempts
to make visible another object using the same name, another reason within
the same argument' (Rancière 1999: xi). The point here is that disagreement
refers to different rational interpretations of concepts such as justice. As such
the fairness or otherwise of liberal democratic procedures is likely to be even
more substantive than even Hampshire envisages. Disagreement is about
substantive differences rather than misunderstanding or ambiguity.
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This understanding of the centrality of disagreement to politics relates to
Rancière's other primary claim which is that the domain of politics is always
predicated upon exclusions from the polity. Indeed, it is the existence of
excluded groups from the democratic polity which underpins the radical
democratic view that the constitutions of liberal democracies are constantly
subject to political challenge and upheaval. Thus, what is usually regarded as
politics in contemporary thinking - the formal domain of organized parties,
voting and elections - is regarded as something different by Rancière: 'Politics
is generally seen as the set of procedures whereby the aggregation and
consent of collectivities is achieved, the organization of powers, the
distribution of places and roles, and the systems for legitimizing this
distribution. I propose to give this system of distribution and legitimization
another name. I propose to call it the police' (Rancière 1999: 28). Rancière is
clear that he wants to differentiate this understanding of the police from the
'state apparatus'. Where the idea of policing as part of a state apparatus has a
long history in political theory (especially Marxism), Rancière sees it as a
much more contingent and arbitrary phenomenon. The idea of a state
apparatus presupposes the notion of an ideological foundation upon which
state mechanisms are organized in the way that they are, whereas Rancière's
interpretation of policing sees the exclusion of certain groups and voices in
society as part of a much more complex dynamic:
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The police is, essentially, the law, generally implicit, that defines a
party's share or lack of it. But to define this, you must first define the
configuration of the perceptible in which one or the other is inscribed.
The politics is thus first an order of bodies that defines the allocation of
ways of doing, ways of being, and ways of saying, and sees that those
bodies are assigned by name to a particular place and task; it is an order
of the visible and the sayable that sees that a particular activity is visible
and another is not, that this speech is understood as discourse and
another as noise. (Rancière 1999: 29)
This is an interesting perspective on the exclusionary nature of contemporary
politics because it recognizes the ways in which the processes of democracy,
which are theoretically understood as being based upon relations of equality,
frequently operate in a contrary fashion. Moreover exclusions are not
necessarily evident in the forceful or coercive operation of institutions of the
state but take place instead in numerous ways and through the covert
workings of a range of bodies in the sphere of politics and government but
also in broader socio-cultural relations. Opposition to the system may not
always emerge in formal political institutions according to this argument
because of the ways in which democratic procedures marginalize and exclude
potentially critical voices. Here we see that issues such as the representation
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of certain groups in the media becomes just as relevant as the formal right to
participate in elections and so forth.
Against this method of policing, Rancière wants to promote an alternative
understanding of politics. He contends that we should reserve the term
'politics' for those activities that stand in opposition to the policing of
contemporary democratic regimes. Politics is, then, the activity of those
groups and voices that have been excluded from the polity. This is:
manifest in a series of actions that reconfigure the space where parties,
parts, or lack of parts have been defined. Political activity is whatever
shifts a body from the place assigned to it or changes a place's
destination. It makes visible what had no business being seen, and
makes heard a discourse where once there was only place for noise; it
makes understood as discourse what was once only noise. (Rancière
1999: 30)
Or, in the words of Bob Jessop, '[p]olitics proper consists in the disruption of
police, i.e., in the disorderly intrusion of the equality of anyone and everyone
into an otherwise ordered inequality and in the testing of new ways of posing
equality in various [unspecified] ways ... Thus politics destabilizes disrupts,
and disorders established divisions and distributions' (Jessop 2003: 6). Such
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an approach it is argued is one that recognizes the demands placed on
contemporary forms of governance by complexity and chaos and the
unknowability of the shape of the polity and the people who comprise it.
Moreover this position comprehends how future developments will
inevitably disrupt and destabilize the dominant political order. It is only by
recognizing the centrality of disagreement to politics that we can envisage a
democratic order in which the minorities that are generated by complexity
and dynamism are able to challenge the status quo. Conceived as such,
disagreement is the lifeblood of a democratic order; it is the only way that the
dominant order can be reconceived as is required. The pursuit of a static,
consensual order acts against such reconception. To be clear, liberal
democracy ensures the creation of disagreement by its exclusion of certain
groups at any given time and the politics of disagreement is essential to
democratic engagement across difference. It is only by making possible the
challenge to the democratic order by hearing voices of disagreement that
liberal democracies can avoid political stagnation and closure. Such a
situation is more likely to lead to the expression of disagreement through
violence and other forms of disorder. It is no mistake that many closed
political orders have eventually had to be opened up to the challenges of
those who have been prepared to perpetrate or defend political violence
because of the unwillingness of majorities to recognize the claims of minority
groups (Little 2004a).
