Democracy in Context: Between Universal Ideals and Local Values

By

Hussein Banai

B.A., York University, 2003

MSc., The London School of Economics and Political Science, 2005

M.A. Brown University, 2007

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctorate of Philosophy In the Department of Political Science at Brown University

Providence, Rhode Island

May 2012 © 2011 by Hussein Banai

All rights reserved.

This dissertation by Hussein Banai has been accepted in its current form

By the Department of Political Science as satisfying the

Dissertation requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy

Date ______Corey L. Brettschneider, Advisor

Recommended to the Graduate Council

Date ______Sharon R. Krause, Reader

Date ______Charles Larmore, Reader

Date ______Nina Tannenwald, Reader

Date ______James Der Derian

iii ABSTRACT

The aims of this dissertation are twofold: (1) to expose the limitations of the dominant theories of democracy as regards the relationship between universal democratic ideals and local values; and (2) to offer a normative framework for a contextual conception of democratic legitimacy. These objectives have been undertaken not in order to offer a single, unified theory of democracy, but in an effort to draw attention to the ineluctable hybridity of democracy as both a system of government and a much-cherished political value. At the root of this view is the notion that the pursuit and realization of democratic ideals are legitimized through individual and collective histories, local and global vernaculars, and persistent political struggles. The chief merit of democracy is that it bestows upon the individual and the collective certain rights and privileges with which to contemplate the terms of membership and coexistence in society. Genuine understanding of the potential pitfalls and triumphs brought about by democracy requires one to understand the concrete constellation of ideas, beliefs, traditions, and values within which it is located. The moral and political legitimacy of democracy, it is argued, rests on its reflective capacity to be responsive to the vicissitudes of context: to be “of, by and for” a people, and all that being part of such a historical construct entails. It is this receptivity to the diversity of human experience across time and space that sets democracy apart from other forms of government.

iv

CURRICULUM VITAE

Hussein Banai was born in Tehran, Iran on September 19, 1980. He completed his elementary and part of his secondary education in Iran until the age of fifteen, at which point he and his family moved to Ontario, Canada, where he completed the remainder of his secondary education at York Mills Collegiate Institute in Toronto. He obtained a BA (Hons.) in Political Science from York University (2003), his MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science (2005), his PhD from Brown University (2011). He served as Deputy Editor of Millennium: Journal of International Studies in 2004-2005, and has acted as a referee for various political science journals such as International Studies Quarterly, Gender and Politics, and Cambridge Review of International Affairs. Among his publications are Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations During the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988 (co-author with James Blight, janet Lang, Malcolm Byrne and John Tirman) (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011); “Diplomacy and Public Imagination,” in Sustainable Diplomacies, edited by Costas Constantinou and James Der Derian (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); “Politics and Democratic Consciousness in Iran,” Review of Middle East Studies (2011); and “Diplomatic Imaginations: Mediating Estrangement in International Society,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs (2011). He has presented papers at various regional, national, and international conferences over the course of his graduate studies, and maintains an active membership in the major professional organizations in his fields of study. In addition, he has assisted in teaching and taught his own courses in political theory, international relations, and Middle East studies at Brown. He is currently a visiting faculty in Middle East Studies at Brown, a visiting scholar at the Political Theory Project, and research affiliate at the Center for International Studies at MIT. In the 2012- 2013 academic year he will join the faculty at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA as Assistant Professor in the Department of Diplomacy and World Affairs.

v

For my parents, Mitra Movasagh-Nekoonam and Reza Banai, exemplary democrats.

vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am greatly indebted to the members of my dissertation committee – Professors Corey Brettschneider (chair), Sharon Krause, Charles Larmore, Nina Tannenwald, and James Der Derian – for their generous encouragement and consideration at various stages of writing this dissertation. If there is even the slightest hint of insight in the pages that follow, the credit is entirely due to them (needless to say, any errors or shortcomings are my responsibility alone). Corey has been the model mentor, patiently guiding me through a torrent of false dilemmas and needless anxieties. It was he who first suggested that I give the “contextual” itch a good scratch, and I am impressed to the point of envy that he continues to understand and articulate the promise and aims of my project much better than I can. I very much treasure his friendship and intellectual example. I had the great fortune of starting my doctoral studies at Brown just as Sharon and Charles made their respective moves from Harvard and the University of Chicago. To the extent that I can claim familiarity with topics in political theory, I owe this to Sharon, who through her teaching and mentorship paved the path for my intellectual growth. Her copious comments on numerous drafts of chapters and other papers were beyond helpful and nearly always accompanied by words of encouragement. I cannot thank her enough. It was a special honor for me to have Charles on my committee. Too often I would rejoice at the prospect of a breakthrough thought only to discover that Charles had already thought and written about it much better than I or anyone else would ever be able to. I am extremely grateful for his patience, lucidity and directness during the writing of the dissertation; I have learned so much from his writings, teaching and intellectual example. I was delighted that Nina agreed to join the committee at a late stage; her clarity of thought and helpful suggestions have made the arguments that touch on topics in international relations more precise and lucid. I also have learned immensely from Nina’s work on the role of norms and ideas in international politics, topics about which I am sure to bother her time and again in the future. Lastly, I owe a special debt to James for his always-helpful comments and continued encouragement. He exemplifies engaged scholarship, and many of us who have had the privilege of working with him are not just better scholars but also better persons for it. I am grateful for his continued generosity and friendship. I am deeply beholden for friendship and advice to other faculty members at Brown and beyond: James Morone, John Tomasi, Pauline Jones-Luong, Melani Cammett, Richard Snyder, Peter Andreas, Mark Blyth, David Estlund, Nancy Khalek, Matthew Gutmann, Lucas Swaine, Michael Goodheart, Bob Gooding-Williams, Jason Brennan, John Tirman, James Blight, and janet Lang. Special thanks are also due to Suzanne Brough and Patti Gardner, both of whom I consider dear friends – my professional training would not have been nearly as enriching without them. This dissertation has benefited greatly from the friendly comments and suggestions of fellow graduate students at Brown, especially those affiliated with the Graduate Political Philosophy Workshop: Jennie Ikuta, Sean Aas, Derek Bowman, Dana Howard, Tim Syme, Matthew Lyddon, Jason Swadley, Molly Wallace, Jack Amoureux, John Phillips, Minh Ly, Christopher Tallent, Gavril Bilev, Feryaz Ocakli, Heather Silber

vii Mohamed, Elizabeth Bennett, Dan Ehlke, Emily Farris, Eli Feiman, Kelly Bay, Jorge Alves, Eduardo Moncada, Rich Maher, and David Blanding. Two individuals deserve special mention for their unconditional friendship and intellectual companionship during the writing of this dissertation. Erin Beck through her warmth and unconditional support has been a model of friendship. Jeremy Johnson has been a most compassionate and generous intellectual companion throughout my time at Brown. I hope he will not think it hyperbolic to be described as a paragon of virtue, for I can mobilize an entire community to assure him of it. This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Mitra Movasagh-Nekoonam and Reza Banai, who have given much to the cause of democracy in our native homeland of Iran. The inspiration they have provided as rootless cosmopolitans, together with the example they have set as engaged citizens, have been invaluable to the development of my own thoughts on democracy. I am also grateful to my siblings, Azadeh and Sepehr, for their love and support. To the never failing love, generosity and glowing vitality of my wife, Tracey Wilkinson, the words “gratitude” and “debt” do not begin to do justice.

viii

Freedom of will is the highest human good; and it is impossible to have both that freedom and an intervening divinity. We, because we are a form of matter, are contingent; and this terrifying contingency allows our freedom.

JOHN FOWLES, The Aristos

ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………….... vii

Introduction………………………………………………………………………. 1

Chapter 1: Democratic Traditions (Re)Considered: Universalism and Particularism…… 12

Chapter 2: Toward a Contextual Conception of Democratic Legitimacy…………………. 55

Chapter 3: Borne by Context: the Quest for Democracy in Iran………………………….. 101

Chapter 4: Beyond Democracy Promotion: A Contextual Critique………………………. 150

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………... 206

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………… 213

x INTRODUCTION

The subject matter of this dissertation – democratic legitimacy – grew out of two distinct yet overlapping preoccupations. The first was a deeply felt dissatisfaction with both lay and academic discussions of democracy in the Middle East and North Africa

(MENA) region, interlaced as they were, and alas, still are, with all manner of Orientalist presuppositions about the ubiquitous misogyny of Muslim societies, the ever-stagnant

“Arab mind,” the insularity of Islamic culture, the intrinsic “sacred rage” of political

Islam, persistent authoritarianism (a latter day rendition of Oriental despotism), the list goes on.1 The feeling became more acute in the aftermath of the twin invasions of

Afghanistan and Iraq, which, in addition to spawning a new discipline of “terrorism studies,” produced many a policy analysis on the urgent need to reconcile Islam with democracy. Predictably, a range of national security and so-called “area studies” experts with little or no academic training in topics concerning either democracy or Islam obligingly produced a plethora of briefs detailing the differences between Arab political culture and Islam, distinguishing between moderate and extreme religious authorities, identifying liberal interpretations of the Qur’an amenable to democratic coalition- building, envisioning Shari’ah-based constitutions, offering blueprints for elections and participatory councils at local and national levels, designing programs for female

1 Among the most well-known of these tracts, are Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (New York: Harper Perennial, 2003) and “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” The Atlantic (September 1990); Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Benjami Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism’s Challenge to Democracy (New York: Ballantine Books, 1995); Daniel Pipes, In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2002).

1 empowerment, etc.2 The tenor and overall purpose of these efforts were unmistakable:

Islamist terror, fundamentalism, and hatred of “Western values” were the result of a

“democracy deficit” endemic in the MENA region, and thus the path toward democracy ran through religious moderation and reform.

For their part, scholars of the region rushed in to reject any suggestions of a natural symbiosis between, on the one hand, Islam and violence, and Islam and lack of democracy, on the other. Islam, it was rightly noted, is the religion of more than a billion and a half adherents across the globe, and as such it encompasses a great range of interpretations, beliefs, and practices.3 As the debate further developed, there emerged two distinct viewpoints on how best to approach the riddle of democracy in the MENA region. On one side were policy experts who advocated “democracy promotion” and a range of governmental and civil society initiatives aimed at engaging “moderate” religious authorities and empowering women and the youth.4 On the other side were academics who saw in democracy promotion a cover for Western hegemonic interests,

2 Alfred C. Stepan and Graeme B. Robertson, “An ‘Arab’ More Than a ‘Muslim’ Democracy Gap,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 14, No. 3 (July 2003): 30-44; Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner, and Daniel Brumberg, eds., Islam and Democracy in the Middle East (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Sharon Otterman, “Backgrounder: Islam and Democracy in the Middle East,” prepared for the Council on Foreign Relations, September 19, 2003: http://www.cfr.org/religion-and-politics/middle-east- islam-democracy/p7708 (Last accessed: August 2011); and M. Steven Fish, Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 3 See John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Jocelyn Cesari, When Islam and Democracy Meet: Muslims in Europe and in the United States (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); John P. Entelis, ed., Islam, Democracy, and the State in North Africa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997). 4 Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway, eds., Uncharted Journey: Promoting Democracy in the Middle East (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005); Tamara Coffman Wittes, Freedom’s Unsteady March: America’s Role in Building Arab Democracy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008); Daniel Brumberg and Dina Shehata, eds., Conflict, Identity, and Reform in the Muslim World: Challenges for U.S. Engagement (Washington, DC: United States Institute for Peace Press, 2009); and Marina Ottaway, “Democracy Promotion in the Middle East: Restoring Credibility,” Policy Brief No. 60, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (June 2008): http://carnegieendowment.org/2008/06/02/democracy-promotion-in-middle-east-restoring-credibility/4li (Last Accessed: August 2011).

2 and, at any rate, an ill-conceived set of initiatives that were likely to raise the ire of religious leaders and local populations. Instead, they argued that Muslims already had plenty of moderate and liberal interpretations of Islam at their disposal, which they could readily draw upon to support the cause of democracy.5

As a native of Iran and an academic, I too had problems with the Bush administration’s “Freedom Agenda” and its external prescriptions (military as well as political and economic) for democracy in the region. But I also had problems with what seemed to be a credulous acceptance of the restrictive and false “Islam-versus- democracy” framework by scholars of the region. At first glance, this was not terribly surprising. Given the menacing atmosphere of hostility and hysteria surrounding Islam and Muslims in the United States and Western Europe (mostly manufactured by right- wing commentators and news sources), it was only natural for critics to seek to present more nuanced and unadulterated accounts of Islamic beliefs and traditions. But as these academics identified multiple resources for democratic exchange and practices within

Islam, they increasingly ignored the equally diverse and consequential traditions of secular and liberal thought, reformist populism, nationalism, and modern constitutionalism that had left noticeable imprints on the political development of most countries in the region. To the extent that these multiple and intersecting contexts were mentioned at all, they amounted to descriptive accounts of what had happened in a distant past, and not as possible resources for normative thinking about reform and democratic change in the present. As a result, the mainstream policy debate over the future of

5 Katarina Dalacoura, Islamist Terrorism and Democracy in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Khaled Abou El Fadl, Islam and the Challenge of Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); and Nathan J. Brown and Emad Shahin, eds., The Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East: Regional Politics and External Policies (London: Routledge, 2009).

3 democracy in “the Muslim world” – with its many assumptions and stereotypes about the people of the region – was countered by an equally stringent and spurious debate about the commensurability of Islam and democracy in academia. Faced with these deeply flawed expert analyses, it became clear that a proper, more contextual framework for thinking about democracy had to be sought elsewhere.

My second preoccupation – connected to the first – was the observation that contemporary democratic theorists had very little to say about the proper relationship that should obtain between universal democratic ideals and local values. Having followed the public and academic debates surrounding the concept of multiculturalism in my adopted country of Canada, I had become well aware of the dangers of thinking about cultural values and democratic citizenship in binary terms (in the case of Quebecois nationalism:

Anglophone/Francophone, separatism/independence, acommodationism/chauvinism).

Absent a contextual normative framework to think about the terms of social and political coexistence, abstract democratic ideals such as political autonomy and equality can easily be deployed by bigoted individuals and groups to demonize cultural minorities. Anti- immigrant and proto-nationalist groups not known for their defense of women’s rights, for instance, can use purported claims about the mistreatment of females to mask their distaste for new immigrants and their cultural practices. Indeed, painstaking normative exposition of the substance of liberal rights by theorists such as Will Kymlicka, Charles

Taylor, Seyla Benhabib, Anne Phillips, to name a few, helped to disentangle such binaries through special guarantees and exemptions for minority cultural groups in

4 Canada and elsewhere.6 But discussions about multiculturalism almost exclusively focus on the elaboration of existing democratic rights in order to diffuse potential tensions and protect the cultural autonomy of minorities. What is more, as it has become evident in recent years in contentious public debates in North American and Western Europe, multicultural protections are highly susceptible to changing socioeconomic fortunes and political conditions. What all this suggests, of course, is that the relationship between democratic ideals and local values is influenced to a great extent by the context surrounding them both. But with democratic theory seemingly focused on broadening the scope and substance of existing rights and freedoms (to include marginalized groups such as cultural minorities, gays and lesbians, and the economically disadvantaged) with very little attention paid to the plight of democratic movements in non-democratic settings, I found any normative discussions of context to also be lacking in mainstream democratic theory.

In the preliminary stages of writing the dissertation, it became increasingly clear that my interest in a contextual conception of democracy – one which accounted not only for the ideals intrinsic to democracy and local cultural values, but also the historical circumstances under which they were iterated – touched very significantly upon questions having to do with the moral and political legitimacy of democratic orders.7

This was indeed a humbling realization, for it exposed me to a seemingly infinite (and

6 Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) and Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Amy Gutmann, ed., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Residents, Aliens, and Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Anne Phillips, Multiculturalism without Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). 7 Namely, the principles and factors that make a given political order – in this case a democratic one – reasonably acceptable to a people.

5 quite distinguished) repository of works on democratic legitimacy. They included works by liberal, communitarian, multicultural, radical, agonistic, and cosmopolitan thinkers, among others, and they each put forward interesting and compelling justificatory principles for democratic rule. It was interesting to note that despite their differences on the sources of democratic legitimacy they all subscribed to the same basic definition of democracy as government by self-rule. As I examined the central propositions put forward by each of these perspectives, however, two distinct patterns of thinking revealed themselves. On one side, there were those thinkers – universalists – for whom the legitimacy of democracy rested on the guarantee of a set of substantive (and procedural) rights and ideals irrespective of local cultural values or historical context. On another side, a different cohort of theorists – particularists – argued that democratic legitimacy was based on the shared values and identities in local communities. There were important differences of emphasis and scope between various thinkers within each cohort, to be sure, but on the general question of the relative weight of local cultural values to core democratic principles they were clearly either of a universalist or a particularist disposition.

The dominant accounts of democratic legitimacy, I now observed, served as reference points for policy professionals and area studies specialists who had simplified and appropriated insights without appreciating the complexities and nuances of their arguments. For instance, those who advocated for external democracy promotion programs did so based on the universalist conviction that representative institutions and guarantees of basic rights would be sufficient in establishing a legitimate democratic order (with instrumental benefits for international society in the form of stability,

6 prosperity, and justice). Similarly, those preferring a model of “Islamic democracy” for

Muslim-majority societies in the MENA region were advancing the particularist argument that only a democratic order based on Islamic precepts would be seen as legitimate to the citizens of that region.

More importantly, what each of these accounts (and their respective policy offshoots) lacks is a clear explanation of the relative weight of contextual factors – social, economic, political, cultural, etc. – on democratic legitimacy. Namely, the notion that individuals and groups did not merely appreciate self-rule for its guarantee of basic rights and freedoms, or the capacity it afforded them for cultural expression, but also for acknowledging and being responsive to the circumstances surrounding the experience and expression of those rights and freedoms. For example, it is certainly the case that when marginalized groups and individuals seek to end discriminatory practices against them they are asserting their rights as autonomous and equal members of society, but they are also seeking to overcome and render illegitimate certain societal norms and practices (i.e. contexts) that are imposed on them – they are seeking a change in the law as well as in public attitudes. In this sense, context cannot be considered merely in descriptive terms, but it must also be seen as both a source and subject of normative inquiry. By excluding the normative dimensions of context, the these dominant accounts in democratic theory, it seems to me, not only overlook important sources of democratic legitimacy, but also inadvertently set the conditions for the imposition of universalist and/or particularist contexts on democratic citizens (as evident in the recommendations by policy and area studies professionals).

7 My aim in writing this dissertation, therefore, has been twofold: (1) to expose the limitations of the dominant theories of democracy as regards the relationship between universal democratic ideals and local values; and (2) to offer a normative framework for a contextual conception of democratic legitimacy. The latter objective, I readily admit, proved far more challenging than first anticipated. I have undertaken it not in an effort to offer a single, unified theory of democracy, but in order to draw attention to the ineluctable hybridity of democracy as both a system of government and a much-cherished political value. At the root of this view is the notion that the pursuit and realization of democratic ideals are legitimized through individual and collective histories, local and global vernaculars, and persistent political struggles. The chief merit of democracy is that it bestows upon the individual and the collective certain rights and privileges with which to contemplate the terms of membership and coexistence in society. Genuine understanding of the potential pitfalls and triumphs brought about by democracy requires one to understand the concrete constellation of ideas, beliefs, traditions, and values within which it is located. The moral and political legitimacy of democracy, I therefore argue, rests on its reflective capacity to be responsive to the vicissitudes of context: to be “of, by and for” a people, and all that being part of such a historical construct entails. It is this receptivity to the diversity of human experience across time and space that sets democracy apart from other forms of government.

The arguments that follow are divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 offer a critical overview of the core arguments of universalist and particularist traditions on democratic legitimacy, and suggest ways of expanding both the normative and empirical scope of these theories by adopting a more pluralist outlook. Universalist conceptions of

8 democracy, I explain, often neglect how cultural influences and social histories shape the development and articulation of democratic values and institutions in different localities.

For universalists, the sources of democratic legitimacy are primarily philosophical as opposed to historical. Following Charles Larmore, I will argue that this view confuses the

“universal content” with the “universalist justification” of democracy.8 In contrast to this view, particularism refers to the situated view that democracy necessarily arises out of a local milieu, and hence can only be reflective of the customs and values of the society in question. Just as the prerogatives of sovereignty differ from one nation-state to another, particularists argue, so does the exercise of self-rule that gives expression to such entitlements. Accordingly, for particularists the sources of democratic legitimacy are primarily historical. Particularists, I argue, ignores the non-communal sources of identity formation as well as the corresponding non-traditional bases of democratic legitimacy.

Both traditions overlook the influence of historical contingency.

Chapter 2 contains my arguments for a contextual conception of democratic legitimacy (which I have previewed above) as a corrective to the limitations of universalist and particularist theories surveyed in chapter 1. Democracy, I will argue, is a product of human labor and struggle, and is as such reflective of the social and political contexts from which it arises. A normative consideration of context does not only enable us to better understand democracy’s trials and triumphs, but rather moves us to continually strive for a more democratic and just society. The latter parts of the chapter explores the implications of this theory for comparative inquiries in political theory, specifically in reference to the relationship between Islam and democracy, a much-

8 Charles Larmore, The Morals of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Chapter 2, § 5, pp. 55-59.

9 pondered topic in democratic theory today. My main aim here is to expose and critique notions of “Islamic democracy” advanced by mainstream Western and Islamic scholars today. In so doing, I wish to advance an alternative understanding of the relationship between local cultural mores and democratic rights and freedoms in Muslim-majority societies, one which takes stock of the pluralism of values and diversity of historical experiences at the heart of ongoing debates about democracy.

Chapter 3 offers an empirical demonstration of the contextual conception of democratic legitimacy through a case study of the century-long struggle for democracy in

Iran. In particular, I endeavor to show how the contemporary Green Movement in Iran is simply the latest manifestation of a long list of pro-democracy groups and movements seeking to combine a longstanding constitutional tradition with democratic values. I do so by providing an account of the early constitutional period (1905-11), the brief but pivotal years of experimentation with social democracy (1950-53), the era of Pahlavi monarchy

(1925-1979), and the period of theocratic rule under the Islamic Republic regime (1979- present. My aim in this chapter is to produce a chronicle of the democratic odyssey in

Iran that endeavors to reveal how Iranian intellectuals and ordinary citizens have reflected on the relationship between universal democratic ideals and their own cultural norms and values.

Chapter 4 considers the implications of my arguments in chapters 1 and 2 and my case study of Iran in chapter 3 for attempts at democracy promotion in the MENA region.

I present and critique the main instrumentalist arguments in favor of democracy promotion in the works of leading political theory and international relations scholars.

Here I argue that the overall failure of democracy promotion initiatives over the past

10 three decades is due to a misconception about the sources of democratic legitimacy in the instrumental view that largely draws from the universalist tradition in democratic theory.

In contrast to this view, I offer an alternative model of “democratic solidarity” in the second section. In lieu of the perceived impossibility of a clear separation between interests and values in the international realm, I argue that the only way for states and international NGOs to be both legitimate and effective as promoters of democratic values is through adherence to three core principles constitutive of solidarity: non-interference, inclusivity, and reflexivity.

A final note on the methodology employed in this dissertation. I have opted for a dialectical approach in order to both retain the many strengths of the prevailing views in democratic theory and, I hope, introduce new insights through constructive criticism and alternative interpretations of democratic ideals. As such, the use of the term “between” in the title of this dissertation – “Between Universal Ideals and Local Values” – is meant to signal a conception of democratic legitimacy that takes seriously the mutual constitution of the universal and the particular in multiple, intersecting contexts. As to whether such a conception can be regarded as really a salutary alternative to the existing accounts of democratic legitimacy, the reader must now decide.

11 CHAPTER 1

Democratic Traditions (Re)Considered: Universalism and Particularism

For us, democracy is both a form of government and a political value. We quarrel fiercely, if confusedly, over how far the value vindicates or indicts our own practices of government; but we also quarrel over how far the same value is practically coherent, or desirable in its prospective consequences in different circumstances, on any scale between an individual family or domestic unit and the entire human population of a still painfully disunited globe.1

- John Dunn, Democracy: A History

INTRODUCTION

How are democratic norms and values characterized in relation to local practices that are informed by diverse historical experiences and pluralistic ways of living? This question has inspired a number of influential answers over the centuries, some as old as the concept of democracy itself. For the ancient Athenians, democracy was very much a product of a proud historical tradition, borne by local traditions and manifestly suited to their own circumstances. As Pericles proclaimed in his face oration, “We [Athenians] live under a form of government which does not emulate the institutions of our neighbors; on the contrary, we are ourselves a model which some follow, rather than the imitators of other peoples.”2 Additionally, just as the likes of Pericles and Xenophon enumerated the exceptional qualities of Athenian democracy, others like Aristotle pondered its possible forms and applications (along with its shortcomings) under different settings: in the case of full citizens; property-owning farmers and residents; foreign laborers and slaves; and

1 John Dunn, Democracy: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005), p. 17. 2 In Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Translated by Richard Crawley, retrieved via Project Gutenberg (1874).

12 the poor.3 In either case, the substance and legitimacy of demokratia (literally derived from demos, “the people,” and kratos, meaning “rule”) oscillated between its conception as “both a form of government and a political value,” as they still do today. Indeed, some

2500 years later, moral and political debates over the saliency, fairness, and future shape of democracy continue to rage on, however sophisticated the cumulative knowledge of its assorted history and complex inter-workings may have become.

In contemporary normative political theory, accordingly, the answer to the question posed above – about the relationship between democratic ideals and local traditions and values – varies greatly depending on the conception of democratic legitimacy advanced (i.e. what renders democracy both morally and politically acceptable). In this chapter, I identify and examine various responses given by what in my view are the two predominant traditions of thought in democratic theory: universalism and particularism. The former tradition consists of a group of thinkers who, despite their quite considerable differences, share in the belief that democratic norms and values are universal in nature and scope, and thus a straightforward complement to any historical context. For universalists, therefore, the sources of democratic legitimacy are philosophical, not historical. In contrast to this view, particularism refers to the situated view that democracy necessarily arises out of a local milieu, and hence can only be reflective of the customs and values of the society in question. Just as the prerogatives of sovereignty differ from one nation-state to another, particularists argue, so does the exercise of popular rule that gives expression to such entitlements. Accordingly, for particularists the sources of democratic legitimacy are primarily historical.

3 Aristotle, Politics (New York: Dover Publications, 2000).

13 These traditions, or ways of thinking, are not meant as classificatory schemes, however, neatly, wholly encompassing the perspectives of those thinkers placed in them.

Rather, they are meant to function as tools of analysis which enable us to explore the dispositions of certain prominent democratic theorists, and to relate and interrogate their works in a thematic framework. To be sure, no school of thought contains within it a single, unified perspective on its subject of study, especially about such a contested and complex a historical phenomenon as democracy. As such, the traditions identified here speak to the common theoretical dispositions, temperaments, and disciplinary practices that are coherently shared by a collection of ancient, modern, and contemporary political thinkers about the sources, characteristics, and scope of democratic norms and values as they are practiced and idealized in certain societies. As inhabitants of the same terrain, moreover, these traditions share multiple points of convergence; but what renders each of them unique is the way in which it diverges from others by either seeking inhabitance elsewhere or attempting to transform the space occupied by all. I have thus conceived of each tradition as existing along a continuum in its conception of democracy, ranging from a minimal to maximal set of persuasions. The existence of such a spectrum of ideas and convictions about the nature and scope of democratic ideals is familiar enough; yet a passage through it remains relatively rare in contemporary political theory.

The reflections below, critical as well as admiring, are written from the perspective of a student of democratic theory who shares many of the proclivities, concerns, and hesitancies of the authors surveyed, but who nonetheless finds the restrictions and abstractions within each tradition worthy of critical treatment and reformulation. For, though learned and quite insightful much of their wisdom may be,

14 they remain wedded to a particular context themselves: that of a self-conscious, well- disciplined Western philosophical canon. It is my intention to retrieve the intellectual heritage of democratic thought – manifested in the two traditions – on the assumption that their severance from historical events and political context has been inadvertent and contingent rather than intentional or necessary. In my estimation, both traditions fall short of offering a coherent and convincing theory of democratic legitimacy by ignoring the social and political context in which abstract ideals, institutions, and values – be they democratic or cultural – are contested and negotiated. Accordingly, this chapter is divided into two sections. In the first, I consider the scope and substance of universalist arguments that have been (and continue to be) especially influential in Western democratic theory. The second section examines the contributions of two influential strands of particularist thinking, the agonistic/radical democrats for whom democratic legitimacy is especially burdened by considerations of identity and difference, and the communitarian school of thought that underscores the import of common values and shared understandings of the good.

In the next chapter, I shall offer an alternative theory of my own (that I call

“contextual”), which will use as its reference point other bodies of scholarship contemplating the same set of questions, albeit from hitherto unfamiliar quarters. It is not my intention (and I hope this chapter stands as proof of this), however, to simply catalogue the ways in which democracy figures in different traditions of thought. Over and above this, I seek to demonstrate that international4 democratic theory has something

4 I insist on the term “international” because too often the history of democracy has been told from a self- indulgent and manifestly partial Western point of view, devoid of the myriad experiences and narratives that have, and continue to, anchor its resonance and appeal in many non-Western locales and societies of

15 to contribute to the already significant Western philosophical arguments over the relationship between democratic ideals and local values. The fulfillment of this aim clearly requires both the articulation of the predominant traditions of thought in Western political theory and a specific interpretation of non-Western variants. This chapter begins this undertaking by first considering the former.

I UNIVERSALISM

In Rights of Man, the great enlightenment revolutionary, Thomas Paine, makes a case for popular sovereignty as the best form of rule leading to, and ensuring, universal human rights. For Paine (an unacknowledged founding father of the United States), the sole purpose of government anywhere is, as he puts in Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens, “the preservation of the natural and imperceptible rights of man;”5 for which vigorous citizenship and self-rule are the only suitable templates. Embedded within this universalist prescription are two different conceptions of democracy: one focusing on democratic regime, another concerned with democratic society. In the former formulation, universal human rights are best realized and secured through the constitution of a “government [that] is restricted to the making and administering of laws.”6 Democracy, in this limited sense, is conceived of as a method of rule, whereby the elected representatives of the people, in accordance with the wishes of their constituents, draft, challenge and administer laws and regulations governing the lives of all. The second formulation conceives of democracy as something altogether more

the world. For more on non-Western conceptions of, and experiments with, democracy, see John Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy (London: Simon and Schuster, 2009). 5 Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 132. Paine continues, “and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.” Italics in the original. 6 Ibid. p. 178.

16 substantive, by contrast; for Paine envisions any regime type to be perennially defective and in need of constant improvement. Hence the need for “open discussion” among active and rational citizens in “forming or reforming, generating or regenerating governments and constitutions.”7 Democracy, in the latter sense, requires a more substantive set of justifications for the maintenance of its daily affairs; it must allow for a more expansive role for its citizens, just as it ought to ensure a fair, representative and impartial system of government. The substance of democratic outcomes is what matters most in this conception, not merely the inclusive nature of democratic procedures.

Yet, different though these conceptions of democracy may be in scope (i.e. democracy as regime type being far more limited than democracy as a way of life), they must not be viewed as mutually exclusive of one another. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued in The Social Contract,

“the act of association [in self-government] consists of a reciprocal commitment between society and the individual, so that each person, in making a contract, as it were, with himself, finds himself doubly committed, first, as a member of the sovereign body in relation to individuals, and secondly as a member of the state in relation to the sovereign.”8

For Rousseau, self-government amounted to the triumph of the “general will,” which he described as representing the “sum of the difference” of individual desires that upon deliberation come to reflect the harmonious interests of all members of society.9 The general will, in turn, was to be interpreted and acted upon by a “lawgiver” whose sovereign powers were authorized by the people. In other words, the legitimacy of representative government rests on the active vigilance and participation of citizens in a

7 Ibid. 8 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (New York: Penguin, 1968). p. 62. 9 Ibid. p. 73.

17 democratic setting where the interests of each are weighed and compared with the interests of the state. Of course, this set up poses a number of questions regarding the interpretation – or even the salience – of the general will by a fallible sovereign; nevertheless, it helps us to frame the centrality of both the democratic regime and democratic society to the universalist narrative.

In contemporary normative political theory, this division of democratic labor has grown too pronounced to be analyzed as a single, unified universal tradition. At one end of the spectrum are those theorists for whom democracy boils down to a method of governance: an institutional framework adjudicating between conflicting interests and legitimized through voting. Although this minimalist conception is a recent, twentieth- century meditation, it has come to enjoy a rather prominent place in the social sciences

(especially in the subfields of comparative politics, international relations, and political sociology) for its parsimonious depiction of democracy’s rise and fall in different political contexts. At the other end of the universalist spectrum, however, lies a maximalist conception of democracy that seeks to describe and explain the shape and form of, and the mechanisms at work in, a democratic society. Even though the maximalist conception is of considerably older provenance, its normative explication of the substance behind democratic ideals and procedures are of more recent vintage. A key challenge of contemporary democratic theory, however, has been to lucidly delineate those areas of the universalist terrain where empirical observations give way to normative considerations – where the state ends and society begins. My own critique of universalist conceptions of democratic legitimacy draws mainly from Charles Larmore’s important differentiation between “universal content” and “universal justification” of democratic

18 ideals. I will argue that both minimalist and maximalist arguments fail to take note of this crucial distinction in their respective considerations of democratic legitimacy.

Minimal Universalism

A central preoccupation of the minimalist conception is a set of procedural criteria which distinguishes democracy from other forms of rule. As the father of minimalism,

Joseph Schumpeter noted, the “democratic method… is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s votes.”10 In other words, democracy is a type of regime in which political elites engage in competition in order to win elections. It does not matter so much what the outcomes of the democratic decisions might be, so long as differences in opinions and beliefs are addressed through the ballot box. In his defense of

Schumpeter’s minimalist conception, Adam Przeworski argues that the democratic method is the best institutional framework for achieving the ultimate normative ideal of avoiding violence and bloodshed.11 When individuals and parties can be voted in and out of office without engaging in existential struggles then the consequences of voting are not all that minimal; for voting will regulate the behavior of individuals in the long run, force them to persuade others of their point of view, and encourage citizens to register their complaints and grievances in a democratic manner.12 Indeed, Przeworski bemoans the fact that “democracy has become an altar on which everyone hangs his or her favorite ex

10 Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Though Edition, 1942), p. 269. 11 Adam Przeworski, “Minimalist Conception of Democracy: A Defense,” Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordón, eds., Democracy’s Value (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 45. 12 Here Przeworski follows the lead of Norberto Bobbio: “What is democracy other than a set of rules… for the solution of conflicts without bloodshed.” Norberto Bobbio, The Future of Democracy (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 156.

