Humanitarian Intervention that Promotes Self Determination:

An Argument for Community Based Understandings of Human Rights

Shane Ryman O’Neal

GOV 679H

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Department of Government

University of Texas at Austin

May 2010

Supervising Committee:

Professor Benjamin Gregg

Department of Government

Humanitarian Intervention that Promotes Self Determination: An Argument for Community Based Understandings of Human Rights

Spreading human rights is one of the principal justifications given in our political culture for intervening in the affairs of other countries. Humanitarian intervention can take many different forms varying from aid, to economic sanctions, to military intervention. In stark contrast, many political theorists have advanced strict theories of nonintervention. In this essay I consider the grounds upon which humanitarian intervention can be initiated and the forms that it would be best for such intervention to take. Formulating a coherent theory of humanitarian intervention, which examines the myriad of different forms it can take, is critical to guiding our interactions with other nations. The analysis provides a framework for engaging in future intervention that will be more effective in promoting human rights and liberal societies abroad.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments i Chapter 1: Introduction 1 – 7 Chapter 2: Traditional Justifications for Humanitarian Intervention 8 – 22 Chapter 3: Applying Enlightened Localism to Foreign Policy in Liberal Democracies 24 – 44 Chapter 4: A Theory of Humanitarian Intervention Consistent with Individual Self-Determination 45 – 56 Chapter 5: How to use an Examination of Fit as a Way to Promote Human Rights 57 – 68 Chapter 6: Conclusion 69 – 72 Works Cited 73 – 74

Acknowledgments This thesis would not have been possible without the love and support of my parents and teachers. I would especially like to thank Professor Benjamin Gregg for his guidance and thoughtful critiques during the writing process.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Since the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has

become the world’s sole superpower. Due to its position of dominance both militarily and

economically, the U.S. and its European allies have felt compelled to act as world leaders. This

group of industrialized liberal democracies sometimes acts with the aim of helping other

countries that are in need, but all too often it intervenes in the political affairs of others in pursuit

of its own interests. In this paper, I intend to examine when it is justified for liberal democracies,

such as the United States, to engage in humanitarian intervention in other nations.

An examination of this problem first requires establishing the rights that states and

foreign individuals have against one another. If it is the case, as some realists believe, that

nations exist in a state of nature alongside all other nations, it is tenable that they can treat people

of other states in whatever way they see fit, requiring no justification for intervention other than

that it would serve the interests of their own citizenry. On the other hand, cosmopolitans argue

that citizens of liberal democracies should strive towards an understanding of themselves as

global citizens and understanding the rights of other peoples in an identical way to how they

understand their own. Humanitarian intervention has historically been justified on these grounds,

referencing the “human rights” possessed by all humans qua humans. The idea of human rights,

rights that are universally granted to all people simply by the fact that they are human, has been

the principal tool that nations and political theorists have used to criticize other nations on both

moral and political grounds.

I will argue that universal objective human rights do not exist. Rather, human rights

function as a political tool that individuals use to protect themselves from aggressive states and,

as such, are historically and culturally contingent. The appeal to human rights as the justification

for humanitarian intervention, or a prohibition against such intervention, is not unique to

cosmopolitan theorists who tend to be permissive of such intervention. I will argue that statist

non-interventionists such as Michael Walzer1

I will argue that liberal democrats should follow neither the relativist view, supported by

the realists, nor the understanding of norms as universally objective truths, required to accept the

idea of “human rights” appealed to by cosmopolitans and statists. Instead, I argue that liberal

democrats can criticize other nations by applying “enlightened localism”

also appeal to a human right, in the case of Walzer

that is the right to self-determination.

2

I consider a liberal democracy to be a form of government that relies primarily on the rule

of the majority but limits the powers of the majority through an enumeration of rights that belong

to all citizens upon which the government cannot infringe. The purpose of these rights is

typically to allow those who are currently in the minority to have sufficient avenues for political

participation that they may one day become the majority through convincing their fellow citizens

of the legitimacy of their position. These rights are often articulated as inalienable rights that are

not contingent on citizenship. The fundamental principle at the base of both majority rule and

rights that check it is that a good government will maximize the ability of its citizens to

determine both the way they live their lives and the structure of their political society. Clearly, it

often does not work out this way in practice. For example, there are significant arguments to be

to their understanding

of human rights. This implies that they recognize that citizens of other nation-states have the

rights that they claim for themselves (localist), but also the possibility that the foreign citizens

may order their lives in ways dramatically different from liberal democrats. Doing so requires an

examination of the localist views possessed by people living in liberal democracies.

1 Walzer 1977, (87). 2 Gregg 2003, (99).

had over whether the degree that money is allowed to be used in democratic elections changes

the ability of liberal democracies to truly allow the majority of the people to have a voice in how

the government is structured. I argue that the right of the people to have the greatest influence

over their lives remains the core belief to which arguments over pragmatic issues such as

campaign finance must appeal.

I conclude that the foundational beliefs of citizens of liberal democracies require that they

recognize that citizens of other countries have the same rights that they claim for themselves.

However, I intend to qualify the argument that democracies completely respect the rights of their

citizens to self-determination. Liberal democrats are restrained by their prioritization of the

individual and fear that the group will infringe on the individual. This limits their ability to

tolerate non-liberal communities because they believe that it is impossible for the individual to

surrender herself to a larger group and retain the rights due to her as an individual. I will argue

that the threshold for liberalism’s ability to tolerate people’s choices about how they live extends

only to the extent that those people accept the fundamental tenants of liberalism, such as the

fundamental equality of each person and the right of those people to participate fully in society.

It is because of the limits of the ability of liberalism to tolerate all difference that I argue

that liberals will be better off if they take an enlightened localist stance towards their liberal

understandings. I will argue that liberals who view liberalism with an enlightened localist

understanding will come to understand that it is possible for people, not socialized into a liberal

community, not only to accept but also desire an alternative system to liberalism. Upon arriving

at this conclusion, it becomes clear that we should temper the liberal’s desires to intervene in

other cultures that they perceive as unjust with a presumption of fit. This forces the interveners to

justify their intervention not only in reference to their own norms but also to the norms of the

society in which they are intervening. A strictly localist belief in the tenants explicated by

liberalism will allow liberal nations to intervene in other countries whenever they perceive that

an individual’s rights are being violated. However, the enlightened localist perspective forces

liberals to recognize that the difficulties of cross-cultural understanding should cause liberal

democracies to approach other nations with the assumption that the state represents the desires of

the people. Fortunately, this presumption does not completely tie the hands of liberal

democracies. I argue that there are means of intervention by which liberal democracies can test

their presumption that the state fits the people it represents without violating their right to self-

determination. As a consequence, humanitarian intervention by liberal democracies is justified

only when “fit” has been verified not to exist and then only when the rights that will be protected

as a result outweigh the rights violated by the intervention. Thus, although the goal is to respect

the individual’s right to self-determination, this often implies respecting the self-determination of

the state. However, the agency of the state can only be respected up to a certain point.

I will conclude my argument be fleshing out some ways that humanitarian intervention

can be employed in a way that tests fit without violating the right of self-determination of the

country. I will explore specific strategies for using aid based domestic intervention to promote

the human rights agenda of central importance to liberal democracies. This analysis will draw on

arguments presented by Gregg3 and Hirschmann4

3 Gregg 2010.

. The argument will be that there are certain

means of promoting rights that are based on local norms as opposed to being imposed by

outsiders and that these methods can be implemented by liberal democracies without producing

damaging effects on the culture being intervened upon.