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Adrian Little: Liberal democracy, ethics and the politics of disagreement
This understanding of the primacy of a politics of disagreement has profound
implications for the nature of democratic governance. It lays bare the
inadequacies of a consensual model which closes politics to necessary
challenges. Moreover it recognizes that decision making in any polity will
never be a matter of certainty and outcomes are never guaranteed. Instead,
the complexity of modern democratic orders demands that:
self-reflexive governing agents should seek creative solutions whilst
acknowledging the limits to any such solution; they must engage in
calculation but also make judgments; they must be committed to the
resulting governance projects but recognize the risk of failure; and they
will need to combine passion and reason to mobilize support behind the
project. (Jessop 2003: 24)
This is a very different conception of politics to the liberal model of
representative democracy. Instead of regarding the political process as one
where political actors convince sufficient numbers to constitute a majority on
the rationality of a particular course of action, the radical democratic
conception of disagreement sees all such decisions as matters of contingency
where fragile coalitions may be built on specific issues not just through
rational agreement but also a politics of passion. Moreover it recognizes that
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Adrian Little: Liberal democracy, ethics and the politics of disagreement
these fragile coalitions are likely to evaporate over time and that the kinds of
coalitions built on one issue may dissipate when it comes to other issues and
decisions.
This is why commentators such as Rancière and Jessop promote what they
call 'fidelity to the disagreement'. For the latter, governance should be
constructed around a 'law of requisite irony' in which 'those involved in
goverance choose among forms of failure and make a reasoned decision in
favour of one or another form of failure'. On this view self-reflexive and
participatory forms of government 'are constitutive of their objects of
governance, but they also become a self-reflexive means of coping with the
failures, contradictions, dilemmas, and paradoxes that are an inevitable
feature of life' (Jessop 2003: 26). In the light of this we should understand
political decisions as choices of one particular rationality over another.
Decision making is not, then, a matter of establishing a rational consensus but
of choosing between different rationalities. As Jessop and Rancière make
clear, such decisions will inevitably reflect the political disposition of the
decision makers. Such an approach gives the lie to contemporary political
perspectives such as the 'Third Way' which attempt to present policy making
in terms of 'what works' rather than ideological commitment.
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Adrian Little: Liberal democracy, ethics and the politics of disagreement
What is important to remember, then, is the way in which the decisions taken
on an issue inevitably generate potential for further political upheaval. Insofar
as decisions taken may fail to achieve desired objectives, they will create
further contestation. Decisions may also establish boundaries around the
terrain for policy making which act to police that order. In so doing then,
political decisions may seek to exclude certain views or specific groups with
alternative beliefs to the dominant order. For this reason decisions will always
establish new potential conflicts although the extent to which these conflicts
manifest themselves may rely on the success of the attempts to police the
policy making paradigm and the democratic order. Or to put it in Rancière's
terms:
Politics acts on the police. It acts in the places and the words that are
common to both, even if it means reshaping those places and changing
the status of those words. What is usually posited as the space of
politics, meaning the set of state institutions, is precisely not a
homogeneous place. Its configuration is determined by the state of
relations between political logic and police logic. (Rancière 1999: 33)
Here Rancière alludes to the necessary conflict that emanates from the
competition between the egalitarian logic that he sees as inherent in politics
and the exclusionary logic of policing. It is in that disagreement that we see
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Adrian Little: Liberal democracy, ethics and the politics of disagreement
the manifestation of the political. This can come through the articulation of
political alternatives that have been isolated from the established landscape or
the arrival on this terrain of new political actors. Often these voices will be
challenged on the grounds of irrationality where they differ from the
dominant paradigm, only to become part of the accepted discourse on that
particular topic at a later date. The dichotomy between the rational and the
irrational is often blurred and must be subject to challenge in democratic
polities and this requires disagreement and contestation.3 Moreover, it is often
the case that the language of realism is misused to exclude those perspectives
which challenge the dominant order and way of seeing things. This parlance
of realism is in fact 'the police logic of order, which asserts, in all
circumstances that it is only doing the only thing possible to do' (Rancière
1999: 132). To put it another way, politics (as it is commonly understood) is
always established on some kind of falseness especially when it suggests that
the political community and the democratic polity form the basis of a
universal rational truth around which we should establish consensus
(Rancière 1999:82-3).
Conclusion: democracy, ethics and disagreement
3
See, for example, the way in which debates on a guaranteed minimum income were often derided as
‘utopian’ before becoming influential on the political agenda. I have commented on this in much
greater detail in Little (1996, 1998, 2002b).