19 voto.”13 What disturbs minimalists is not so much the fact that democracy’s raison d’être is normative in essence (i.e. achieving a kind of harmony of interests), but that too many substantive demands are placed upon it as a regime type. As Schumpeter sees it, “In a democracy… the primary function of the elector’s vote is to produce government,”14 not to realize certain normative outcomes in pursuit of a more just and democratic society.

Such formulations do not necessarily exclude a basic requirement of rights and freedoms (of speech, press, assembly, and fear) but their preference for them as preconditions is minimal, and they do not account for their fulfillment in their overall measurements of democracy.15 There are, however, softer versions of minimalism that allow more room for struggles among citizens over their rights and interests (not just between elites). For instance, Robert Dahl offers a model of democracy, “polyarchy,” that is both competitive and inclusive. Polyarchies (or “realistic democracies”) are regime types composed of two dimensions: (i) contestation, which allows for competition between individuals and political parties, and more importantly, for opposition to the ruling faction; and (ii) participation, which guarantees the right of citizens to engage in public contestation.16 Together, these dimensions comprise an institutional framework that, however minimal, is far less elitist and more attuned to the interests and grievances of the population it seeks to draw its legitimacy from. With polyarchy, the public space for deliberation and power struggles is widened so that the competition over people’s

13 Adam Przeworski, “Minimalist Conception of Democracy,” p. 24. 14 Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 273. 15 See, for instance, Adam Przeworski, Michael Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi, “What Makes Democracies Endure?” Journal of Democracy. Vol. 7, No. 1 (1999): pp. 50-51. 16 Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 4. For a more comprehensive description of a polyarchy’s characteristics, see Dahl’s other book, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 233. These include: popular rule through free and fair elections, universal adult suffrage, right to contest public office, guarantee of basic rights, access to information, and the right to organize and form political parties.

20 votes is not merely confined to the rich and powerful members of society (as indeed was the case in most Western states until very late in the twentieth century).

Similarly, Samuel Huntington’s conception of democracy offers a more inclusive version of the Schumpeterian model, one which he terms “procedural democracy.” What

Huntington means by “procedure,” however, is strictly electoral:

“Elections, open, free, and fair, are the essence of democracy, the inescapable sine qua non. Governments produced by elections may be inefficient, corrupt, shortsighted, irresponsible, dominated by special interests, and incapable of adopting policies demanded by the public good. These qualities may make such governments undesirable, but they do not make them undemocratic. Democracy is one public virtue, not the only one, and the relation of democracy to other public virtues and vices can only be understood if democracy is clearly distinguished from other characteristics of political systems.”17

This rather brusque account fulfills the minimal requirement of democracy-as-regime type but it also amends the traditional conception to observe “open, free, and fair” electoral procedures. These procedures would include Dahl’s two dimensions of contestation and participation, but they also point to a need for an institutional framework through which both the opacity and fairness of the procedures and related laws be challenged, interpreted and improved upon. This would entail a more inclusive – and responsive – minimalism, which, although it is not concerned with democratic outcomes, could more accurately be characterized as a political system with democratic features.18

Together, these variants of the minimalist conception of democracy as a “method” of governance or “institutional arrangement” have enjoyed a prominent position in the

17 Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: Oklahoma University Press, 1991), pp. 9-10. 18 Huntington is most concerned about the “processes of democratization,” and a systematized classification of democratic regimes in relation to the social, economic and external conditions that make their transitions and realization possible.

21 social sciences and wide circulation outside of academia within policy circles and research think tanks. Whether the subject matter is democratic transitions in post-Soviet states in the Caucuses and Central Europe, democracy promotion in the Middle East, democratic preconditions for European Union membership, or the outcome of presidential elections in Venezuela – in each of these cases, democracy is often understood and discussed in the minimalist sense, as a means to producing a government through open, free and fair elections. Yet, as also a political value, democracy embodies a set of moral ideals – autonomy, equality, reciprocity, rational dialogue – that are considerably more substantive in scope than mere institutions of government, and without which electoral procedures, however open, free and fair, would lack meaning. It is the insistence on the centrality of such ideals that preoccupies maximalist arguments within the universalist tradition.

Maximal Universalism

The predominant variant of the maximalist conception is “deliberative democracy,” the notion, according to Joshua Cohen, that in democratic states “the exercise of power [is manifestly tied] to conditions of public reasoning.”19 Public reason, in this set up, functions as the ultimate source and barometer of legitimacy in any democratic society. For maximalists, the legitimate use of coercion by agents of the democratic state requires a more substantive commitment to the core values of democracy that regard individual citizens as free and equal members of society. This requirement largely reflects the discomfort with the minimalist conviction that regards

19 Joshua Cohen, “Democracy and Liberty,” Deliberative Democracy, Jon Elster, ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 168.

22 “open, free and fair” electoral procedures as sufficient arbiters of seemingly endless contestation and participation that exceed the institutional bounds of democratic living. In contrast, deliberative democracy is premised on the “fact of reasonable pluralism,”20 which speaks to the observable reality of multiple commitments, obligations, and beliefs that condition the behavior and reasoning of individuals in society.21 As such, whereas in the minimalist conception the ultimate objective is the formation of government through democratic procedures, the maximalist view strives for the observance and practice of democratic values in society as a whole.

Moreover, since it is conceivable that a government elected through free and fair democratic procedures may enact unjust laws or even infringe upon the rights of their citizens due to certain beliefs or under special circumstances (as has been the case in some of the worlds most stable and enduring democracies with respect to issues involving race, gender, welfare, marriage, privacy, etc.), there must exist a deliberative framework through which opposing views are represented and the meaning of dominant values challenged regardless of who is in power. As Rawls puts it,

“Although in given circumstances it is justified that the majority… has the constitutional right to make law, this does not imply that the laws enacted are just…. [W]hile citizens normally submit their conduct to democratic

20 This notion is employed by John Rawls in Political Liberalism to qualify his ideal of “public reason,” but it is improved on by Cohen who distinguishes it from plain descriptions of pluralism. See, John Rawls, Political Liberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 36, and Joshua Cohen, “Moral Pluralism and Political Consensus,” in David Copp, Jean Hampton, and John Roemer, eds., The Idea of Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 270-91. 21 As Cohen explains, “The claim about reasonable pluralism is suggested by persistent disagreement about, for example, the values of choice and self-determination, happiness and welfare, and self-actualization; disputes about the relative merits of contemplative and practical lives and the importance of personal and political engagement; and disagreements about the religious and philosophical backgrounds of these evaluative views.” Joshua Cohen, “Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy,” Seyla Benhabib, ed., Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 96.

23 authority, that is, recognize the outcome of a vote as establishing a binding rule, other things equal, they do not submit their judgment to it.”22

The deliberative conception, therefore, provides a dynamic framework for the ongoing discussion of issues vital to the interests and beliefs of all members of society, provided that the arguments offered are reasonably acceptable to all regardless of who or what party is in power.23 This suggests that a broader, more substantive set of ideals and political values must guide the ideal procedures of deliberation. As Corey Brettschneider argues, “a core set of substantive values implicitly underlies pure procedural theories of democracy: [namely,] equality of interests, political autonomy, and reciprocity.”24 That is to say, in a deliberative setting, individuals enter the domain of public reason with an understanding of one another as equals, endowed with the right to participate freely in society under the conditions of collective self-rule.

Indeed, given the over-reliance of the deliberative conception on the two central tenets of liberal philosophy, autonomy and equality, it is not altogether surprising that it bears a strong resemblance to Rawlsian “political liberalism” and liberal conceptions of justice. Rawls offers two conceptual (deliberative) devices which he believes would help achieve a just democratic order: the ideas of “overlapping consensus” and “public reason.”25 The ideal of a reasonable overlapping consensus is achieved when individual come to endorse political principles of justice in spite of their personal comprehensive

22 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 356-57. 23 This does not mean that arguments offered by some must be accepted by others, but rather that they must be seen as reasonable demands made by the participants in deliberation. As Cohen notes, “Though a deliberative view must assume that citizens are prepared to be moved by reasons that may conflict with their antecedent preferences and interests, it does not suppose that political deliberation takes as its goal the alteration of preferences.” Joshua Cohen, “Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy,” p. 100. 24 For Brettschneider, the realization of these core values in turn “requires the guarantee of substantive individual rights as well as rights to participate in democratic procedures.” Corey L. Brettschneider, Democratic Rights: The Substance of Self-Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 9. 25 John Rawls, Political Liberalism. p. xlvii.

24 conceptions of the good.26 The ideal of public reason stresses that when engaged in political debates about “constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice” (i.e. in matters of rights and liberties, and of issues related to the basic structure of society respectively) individuals must appeal to reasonable political conceptions of justice that others also find reasonable to endorse.27 Here Rawls emphasizes the importance of the

“criterion of reciprocity…as one of civic friendship,”28 which amounts to the same deliberative notions discussed earlier.

To its proponents, the main strength of political liberalism lies in its non- comprehensive, political solution to the crisis of legitimacy in comprehensive liberalism.

Given the conditions of pluralism, political liberalism maintains an important minimal moral conception of justice that regards individual citizens as free, equal, and deserving of respect. For deliberative liberal democrats such as Cohen, these values combine to form a unique ideal of “democratic toleration” that touches very significantly upon the classical liberal values of toleration, but which also makes substantial revisions in order to provide a political space for fundamental moral, religious, and philosophical disagreement in democratic societies.29 In democratic societies where this overarching value of democratic toleration is prized and adhered to, the public realm is characterized

26 Rawls is adamant to remind us that political liberalism “makes no attempt to prove, or to show, that such a consensus would eventually form around a reasonable political conception of justice. The most it does is to present a freestanding liberal political conception that does not oppose comprehensive doctrines on their own ground and does not preclude the possibility of an overlapping consensus for the right reasons” (xlvii- xlviii, emphasis added). Rawls’ own brand of a comprehensive doctrine, of course, is ‘justice as fairness’ with its two principles of justice (basic liberties and the ‘difference principle) as elaborated in A Theory of Justice. 27 Ibid. p. li. 28 Ibid. 29 Cohen notes, “Generalizing and deepening the [classical liberal] ideal of toleration – by carrying it to a higher order of abstraction – Rawls offer a democratic liberalism less susceptible to charges of moral parochialism, sectarianism, and elitism and more suited to the ‘historical and social circumstances of a democratic society’.” Joshua Cohen, “A More Democratic Liberalism,” Michigan Law Review (1994), p. 1546.

25 by inclusive modes of interaction among citizens of many backgrounds and beliefs. Thus for Cohen political liberalism’s seminal strength lies in its aspiration “to free the democratic idea of a shared arena of public deliberation among equal citizens from dependence on the particular ethical outlook of any subset of the public.”30 Other proponents, moreover, argue that political liberalism is especially valuable since it neutralizes the passions and places a higher value on processes of rational deliberation when it comes to deciding on coercive principles. Jeremy Waldron points out that this distinctively liberal impulse is in fact “the source of an impatience with tradition, mystery, awe and superstition as the basis of order, and of a determination to make authority answer at the tribunal of reason and convince us that it is entitled to respect.”31

Regardless of its decidedly liberal origins, however, this “tribunal of reason,” proponents note, comes to subject all forms of authority (even liberal authority) to public scrutiny and critical reflection.

This apparent fluidity in democratic practice has compelled some maximalists to even go so far to say that public reason – deliberation – is what gives the state something to govern. The real strength of the modern democratic state, in other words, is the depth of its deliberative process as embodied in the “epistemic value” of its procedures.32 It must be noted, however, that this view does not at all approximate the minimalist

30 Ibid. p. 1544. 31 Jeremy Waldron, “Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism,” The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 147 (1987), p. 134. Emphasis added. 32 David Estlund endorses a view, “epistemic proceduralism,” in which both the “legitimacy and authority” of democratic outcomes are derived from “the modest epistemic value” of democratic procedures. As he explains, “It is a proceduralist view, linking legitimacy and authority of a decision to its procedural source and not to its substantive correctness…. Citizens are not given strong reasons to believe its results are correct. They are, rather, given moral reasons to comply with and enforce those results, even, in many cases, when they think they are mistaken. David Estlund, Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 116.

26 emphasis on procedure over substance, as it may appear at first glance; for epistemic proceduralism does not challenge the substantive weight of the core values/ideals of democracy that the maximalist position holds as essential to the formation and operation of democracy, but rather it privileges the epistemic value of those ideals – which justify the existence of the procedures in the first place – over the collective judgment of the democratic body. As Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson argue elsewhere, “Citizens value basic liberty and opportunity, and their mutual recognition by fellow citizens, for reasons other than the role of these values in democratic deliberation.”33

Equally influential as the deliberative conception has been Jürgen Habermas’ theory of discourse ethics, in which the aim of the democratic framework is to establish

“all those conditions of communication under which there can come into being a discursive formation of will and opinion on the part of a public composed of the citizens of a state,”34 and to create a space for ongoing normative reasoning, contestation, and dialogue in civil society. For Habermas, procedure and substance in any democratic structure are mutually constituted, and hence equally important in determining the justness of democratic outcomes. In contrast to minimalist and deliberative conceptions of democracy, Habermasian maximalism is primarily concerned with the relationship between democratic institutions and the public imagination that operates in the background in civil society. As he puts it,

“Discourse theory reckons with the higher-level intersubjectivity of processes of reaching understanding that take place through democratic procedures or in

33 Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 17. 34 Jürgen Habermas, “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere,” in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 446-52. Emphasis in the original.

27 the communicative network of public spheres. Both inside and outside the parliamentary complex and its deliberative bodies, these subjectless communications form arenas in which more or less rational opinion- and will- formation can take place for political matters, that is, matters relevant to the entire society and in need of regulation. The flow of communication between public opinion-formation, institutionalized elections, and legislative decisions is meant to guarantee that influence and communicative power are transformed through legislation into administrative power.”35

Of course, the bedrock ideals of autonomy, equality, and reciprocity are central to the transformation of public discourses into legislative and administrative power, but what renders unique Habermas’s account of this interpenetration are the ethical imperatives – i.e. the proper way of deliberating – that must be met before meaningful communicative power can be created. I will not explore these ethical conditions here since they do not bear directly on my discussion of Habermas’s maximal criteria here; suffice it to say, however, that discourse theory on the whole places a numbers of quite extensive demands on both the procedure and substance of democratic practices.

Together, these conceptions, however truncated or expansive, have come to constitute a canonical tradition – universalism – concerned with the formation, operation, and validity of democratic practices in the abstract. Both minimalist and maximalist variants of universalism avoid delving into the specific social-historical context in which democratic ideals are debated, challenged and amended. In the case of minimalists, empirical observations about electoral procedures, voter participation, and curious indexes purporting to measure “freedom” and basic rights are often brandished to track the metamorphosis of political regimes at different stages of their democratic journeys.

35 Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to A Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), p. 299.

28 Maximalists, on the other hand, deploy highly sophisticated normative philosophical arguments to probe various idealized configurations, hypotheses, and connections in the ever-complex relationship between state and society under a democratic setting. Nowhere in either one of these variants are the intermingling of local histories and democratic ideals contemplated in great depth; instead, the kinds of conceptions envisioned are offered as universal in both essence and breadth. The nexus of procedure and substance creating “democracy” – and in a sense interrogating it the world over – although universal in aspiration and scope, is not in the end a worldly construction. Yet it has been, and remains, an intellectual matter of some very obvious importance.

But perhaps the most significant flaw in universalist accounts of democratic legitimacy is the failure to distinguish between the “universal content” of democratic ideals, and their “universal justifiability.” Following Charles Larmore’s instructive explication of the concept of a universal morality into these two categories, the former refers to “a set of (categorical) duties that obligate each person with regard to all other persons as such,” while the latter merely posits “that this system of duties is such that each person, simply by virtue of being rational, has good reason to accept them as his duties.”36 Larmore proposes that we “reject the idea of universal justifiability… while keeping that of a universalist content. That is, why can we not affirm a set of duties binding on all without supposing they must be justifiable to all?”37 Indeed, most of the universalist accounts of democratic legitimacy – especially of the maximalist variety – do make the mistake of only emphasizing the universal justifiability of democratic ideals

36 Charles Larmore, The Morals of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 57. 37 Ibid. Emphasis in the original. Larmore adds, “Though one of these duties may well be that we should do our best, if need be, to justify to others the duties to which we hold them subject.”

29 without considering the possibility that people of different backgrounds may have reasons to support them, but only in a way that would honor their historical experiences and fit their political circumstances. The minimalist conception of democratic government with its singular emphasis on elections and the institutions they help to sustain completely overlooks the fact that most basic rights and freedoms have not been won at the ballot box but through other democratic means such as public persuasion, grassroots mobilization, or acts of civil disobedience. At the heart of this oversight is the notion that rational individuals are best placed to decide what is in their self-interest, and therefore a government produced through their votes will find it against its interests to displease the electorate. Hence the universal appeal of democracy.

We have good reason to believe, however, especially in light of the so-called

“third wave of democratization” and the recent pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle

East and North Africa, that citizens of different backgrounds do aspire to realizing core democratic ideals by appealing to the most inclusive, egalitarian, and representative ideas and principles arising from their own societies, and not through appeals to abstract rationality. As Larmore clarifies, “The demand that each of our beliefs be justified is the demand that we undo the weight of historical circumstance and rethink our commitments on the basis of reason alone.”38 Clearly, not all of the universalist arguments I have surveyed above operate on such a stringent reading of rationality, but to the extent that most overlook the relative importance of historical circumstance and political context on the legitimacy of democratic orders they do give the impression that the latter stands upon a singular rational justification. Admittedly, maximal-universalist conceptions of

38 Ibid. p. 60.

30 democratic legitimacy are directly concerned with separating matters that concern the content of democratic ideals and those that (falsely) seek a universalist justification.39 But here too the emphasis on the historical construction of democratic ideals is rather thin. As such, maximalists are rightly affirm the fact of value pluralism (i.e. that there are multiple sources of the good), but fail to explain the contingency this plurality entails. In this sense, democratic ideals cannot be discussed independent of the political context and socio-historical circumstances in which they are debated. Maximalist conceptions of democracy offer compelling reasons as to why democratic ideals should be endorsed, but they have little to say about how and why people of different backgrounds do come to endorse them.

My aim in the preceding section has not so much been to offer a comprehensive account of every variant or subsection of the universalist conceptions of democracy, but to reveal the main normative and empirical sources accounting for its internal consistency and endurance as a canonical tradition. In the next section, I offer a similar survey of the two dominant conceptions of democracy in the particularist tradition, which take as their beginning the social-historical context of democratic imagination and practice. In the next chapter, I wish to push back against such presuppositions about the “rational” sources of democratic legitimacy, stated or implied. But I want to be clear that a rejection of a model of democratic legitimacy based on universal justifiability is not a rejection of reason as such. Rather, I wish to argue that a greater appreciation of historical context can reveal to

39 To be sure Rawlsian political liberalism and Habermasian discourse ethics both operate on abstract notions of individual rationality in the realm of public reason, but both Rawls and Habermas allow for a plurality of rational frameworks informed by a variety of background conditions and comprehensive beliefs to enter the public sphere, and not merely a singular notion of human rationality.

31 us the great variety of reasons for which people may find the idea of democratic government more fair and representative than other forms of government.

II PARTICULARISM

If the remarkable confidence with which most universalists expound their theories is nevertheless of fairly recent vintage in the history of democratic thought, the particularist tradition spans across two and a half millennia, beginning in ancient Athens and continuing to today in the narratives about the exceptionalist characteristics and practices of democracy in contemporary Western societies. According to these perspectives, normative judgments about the development and improvement of democratic practices must only be sought out in reference to particular socio-cultural traditions and configurations. Particularist beliefs by no means comprise a monolithic whole, however. By “particularism” I intend to convey two very distinct, yet overlapping, strands of thought: one emphasizing the importance of identity and difference, another of the shared values and traditions vis-à-vis democratic norms and values. In the case of the former, democracy is conceived of as a manifestation of a “politics of difference” that would best reflect the state of relations between individuals of different backgrounds

(socioeconomic, ethnic, religious, etc.) and of socio-cultural and -economic conditions in general of a particular political community. This is a view commonly held by “radical democrats” and those endorsing an “agonistic” conception of democracy, for whom the genesis, development, and aims of democratic values and institutions are explained through the politics of identity and difference. The second perspective, commonly referred to in the Western canon as “communitarianism,” does not concern itself much with the politics of identity/difference in the construction of political community, but

32 rather attributes to democracy a unique political culture and set of mores and practices exceptional to the society in question. This view dates back to the very first expressions of exceptionalism in ancient Greece,40 but, as I will explain below, it especially owes its popularity in the modern imagination mostly to Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations about the unique political culture of American democracy in his Democracy in America, as almost sacred tract for most communitarian democratic theorists today.41

For the most part, the particularist tradition can be read as a response to universalist conceptions of democracy that overlook the very contingent, yet consequential, historical and cultural foundations of human agency in society. The argument on behalf of identity/difference, for instance, is a direct challenge to the universalist notion that democratic legitimacy can be determined through appeals to a

“freestanding” set of democratic values, independently of individual and communal identities. Under the conditions of “reasonable value pluralism,” radical democrats observe, what becomes most important is not so much the formal designation of individuals as free and equal members of society in the eyes of the law, but rather their social position as rights-bearing citizens in a political community of multiple, hierarchical and intersecting social fields and networks. Similarly, the communitarian critics take

40 Perhaps the earliest expression of this belief can be found in the famous eulogy offered up by Pericles (and chronicled by Thucydides in The History of the Peloponnesian War), for whom democracy in Athens, although it excluded women, the poor, slaves, and foreigners, was a manifestation of the cultural, political and moral achievements particular only to Athenian society. Pericles sums up the exceptional political culture of Athens as follows: “Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life.” In Thucydides. 432 B.C.E. The History of the Peloponnesian War, Translated by Richard Crawley (1874), retrieved via Project Gutenberg. 41 See, Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

33 issue with the universalist minimalism of those who regard democracy as a mere institutional framework designed to merely encourage competition between elites, to rectify political conflicts, or to simply produce a government. What renders democracy unique as both a political system a political value, they would counter, is its ability to give expression to longstanding local traditions, shared values, and common understandings. Local customs and traditions, communitarians argue, condition the conduct of politics in society, and they are different from place to place.

The pertinence of these critiques has become especially apparent in recent years, when, as a result of huge migration flows to advanced Western liberal democracies, the democratic negotiation of multicultural identities/differences has intensified the debate over the proper relation between democratic rights and obligations in local contexts. But what is especially interesting about the particularist responses to these challenges is the range and variety of viewpoints they encompass. At the minimalist end of the spectrum, as I alluded to above, the exponents of identity/difference include pluralists, radical and agonistic democrats, and postmodern theorists. Together they do indeed endeavor to make the democratic state more responsive to the particular – however thin at the national level – needs and demands of local communities, but they are otherwise antithetical in both method and argument, as it will become evident. Maximalist arguments, too, spring from disparate orientations, but here one encounters more homogeneous bodies of work that in one way or another share in the idea that since cultures and traditions vary from place to place, then so must democratic values that are informed by them. These views constitute a decidedly thick notion of democratic exceptionalism – i.e. the idea that democratic values are exceptional to local customs and mores from which they originate

34 – and as such have exerted tremendous influence on our collective understandings of democratic life and governance since time immemorial. My principal aim in this section is not to merely sketch out the contours of particularism and separate them from their universalist counterparts, but rather to make plain the qualities and characteristics attributed to such complex, dynamic and impure concepts as “community” and “culture” in the particularist canon.

In this section, I offer a critical overview of the dominant strands of particularism.

I argue that at their best particularist arguments enrich our understanding of the cultural/communal underpinnings of political life in democratic societies, but at their worst – and, alas, this is often the case – they make caricatures out of local cultures and values in order to invalidate certain core democratic ideals and practices that cut across cultural mores and local identities. If democracy is solely determined by tradition or is only discernible in reference to a set of cultural preconditions, then what sense does it make to speak of democracy as a political concept at all? On what basis would we ever be able to judge the effectiveness and just functioning of a democratic system? My critique of the particularist tradition is as follows: (1) the minimal perspective (a la radical democrats and communitarians) accords too much import to the “politics of difference/recognition” at the expense of “problem-solving” features of democratic governance (i.e. the unique capacity of democracy to resolve and accommodate disputes among a variety of comprehensive beliefs and doctrines); (2) the maximal perspective fails to take note of the heterogeneity of local cultures and traditions, even among the advanced liberal societies of the West – democracy does not have a unified culture any more than diverse cultures can be subjected to a unified model of democracy; rather, the

35 substance and procedures of democracy are constantly in conversation with local political cultures; and (3) the particularist tradition does not sufficiently acknowledge the enormous normative appeal of universal democratic values that make the global yearning for and proliferation of its norms and values possible in the first place.

It is certainly the case that no two democracies – even in the liberal democratic

West – operate in the same way, share in the same social, political or economic values, or even agree with one another on the basic tenets of democratic citizenship. But, I wish to argue below, for them to properly be called democracies they share in those core values of self-government that have proven most conducive to achieving civil dialogue and peaceful coexistence among people of different beliefs and backgrounds. A just and coherent conception of democratic legitimacy must provide a convincing account of the mutual constitution of democratic ideals and local cultural traditions in both moral and political terms.

Minimal Particularism

There are many ways of approaching minimalist arguments about the centrality of identity/difference and contingency to the everyday practices of democracy. What I would like to do is to focus on what I take to be the common thread running through these arguments, namely the predominant influence of the “politics of recognition/difference” upon democratic norms and values. Together these perspectives amount to a minimal understanding of the relation between local values and democracy because they take the exercise of politics to be largely influenced by the identities and differences of individuals and networks of power in political community. They do not posit, as maximalists (communitarians) do, that each political community has an

36 exceptional identity and culture of its own that are informed by a common conception of the good, but that democracy should be understood in terms of the plurality of values and traditions shared by its citizens. In this sense, the minimal-particularist conception of democracy is best understood as a critique of the universal model of rationality that separates democratic norms from the particularistic influence of communal life. This perspective is mainly influenced by Michel Foucault’s critique of universal rationality underlying his notion of “governmentality.”42 For Foucault, universal models of governance often obscure the all-encompassing influence of state power and sovereign mechanisms of control (state-sanctioned as well as non-state discourses, rules and norms) upon everyday social life. This notion is fundamental to understanding the specificity of political life since, as Foucault noted, “the problems of governmentality and the techniques of government have really become the only political stake and the only real space of political struggle and contestation.”43

The principal expositors of the minimalist perspective in contemporary political theory are those arguing for a “radical” or “agonistic” model of democracy.44 They have, respectively, argued for the assertion of an “ethos of pluralization” and of “the political”

42 Foucault defines governmentality as “The ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses, and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power [i.e. governmentality], which has as its target population, as its principal form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means appearances of security.” Paul Rabinow and Nicholas Rose, eds., The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984 (New York: The New Press, 1994), p. 244. 43 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977-1978. Edited by Michel Senellart, translated by Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave, 2004), p. 109. 44 Key texts include: William E. Connolly, Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 2002) and The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1995); Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political. New York: Verso, 1993) and The Democratic Paradox (New York: Verso, 2005); Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); and Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).

37 into everyday practices of democracy.45 Of main concern to these theorists is the moral – not just the political – status of pluralism in democratic society. They take issue with the predominant liberal (Rawlsian) designation of pluralism in society as a mere “fact,” arguing that it reduces the ethical and contingent dimensions of really-existing pluralism to a set of formal legal rights and obligations. This liberal formulation leads to the construction of a universal model of citizenship, whereby the identities and differences of individuals and groups are deliberately kept out of the political process, consigned to the private realm. As a result, modern democratic ideals of autonomy and equality, in the liberal formulation, are envisioned independently of contestation, antagonism, and active participation – dynamics that provide the normative foundations and ethical character of democratic life. By not actively engaging with the moral content of citizens’ comprehensive views – and in fact by establishing strict criteria for public reasoning – political liberalism can only “provide a consensus among reasonable persons who, by definition, are persons who accept the principles of political liberalism.”46

To radical/agonistic democrats, this proclivity toward consensus is in effect aimed at constructing a universal, liberal identity for all citizens. By pretending to honor pluralism in theory, political liberalism’s drive toward achieving an “overlapping consensus” seeks to diminish its role in society as a marker for identity/difference in practice. Instead, what radical/agonistic democrats argue for is the re-assertion and construction of “competing interpretations of democratic citizenship,”47 not just of competing comprehensive views or personal preferences. As Chantal Mouffe observes,

45 See essays in Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization, and in Mouffe, The Return of the Political. 46 Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox. p. 26. Emphasis in the original. 47 Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political. p. 66.

38 this entails “seeing citizenship not as a legal status but as a form of identification, a type of political identity: something to be constructed, not empirically given.”48 Moreover, it necessitates the cultivation, not the resolution, of the inherent, “unresolvable tension” between the democratic ideals of liberty and equality as contingent and historically constructed concepts.49 For it is through this effort that the power-political framework in which these ideals have been articulated becomes recognizable, and enables democratic citizens to decide “how to constitute forms of power which are compatible with democratic values.”50 As Mouffe argues,

“To acknowledge the existence of relations of power and the need to transform them, while renouncing the illusion that we could free ourselves completely from power – this is what is specific to the project that we have called ‘radical and plural democracy’. Such a project recognizes that the specificity of modern pluralist democracy – even a well-ordered one – does not reside in the absence of domination and of violence, but in the establishment of a set of institutions through which they can be limited and contested. To negate the ineradicable character of antagonism and to aim at a universal rational consensus – this is the real threat to democracy. Indeed, this can lead to violence being unrecognized and hidden behind appeals to ‘rationality’, as is often the case in liberal thinking which disguises the necessary frontiers of forms of exclusion behind pretenses of ‘neutrality’.”51

Radical/agonistic democracy, then, treats conflict, contradiction, and power relations as the necessary ingredients of political life. Rather than seeking to create the illusion of eradicating them from democratic politics, it argues for the revitalization of their collective force upon identity and difference. This view combines “agonistic respect” for difference with a project of “radical pluralism” in order to draw attention to the contingent bases of power and political identity in society. As William Connolly

48 Ibid. pp. 65-66. 49 Chantal Mouffe, Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community (London: Verso, 1992), p. 14. 50 Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox. p. 26. 51 Ibid.

39 observes, radical/agonistic democracy “affirms the indispensability of identity to life, disturbs the dogmatization of identity, and folds care for the protean diversity of human life into the strife and interdependence of identity/difference.”52

For radical/agonistic democrats, therefore, democratic legitimacy is sustained through an “ethos of pluralization,” which seeks to continually interrogate monolithic representations of identity/difference.53 Core democratic ideals such as liberty and equality, radical/agonistic democrats argue, are mutually constituted by their human subjects, and must therefore be understood as contingent and local, not rational or universal. This particularist rendition of democratic legitimacy, furthermore, calls for a positive political agenda premised on the radicalization of the public sphere. As Wayne

Gabardi notes, “it endorses a politics of diverse social, cultural, and political movements organized around the values of cultural recognition, direct democracy, and performative resistance.”54 The reason why this position constitutes a minimalist view, to recount, is because of the emphasis its proponents place on pluralism and heterogeneity of identity in the public sphere. Indeed, this in my view is the signal contribution of radical/agonistic theorists to the study of democracy. However, as a conception of democratic legitimacy this position leaves a great deal to be desired.

Principally, the heavy emphasis on difference and antagonism more than diminishes the central aims of democratic politics, which are to (a) ensure social coexistence; and (b) foster cooperation in the general interest. The underlying ideals of mutual respect and reasonable dialogue, which many proponents of deliberative

52 William E. Connolly, Identity/Difference, p. x. 53 See Connolly’s essays in The Ethos of Pluralization. 54 Wayne Gabardi, “Contemporary Models of Democracy,” Polity, Vol. XXXIII, NO. 4 (Summer 2001), p. 554. He further explains that “This models is the political extension of the postmodern model of society as a world of multiple, intersecting social fields and networks.”

40 democracy emphasize, do not necessarily eschew discussions of identity/difference, as radical/agonistic democrats claim. It is indeed the case that complex issues having to do with identity/difference are reduced to a universal model of rights-bearing citizenship, but this is not because such issues are ignored or downplayed in the Rawlsian view of democracy. Political liberalism’s concern with achieving an “overlapping consensus,” for instance, is precisely motivated by problems arising from incommensurable comprehensive doctrines manifested in individual and group identities. The aim of democratic politics in such a scheme, moreover, is not to resolve or wash over such differences, but rather to determine the terms of social coexistence in spite of their likely paralyzing effects. Radical/agonistic democrats, in contrast, display little concern for devising political (i.e. institutional) mechanisms for ensuring social coexistence.

Furthermore, by largely adopting Carl Schmitt’s definition of politics as an existential and relational struggle between “friends” and “enemies,” the radical/agonistic model conceives of democratic legitimacy as existing in the realm of “power and antagonism.” As Mouffe argues,

“Antagonism is struggle between enemies, while agonism is struggle between adversaries. We can therefore reformulate our problem by saying that envisaged from the perspective of ‘agonistic pluralism’ the aim of democratic politics is to transform antagonism into agonism…. An important difference with the model of ‘deliberative democracy’ is that for ‘agonistic pluralism’, the prime task of politics is not to eliminate passions from the sphere of the public, in order to render a rational consensus possible, but to mobilize those passions towards democratic designs.”55

Mouffe’s “agonistic pluralism” perspective does indeed highlight the shortcomings of the deliberative democracy model in acknowledging the very subjective bases of

55 Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, pp. 102-3. Italics in the original.