4 Hirschmann 1998.

This part of the argument will take the example of Tunisia in the late 20th century. I argue

that religion, and culture in general, can be shaped by the political and economic environment of

the country to lead to radically different ends. Liberal democrats can intervene in a non-intrusive

manner by attempting to reframe the cultural understandings of non-liberal peoples in order to

foster greater civil society and conceptualization of human rights within the non-liberal state.

Before proceeding with the arguments, it is essential to discuss a few terms that are

central to understanding the argument being made. Humanitarian intervention typically refers to

the intervention by one state into the affairs of another with the intention of providing aid to the

people of the state being intervened upon. In this paper, I intend to focus on humanitarian aid

that focuses on solving social as opposed to natural problems. By natural problems I mean to

refer to natural disasters such as hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes. Humanitarian

intervention obviously does not face the same obstacles in combating those types of problems as

when it attempts to create social change. This intervention can take multiple different forms

including: military action, support (either economic or military) for homegrown political

movements, peaceful economic sanctions, inter-governmental dialogue, propaganda, and general

educational efforts.5

5 Pangle 2009, (33).

The range of these different types of intervention poses a problem for the

creation of one principle to govern when intervention is justified. It will be easiest to examine

different types of intervention and the relevant differences between them if we begin by grouping

them into broad categories. The first, and most important distinction is between domestic-based

and foreign-based intervention. This represents a distinction between the agents of intervention.

Foreign-based intervention refers to intervention in which the intervening state both coordinates

and implements the intervention on foreign soil. The most obvious example of this sort of

intervention is a military intervention where the intervening state deploys its soldiers to enact the

change it deems necessary. However, foreign-based intervention does not have to be so extreme.

It can also refer to a schooling initiative in which the intervening state dispatches its citizens to

build a school that is run and largely staffed by missionaries from the intervening state. The

second relevant distinction I will draw is between aid-based and violent intervention. Violent

intervention attempts to create change by putting pressure on the state in which the intervention

is occurring. Aid-based intervention on the other hand attempts to create change through a

slower process of giving some type of aid to the country in which the intervention is occurring in

the hopes that the aid itself will encourage a change. These four distinctions create four general

types of aid of which I will give examples for further clarity.

Violent foreign-based intervention is best exemplified by the military intervention

referred to in the previous paragraph. Violent domestic-based intervention is distinct because it

involves the intervening country attempting to coerce change by using the people of the country

against their government. The best example of this is economic sanctions. The goal of an

economic sanction is to change the people’s decision from support or tacit consent to their

government’s policies to opposition towards those policies. Economic sanctions are domestic-

based because the pressure on the government arises from within the nation, but coercive

because the citizens pressuring the government are not advocating for the abandonment of

particular policies because they dislike the policies. Rather, what they dislike are the sanctions

imposed as a result of those policies. A good example of aid-based foreign intervention is the

school referenced in the previous paragraph. The goal is to provide education that, it is believed,

will lead the students to become reformers in their country, but it is run by people from the

intervening country, thus making it foreign-based. The final type of intervention is aid based

domestic intervention. I will argue that this type of intervention should be preferred most of the

time because this is the only way to test the presumption that the state fits the people that it

represents without violating their self-determination. Examples of aid-based domestic

intervention include giving money to finance domestic run schools or microfinance programs.

The goal of this type of intervention is to facilitate change on a local level, with the primary

agents being people of the culture that is being changed. By preferring this type of intervention, I

do not mean to say that other types of intervention are bad only that when given the choice

between the different types, we ought to prefer aid based domestic intervention. A foreign-run

school, for example, may be better than other, domestically run institutions because of its

funding from abroad. However, given the option, I will argue that foreign donors should prefer

funding schools run by the people they are trying to serve rather than attempting to run the

schools themselves.

By arguing for domestic aid-based intervention, I am able to avoid challenges of cultural

imposition because this aid is relies on changing the minds of domestic actors. Instead of cultural

imposition it is better described as cultural advocacy because it involves foreign actors

attempting to persuade domestic people that their cultural beliefs might be helpful towards them,

but relies on the domestic people’s acceptance of that argument.

Chapter 2: Traditional Justifications for Humanitarian Intervention and the Viability of

Universal Human Rights

The traditional method of justifying humanitarian intervention involves outlining human

rights abuses that are occurring in a given country and arguing that intervention on the part of a

liberal democracy will lead to a better situation in the future in that human rights will be more

consistently protected. I believe that this type of analysis skips a critical step of examining the

reasons why liberal democracies are justified in taking this action. Arguments appealing to the

assumed good of enforcing universal human rights make two critical assumptions: (1) that

universal human rights exist and (2) that liberal democracies have the right to interfere in other

states in order to enforce them. Even if there are human rights that should be protected, it does

not automatically follow that a regime believing in human rights has the right to gallivant about,

fighting regimes that are perceived to deny rights to their people. There are at least two obvious

problems with skipping a moral analysis of the actor: (1) it is possible that attempting to give

human rights to others results in greater harms or violates more rights than leaving the situation

alone would or (2) forcing human rights on others is inconsistent with the justifications

underlying human rights.

In this chapter, I will start by examining the idea that there is a universally accepted,

objective conception of human rights. Concluding that such rights do not exist I will argue that

the lack of these universal standards to which we can appeal does not make criticism of states

that are different from our own impossible. In order to provide a framework for criticizing states,

I will present an international version of “enlightened localism” as an alternative to the Western

conception of human rights. This enlightened localism will allow liberal democracies to appeal

to their own core beliefs as justifications for intervening in other countries but will also require

them to promote their beliefs in a qualified way, recognizing that they may be incorrect. The

argument will conclude that liberal democracies can engage in humanitarian intervention if such

intervention is consistent with the foundational principles of liberal democracies and does not

attempt to achieve those foundational principles without undermining the abilities of illiberal

peoples to choose to reject them.

I. Universal Objective Human Rights

A. Culturally Specific Cognitive Spaces

One underlying theme, which will inform a lot of my analysis in this paper, is that every

individual is born into a particular culture which structures itself in a particular way as a result of

an historical narrative. This narrative is the story of the relationships between the people that

make up the culture in question. By “the people” I refer to a group of people who have come

together, organizing themselves around a common set of beliefs, rules, or traditions. These

beliefs, rules, and traditions are what compromise their culture. A culture and the people who

make it up are to some degree fluid. Not only do the beliefs, rules, and traditions that define the

culture have the capacity to change, but the people also change as the culture may spread, divide,

or die out. Furthermore, an individual’s membership in one culture does not mean that they are

not part of other cultures. It is most often the case that any given individual is part of an

intersection of multiple different cultures. For example, the culture of Roman Catholicism is a

culture centered around a highly organized central Church with dioceses in most of the countries

throughout the world with millions of individual members. However, most individuals who

identify as Roman Catholics do not define themselves exclusively as Catholics. Take the case of

an American Roman Catholic. This individual is simultaneously influenced by American and

Roman Catholic culture. She is both a member of a Church with a hierarchy based in Rome and

a citizen of a nation-state with its government based in Washington. These separate (and in some

cases conflicting) identities cause her culture to be slightly different from, but also mostly similar

to, both her fellow Americans from other religions (such as Protestantism and Judaism) and her

fellow Catholics living under different governments (such as Mexican Catholics or Indian

Catholics). Even in a seemingly very common case such as that of the American Roman Catholic

there is some conflict created by the intersection of multiple identities. As an American she

professes beliefs in the equality of men under the law and the freedom of every individual to

determine, for the most part, her life. However, as a Catholic she believes that God has told us

that men and women should have some different roles in society that are determined by gender.

