Proposal for A Project on the

Limits of Pluralism

David E. Apter

I The Libertarian Formula

Most of us would accept Hannah Arendt's argument that liberal democracy

begins with a tripartite libertarian formula: individualism, citizens

rights and obligations, and personal freedom. Among the presuppositions of

that formula are the following: human similarities far outweigh their

differences. Rationality is a universal human property. Work is at the

core of learning and knowledge. Knowledge stimulates self improvement.

Together work and knowledge enhance moral purposefulness. Interests are

balanced against principles. Motivation is both self and group engendered.

Dogma must be eschewed.

Dogma, by diluting these libertarian properties, offends rationality.

Hence, for example, the admonishing tone of Locke's A Letter Concerning

Toleration with its concern over the dangers of religion and by implication

all dogma. To corral free minds within sectarian precincts is precisely

opposite to the market place of free ideas and open ends.

There is "system" behind these principles which has to do with the way

such a market place works. It has two main components, economic and

political, the two intersecting each other by balancing the diversity of

needs and interests against preferred principles. The first is based on

man's common propensities to truck, barter, and exchange, as Adam Smith put

it, while to check the negative and unintended consequences of those

propensities it is necessary to make power accountable according to

justiciable principles and the free play of coalitional factions. In this

model, diversity is a virtue but cleavage is to be eschewed. We will call

this an original pluralism.

Original pluralism means diversity, an ensemble of needs, preferences and

desires as these are registered by the double market. In this sense

pluralism means free choice which is the centerpiece of the libertarian

formula. But free choice is itself contingent on certain deontological

constitutional principles designed to ensure that in both market places

ends remain open. This requires certain institutional arrangements

enabling the realization of such ends by means of a framework for choice.

Crucial to this framework are two principles, representation and

accountability. In turn both require appropriate and facilitating

instrumentalities such as political parties. These latter render pluralism

and diversity into agendas for decision-making and which give substance to

the political marketplace.

In this sense system and process come together through the free and

mutually compensatory interplay of institutional mechanisms within the

double market. For example, inequalities arising in the economic can be

rectified or compensated for in the political. Concentrations of power in

the political can be diluted in the economic. Equilibrium or stability

over time consists of such mutual rectification, the ensuing balance

sustaining an open-ended system of political order.

Today we use different languages to get at the same thing. How to convert

pluralism into information, and information into the policy process is one

way to put it. How to remove obstacles to the mutual responsiveness of

this double exchange is another. Whatever the specific modalities of

government, parliamentary or presidential, and variations in

instrumentalities, mechanisms, (committee systems, electoral practices), at

some basic level the libertarian formula remains embodied in all democratic

states. That said, it is also the case that the original 18th century

ingredients have been amended almost beyond recognition - almost but not

quite.

Major political amendments to the model have resulted from a variety of

problems. The dual market place is often sticky, its mutual responsiveness

insensitive, losing or ignoring information, failing to respond to needs

according to principles, and producing self reinforcing inequities.

However, efforts to rectify imbalances have also created opportunities for

what can be called negative pluralism, i.e. the elevation of dogma in the

name of principle to the point where it poses real challenges to the

libertarian formula.

The problem is that dogmas constitute discourses of difference and make

claims accordingly. Their starting assumption is not similarities between

human beings but the elevation of differences into discrete discourse

communities. By so doing interests are transformed into principles and

claims into rights. This maximizes cleavage politics, the logic of which

is the universalization of sectarianism. Today sectarian revivalism takes

many forms, religion, gender, race, ethnicity, ideology, etc. Insofar as

individualism is thus collectivized difference becomes the priority basis

of representation and accountability.

To some extent such tendencies can be both justified and tolerated. Where

the double market is insensitive to needs, where inequalities are not

compensated for, where people are systematically excluded, etc., the

mobilization of political groups are part of and embedded in the democratic

process. But if at some point, such mobilization begins to serve as the

basis of that process itself, then in effect democracy becomes an arena of

conflict rather than a basis of accommodation, accountability and consent.

Private gain is in this sense inimicable to public good.