41 comprehensive beliefs and public disagreements (i.e. “the passions”), but it wrongly portrays the effort to achieve a general agreement on the terms of social coexistence as “a rational consensus.” As the history of multiple liberal-democratic regimes demonstrate, the terms of any consensus are constantly in flux, and as such continually amended as social customs and norms change. Political liberalism does not aim to “eliminate passions from the sphere of the public,” but rather strives to establish a neutral political space where the moral priority of coexistence is at least minimally recognized by enemies and adversaries alike.56 In this sense, the model of “agonistic pluralism” advanced by Mouffe and other radical/agonistic theorists confuses the moral priority of minimal consensus on the terms of social coexistence with “a rational consensus” on the terms of “mobilization” and “public discourse,” which are not the aims of the liberal-democratic project.

Setting aside the socioeconomic and cultural preconditions required by this minimalist view, the oversights highlighted above can in fact have the opposite effect of undermining democratic discourse and exchange. Absent a clear political mechanism for achieving compromise and consensus on the terms of coexistence, it is unclear why the agitation of identity on the basis of difference should not lead to the tribalization of politics along racial, ethnic, class, or gender (to name the most obvious markers) divisions. Indeed, as the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first developments in Western

56 For an excellent explanation of the “minimal moral conception” required by political liberalism, see Charles Larmore, “Political Liberalism,” Political Theory, Vol. 18, No. 3 (August 1990): 339-360. What this essentially amounts to is a political model of “neutrality” which seeks to reconcile the liberal comprehensive view of legitimacy with the conditions of existing value pluralism in modern democratic societies. Larmore’s solution is especially inspired by the “powerful” Romantic criticism of comprehensive liberalism’s celebration of the aforementioned ideals of individuality and autonomy. These critics, Larmore notes, have shed light on the enduring and seemingly eternal relevance of “such ways of life (shared customs, ties of place and language, and religious orthodoxies) [that] shape the sense of value on the basis of which we make whatever choices we do.” Political liberalism, for Larmore, addresses this critique by presenting a strictly political doctrine in the place of a comprehensive theory of the good: “[Political liberalism] is the attempt to understand how liberalism can be strictly a political doctrine and not a general ‘philosophy of man’, not a ‘comprehensive moral ideal’.

42 liberal democracies demonstrate, the more diverse and pluralistic the public sphere has become, the more fragmented and polarized the political arena. I mention this not in order to bemoan the expansion of the public sphere (which as I said above is the admirable part of the radical/agonistic vision of politics), but to underline the importance of envisioning and establishing political and institutional mechanisms to solve common problems in spite of entrenched ideational and interest-based differences. Still, achieving this is less of a problem for a minimal-particularist view of democratic legitimacy such as radical/agonistic democracy since the conception of identity/difference prized here is ultimately premised on an “ethos of pluralization,” as compared to a decidedly “thick” view of community and political culture, to which I shall turn next.

Maximal Particularism

The most dominant strand of particularism in democratic theory today is commonly referred to as “communitarianism,” which has especially been influential in the United States in the last three decades.57 Communitarian arguments can be broadly divided into two categories: descriptive and normative-ethical. In political theory, these arguments are often considered as part of a backlash against liberal theories of democracy and justice – the so-called “liberal-communitarian debate” – which prize individual

57 Among the most well-known and influential works in this perspective are Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984); Daniel Bell, Communitarianism and Its Critics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993); Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985); Amitai Etzioni, The Spirit of Community: The Reinvention of American Society (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993); Amitai Etzioni, The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society (New York: Basic Books, 1996); William Galston, Liberal Purposes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007, 3rd ed.); Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (New York: Cambridge University, 1982); Thomas Spragens, Reason and Democracy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990); Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983).

43 autonomy and rights over shared customs and communal values.58 I am not interested in recounting the terms of the debate here; instead, what I wish to outline in the remainder of this section is to show how the normative-ethical claims of communitarianism amount to a maximal-particularist reading of democratic legitimacy. In contrast to deliberative and radical/agonostic models of democratic legitimacy, communitarian democracy is concerned with preserving the “bounded autonomy” of communities through the cultivation and mobilization of a common morality in the institutions of civil society such as the family, public schools, civic associations, and neighborhoods.59 The sources of democratic legitimacy, according to communitarians therefore, reside in the shared moral and ethical foundations of community. I will expound on and critically assess the normative-ethical claims of communitarianism shortly, but in order to make clear why this perspective properly belongs to the particularist tradition a passage through its descriptive claims is necessary.

The central descriptive claim of communitarianism concerns the constitution of individual and group identity. For communitarians identity is defined by virtue of personal or group membership in a community. As Michael Sandel has noted, people

“conceive their identity… as defined to some extent by the community of which they are a part. For them, community describes not just what they have as fellow citizens but also what they are.”60 Similarly, Alasdair MacIntyre has said of human actions, “[T]he history of a practice in our time is generally and characteristically embedded in and made

58 For helpful summations of the liberal-communitarian debate, see Simon Caney, “Liberalism and Communitarianism: a Misconceived Debate,” Political Studies, XL (1992): 273-289; Amy Gutmann, “Communitarian Critics of Liberalism,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Summer 1985): 308- 322; and Will Kymlicka, “Liberalism and Communitarianism,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 2 (June 1988): 181-204. 59 Amitai Etzioni, The New Golden Rule, pp. 3-12. 60 Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, p. 150.

44 intelligible in terms of the larger and longer history of the tradition through which the practice in its present form was conveyed to us.”61 It is a central descriptive claim of communitarianism contra political liberalism, therefore, that a freestanding conception of political morality is impossible since there is no such thing as a freestanding notion of identity. As such, in the case of democratic legitimacy, communitarians hold that there are no independent standards (independent of communal traditions) by which to judge the substance and scope of democratic rights and ideals.62 This does not mean that individuals and groups are confined to a set of static cultural norms and local values; to the contrary, as Amitai Etzioni argues, identities can be developed into “an evolving framework of shared values, which all subcultures will be expected to endorse and support without losing their distinct identities and subcultures.”63 Much like the minimal- particularist view, therefore, communitarianism acknowledges the plurality of value- systems that may exist within a given community. But unlike radical/agonistic theorists, communitarians do not seek pluralism as an end in itself, and in fact view difference as divisive and needlessly alienating.

The latter are of course claims of normative-ethical nature. For communitarians, identity/difference must eventually yield to consensus not merely on the terms of

61 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 222. Earlier he notes that “we all approach our own circumstances as bearers of a particular social identity. I am someone’s son or daughter, someone else’s cousin or uncle: I am a citizen of this or that city, a member of this or that guild or profession: I belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation.” Ibid. p. 220. 62 Sandel calls his view “teleological” and “perfectionist,” thus rejecting the communitarian label placed on his critique of freestanding conceptions of rights as proposed by political liberals. In his estimation, “the case for recognizing a right depends on showing that it honors or advances some important human good. Whether this good happens to be widely prized or implicit in the traditions of the community would not be decisive.” Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, p. xi. But given Sandel’s description of identity (as determined by communal traditions) recounted above it is unclear how the conception of “the good” wouldn’t be solely determined by traditions of the community. 63 Amitai Etzioni, “On Restoring the Moral Voice,” in Rights and the Common Good: The Communitarian Perspective, ed. Etzioni (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), p. 274.

45 coexistence but on the deontological value of “the good” being pursued. As Benjamin

Barber argues in support of his notion of “strong democracy,”

“It seeks to create a public language that will help reformulate private interests in terms susceptible to public accommodation; and it aims at understanding individuals not as abstract persons but as citizens, so that commonality and equality rather than separateness are the defining traits of human society.”64

The purpose of democracy as a system of governance, in other words, is to cultivate a sense of community, organized around and sustained by shared values. Indeed, this perspective is yet another variation on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s concept of the “general will,” more recently characterized by Joshua Cohen as a “free community of equals.”

Cohen explain this normative scheme as “a social-world in which individuals realize their nature as free by living together as equals, giving the laws to themselves, guided in those lawgiving judgments by a conception of their common good.”65 In this formulation, the society of the “general will” is dedicated to preserving the liberty and equality of individuals and groups for the purpose of realizing “their common good.” The communitarian interpretation of this principle, however, rest as it does on a descriptive challenge to the liberal notion of the “unencumbered self,” presupposes a shared understanding of the common good amongst individuals and groups in society.

64 Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy, p. 119. 65 Joshua Cohen, Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 10. In this tract, Cohen offers a liberal interpretation of Rousseau’s concept of “general will” thusly: “In the society of the general will, citizens share an understanding of the common good and that understanding is founded on the members’ commitment to treat one another as equals by refraining from imposing burdens on other citizens that those members would be unwilling to bear themselves. Thus the content of the understanding of the common good reflects an equal concern for the good of each citizen; citizens take that shared understanding to be the ultimate basis of their political deliberations, and express it by jointly settling on the laws of their community; finally, they acknowledge political obligations as fixed laws founded on the common good, and the limits of collective legal regulation as fixed by the need to justify to such regulation by reference to the common good.” Ibid. p. 15.

46 Some communitarian theorists have even gone as far as suggesting that the moral legitimacy of democracy (as an instrument to achieving justice) is determined by the extent to which its practices reflect the shared values of the community as a whole. For instance, Michael Walzer argues that “a given society is just of its substantive life is lived… in a way faithful to the shared understandings of the members.”66 As for the legitimacy of such democratic ideals as mutual respect or reasonable dialogue, Richard

Rorty notes that “there is nothing to be said about either truth or rationality apart from… the familiar procedures of justification which a given society – ours – uses in one or another area of enquiry,”67 which leads him to the rather despairing conclusion that there simply is “no way to rise above the language, culture, institutions and practices one has adopted.”68 Again, this does not mean that shared understandings are not always in flux and evolving; as Walzer notes, “there is no other starting point for moral speculation. We have to start from where we are. Where we are, however, is always someplace of value, else we would never have settled there.”69 Rather, for communitarians such as Walzer and Rorty the shared understandings of a community are important because they are decided upon and adopted voluntarily. We tacitly or expressly consent to social norms and come to “settle” on certain civic values; if we do not, then we would openly challenge those norms and seek to convince others of the merit of our objections and proposals. It follows that the liberal-universalist exaltation of individual rights, instrumental rationality, and self-interest leads to exploitation and “atomism” in the

66 Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice, p. 313. 67 Richard Rorty, “Solidarity or Objectivity,” in John Rajchman and Cornel West, eds., Post-Analytic Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p. 6. 68 Richard Rorty, “The Contingency of Community,” London Review of Books (24 July 1986), p. 10. 69 Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 17.

47 absence of shared understandings of the common good. The moral and political legitimacy of democratic institutions, communitarians thus conclude, are derived from their capacity to promote the common good, not from minimal, freestanding moral precepts such as neutrality.

The meta-ethical argument that the moral legitimacy of democratic practices rests on the shared values and understandings of communities, however, risks lapsing into cultural relativism. As Simon Caney points out, this argument “relies on an extremely naïve view of the generation of moral values and overlooks the fact that norms are often influenced through manipulation, ignorance, advertizing, and political machinations.”70

Leaving aside for the moment whether shared understandings about important general interest matters can ever exist, consent can be generated through a variety of oppressive means, and as such what may appear to have the support of the general public can in fact be a manufactured consensus engineered by elites or special interests. Furthermore, even in the absence of external manipulation, the public may come endorse a set of policies that are solely determined by exclusivist passions such as ethnocentrism and religious pride. The absence of any independent ideals or criteria against which to judge the moral and political legitimacy of such actions easily undermines a society’s claim to justice and democracy. But perhaps most problematic of all is the communitarian belief in the possibility of shared understandings of the common good in the first place. Outside of very small, culturally homogeneous villages, neighborhoods and towns, where people have an intimate knowledge of the interests and cultural proclivities of their neighbors

(and even in these settings one can find irreconcilable differences aplenty), it is

70 Simon Caney, “Liberalism and Communitarianism: a Misconceived Debate,” p. 287.

48 impossible to arrive at any common understandings of the general interest. In response to these worries, Walzer notes that,

“[W]e do justice to actual men and women by respecting their particular creations… Justice is rooted in the distinct understandings of places, honors, jobs, things of all sorts, that constitute a shared way of life. To override those understandings is (always) to act unjustly.”71

In other words, for Walzer respect for and tolerance of others’ beliefs and “creations” are ways of ensuring that disagreements about the common good are aired and that these ideals are seen as fundamental to the conception of justice pursued by the community.

There are two main problems with this thesis. First, they run counter to the descriptive claims of communitarianism on which Walzer and other communitarians build their ethical-normative theories. As Caney points out, “one cannot maintain both the relativist and the tolerance theses, because whereas the former states that all principles are relative to given communities, the latter states that there is a non-relative principle of tolerance. The latter asserts what the former denies.”72 To assert the tolerance thesis, therefore, would be to deny the possibility of shared understandings and admit the existence of incommensurable and even irreconcilable differences. Which leads us to the second problem: if the tolerance thesis is introduced to account for the fact of value pluralism, regardless of the emphasis on the language of shared understandings, how is this view distinguishable from political liberalism’s perspective on democratic legitimacy? Certain liberal views of democratic legitimacy such as political liberalism allow for the emergence of an “overlapping consensus” based on core ideals of

71 Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice, p. 314. Emphasis added. 72 Simon Caney, “Liberalism and Communitarianism: a Misconceived Debate,” p. 288.

49 autonomy, equality and reciprocity.73 They do so not in order to deny the possibility of shared values or understandings, but to guard against disorder and needless bloodshed when deeply held disagreements threaten to undermine cooperation.

More importantly, liberal conceptions of democratic legitimacy do not deny either the constitutive or elective role of tradition as manifested in individual and group identity.

As Charles Larmore notes,

“We may feel that our deepest commitments are constitutive rather than elective, fashioning our very sense of the persons we are and the choices we can understand ourselves as making, and at the same time believe that political principles, relying as they do upon coercion, must be reasonably acceptable to all whom they are to bind…. A reverence for tradition is not inherently hostile to liberal ideals any more than the cultivation of individuality is intrinsically friendly to them.”74

It is therefore plain that political liberals do in fact acknowledge some of the descriptive claims of communitarianism as regards the historicity of identity and the important role played by tradition in conditioning shared understandings about the general interest.

What they do reject, however, are maximal claims about the cultural/traditional sources of democratic legitimacy that accord too much influence to community at the expense of individuality. Again, this is not to disregard the traditional sources of morality and democratic legitimacy for some individuals or groups, but merely to point out that reasons for democratic legitimacy can and do also spring from non- or anti-traditional points of view. How else could one explain the expansion of the franchise, racial, gender, class, and religious equality, or scientific innovation? Democracy is as much a product of

73 See my discussion of Corey Brettschneider’s “value theory of democracy” in the first section; also see his explication of it in Democratic Rights, p. 9. 74 Charles Larmore, The Autonomy of Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 165.

50 history and tradition as it is a contrapuntal scheme to overcoming exclusionary customs and practices. As such, it is historically contingent, dynamic, and reflexive.

Ultimately, the maximal-particularist account of democratic legitimacy as presented by communitarians suffers from critical descriptive and normative-ethical flaws. Insisting as it does on the so-called “embeddedness thesis,” it leaves little room for the constitution of social identity outside of the community. Building on this, it rejects as trivial and ahistorical liberal-democratic conceptions of democratic legitimacy based on the fact of value pluralism (including non-traditional values) and reasonable disagreement. But as I have attempted to demonstrate above, this view ignores the non- communal sources of identity formation as well as the corresponding non-traditional bases of democratic legitimacy. What is more, by doing so, it deprives the individual and groups of the capacity to reason and to reflect, the hallmarks of democratic citizenship and living. If the maximal-universalist view of democracy tends to downplay the historical contingency of identity and social institutions, the maximal-particularist accounts risks denying agency to its putative subject altogether. That neither view has managed to advance much beyond a theoretical impasse against its counterpoint is evidence enough of the normative and practical limitations underlying both.

CONCLUSION

In the preceding I have attempted to summarize the central arguments of the two predominant traditions in democratic theory – universalism and particularism – as regards the sources of democratic legitimacy. I hope it is clear by now that both traditions have been instrumental in shaping lay and academic discussions about the inherent characteristics and normative appeal of democracy as both a form of government and a

51 political ideal. Leaving aside their respective shortcomings for a moment, both the minimal and maximal iterations of each tradition contain within them a set of useful descriptive as well as normative arguments which doubtless many citizens and theorists can endorse and find as sufficient requisites to democratic living.

For instance, the minimal-universalist accounts of democracy as a mere

“institutional arrangement” are often championed by pro-democracy activists and political dissidents as the first and necessary phase in establishing a democratic transition away from oppressive systems of rule. In the past three decades alone – as part of the so- called “third wave of democratization” – such yearning for a minimal set of institutions and procedures has been on global display from the former satellites of the Soviet Union in Eastern and Central Europe to nascent democratic regimes in Latin America, and even now being considered in the Middle East and North Africa (however imponderable the prospects for democracy may have seemed in that region just less than a year ago). So there is something to be said about the conception of democracy as an institutional schema. However, as I demonstrated in the first section of the chapter, there is another cohort of universalists for whom the minimalist argument does not go nearly deep enough in showing what makes democracy such an appealing political ideal across different cultures and communities in the first place. Maximal-universalists, therefore, argue that the legitimacy of democracy lies in its substantive justification of core democratic ideals such as political autonomy, equality of opportunity, and mutual respect.

For this group of theorists, the democratic tradition is exemplified by the near-universal struggle of political activists for not only the attainment of basic rights and freedoms, but more importantly for a more inclusive and equal society in established democracies.

52 Similarly, the two poles of the particularist tradition also have some important insights, seemingly related in terms of their emphasis on identity and citizenship, but vastly different as regards their accounts of democratic legitimacy. As I showed in the second section of the chapter, the minimal-particularist cohort largely adopts the

Schmittian premise about the nature of political relations, and as such envisions a kind of democratic sphere in which arbitrary markers of personal and group identity are rescued from the paralyzing “friend-enemy” binary distinctions and transformed into an

“adversarial” relationship capable of accommodating difference instead. In contemporary political theory the cohort of scholars championing identity/difference are known as radical or agonistic democrats, and they are rightly credited for having developed further a more variegated and dynamic conception of pluralism, perhaps more attuned to the realities of Western liberal democracies today. At the other end of the particularist spectrum, moreover, are another group of theorists – communitarians – for whom identity also plays an important part in shaping democratic politics. What renders communitarians different from radical/agonistic theorists, however, is the former’s emphasis on shared understandings and common values as opposed to difference or pluralization. In fact, for communitarians democratic ideals cannot ever properly exist outside the bounds of tradition and communal identity. The legitimacy of democracy, therefore, is derived from the particular values and shared understandings of community. Although I find important flaws in both the descriptive and normative claims of this strand of thought, it must be recognized that common values are indeed an important part of civic identity and cannot simply be dismissed as wholly inaccurate or reductive.

53 My chief aim in presenting a critical survey of the two traditions, however, has been to lay bare the shortcomings of each in both their minimal and maximal forms.

Democratic legitimacy, as I have been hinting throughout my critical commentary on the two traditions, has its sources in both universal and particular ideals and values.

Universalist conceptions of democratic legitimacy, as Larmore has shown, often confuse the “universal content” of democratic ideals with their “universal justification.” It is indeed the case that any functioning democracy worthy of its name must have robust and flexible institutions capable of enforcing the rule of law and to further allow for substantive guarantees of basic rights and freedoms. But universal content and justification of democratic ideals also depend on the local contexts in which they are interpreted and struggled over. This is not the same acknowledging particularist claims about the defining influence of communal identity and shared understandings, however.

But rather to look at the sources of democratic legitimacy as always in flux, constantly traversing the borders between common understandings and individual or group initiative. In short, neither tradition provides a satisfactory account of democratic legitimacy given the fact of value pluralism and in lieu of the irreducibility of historical and political experience of nations, communities, and individuals. What democratic is lacking today is a theoretical account of the interaction of universal democratic ideals and local political experiences – in short, a contextual theory of democracy. In the next chapter, I attempt to provide a theoretical framework for just such an account.

54 CHAPTER 2

Democracy in Context: Between Universal Norms and Local Values

“Political forms do not originate in a once for all way. The greatest challenge, once it is accomplished, is simply the outcome of a vast series of adaptations and responsive accommodations, each to its own particular situation.”1

-- John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (1927)

INTRODUCTION

There is now a burgeoning trend toward studies of culture in contemporary political theory.2 This is indeed a welcome development for it has enlivened our discussions and understanding of the nexus between cultural influences such as collective meanings and “invented” or “imagined” traditions (ethnic, national, religious, linguistic, etc.) upon everyday practices of politics.3 For instance, thanks in large measure to recent debates about the promises and burdens of “multicultural citizenship” we now have a better awareness of the complex relationship between identity politics and democratic

1 John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (New York: H. Holt, 1927), p. 84. 2 Such endeavors are generally classified as works in “comparative political theory”, especially when they touch upon non-Western concepts and topics; but I have in mind here studies concerned with the intersection of culture and political thought. Prominent examples include: Fred Dallmayr, Border Crossings: Toward a Comparative Political Theory (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1999); Roxanne L. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); Roxanne L. Euben, Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Gerald J. Larson and Eliot Deutsch (eds.), Interpreting across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Anthony Parel and Ronald C. Keith (eds.), Comparative Political Philosophy: Studies under the Upas Tree. New Delhi and Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 2003); Brooke A. Ackerly, “Is Liberalism the Only Way Toward Democracy?” Political Theory 33:4 (2005), pp. 547-57; David Scott, “Culture in Political Theory,” Political Theory 31:1 (2003), pp. 92-115; Andrew F. March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009); Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman (eds.), Western Political Philosophy in Dialogue with Asia (Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books, 2009); and Leigh K. Jenco, “’What Does Heaven Ever Say?’ A Methods-Centered Approach to Cross- Cultural Engagement,” American Political Science Review 101:4 (2007), pp. 741-55. 3 Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Renger, eds. The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).

55 institutions in multicultural societies.4 Furthermore, discussions about the cultural origins of certain oppressive and hierarchical political norms and practices such as polygamy, female genital mutilation, forced marriages, or unequal access to health and education, have challenged key assumptions and omissions about gendered, racial, or class-based relations in normative political theory.5 Perhaps most importantly, in a field hitherto dominated by Western visions and theories about the interplay of politics and culture in society, the growing interdependence among nations and peoples in international society has injected new insights and controversies about the compatibility of universal ideals and values (e.g. liberal democracy and human rights) with certain politico-cultural norms and traditions. These developments suggest that attention to culture, long the purview of anthropological and sociological theories, is at last a mainstream preoccupation within political theory.

Yet in spite of these recent inclusions, culture remains very much a static and confused concept in political theory.6 Too often, what passes for “culture” in both empirical and normative reflections is in fact a subset of culture or a political phenomenon masquerading as culture. These problems are especially acute in contemporary debates in democratic theory about the compatibility of universal democratic norms and local cultural values in societies with majority Muslim

4 See Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Bhikhu Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Amy Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition” (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); Brian Barry, Culture and Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); William A. Galston, Liberal Pluralism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Seyla Benhabib, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). 5 See Susan M. Okin, “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?” in Joshua Cohen and Matthew Howard (eds.), Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); Iris M. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). 6 I should note from the outset that I do not include discussions about “democratic culture” in this grouping, for much has been written and explored on that topic within political theory.

56 populations. The deficiency of these approaches is revealed in the way they seek to impose or privilege certain values or ideals without interrogating the universalist or particularist assumptions that underlie them. Must local cultural practices be altered in order to comply with universal norms of justice and human rights? Or, must universal norms justify their applicability through appeals to local values and vocabularies?

In the previous chapter I offered a general overview and critique of the range of answers provided to these questions by the predominant traditions in Western democratic thought – universalism and particularism – and suggested ways of expanding both the normative and empirical scope of these theories by adopting a more pluralist outlook.

Universalist conceptions of democracy, I argued, often neglect how cultural influences and social histories shape the development and articulation of democratic values and institutions in different societies. As such, they often mistake the universal spirit behind the struggle for democracy for a universal model of democracy.7 By contrast, particularist theorists of democracy wrongly dismiss some of the more commonly shared attributes of democracy such as the right to participation (also known as the “the right of rights”) that have enlisted generations of humankind across time and space. Much to the chagrin of particularists, democracy does indeed require the observance of certain core values, however divergent in expression and scope these may be in different contexts.

In this chapter I wish to advance a normative thesis on how the seemingly insurmountable gulf between the two traditions might reasonably be bridged. I do so not

7 By “spirit” I have the same concept in mind as Walzer in his discussion of “minimal morality” in Thick and Thin: expressive of universal grievances on behalf of justice, rights and freedoms, but decidedly divergent and localized (i.e. “thick”) in their political/historical content. By “model” I have in mind something approximating a universal template for how democracy ought to look like in every polity regardless of the local histories or cultural mores guiding political and moral discussions in them. This view amounts to a comprehensive belief system about democracy, which is best analyzed and critiqued by Patrick J. Deneen in his book Democratic Faith (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).

57 in an effort to offer a single, unified theory of democracy, but in order to draw attention to the ineluctable hybridity of democracy as both a system of government and a much- cherished political value. Democracy, I will argue, is a product of human labor and struggle, and is as such reflective of the social and political contexts from which it arises.

There is therefore a plurality of forms of democracy, in both the political and cultural senses of that term (e.g. aristocratic, liberal, social, or radical). To be sure, not all aspects of local cultures and political traditions will be compatible with the basic rights, freedoms, and values that underlie democracy, and it is certainly not my intention here to overlook or condone such incongruities (as my critical take on the relationship between

Islam and democracy elaborates). But it is my argument that even the defense of such universal democratic ideals are always undertaken in reference to a specified set of social and political circumstances. This dualism need not trouble us, however, for as Michael

Walzer has aptly observed, it attests to “the necessary character of any human society: universal because it is human, particular because it is a society.”8 Indeed, it is the responsiveness of democracy to the vicissitudes of context, I want to suggest, which sets it apart from other forms of government: the political legitimacy of democracy is derived from its reflective capacity to be responsive to the diversity of human experience across time and space.

This chapter is organized in five parts. In the first, I offer a critical overview of existing conceptions of context in political theory and especially explore the reasons behind its exclusion in normative accounts of democracy. In the second part, I attempt to remedy this oversight by suggesting ways of thinking about possible normative

8 Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), p. 8.

58 arguments in favor of a contextual theory of democracy. I argue that attention to context does not only enable us to better understand democracy’s trials and triumphs, but rather moves us to continually strive for a more democratic and just society. The third part of the chapter explores the implications of this theory for comparative inquiries in political theory, specifically in reference to the relationship between Islam and democracy, a much-pondered topic in democratic theory today. My main aim in this section is to expose and critique notions of “Islamic democracy” advanced by mainstream Western and Islamic scholars today. In so doing, I wish to advance an alternative understanding of the relationship between local cultural mores and democratic rights and freedoms in

Muslim-majority societies, one which takes stock of the pluralism of values and diversity of historical experiences at the heart of ongoing debates about democracy. It is my hope that the following stimulates a new mode of thinking about democracy, and especially about the role of democrats as well as non-democrats in society.

I CONTEXT: A DEFINITIONAL PROBLEM

The term “context” can be vexingly imprecise, denoting a set of “circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea,” yet also alluding to “parts that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and make its meaning clear.”9 To put a given election results “in context,” for instance, could mean either to look at a range of specific issues and events (e.g. immigration, natural disasters, corruption, wars, etc.) that dominated the pre-election period, to factor in the effect of specific attributes such as age, gender, race, income, education, party loyalty, or religion, or to measure the impact of advertising, money, and the media on the electorate – and one can expand the boundaries

9 Oxford English Dictionary, 2009, s.n., “Context.”

59 of context further still. Context, it would seem, can be at once broad and specific, inclusive and exclusive, irrepressibly in the eye of the beholder. The spectrum of possibilities encompassed by this term need not detain us, however. Context encapsulates the complexity of human endeavors in society, and as such serves as a barrier against any attempts at unreasonable isolation or generalization of social activities large and small. In this sense, context attests to and affirms the existence (but not validity) of a multiplicity of perspectives. To “contextualize,” therefore, is to continually examine the surrounding circumstances that give words, concepts and events their meaning.

I begin with this definitional exploration for two reasons. First, because of the seemingly inexact definition of the term and its empirical connotations (i.e. to search for and reflect on empirical evidence) context is largely overlooked in democratic theory today, where idealized conceptions of deliberation, representation, and citizenship are prized over non-ideal treatments of the same subjects. The very novelty of ideal theories of democracy, of course, rests on their transcendence of local and global contexts, not in order to, it must be said, paper over the great variety of cultures and histories that exist in different societies, but merely to devise an ideal (i.e. just) model of government which different cultures and peoples can aspire to and endorse. It is not the case therefore that ideal modes of inquiry lack sensitivity to context, but that the contingent nature of human experience renders context too unwieldy to be properly accounted for in ideal theory.

Second, the multi-perspectival characteristic of context puts it in tension with overly universalistic and particularistic conceptions of democracy that are often guided by and responsive to a limited set of principles and perspectives. Again, this is not to suggest that such theories therefore lack internal coherence or are deliberately exclusive in the choice

60 of ideals and discourses they wish to advance. Rather, I want to suggest that by overlooking the underlying contingency of social life and political interactions that often necessitate multiple forms of democratic exchange and struggles on behalf of rights and freedoms mainstream theories of democracy have become too esoteric and exclusive in their effect.

The point I am making is that normative conceptions of democracy can be made more inclusive and more interesting if we situate democracy as taking place in a socio- cultural and historical setting. Another way of putting this is to say that the modes of life incorporated by democracy in any society are extraordinarily varied, and far exceed the limiting, inert, and monolithic status they are often accorded in the dominant theories of democracy. Consider the amelioration of political inequality and discrimination in democracy; or the affiliation between democratic ideals and national and ethnic identity; or the accommodation of religious and ideological veneration of different hues by democratic principles; or the absorption of power imbalances by democratic institutions – and the versatility and reflexive characteristics of democracy become clear enough. It follows then that what renders democracy legitimate is not merely the appropriation of certain abstract rights and values, but the absorption of an irreducible variety of views and lifestyles that are respected and tolerated – but not always validated – through dialogue and reciprocity. For in a crucial sense this is what distinguishes the normative appeal of democracy from authoritarian and monistic visions of governance: just as pluralism necessitates democracy, so too democracy helps to engender pluralism. Indeed, this view is endorsed by most deliberative conceptions of democracy and forms the

61 backdrop for liberal prescriptions for resolving reasonable disagreements and achieving justice in well-ordered democracies.10

It would not be sufficient, however, to merely argue that democratic theory must become more sensitive to context, more attuned to the contingency that underlies the kinds of dynamics noted above. After all, empirical investigations into the practice and experience of democracy achieve this task well by explaining the behavior of interest groups, exploring voting patterns, measuring institutional capacities, and considering other correlates of democracy in specific settings. But, in keeping with the dual definition of the term, context also very significantly touches upon normative considerations in democratic theory: it affects the conditions of legitimacy of democratic ideals in society.

The circumstances surrounding the articulation and mediation of democratic ideals – e.g. whether democratic rights are granted after a revolutionary struggle, or are won in increments by social movements, or made more elaborate and inclusive through legislative acts or the courts, etc. – place a particular imprint on how different publics think about democracy and its legitimacy. For instance, as Tocqueville famously chronicled in the case of America, the legitimacy of democratic ideals in the United

States often depended on their articulation in religious terms: “Religion, which, among

Americans, never mixes directly in the government of society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not give them the taste

10 See for instance Rawls’s acknowledgement of “a plurality of reasonable yet incompatible comprehensive doctrines” from which his “freestanding” political conception of justice emerges, John Rawls, Political Liberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. xxxix. See also, Charles Larmore, “Political Liberalism,” Political Theory, Vol. 18, No. 3 (1990), pp. 339-360; Isaiah Berlin, “The Pursuit of the Ideal,” New York Review of Books, 17 March 1988; Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); and James Bohman and William Rehg, eds. Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997).

62 for freedom, it singularly facilitates their use of it.”11 Of course, in certain historical contexts (and even in certain contexts today) this insight is hugely important to the development of democracy in America; but in certain other contexts (e.g. struggles on behalf of racial and gender equality, privacy or property rights, personal or group autonomy, etc.) non-religious views have been more important in legitimizing democratic ideals. The important point here is that in each case the articulation, mediation and realization of democratic ideals are influenced by context.

Yet what precisely is lacking in democratic theory is a normative conception of how democratic ideals ought to absorb and engage with context. The nearest approximations are conceptions of “moral minimalism” and “democratic iterations” advanced by Michael Walzer and Seyla Benhabib respectively.12 In his book Thick and

Thin, Walzer sets out to explain the “dualism” at the core of every moral consideration, which is most often described “in terms of a (thin) set of universal principles adapted

(thickly) to these or those historical circumstances.”13 For Walzer, this dualism is often falsely interpreted as a paradox or a tension between universal and local moral values when in fact it attests to the elasticity of morality: “Morality is thick from the beginning, culturally integrated, fully resonant, and it reveals itself thinly only on special occasions, when moral language is turned to specific purposes.”14 The reference point of morality – its elasticity – is therefore context: those “special occasions” and “specific purposes” that occasion moral invocation. Democracy is of course one of those commonly invoked

11 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2000), p. 280. 12 See Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Arguments At Home and Abroad (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), and Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens (Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge Press, 2004). 13 Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin, p. 4. 14 Ibid.