For example, the priesthood is limited to men and nuns are exclusively women.

What I want to suggest with this analysis is that there is a large overlap and a great

amount of influence of one culture upon another. The increasingly interconnectedness of the

world, especially facilitated by the rapidly globalizing economy, has lead to a much greater

occurrence of cultural influence that has existed previously, leading to many hybrid cultures.

This suggests two things: first that culture is not a static and unchanging, rather quite fluid and

largely dependent on the influence of multiple cultures upon one another. Second, it suggests that

the changing ability and the variance of culture from one place to another casts significant doubt

on the idea of universally, verifiable truths.

Most people grow up in a culture that is very particular to the community (group

comprising a determined geographic area) in which they are raised. By community I want to

refer to a group of people that live together. A community is limited to a determined geographic

area. A common set of rules that structure life within the community governs the people living in

this area. The people living in the community share major identities but can also have some

degree of difference within their ranks. The degree of difference will depend on the size of the

society. What is important is that they share some common assumptions about how to live a

good life that allows them to peacefully coexist with one another. The example of American

Roman Catholics demonstrates the uniqueness of each individual’s experience of socialization

into a given community. Every individual is socialized into the community in which they grow

up and take on aspects of that culture that are unique to the community. Gregg explicates:

“[Q]uite partial is that central feature of human life, the individual’s deep embeddedness in his or her culture, in patters of socialization, in beliefs and need interpretations, in group specific experiences and political commitments6… Through culturally generalized modes of understanding, people win access to their own particular understandings, to their individual need interpretations. Individuals express their innermost thoughts in a shared language through which even the most personal becomes communicable, in terms understandable across many if not all differences between sender and receiver.” 7

Thus, an individual’s cultural socialization creates the cognitive space in which she can reason

about her life and the society around her. The uniqueness of this socialization has major

implications for her ability to engage in moral/political reasoning that claims to be objective or

universal. My argument in this chapter is that the particularity of socialization and the diversity

of cultures into which people are socialized make social critique, which attempts to appeal to

universal standards that are equally applicable to all cultures, very difficult if not impossible.

Because of the impossibility of social critique to appeal to universal norms, I will argue that

social criticism can occur based on local norms.

B. Human Rights as Contingent Mechanisms of Social Critique.

Cultural diversity and the problems that it poses for social critique have been widely

recognized in both international law and political theory. The most popular way of attempting to

combat this relativism is to search for a commonality among the diverse moral systems that arise

6 Gregg 2003, (42). 7 Gregg 2003, (46).

out of different cultures or attempting to abstract away from one’s particular position within

society to see to what sort of rights or principles of justice an unencumbered person would agree.

These sorts of articulations point to human rights as self-evident, as inherently part of human

nature that should be respected. Ignatieff refers to views like this as an ideological understanding

of human rights. This type of foundation for a belief in human rights sees them as an eventual

realization of any society as it continues to progress. It believes that cultures lacking a human

rights regime are, in a sense, barbaric. The idea is that as they continue to develop and progress,

they will inevitably come to the natural conclusion that individuals possess certain inviolable

rights that they can always use to protect themselves from encroachment by their community.

This understanding of human rights is problematic because it views human rights as a

necessary end of human evolution when in reality they are a historically contingent invention

that arose from a very particular set of circumstances. An understanding of human rights as a sort

of secular religion fails to do justice to the ways that rights actually function. It also unfairly

condemns societies that lack a strong culture of individual rights. To claim that a regime of

human rights is uniquely capable of treating individuals in a moral way denies that a regime of

human rights is nothing more than

“the language through which individuals have created a defense of their autonomy against the oppression of religion, state, family, and group. Conceivably, other languages for the defense of human beings could be invented, but this one is historically available to human beings here and now…[H]uman rights language is not an ultimate trump card in moral argument. No human language can have such powers. Indeed, rights conflicts and their adjudication involve intensely difficult trade-offs and compromises. This is precisely why rights are not sacred, nor are those who hold them.”8

We can conclude from this analysis that a culture’s lack of a human rights tradition does not

imply a failure of that culture to treat individuals as they ought to be treated. The theory of

8 Ignatieff 2001, (84).

cultural relativity argued for in the prior section demonstrates that any moral system used to

criticize society or the political system that rules over it must be based on standards derived from

the historical experience of that society. Any analysis that comes from outside that culture’s

narrative will be to some degree incomprehensible to the members of that culture.

The idea of human rights is much more widely accepted than specific iterations of human

rights because differences in beliefs about what humans are due as humans tend to be more

varied than arguments over whether there are things that all humans are due. Inherent in the idea

of human rights is a protection of the humans qua humans. Central to respecting human rights is

a preference of the individual over the community. Human rights have traditionally been

conceived of as inalienable rights due to all humans. The word human as part of the term implies

an underlying basis in natural law. The argument is that there is something in the nature of

humans that gives them worth and respecting human rights, therefore, is essential to recognizing

that worth. Thus, human rights arise within a very liberal tradition that focuses on the individual

and is in competition with, what I will call, communitarian views, which focus more on groups.

Individualism is inherent to human rights because of the focus that human rights place on the

essence of being human. Group rights, which stem from a more communitarian tradition, either

derive from the rights of the individuals that make up the group or lack the universality claimed

by human rights. It is impossible for group rights to appeal to a common essence that is

contained by all groups in the way that human rights do. Thus, conflicts over the viability of

human rights arise in cultures that reject the individualism implied by human rights. However,

there is further difficulty in articulating a universal human rights regime and this difficulty arises

from disagreements over what respecting the essence of humanity implies.

Standards of universal human rights may make social criticism difficult because of the

differences between human rights regimes. While different cultures may be able to come to come

to an agreement on the importance of human rights and draw up some common human rights that

they agree to, their different understandings of the wording and implications of a given right may

make it difficult for those broad agreements to have any real meaning. For example, Article 5 of

the UDHR states, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading

treatment or punishment.” However, the usefulness of such an abstract right is in jeopardy

because what constitutes “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” is based in the history of a

given culture, and one society’s understanding of what is humane may differ widely from other

societies. For example, the European Union defines inhuman treatment as encompassing the

death penalty whereas the United States disagrees and has historically argued that the death

penalty is permissible under this exact language. This illustrates, that despite the diversity of

countries chosen to help create the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the result has been

an articulation of rights within which there can still be significant disagreement.