Which suggests several questions. How can one distinguish between

negative and positive pluralism? When does a politics of pluralism lead to

monopolistic tendencies within the political market place? And indeed,

when did negative pluralism begin and how has it evolved today? For it is

certainly the case that pluralism has increased in ways unthinkable in the

past. And with many excellent consequences. Diversities of social

composition have become fine-tuned. The range of possible choices has

enlarged.

If our assumptions are correct, and if, despite vast changes in spirit,

structure, and form, the libertarian model retains a certain integrity,

there must be limits to the extent it can be tinkered with without being

destroyed. Such limits are not self evident. They require fresh appraisal

and reexamination precisely because they are in danger of being overwhelmed

by the primacy of group over individual claims. That being the case, it

seems to me urgent that we reconsider pluralism. What is needed is an

inquiry into the limits of pluralism.

II The Developmental Formula

Structural weaknesses in the libertarian formula became particularly

apparent in the 19th century. Inequalities in the economic market were

reinforced rather than diluted in the political. Arendt, considering such

problems historically, traced them to what she rather delicately called the

"social question". As the libertarian formula failed signally to rectify

imbalances the resulting political alternatives came to include a search

for radical solutions, the first embodiment of which was the Jacobin phase

of the French revolution.

The failure seemed intellectual as well manifested in a burgeoning of

radical theories critical of the libertarian formula, Marxism perhaps being

the most fundamental. Class began to take precedence over individual as

the defining unit, and in terms of cleavage and polarization. The

discourse so engendered elevated class interest to the level of principle

in a variety of doctrines ranging from the "collective individualism" of

anarchism, to the collectivism of communism, with a variety of socialisms

distributed in between. The solution seemed to be group claims pressed in

the political market place against dominant economic interests, especially

where the free play of coalitions was insufficiently sensitive to those

marginalized in the developmental process.

Group claims, phrased in compensatory terms or as rights, introduced both

moral saliency into the political market place and reallocative and

redistributive justice in the economic. Whatever the principles invoked,

discrimination, class, marginality, etc., collective representation became

an aspect of pluralism where it had not been before. Hardly immune to the

political consequences of such doctrines and their consequences Western

democracies moved towards both the social welfare and social democratic

states. State intervention in the double market place became accepted as

the normal way to facilitate the equilibration process.

For Arendt the problem was that the bureaucracies so formed and the

superstructural complexities also produced individual alienation,

irrationalities, and more susceptibility rather than less to dogmas and

ideologies (including fascism). She posed the vexing question of how far a

pluralism of rights could go without penalizing the liberty of individuals.

Her own solutions, communitarianism, more direct forms of democracy, were

more charming than practical.

State intervention in the double market place has certainly produced its

own problems, bureaucracy being one of the most important. But it made

possible social improvements whereby a developmental formula in part

displaced the libertarian one while seeming to enhance it. In part this

was due to the prospect of the virtually unlimited creation of wealth

through industrialization, making compensatory policies non-zero sum.

Moreover, embedded in the teleologies of developmentalism, (whether liberal

or Marxist) was the idea that the functional allocation of roles germane to

the industrialization process would take precedence over all others, and

especially over those based on non-germane criteria such as religion,

ethnicity, etc. In short, greater diversity and more pluralization also

involved shrinking differences over values and beliefs, in a world of

rationality in which the division of roles depended on the division of

labor. The universalization of roles was the basic principle of

developmental change shared by the historical sociologists, a Durkheim, or

Weber, etc. and a great many others and the basic working principle of the

modernization paradigm which became fashionable after the second world war.

It was a principle which extended to nationalism, anti-colonialism, and

the idea of the modern state. Indeed, for most of this century, in one

doctrinal form or another, it has been accepted that growth, development,

and political development (democracy) would enjoy a mutual prosperity.

It is not that developmentalism does not work in the way predicted. It

does, but not everywhere and quite often the negative consequences of

development, greater inequalities, marginalized populations, etc. generate

social and political movements the appeasement of which make things worse.

It encourages the creation of groups that want it both ways - that the

state cater to their need for difference while they claim rights on the

basis of identity. It becomes morally troublesome when equality is defined

in terms of compensatory privileges. Such conditions tend to elevate

differences to the level of cultures each with its own assumptions about

the nature and workings of the political process. In this respect one

needs to analyze the interiority of such groups, especially where the

disciplining and mobilizing effects of such cultures include

predispositions to violence, cleavage, and confrontational activities.