63 “specific purposes” – alongside human rights, freedom and justice – in reference to which moral language is used. As such, its invocation is greatly determined by the context – understood here as the meeting of the universal and the particular (i.e. those “special occasions”) – in which it is discussed and struggled over. As Walzer describes it, the moral case for the legitimacy of certain political ideals is thick (or “maximal”) when discussed in the context of specific social histories, and thin (or “minimal”) when considered in the universal context of “humanity” at large:

“Societies are necessarily particular because they have members and memories, members with memories not only of their own but also of their common life. Humanity, by contrast, has members but no memory, and so it has no history and no culture, no customary practices, no familiar life-ways, no festivals, no shared understanding of social goods. It is human to have such things, but there is no singular human way of having them. At the same time, the members of all the different societies, because they are human, can acknowledge each other’s different ways, respond to each other’s cries for help, learn from each other, and march (sometimes) in each other’s parades.”15

Indeed, the delineation between the universal and the particular is especially useful in understanding the singular and/or varied sets of interests and values that underlie certain political struggles. It affirms the pluralism of values in national and international societies without necessarily lapsing into the language of relativism or essentialism that often mars such efforts. The universality of certain moral undertakings is preserved in a minimal sense, but Walzer is also keen to take stock of the local “memories” that give context and meaning to moral debates.

But if Walzer’s normative elaboration opens the way toward a contextual understanding of morality, it still leaves us with the difficulty of formulating a contextual conception of democracy as a political ideal. How ought we think about the relationship

15 Ibid. p. 8. Italics in the original.

64 between universal and particular political principles? How are universal democratic principles best translated into local practices that are informed by distinct political and cultural experiences? What is the relationship between context and democratic values?

These questions are at once decidedly more mundane and more pertinent than those taken up by Walzer, for they are ultimately questions about political authority and obligation, and not about moral legitimacy or duty. This is not to say that moral considerations have no place in these discussions. To the contrary, the central claim of a contextual conception of democracy rests on the moral necessity to rescue democracy from those universalist and particularist schemes that presuppose the image of either an unencumbered self or a reified community. Walzer’s “moral minimalism” does well to delineate between the universal and particular sites of contention and commonality surrounding deep-seated beliefs about “justice,” “truth,” or “life”. The moral minimum, since it is derived from a thick morality that is more attuned to the historical and cultural circumstances of one’s own society, enables one to see where criticism of, and solidarity with, others is necessary and useful and where they are not. But it is still less instructive in explaining the relationship between context and political legitimacy under a democratic arrangement: how democratic norms and values ought to be articulated and mediated over time; what political circumstances must obtain for democratic ideals to gain legitimacy; how basic rights and freedoms can be protected or encroached upon by context; etc.

It is at this juncture where Benhabib’s consideration of political legitimacy through her conception of “democratic iterations” proves more relevant:

65 “By democratic iterations I mean complex processes of public argument, deliberation, and exchange through which universalist rights claims and principles are contested and contextualized, invoked and revoked, posited and positioned, throughout legal and political institutions, as well as in the associations of civil society. These can take place in the ‘strong’ public bodies of legislative, the judiciary, and the executive, as well as in the informal and ‘weak’ publics of civil society associations and the media.”16

Benhabib’s conception is narrower than Walzer’s in that it focuses on the complex and contentious processes of deliberation, disagreement and mediation that condition democratic politics. Yet, in its embrace of the contingency of everyday politics, it is also decidedly more dynamic: “Every act of iteration involves making sense of an authoritative original in a new and different context.”17 By recognizing the malleability of democratic struggles and speech acts, Benhabib crucially opens a space for normative considerations of context in democratic society. The novelty of democratic iterations lies in their ability to “invoke and revoke” conventional understandings of rights claims or basic freedoms that may still remain unrealized in certain segments of society. Here one can think of the struggles on behalf of universal suffrage and equality by women’s groups and racial and ethnic minorities in most Western democracies in the early and middle parts of the twentieth century. In each instance, the gradual and arduous task of

“contesting and contextualizing” the social and political norms of the day served to expose the unfulfilled democratic potential of the society in question. In this sense, democratic iterations helped to not only expose and challenge the hypocrisy of those in the majority or the ruling classes who paid only lip service to the virtues of a democratic society, but also actively sought to redefine and expand the meaning and scope of democratic ideals “in the associations of civil society.”

16 Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others, p. 179. 17 Ibid. p. 180.

66 More crucially still, democratic iterations point to the central role played by citizens as “not only the subject but also the author of the laws.”18 This agent-centric view affirms the worldly nature of democracy as a historical, human enterprise, in contradistinction to universalist and particularist conceptions that assume democracy to be derivative to certain superstructures or communal mores. It also attests to the multi- perspectival characteristic of context, which I alluded to earlier. Any political endeavor, but especially a democratic one, features a multiplicity of voices and narratives in conversation with one another. For any number of under-served, disenfranchised citizens there are an equal, if not more, number of citizens bemoaning the loss of their once- privileged place or the inclusion of others. But also for those struggling on behalf the same ideals (e.g. right to privacy, equal opportunity, due process, etc.) there will be a range of ideological hues (e.g. conservative, centrist, liberal, radical, etc.) distinguishing one cohort from another. In this respect, democratic iterations form the lifeblood of democratic citizenship: they seek to at once affirm and enhance the democratic process.

Benhabib’s concept is not without its limitations, however. “Democratic iterations” may help us to better understand the complexities surrounding certain social and political issues in established, multicultural democracies – from the so-called headscarf affairs (l’affaire du foulard) in France to the plight of Muslim immigrants in

Germany around issues of education and citizenship, to issues of same-sex marriage and abortion rights in the United States – but the concept is less illuminating in understanding non-democratic forms of participation. In other words, democratic iterations only account for those contexts that reside within the democratic polis – they assume a democratic

18 p. 181. Italics in the original.

67 context.19 What happens when we take away the privileges and rights of a democratic society that make processes of public deliberation and contestation possible in the first place? This is not to say that democratic iterations do not shine any light on anti- democratic voices in democratic societies; by virtue of covering a multiplicity of voices at the moment of deliberation, they do. But what they cannot explain is the daunting challenge faced by democrats in non-democratic contexts, and how the latter may affect the expression and mediation of universal democratic ideals. For instance, one of the main challenges to human rights activists and democrats under both secular and theocratic forms of government in Muslim-majority societies has been their inability to participate freely in public affairs. Therefore, of urgent concern to them is the right to participation, not equal opportunity, special ethnic or cultural rights, or even the right to worship freely. In such non-democratic contexts, any concept that assumes a certain degree of freedom and openness in the public sphere could easily lapse into a kind of abstract universalism which is divorced from actual circumstances on the ground.

It thus follows that Benhabib’s concept of democratic iterations must be supplemented with a normative conception of context that also takes stock of the iterative process in non-democratic settings. Considering the non-democratic context is especially important because it reveals the multiplicity of reasons behind the initial appeals to

19 Similarly, Jürgen Habermas’s theory of “communicative action” has charted an exemplary way in incorporating rational dialogue and discursive deliberation into normative discussions about democratic legitimacy. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, tr. Thomas McCarthy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1984). But it does so in order to reorient the source of political power in the democratic sphere from procedures and institutions to the “communicative power of the citizens.” As Habermas declares elsewhere, “all political power derives from the communicative power of citizens.” Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, tr. William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), p. 170. This effort of course accords well with a contextual reading of democratic legitimacy, but placing an a priori requirement on critical reflexivity and rational dialogue it too already assumes a democratic context.

68 democratic ideals and provides a blueprint to the gradual acceptance and institutionalization of democratic norms. More importantly, it guards against the reintroduction and inclusion of anti-democratic arguments and values into the iterative process. In most Western democracies, for instance, the ideas and beliefs of racist and violent groups are rightfully dismissed without much deliberation because of the common understanding of their role in recent history as saboteurs of democratic ideals. In a different context (but on the same point), comprehensive religious views have had to undergo successive transformations over the decades in most established democracies in order for certain democratic values such as autonomy, equality, toleration and reciprocity to be enjoyed by all members of society. In each case, the non- or anti-democratic contexts have been as important as the democratic contexts in shaping democratic ideals.

Democratic ideals, in sum, are as much earned by democrats as they are conceded to by anti-democrats – and it is precisely through this process of earning and conceding that the legitimacy of democratic procedures and outcomes is secured. Over the years, theorists of deliberative democracy have largely focused on the ideal conditions for the fruition and legitimacy of democratic ideals (be they procedural or substantive) without taking heed of the differential modes of argument and expression in favor of democratic ideals across time and locale. As a result, we have learned a great deal about the architecture of deliberative democracy, but relatively very little about the context that would produce or stand against such an impressive structure. To achieve this, both the contingency of everyday politics and the multitude of voices, beliefs, and practices

(historical and contemporary) need to be reflected in normative accounts of democratic legitimacy. Such a conception would make it possible dialectically to assess the interplay

69 between the ideal and the non-ideal, on the one hand, and the impact of historical memory and culture on institutions and politics, on the other. It is to a consideration of arguments in support of such a conception that I turn to next.

II TOWARD A CONTEXTUAL CONCEPTION OF DEMOCRACY

In defining context in terms of pluralism and contingency in the previous section I have argued that human labor, cooperation and conflict are instrumental in the social construction of democracy (just as they would be in the case of other forms of government and social organization). This recognition leads to the further suggestion that for normative theories of democracy to be inclusive of different modes of social and political association, they must provide an account of democratic legitimacy that is responsive to context. But before considering what a contextual conception of democracy consists of in normative terms, I wish to make clear my working definition of democracy.

By democracy I generally mean a government (and hence a society) organized around the principle of self-rule, namely the notion that citizens are the authors of the laws to which they are subject. Democratic legitimacy, therefore, refers to the fulfillment of certain core ideals such as autonomy, political equality, and equal respect that would make the practice of self-government both possible and meaningful (and which I shall consider in greater depth in my discussion of Islam and democracy below). Following Charles

Larmore, moreover, I wish to note that the moral and normative character of democracy is derived from the core ideal of equal respect (for persons). This is critically important to the contextual conception of democratic legitimacy I wish to advance because, as

70 Larmore explains, “Respect for persons is what gives their [citizens’] democratic will the normative shape it has.” 20

What then should a contextual conception of democracy consist of? At the root of this view is the notion that the pursuit and realization of democratic ideals are legitimized through individual and collective histories, local and global vernaculars, and persistent political struggles. The chief merit of democracy is that it bestows upon the individual and the collective certain rights and privileges with which to contemplate the terms of membership and coexistence in society. Genuine understanding of the potential pitfalls and triumphs brought about by democracy requires one to understand the concrete constellation of ideas, beliefs, traditions, and values within which it is located. The moral and political legitimacy of democracy, therefore, rests on its reflective capacity to be responsive to the vicissitudes of context: to be “of, by and for” a people, and all that being part of such a historical construct entails.

It is very important to note, however, that a contextual conception of democracy is not relativistic. My main aim in emphasizing context is to demonstrate how divergent local experiences and histories serve as reference points for the legitimacy of democratic ideals. I do not wish to argue, as some particularists do, that democratic legitimacy is determined solely by local histories and values. The latter argument strikes me as rather anti-democratic in its reduction of highly complex and pluralistic societies to monolithic wholes, insular from outside influences and in total internal unison. Nevertheless, this

20 Larmore argues, “Popular sovereignty can be understood as manifesting itself through reasonable agreement, only if it is assumed to be heeding the obligation of respect for persons. Democracy is thus a moral conception, and not just in the trivial sense that the principles and values by which a democratic people organize their political life are recognizable moral in character. More profoundly, democracy involves commitment to a moral principle that citizens must see as binding on them independently of their democratic will. Respect for persons is what gives their democratic will the normative shape it has.” Charles Larmore, The Autonomy of Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 164.

71 argument does provide the contextual theorist (and indeed this is what I wish to do here) with the opportunity to rearticulate the terms of democratic legitimacy in lieu of the irreducible characteristics of social and political context. As I noted above, the legitimacy of democratic ideals is derived from their recognition of context as the amalgam of prevailing and background conditions that give meaning to social and political life.

Unlike other forms of rule – most notably authoritarian and oligarchic systems of governance – democracy does not seek to delimit context or impose comprehensive values or meanings on citizens’ lives. Indeed, democracy does require of citizens a minimal recognition of a set of norms and values (e.g. respecting the rights of others and political equality), but it does so out of respect for the lives and beliefs of all members of society regardless of their backgrounds and social, political and biological attributes. In this sense then democracy is very much a contextual construct, perpetually in flux but also guided by a set of versatile and reflexive ideals.

Furthermore, a contextual theory of democratic legitimacy requires a revision of the modern ideals of democracy along temporal and contingent lines. Let us take the core ideal of popular sovereignty, according to which all minimally competent and eligible citizens are entitled to participate in the making of laws that affect their lives. They do so by electing representatives to act on their behalf, and by having access to a judicial system tasked independently with safeguarding their rights. But this process does not necessarily guarantee that democratic politics can be legitimately representative. For instance, a government may very well bestow democratic rights and privileges on its citizens in the abstract, but due to historical circumstances, prejudicial cultural mores, or entrenched hierarchies be anything but representative in practice. Indeed, such was the

72 paradox and scandal of American democracy at the time of slavery that compelled

Abraham Lincoln to famously lament the contradiction:

“The sacred right of self-government, rightly understood, no one appreciated more than himself…. The principle that men or states have the right of regulating their own affairs, is morally right and politically wise. Individuals held the sacred right to regulate their own family affairs; communities might arrange their own internal matter to suit themselves; states might make their own statues, subject only to Constitution of the whole country; no one disagreed with this doctrine. It had, however, no application to the question at present at issue, namely, whether slavery, a moral, social and political evil, should or should not exist in territory owned by the Government, over which the Government had control, and which looked to the Government for protection – unless it be true that a negro is not a man; if not, then it is no business of ours whether or not he is enslaved upon soil which belongs to us, any more than it is our business to trouble ourselves about the oyster-trade, cranberry trade, or any other legitimate traffic carried on by the people in territory owned by the Government…. [B]ut if the negro, upon soil where slavery is not legalized by law and sanctioned by custom, is a man, then there is not even the shadow of popular sovereignty in allowing the first settlers upon such soil to decide whether it shall be right in all future time to hold men in bondage there.”21

For Lincoln, the institution of slavery that was at the time “legalized by law and sanctioned by custom” gave the lie to the right of self-government that white American politicians and citizens were only fond of cherishing for themselves. Popular sovereignty was but an abstract hypocrisy that, while soothing and convenient to the majority of the population, ignored the inhumane and arbitrary “bondage” of scores of others who were only distinguished by their racial heritage. Therefore, the ideal of popular sovereignty was bereft of democratic legitimacy so long as slavery and racism persisted in American society. Of course, not all members of the majority practiced slavery or racism at the time; indeed, many actively took part in the abolitionist movement that eventually

21 Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Bloomington, Illinois,” September 26, 1854, as reported in Peoria Weekly Republican, October 6, 1854, from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy Basler, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953. Emphasis in the original.

73 brought an end to slavery. Moreover, of these some were motivated by religious reasons

(e.g. revivalist preachers and ordinary devout followers), some recruited to the cause by moralists (e.g. journalists, businessmen, and academics), and still others, like Lincoln, by a variety of reasons, including democratic ones.

More than a demonstration of moral and religious triumphalism, however, this example illuminates the clash between concrete individuals and groups with different ideas, beliefs and powers over a fundamental democratic ideal. It speaks to the very important relationship between democratic legitimacy and context. The eventual abolition of slavery was in effect an exercise in the elaboration of the ideal of popular sovereignty.

It by no means fulfilled the ideal as the ensuing struggle for political equality and civil rights attested to, but rather made it more concrete, more contextual. So much so that when we now look back on that dark period in American history, Lincoln’s exhortation and his subsequent Emancipation Proclamation serve as important reference points in thinking about the past, present and future of democratic ideals in American society. In fact, when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. in 1963, he invoked the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln in order to affirm the promise of the document once again, but more importantly to also demonstrate how much more progress still needed to be made before racial equality could be fully achieved.22 Of course, even a

22 As King put it, “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize

74 most perfunctory survey of the main issues of the day – ranging from the dire state of the public school system to debates surrounding reproductive rights, immigration and gay rights, etc. – would reveal the continuation of these complex, multi-perspectival processes of articulation, elaboration, and mediation behind the cultivation of democratic ideals.

This reflexive attribute of democratic government toward the context of ideas and actions makes it possible to contemplate the legitimacy of particular social and political arrangements while at the same time making concrete universal claims to popular sovereignty, autonomy and equality. Furthermore, it not only challenges the predominant universalist assumptions about the linear development and internalization of democratic ideals, but also attests to what Nadia Urbinati calls “the incalculable influence of basic ideals and principles concerning the general interest that transcend the acts of decision and election.”23 In other words, the legitimacy of democratic ideals such as popular sovereignty and political equality are not solely determined by electoral results or observance of democratic procedures. It is important to note, however, that this is not necessarily an allusion to the much-cited “substance versus procedure” debate in democratic theory.24 Rather, what I wish to posit here is the simple notion that democratic ideals are reinterpreted the world over through continual acts of contestation and deliberation that are grounded in the irreducible temporality of national and global

a shameful condition.” Martin Luther King Jr. I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches that Changed the World, edited by James Melvin Washington (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 101. 23 Nadia Urbinati, Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 225. 24 For a good overview of the main issues see, Joshua Cohen, “Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy,” in Seyla Benhabib, ed., Democracy and Difference: Changing Boundaries of the Political (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 95-119; and Corey Brettschneider, Democratic Rights: The Substance of Self-Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

75 politics. To this end, as Urbinati rightly argues, “Elections ‘make’ representation but do not ‘make’ the representatives. At a minimum, they make responsible and limited government, but not representative government.”25 This awareness of the historicity of democratic struggles, furthermore, enables the contextual theorist to conceive of democratic ideals as existing both prior to and after the establishment of democratic institutions. As Urbinati notes, democratic as well as non-democratic iterations are conditioned within an “uninterrupted temporality.”26

Indeed, it is this notion of the historical mediation of representation that lies at the core of a contextual conception of democracy. For the legitimacy of democratic ideals is ultimately derived from their inclusive elaboration and mediation over time. In this sense, democratic ideals are made more concrete and contextual, and the practice of politics more inclusive and just. This I believe is what John Dewey had in mind when he observed the following:

“[T]heories of the nature of the individual and his rights, of freedom and authority, progress and order, liberty and law, of the common good and a general will, of democracy itself, did not produce the movement [for democracy]. They reflected it in thought; after they emerged, they entered into subsequent strivings and had practical effect.”27

We may acknowledge the universal appeal and salience of democracy, we may even strive for a global democratic regime that erases the arbitrary boundaries of the state, but as Dewey notes, such reflections can only be made concrete in the context of local movements and politics that would eventually bring them to fruition. This is a crucial insight for it attests to the necessity of both universal conceptions of democracy and

25 Nadia Urbinati, Representative Democracy, p. 224. Emphasis in the original. 26 Ibid. p. 225. 27 John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (New York: H. Holt, 1927), p. 85.

76 particular “strivings” for democracy. In each case, what matters most are the contexts that either enable or preclude the marriage of ideas and actions.

Indeed, it is precisely because under certain circumstances – e.g. imbalance of power in favor of social or religious groups, corporations, or wealthy individuals with narrow, exclusivist political agendas – the legitimacy and representativeness of democratic ideals can be undermined that mere sensitivity to context in accounts of democracy will not suffice. Additionally, normative conceptions of democracy must take heed of those contexts that enable further cultivation and elaboration of democratic ideals and those that merely exploit its privileges in order to prolong exclusion, prejudice and conflict. Democratic ideals and context mutually constitute one another. But as I noted above, the legitimacy of democracy rests in its reflective capacity to offer a fair and reasonable hearing to a diversity of views, which may or may not accord with the ideals that underlie democracy. Such a capacity does indeed display an acute sensitivity to mixed offerings of social and historical context, but by no means does it affirm their validity or relevance credulously. Rather, what a democratic form of government bestows a society is the ability to debate, reason and empathize as regards what may in the immediate and the long term preserve and nourish the reflective capacities of a public. In this respect, as Dewey eloquently observed, democracy “is the clear consciousness of a communal life, in all its implications.”28

Dewey’s reflexive take on democratic life, therefore, can serve as a model for the contextual theorist. His rejection of “Ultimate Truth” drew attention to the quite palpable loss of “experience” and “meaning” in essentialist (whether universalist or particularist)

28 Ibid. 148.

77 accounts of social life.29 For Dewey, social and political activities were very much entangled within what Max Weber called “webs of meaning,” whose multidimensional manifestations compelled the observer “to experience and see what the thing [particular social or political activity] is experienced as.”30 It was this distinctly human aspect of democracy (i.e. as a product of human labor and experience) that for Dewey was ultimately in need of theorizing and normative exploration. For democracy very significantly touches upon many expressed and implied meanings, values, grievances, and aspirations, which, once made the subject matter of public reason, were in need of contextual analysis and interpretation in order for equality and fairness to prevail.31 In

Dewey’s political thought, democratic ideals always arise out of the lived experience and imagination of those aspiring to them. They are no more the preserve of exclusivist visions that insist upon fixed sets of ideas and values, as they are manifestations of a universalist conception that pictures them at a remove from the contexts that enable their articulation and seemingly perennial elaboration.32 What is more, championed by democrats and sustained by democratic institutions, such ideals are subject to immanent critique and reflective modes of thinking, thereby engendering dialogue and ensuring the

29 John Dewey, The Philosophy of John Dewey, ed. John J. McDermont (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 336-7. 30 Ibid. 247. 31 As Dewey put it, “Transformations readjustments, reconstruction, all imply prior existences” existences which have characters can behaviors of their own which might be accepted, consulted, humored, manipulated or made light of, in all kinds of differing ways in the differing contexts of different problems.” Ibid. 221. 32 Similarly, Sheldon Wolin describes democracy as a “mode of being that is conditioned by bitter experience” and existing within “boundaries [that] signify the will to contextualize.” Sheldon Wolin, “Fugitive Democracy,” in Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. Seyla Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 31-43. Wolin’s concept of “fugitive democracy” characterizes democratic ideals as episodic and ephemeral, and ultimately ill-accustomed to the exigencies of politics. On the whole, I find this conception far too pessimistic an account of contemporary democracy; but Wolin’s underlying thesis that democratic experience constantly challenges the boundaries of the universal and the particular in politics speaks directly to my point about the role that context plays in framing struggles on behalf of democratic ideals.

78 continuation of democracy.33 A contextual conception of democracy, accordingly, would share the pragmatist premise that democratic ideals are as much shaped by the individual and collective lived experiences as they are influential in shaping and transcending the experiences of democratic citizens.

The view that democracy can engender reflection on the circumstances surrounding the plight or privileged place of citizens in a polity may at first glance seem like a fairly uncontroversial perspective. By virtue of their right to freely participate in the public sphere, democratic citizens of different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds can both individually and in association with others speak to their interests, needs, grievances, or aspirations. In the process, they offer one another narratives about their experiences and invoke the underlying values and beliefs that sustain their identity.

All this is fairly uncontroversial, indeed. But what remains at issue is the ongoing mediation (i.e. democratization) of beliefs and identities and the resulting reform of social practices and institutions that such exchanges set in motion. Democratic rights and freedoms enable citizens to constantly challenge and amend the wisdom of received ideas and to debate the ostensible hegemony of social and political values. But they do so by constantly traversing the boundaries of the universal and the particular, by recognizing the contingencies of daily life and yet aiming for a consensus on the terms of coexistence.

Rational discussion and mutual respect are both important ideals in a democratic setting, but how they are conceived of by different publics and eventually honored (or not) as political norms worthy of routine observation is as central to accounts of democratic

33 For an excellent explication of Dewey’s conception of democracy as a reflexive construct, see Axel Honneth, “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation: John Dewey and the Theory of Democracy Today,” Political Theory 26:6 (December 1998), pp. 763-783, and James Bohman, “Democracy as Inquiry, Inquiry as Democratic: Pragmatism, Social Science, and the Cognitive Division of Labor,” American Journal of Political Science 43:2 (April 1999), pp. 590-607.

79 legitimacy as the observance of periodic elections or separation of powers. A contextual conception of democracy, therefore, would emphasize the complex hybridity that underlies and enables the realization of an “overlapping consensus”.

III ISLAM VERSUS DEMOCRACY: A CRITIQUE

Islam, often misunderstood as the overriding culture or civilization of more than a billion and a half adherents, has been variously described as both accommodating of and impervious to universal democratic values. In each case, it is only Islamic jurisprudence or Islamic cultural practices that are considered as constitutive of social and political life in the societies under consideration. A whole set of other cultural attributes such as national or ethnic creed, racial or gender identity, class-induced grievances and rights, other linguistic and religious practices, or power imbalances are assumed to be either derivative of the overall Islamic framework or secondary in the order of influence to it.

Worse still, Islam is often discussed on the account of its particularistic values and injunctions when in fact it is decidedly a universal doctrine (much like the other

Abrahamic religions) in both substance and scope. It aspires to provide a comprehensive framework as regards justice, and purports to offer a path toward universal salvation. To be sure, as a comprehensive doctrine, Islam does figure prominently in the cultural practices of its adherents – and here its influence is a matter of degree and not absolute – but on the whole it remains only one aspect of social and political identity in predominantly Muslim societies. Culture is an important aspect of political life, but it is neither a monolith nor entirely indigenous to a particular history and set of traditions; it is not a stable and closed-off entity either, but is rather open-ended and always in the process of being cultivated.

80 Contemporary encounters with Islam and democracy in political theory often ignore the quite variegated historical, geographical, and social contexts in which Islamic and democratic values intermingle and operate. This oversight presents significant ethical problems for understanding the relationship between Islam and politics, but especially for thinking about democracy in Muslim societies.34 It creates a false dichotomy between

Islam and democracy, where the real issue concerns the negotiation of a set of universal and particular values in the context of complex political struggles. It is not the predominance of Islamic beliefs in most Arab and Muslim societies that has kept them from becoming democratic, but rather the trying political circumstances under which the struggle for democracy has/is taken/taking place. Conventional conceptions of “culture” must be broadened to include the full spectrum of (oft-conflicting) beliefs and ideas advanced and fought for by human beings as historical agents. It is the central argument of this chapter, therefore, that democratic theory needs a better understanding of both historical and political context, one that appreciates the circumstances surrounding the adoption or blockage of democratic norms and practices by human agents living in non- democracies. I shall undertake this task through an examination of hitherto under- explored works in non-Western political theory – by Muslim and non-Muslim thinkers alike – that have grappled with the plurality of comprehensive views and political positions in Muslim societies, and not merely with “Islamic identity” as such.

Although some of what bedevils contemporary inquiries about democracy in

Muslim societies is undoubtedly due to the orientation of certain thinkers within

34 By “Muslim societies” I mean societies in which the majority of population happen to be Muslim. I especially do not mean to infer that these majorities are strict adherents of Islam, however. But to merely suggest the existence of a common religious heritage in the same manner that one would observe Christian- , Hindu- or Jewish-majority societies in Germany, India and Israel respectively. Throughout this study, I shall use the terms “Muslim-majority” and “Muslim” societies interchangeably.

81 particular ‘democratic traditions’ (see Chapter 1), much of it stems from an impoverished understanding of the place and influence of religion (as a rubric for identity and mobilization) in society. Hence, most considerations of the development and future of democratic politics in Muslim societies are inevitably framed in terms of the “Islam and democracy compatibility” thesis, a false binary. This imprudent privileging of Islam, to be sure, is not of recent vintage, and in fact its origins can be traced back to the eighteenth-century “Orientalist” depictions of Muslim and Middle Eastern societies as monolithic entities, united by a singular religio-cultural “essence”.35 These abstract representations of Islam as the dominant determinant of identity politics and social mobilization in Muslim societies have left a lasting (and very damaging) impression in the Western political and philosophical imagination.

It was little wonder, then, that in the period immediately after the end of the Cold

War, Samuel Huntington’s infamous “Clash of Civilizations” thesis garnered such serious, near-universal attention in the policy and academic circles for its alarmist predictions about “the fault lines between Western and Islamic civilizations.”36

Huntington’s core thesis declared, “The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations.”37 In arguing this, Huntington was

35 For a comprehensive study of Orientalist depictions of Muslim and Middle Eastern cultures, see Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978) and Maxime Rodinson, Europe and the Mystique of Islam (New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.). See also Said’s Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1993) and Covering Islam (New York: Vintage, 1997). 36 Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Summer 1993), p. 31. Huntington later expanded the article (and his thesis) into a book, see Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998). 37 Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” p. 22.

82 aided by the British Orientalist scholar of Islam, Bernard Lewis, whose article on “The

Roots of Muslim Rage” had earlier warned of an impending backlash from an increasingly inert and resentful “ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the world-wide expansion of both.”38 Indeed, the reaction against

Huntington’s thesis was equally wide-ranging and swift, but it was – and still remains to this day – striking how very few of his critics actually took issue with Huntington’s problematic merging of disparate and estranged communities of different ethnic, linguistic, national, and religious backgrounds into a unified “civilizational” cohort.39

Most critics took issue with the characterization of “the Islamic civilization” as an inherently decadent and violent force in international politics; others pointed to the differentiated practice of Islam (the Sunni-Shi’a split, moderates versus radicals, secular versus fundamentalist) in different regions of Huntington’s vast geographic canvas (Arab

Muslims being different from Kurdish, Turkic or Persian Muslims, who are different from the Muslims of South Asia, who are still very different from East Asian Muslims).

In short, what rattled most observers was not the existence of an “Islamic civilization” per se, but its monolithic representation in Huntington’s terms.40

Of course, Orientalist scholars are not alone in thinking about Islam in macro- historical – indeed, civilizational – terms. There is a very long and consistent tradition in

Muslim societies of religious intellectuals and Islamist movements who regard Islam as

38 Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” The Atlantic Monthly, 266 (September 1990), p. 60. 39 Notable exceptions included, Edward W. Said, “The Clash of Ignorance,” The Nation, 22 October 2001; and Fred Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996), Part Two. 40 It is important to note, moreover, that Huntington’s article appeared soon after yet another sweeping thesis, by Francis Fukuyama, about the purported triumph of liberal-democratic values in the great ideological battle between the capitalist West and Soviet Communism, and humanity’s arrival at “the end of history”. See, Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).

83 the constitutive force in the social and political lives of Muslims. It is simply beyond the scope of my inquiry here to offer a comprehensive summary of the main schools of thought – radical, conservative and reformist – that constitute this cohort. Suffice it to say that although each of these approaches has different interpretations of Islamic ethics, authority, jurisprudence, culture, and modernity, they are all united in their understanding of Islam as the overriding political force in society – i.e. of the need for Muslims to infuse their political beliefs with religious values.

As the Iranian social theorist, Asef Bayat, has correctly shown, “Islamism emerged as the language of self-assertion to mobilize those (largely middle-class high achievers) who felt marginalized by the dominant economic, political, or cultural processes in their societies, those for whom the perceived failure of both capitalist modernity and socialist utopia made the language of morality, through religion a substitute for politics.”41 Indeed, the so-called “Islamist turn” had its genesis in the political reaction against the authoritarian policies of highly secular, yet corrupt and westernized, elites and strongmen. By the middle of the twentieth century, prominent

Muslim thinkers and political activists such as Jalal Al-e Ahmad (Iran), Sayyid Qutb

(Egypt), and Abul A’la Mawdudi (Pakistan), were blaming the relative backwardness and decadence of their societies on the “westoxication” and overt “materialism” of the elite and political classes.42 They argued that the failure of various modernizing projects had proved that only religion – Islam – could serve as an authentic force in once again unifying society and forging bonds among the faithful. Politically, this quasi-nativist

41 Asef Bayat, Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), p. 6. 42 Ale- Ahmad coined the term “westoxication” (gharbzadegi) in his book, Occidentosis: A Plague from the West (1962), which bemoaned the loss of local cultural values and industry due to national leaders’ worship of western material culture and modernism.

84 ideology had profound implications for Muslim-majority countries. In Iran, an Islamic cleric named Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini not only managed to unify otherwise disparate and rival political factions to overthrow the Pahlavi monarchy, but proceeded to institute a uniquely theocratic republic based on certain Islamic precepts. Elsewhere, movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Jama’at-e-Islami mounted effective challenges against liberal and secular political ideologies and called for the “revival” of

Islam and Shari’a rule. In almost every case, however, Islamist movements were aided by non-practicing, secular individuals and groups of diverse ethnic and political backgrounds. Therefore, although Islam played an important rhetorical role in crafting a common vocabulary against inauthenticity and injustice, the Islamist political agenda (i.e. establishing an Islamic state) enjoyed very little support among the public.

The cumulative impact of such overstatements about the all-encompassing role of

Islam in society on contemporary scholarship, however insidious or wishful, has been quite considerable. Much effort has been concentrated on studying such elusive topics as

“Muslim exceptionalism”, “the Muslim democracy gap”, “Islam and authoritarianism”,

“Islam and secularism”, and a host of other suggestive conjectures premised entirely on the predominant position of Islam in the social and political imagination of Muslim- majority societies.43 These are the kinds of topics frequently taken up by “scholar- experts” who are typically fixated by the “compatibility” question as regards the

43 Among the most well-known studies in this area are, Sanford A. Lakoff, “The Reality of Muslim Exceptionalism,” Journal of Democracy 15 (October 2004), pp. 133-139; Daniela Donno and Bruce Russett, "Islam, Authoritarianism, and Female Empowerment: What Are the Linkages?" World Politics (July 2004), pp. 582-607; Martin Kramer, “Islam vs. Democracy,” in Martin Kramer, Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996), pp. 265-78; Shlomo Avineri, “Failed Democratization in the Arab World,” Dissent 49 (Fall 2002), pp. 21-25; M. Steven Fish, “Islam and Authoritarianism,” World Politics 55 (October 2002), pp. 4-37; S.V.R. Nasr, “Democracy and Islamic Revivalism,” Political Science Quarterly 110 (Summer 1995), pp. 261-285; and Adrian Karatnychy, “Muslim Countries and the Democracy Gap,” Journal of Democracy 13 (January 2002), pp. 99-112.