The argument that the UDHR cannot be taken as a universal statement of beliefs that all

people can adhere to is further buttressed by the fact that, despite Iran’s membership on the

commission that drafted the UDHR, its representatives have a history of articulating their beliefs

that Islamic law should take precedence over the UDHR in their country. David Littman cites, as

evidence, a statement made in 1984 by the Iranian representative to the UN General Assembly’s

Third Committee:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which represented a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition, could not be implemented by Muslims and did not accord with the system of values recognized by the Islamic Republic of Iran; his country

would therefore not hesitate to violate its provisions, since it had to choose between violating the divine law of the country and violating secular conventions.9

Given the inability of a universal human rights regime to provide a mechanism for social

criticism, we must answer the question of whether and how it is possible to engage in social

criticism. If it is impossible for a universal set of objective standards to exist, on what basis is it

possible to criticize society? This question becomes relevant not only for foreign countries that

feel an obligation to criticize the way a certain country is treating its citizens but also the citizens

within any country that want to criticize either the actions of their government or the way their

social culture works in general.

II. “Enlightened Localism” as an Alternative Method of Social Criticism

A. What is “Enlightened Localism?”

“Enlightened localism” is a theory formulated by Benjamin Gregg as a method of dealing

with normative indeterminacy in politics and social critique. He defines it as “a sociology of

moral knowledge because it begins with the given norms of actual communities.” The central

idea behind enlightened localism is that when faced with the indeterminacy of postmodernism,

the appropriate strategy is not to surrender to a sort of nihilism but rather to construct a localist

system of morality. This local morality is admittedly imperfect because it does not purport to

appeal to a universal notion of truth but rather attempts to be true in the sense of truth as “a social

belief created experimentally, through inquiry into the process of resolving problems as they

present themselves to the community.”10

9 Littman 1999, (5).

Thus truth is never a finite, universally valid concept.

To best understand this conception of truth we can draw an analogy to the idea of truth in the

scientific community. Scientists discover truth through a constant process of testing the validity

10 Gregg 2003, (69).

of observations and hypotheses. Based on her observations a scientist might formulate a

hypothesis drawing a connection between two events such as the statement that, “If I drop a ball,

it will hit the floor.” Once many other scientists have tested her hypothesis, it may become a

theory and, in some instances, a scientific law. In the scientific community theories are assumed

to be true, though they may be occasionally tweaked and improved or every now and then

disproved through further experimentation.

Similar to scientific truth, Gregg argues that communities form a type truth through the

empirical experiences of its members. To look to the example of human rights based on the

argument above, following World War II, many nations reflected on the atrocities that had

occurred and vowed that such a thing would never happen again. Thus, they created the United

Nations. The U.N. then formulated a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The “Universal

Declaration” was actually an enumeration of rights that a coalition of nations agreed, as a result

of recent events, to be necessary in order to ensure that the international community would have

the tools to combat another dictator similar to Hitler and that individuals would have recourse

against an abusive state. The “truth” of the existence of human rights arose through the empirical

experience shared by those nations. However, as documented above, other nations have had

different historical experiences that have led to their rejection of liberal understandings of human

rights. It is also useful to briefly comment here that while some nations might nominally agree to

respect international declarations such as the UDHR, it is often the case that they do so primarily

for geopolitical reasons and in practice allow their local laws and practices to take precedence.

This will be further discussed when we get to the empirical example of Tunisia in the fourth

chapter.

Gregg calls the type of truth formed through experience a weak objectivity. Weak

objectivity, he argues, “refers to non-absolute objectivity…Weakly objective norms are

applicable locally, not universally.” The community therefore, constructs truth. It has its

foundation in the language and discourse employed by the community. “The strategies we

employ in disparate discourses are grounded in the linguistic practices embodying them (if solely

these)…[C]ertainty is possible, if only in a limited or narrow sense, namely as a certainty

constructed through linguistic conventions within particular discourses.”11

A localist understanding of morality is much more compatible with the ways that

communities function than a system of morality which attempts to appeal to universally valid

standards. Because individuals are socialized into a particular community, they have a unique

capacity to understand the norms that they learn both as part of being socialized into the

collective historical experience of that community and through their own experiences within that

community. It, therefore, makes sense that they should be able to criticize their community on

the basis of those norms. For example, the existence of certain basic human rights has taken on a

weakly objective truth in some societies because history has taught them that humans are best off

when each individual has a space which she can mark off as hers, a space into which neither the

government nor the community can infringe for a greater good. Thus, in liberal societies

individuals can criticize the government using the human rights that their society has historically

Thus, each

community forms its own truths through a dialectic process in which ‘justice’ takes on a

particular meaning for that community. From their shared experiences, communities create

systems of norms that have proven useful to follow in past experience and that they think will

continue to be important in the future. This is a localist understanding of morality.

11 Gregg 2003, (81).

determined are important to protect. Likewise, in religious societies, individuals can appeal to

religious tenants and beliefs about God’s will to protect themselves. This sort of criticism

involves individuals pointing out a failure of their community to live up to the historical norms

that the community has embraced. They are uniquely able to do that because they understand

those norms in a way that others cannot. They have both internalized the experiences of their

ancestors, who formulated those norms, and experienced the application of those norms in their

own lives.

The problem with a localist understanding of morality is that it is limited to the type of

criticism outlined above. Individuals can only criticize their society’s inability to live up to its

own ideals, but those ideals are static and have no grounds upon which to change if critique of

society is limited to ideals that are contained within the community itself. This is obviously

problematic if we take as an example a society that creates different social positions for

individuals that are determined by the individual’s race. A localist morality would take the value

of racial separation as a moral good because it was held by that society, making it difficult to

evaluate or question the principle itself, only its application. Social critique would be limited to

arguing about whether the particular relations between different races were good at achieving the

desired separation. It would not be able to question whether the value of racial separation was

desirable as a value in and of itself.

Gregg is aware of this problem and for that reason distinguishes between localism and

“enlightened localism.” He writes:

“[O]nly intersubjective norms of inquiry, only arguments available to such “outsiders,” can identify socially significant problems, clarify different understandings and misunderstandings within a community, and identify and address disconfirming findings. Thus racism appears as a problem only from the standpoint of the nonracist community;

racism will appear as problem within the racist community itself only when nonlocal standpoints can be made plausible to members of that community.”12

A theory of “enlightened localism” encourages the individual to approach social criticism from a

decentered position, a position centered outside of her community. It is a sort of compromise

between localism and universality in which the individual must criticize her community by

temporarily co-opting standards that are foreign to her culture. While Gregg explains the

desirability of a decentered critique well, applying this argument to an essay about international

relations requires an exploration of the practical ways in which such a decentered critique can

actually be realized,

B. Realizing an “Enlightened Localist” Critique

In his book Interpretation and Social Criticism Walzer provides a method of social

critique that, I believe, meets the standards that Gregg sets out for good social critique.13

12 Gregg 2003, (99).

Gregg

attempts to find a compromise between strictly applying either universal or local standards and

Walzer, in arguing for a “critical distance” as key to social criticism provides a good way of

achieving that compromise, a way particularly beneficial for considering inter-social critique as a

question of foreign policy. For Walzer, the social critique should not be an outsider, but an

insider, someone who comes from and has roots in the community. However, the critic must

establish critical distance between herself and the community. The critic must become detached

in the sense that she attempts to overcome both an emotional and intellectual affinity for the

ways of thinking she has learned from her community. Walzer mentions that she may attempt to

apply “objective” standards that come from outside of the community and are universally agreed

upon. However, Gregg has shown that the application of objective standards is impossible. The

only thing the critic can do to establish distance between herself and her community is to

13 Walzer 1987, (37).

temporarily adopt foreign standards. These foreign standards are still subjective, but due to

cultural diversity necessarily different and probably in conflict with those of her culture. It is

very difficult to imagine a situation in which the individual is unable to find alternative ideas

outside of her community. Such a situation would seem to indicate that there is great normative

consensus on the given issue. In such a situation, social critique will certainly be much more

difficult but still possible by fairly inventive social critiques who have the ability to come up

with alternative ways of thinking about the norms that are employed by their society without

drawing on foreign norms outside of their community. In adopting these foreign standards, the

critic necessarily understands those standards differently than the foreign people who formulated

them, because she views them through a different lens, she translates them into the language of

her culture. While she has detached herself from her community, her method of understanding,

her thought process and moral language were shaped in the community, and it is impossible from

her to divorce herself from those understandings. Thus, the critic establishes distance by learning

about and taking on principles foreign to her community but necessarily translates them through

the eyes of a member of her community giving them a certain local flavor.