In turn, the decline of this developmental formula and the teleologies

that went with it (most particularly radical ones) has left a space for the

revival of the liberal formula. By the same token the latter now needs to

be able to cope with the political consequences of group claims - something

quite alien to its original formulation.

III Are There Limits to Pluralism?

To recapitulate briefly, today, and especially since the demise of

socialism, not to speak of the dismantling of social democracies, the

social question has become more and more difficult to resolve. Marginality

has become a world wide problem. The fine tuning of ethical sensibilities

has increased rather than decreased moral outrage, and led to the

intensification rather than the defusing of grievance. Modern pluralism

includes the collectivization of grievance, the elevation of group

boundaries and affiliations, and in ways which combine earlier class claims

with others, many of them interclass, such as clanship, religion,

ethnicity, race, language, etc. So much so that to make the political

marketplace work, politics is more and more a matter of elevating

differences rather than resolving them. To the point where these represent

precisely the kinds of threats that Locke originally pointed out with

reference to religion and which today prejudice the open-ended quality of

the libertarian formula.

In a Western context the issue has taken shape in three major ways,

immigration and the absorption of immigrants, upsurges in local nationalism

and parochial revivalism, and the rise of prejudice (including neo-fascism

and neo-Nazism). In a non-Western context, (Russia is a good example) such

matters prejudice the establishment of a democratic state. My own

experience in Africa has enabled me to be a witness to the decline of

"national" nationalism in favor of localism and parochial affiliations, the

rise of fundamentalism and integralism. I have seen, again and again, on

the ground, the tragic consequences of trying to use a democratic framework

for mediating what are escalating parochialisms. In such terms democracy

is little more than war by other means.

Particularly startling has been the "renewal" of "primordial" affiliations

whose appearance within the framework of the secular democratic state was

largely unanticipated. Complex issues are reduced to sectarian criteria,

(as for example in our own country, the abortion issue). Under such

circumstances institutions and instrumentalities are misused in the name of

democracy. Secondary affiliations are made primary. Loyalty becomes more

important than choice. Preferences, redefined as principles, are made

universal and imposed on society at large. What is involved is nothing

less than the foreclosure of the open-ended quality of the democratic

process. Among its consequences are an increase in prejudices as a form of

purification, the elevation of boundaries and their ritualization, and

ideas that come to represent the very opposite of the original ideal of

pluralism.

In established democratic societies the problem includes threats to the

cultural integrity and shared values on the basis of which democracies

operate. It produces fears of "cultural tipping" when group claims are

made on behalf of immigrant or religious communities that want it both

ways, to preserve their differences, and claim the rights based on

similarities. Entire communities may be "taken over" and local populations

alienated or fearful of the loss of patrimony and place. With negative

pluralism the political market encourages group separatism as a way of

determining political agendas and insuring clientelistic benefits. Which

reinforces "interiority", ritualizes and makes inviolate boundaries, and

reinforces tendencies to want it both ways by groups seeking to be

separate, autonomous, and free of state intervention in order to maintain

their own principles and communities, and at the same demand time the same

freedoms and rights as those not in their communities. It is a major

problem in many countries which, after highly regrettable experiences with

autocratic and totalitarian rule, are now trying to establish democratic

systems where there is little consensual common ground. Which places

severe handicaps on the democratic potential and great pressures on

democracy as a cultural practice.

It also forces one to challenge the bland assumption that because all

cultures are equal in the sight of god, they are equally amenable to

democracy - something which is clearly not so. Nor are such matters up in

the clouds. They are very much down to earth. France is wrestling with

the problem of how pluralism can be made acceptable and how much it will

depend on some necessary degree of prior assimilation - forced if necessary

- a matter of great concern in dealing with Algerian as well as other

immigrant communities. The U.S. which prides itself on pluralism as a

preferred political system, the problem is how to cope with single interest

politics elevated to levels of fundamentalist belief, as among the

so-called religious right.

Which brings us back to the principle of individualism and the limits it

sets on pluralism. For pluralism as such, despite the celebration of its

obvious virtues, has its political limits. Go past those limits and we

encounter negative rather than positive pluralism. It is on the problem of

negative pluralism, the kind that undermines national citizenship and

rights under the law that we need to focus attention.