85 relationship between Islam and liberal-democratic values, and whose interests in the subject matter stem primarily from a policy point of view. They tend to rely exclusively on arbitrary measurements of factors such as patriarchy, economic development, religiosity, literacy, women’s empowerment, political representation and governance, ethnic and sociolinguistic diversity, oil and gas resources, etc. that are compiled and offered as datasets by policy think tanks and government agencies such as Freedom

House and the Polity IV Project.44 This is not to say that careful studies of these rubrics and surveys cannot yield illuminating results (they most certainly have45), but merely to point out their problematic adoption of incredibly complex and contextual social and political phenomena in the form of non-ambiguous, highly correlated definitions and concepts. If one begins with the assumption that Islamic beliefs and values are what distinguishes Muslim-majority countries from other societies without taking into account the storied role of Muslim citizens as agents and interpreters of their political circumstances and dilemmas, then any hypothesis about the compatibility of Islam and democracy is bound to be either over-determined or highly reductive.46 In part, the

44 Most of the data used by scholars working on issues related to Islam and democracy is gathered by Freedom House, “an independent non-governmental organization” that “functions as a catalyst for freedom, democracy and the rule of law through its analysis, advocacy and action.” See Freedom House’s “Mission Statement” at www.freedomhouse.org. The Polity IV Project is in part supported by the Central Intelligence Agency as part of its Political Instability Task Force. 45 See Alfred Stepan and Graeme B. Robertson, "An ‘Arab' More than a ‘Muslim' Electoral Gap," Journal of Democracy 15 (October 2003), pp. 30-44; Robert W. Hefner, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); and Mary Ann Tetreault, “Patterns of Culture and Democratization in Kuwait,” Studies in Comparative International Development 30 (Summer 1995), pp. 26-44. 46 A good examples of this is the much-cited study on “Islam and Authoritarianism” by M. Steven Fish, who states his intentions as thus: “… I am interested in whether Islamic societies are more or less resistant to democratization than others. I am not concerned with whether a society that is one-tenth Muslim is more or less likely to have an authoritarian regime that is a society that is one-eighth Muslim… I do not wish to test whether Muslims per se are good or bad for democracy but rather am asking whether polities whose populations are predominantly Muslim – crudely put, ‘Muslim countries’ – are more or less hospitable for democracy. My working assumption, therefore, is that the tipping point, if there is one, at which Islam matters for democracy is predominance, meaning that Islam is the country’s main religious tradition.” M.

86 poverty of these approaches is revealed by the actual events and dynamics on the ground in Muslim countries, where the spontaneous development of grassroots social and political movements (e.g. teachers and labor unions, women’s groups, religious organizations, university students, artists and writers guilds, human rights groups, etc.) struggling for civil rights and democracy has a decidedly pluralistic character, and is in any event a response to the authoritarian actions of the political regimes in charge. In these contexts, religion does not enjoy a monopoly over other worldviews or social preoccupations; it may very well be that Islamic arguments can be manipulated to justify arbitrary exercises of power and social imbalances, but that only goes to highlight the priority of political agendas and worldly machinations over religion.

Most tragically, however, these arguments obscure the highly differentiated interpretations of core religious precepts and values within Islam itself. They paper over the very pronounced theological differences between Shi’a, Sunni, Sufi, Ibadi (the last remaining branch of the Kharijite sect), and a host of other related sects and faiths within

Islam.47 Understanding this diversity of interpretive traditions within Islam is important not because of what it might convey about the various manifestations of Islamic beliefs in different regions and societies (interesting and highly valuable in its own framework though this exercise may be), but for what it suggests about the political differences that

Steven Fish, “Islam and Authoritarianism,” p. 7. Fish’s quantitative analysis reveals higher instances of authoritarian government and repression of women in countries with Islamic religious traditions. But his analysis does not address the high degree of volatility associated with such trends. For instance, as the case of Iran will make clear in the next chapter, instances of authoritarianism and female repression have fluctuated from decade to decade without any discernible relationship with each other. 47 To complicate matters even more, each of these sects contain within them different schools of thought and value systems. For instance, within Shi’a Islam there are Twelvers, Ismailis, Alawites, Alevis, and Zaidites; Sunnis Islam includes, most prominently, the Hanafi, Shafi’I, Maliki, and Hanbali schools of thought; Sufism encompasses the Qadiri, Bektashi, Naqshabadi, Oveissi, Chishti, and Suhrovardi schools; and there still exist a whole range of heterodox and related sects such as Ahmadi, Mahdavi, Baabi, and Bahai, which, although very small and marginal to the main traditions, have nonetheless figured prominently in the politics of the societies in which they are practiced.

87 such views give expression to. For instance, how a minority Sunni elite might come to rule over a majority Shi’a population – as was the case under the Ba’ath Party in Iraq – is less a predicament pertaining to the incommensurability of religious views and liberal- democratic values than it is a commentary on the contingency of historical circumstance

(the legacy of Western imperialism) and the absurdities of certain political considerations

(imperial, nationalist, or even religious). And so it was that in 1954-63 an Arab Ba’athist socialist insurgency calling for a unified Arab “resistance” against Western imperial influence in the region managed to successfully overthrow two Western-backed dictatorships in Syria and Iraq, replacing them with powerful secular minorities instead

(Alawi Shi’as in Syria and Sunnis in Iraq). Indeed, the sectarian tensions between majority/minority Shi’a/Sunni was largely irrelevant to the cause of independence and

Arab nationalism in each of these countries (as well as in Egypt) at this time. It would not be until the rise of Islamism as a political force in the late 1970s and after that religious affiliation becomes a political issue in the wider Arab world. Any framework of analysis that would privilege the role of Islam in politics prior to these developments risks reducing the very complex and contingent dynamics between religion, secularism, socioeconomic processes of modernization, and above all geopolitics in Muslim-majority societies to a set of dependent variables.

I want to be clear, however, that by rejecting these approaches I do not wish to suggest that analyses of religion have nothing to add when considering the obstacles to political development or democratic reform in Muslim societies. To the contrary, religious beliefs and arguments about the place of religion in politics have historically played an important role in the development of democracy in both Western and non-

88 Western societies. What I wish to contest is the prevailing view most influentially posited by Alfred Stepan in his study of the “Twin Tolerations” that in these societies “the major conflict for a long period of time was precisely over the place of religion in the polity,” and that “this conflict was politically contained or neutralized only after long public arguments and negotiations in which religion was the dominant item on the political agenda.”48 Highlighting the case of the Netherlands in 1917, Stepan argues that “religious conflicts were eventually taken off the political agenda of majority decision-making by a democratic – but not liberal or secular – consociational agreement that allocated funds, spaces, and mutual vetoes to religious communities with competing comprehensive doctrines.”49 While this may certainly have been true in the case of comprehensive religious doctrines, it is puzzling why Stepan is not willing to extend the argument to include other, non-religious comprehensive doctrines as well. He goes on to argue that

“Liberal arguing has a place in democracy, but it would empty meaning and history out of political philosophy if we did not leave room for democratic bargaining and the non- liberal public argument within religious communities that it sometimes requires.”50

But this point begs the obvious question: could the decline in religious conflicts also have come about due to the ascendance of liberal or secular arguments about the inherent value and benefits of democratic bargaining as a means of reducing social conflicts in general? Religious leaders may find it beneficial to participate in democratic bargaining in order to reduce the likelihood of conflict between them, but even

48 Alfred Stepan, “Religion, Democracy, and the ‘Twin Tolerations’,” Journal of Democracy 11:4 (October 2000), p. 45. 49 Stepan also adds, “And proponents of the democratic bargain are often able to win over their fellow believers only by employing arguments that are not conceptually freestanding but deeply embedded in their own religious community’s comprehensive doctrine.” Ibid. Italics in the original. 50 Ibid., pp.45-6.

89 predominantly religious societies include individuals and groups for whom democratic exchange is a means to achieving basic rights and freedoms that are in essence quite separate from or counter-claims to religion (e.g. cultural or ethnic autonomy, economic or gender equality, or the right to free speech and due process). Indeed, as Corey

Brettschneider has shown, for any kind of democratic bargaining – involving religious comprehensive views or not – to be successfully carried out, there must first exist a mutual recognition of the “core values of democracy: equality of interests, political autonomy, and reciprocity.”51 Democratic bargaining of the sort Stepan refers to, therefore, can arise in multiple contexts and among different comprehensive doctrines, and not only out of a religious context. What is important to keep in mind from the standpoint of my argument is the all-important notion that even in societies where a majority of the population shares the same religious background, religion is still only one rubric for identity and mobilization among many others that may necessitate democratic thought and bargaining. As I will demonstrate below in my discussion of cases in

Muslim-majority countries, indeed a whole host of feminist, human rights, youth, and, yes, religious activists have been and are struggling for basic rights and freedoms; but what is important to note in each case is the political (as opposed to religious) nature and form of argumentation presented by these activists. At the top of their agenda is not the concern about the relationship between Islam and democracy (even though for some this may certainly be the issue), but rather the lack of basic rights and freedom afforded to them by deeply entrenched interests in charge of their governments.

51 Corey L. Brettschneider, Democratic Rights: The Substance of Self-Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 9. Italics in the original. As Brettschneider explains, “These values are central to the idea of democracy because they support the notion of democratic citizens as free, equal, and reasonable rulers.”

90 In normative political theory, discussions about the role of Islam in politics have largely been confined to ideal-typical examinations of the meeting point between theology and philosophy. Contrary to the macro-historical methodology employed by comparative politics scholars, political theorists have sought to directly engage with the ideas generated by prominent Muslim intellectuals and religious scholars.52 As such, studies of Islam in political theory tend to employ an interpretive methodology that takes the role of ideas, historical texts, and Muslim citizens as political agents much more seriously than other modes of inquiry. Yet, whereas in the literature in comparative politics most discussions revolve around the “compatibility thesis,” in political theory the debate is framed in terms of the possibilities or desirability of an “Islamic democracy”. In recent years, quite a few Muslim and non-Muslim legal and political theorists have argued that in matters of law and government, Islamic Shari’ah law can provide ample resources for democratic exchange and dialogue between citizens: concepts such as ‘aqd

(contract), shura (consultative deliberation), huquq (rights), al-masalih al-mursalah (the public interest), ijma (consensus), ijtihad (independent interpretive judgment), to mention a few – these concepts, it has been argued, can be employed to endorse core democratic values and ideals.53 Indeed, Muslim scholars have offered various interpretations of these

52 For excellent contributions in this area, see Hamid Dabashi, Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2005); Hamid Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Thought (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1982); Roxane L. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); and chapters by Roxane L. Euben, Nancy J. Hirschmann, Ahmet Davutoglu, Manouchehr Dorraj and Robert C. Johansen in Fred Dallmayr, ed., Border Crossings: Toward a Comparative Political Theory (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1999). 53 John Esposito and John Voll, eds., Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Khaled Abou El Fadl, Islam and the Challenge of Democracy. Edited by Joshua Cohen and Deborah Chasman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); Abdou Filali-Ansary, “Muslims and Democracy,” in Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner and Daniel Brumberg eds., Islam and Democracy in the Middle East (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 193-207; Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and International Law (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996); Charles Kurzman, ed. Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook (Oxford: Oxford

91 concepts in order to assure devout Muslims that their religious traditions and ways of life can be preserved under a democratic form of government. As Khaled Abou El-Fadl has argued, democracy provides the best possible means to preserving Islam’s core ideals:

“… democracy – by assigning equal rights of speech, association, and suffrage to all – offers the greatest potential for promoting justice and protecting human dignity, without making God responsible for injustice or the degradation of human beings… A constitutional democracy … acknowledges the errors of judgment, temptations, and vices associated with human fallibility by enshrining some basic moral standards in a constitutional document – moral standards that acknowledge the dignity of individuals. To be sure, democracy does not ensure justice. But it does establish a basis for pursuing justice and thus for fulfilling a fundamental responsibility assigned by God to each one of us.”54

This is a sentiment shared by many religious intellectuals for whom cohabitation between

Islam and core democratic values is not only possible, but also necessary.55 However, most of these views are undermined at the outset by the abstract and static manner in which they treat politics in Muslim societies, and by their lack of attention to the role of

Muslim citizens as agents and interpreters of Islamic and democratic ideas. As I argued earlier, Muslim societies are characterized by higher degrees of pluralism and differentiation than most observers and scholars of Islam allow. Islam may very well constitute the comprehensive religious doctrine of most citizens in Muslim societies, but this fact does not necessitate the practice of an Islamic form of democracy, but rather a

University Press, 1998); Abdolkarim Soroush, [translated by Mahmoud and Ahmad Sadri] Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 54 Khaled Abou El Fadl, Islam and the Challenge of Democracy. Edited by Joshua Cohen and Deborah Chasman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 5-6. 55 For instance, the Iranian religious philosopher, Abdolkarim Soroush, has also argued, “Just as being humane is the condition of the truth of religion, so it will have to be the condition of the legitimacy of the government as well. Observing human rights (such as justice, freedom, and so on) guarantees not only the democratic character of a government, but also its religious character.” Abdolkarim Soroush, [translated by Mahmoud and Ahmad Sadri] Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam, p. 129.

92 form of democratic politics that respects Islamic culture and practice alongside other social and political values.

Implicit in these arguments, moreover, is the disposition to separate the moral doctrine of Islam from the political context in which it operates, in order, as Andrew

March has argued, “to clarify our understanding of the sources of moral disagreement and what is required for principled moral reconciliation [between Islamic and liberal democratic values].”56 Of great importance to March is unearthing the sites and depths of

“moral disagreement” between these value systems:

“By studying the patterns of moral disagreements in their specific points of contact, by studying Islamic moral commitments in terms of a juridical and ethical tradition, and by abstracting ourselves from a political analysis of current events to something like an ideal moral encounter, it is possible to better understand whether a given political conflict actually has at its root a principled moral disagreement between competing ethical systems.”57

In so doing, moreover, March downplays the role of Muslims as social agents, ever entangled in a web of relations with one another as well as with people of different views and backgrounds. It is precisely such an endeavor (i.e. the search for an ideal overlapping consensus), however, that ignores the fact of value pluralism and the role of Muslims as agents in Muslim-majority societies. For any ideal encounter between Islam and liberal democracy must necessarily involve the vast array of claims and counter-claims registered on behalf of other interests, identities and rights. As I highlighted earlier, adherence to Islam is highly differentiated across the Muslim world and is often informed by a host of other local values and traditions. For instance, more than 90 percent of

56 Andrew F. March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p.7. 57 Ibid. Italics in the original.

93 Iranians identify themselves as Shi’a Muslims, but Iranians are also differentiated ethnically as Persian, Azeri, Kurdish, Balouchi, Gilaki and Mazandarani, Lur, and Arab peoples, each with their own distinct socio-linguistic practices and traditions. So although they may share a common adherence to Shi’a Islam, their attitudes toward the relationship between Islamic and liberal democratic values are informed by the political and historical circumstances in which as individuals or a cohort they find themselves.

Indeed, this has precisely been the case in Iran throughout the past century (especially since the time of the constitutional revolution in 1905-11) as ethnic minorities have sought to assert their autonomy and attain special cultural rights (and this only highlights the case of ethnic minorities; the picture becomes even more complex once we consider the role of women’s groups, religious minorities, the working classes, the bazaar merchants and entrenched economic interests, unions and other interest groups).

It is therefore a futile exercise, in my view, to think of an encounter between

Islam and liberal democracy in the absence of other factors, but especially if such an endeavor aims for an ideal “moral consensus”. As March himself concedes, “It is…not easy in the case of actual individuals or communities to cleanly separate commitment to an identity from commitment to beliefs.”58 Curiously, however, he seeks to overcome this dilemma by only engaging with “internal Islamic sources” and “doctrinal arguments” pertaining to democratic citizenship of Muslims.59 This move, while well intentioned and widely held among political theorists, contributes to the objectification of Islam as a self-

58 Ibid. p. 9. As he correctly elaborates, “Furthermore, the commitment to a certain social identity can be an important factor in the selection of beliefs. Where what we can call identity commitments and belief commitments overlap, it might be impossible to identify primary motivations.” 59 It is important to note that March is mainly concerned with issues concerning Muslim citizenship in Western liberal democratic societies. This does not, however, invalidate the central concern of my critique that an ideal-typical moral encounter between Islam and liberal democratic values greatly mischaracterize the role of Muslims as agents and interpreters of their socio-historical and political predicaments.

94 contained, fairly static bundle of moral and juridical principles, and of Muslims as passive, undifferentiated carriers of such beliefs. By solely examining ideal readings of internal Islamic sources independent of socio-historical and political contexts in which they are actually interpreted and argued against, the agency of Muslims as individuals or even a cohort is severely undermined. In this sense, separating the power-political context from the moral context in hopes of attaining a moral consensus runs counter to the spirit and letter of democracy, which are at bottom about the peaceful management of political conflict and moral disagreement between a plurality of worldviews, traditions, and comprehensive beliefs. It would be more fruitful, as I will demonstrate in the following section, to view the role of Muslims as agents and that of Islamic values as a belief structure as mutually constitutive of one another, and then set about searching for favorable circumstances under which coexistence in the face of disagreement may be possible. This would first require, however, an appreciation for Muslims as agents, and not mere carriers of an Islamic “essence” or “identity”.

To speak of democracy is to conjure up a political form as well as a political value.60 For democracy is as much about the clash of interests, values, beliefs and ideas of differentiated social groups and individuals of diverse backgrounds as it is about the battle over the institutions, values, and ideals underlying democracy itself. In each case, what animates and enables such exchanges and struggles, shortcomings and triumphs are

60 This assertion may seem fairly intuitive and uncontroversial at first glance, but as John Dunn convincingly demonstrated in his historical study of the development of democratic ideals and institutions, the very political circumstances under which both the form(s) and value(s) of democracy have been and are continuously negotiated are often overlooked. As he aptly puts it, “For us, democracy is both a form of government and a political value. We quarrel fiercely, if confusedly, over how far the value vindicates or indicts our own practices of government; but we also quarrel over how far the same value is practically coherent, or desirable in its prospective consequences in different circumstances, on any scale between an individual family or domestic unit and the entire human population of a still painfully disunited globe.” Dunn, John. 2005. Democracy: A History. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. p. 17.

95 the politics of everyday life (be they informed by religion, class, gender, race, or any other rubric) that form the threads out of which the fabric of democracy is woven together. Most importantly, however, this fact confirms the priority of politics over democracy: politics precede their management by any form of government. This is not merely because, as in Aristotle’s account, human beings are political animals by nature; but rather because membership in any human society necessarily involves a consideration of the nature and exercise of authority and power in that society. In this sense, any account of democracy that would privilege or isolate certain aspects of social identity (or certain social factors) over and apart from other political currents affecting attitudes and beliefs in society is bound to offer only a partial picture of the human dynamics at work.

While most works in contemporary democratic theory have been impressive in their conscious avoidance of such oversights, as the preceding discussion illustrates, the substance and tenor of discussion becomes decidedly more abstract and reductive when dealing with democratic impulses and movements in Muslim societies.

Democratic theorists have found it especially difficult to mediate between the universal and the particular when discussing Islam and democracy. This is mainly due to the stubborn belief that (a) democratic norms and values are freestanding principles that can have meaning independent of particular contexts, and (b) Islamic norms and values are necessarily particularistic, devoid of and immune to societal influences. These convictions run counter to the actual historical encounter between Islam and democracy in the Muslim world. No successful democracy has ever been achieved based on a ready- made template, but rather cultivated and struggled for over time. Yearning for democratic rights and values is always necessitated by particular circumstances, and in this regard

96 Muslim societies are no “exception”. As both a political form and a political value, democracy has always been justified in reference to particular histories and cultures. One only has to revisit the particular circumstances surrounding the Iranian, Turkish or

Lebanese experiences to better appreciate the degree to which the particular and the universal constitute one another. But to say that religio-cultural values do (and ought to) form a prominent part of the democratic experience is not to suggest that democratic theory ought to give either religion or culture a privileged place, immune to rational dialogue and criticism. To the contrary, precisely because cultural practices and local values are historical constructs and as such subjected to contingent power relations and arbitrary authorities from time to time, their underlying principles and content may have to be scrutinized and reinterpreted over time. Accordingly, it may also be that certain universal injunctions would have to be reconsidered and reformulated so as to achieve the most just and democratic results. What all this suggests is that we can no longer afford to address democratic ideals and religio-cultural values as separate wholes. More importantly, it means that an adequate theory of democracy must provide an inclusive account of the symbiotic relationship between universal principles and particular values, not in order to acclimate one to another, but to demonstrate how they are constantly negotiated, amended and in conversation with one another.

CONCLUSION

That democracy is experienced differently in different societies while embodying the same ideals across all societies is evidence enough of an urgent need for a normative account of its versatile and reflexive characteristics. A contextual conception of democracy, I have argued above, would place an emphasis on how context (individual,

97 collective, historical, socioeconomic, etc.) affects the legitimacy of democratic ideals, institutions, and practices. It does so, furthermore, not in order to provide a singular or synthetic theory of democracy, but simply to broaden the field of inquiry as regards the sources of democratic legitimacy. Democracy’s appeal and inclusive functioning, it seems to me, stem to a great extent from the way in which the pursuit and struggle for, and the continual elaboration of, democratic ideals reflect and speak to the multiplicity of voices and experiences in any given society. As such, the contextual theorist is not only concerned with what democratic representation and decision-making ought to look like in society, but also more importantly with how arguments and interests might be represented, and how an overlapping consensus might be achieved.

Toward this end, democratic theory must pay more attention to the social construction of democratic norms and ideals: how they are mutually constituted by certain agents and structures through continual acts of trial and error, and sustained by discourses of hope and visions of justice. Related to this is the importance of modes of public discourse and historical narratives in shaping the views of individuals and groups vying for attention and seeking influence in society. Normative theorizing must become sensitive to how moral sentiments (be they democratic or non-democratic) affect citizens’ views about democratic ideals.61 This awareness, in turn, requires a greater appreciation of how such views can inform human agency in ways that can work both for and against democracy. Moreover, the affective dimension of politics deserves special attention in comparative inquiries in democratic theory where oftentimes either too much or too little

61 Sharon Krause illuminates this issue by advancing a new reading of moral sentiments that “makes distinctions between the legitimate and illegitimate influence of passions on public deliberation.” See, Sharon R. Krause, Civil Passions: Moral Sentiments and Democratic Deliberation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 200.

98 attention is accorded to the politico-historical context in which certain comprehensive values are privileged or underemphasized. Good examples of this are inquiries about the relationship between democratic ideals and religion in non-Western societies. Such inquiries, as in the case of Muslim-majority societies, too often treat religious traditions and values as all encompassing or at a minimum constitutive of citizens’ political views.

A contextual reading of democracy in such comparative settings, however, would instead broaden the focus to a range of factors (e.g. class, gender, ethnicity, as well as religion) affecting political activity, and then proceed to offer normative prescriptions based on an assessment of which factors best contribute to democratic legitimacy.

Lastly, the possibilities for normative theorizing expand significantly once we acknowledge the hybridity of democracy as both a form of government and a political value, as John Dunn has shown.62 For democratic values to have legitimacy, they must speak to the particular historical traditions of the society and be mediated through the everyday practices of politics. Democratic ideals are only universal in the sense that they lend themselves to translation by local actors and can be endorsed by a diverse range of comprehensive views. The main question, therefore, is not about “compatibility” of universal rights with certain local values, but rather about the political circumstances surrounding the articulation, mediation and adoption of such rights and values.

Unfortunately, we do not always know what the favorable historical and political conditions for establishing democracy are, but this does not mean that we must abandon

62 As Dunn eloquently argues, “For us, democracy is both a form of government and a political value. We quarrel fiercely, if confusedly, over how far the value vindicates or indicts our own practices of government; but we also quarrel over how far the same value is practically coherent, or desirable in its prospective consequences in different circumstances, on any scale between an individual family or domestic unit and the entire human population of a still painfully disunited globe. John Dunn, Democracy: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005), p. 17.

99 the everyday practices of politics by agents who wish to bring it about. It may be that their efforts turn out to be futile, incoherent, or even contradictory to their aims, but such is the plight of the democratic citizen. Democratic theory, it seems to me, can take account of the contingency and diversity of such struggles from a distinctly normative standpoint. Such has been my attempt, at any rate, at starting a conversation toward this end in the preceding.

100 CHAPTER 3

Borne by Context: the Quest for Democracy in Iran

The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when men seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle cries and costumes in order to present the new scene in this time-honored disguise and this borrowed language.1

- Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

INTRODUCTION

I began this project by offering a critical overview of the two dominant schools of thought in contemporary democratic theory, universalism and particularism. The danger of particularist approaches, I argued, is in their emphasis on only one aspect of local culture (e.g. religion) often to the exclusion of other important social and political factors

(e.g. ethnic, class, and gender identity) pertinent to liberal democratic values. Similarly, I argued that those who emphasize the priority of universal ideals over local traditions and values often neglect the important role played by historical and political circumstances in the adoption or blockage of such ideals. In contrast to those approaches, I offered a contextual theory of democratic legitimacy, which argued that in order to understand the appeal, development and internalization of democratic values over time one must look to the reflective capacity of democracy to be responsive to the vicissitudes of context, both local and global. Furthermore, I offered a critique of contemporary normative theories of

“Islamic democracy” that seek to justify religious tenets and government in democratic terms. Islam, I noted, is but a factor among many other socioeconomic, political, and

1 Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” Selected Works (Moscow, 1958), I, p. 247.

101 cultural factors necessitating democratic change and reform in Muslim-majority societies.

It would be a misreading of popular struggles for greater rights and freedoms in the Arab and Islamic world to view them only through particularist (e.g. Islamic) or universalist

(e.g. liberal) perspectives. Attention to context, I asserted, illuminates the process by which citizens come to demand and affirm democratic values, and the reification of diverse societies as monolithic wholes.

In this chapter, I wish to offer an empirical demonstration of the theory of contextual democracy through a case study of the century-long struggle for democracy in

Iran. In particular, I will endeavor to show how the contemporary “Green Movement” in

Iran is simply the latest manifestation of a long list of pro-democracy groups and movements seeking to combine a longstanding constitutional tradition with democratic values. Contrary to the assertions of particularist theorists, however, the goals and aspirations of the green movement (and those of movements preceding it) are not reducible to singular desires for secularism, liberal nationalism or religious democracy. In providing an account of the early constitutional period (1905-11), the era of Pahlavi monarchy (1925-1979), and the period of theocratic rule under the Islamic Republic regime (1979-present), I will provide a contextual framework for examining the vexed question of democracy in contemporary Iran. Specifically, I aim to draw on the long history of various intellectual struggles (liberal, secularist, and Islamic) in Iran in order to demonstrate how often non-statist and non-religious social movements have in the past succeeded (and might be succeeding today) in cultivating a genuinely contextual political space for democracy, one which resonates with Iranians and non-Iranians alike.

102 Accordingly, this chapter is divided into four sections. In the first section, I offer a brief overview of advent and current state of the Green Movement inside and outside of

Iran. This will not be accomplished by furnishing the reader with an exhaustive historical account of the obstacles endured and overcome by various activists, intellectuals, and interests groups within the movement, but by explicating the contextual framework that has guided their efforts. My aim here is to demonstrate how the daily struggles of present-day reformists and their detractors, regardless of their successes, setbacks, or disagreements with each other are a distinctly Iranian story of democratic engagement. In the second section, I revisit the earlier period of the Constitutional Revolution, and consider its enduring legacy in Iranian politics over the decades. My aim in this section is to lay out the contours of the main debates among religious intellectuals, secular nationalists, and liberal modernizers in order to demonstrate how they inform the contemporary debate over constitutionalism in Iran. In the third section I turn to the troubled periods of theocratic rule in Iran, when in the name of anti-imperialism, justice and Islamic liberation many of the achievements of constitutionalism (accomplished by both religious and secular activists) were rolled back. This period, I argue, represented a highly particularist phase in Iranian politics, one which the Green Movement is in the midst of constructing a democratic alternative to. In the last section, I consider the intellectual context guiding much of the debate about democracy and reform in Iran since the Constitutional Revolution in order to imagine how it might evolve to become more inclusive in scope and method.

My case study of Iran, therefore, places emphasis on the political development of

Iranian society, which has by no means been linear or monolithic. As such, I draw rather

103 heavily on Iranian sources in this chapter, which I hope will shed a bight and more intimate light on the plight of democracy over the past century in Iran. The central theme of this chapter is the claim that the “Green” awakening which has reinvigorated civil society and democratic struggle in Iran is distinguished by its focus on a contextual understanding of Iranian social and political history, by its reflexivity concerning its own philosophical aims and orientations, and by its engagement with trans-national, cross- cultural movements of similar ethical ambition and scope. This means that the diverse manifestations of this contextualist approach (e.g. feminist, secularist, religious, etc.) must be understood in terms of their evolution from purely universalistic or particularistic perspectives on democracy first. It is to a consideration of such a journey that I shall turn in the first two sections of this chapter: the legacy and continuing relevance of a tradition of constitutionalism in Iran.

I SEEKING DEMOCRACY: RADICAL CHANGE VS. REFORM

In the months following the disputed 2009 presidential elections in Iran, five prominent religious intellectuals – the philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush, progressive cleric Mohsen Kadivar, journalist and public intellectual Akbar Ganji, former member of parliament and Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Ataollah Mohajerani, and reformist intellectual and son of former Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, Abdol-ali

Bazargan – issued a widely circulated statement outlining a list of ten demands on behalf of the so-called “Green Movement,” which at the time was subjected to a harsh crackdown by various official and shadowy security outfits of the regime. In addition to calling for the resignation of President Ahmadinejad and the release of all political prisoners, the statement called on the regime to recognize “the right to free speech, press

104 and peaceful protest, in compliance with Article 27 of the Islamic Republic

Constitution.”2 Furthermore, it demanded a ban on any “interference by the military, security and police forces in politics, the economy, and cultural institutions” of the country, especially as regards the “surveillance and control of the universities.” The statement concluded by calling for the reform and establishment of an independent judiciary, and by demanding that “All ranked positions become elected ones with term limits.”3 Although the statement generated some dissent from secular humanist and feminist groups for its modesty and references to the Islamic Republic Constitution, the signatories were at pains to acknowledge the diversity of views represented in the Green

Movement. As Soroush acknowledged in an interview later, “This is a pluralistic movement, including believers and non-believers, socialists and liberals. There are all walks of life in the Green Movement. We tried to come up with the common points for all. We know there are many more demands, many more than these.”4

As such, the statement did not directly challenge the validity of the Constitution, nor did it object to the principle of Velayat-e Faqih (Rule of the Jurist), which bestows on a Supreme Leader the absolute power to provide “political guardianship” over the people.5 Instead, the signatories sought to reiterate the need for the reform of certain provisions and laws within the existing constitutional framework. As Soroush explained,

2 “Iranian Intellectuals List Demands of the Green Movement,” republished in Payvand, January 4, 2010, http://www.payvand.com/news/10/jan/1028.html (accessed July 28, 2010). 3 The statement also called for the “Immediate trials of the torturers, the operatives and the masterminds of the past crimes especially over the past few months,” and for “Giving political and financial independence to the seminary schools from the government; stopping the practice of buying the Friday prayer Imams for political goals.” Ibid. 4 Abdolkarim Soroush, “The Goals of the Green Movement,” New Perspectives Quarterly (Winter 2010), http://www.digitalnpq.org/articles/global/424/01-06-2010/abdolkarim_soroush (accessed July 28, 2010). 5 Ruhollah Khomeini, Hokoumat-e Eslami: Velayat-e Faqih (Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist), translated by Hamid Algar (London, UK: Alhoda, 2002).

105 “Maybe in the next stage they [the leaders of the opposition in Iran] may demand redrafting the constitution. But for now, they would like to work within the framework of the constitution, and we were careful not to trespass those limits.”6 Indeed in statements of their own, the leaders of the opposition in Iran – principally the reformist presidential candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, but also figures like former reformist president Mohammad Khatami – each had explicitly reaffirmed their allegiance to the constitution of the Islamic Republic but merely insisted on the observance of the republican principles (i.e. free and fair elections, freedom of assembly and the press, due process, and civil rights) enshrined in the constitution. Dismantling the Islamic Republic, they declared time and again, was not their intention.

However prudent the timing and wording of the statements may have been, they could not have been more at odds with the public sentiment on the streets of Tehran and other major cities where daily, spontaneous protests were taking place. The protests – broadcast and reported on the world over in the international media – featured chants such as “Independence, Freedom, Iranian [as opposed to “Islamic”] Republic,” “Where is my vote?” “Down with the Dictator” (a reference to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei), or “We want democracy.”7 As a BBC report explained at the time, “old chants are being reworked [sic] to emphasize Iranian identity over Islamic identity…. It is an appeal for a secular state and also for the freedoms people hoped they were going to get the first time the chant was used [at the time of the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah].”8 Indeed, not only did the religious intellectuals’ statement appear out of step with the public

6 Abdolkarim Soroush, “The Goals of the Green Movement,” New Perspectives Quarterly (Winter 2010). 7 “Iran Protesters Take to the Streets Despite Threats,” The New York Times, Jull 11, 2009: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/world/middleeast/11iran.html (accessed July 30, 2010). 8 “How Iran’s Opposition Inverts Old Slogans,” BBC World Service, December 7, 2009: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8386335.stm (accessed July 30, 2010).

106 sentiment at the height of the protests, it also angered many progressive, secular and women’s groups for whom the stated demands of the religious signatories were both conservative in scope and implicitly approving of the decidedly undemocratic and discriminatory constitutional principles of the Islamic Republic. Most prominent among the dissenters were a group of mostly exiled intellectuals called “The Secular Green

Movement,” who issued a fifteen-point comprehensive declaration of their own, which set out to directly challenge the religious foundation of the Islamic constitution. The first two points struck at the core of the problem:

1. We have recognized that the main historical problem of the Iranian people has been a perpetual suffering caused by different kinds of discrimination which have manifested themselves with regard to beliefs, opinions, religions, ethnicities, languages, sexuality, cultural values, and social opportunities. By declaring an official religion in the past, and due to 31-year-long governance by the clergies of the Imami Shiite sect, the number and depth of these discriminations have become threefold. 2. We find the key to resolve this historic problem in building a society that is governed by mundane laws created by the will of all Iranians, for all of them and in their service, regardless of any consideration for religious orientations, ethnic and sexual identities or cultural and lingual preferences. Such laws will not divide the nation into different categories of citizenship but will bestow law, order, resources and opportunities to every member of the society without any discrimination.9

The Secular Green Movement’s declaration, in other words, sought to give expression to some of the foundational problems (e.g. discrimination on the basis of religion, gender and sexuality, and cultural or ethnic identity) plaguing the current constitution. It thus demanded a complete revision of the special constitutional status accorded to Shi’a Islam as the official religion of Iran. Similarly, various feminists and women’s organizations

9 “A Declaration By the Secular Supporters of the Iranian Green Movement,” published by the Global Network of Iranian Green Seculars, January 2010: http://www.seculargreens.com/English-Section.htm (accessed July 30, 2010).