While the translation of such principles by a member of the community facilitates their

ability to be spread to and adopted by other members of the community, it is certainly the case

that the community will, at least initially, reject these alternative ideas. Social change is never

easy, and even a person in a position to challenge social norms as a member of the community

will often face resistance. Social critics often achieve their distance from the society they are

criticizing due to negative reactions towards the ideas they propose. Ideally, over time, the better,

more just ideas will win out and the society will be better off for it. However, without universal

standards of the good to appeal to, it is impossible to empirically verify that this will occur

because our conceptions of the good are always based in what we currently believe to be true. It

is for that reason that Gregg refers to this process of social criticism as “weak objectivity.”

Social criticism can therefore be achieved when people within one community look

outside their community for ideas which they can adopt and use to improve the system they

already have. This type of social criticism can be an effective method of turning the difficulty

posed by cultural relativism into a useful tool for social criticism and progress.

To return to the problem of this chapter, how does this theory of social criticism help us

develop a framework for understanding when liberal democracies are justified in intervening in

other countries? The first part of the chapter establishes that there are no universal human rights

or standards of justice that can be appealed to in order to say that such an intervention would be

unjust. The question then becomes, on what grounds can we condemn the interference by one

state in the affairs of another? “Enlightened localism” provides us with a mechanism of

articulating principles of justice that can be applied to liberal democracies (and other social

structures as well). The key element of “enlightened localism” is the idea that every culture or

society has articulated some set of beliefs or values that it holds and around which it is based.

This is true not only of liberal democracies but of any government or society that is based on

anything more than rule by brute force. Historically, most forms of government have felt

compelled to justify themselves to their citizenry. It is a rare governing system that holds power

despite extreme popular resistance. For example, even the feudal system of Middle Ages Europe,

which was an undoubtedly repressive system, still justified itself based on the divine right of

kings and was thus accepted and often supported by the people ruled by it. Thus, in order to

determine what sorts of actions are just in a liberal democracy (in this case, what sort of

humanitarian intervention is just) we must determine whether those actions are consistent with

the core values of a liberal democracy.

In the next chapter, I will explicate a theory of liberal democracy, analyzing the values

that are inherent in a society structured as a liberal democracy. These values will form a basis

upon which to evaluate different types of humanitarian intervention, preferring those that most

closely adhere with the core values of a liberal democracy. I will argue that the principle concern

of liberal democracies should be maximizing the abilities of individuals to determine the way

they live. Then I will argue that certain types of humanitarian intervention can help to promote

this individual self-determination whereas other types are very destructive of it.

Chapter 3: Applying Enlightened Localism to Foreign Policy in Liberal

Democracies

In this chapter I will analyze what a liberal democracy is with the goal of establishing the

fundamental values that are necessarily held by a society that submits to rule by such an

organization. After establishing that the core value held by liberal democracies is individual self-

determination in the first section, I will examine two problems that arise when trying to hold

other nations to a standard of respecting individual self-determination in sections B and C. I will

conclude the chapter by presenting a theory of theory of humanitarian intervention that attempts

to resolve the problems outlined in sections B and C.

A. Self Determination as the Fundamental Value of Liberal Democracies

Democracy is, at its base, rule by the people. While this definition may seem simple, it

gives rise to a whole host of other questions. Who are the people? How should they rule? Are

they limited in what they can decide? Providing a complete theory of democracy is outside of the

scope of this paper. Here I intend to focus mostly on the Why as opposed to the How of

democracy. Thus, the theory of democracy presented here is an ideal theory of democracy,

however I believe it is still the most appropriate. First, questions of implementations of

democracy, while they may dramatically change the extent to which the goals of democracy are

achieved still operate under the fundamental framework of the democracy. In the introduction, I

gave the example of a current debate about the degree to which the financing of political

campaigns should be regulated in a liberal democracy. The two sides of this debate both appeal

to the fundamental value of democracies, individual self-determination. The anti-regulation side

argues that there is a link between funding campaigns and the freedom of speech. To impede the

ability of people to speak by using their wealth allows the government to deny them their self-

expression. It is argued that the more speech there is, the more informed the people are and thus

the better they are able to represent their own interests. On the other hand, the side in favor of

regulation argues that allowing for some people to have a disproportionate amount of speech

allows them to skew and obfuscate the debate over certain issues in their favor, thus denying the

people the ability to make an informed decision over what is truly in their interests.

The common element in the two sides of the argument is an appeal to the policy that best

allows people to make decisions that are in their interest. The values held by liberal democrats

are the important part in determining how they should act based on enlightened localism because

enlightened localism allows for criticism of the society based on the norms that they have

decided are important for themselves. Looking to an ideal theory of democracy allows us to

determine what the “localist” views are. Modifying that view through an enlightened approach

allows us to recognize that those views may not be perfect, that liberal democracies do not

always achieve the values they purport to strive after, and that they should therefore modify their

approach accordingly.

I will make certain assumptions about the operation of democracy that I believe are

widely true of governments that claim to operate under such a title. First, democracies are ruled

by the will of the majority as expressed by their elected representatives. Elections of these

representatives are open to adult citizens. These representatives are required to face the voters

and defend their seats as representatives in periodic elections. The election process is structured

such that the majority is able to consistently ensure that its representatives are protecting its

interests.

In a pure democracy the majority will is unchecked and allowed to reign supreme. This is

not the case in a liberal democracy. A liberal state has come to mean a state with some sort of

rights regime. A rights regime is an articulation of a set of rights that cannot be violated by

majority will alone. In this way, liberalism is not strictly democratic because it imposes limits on

the decisions that a majority can make. It is false to say that rights are inviolable in a liberal state

because it is nearly always possible to do away with rights if enough popular will supports the

decision. For example, the United States is considered a liberal democracy because laws are

passed when they have the support of the majority, but those laws can be invalidated if the

Supreme Court determines that they violate a right enumerated (or implied) by the Constitution.

However, the Constitution is not completely outside of the power of the legislature. If sufficient

popular support is gathered behind a movement to amend the Constitution those rights can be

altered, removed, or added to.

Now that I have provided a rough sketch of the way a liberal democracy operates I will

explore the reasons why some people choose to structure their governing system in this manner. I

believe the best way to discover the fundamental values of a given society is to examine the

justifications the people give for structuring their society in that manner. Especially in a

democratic society, these justifications are the grounds upon which the government justifies its

existence to the people. Democracies, at base, rely on the consent of the people and, therefore,

we can conclude that people support a type of government that derives its authority from moral

arguments that reflect the convictions of the people.