I have suggested some of the different settings in which the problem has

become important (including the United States). It is a matter of growing

concern in settings where democracy already exists as in Western Europe.

It is a problem of overwhelming proportions in Russia and parts of Eastern

Europe. It is a long standing problem in Africa where ethnic and other

forms of factional violence has led to a general turbulence which includes

genocide in Rwanda and Southern Sudan, etc.

It is a concern which leads directly into the present emphasis on "the

limits of pluralism" and how far democracy can accommodate to groups which,

in effect, want it both ways - to preserve their autonomy as a group right

even when and if it imposes on others through the political process, and

how far group rights need to remain secondary to individual liberties.

After a good many years of bitter practical experience we now know that

uncertainty and risk, marginality and vulnerability are among the

consequence of development which produce problems of greater magnitude than

the means of resolving them. At the end of the twentieth century one might

say that the great problem is how to deal with such problems without

destroying the original libertarian formula.

IV Questions Concerning Pluralism and Democracy

These comments, superficial and over-simplified as they are, suggest

certain theoretical questions - questions which might be called the

"pluralism problem." They suggest why research on such matters has become

a concern among scholars from several different disciplines and analytical

perspectives, history, political theory, developmental economics, cultural

change, constitutionalism, group and coalition politics. Of course, the

last thing one wants is a recycling of old arguments on liberal theory and

its principles. But there is so much at stake in terms of the relations

between concrete conditions and democratic political life that at a minimum

one to review some of the deeper substantive, institutional, and contextual

issues such relations raise, and with it a new look at the limits of

conventional knowledge about democracy.

Which suggests why we propose this topic as a project for the Society for

Comparative Research which because it represents several relevant

disciplines can approach the problem of the limits of pluralism from quite

different perspectives. If possible it should result in a volume published

under the imprint of the Society. Indeed, I have made several soundings on

the matter and find a surprising degree of common concern. Perhaps one

also ought to consider this as an ongoing project - holding future sessions

in Berlin or Paris. If so, then the first meeting should consist of a

small working group to develop a common framework and research design, and

select several three or four significant working hypotheses around which to

structure the analysis. Study groups might then be organized to examine

and analyze the implications of these hypotheses leading to an a cohesive

volume or volumes which will attempt a redefinition of the terms of the

debate over the limits of pluralism in ways that might be useful not only

to those concerned with democratic theory but practical politics as well.

1. See Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, (New York: Viking, 1963).

2. A preoccupation of Madison for example in The Federalist Papers.

3. In Africa what began as ecumenical nationalism often gave way to

rather muddy versions of socialism. Today both have been replaced by

localism and parochialism, the revival of ethnic, religious, and

ideological affiliations, with implied or revealed threats of separatism.

4. In Africa what began as ecumenical nationalism often gave way to rather

muddy versions of socialism. Today both have been replaced by localism and

parochialism, the revival of ethnic, religious, and ideological

affiliations, with implied or revealed threats of separatism.

5. Indeed, it was one of the assumptions of social science that ethnicity,

religion, etc., would decline in favor of more secular and instrumental

beliefs, instrumentalities and institutions. What we have not been

prepared for is the instrumentalization of precisely such ties and

affiliations to the point where we can speak not only of ethnic but "tribal

revivalism", not only the invigoration of religious ties but the

politicization of the sacred in just the ways Locke warned against.

6. My own interest in such matters goes back many years to Africa where

early on problems of ethnicity posed fearful problems of constitutional

appropriateness in newly independent states. As failures led to violence I

became interested in the connection between group claims and political

violence. Which led to involvement in a project which I directed and which

included scholars from Australia, South Africa, Peru, France, Ireland,

England, elsewhere. The project analyzed and examined in depth how group

claims became mobilized and form into discourses which, forming into

discourse communities, become inversionary and transformational, to

challenge state authority and the very nature of the state itself. That

project, under the auspices of the United Nations Research Institute for

Social Development in Geneva, resulted in five books dealing with different

aspects of what we called the "legitimization of violence".

7. My own interest in such matters goes back many years to Africa where