107 refused to adopt the cautious approach of religious intellectuals in their calls for change.

As the Nobel laureate, lawyer and activist, Shirin Ebadi, put it in a recent editorial, the fundamental grievances of many Iranian women and citizens concern the discriminatory nature of the Islamic Republic Constitution itself, not a particularly ultra-conservative reading of it:

Iran today is a country where women are more educated than their male compatriots; more than 60% of university students are female, as are many university professors. Iranian women obtained the right to vote and become members of parliament half a century ago – earlier than women in Switzerland, who achieved this right in 1971. Since that time at least a small number have been present in Iran's parliament. Even the present parliament, which is monopolised by hardliners, has 13 women members. In governments, women have often held senior positions. Even the health minister in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's cabinet is a woman. All this is proof that women have managed to rise within the ranks of the fundamentalists. And yet despite the cultural, social and historical heritage of Iranian women, the Islamic Republic has imposed discriminatory regulations against them. A man may marry up to four wives and divorce them whenever he desires. But mere will is not enough for a woman to divorce her husband.

Similarly, according to Iranian law, the life of women is worth half of the man's life in terms of blood money. When drawing up compensation after an accident, women receive half the amount allocated to men. During a trial, a declaration by a man is worth twice that of a woman. Women also require their husband's permission to work, travel or leave the country…. The laws imposed on Iranian women are incompatible with their status and, consequently, the equality movement is very strong. Although lacking a leader, headquarters, or branches, the movement is located in the home of any Iranian who believes in equal rights for men and women.10

Taken together, these statements – however brief or selective – illuminate the political and cultural context in which the debate over the future of constitutionalism, reform and democracy is taking place among the opposition inside Iran and in the diaspora. It is a

10 Shirin Ebadi, “Iran’s women are not afraid,” The Guardian, October 6, 2009: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/06/iran-women-rights-vote-discrimination (accessed August 6, 2010).

108 striking exchange not merely because of the broad range of ideological perspectives represented in it, but especially for the way in which each constituency, interest group, or activist network taking part in the debate has highly developed ideas of their own about the contours of a future democratic state in Iran. There are the religious intellectuals for whom reformist Islam and democracy are not only compatible but also very much desirable given, as they see it, the traditional “fabric” of Iranian society; there are secularists who regard the “separation of mosque and state” as a sacred democratic principle; there are persecuted minorities such as the people of the Baha’i faith for whom a hard secularist stance against religion – any religion – would further endanger and alienate religious group, and who thus argue for the principle of religious freedom; there are feminists who worry not only about the prominent status of religion in the state, but also the entrenched structures of patriarchy normalized and sanctified over the centuries; there are bazaar merchants and members of the upwardly mobile upper middle-classes who despise the daily encroachments upon their private affairs, loathe corruption, and fear Iran’s increasing isolation in the international arena; and finally there are university students, labor unionists, human rights activists, journalists, and dissidents of different backgrounds for whom the essence of the debate is about basic civil, political, and economic rights.

II BACK TO THE FUTURE: CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION REDUX

To be sure, part of the reason why the Green Movement has encountered difficulties in mounting a sustained and coherent response to the neoconservative cabal of clerics and ex-Revolutionary Guards members has been the persistence of factional politics that divide these constituencies from each other [REPHRASE]. But in a striking

109 sense, today’s debates over the proper balance between religion and politics on the one hand, and power relations and civil liberties on the other, harkens back to – indeed, they have their origins in – the era of Constitutional Revolution (1906-11) in Iran. As with today, the movement that brought an end to despotic rule and established a national constitution consisted of a coalition of religious dissidents and intellectuals, liberal and radical thinkers, secular nationalists, bazaar merchants, ethnic minorities, and women’s groups.11 More similar still, the early period of constitutionalism also featured highly contentious debates and political skirmishes between the ulama (religious scholars and members of the clergy) and progressive, secular, western-orientated intellectuals over basic constitutional principles. As the historian Ervand Abrahamian has observed, while members of the secular intelligentsia “came to see constitutionalism, secularism, and nationalism as the three vital means for attaining the establishment of a modern, strong, and developed Iran,” the ulama opposed the status quo because they “viewed the monarch as a worldly usurper of a religious authority that had been temporarily delegated by the Hidden Imam, the Mahdi, to the leading mujtahids [Muslim jurists].”12

In a most important sense, therefore, from the very beginning in the long journey of constitutionalism and reform in Iran, there were two different sets of attitudes to processes of democracy and social change: positive and negative. Liberal nationalists and members of the secular intelligentsia drew much inspiration from progressive western

11 For the definitive narrative histories of this era see, Edward G. Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905- 1909 (Washington, D.C.: Mage Press, 1995); A. Kasravi, Taikh-e Mashruteh-ye Iran (History of the Iranian Constitution) (Tehran, 1961); Fereydoun Adamiyat, Fekr-e Demokrasi-e Ijtemai dar Nehzat-e Mashruteh-ye Iran (Social Democratic Thought and the Constitutional Movement of Iran) (Tehran: Payam Press, 1984). Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906-1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the Origins of Feminism (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996). 12 Ervand Abrahamian, “The Causes of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 10 (1979), p. 395.

110 ideals – especially those behind the French revolution – and sought to employ them in their own quest for representative government in Iran. By and large, they viewed

Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité as enabling and ennobling: such ideals allowed individuals not only to exercise their rights and freedoms, but also to realize their potential to the fullest and cultivate their faculties. Members of the clergy and religious intellectuals, by contrast, participated in the movement for constitutionalism for more mundane and instrumental reasons: to strive for social justice and safeguard Shi’a Islam against arbitrary exercises of power by despotic monarchs. Doing away with monarchy promised a return to an almost puritan, more authentic practice of Islam unsullied by power and corruption. For centuries, the institution of monarchy had alienated the devout by cultivating a separate class of court-friendly ulama, corrupted by and beholden to worldly vices, political status and prestige. It was high time that religion was restored to its once prominent and respected place in society (above all, as a moral and ethical guide to rulers), and the movement for constitutionalism allowed for such a possibility.

These contrasting attitudes toward processes of change and constitutionalism in turn produced two separate philosophies about the role of government in Iran: one republican, another Islamist. Proponents of republicanism envisioned a form of government modeled after the American and French systems of representative democracy. Progressive organizations such as the Society of Humanity (influenced by

Russian Marxism and inspired by the liberal humanism of Auguste Comte) championed free periodic elections and called for an end to aristocratic rule and the abolishment of absolute monarchy. As the prominent constitutional historian (and son of the founder of the Society of Humanity), Fereydoun Adamiyat, later wrote of the Society, “their aims

111 were threefold: to use social engineering for national development; to secure individual freedoms so that human reason could ‘blossom’; and to obtain legal equality for all citizens, irrespective of birth and religion.”13 Similarly, social democratic newspapers such as Sur-e Israfil (Trumpet Call of Israfil, an independent paper with strong socialist sympathies) and Iran-e Now (New Iran, a pamphlet of the Democrat Party of Iran) championed basic rights and freedoms, equality, and the separation of religion from politics. In the inaugural issue of Sur-e Israfil, for instance, the editors did not shy away from boldly declaring their progressive mission: “In perfecting the cause of constitutionalism and support of the Majles, as well as aiding the peasants, the weak, the poor and the oppressed, we hope to be steadfast to the end…. We have no fear of intimidation and death. We give no value to life without freedom, equality, and honor.”14

For these outlets and the political organizations that supported them, the movement for constitutionalism represented an opportunity to remake the fabric of

Iranian society from above. It was a far more ambitious project than merely ending corruption and setting up an independent parliament; what the liberal intelligentsia bemoaned most about despotic rule was the way it had come to embody the backwards, traditional and superstitious attitudes of ordinary Iranians themselves. Toward this end, they held that the practice of religion at the hands of greedy and orthodox ulama had indeed become a feeble and dogmatic enterprise; God, they posited, once had serious philosophers and highly refined men of the humanities like Omar Khayyam, Ibn Sina

(Avicenna), Hafez, Sa’adi, and Rumi on his side – now whom did He have, an ignorant

13 Fereydoun Adamiyat, Fekr-e Azadi, pp. 206-212. 14 Lead editorial in Sur-e Israfil, May 30, 1907, No. 1, p.1, quoted in Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906-1911, p. 121.

112 band of “religion-seller and jurist-consultants… corrupt ulama” who reduced the glories of theology to a “ridiculous concoction” amenable only to rote memorization.15 And it was not a matter of coincidence either that these particular attacks appeared in, as Afary demonstrates, “a series of editorials on the epistemology of freedom in the language of the eighteenth-century philosophes” in the social-democratic daily Sur-e Israfil.16 The liberal intelligentsia, as I will explain below, were to ultimately lose the political battle with the ulama on the matter of separation of religion from politics, but the kinds of progressive intellectual arguments championed by them in papers such as Sur-e Israfil have remained the central tenets of the democratic opposition to monarchical and theocratic rule in Iranian society ever since. Hence the overwhelming support of lay citizens today – as demonstrated by their chants in the aftermath of the recent contentious presidential election – for an “Iranian republic.”

It must be noted, however, that even though a great majority of liberal intellectuals held highly secular beliefs as regards the relationship between religion and politics, they were at pains not to alienate members of the clergy in their march toward constitutionalism. They did so by appealing to the common denominator uniting the ulama and members of the intelligentsia – i.e. the importance of accountability and the rule of law – and by employing a religious vocabulary that framed liberal-democratic and western ideals in terms agreeable to devout bazaar merchants, seminarians, religious intellectuals, and lay followers. An excellent case in point was the progressive intellectual of the pre-revolutionary period, Mirza Malkum Khan, who was also the founder of the

15 Afary has masterfully compiled the attacks on the traditional ulama by the daily Sur-e Israfil in Chapter 5 of her historical study of the period, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906-1911, pp. 116-142. The excerpts I cite above appear, respectively, in “Enchanting Dream or Pointless Story,” Sur-e Israfil, June 27, 1907, No. 5, p. 2; and “New Revelation,” Sur-e Israfil, June 20, 1907, Nos. 4-6, p. 6. 16 Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906-1911, p. 122.

113 first liberal journal of ideas entitled Qanun (literally translated as “the canon,” it refers to a body of laws under a sovereign jurisdiction, of a country). A keen observer of Western political philosophy, Freemasonry, and imperial politics in Iran, Malkum Khan used

Qanun as a platform for disseminating ideas about popular legitimacy, accountability, and rights, all couched in the terminology of the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet

Mohammad, the Hadith.17 The inaugural issue of Qanun, for instance, featured a sharply worded editorial attacking the absence of laws and violations of the basic rights and freedoms of religious and lay citizens:

God has blessed Iran. Unfortunately, His blessing has been negated by the lack of laws. No one in Iran feels secure because no one in Iran is safeguarded by laws. The appointment of governors is carried out without laws. The dismissal of officers is done without laws. The monopolies are sold without any laws. The state finances are squandered without laws. The stomachs of innocent citizens are cut open without laws. Even the servants of God are deported without laws. Everyone in India, Paris, Tiflis, Egypt, Istanbul, and even among the Turkman tribes, knows his rights and duties. But no one in Iran knows his rights and duties. By what law was this mujtahid deported? By what law was that officer cut into pieces? By what law was this minister dismissed? By what law was that idiot given a robe of honor?....18

17 As he explained in a public lecture in London, language was a key factor in enlisting the help of the ulama to the cause of constitutionalism: “We have found that ideas which were by no means acceptable when coming from your agents in Europe were accepted at once with greatest delight when it was proved that they were latent in Islam. I can assure you that the little progress which you see in Persia and Turkey, especially in Persia, is due to this fact that some people have taken your European principles and instead of saying that they came from England, France, or Germany, they said, ‘We have nothing to do with Europeans; but these are the true principles of our religion (and indeed, this is quite true) which have been taken by Europeans!’ That has had a marvelous effect at once.” Malkum Khan, “Persian Civilization,” Contemporary Review, 54 (February 1891), pp.238-244; quoted in Ervand Abrahamian, “The Causes of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran,” p. 397-8. 18 Malkum Khan, “God Has Blessed Iran,” Qanun, 1 (February 1890); quoted in Ervand Abrahamian, “The Causes of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran,” p. 398.

114 In this respect, early liberal proponents of constitutionalism in Iran were not unlike

Western Enlightenment philosophers such as Francis Bacon, John Locke and David

Hume, who skillfully employed religious terminology and reasoning in order to render their otherwise revolutionary ideas palatable to dominant religious constituencies at the time. This strategy did indeed work as senior clerics came to increasingly – if somewhat begrudgingly – view the movement for constitutionalism as congruent with their own struggle for national independence and justice.

For their part, the ulama, too, were comprised (as they are today) of a diverse cohort. There were liberal-minded clerics, moderate scholars and dissidents, as well as hard line and reactionary conservatives, which formed the religious bloc in the run up to and after the Constitutional Revolution. But it is important to note that unlike members of the intelligentsia who were persecuted under the despotic rule of the Qajars, “the ulama enjoyed a position of power and influence which would hardly have been possible under a modern centralized government.”19 This is an important fact because it accounts for their, on aggregate, conservative attitude toward constitutionalism. As I mentioned above, the clerical establishment yearned for the return of a just ruler and order to Iran, and as such it did not regard constitutionalism as the ultimate answer to the ills of the faithful masses in society, rather a mere means to an end. What they sought, in short, was a reformist movement that cleansed the system of some of the unsavory characters

(religious and non-religious) and ways of rule, all the while preserving the prominent position of the ulama and religion in matters of governance. Whatever differences existed among liberal-minded and conservative clerics – and there were some quite significant

19 Vanessa Martin, Islam and Modernism: The Iranian Revolution of 1906 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1989), p. 35.

115 differences indeed – they were united around the notion that Islam should serve as a moral anchor in matters of governance. But whereas leading liberal-reformist clerics such as Mirza Mohammad Hussein Na’ini believed this could be achieved within a secular constitutional framework, conservative clerics led by Sheikh Fazlullah Nuri thought the suggestion not only disagreeable but also immoral. Revisiting this debate is especially important because in many ways the arguments against and in favor of constitutionalism have figured prominently in Iran since the time of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and especially in the aftermath of the outbreak of the Green Movement in 2009. In the latter phase, reformist politicians and intellectuals have openly proclaimed their admiration for

Na’ini’s perspective, while the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and hard line President

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have repeatedly invoked the memory of Nuri and his supporters in their sermons and public speeches. In fact, the founder of Islamic Republic Ayatollah

Khomeini himself was also a steadfast supporter of Nuri’s anti-constitutionalist views, which he propagated with great effect in his campaign to establish clerical rule in Iran.20

As Nader Hashemi has correctly observed, “The two questions at the center of this debate were (1) does a secular constitution have any legitimacy in an Islamic society, and (2) where is the locus of political sovereignty?”21 On the first question, Na’ini believed, as do many Muslim reformists today, that the principle of popular sovereignty at the heart of a secular constitution could also be endorsed by Islamic law since the

Koran and the Hadith identified a just government as one ultimately legitimized by the

20 For excellent discussions of this period see, Nikki Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), and Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy-State Relations in the Pahlavi Period (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1980). 21 Nader Hashemi, “Religious Disputation and Democratic Constitutionalism: The Enduring Legacy of the Constitutional Revolution On the Struggle for Democracy in Iran,” Constellations, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2010), p. 53.

116 people. Futhermore, Na’ini and his followers believed that the authenticity of religious practice was best preserved in the private realm, away from worldly temptations and corrupting influences of politics. Lastly, in his brief tract, Ranbih al-umma wa tanzih al- milla (The Admonition and Refinement of the People), Na’ini noted that since the time of the Prophet “a number of problems had arisen which were not predicted by the shari’ah.”22 This meant that the locus of political sovereignty ultimately rested with the people, who were subjected to the contingencies of time, and therefore had to decide for themselves whether a given order/government was just or not. For these reasons, Na’ini held that Muslim citizens were better left to engage in the practice of ijtihad (independent interpretation of the Koran and the Hadith), or at the communal level refer to the judgment of a mujtahid (someone who interpreted religious laws independently).

Sheikh Nuri, on the other hand, disagreed with the reformist reading on both counts. For him the very concept of representative democracy denigrated the role of

God’s representatives (i.e. the Imamate) in the Muslim community. A secular constitution, in other words, not only minimized the significance of religious duties in matters of governance, but also elevated the rights and interests of mere mortals above those of God and his representatives. As Nuri explained in Ketab-e Tadhkirat-e al-Ghafil va-Irshad al-Jahil (The Book of Admonition to the Misinformed and Guidance for the

Ignorant), “Participation in the affairs of the community by anyone other than the Imam amounts to denigrating the authority of the Prophet and the Imam… If anyone else sits in his (the Imam’s) place it is obligatory to oppose such an attempt and obligatory to oppose

22 Hi edicts were first published in 1909 in Najaf, Iraq. Vanessa Martin, Islam and Modernism, p. 180.

117 it.”23 As such, Nuri proclaimed that it was not enough for Muslims to merely refer to the interpretations of mujtahids, but rather it was their religious duty to engage in taqlid

(imitation) of their practices, for their cumulative judgments constitute the true source of political legitimacy and sovereignty in Muslim society. Indeed, this logic would later become the basis of Ayatollah Khomeini’s thesis on governance, velayat-e faqih

(guardianship of the jurist), which appointed a leading Islamic jurist as the political guardian of the people, a decidedly theocratic system of governance. The problem with such a concept from a reformist standpoint, however, was the fact that it “did not attempt to reconcile this appeal to individual judgment with the argument that a defective intelligence could not gauge what was in conformity with the shari’a.”24 Aside from being anti-republican, Nuri’s views do not account for the fact that God’s representatives themselves might become corrupted by the trappings of power, of course, which has increasingly become the case in Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

But Nuri and his followers eventually prevailed over their reformist detractors, and their views came to stand as the majority opinion of the ulama prior to the constitutional revolution. In 1906, in the first phase of the revolution, the liberal intelligentsia managed successfully to force the monarch Mozaffar al-Din Shah to issue a royal decree for the formation of a National Consultative Majles (parliament) and the writing of a constitution. The First Majles, populated by liberals, passed new landmark electoral laws that “significantly curtailed the powers of the monarchy and made government ministers responsible to the delegates in the Majles. It gave administrative

23 Mehdi Malekzadeh, Tarikh-e Enghelab-e Mashrutiyat-e Iran (The History of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran), (Tehran: Elmi Press, 1984), Vol. IV, p. 215. 24 Vanessa Martin, Islam and Modernism, p. 183.

118 and financial autonomy to the provinces through the election of provincial and departmental anjomans (local assemblies), which supervised the elections and monitored the activities of the governors and the process of tax collection.”25 The new constitution was a watershed triumph for the liberal intelligentsia, furthermore, for it “established the framework for secular legislation, judicial codes, and courts of appeals, which reduced the powers of the royal court and the religious authorities and established a free press.”26

The constitution was heavily influenced by the 1831 Belgian Constitution, which placed a high premium on the principle of separation of powers between the monarch, the legislature, and the judiciary, and on individual rights.

Despite the significant progress made in electoral laws, however, the constitution of 1906 fell short of the kinds of protections and rights guaranteed by the Western

European constitutions it sought to mimic. As Afary has chronicled, for instance, “there was no bill of rights in the 1906 law, nor were the limits to the authority of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government clearly defined.”27 In order to remedy such oversights, the Majles ratified a set of Supplementary Constitutional Laws in 1907.

It was at this stage that Nuri, with the backing of senior ulama (of all ideological stripes), formed a coalition with the other aggrieved party to the new Constitution, the Shah, and successfully pushed for the passage of the infamous Article 2, which granted supreme authority to the religious oversight of state laws in the Majles. As such, the principle of separation of religion and state, which had been a cornerstone of the liberal intelligentsia’s campaign was set aside, and in its place was established a committee of

25 Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906-1911, p. 63. 26 Ibid. 27 Janet Afary, “Civil Liberties and the Making of Iran’s First Constitution,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Vol. 25, No. 2 (2005).

119 leading ulama to rewrite any and all provisions in the constitution that conflicted with the core principles of Shari’ah law.28 Supporters of the secular constitution set up massive demonstrations and strikes against Nuri and his brand of “clerical constitutionalism,” but with the Shah and bazaar merchants (who were angered by the passage of new taxation laws) now on their side, the ulama prevailed. The passage of the Supplementary

Constitutional Laws would prove a significant turning point for the short-lived secular- democratic movement in Iran. As Afary has correctly noted, “The response to this document would define many of the ideological debates of twentieth-century Iran.”29

The movement for constitutionalism came to an abrupt end in Iran when Russian forces marched to Tehran and forced the dissolution of Majles in 1911. What provoked this action was a decision made by the Majles to enlist the services of the prominent

American financier, Morgan Shuster, who had agreed to reform Iran’s financial sector and advise the government on modernizing Iran’s economy. British and Russian governments regarded this move as against their interests at the time and issued an ultimatum to the Majles to dismiss Shuster. The dissolution of Majles and division of Iran into northern (Russian) and southern (British) zones of influence led to the breakdown of the already fragile alliance between the ulama and secular reformists and marked the end of the constitutional era. In the aftermath of these developments, an army officer by the name of Reza Khan, who had made a positive impression on both British and Russian diplomats in Iran, eventually rose to power through a bloodless coup, first as the caretaker of a provisional government, and then after successfully dethroning the Qajar

28 Ahmad Kasravi, Tarikh-e Mashrute-ye Iran, p. 292. 29 Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906-1911, pp. 4-5.

120 dynasty as the first Pahlavi monarch.30 Under Reza Shah, Iran embarked on an ambitious modernization trajectory, which saw the expansion of modern education, infrastructure, industry, Western arts and culture, and a range of other socioeconomic plans aimed at transforming traditional mores and modes of organization in Iranian society.31

Furthermore, Reza Shah was particularly hostile to religious authorities and sought to undermine their reach and appeal at every turn. As Amin Banani has explained, his antagonism toward the clergy was the result of “a definite ideological motivation” manifested in emulating “the material advances of the West [through] a breakdown of the traditional power of religion and a growing tendency toward secularism.”32 Eventually,

Reza Shah was forced by the British and the Russians to abdicate the throne in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Shah, who would rule Iran until the Islamic Revolution in

1979. His demise saw the revival of parliamentary politics in Iran in the years 1944-1953, culminating in the brief exercise in representative democracy under the government of

Mohammad Mossadeq. But given that Iran was a prized possession of the European imperial interests in this period – particularly the British, who favored the Shah’s absolutist rule over any democratic arrangement that would endanger their oil interests – the outstanding tensions between various secularist and Islamist constituencies were very much overshadowed by anti-imperial, nationalist, and populist passions and pursuits. As

30 Said Amir Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988). 31 He even formally changed the name of the country from “Persia” to “Iran” in order to acknowledge the contributions of other ethnic groups to Iranian heritage. 32 Amin Banani, The Modernization of Iran, 1921-1941 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984), pp. 44-45. He pursued this vision through a controversial nationwide forced unveiling and literacy campaign aimed at “liberating” women from religion and domestic households, but crucially also by preventing the development of independent women’s organizations (as he did with other groups) and by drawing a clear line between the privileged classes and the rest. For an excellent overview of women’s plight during the Pahlavi period, see Hamideh Sedghi, Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling, Reveiling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Ch. 2.

121 a result, the underlying tensions between secular-nationalist parties and the clergy remained unresolved as regards the content and scope of constitutional reforms.

This brief historical overview is instructive for two reasons. First, it testifies to the domestic political context in which the battle over a secular-democratic constitution took place. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, many scholars of democratic movements in Muslim-majority societies falsely assume Islam to be an all-encompassing political doctrine, the predominate force shaping beliefs and identities of individuals Muslims.

This assertion, as I demonstrated in Chapter 2, has led many democratic theorists to envision an alternative democratic arrangement for such societies: a system of “Islamic democracy” in which core democratic values and ideals are justified to and sanctioned by basic Islamic precepts such as justice, mercy, or charity. Such propositions, I wish to assert, overlook an essential point about the context in which democratic ideas are struggled for and implemented. The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, as the preceding discussion demonstrates, was a “multiclass, multicultural, and multi-ideological”33 event.

It was no more or less a liberal or secular accomplishment than it was an Islamic or socialist milestone. It was a democratic achievement in the sense that it was brought about through active communicative action, shifting coalitions, reflective thinking, and a representative politics. It began, publicly anyway, with a call for accountability and just laws in Mirza Malkum Khan’s newspaper Qanun, was put into operation (practiced) after the passage of the electoral laws of 1906, but was soon curtailed by Sheikh Fazlullah

Nuri’s intervention and the passage of the Supplementary Laws that reintroduced

Shari’ah law. The movement for constitutionalism and reform of existing laws was very

33 Ibid. p.3.

122 much a democratic enterprise born out of a mixture of liberal-universalist and religio- particularist ideas and values that formed the political context of the early twentieth- century Iran. In short, this was a contextual democratic movement, not a solely particularist or universalist one; hence its broad appeal, organic politics, and early success in peacefully disbanding the old authoritarian order.

Second, revisiting the early history of constitutionalism in Iran helps us to better understand the nature and scope of the democratic struggles in which reformist religious intellectuals, liberal-democrats, secular nationalists, and feminist organizations – i.e. the

Green Movement – are engaged in today. It is not a mere coincidence that on the anniversary of the Constitutional Revolution this year representatives from each of these cohorts issued highly publicized statements denouncing “absolutist rule” and calling for reforms, accountability, and observance of basic rights and freedoms. The leading opposition figure, one-time prime minister and reformist presidential candidate, Mir

Hossein Mousavi, marked the occasion by criticizing the “unchecked” power of unelected officials (i.e. the Supreme Leader) who “repeatedly ask of us [citizens] to blindly obey edicts and certain personalities; nothing in Islam obliges us to do as such, and it most certainly was not one of the objectives of the Islamic Revolution to do so either.”34 As I noted at the beginning of this section, there is much debate within Iran today as regards the overall strategies and objectives of the Green Movement; however, in spite of their differences, it is striking how very little patience each cohort seems to have for either an exclusively universalist or particularist vision of democracy. The Green

34 “Mousavi: We Want to Eliminate Power,” BBC Persian Service, August 4, 2010: http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/2010/08/100804_l10_mousavi_constitutional.shtml (accessed August 6, 2010).

123 Movement today is in this regard a thoroughly contextual democratic movement, which is struggling to break free of the religio-particularist framework left behind since the time of Nuri’s crusade against a liberal-democratic constitution.

II THE PARTICULARISM OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

In the period between the Constitutional and Islamic revolutions (1914-1979),

Iran was mostly under the rule of the Pahlavi dynasty (the father and son shahs, Reza and

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi). With the exception of a brief democratic episode in the

Mossadeq years (1949-1953), Iran was governed by a secular system of absolute monarchy, which was mainly supported by Anglo-American governments and interests.

The Shah very much did want to keep the appearance of a representative government, but the Majles under the Pahlavis was mostly a rubberstamp institution, managed by the monarch from above. After the removal of Mossadeq, the relationship between

Mohammad Reza Shah and the ulama remained mostly non-confrontational until 1960,35 at which time the government undertook an ambitious modernization and land reform project called the “White Revolution.” The new reforms were mainly designed to consolidate the financial and political advantage enjoyed by the Shah’s supporters, and as such alienated the ulama and the middle class, thus indirectly opening the door once again to a possible coalition between members of the clergy and dissident progressives.

Indeed, this is exactly what happened after a series of ill-conceived attacks on religious seminaries by the regime’s paratroopers and secret police united the ulama with secular

35 As Mohsen Milani has pointed out, until 1960 “The Shah saw in the ulama a powerful force against the radicalism of the left and the liberalism of the middle class. Anxious to demonstrate his commitment to Shi’ism, he made frequent trips to the sacrosanct shrines in Mashhad and Qom and contributed handsomely to their refurbishment as well as to major Shi’i theological centers.” Mohsen Milani, The Making of Iran’s Islamic Revolution: From Monarchy to Islamic Republic (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988), pp. 47-48.

124 and religious members of the National Front Party, the Tudeh (Communist) Party, and other emerging dissident organizations and parties. This episode also propelled a little known Ayatollah by the name of Ruhollah Khomeini to a position of national and even international renown as the new face of the opposition to the Shah.36 Recognizing the broad appeal of his message, Khomeini’s supporters issued a ten-point list of demands to the government that, “Among other things, [sic] included a demand for the implementation of the 1906 Constitution, especially Article 2 of the Supplementary

Laws, which gave the ulama veto power over Majles legislation.”37 Soon after Khomeini and his immediate followers were sent into exiled by the Shah first in Turkey, and then to the holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq (Khomeini was eventually deported by Saddam and relocate to a suburb on the outskirts of Paris).

In a series of fiery sermons and speeches delivered before his return to Iran,

Khomeini accused the Shah of being a stooge of “imperialist powers” (the United States,

Britain, and the Soviet Union): “The Shah has given foreigners all subterranean wealth and vital interests belonging to the people. He has given oil to America; gas to the Soviet

Union; pastureland, forests, and part of the oil to England and other countries. The people have been deprived of all necessities of life and kept in a state of backwardness.”38

Khomeini deftly infused his religious agenda and speeches with an anti-imperialist rhetoric designed to resonate with the majority of Iranians. Indeed, so popular was

Khomeini’s message to “the wronged and the oppressed” that at the time of the revolution his base of support consisted of a broad coalition composed of secular and

36 Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran, pp. 108-12. 37 Mohsen Milani, The Making of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, p. 51. 38 Ruhollah Khomeini, “Message to the Pilgrims,” Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini (1941-1980) translated by Hamid Algar (Mizan Press, 1981), p. 237.

125 religious intellectuals, nationalists, unionists, feminists, students, seminarians, the working classes, bazaar merchants, and a host of other exiled groups – all united against

Western imperialism and domestic tyranny. The scale of unity coupled with the enigmatic charisma of Khomeini even made an impression on some Western intellectuals at the time. Famous among them was the French philosopher Michel Foucault, who wrote a series of glowing reports from Tehran about Khomeini and the revolutionaries for the

Italian newspaper Corrier della Sera.39 Admiring of Khomeini’s almost “superhuman” ability to transcend ideology, class, gender, and even religion, Foucault credited him with reflecting “the perfectly unified collective will” of the Iranian people.40

Of course, revolutions can be attractive in the way they expose the fragility of settled orders. But any revolution, as John Dunn has aptly observed, “like the doors of the

Temple of Janus, has two faces. One is an elegant, abstract, humanitarian face, an idyllic face, the dream revolution, its meaning under the calm distancing of eternity. The other is crude, violent and very concrete, rather nightmarish….”41 A more careful reading of

Khomeini’s proclamations in exile and especially those delivered upon his return to Iran would have alarmed – as it indeed did many secular and feminist intellectuals and activists at the time – any foreign or domestic observer of the “concrete” threat posed by them to the legacy of constitutionalism in Iran. Just prior to the revolution, from his perch in Paris Khomeini issued a declaration that admonished the progressive elements within

39 Janet Afary and Kevin Anderson have collected Foucault’s articles and translated them in English for the first time in Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islam (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005). The book makes the argument that Foucault, due to his anti-modern proclivities, was naively “seduced” by the Islamic revolition and the figure of Khomeini himself. 40 Ibid., p. 221. Michel Foucault, “The Mythical Leader of the Iranian Revolt,” Corriere della Sera, November 26, 1978. 41 John Dunn, Modern Revolutions: An Introduction to the Analysis of A Political Phenomenon, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 11-12.

126 the coalition (mostly secular nationalists and communists) who expressed concerns about the tactics used, the overly-religious tone of his speeches, and the prominent role of the ulama in the movement:

My dear ones! Avoid all disagreement, for disagreement is the work of the devil. Continue your sacred movement in unison for the sake of the ultimate goal, which is the overthrow of the corrupt Pahlavi regime and the liberation of the destiny and resources of our country from foreign control. Fear nothing in your pursuit of these Islamic goals, for no power can halt this great movement.42

From the very beginning, therefore, Khomeini and his followers were determined on a particularly monolithic vision as regards the overall aims of the revolution. In fact, a little over eight years before the Islamic revolution, Khomeini had published his views on the relationship between Islam and politics in a book entitled Hukumat-e Islami (Islamic

Government), which according to a leading scholar of Khomeini’s political thought,

Hamid Algar, contained three inter-connected theses: (1) “the need for subordinating political power to Islamic goals, precepts, and criteria;” (2) “the duty of religious scholars

(the fuqaha) to bring about an Islamic state, and to assume legislative, executive, and judicial positions within it – in short, the doctrine of “the governance of the faqih”

(velayat-e faqih); and (3) “a program of action for the establishment of an Islamic state, including various measures for self-reform by the religious establishment.”43 To be sure, in time all three injunctions were formalized and put in practice by Khomeini and his supporters after a nationwide referendum endorsed the idea of an Islamic Republic in a hastily arranged poll shortly after Khomeini’s return to Iran. The referendum asked only

42 Ruhollah Khomeini, “In Commemoration of the Martyrs of Tehran,” Islam and Revolution, pp. 240-241. Emphasis added. 43 Ruhollah Khomeini, Islam and Revolution, p. 25.

127 one question of the public “Islamic Republic: Yes or No?” and did not offer any other alternatives. In fact, not even the most ardent followers of Khomeini could explain what the new government would look like, let alone the general public. Given the immense popularity of Khomeini at the time and the general distaste with the Shah and his Western supporters, the referendum passed in the affirmative with a whopping ninety-eight percent of the vote. At the time of the vote, both the wisdom and handling of the vote were criticized by secular and progressive parties (as well as international observers) that also played a role in bringing about the revolution, but to no avail. Khomeini marked the occasion by declaring it “the first day of God’s government.”44

Indeed, this constituted a pivotal moment in the storied struggle of constitutionalism in Iran. In contradistinction to the early constitutional period, when the secular-liberal intellectual class formed a democratic coalition with the ulama and went as far as adopting their vocabulary, Khomeini decided to seize the moment, marginalize

(and later eliminate) liberal-democrats, and implement his vision of an Islamic republic.