In Democracy and Its Critics14

14 Dahl 1989.

, Robert Dahl outlines the principle justifications cited for

democracy. Dahl’s project is to examine the rationale behind democracy and attempt to

determine the validity of those arguments, ultimately providing a defense of democracy.

However, for my purposes the validity of the arguments cited by Dahl are largely unimportant.

As outlined in the second chapter, I take for granted that his arguments on some level fail in that

either the values to which he appeals or the methods he chooses to achieve them are not

universally acceptable or at the very least cannot be justified based on universally valid norms.

Rather, what is important for this project is that people who have endorsed democracy have done

so because they believe democracy to be the best form of government for achieving a certain set

of values. To appeal to the arguments set up in the previous chapters, democratic peoples believe

in weakly objective truths that their society ought to be based around certain values and that

those values are best achieved through a liberal democracy. Whether democracy achieves those

values or whether those values are actually universally valuable is unimportant to determining

what sort of foreign policy positions countries can take based on those values.

At their core, the arguments Dahl presents for democracy boil down to a desire to

maximize self-determination. He writes:

Advocates of democracy have generally interpreted the most fundamental “interests” or “good” of human beings in three ways. It is in the interest of human beings that they have opportunities to achieve maximum feasible freedom, to develop fully their capacities and potentialities as human beings, and to attain satisfaction of all other interests they themselves judge important, within limits of feasibility and fairness to others. Democracy, it can be argued, is an essential means to these fundamental interests, even though it may be far from a sufficient condition for achieving them.15

Dahl’s argument for democracy starts from the assumption that individual people decide that

their desire to maximize their ability to pursue their own ends requires that they work with other

people and thus create a society. However, in order to achieve their ends they must structure that

society in such a way as that allows each of them to pursue their own vision of the good life to

the greatest extent possible without infringing on the capacity of other members of society to do

the same. Thus, they choose a system of democracy because it maximizes each individual’s

autonomy both through the ends and the means of the democratic process.

15 Dahl 1989, (88).

The ends of democracy maximize the individual’s ability to determine own life because

they allow for the creation of government policy that is supported by the most possible in the

society. Dahl elaborates:

[N]o other form of government can go so far, at least in principle, to ensure that the structure and processes of government itself and the laws it enacts and enforces depend in a significant way on the genuine consent of the governed. For in a democracy, and only in a democracy, are decisions as to the constitution and laws decided by a majority. By contrast all the feasible alternatives to democracy would permit a minority to decide these vital issues.16

Not only does democracy allow for the greatest number of people possible to affect their own

lives but it also rests on the idea that “in the absence of a compelling showing to the contrary

everyone should be assumed to be the best judge of his or her own good or interests.”17

Thus, liberal democracies are concerned with maximizing the freedom of the individual to decide

how to organize her life. Take for example a common point of debate in modern liberal

democracies: the individual can choose through voting between a state that has high taxes but

provides numerous social systems or a state with minimal taxes that offers the individual very

little. In this case it is unclear whether there is an answer as to whether any given individual is

best able to achieve her ends under either system. Perhaps she prefers the security of a social net

with understood limits on her ability to amass great amounts of wealth, or vice versa. Liberal

democracy gives each individual the ability to influence the decision over the balance between

taxation and government services. This argument shows that at its core democracy cannot be

justified unless the people of a democracy believe that individuals are both the best judge of their

interests and that government policy should reflect what most of the people have determined to

be in their interests. This argument demonstrates how the ends of democracy not only affirm but

also rest on the value of individual self-determination.

16 Dahl 1989, (89). 17 Dahl, 1989, (100).

While the ends of democracy are certainly sufficient to demonstrate that supporters of a

democratic society embrace the value of self-determination as the most important value in the

structuring of a society, the means of democracy reinforce this view quite strongly. Because

democracy requires that normal every day citizens play a major role in decision-making, it

requires that its citizenry is both politically informed and capable. In order to achieve “rule by

the people,” the people must, to some degree, have the capacity to rule. Developing such a

capacity requires a basic political education. In order for a democracy to achieve the ends it sets

out for itself, it must create conditions in which the citizenry can be informed about the basic

policy decisions being considered by the government and how to express those opinions to their

government. Learning how to engage in politics helps the development of each citizen as a

rational thinking person. Dahl, citing Mill, elaborates:

[A]ll other regimes reduce, often drastically, the scope within which adults can act to protect their own interests (much less the interests of others), exercise self-determination, take responsibility for important decision, and engage freely with others in a search for the best decision…[I]f the qualities I have described are desirable, then it seems reasonable to hold that, in order for them to develop among a large proportion of a people, it is necessary if not sufficient that the people govern themselves democratically.18

Thus, arguments for democracy not only support the idea that the people ought to take the

principle role in deciding the policies that govern them but also that it is desirable when the

structure of government facilitates the education of the people in such a way that they can make

the best choices possible.

The arguments presented thus far have demonstrated why democracy, understood strictly

as majority rule, rests on the value of individual self-determination. It is worth examination

whether qualifying democracy as a liberal democracy furthers or detracts from the ultimate good

of self-determination. As articulated earlier, the qualification “liberal” indicates that the 18 Dahl 1989, (93).

democracy in question imposes some limits on what the majority can do. These limits are usually

expressed as rights that are ideally “inalienable” but in reality there are normally means by which

supermajorities can modify the list of rights protected. At first brush, it seems like rights which

are difficult for the majority to modify put some qualifications on democracy’s commitment to

self-determination, but I believe that in reality a strong culture of rights is an expression of the

people’s deep commitment to individual self-determination. In that way, they modify

democracy’s understanding of self-determination as desirable only insofar as the people do not

decide to remove their right to self-determination.

The rights that are most typically given special protection in liberal democracies are those

that are important for perpetuating democracy and self-expression. For example, it is difficult to

have rule by the people if the government can censor speech or imprison political opponents.

Thus, liberal democracies create rights to free speech and due process in order to protect dissent.

The basic rationale behind the extra protection given to rights is that there will be times in a

nation’s history when temporary circumstances will impassion the people in a way that many

may begin to support very antidemocratic ideals. For example, widespread fear over the threat of

terrorism has recently made many United States citizens willing to sacrifice the right to due

process because of the great fear they feel. Therefore, the antimajoritarian support for rights

reflects not a fear of self-determination but a fear of the imperfections of humanity and a

recognition that while we may at times fear certain freedoms when given to the “evil” people, we

recognize that such a fear is not a rationale basis for abandoning our commitment to self-

determination.

In this section we have concluded that democracies are principally concerned with

securing for each individual a right to self-determination. Self-determination is the principal

value that underpins democracy. Upon making the determination that the fundamental value we

should look to in trying to determine what action is just for a liberal democracy is individual self-

determination, we can conclude it is probably permissible for democracies to engage in some

form of intervention in another country when doing so would, on the whole, promote individual

self-determination. However, the conclusion that liberal democracies can engage in intervention

when it is necessary to promote individual self-determination fails to take into account illiberal

understandings of the ways in which people can order and shape their lives. The qualification

that liberal democracies place on self-determination, that people not decide to be illiberal, can

potentially lead to liberal democracies denying the ability of other peoples to live their lives in

the ways that they would prefer. Hence, we must examine a way to enlighten the localist

understanding that liberal democracies have of self-determination. In order to justify intervention

based on self-determination liberal democrats must de-center themselves from their localist

understanding of how to evaluate whether people have the ability to determine their rights. (That

localist understanding usually involves determining the degree to which political freedoms

empower people to affect their government.) In order to determine how liberal democrats can

achieve an enlightened localist understanding of their values of self-determination I will begin by

examining the qualifications that liberal democrats must put on the right to self-determination

that they advocate for.