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Adrian Little: Liberal democracy, ethics and the politics of disagreement
This paper has argued that an understanding of disagreement borrowed from
the continental philosophy tradition is more instructive in opening up spaces
for democratic engagement than the dominant liberalism of normative
political philosophy. It contends that the ethical terrain of contemporary
political debates must be viewed in terms of the political disagreements
which emanate from political exclusions. That said, some Anglo-American
political philosophers have recognized this way of understanding the nature
of democracy. Thus, Hampshire, for example, argues that 'Incompatible
conceptions of evil would be a more realistic phrase for incompatible moral
values, because a moral outlook or theory is usually best defined by its
exclusions and prohibitions' (Hampshire 2000: 44). However what this paper
suggests is that we need to develop a more radical interpretation of the ways
that these incompatible values will generate future challenges for democratic
politics. This implies that democratic politics will be characterized by
instability created by the ethical challenges raised by excluded voices. Or, to
put it in the words of Samuel Chambers, by 'refusing the given identity of the
police order, political subjects lay claim to the fundamental equality that
means that they too, those who do not count, must be counted. It is the
addition of those who do not count to the equation that throws the equation
out of balance ...' (Chambers 2003: 16). The simple mathematics of
majoritarianism - which feature prominently in liberal democracy – are made
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Adrian Little: Liberal democracy, ethics and the politics of disagreement
much more complicated by these radical democratic understandings of
disagreement.
In a similar vein Michael Shapiro uses the work of Deleuze and Guattari to
explain how exclusions from democratic politics are always contingent,
dynamic and alterable. Where individuals might be in a majority on some
issues, that does not mean that they are a member of a permanent majority.
However, representative liberal democracy tends to focus on majoritarian
'facts' that are actually not factual. For example, if the majority is constructed
as the 'average adult-white-white-heterosexual-male-speaking in a standard
language', then we need to recognize that the number of individuals who fit
this construction is actually fewer than the number of women or children or
blacks or homosexuals. Thus we need to recognize that the issue is not just
that minorities are excluded. The 'point is that no majority can represent
because there is no definitive unity from which it can be drawn. All such
unities … are imposed as norms' (Shapiro 2003: 12). On this foundation we
can always question whether the exclusions which do appear in
contemporary liberal democracies are justifiable and whether decisions taken
on the basis of majoritarianism carry the kind of weight that is actually
attached to them. For Shapiro, what we require is 'the restoration of
contingency as a prerequisite for the institution of democratic social space'
(Shapiro 2003: 14). On this understanding the reification of majorities closes
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Adrian Little: Liberal democracy, ethics and the politics of disagreement
off spaces of opposition not only to minorities but potential minorities thus
foreclosing avenues for political opposition and disagreement in the future as
well as the present. This is all the more dubious when the flimsy and
contingent nature of the majorities that play pivotal roles in the construction
of political exclusions is borne in mind.
Increasingly the realm of formal party politics and representative institutions
seems distant from the everyday concerns of the lives of ordinary people. This
does not mean that they are becoming less political but that the processes that
are conducted under the label of politics seem far removed from what people
perceive the issues to be. This alienation is manifest in numerous indicators
such as declining rates of electoral participation where voting is voluntary
and a growing void of mistrust between politicians and the electorate. At the
same time ethical issues continue to divide people and generate political
debate between those who bring different moral perspectives to the sphere of
democratic engagement. It is ironic then that liberal political theorists
continue to offer us different variants of consensus democracy as the most
appropriate institutional systems for diverse societies. It is for this reason that
Rancière views models of consensus democracy as ‘the disappearance of
politics’ (Rancière 1999: 102).
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Adrian Little: Liberal democracy, ethics and the politics of disagreement
This critique of consensus shows up the ways in which a universal - the unity
of the political community - manifests itself in the rule of law and establishes
boundaries as to what is the proper concern of politics and which groups of
people are allowed to participate in the political process. Under the facade of
consensus, this linkage of the rule of law and the universal political
community becomes synonymous with democracy. In fact, for Rancière, it is
the denial of democracy. This is where the liberal pursuit of consensus relies
on exclusion despite the common argot of contemporary governments to
tackle social exclusion: 'the theory of the social contract and the idea of a "new
citizenry" have today found a privileged conceptual terrain: that of the
medicine applied to what is known as "exclusion." This is because the "fight
against exclusion" is also the paradoxical conceptual place where exclusion
emerges as just another name for consensus' (Rancière 1999: 115). From this
perspective, the model of consensus democracy is always predicated upon
exclusion to some degree. The existence of exclusion is a recognition of this
and the attempt to 'fight' exclusion becomes a process of trying to subsume
more and more groups under the aegis of the established consensus.
To conclude, the consensual drift in much contemporary democratic theory is
symptomatic of the liberal tendency to close down spaces for genuine political
engagement between competing ethical perspectives. The inability of formal
party politics to reflect the diversity of arguments helps to explain why
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Adrian Little: Liberal democracy, ethics and the politics of disagreement
genuine political disagreements are increasingly evidenced within the field of
ethical disputes. This is precisely because representative politics and
institutions exclude many views that are regarded as unpalatable. Formal
politics is constructed around the 'rational' and 'realistic' and this is the very
terrain on which ‘consensus’ is built. In so doing we exclude those people or
opinions that differ from the prevailing order. In short, these voices become
the irrational and the utopian in ordinary political discourse when, quite
frequently, they should be viewed as the excluded. It is for this reason that,
contrary to the direction of dominant forms of liberalism, we should be
embracing disagreement as the lifeblood of democratic politics.
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Adrian Little: Liberal democracy, ethics and the politics of disagreement
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Notes
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