From the beginning, the progressive intelligentsia were no match for Khomeini’s fiercely anti-West, anti-modern rhetoric since many of their leading lights were products of western educational systems and lacked the authentic vocabulary of grievance and victimhood marshaled by “the Imam” (many of them even referred to Khomeini in reverential tones as “the Imam”). What is more, as Abrahamian points out, “Khomeini reminded his audience [that] clerics had risen to the occasion in times of crisis to protect

44 Upon passage of the referendum Khomeini declared, “This day of Farvardin 12, the first days of God’s government, is to be one of our foremost religious and national festivals; the people must celebrate this day and keep its remembrance alive, for it is the day on which the battlements of the twenty-five hundred-year old fortress of tyrannical government crumbled, a satanic power departed forever, and the government of the oppressed – which is the government of God – was established in its place.” Ruhollah Khomeini, “The First Day of God’s Government,” Islam and Revolution, p. 266.

128 Islam and Iran from imperialism and royal despotism… [that] the clergy as a whole had kept alive ‘national consciousness’ and stood firm as the ‘fortress of independence’ against imperialism, secularism and other ‘isms’ imported from the West.”45 In this respect, the Islamic revolution really embodied the general sense of disaffection and outright antagonism toward Western-backed secular dictatorships across the Middle East

– an intoxicating admixture of deep-seated resentment and boundless defiance that propelled to action even the most ascetic and sterile of individuals in post-colonial settings. In retrospect, then, it is not at all surprising that a figure like Khomeini would want to cement the place of the ulama in society with a decidedly particularist political doctrine such as velayat-e faqih. But realizing this vision entailed much devastation and agony for other ideological groups and non-Islamist revolutionaries whose support for

Khomeini’s eventual triumph over the Shah had been absolutely instrumental.

Perhaps the most potent symbol of the Islamic Republic’s particularist vision for

Iran was the enforcement of new Islamic social codes and restrictions. Not only did the regime set out to rewrite school textbooks and make the study of Islam and the Koran compulsory, it also unleashed its Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance as well as a band of newly-established neighborhood morality police forces and paramilitary groups

(such as the infamous Basij force) to combat what it regarded as “immodesty” and

“subversive Western influences” in society. Nowhere were these invasive policies more evident than in the case of new Islamic codes specifically targeted at women. The regime instituted a “compulsory veiling” policy for women above the age of puberty (9 years- old) in public venues; it further enacted discriminatory divorce and family laws, and

45 Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 25-26.

129 systematically set about cultivating a patriarchal social structure. Shortly after his return to Iran from exile, Khomeini had met with representatives of women’s groups and assured them of his support for their rights: “We want our women to attain the high rank of true humanity. Women must have a share in determining their destiny.”46 And yet among his first decrees as Supreme Leader of Islamic Republic, Khomeini abolished the

Family Protection Laws, revoked women’s rights to serve as judges, segregated all public venues into men’s- and women’s-only zones, and instituted compulsory veiling.

This was a remarkable reversal for Iranian women who had endured discriminatory policies of overly secular variety under the Pahlavi regime, where religious women were beaten for wearing the hijab under Reza Shah and culturally ostracized under Mohammad Reza Shah. Despite numerous protests and appeals to various governmental bodies and religious authorities by various women’s groups, the state’s control over women’s bodies, sexuality and persons became legally sanctioned, justified in reference to the dictates of Islamic law. Indeed, many of these discriminatory policies remain intact today (thirty-one years after the revolution), for they are at bottom about the identity and particularist ideology of the revolution.47 As the feminist Iranian scholar Hamideh Sedghi has correctly observed of the institution of discriminatory laws against women in the early stages of the revolution, “concealing women’s bodies, gender segregation and inequality became integral to state-building and its identity: Islamic, anti- imperialist, and anti-Westernist.”48 The particularist ideology of the Islamic Republic

46 Ruhollah Khomeini, “Address To A Group of Women in Qom,” Islam and Revolution, p. 264. 47 As part of a campaign to rehabilitate its image internationally, the Islamic Republic instituted certain reforms that reversed some of its earlier laws, the most prominent of which was the injunction to allow the appointment of women to various high level governmental positions. In 1996, Shirin Ebadi became the first woman and female judge in Iranian history. 48 Hamideh Sedghi, Women and Politics in Iran, p. 201.

130 manifested itself across different sectors of Iranian society, of course, but by so vehemently insisting on women’s submissiveness to Islamic mores Khomeini and his supporters engineered a form of government that was not only exclusive but also archaically segregated.

Still, not even Khomeini was willing to completely do away with some representative functions of the old order (the “Republic” in the Islamic Republic). Under the new Islamic Republic Constitution, the Majles, President, and Prime Minister were directly elected by men and women above the voting age of eighteen; religious minorities

(mainly Christians and Jews) were granted special representation in the parliament; members of the Assembly of Experts, charged with overseeing the conduct and rulings of the Supreme Leader, were also popularly elected; and all municipal and provincial offices were also popularly elected. These republican elements of the Constitution, however, were undermined by two major institutions acting as gatekeepers: the supreme leader and the Council of Guardians (see Figure 1). The supreme leader appoints the heads of the judiciary and the armed forces, oversees the work of the Expediency Council (an advisory group to the supreme leader), and appoints half of the members of the Council of Guardians, a body that is tasked with vetting candidates eligible to run for any elected offices in the country. The Council of Guardians is a twelve-member body consisting of six religious jurists appointed by the supreme leader and six appointed by the Majles. The

Council adheres to very strict religious and revolutionary criteria for approving the candidacy of eligible office-holders, thereby significantly reducing the possibility of

131 liberal or reformist candidates getting on the ballot.49 Moreover, the Council is also invested with judicial powers to interpret the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, acting in effect as a constitutional court of sorts.

Figure 1: The Structure of Governance in the Islamic Republic of Iran (Source: British Broadcasting Corporation, 2001)

The first decade of the Islamic Republic, it must be noted, was a turbulent but ultimately pivotal one for the clerical establishment. Immediately after the revolution,

Iran was engaged in a direct confrontation with the United States over the future of the

Shah (Khomeini wanted him to be sent back to Iran in order to stand trial, but the Carter administration decided to admit him to the United States to receive treatment for cancer) and the hostage crisis that lasted 444 days. Moreover, Saddam Hussein attacked Iran in fall of 1980, commencing an 8-year war, the longest conventional interstate conflict in the twentieth-century. The Iran-Iraq War, while costly on both a human and monetary scale, enabled the clerical establishment to exploit the collective sense of grievance

49 For instance, of the more than one thousand nominations for candidacy for the office of president submitted to the Council of Guardians, only six candidates were approved and allowed to run for office.

132 against Iraq and its backers (the United States and USSR both provided military and economic aid to Saddam) as it further marginalized the role and meager influence of non-

Islamist parties and organizations. The institutions of government (both elected and unelected ones) at this time were very much under the sway of Khomeini; if anyone serving in any organs of the government fell out of favor with Khomeini or disagreed with his injunctions they would be summarily dismissed, which meant they could not stand for elective office ever again. But Khomeini’s death in 1989 plunged the whole system into a deep crisis, as fissures among the clerical elite (between would-be reformers and hard line conservatives) over the future shape of the Islamic Constitution once again became public. At issue was the question of who would succeed Khomeini.

Some clerics believed that since “the Imam” was such a unique historical figure, replacing him with anyone, regardless of how qualified they might be, would be impossible. They therefore recommended that a council of leading clerics be adopted in the place of the institution of velayat-e faqih. Another, more influential, group of clerics opposed this council and pointed to the late speeches of Khomeini himself, in which he expressed the desire to be succeeded by a qualified person of national renown.

The latter group eventually won the argument and former president Ali Khamenei was appointed as Supreme Leader by the Council of Experts. Khamenei clearly lacked the necessary credentials for the post, and so from the outset his appointment was greeted as a political machination engineered by a cohort of opportunistic junior clerics seduced and corrupted by power. As I mentioned earlier, Khomeini’s iconic status among the rank and file members of Islamic Republic government owed much to his anti-imperialist rhetoric and proven record against the Shah and secular autocracy; therefore, regardless

133 of whether they disagreed with his views from time to time, most of the ulama revered his example and respected his decisions. Khamenei and his detractors were well aware of the fact that the same courtesy and respect would not be extended to him. Indeed, the origins of the reform movement in Iran can be traced back to this period, when liberal- minded clerics envisaged an opportunity to speak out against some of the excesses of the regime and push for reforms in the Majles, reclaiming and seeking to enforce some of the republican elements of the constitution. It was at this juncture that two competing visions of the Islamic Republic Constitution within the regime began to take shape. As each side used its newspapers and propaganda outlets to denounce the ideas of the other, progressive groups and networks that had either succumbed to apathy or forced to become dormant seized the opportunity and set about creating a coalition for reform. The result was the highly surprising election of the reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami in

1997 as president followed by a landslide victory of reformists in the Majles elections.

Since most of the reformist candidates had at one point been prominent supporters of Khomeini during the revolution and after, they easily passed through the filter of the

Council of Guardians. The conservative bloc and supporters of the Supreme Leader

Khamenei were stunned, and for a short while it appeared as if the momentum had entirely shifted to the reformists. Khatami’s reformist government relaxed political and cultural restrictions on the press, political parties and the general public, sought a constitutional amendment to curtail the powers of the Guardian Council, called for a

“dialogue of civilizations” with the West, and even announced its intentions to normalize relations with the United States. From his first day in office, Khatami insisted on presenting another, more philosophical face of the Islamic Republic. He and his allies in

134 the Majles were intent on instituting a system of “Islamic democracy,” which they viewed as not only possible, but inevitable. I have relayed the core arguments of reformists and religious intellectuals earlier so I will not repeat them here, but it is important to note here that Khatami and his supporters in Majles did not oppose the constitution of the Islamic Republic, but merely sought to strengthen some of its republican attributes. This would indeed turn out to be a recurring (and losing) theme in the reform movement. The Guardian Council acting at the behest of the Supreme Leader roundly rejected attempts at reform; similarly, the judiciary ordered the closure of scores of reformist newspapers and arrests of leading reformists on trumped up charges.

Indeed, the weight of these repeated setbacks have raised legitimate doubts about the possibility of reform within the existing constitutional framework. If the collective will of an overwhelming majority is rendered void and meaningless by a powerful minority, many leading reformists now ask, then what sense is there in participating in such a scheme at all? It is this widespread disenchantment with the political system as a whole that has for the first time exposed the limitations of the particularist approach to politics in Iran. The latest crisis has shown that certain shari’ah injunctions and norms are simply irreconcilable with republican values prized in a democratic system of government. From the standpoint of many leading religious reformists today, the crisis of legitimacy engulfing the Islamic Republic is mainly due to the arbitrary exercise of power by the unelected bodies of the regime; eliminate those institutions (i.e. the Council of Guardians or even velayat-e faqih) and the system will become more democratic and just, they argue. As a leading reformist cleric and journalist, Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari has recently put it,

135

In the case of failure to the reform and the future collapse of the regime, it seems that the most viable option would be a moderate Islamic regime without the central doctrine of velayat-e faqih [sic]. This would be an alternative system of governance that is committed to the basic principles of democracy, akin to the one that was promised by Ayatollah Khomeini when he was in exile in Paris. The early draft of the constitution that Ayatollah and his aides actively pursued early on to be put to a national referendum could provide a common ground for the initial level.50

But this begs the obvious question as to what would happen to the place and role of religion in matters of governance if the key institutions designed to preserve the place of shari’ah law in society are abolished. Many reformists have answered this question by pointing to the examples of Islamic countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, even

Pakistan) that practice parliamentary democracy and grant basic rights and freedoms to their citizens.51 But this overlooks the fact that each of these countries has maintained a healthy, constitutional separation between religion and politics. Although they each regard Islam as the official religion of the state, they have not institutionalized shari’ah law in the way the Islamic Republic Constitution obliges the government of Iran to do.

Moreover, most religious reformers inside Iran have arrived at their prescriptions without any engagement or intellectual exchange with secular and liberal intellectuals who, as I demonstrated at the beginning, have their own claims, grievances, and suggestions about the place of religion and secularism in Iran.

A good counter-example to the religious reformers’ provincialism is the case of women’s struggle for gender equality and autonomy since the advent of the revolution

(but especially since the beginning of the reform movement). Whether campaigning

50 Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari, “The Green Movement and the Role of Ruhaniyyat,” Public Lecture, Houston, Texas, January 24, 2010. 51 Akbar Ganji, The Road to Democracy in Iran (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008).

136 against misogynist family laws, fighting for reproductive rights, striving to establish advocacy groups and rights-based organizations, demanding equal wages or equal access to education – women’s groups in Iran have been subject to sustained social repression by conservative cultural forces (e.g. Islamist movements and entrenched patriarchal social structures) from below, and oppressive state policies from above.52 It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that under such trying circumstances “women‘s quest for identity, self-determined subjectivity and space in social and cultural life,” as the Iranian scholar- feminist, Haideh Moghissi, puts it, has not only been weakened, but indeed become more innovative and subversive in devising long-term strategies and daily tactics.53 However, these acts do not necessarily resemble the struggles by women in more liberal, Western societies, where the rights to free assembly and speech are protected by the law. Rather, they are performed by individual women – in a noncollective manner – through what

Iranian sociologist, Asef Bayat, calls their “power of presence;” namely, “the ability to assert collective will in spite of all odds, by circumventing constraints, utilizing what exists, and discovering new spaces of freedom to make oneself heard, seen, felt, and realized.”54 Indeed, the power of Iranian women’s presence can be seen in their refusal to vacate the public sphere through such seemingly mundane acts as pursuing education, seeking jobs, participating in discussions about public policy issues (whether they relate to women or not). Lest one think of these acts as little more than delusional acceptance of

52 For excellent accounts of the plight of women and feminist movements in the Middle East, see Haleh Afshar (ed.) Women in the Middle East: Perceptions, Realities and Struggles for Liberation (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993); Nikki R. Keddie, Women in the Middle East: Past and Present (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); and Lila Abu-Lughod (ed.), Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). 53 Haideh Moghissi, Populism and Feminism in Iran (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), p. 183. 54 Asef Bayat, Life As Politics, p. 112.

137 the permissible, Bayat explains just how significant they have been in leading to significant changes for Iranian women:

“Women did not get involved in car racing or mountain climbing because they wished to defy the patriarchal attitudes or religious state; they did so because the found fulfillment in such activities even though in the context of the Islamic Republic they appeared defiant. The crucial point is that despite much constraint and pressure, women did not give up and kept on pursuing those interests, which in turn led to serious normative and legal consequences. For they compelled patriarchal and political authority to acknowledge women’s role in society, and thus their rights. In sum, what underlined Iran’s women’s activism was not collective protest, but collective presence… In this nonmovement, women did not usually take extraordinary measures to compel authorities to make concessions; in a sense, the very ordinary practices that they strived for (e.g. studying, working, jogging, initiating divorce, or running for political office) accounted for the actual gains. Not only did the element of ordinariness make the movement virtually irrepressible, it also women to gain ground incrementally without seeming to constitute a threat.”55

It is important to note, moreover, that the political and cultural constraints placed on women by governments and Islamic social codes have paradoxically helped to preserve the ideological and political differences between women of different socio-cultural backgrounds. In the absence of formal organizations and social support groups, women have had to chart their own course as individuals or in association with small, informal groups (composed mostly of immediate female family members or friends and acquaintances).56 As such, their grievances and actions tend to be informed more by their immediate environment and social status than by national or transnational feminist concerns.57

55 Ibid., pp. 112-3. 56 Azar Nafisi’s celebrated account of her private book club with a group of ex-students is an excellent example of such informal voluntary gatherings. See Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (New York: Random House, Inc., 2003). 57 Valentine M. Moghaddam offers a lucid critical perspective on the impact of economic (in)security, religiosity, education, and social upheavals (i.e. revolutions) on gender identity and relations in the Middle

138 Indeed, this trend has been both a blessing and a curse for the cause of women’s in Iran under the Islamic Republic. While it does attest to women’s “power of presence” in the public domain, it also considerably slows down the pace of reform and democratic change on issues affecting women as a whole. For resistance in the face of tyranny, while noble and courageous, is still altogether different from equality of opportunity and self- realization in pursuit of one’s talents and aspirations. The latter can ultimately be achieved in a society responsive to the diversity of viewpoints and experiences, where the distance between mere “presence” and self-realization is traversed by the individual’s own will to power, free of external constraints. This possibility is clearly lacking under the particularist ideology of Islamic Republic. Taking into account the prevalence of such nonmovements, however, is otherwise instructive in thinking about the translation of universal ideals into local values. What propels the seemingly mundane maneuverings of everyday life by women, teachers, laborers, the youth, gays and lesbians, religious intellectuals, ethnic minorities, etc. into concerted action on behalf of universal rights and values? Plainly stated, how ought one to think about the translation of universal democratic values in the case of Muslim societies given the widespread socialization of different agents and constituencies into nonmovements? Answering these questions requires a departure from the conventional analytical models premised on rigid dichotomies of “passive/active,” “religious/secular,” “civil/political,” “public/private,” and “universal/particular” comprehensive values. Moreover, it requires greater sensitivity to the contextual bases of struggles on behalf of democratic ideals.

East in her book Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2003).

139 What this suggests, therefore, is the need for a national dialogue and intellectual consideration of the inherent contradictions contained in the Islamic Republic

Constitution. The emergence of the Green Movement as a broad, multiclass, multiethnic, multi-ideological, and above all, multi-media political force has engendered a uniquely contextual (and global) engagement over the future of reform and democracy in Iran. But since the most prominent figures in the opposition inside Iran are of devout religious backgrounds with revolutionary credentials and are at any rate under constant threat by the regime for their political beliefs, the tenor, tempo and substance of the national conversation about reforming the Islamic regime has been distinctly univocal. As a result, there has been little by way of a reflective dialogue about the limitations of a particularist

(i.e. Islamist) form and vision of politics. Of course, this is not just a reformist problem; reconstructing a truly pluralistic, reflective and contextual democratic movement also requires secular and liberal intellectuals to do their part in constructing a truly inclusive national dialogue about the future of constitutionalism and democracy in Iran. It is to a consideration of this intellectual public sphere that I turn next.

III RECONFIGURING THE INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT

In his important new book, Democracy in Modern Iran, the leading Iranian sociologist Ali Mirsepassi, issues an impassioned call for a revitalization of intellectual discourse around concepts such as democracy, human rights, and secularism.58 He argues that the challenge facing Iranian intellectuals today “is to define and create, through a new way of communicating born of a dialogue that accepts diverse points of view, a self-

58 Ali Mirsepassi, Democracy in Modern Iran: Islam, Culture, and Political Change (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2010).

140 understanding as cosmopolitans who live in a common, national concerns and imaginary.”59 By “cosmopolitans,” however, Mirsepassi does not mean that Iranian intellectuals must become global citizens or worldly intellectuals. But rather to break free of the rigid intellectual traditions and entrenched class, ethnic, religious, and patriarchal structures that have foreclosed the possibility of “dialogue” among them within the

Iranian “public sphere.”60 Indeed, as the brief narrative overview recounted above attests to, intellectual turf wars seem not to have evolved much from the time of the

Constitutional Revolution. Even within the self-reflexive Green Movement, religious and secular intellectuals seem unable to engage in constructive dialogue with one another with regards to future steps, objective and strategies of the movement. This lack of dialogue, Mirsepassi correctly notes, “is itself prompted by the absence of institutional foundations for public discussion or of a public sphere that could serve as the basis for

Iranian democracy.”61 This is an important observation for it points to the utter lack of critical engagement and reflective understanding within different intellectual communities and political organizations in Iran since the era of constitutionalism.

From the early days of constitutionalism, Iranian political parties and intellectual communities have remained fairly insular and parochial in their perspectives. There were the nationalist modernizers, for whom cultivating a sense of national pride bordering on nativism was of utmost importance. They envisioned a modern, purposeful Iran capable of projecting power in the international arena, much like what Kemal Ataturk had been able to achieve with Turkey. There were also those intellectuals who looked to Turkey’s

59 Ibid. p. 150. 60 Ibid. pp. 151-160. 61 Ibid. p.156.

141 achievement as a model for Iran, but for them it was secularism that offered the path toward national salvation. Secular democrats reserved special contempt for members of the clergy whom they regarded as hopelessly traditional, anti-modern and backward. As I explained in the first section, there were some secular intellectuals such as the publisher of the daily Qanun, Mirza Malkum Khan, who did attempt to engage with dialogue, but such cases were the exception rather than the rule. Similarly, the ulama, as the cases of

Sheikh Fazlullah Nuri and Ayatollah Khomeini demonstrated, were exceedingly rigid in their outlook. There were some notable exceptions such as Mirza Hossein Na’ini and the late Ayatollah Montazeri (both heroes of the Green Movement today), but they are fondly remembered more for their critical exchanges with conservative clerics and hard line religious thinkers than for any dialogues with members of the secular or liberal intellectual class. Given this sad state of affairs, Mirsepassi’s intervention is all the more appealing now that political events in Iran have occasioned the coming together, once again, of a diverse coalition of intellectuals and lay citizens.

Moreover, Mirsepassi’s is not merely a call to dialogue. He urges members of the intellectual class of every background and hue to reconfigure the basis for dialogue and engagement after more than a century of struggle for a just constitution. As he puts it,

“Now it is time for the establishment and expansion of democracy to become the basic objective and the primary focus of intellectual discourse.”62 Drawing on the pragmatist philosophies of Dewey and Richard Rorty, Mirsepassi advances a critical understanding of modernity that not only accounts for the unique “experience” and “development of modern reason” in Iran, but also offers a much-needed repudiation of “the ‘nativist’

62 Ibid. p. 151.

142 tendency to reject the ‘Other’ either within the domestic national framework or abroad.”63

Mirsepassi is at his best when he takes to task Iranian public intellectuals (his chief targets being Abdolkarim Soroush, Javad Tabatabai, and Aramesh Dustdar) for propagating “philosophical dogmas” that overlook “structures of knowledge, ideas, or any other form of cultural representations in their historical and social contexts.”64 He is far less persuasive, however, when he repeatedly suggests that only a “sociological interpretation” of the “complex interrelation” of agents and structures could yield a plausible democratic future. Given Mirsepassi’s erudite command of the Western philosophical canon, it is surprising (and somewhat disappointing) that he does not at all engage with any of a number of serious works in contemporary democratic theory which take as their starting point Isaiah Berlin’s devastating critique of the predominant

“monist” tradition in the history of political thought.65 Had he done so, he would have found a sizable cohort of political theorists and philosophers whose contributions to, and reflections on, the democratic experience, as I demonstrated in the previous two chapters, do not presuppose a universal or Western model of modern rationality.

The lack of engagement with contemporary ideas in democratic theory, furthermore, divests the reader of the ability to measure the democratic legitimacy and credibility of certain political visions and their purveyors respectively. For instance, as part of his research, Mirsepassi interviewed five prominent members of the embattled

63 Ibid. p. 70-73. 64 Ibid. p. 97. 65 In his famous essay, “The Pursuit of the Ideal” (1988), Berlin posited that “monism” referred to that category of beliefs that took the source of moral – and hence political – undertakings to be one, such as liberty or religious salvation. He contrasted this disposition with the doctrine of “pluralism,” which asserted that the sources of the good are many, and that human beings can take any number of paths to achieving the good life for themselves. See, Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 1-19. The Islamic Republic’s Platonic take on Islamic ideals and governance places it squarely in the monist camp, but the sociological view privileged by Mirsepassi all but misses this.

143 reform movement (Alireza Alavi-Tabar, Mustafa Tajzadeh, Hadi Khaniki, Reza Tehrani, and Abbas Abdi), all of whom “take a greater interest in social science approaches to tackling the problems of contemporary Iran.”66 Yet, as he sympathetically wades through their many “sociological” insights about their misspent youth as radical revolutionaries, the shifting of their political fortunes, and their manifold intellectual transformations, the reader is left with no coherent political vision or positive democratic conception from these political figures. In fact, it is unclear why in the nearly two chapters devoted to the activities and political thinking of reformist intellectuals there is scarcely any mention of the tortured political experiences of former secular- and liberal-minded political figures and parties – former premier Mehdi Bazargan and the National Front being the prime examples – and any lessons they may provide today’s pro-democracy movements inside

Iran. A sociological mode of inquiry does indeed provide us with a greater understanding of social and historical context, but it is not a substitute for a normative and concrete political vision. I mention these oversights in the book as a whole because they attest to the inherent difficulties involved in not just seeing the specter of democratic legitimacy in

Iran as an intellectual challenge, but also forging a contextual political vision that can offer a positive democratic agenda.

Indeed, moving forward, a key challenge for the opposition will be to figure out just how to forge a democratic alliance between secularist, religious, nationalist, and monarchist factions without letting its message dissolve into the sort of intellectual exercise that eventually undermined the process of constitutionalism and reform at the time of both Constitutional and Islamic revolutions. That the opposition has by and large

66 Ali Mirsepassi, Democracy in Modern Iran, p. 113.

144 uniformly adopted the nonviolent model of a movement struggling on behalf of civil and political rights is encouraging enough; it is also encouraging that more critical exchanges and joint undertakings by intellectuals of different backgrounds is now taking place. But a full and meaningful verdict has yet to be rendered on the future of the Green Movement precisely because of the lack of “institutional foundations for public discussion” inside

Iran. Although the intellectual scene in the exile and dissident community outside of Iran remains eclectic, dialogic, and self-reflective, inside Iran, due to harsh crackdown on reformist organizations and newspapers in the aftermath of the presidential elections, the terrain looks decidedly arid. Moreover, even at the height of their power, reformist intellectuals and politicians were mostly of the religiously devout variety. In the absence of a truly vibrant intellectual spectrum inside Iran, therefore, any hope for a constructive dialogue about the future of democracy may remain just that.

CONCLUSION

The century-long struggle for democracy in Iran is – as most democratic struggles undoubtedly are – largely a story about popular legitimacy. Ever since the 1905-1911

Constitutional Revolution, Iranian politics has been defined in terms of the struggles of ordinary citizens against the illegitimacy of, in historical order, dynastic despotism,

Western imperialism, secular dictatorship, and theocratic rule. To be sure, each encounter has occasioned its own milestones and setbacks. While the demise of the Qajar dynasty at the hands of secular and religious constitutionalists led to the adoption of a modern constitution, a parliamentary system, and an independent judiciary in principle, it did not result in democratic governance in practice, as the interests of the monarch and privileged classes superseded those of ordinary citizens. In the years 1950-53, Iranians did indeed

145 manage to resuscitate the constitution and institute parliamentary democracy. But the experiment proved short-lived as it ran counter to Anglo-American interests, which helped to carry out a coup and reinstated absolute monarchy in Iran. Following the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1979, furthermore, any hopes of a democratic Iran were once again dashed as Ayatollah Ruholllah Khomeini deftly exploited his favorable public standing by declaring Iran an “Islamic Republic,” and consolidating power by establishing the institution of Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist). The ensuing thirty years have showcased the quite pronounced tensions between this theocratic arrangement and the democratic principles espoused a century earlier – tensions which the nascent pro-democracy Green Movement is seeking to expose and resolve at the time of this writing.

Equally important to the democratic cause in Iran, moreover, has been the struggle for independence. By this I do not necessarily mean a struggle for territorial sovereignty, of some marginal import though this issue has been to the Iranian political development over the past century.67 Rather, I mean a struggle for independence from certain universal and particular scripts championed by constitutionalists, autocrats, monarchs, theocrats, and reformists in their efforts to remake Iranian politics according to their own prerogatives. Proponents of onstitutionalism (mainly composed of Western- educated elites) were especially animated by the ideals behind the French Revolution, and envisioned for Iran a kind of republican system of government not unlike those established in Western Europe. In fact, as I demonstrated above, the drafters of the

67 Unlike many countries in the Middle East or the Indian Subcontinent, Iran was never colonized by any European power. However, the country was invaded by both the British and Russian forces in 1941 and thereafter divided into northern and southern “zones of influence” in order to secure strategic oil fields and supply routes to aid British and Russian war efforts at the time.

146 constitution drew rather heavily on a translation of the Belgian constitution in devising the formal structure and separation of powers between different branches of government.

This is not to say that the goals and aspirations behind the revolution were not genuinely

Iranian; to the contrary, the constitutional revolution showcased a unique blend of universal aspirations (to equality, individual and group autonomy, religious freedom) and particular arrangements (Shi’a doctrine incorporated into the structure of government and the appointment of a constitutional monarch). What it suggests is that a period of “trial and error” would ensue before the right balance between certain constitutional principles and power-political realities could be struck. Unfortunately for constitutionalists, this period was cut short by the ascendance to power of the first Pahlavi monarch, Reza Shah, a deeply nationalist autocrat who regarded the constitution as undermining sovereignty and an obstacle to effective rule.

But neither the Pahlavi monarchs nor the clerical establishment that would replace them could completely ignore the deeply egalitarian principles enunciated in the constitution. As such, both regimes devised elaborate schemes to justify their methods of rule in constitutional terms. Monarchists did this by retaining certain constitutional offices and principles, but rendering them impotent in the name of modernization and nationalism. The Islamic regime for its part allowed for quasi-democratic institutions, paid lip service to such constitutional principles as separation of powers, equality and justice, but invested ultimate authority in the office of a Supreme Leader charged with discerning the interests of the public according to certain Islamic codes and values.

In this chapter, I have attempted to demonstrate how neither of these regimes have in the end managed to reconcile their highly autocratic and particularist visions of

147 governance with the core democratic values that were first expressed during the

Constitutional Revolution. The pro-democracy Green Movement today is setting about to achieving just such a task. Although the government has thus far been successful in stopping the momentum of the green movement through mass-arrests of opposition members, random killings, and general intimidation of the public via clandestine security efforts and paramilitary organizations like the Basij, the range of long-term challenges to the stability and legitimacy of the regime are immense. Much like the period before the fall of the Pahlavi regime, the government’s needless violent crackdowns on dissent and peaceful protests has helped to unite disparate organizations and figures from across the political spectrum and strengthened their resolve against tyranny. But unlike 1979, the green opposition is also very much aware of the deep differences that exist between them.

In his brilliant account of Iran in the last days of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s reign, Shah of Shahs, the Polish journalist and global nomad, Ryszard Kapuściński, captured an essential truth about moments of great national upheaval: “Several hundred languages are fighting for recognition and promotion; the language barriers are rising.

Deafness and incomprehension are multiplying.”68 Indeed, this insight is an apt description of the political crisis gripping Iranian society today. Little more than thirty years after Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise to power amid the chaotic welter of “deafness and incomprehension” that characterized the period leading up to the Iranian revolution in

1979, Iran is once again in the throes of a major legitimation crisis. Indeed, moving forward, a key challenge for the opposition will be to figure out just how to forge a democratic alliance between secularist, religious, nationalist, and liberal factions without

68 Ryszard Kapuściński, Shah of Shahs (London: Penguin Books, 1985), pp. 10-11.

148 letting its message dissolve into the sort of “deafness and incomprehension” that permeated the political atmosphere at the time of the revolution. That the opposition has by and large adopted the contextual model of a movement struggling on behalf of civil and political rights is encouraging enough, but a full and meaningful verdict has yet to be rendered on the future of democracy in Iran.

149 CHAPTER 4

Beyond Democracy Promotion: A Contextual Critique

“When a people has had the misfortune to be ruled by a government under which the feelings and the virtues needful for maintaining freedom could not develop themselves, it is during an arduous struggle to become free by their own efforts that these feelings and virtues have the best chance of springing up.”1 -- John Stuart Mill, “A Few Words on Non-Intervention”

INTRODUCTION

No topic is more alluring and yet more contentious in contemporary democratic theory than that of democracy promotion. In the last two decades there has been a conspicuous shift in the way government officials, scholars and public intellectuals, journalists and activists, and ordinary citizens nearly everywhere understand, espouse, or pay lip service to the virtues of democracy. Whereas the appeal of earlier commitments to the spread of democratic values and institutions (e.g. Wilsonian idealism) faded in the face of strategic interests and intensified great power rivalries spanning much of the globe, the post-Cold War order did in fact fortify democracy’s normative status – its empirical shortcomings notwithstanding – in international politics. No sooner was the triumph of capitalist democracy declared “the end of history” than scholars and practitioners of international politics were rushing to welcome the onset of a “third wave” of democratization.2 As a result of this general buoyancy about the prospects of democratic flowering and transition in much of the non-Western world (especially in the

1 John Stuart Mill, “A Few Words on Non-Intervention,” [1859] in Chris Brown, Terry Nardin and Nicholas Rengger, eds., International Relations in Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 491. 2 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992); and Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993).

150 post-communist societies of Central and Eastern Europe), Western governments and a host of international organizations set about devising programs to “promote” and “assist” democratic development in non-democratic countries. What was once an afterthought of economic development officers at organizations such as the U.S. Agency for

International Development (USAID) soon became a “growth area” in the mid-1980s and onwards as a result of the establishment of targeted programs primarily by the United

States and Western European countries.3 Indeed, as Michael McFaul has argued, democracy promotion has virtually become an established “international norm” in “the community of democratic states,” so much so that “the normative burden has shifted to those not interested in advocating democracy promotion.”4

Yet in spite of the near-universal sentiment in support of the idea of democracy promotion there is nothing even remotely approaching a consensus as regards the means of its implementation. Should promoters limit their efforts to offering electoral assistance, building institutional capacities, facilitating civic engagement, etc., or must they use other means such as military force, economic sanctions, or other invasive strategies to spur

3 Through such organizations as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Electoral Assistance Division at the United Nations, the United Nations Democracy Fund, the European Endowment for Democracy and Human Rights of the European Union, and a variety of other democracy promotion and “political development assistance” programs. Among other prominent international organizations operating such programs are the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Economic Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Organization of American States (OAS), the African Union (AU), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). For comprehensive historical surveys and analyses of Western democracy promotion programs, see Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999); Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Laurence Whitehead, ed., The International Dimensions of Democratization: Europe and the Americas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); and Richard Youngs, The European Union and the Promotion of Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 4 Michael McFaul, “Democracy Promotion as a World Value,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Winter 2004-05), p. 158.