B. The Limits of Self Determination – Is Democracy Hospitable to All Ideas?

As the previous section established, liberal societies give rights an elevated status in order

to achieve two basic goals, ensure self-determination by allowing for the status quo to be

constantly challenged and allow individuals to structure their own lives free without being

restrained by what society deems as acceptable. In this section, I will argue that while

democracies use these rights in an attempt to allow for a large diversity, a liberal understanding

of individual rights limits the sort of behavior that liberal democracies can permit. Individual

rights carry weight in liberal societies because of the normative beliefs in the autonomy of

individuals that serve as their basis. Thus, while liberal societies attempt to recognize a diversity

of views, they cannot permit cultural practices that conflict with the normative beliefs upon

which those rights are founded. In order to better express the limitations of democracy, I will

frame them within the discussion between Habermas and Derrida over the difference between

toleration and hospitality. Thus, I will begin the section by analyzing these two terms and then

explain what their arguments about these two concepts demonstrate about the nature of liberal

democracies.

Habermas presents tolerance as an evolving concept that began as a paternalistic term and

had the connotation of the authoritarian doing a favor for the minority. Thus, while dissenters are

allowed, they are constantly marginalized by toleration because the authoritarian arbitrarily

draws the threshold. In his defense of toleration, Habermas reconstructs the concept by recasting

it in a liberal democratic society. He argues that tolerance is effective within this type of society

because of the universality required by liberal democracy: “on the basis of the citizens’ equal

rights and reciprocal respect for each other, nobody possesses the privilege of setting the

boundaries of tolerance from the viewpoint of their own preferences and value-orientations.”19

As for those problems that fall outside of the constitutional limits of a liberal democracy,

Habermas argues that such a constitution allows a liberal democracy to “repel the animosity of

This feature of democracy solves the problem of a unilateral definition of the bounds of tolerance

because tolerance is extended to each view held by a member of the democratic society.

19 Borradori 2003, (41).

existential enemies while avoiding any betrayal of its own principles.”20 This is possible only

when the dissidents who “still insist on combating decisions that came about legitimately…

justify their resistance by citing constitutional principles and express it by nonviolent, i.e.,

symbolic means.”21 Thus, by allowing for civil disobedience, constitutional democracies can

survive even those that present themselves as enemies to the constitution by understanding the

constitution “as an ongoing project – the project to exhaust and implement basic rights in

changing historical societies.”22

Derrida offers attempts to deconstruct the notion of tolerance as creating an equal playing

field for all ideas. He argues that tolerance is

Habermas’s conclusion is that tolerance can allow for a non-

paternalistic treatment of those who dissent from the majority’s point of view both through the

avenues of dissent provided by democracy and civil disobedience.

in the best of cases…a conditional hospitality, the one that is most commonly practiced by individuals, families, cities, or states. We offer hospitality only on the condition that the other follow our rules, our way of life, even our language, our culture, our political system, and so on. That is hospitality as it is commonly understood and practiced, a hospitality that gives rise, with certain conditions, to regulated practices, laws, and conventions on a national and international…scale.23

Derrida argues that the conditional hospitality, which he equates with Habermas’s democratic

tolerance, should be rejected in favor of unconditional hospitality. He explains that pure

hospitality is distinct from tolerance because pure hospitality involves a complete openness to

the other. A hospitable approach declares that “whatever happens, happens, whoever comes,

comes (ce qui arrive arrive).”24

20 Thomassen 2006, (198).

Being hospitable to other ideas involves a removal of the

restrictions on ideas that can exist in a political debate and giving equal ground to different,

21 Thomassen 2006, (199). 22 Thomassen 2006, (199). 23 Borradori 2003, (128). 24 Borradori 2003, (129).

competing ideas. For example, it would force liberal democracies to tolerate even those beliefs

that deny that fundamental precepts of liberalism.

A liberal democracy hospitable to any understanding of self-determination would have to

permit groups to democratically decide to structure themselves illiberally. One example of the

difficulties that liberal democracies face is when there are groups living within the liberal

democracy that want to organize themselves in illiberal ways. These groups, such as certain sects

of Mormonism, typically deny fundamental precepts of liberalism, such as the equality of the

sexes, and organize their communities in a hierarchical manner, with a strong leader that makes

decisions that structure the lives of the rest of the group. Applied to the international sphere, an

unconditioned hospitality would require liberal democracies to recognize that social

organizations in which, for example, women have defined roles based on their gender are

actually consistent with what their members desire as opposed to being systems of oppression.

Derrida admits that such a schema is impossible to realize, especially in a juridical sense. It is

impossible for a state to structure its laws in such a way that it is completely open to anyone and

any idea. However, the idea of hospitality is useful in that it gives us a way to understand the

natural limitations of our ability to engage with the other.

When looking to real world examples of these contrasting ideas, it is clear that Derrida is

correct in saying that Habermas is overly optimistic about liberal democracy’s ability to deal

with diversity. He is certainly right that democracy is tolerant, but it is only tolerant insofar as

the cultures it deals with affirm an individual right to self-determination. We can see that it is the

case that those affirming a conception of individual rights do “enjoy the privilege of setting the

boundaries of toleration.” The boundaries of toleration are simply toleration. When democracy

runs up against cultures that allow other values to supercede an individual person’s freedom and

are therefore intolerant of some types of individual difference, its capacity to tolerate fails. In

Multicultural Citizenship Will Kymlicka distinguishes between liberal and illiberal toleration.

The inability of liberal democracies to embrace illiberal toleration shows that democracy, as

Derrida argues, cannot be hospitable. They key difference is that liberal toleration emphasizes

individual autonomy whereas illiberal toleration grants group/cultural autonomy and sacrifices

the autonomy of the individual. The distinction is best illustrated by looking to an example of

illiberal toleration. Kymlicka offers the Ottoman Empire as an example. The Ottoman Empire

operated under “the millet system” between the 1450s and the beginning of World War I. Under

this system

Muslims, Christians, and Jews were all recognized as self-governing units (or 'millets'), and allowed to impose restrictive religious laws on their own members… the Ottomans allowed these minorities [the Christians and Jews] not only the freedom to practise their religion, but a more general freedom to govern themselves in purely internal matters, with their own legal codes and courts… it was not a liberal society, for it did not recognize any principle of individual freedom of conscience. Since each religious community was self-governing, there was no external obstacle to basing this self-government on religious principles, including the enforcement of religious orthodoxy…While the Muslims did not try to suppress the Jews, or vice versa, they did suppress heretics within their own community... The millet system was, in effect, a federation of theocracies. It was a deeply conservative and patriarchal society, antithetical to the ideals of personal liberty.25

Clearly a liberal democracy cannot tolerate this type of diversity. If a religious community that

suppressed individuals within the community wanted to live within a liberal democracy, the

national government would certainly intervene in order to protect the individual autonomy of the

members within the community. This example demonstrates that Habermas is incorrect in

asserting that there aren’t boundaries set in liberal democracies that depend on particular values.

The boundary for toleration in liberal democracy is a respect for individual self-determination.

Habermas’s solution to groups that operate outside of the constitution is to allow them to engage 25 Kymlicka 1996, (156).

in civil disobedience, but civil disobedience is a passive form of noncompliance. However, the

religious communities referred to by Kymlicka would be going much further than civil

disobedience. If they attempted to establish themselves within a liberal democracy, they would

be actively breaking the laws of the country in question.

Derrida’s analysis of the ideal manner for engaging with the other, “pure hospitality,”

helps us to understand the shortcomings of democracy. Liberal democracies are limited to

toleration. People who consent to live in liberal democratic societies and grow up in a culture

that is steeped in a very strong understanding of an individual’s right to self-determination will

find it very difficult to be open to ideas presented by individuals who have been raised in an

orthodox religious society and believe that the will of their family or their community precedes

individual considerations. To go back to the analysis presented in the first chapter, these two

individuals speak different moral/political languages that they learned through vastly different

processes of socialization. Neither can engage the other on the other’s terms because it is

impossible for either to completely divorce themselves from their preconceived understandings

of how a political system ought to be structured.

Thus far I have demonstrated the limits of the right to individual self-determination for a

liberal democracy. Liberal democracies allow an individual to realize her conception of the good

life so long as that conception of the good life does not involve the creation of a community that

holds certain values that are beyond democracy’s pale of toleration.

When applied to foreign policy, this analysis means that liberal democracies can only be

tolerant of other countries that allow for individual self-determination if they are to remain

consistent with their values. Liberal democrats will achieve the goal of understanding their

values from an enlightened localist perspective if they can realize the restrictions on their

abilities to tolerate certain types of self-determination.

In the case of citizens of liberal democracies who hold deep convictions about self-

determination, they can simultaneously recognize both their belief that everyone has an

individual right to self-determination and their belief that other individuals believe that they do

not have that right and that they should instead submit themselves to the good of the community.

It is inconsistent with the belief of the democratic citizen to force the religious communitarian to

divorce himself from his attachment to his community. Ignatieff elaborates:

Because the very purpose of rights language is to protect and enhance individual agency, rights advocates must, if they are to avoid contradicting their own principles, respect the autonomy of those agents. Likewise, at the collective level, rights language endorses the desire of human groups to rule themselves. If this is so, human rights discourse must respect the rights of those groups to define the type of collective life they wish to lead, provided that this life meets the minimalist standards requisite to the enjoyment of human rights at all. If, for example, religious groups determine that women should occupy a subordinate place within the rituals of the groups, and this place is accepted by the women in question, there is no warrant to intervene on the grounds that human rights considerations of equality have been violated. Human rights principles themselves imply that groups do not actively persecute others or actively harm their own members should enjoy as much autonomy as the rule of law allows.26

This example illustrates that to truly achieve the value at the heart of liberal democracies, they

must accept the possibility that people can choose to organize their life in an illiberal way, and

find that organization quite desirable. He argues that human rights advocates must allow for the

possibility that a woman can consent to live under such a system and that in order to be

consistent with their principles, must allow her to make that choice. However, the liberal

democrat finds it extremely difficult to even conceive of such a situation. The committed

democratic citizen will respond to Ignatieff by arguing that once such a religious group has

established that women should occupy a subordinate position, it will be impossible to evaluate

26 Ignatieff 2001, (18).

whether women can truly consent to an inferior position since they will be unable to challenge

their social status on the same level as men. Perhaps it will occur, the democrat will argue, that

female members of a religious community decide to accept a subordinate position, but this will

destroy the individual right to self-determination of their female descendants to change such a

subordinated position. It is further unclear how a group can occupy a “subordinate” position and

not be “persecuted.” To be even more generous to Ignatieff’s argument, some may argue that a

religious society could decide that the both sexes are equal but divide the jobs according to what

are perceived to be the special qualifications of each sex to perform a certain type of work. Many

democratic citizens would still see such a scheme as very oppressive because it locks individual

people into a predetermined set of options in their life without them consenting to it. Ignatieff’s

example pushes the democrat past the limit of her toleration, demonstrating that hospitality

towards different ways of thinking is impossible.

This example demonstrates well the impasse the liberal democracies must face in making

foreign policy. Liberal democrats cannot divorce themselves from their commitment to

individual self-determination, but they must also recognize that the individuals of other countries

have, through the historical development of their culture decided to shape their lives in ways that

emphasizes things other than individual self-determination and can individually decide to

subordinate their desires over how their lives are governed to the group. The question then

becomes, whether we can come up with a way for liberal democrats to determine whether the

nation that foreign citizens live in accurately reflects their desires over how they would choose to

live their lives. In the following section, I will examine the arguments presented by Waltzer and

Beitz regarding how a given country should engage with another country. More precisely, since

both take for granted that we should respect the rights of citizens of other countries, the question

is whether those rights should be located in the individual, the nation or the state. Resolving the

question of where to locate that right is very important for the problem raised by this section

because doing so will provide a mechanism through which we can determine whether an

individual’s right to self-determination is being respected or not.

C. Where the Right is Located

The previous section established that liberal democracies should be concerned with

respecting every individual’s right to determine their own lives to the greatest extent possible.

The question then becomes, whether, given a liberal democrat’s incapacity to completely

understand people coming from illiberal cultures, they can make an informed decision over

whether people in other cultures actually choose their position or not. To refer to the example

given earlier by Ignatieff, we must determine whether a woman can truly consent to a political

system in which she occupies a socially subordinated position to men.

Walzer appeals to the right to self-determination in order to justify his principle of non-

intervention. His analysis therefore functions as a very good jumping off point for both how to

determine if a given country allows for self-determination and whether a lack of such

determination justifies humanitarian intervention. While both Walzer and Beitz seem to appeal to

the same right of self-determination, their theories start to diverge on where the right to self-

determination is located. This is critical for answering the question of whether liberal

democracies can tolerate other governing systems that reject liberalism. Walzer seems to locate

the right in either the state or the nation. He is a bit unclear in that he argues that the nation has

the right to self-determination, which it derives from its citizenry, but the right is actually

claimed by the state.

To clarify the relationship between the individual, the state, and the nation, the state

refers to the juridical body that rules over geographically defined group of people. The majority

of this group of people is typically united around a common understanding of how their lives

should be structured and a common culture. This group of people is the nation. There is not

always a one to one correspondence between the people living in the state and the people that

comprise the nation. It is often the case that there are small groups that live within the juridical

boundaries of the state but maintain radically different ideologies and cultures from the group

that dominates the state and comprises the nation. The differences between these three concepts

are well demonstrated by the current political realities in Israel. The state of Israel is a juridical

institution defined by geographical boundaries. The majority of the people living within these

boundaries identify themselves as part of the Israeli nation, the group of people that share a

political ideology represented by the government of Israel. However, within these geographical

limits are people who are members of the nation of Palestine. Palestinians are not members of

the nation of Israel but do live within the state.

Walzer argues that autonomy is located not in the state but rather in “the political

community that (usually) underlies it.” The “political community” refers to the nation.

Ultimately, his argument is that the state is an instrument of the nation and by extension the

individuals that comprise that community. The state is merely the mechanism that the political

community uses to govern it. While the state has an obligation to represent the people, the people

do not have a correlative obligation to support the state. Since it is the state that claims the right

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