151 democratic change?5 While some have argued vociferously that Western democracies

(especially the United States) should pool their considerable military and economic resources to spread and promote democratic values across the globe, others have warned of the inevitable politicization, and hence illegitimacy, of such programs when used as tools of statecraft.6 Still others have argued that only NGOs and transnational bodies have the legitimacy and disinterested motives to promote democracy (and even then only through programs targeted at the level of civil society).7 Nor is there general agreement about the desired or likely outcomes of democracy promotion. While proponents of the so-called “democratic peace theory” hold that the spread of democratic values and institutions will usher in a more peaceful world (since, historically speaking, democracies are less likely to go to war with each other), there is ample evidence that the road to

5 As Gideon Rose notes, “Which camp one belongs to will depend to some extent on subjective judgments about where democratization should be ranked relative to other foreign policy goals and what price should be paid for it.” “Democracy Promotion and American Foreign Policy,” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Winter 2000/01), p. 189. 6 Examples of the former are mostly found in the writings of neoconservative and liberal-internationalist writers, their differences on the justifications for the promotion of democratic values notwithstanding: Joshua Muravchik, Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America’s Destiny (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1991); Natan Sharansky, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror (New York: Public Affairs, 2006); Michael McFaul, Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can (Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield, Inc., 2010); Strobe Talbott, “Democracy and the National Interest,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 75, No. 6 (November/December 1996), pp. 47-63; G. John Ikenberry, “America’s Liberal Grand Strategy: Democracy and National Security in the Post-war Era,” in Michael Cox, G. John Ikenberry, and Takashi Inoguchi, eds., American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Strategies, and Impacts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp.103-126. The latter group is mostly composed of international relations scholars of either the realist, constructivist, or radical persuasion: Steve Smith, “U.S. Democracy Promotion: Critical Questions,” in ibid., pp.63-82; William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, U.S. Intervention, and Hegemony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); and Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (London: Vintage, 1992). 7 For a wide-ranging discussion of the role of NGOs and international organizations (IOs), see Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway, eds., Funding Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution Press, 2000); John C. Pevehouse, Democracy from Above? Regional Organizations and Democratization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Daniel Archibugi, The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), Ch. 8.; and Thomas D. Zweifel, International Organizations and Democracy Promotion (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2006).

152 democratization is anything but peaceful, and that, at any rate, democracies are not any less prone to war, especially so against non-democracies.8

For their part, political theorists have made significant contributions to these debates by developing normative frameworks for thinking about the utility of democracy promotion programs as well as their permissibility. The question of legitimacy is of paramount importance for the simple fact that any democratic arrangement worthy of its name must ultimately be consented to and endorsed by those living under it.9 Thus the debate within political theory is mainly focused on the instrumental value of democracy promotion programs for achieving justice in society, and whether such a utility warrants a universal entitlement to democracy alongside other basic human rights.10 The standard theme of these discussions, moreover, is one of affirmation. Although many political theorists remain skeptical of a universal right to democracy (for reasons which I shall consider below), a great majority of them affirm as legitimate – and hence support – the

8 As realist thinkers have pointed out, democracy promotion constitutes a dangerous foray into idealism in international politics with serious deleterious consequences in the long-term for the society of states as a whole. Many realists point to the example of the 2003 invasion of Iraq as an instant of such misbegotten idealism. For an overview of the issues involved in this particular debate, see Michael Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 3-4 (Summer and Fall 1983), pp. 205-35 and 323-53; Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, eds., Debating the Democratic Peace: An International Security Reader (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996); Spencer R. Weart, Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); Joanne Gowa, Ballots and Bullets: The Elusive Democratic Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005). 9 “Popular sovereignty,” notes Thomas Christiano, “implies that all minimally competent adults come together as one body to make decisions about the laws and policies that are to regulate their lives together.” The Rule of the Many: Fundamental Issues in Democratic Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). 10 For the most notable contributions, see Charles R. Beitz, The Idea of Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 174-186; Joshua Cohen, “Is there a Human Right to Democracy?” in Christine Sypnowich, ed. The Egalitarian Conscience: Essays in Honor of G.A. Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 226-248; Gregory H. Fox, “The Right to Political Participation in International Law,” Yale Journal of International Law Vol. 17 (1992): 539-608; Thomas M. Franck, “The Emerging Right to Democratic Governance,” The American Journal of International Law Vol. 86 (1992): 46-91; Thomas M. Franck, “Legitimacy of the Democratic Entitlement,” in Gregory H. Fox and Brad A. Roth, eds., Democratic Governance and International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); and Amartya Sen, “Democracy as a Universal Value,” Journal of Democracy Vol. 10, No. 3 (July 1999): 3-17.

153 promotion of democratic institutions and values from without (strictly through peaceful means, however).

In this chapter, I aim to temper the cross-disciplinary enthusiasm for democracy promotion programs in reference to the contextual conception of democratic legitimacy I offered in Chapter 2. The range of instrumentalist arguments on offer is hampered by universalist generalizations about democratic government: namely, the tendency to separate democratic values and institutions from their orientation within particular political and historical contexts. As I pointed out in Chapter 2, the social construction of democratic norms – and especially the reflective processes that mediate their internalization – has a direct bearing on the legitimacy of political forms and decisions.

This process, moreover, is perennially in flux, characterized by continual contestation and ever responsive to the changing circumstances of any number of social and political constituencies, power relations, and cultural currents. Given the complexity of such dynamics in actual societies, democracy promotion must therefore entail something considerably more expansive and intimate than mere advocacy on behalf of periodic elections or institutional reforms. To say that democracy promotion “is intended only to help reveal preferences in the society… [and] to level the playing field by eliminating the authoritarians’ unfair advantages,” as some prominent proponents of such programs do,11 would be to assume that public preferences are either somehow hidden from view or necessarily uniformly democratic. As I demonstrated through the case of Iran in Chapter

3, although democratic representation is often a central demand of different constituencies, not all public preferences entitled to representation are compatible with

11 Francis Fukuyama and Michael McFaul, “Should Democracy Be Promoted or Demoted?” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Winter 2007-08): p. 28.

154 basic democratic principles. Therefore, the struggle on behalf of democracy does not end at the ballot box or through the observance of fair and impartial procedures. Rather, it is a continual meditation on the meaning and scope of basic rights and values in the context of changing times.

Accordingly, the following critical look at democracy promotion is divided into three parts. In the first section, I present and critique the main instrumentalist arguments in favor of democracy promotion in the works of leading political theory and IR scholars.

Here I argue that the overall failure of democracy promotion initiatives over the past three decades is due to a misconception about the sources of democratic legitimacy in the instrumental view. In contrast to this view, I offer an alternative model of “democratic solidarity” in the second section. In lieu of the perceived impossibility of a clear separation between interests and values in the international realm, I argue that the only way for states and international NGOs to be both legitimate and effective as promoters of democratic values is through adherence to three core principles constitutive of solidarity: non-interference, inclusivity, and reflexivity. This does not preclude the possibility of direct electoral or monetary assistance to those states (not civil society members) which formally request such help in a period of political transition to democracy (as in the case of certain Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, or East Asian countries), but it does so in other cases, such as the Middle East and North Africa, where the role and position of outside parties are conditioned by different contexts. In the last section, in reference to my case study, I offer a critical comparison of two very different approaches to advancing democracy in the Middle East by the Bush and Obama administrations respectively, and demonstrate how the latter’s embrace of democratic solidarity over

155 democracy promotion has been more fruitful in advancing the cause of democracy in the

Middle East and North Africa over the long run.

I THE INSTRUMENTAL VIEW AND ITS LIMITATIONS

Support for efforts to promote democracy in non-democratic societies is often framed in reference to two sets of instrumental arguments: (1) democracy leads to a more peaceful international society, and (2) democracy is the best means to achieving justice in any society. In this section, I will examine the justifications offered in support of these claims in the literature in international relations (IR) and political theory, and endeavor to demonstrate why their limited view of the contextual bases of democratic legitimacy ultimately undermines the instrumental arguments for democracy promotion.

Democracy as a means toward peace

The claim that democracy engenders peace is widely (and controversially) regarded as the single most compelling contribution of IR scholarship since the birth of the discipline in the aftermath of the First World War.12 As Chris Brown has explained, the spectrum of justifications on offer is in reference to two sets of factors: “cultural- normative” and “structural-institutional”.13 The first grouping refers to the propensity toward dialogue, compromise, and cooperation in democratic societies as a means of

12 In 1994, the editors of the prominent IR journal, International Security, identified it as “the conventional wisdom” of the IR scholarships. “Editors’ Note,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall 1994), p. 3. The most cited instance of this argument is made by Jack Levy when he identified the democratic peace theory as “the closes thing we have to empirical law in the study of international relations.” Jack Levym “Domestic Politics and War,” in The Origins and Prevention of Major Wars, eds. Robert Rotberg and Theodore Rabb (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 88. Also see, Robert Keohane in Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (with Gary King and Sidney Verba), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. 13 Chris Brown, “’Really Existing Liberalism’ and International Order,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (December 1992): 313-328.

156 achieving political objectives and affecting change. Correspondingly, democratic leaders are prone to adopting similar norms of behavior when dealing with their foreign democratic counterparts in international society.14 Structural-institutional factors are more wide-ranging, however. First, democratically elected leaders are more accountable to the public than their non-democratic counterparts; therefore, they must labor to present credible evidence and adhere to constitutional statutes prior to embarking on costly wars against another democratic polity. Second, in democratic societies decisions are contemplated and made in public, and therefore are accessible to domestic and foreign agents alike. This transparency in decision-making renders democratic countries’ actions and intentions more predictable in international society, thereby reducing the likelihood of uncertainty and arbitrary behavior in international society.15 Third, because of their openness and popular legitimacy, democratic societies tend to establish a range of socioeconomic and political linkages with each other, thereby creating a mutually beneficial incentive structure for continued peace.16 Lastly, the international regimes and institutions that democracies set up help to further the cause of peace by establishing a

“concert of democracies” to both help monitor the compliance of state and non-state actors within the democratic sphere and act as a secure, stable and prosperous exemplar to non-democratic states and other actors.17

14 Bruce Russett, “Why Democratic Peace?” in Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, eds., Debating the Democratic Peace, p. 97. 15 James Fearon argues that the transparent nature of democratic decision-making makes democratic countries more dependable, and their claims and interests more credible, in foreign affairs. See, James Fearon, “Signaling Foreign Policy Interests,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 41, No. 1 (1997): 68-90. 16 John Oneal and Bruce Russett, “The Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and Conflict, 1950-1985,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 2 (1997): 267-94. 17 Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, “Democracies of the World, Unite,” The American Interest, Vol. 2, No. 3 (January/February 2007): 5-15; see also, Russett, “Why Democratic Peace?” pp. 84-85.

157 Together, these purported causal links between democracy and peace have formed the bases for one of the enduring arguments presented by the advocates of democracy promotion in Western governments (especially in the United States). Since the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, the promotion of democratic values and institutions for the purposes of establishing global peace has been a standard feature of American foreign policy. Although much of it rhetorical, in recent decades the U.S. Department of State has steadily increased its budget for democracy promotion programs especially targeted at

Middle Eastern countries. These trends reached their zenith during the presidency of

George W. Bush with the advent of the so-called “Freedom Agenda,” which, drawing on democratic-peace theory, linked the spread of democracy to the preservation of national and international security. This view was emphatically affirmed by the president in his second inaugural address:

“We are led by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world…. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our nation. It is the honorably achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation’s security, and the calling of our time. So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”18

Nearly a century since Wilson’s pledge to “make the world safe for democracy,” the

Freedom Agenda sought to rearticulate the terms of its underlying idealism through the application of force. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – the geopolitical imperatives behind their inception notwithstanding – were both justified in reference to the ostensible benefits of democracy and human rights for international security. Questions regarding

18 George W. Bush, “Second Inaugural Address,” Washington, D.C., January 20, 2005.

158 the legitimacy of exporting democracy forcibly from without aside, it was determined that the fruits of such a venture would ensure a more peaceful and prosperous world in the long run. As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice argued, “The fundamental character of regimes now matters more than the international distribution of power.”19

Of course, these arguments at once echo and obscure what was first presented in

1795 by Immanuel Kant in his famous essay, “Perpetual Peace,” in which he posited that the maintenance of peace in international politics relied on the guarantee of three

“definitive articles”: (i) a representative, republican form of government ("The Civil

Constitution of Every State Should Be Republican"); (ii) the liberal principle of respect manifested in a universal regime of human rights ("The Law of Nations Shall be Founded on a Federation of Free States”); and (iii) social and economic interdependence across borders ("The Law of World Citizenship Shall Be Limited to Conditions of Universal

Hospitality").20 For Kant, these articles helped to explain how liberal states could be peaceful in their relations between each other but also war-prone and hostile in their relations with non-liberal states. Moreover, only once all three articles have been realized will a liberal peace be sustainable. As Michael Doyle has pointed out, “no single constitutional, international, or cosmopolitan source is alone sufficient, but together – and only together – they plausibly connect the characteristics of liberal polities and economies with sustained liberal peace.”21 This is a crucial yet oft-overlooked aspect of

Kant’s cosmopolitan scheme for perpetual peace in the literature on democracy

19 Condoleezza Rice, “Remarks Presented to the Georgetown School of Foreign Service,” Washington, D.C., January 18, 2006. http://www.disam.dsca.mil/pubs/Vol%2028_2/Rice.pdf. 20 Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace, in Hans Reiss, ed., Kant’s Political Writings, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). 21 Michael W. Doyle, “Peace, Liberty, and Democracy: Realists and Liberals Contest a Legacy,” in Michael Cox, G. John Ikenberry, and Takashi Inoguchi, eds., American Democracy Promotion, p. 31.

159 promotion. A republican (i.e. democratic) form of government alone will not necessarily help the cause of peace; governments can be representative of their citizens beliefs and interests but still lack the liberal principles of respect and equality to create lasting bonds based on friendship and trust with other liberal nations in international society.

Indeed, the latter observation is borne out in the case of emerging or transitional democracies, where the absence of widely shared liberal values among those coming to power through hastily arranged elections or referenda increases the likelihood of war. As a number of studies have shown, democratizing states have a much higher chance of initiating war their stable liberal democratic counterparts. 22 According to the advocacy think tank, Freedom House, of the 179 cases of countries in democratic transition

(defined as moving either from “Not Free” to “Partly Free” or from “Partly Free” to

“Free” categories) during the so-called “third wave” of democratization (1972-2010) 30 experienced either civil or interstate wars.23 Although this does not necessarily prove that the causes of war were strictly tied to the democratizing process, it certainly stands in support of the Kantian proposition that democratic procedures and institutions alone are not sufficient for the realization of peace, especially among nations at different stages of democratization. What this suggests, then, is that the focus on democracy promotion, absent a concurrent effort to promote liberal values, will not necessarily produce a

22 Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, Electing to Fight. For a dissenting argument, see Michael McFaul, “Are New Democracies War-Prone?” Journal of Democracy 18:2 (2007), 160-67. McFaul claims that the emphasis on weak institutions is too narrow, and that without it, there is no statistically significant relationship between democratization and war. But this argument overlooks the importance of liberal values underlying democratic institutions. If such values are not shared all the way down, then is the country worthy of the title “democratic” at all? 23 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2010: Erosion of Freedom Intensifies,” (Washington, D.C., 2010). The dataset for this study is provided by the Center for Systemic Peace, which uses the Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions Dataset (2009 release version) of the Polity IV Project. The dataset can be accessed at: http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/inscr.htm/.

160 durable and stable peace. Proponents of democracy promotion, however, are loath to describe their efforts as advancing a liberal agenda. Instead, as McFaul argues, theirs is an effort to realize “electoral democracy,” which “follows [sic] Joseph Schumpeter in defining democracy most minimally as ‘the institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle’.”24 In this regard, it is in fact correct to argue that democracy promotion does not entail advancing a liberal agenda; but then the obvious question is why its proponents should continue to argue that it would lead to peace. Both of these assertions cannot be true at the same time according to the Kantian scheme.

Setting aside the liberal preconditions for a democratic peace, there are other compelling reasons for doubting the plausibility of Kant’s vision of a peaceful cosmopolitan order. Many adherents of the realist school of IR have argues that what ultimately accounts for peaceful relations between nations is not the internal characteristics of governments, but rather the balance of power based on material needs and interests.25 Countries with vastly different forms of government, they explain, have throughout history formed alliances and maintained peaceful relations based on mutual security and material interests. For instance, in spite of its grand rhetoric about securing peace through democracy, the United States forged friendly relationships with countries such as Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan

(to name a few) based purely on material (oil and gas) and geostrategic (balancing

24 Michael McFaul, Advancing Democracy, p. 28. The other favored definition is Adam Przeworski’s: “Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections.” in Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 10. 25 John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War,” International Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Summer 1990): 5-56; and Kenneth N. Waltz, “America as Model for the World? A Foreign Policy Perspective,” PS (December 1991): 667-670.

161 Russian and Chinese influence) interests. Correspondingly, it would be wrong to assume that a natural “harmony of interests” exists between states with similar institutional compositions and constitutional guarantees.26 For was Wilhelmine Germany any less democratic than France or Great Britain at the time of the outbreak of the First World

War?27 More often than not, it is geopolitical context and the balance of power that determine the causes of war and peace in international politics, not the attributes of governments.

Furthermore, as Christopher Layne has argued, the appeal of the democratic peace theory rests entirely on a small universe of cases compared to the quite substantial range of international outcomes explained using realist arguments.28 This is largely due to the historical fact that there simply are very few examples of a cohort of countries satisfying

Kant’s constitutional and cosmopolitan criteria for perpetual peace, whereas there are countless examples of non-democratic countries waging wars as well as maintaining long periods of peace.29 Therefore, while there is a stronger causal links between the breakdown of regional alliances and the outbreak of war – as in the case of the First

World War – as per realist theory, the liberal take on democratic peace is merely based on a correlation between cultural-normative factors and peace. Using the case of the

American civil war, Layne asks, “if democratic norms and culture fail to prevent the

26 E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919-1939 (London: Macmillan, 1958). 27 This has led some to the following conclusion: “If there is a pacific democracy effect in evidence in international affairs, its consequences are swamped by a modernity effect from which it cannot be separated.” Joshua Foa Dienstag, “Pessimistic Realism and Realistic Pessimism,” in Duncan Bell, ed., Political Thought and International Relations: Variations on A Realist Theme (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 169. 28 Christopher Layne, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall 1994): 5-49. 29 David E. Spiro, “The Insignificance of Liberal Peace,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall 1994): 50-86.

162 outbreak of civil war within democracies, what reason is there to believe that they will prevent the outbreak of interstate wars between democracies?”30 At first glance, this may seem like an unfair question given the fact that American society and government could hardly be characterized as either democratic or liberal at the time of the civil war; nonetheless, it would certainly have qualified as an “electoral democracy” according to the minimalist criteria favored by the proponents of democracy promotion.

As the preceding arguments demonstrate, the case for democratic peace is hardly uncontroversial, let alone even approaching anything resembling a social scientific law.

Yes, this does not mean that the assertions of liberal-cosmopolitan theorists are entirely without merit. For much of the past century stable democracies in Western Europe, North

America, Oceania, and Japan have indeed enjoyed peace and prosperity in their relations with one another. Structural-institutional and cultural-normative factors have tremendous explanatory power with respect to the durability of peaceful relations in and between countries in these regions. When it comes to the composition and organization of politics, the economy, and the society at large, liberal-democratic values form the basis of legitimacy for all of the countries in these regions, and as such have developed into norms governing the multiple linkages and relationships between them. The successful internalization of liberal-democratic norms in these countries and the resulting peaceful and prosperous relations between them, in turn, account for the prominence of the discourse of democracy promotion as a tool of statecraft after the end of the Cold War.31

30 Christopher Layne, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” p. 41. 31 Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink argue that certain norms are more easily internalized in international politics than others, especially if propagated by powerful states that are seen as models of success by others: “Norms held by states widely viewed as successful and desirable models are thus likely to become prominent and diffuse. The fact that Western norms are more likely to diffuse internationally would seem to follow from this observation. This fits the pattern of adoption of women's suffrage norms,

163 The cascading effects of these norms in other parts of the globe (most notably in Eastern

Europe, Latin America and East Asia), moreover, attest to the power of ideas (especially democratic ones) over brute material and security considerations. The spread of democratic ideas may not necessarily usher in a more peaceful world, but surely the fact that stable liberal-democratic regimes have established durable ties with one another in the past century should not be dismissed as irrelevant to international stability.

Where does this leave us with respect to democracy promotion? At the very least, it ought to temper the certainty behind the instrumental argument that democracy can be a means toward world peace. As the costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate – both of which have at various times been justified in reference to the core tenets of the

Bush-era Freedom Agenda – looking at democracy solely through the lens of international security can have dire consequences for stability and peace. As Layne points out, “Because it links American security to the nature of other states’ internal political systems, DPT’s [democratic peace theory] logic inevitably pushes the U.S. to adopt an interventionist strategic posture.”32 This is precisely the kind of faux idealism that is most disturbing to realists, and which over the past two decades has degraded the otherwise worthy pursuit of affirming the near-universal appeal of democratic values by reducing it to a mere tool of statecraft. Democracy, as I have argued in the previous chapters, is socially constructed and as such informed by a set of contextual factors unique to the historical experience of particular societies. This does not mean that the basic underlying values of democracy do not entail the same outcomes or arrangements in all societies, but

since almost all the norm leaders were Western states (though the United States and Britain were latecomer norm leaders, not early ones).” Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization Vol. 52, No. 4 (Fall 1998), p. 906. 32 Christopher Layne, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” p. 46.

164 rather that the vocabulary and reference points of democratic legitimacy differ from one society to another. Aligning the goals of democracy promotion too closely with those of global security risks reducing democracy to a mere normative object with nothing more than plain, unsophisticated electoral features.

Democracy as a means to justice

The instrumental arguments in favor of democracy as a means to justice are decidedly more complex and potent than those offered in support of democratic peace.

Compelling though they may be, however, they ultimately fall short of offering convincing justifications for the promotion of democratic values and institutions by an outside party. Much like the aforementioned democratic peace thesis, these arguments rely on too minimal a definition of democracy and too objective (non-contextual) a view of justice to be regarded as legitimate across different societies. As I will argue in the next section, they are certainly sufficient in forming the basis for universal “solidarity” in support of democratic values and certain global justice issues, but not resonant enough to warrant (non)coercive promotion by third parties.33

Let us begin with the most familiar claim of the instrumental justification first. As

James Bohman has succinctly put it, “democracy promotes justice precisely because it enables citizens to demand to be treated justly, as free and equal citizens.”34 Embedded in this pithy justification is an understanding of justice based on the substantive ideals of autonomy and equality (as opposed to mere procedural guarantees such as electoral

33 I will elaborate further on the salient differences between “democratic solidarity” and “democracy promotion” in the next section, but suffice it to say that the former refers to a non-strategic, non-ideological mode of democratic expression, while the latter is always the stated aim and policy of a political entity (state or non-state) guided by extraneous interests of its own. 34 James Bohman, “The Democratic Minimum: Is Democracy a Means to Global Justice?” Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2005), p. 102. Italics in the original.

165 competition or constitutional checks and balances). According to Bohman, the ideals of autonomy and equality “constitute” the very idea of justice; “that is, any practice is just to the extent that it treats each person as free and equal, unjust to the extent that it does not.”35 The novelty of democracy, therefore, lies in its capacity to facilitate and promote the pursuit of just practices, which in turn deepen democracy itself through constant reinterpretation and expansion of democratic ideals.36 Crucially, this transformative process avoids the problem of circularity first raised by Iris Marion Young: “For democracy to promote justice, it must already be just.”37 The instrumental view advanced by Bohman accounts for this problem by fulfilling what he calls “the democratic minimum: the minimum necessary for people to claim their freedom and equality effectively in the particular situation of democratic deficit of the global system.”38 In short, democracy promotes justice by ensuring freedom from domination and providing equality of opportunity for citizens. Of course, Bohman’s argument is concerned primarily with ameliorating global injustices through the creation of a transnational cosmopolitan democratic order based on human rights. The kind of justice achieved through the “democratic minimum,” in this regard, “aims at the realization of human rights – rights against tyranny and domination.”39

Be that as it may, it is unclear why this justification only amounts to a minimal conception of democracy. The underlying ideals of autonomy and equality, it seems to me, are tied to a whole set of substantive rights and preconditions (i.e. rights to free

35 Ibid. 101-2. 36 Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, eds., Deepening Democracy (London: Verso, 2003). 37 Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 35. 38 James Bohman, “The Democratic Minimum,” p. 102. 39 Ibid.

166 speech and assembly, reciprocity, effective enforcement of the rule of law, an independent judiciary, widespread adherence to the doctrine of pluralism, etc.) that would make their observance anything but minimal. For instance, as Joshua Cohen has argued,

“The democracy that justice requires is associated with a demanding conception of equality… [since it signifies] equal respect to those who have sufficient capacity to understand the requirements of mutually beneficial and fair cooperation, grasp their rationale, and follow them in their conduct.”40 The ideal of political equality, therefore, entails equal rights of participation, equal respect, and above all equal opportunities to affect politics and fair distribution of resources.41 It is significant that Rawls describes his two principles of justice as fairness – liberty and equality – as signifying a “democratic conception of society as a system of cooperation among equal persons.”42 These guarantees are required in order to ensure that citizens are endowed with basic capacities to claim their political rights and be able to demand justice in society.

Related to Bohman’s minimal instrumental account, but different in its scope and implications, is the developmental argument championed by the economist-philosopher,

Amartya Sen. In Development as Freedom, Sen argues that democracy is better than any other form of government in enabling individuals to pursue their interests and to chart a course toward their own self-development. Democracy engenders justice by revealing the preferences of the public and holding governments accountable for their (in)actions. Sen demonstrates this point through a study of the causes of famines worldwide, in which he

40 Joshua Cohen, “Is there a Human Right to Democracy?” in Christine Sypnowich, ed., The Egalitarian Conscience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 226 and 240. 41 The latter, of course, comprise John Rawls’s second principle of justice as fairness known as the “difference principle.” See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 303. 42 Ibid. p. 383.

167 finds that no stable, independent democratic country with a reasonably free press and guarantees of basic rights and freedoms has ever suffered from a severe famine. As he explains it, “Democracy [distributes] the penalty of famines to the ruling groups and political leaders…. [which then] gives them the political incentive to try to prevent any threatening famine, and since famines are in fact easy to prevent… the approaching famines are prevented.”43 According to Sen, therefore, democratic values and institutions advance a larger developmental interest by not merely endowing citizens with, in Hannah

Arendt’s words, “the capacity to begin,” but in fact bringing about just ends that would protect basic rights and serve the interests of all.44 The instrumental argument employed in Sen’s formulation is at once more substantive and more rationalist than Bohman’s, however, and for those reasons all the more problematic.

First, there is the widely acknowledged problem in democratic theory that electoral competition and representative bodies indeed do produce discriminatory policies and injustice.45 This is not a validation of the particularist refrain that democratic procedures and values are inherently faulty and hence in need of a common foundation or shared understanding of social and political life. Rather, it is a testament to the observable reality that reasonable people very well disagree about what constitutes social justice, and, more importantly, how the underlying ideals of autonomy and equality in society ought to be interpreted. What democracy provides is the promise of an inclusive political space whereby questions of justice are debated, but not necessarily resolved or ameliorated. Therefore, during the course of these debates, it is entirely possible that

43 Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1999), p. 180. Italics in the original. 44 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1976), p. 479. 45 For a good summation of these views, see Ian Shapiro, Democratic Justice (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), especially Chapter 8.

168 democratic processes produce unjust laws or provisions. Examples of such instances abound in stable Western liberal democracies concerning the rights of women in the workplace (and reproductive rights), migrant workers, gay and lesbian partnerships, foreign detainees, to name a few. In each case, the authority of democratic decisions, whether through referenda, representative bodies, or judicial channels, is not congruent with the demands of justice, leading some to call “for the priority of justice and human rights in principle over the authority of democratic decisions.”46

Second, as both John Stuart Mill and Rawls have relayed in their respective conceptions of democratic government, abstract objectives of political justice may be achieved through a variety of forms of government. The socioeconomic and cultural circumstances of certain societies may be such that justice can best be attained through non-democratic means.47 For instance, as can be observed in contemporary China, non- democratic governments can sometimes institute infrastructural, urban, educational, or economic plans that would maximize improve the improve the overall health and wellness of the general public and lead to prosperity without periodic, fair and free elections.48 Of course, this does not mean that other forms of rule – especially non- egalitarian, authoritarian ones – are to be preferred over democracy. To the contrary,

46 Carol C. Gould, Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 49. She cautions, however, that “inasmuch as the argument for democracy is based on the requirements of justice as equal freedom, itself one of the human rights, it follows that interventions on behalf of justice should carefully delimited, and specifically to acses where fundamental rights have been violated.” 47 J. S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government [1861], in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), Ch. 4; Rawls makes this point in §§ 11 and 39 of A Theory of Justice. 48 Many commentators credit China’s rise to global economic and political prominence to its “efficient,” top-down ruling structure. In fact, China is often favorably contrasted with India, which to many, precisely because of its tediously complex democratic system has lagged behind China in development and economic growth. See, Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2009), Chs. 1 and 4.

169 democratic values and institutions do serve the interests of individuals and groups better than any divine or absolute authority ever would, as multiple cases of once authoritarian but now democratic countries across the world demonstrate. But if electoral competition is once again the only measure of democracy, as Sen seems to imply, then highly abstract considerations of justice might be better addressed through other forms of government depending on the socioeconomic and political context of the case in question. As Charles

Beitz explains,

“An electoral incentive mechanism is likely to operate effectively only when voters are in a position to judge whether the government has made the best choices among the alternatives available. The occurrence of a readily avoidable famine whose effects are plainly visible might be enough to inform such a judgment. But the abrupt and discontinuous character of most famines distinguishes them from many other adverse conditions, for which a government’s responsibility may be less clear…. We need more systematic evidence before accepting the inference from the special to the general case.”49

Indeed, Beitz proceeds to do exactly that by looking at policy performance by democratic and authoritarian regimes (both rich and poor cases) and by examining the performance of poor countries transitioning to democracy, before arriving at the following conclusion:

“Both points illustrate that the empirical basis of the generalization of familiar arguments for democracy to unfamiliar cases is more unsettled than one might have believed. It is difficult to be confident that efforts to promote the democratic reform of political institutions in poor societies have a reasonable probability of producing a sustained improvement in the satisfaction of people’s basic interests in personal and material security. This is true, anyway, in the general case; perhaps there are cases about which enough is known to warrant more confident predictions. But for human rights [and, by extension, democracy promotion] it is the general case that matters.”50

49 Charles R. Beitz, The Idea of Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). P. 177. 50 Ibid. p. 180.

170 As I noted above, this need not temper our preference or enthusiasm for democratic values and institutions over other governing values and institutions. The question of whether democracies in general produce better results for their citizens than other forms of rule may be empirically unsettled, but one which most reasonable observers would undoubtedly regard as normatively true. But for our purposes, the key question is whether such normative preferences alone can justify the promotion of democratic values and institutions from without. Hence, as Beitz observes, if it is the strength of general cases alone that drives the instrumental argument for democracy as a means to justice and development, then a more substantive refutation of other modes of rule that may accomplish the same ends must also be produced. One can easily find such robust accounts of the underlying normative virtues of democratic values in the works of many contemporary democratic theorists, of course; but it is not insignificant that most proponents of such views do not impulsively offer the same reasons in support of promoting democracies in other countries.

An excellent case in point here would be Rawls’s thinking on this issue. In The

Law of Peoples, Rawls confirms the realist view that states are generally inclined to act rationally, but adds the crucial insight that they may not always do so reasonably: states may pursue their interests without taking into account what would be in the interest of others. Reasonableness, in this sense, signifies the lack of concern with reciprocity at the international level (hence the interest, in Rawls’s part, in crafting a “law of peoples” as opposed to a “law of nations”).51 We need not endorse the content of Rawls’s normative

51 John Rawls, The Law of Nations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), § 2. By “peoples” Rawls has in mind “liberal democratic” and “decent” peoples, with the latter referring to members of those societies that are non-liberal but reasonable. He explains the difference between peoples and states as

171 conception tout court to appreciate the judgment that the instrumental argument in favor of democracy as a means to justice can operate at two different levels. The requirements of justice in each state (that is, for each peoples) are different enough to make it difficult for a universal conception of democracy (understood primarily as electoral competition by its chief proponents) to deliver on it in a manner that would be legitimate. This is why,

I believe, Rawls limits the promotion of democratic values to the realm of peoples as opposed to states: “Peoples have a duty to assist other peoples living under unfavorable conditions that prevent their having a just or decent political and social regime.”52 This way, the task of democracy promotion is removed from the cold rational calculus of national interests and instead placed at core of a reasonable concern for just and humane treatment of peoples everywhere.

Furthermore, marginalized and aggrieved parties in non-liberal societies may not always register their grievances in the form of greater demands for democracy. In fact, they generally do so in terms of the denial of their basic human rights. Democracy may well be the most optimal means to securing human rights, but precisely because it varies so greatly across societies and is shaped by divergent sets of contextual factors, it does not qualify as a human right.53 To be sure, certain features of democratic government – such as the rights to equal protection of the law, equal suffrage, and equal access to public positions – are guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

follows: “A difference between liberal peoples and states is that just liberal peoples limit their basic interests as required by the reasonable. In contrast, the content of the interests of states does not allow them to be stable for the right reasons: that is, from firmly accepting and acting upon a just Law of Peoples. Liberal peoples do, however, have their fundamental interests as permitted by their conceptions of right and justice.” p. 29. 52 Ibid. p. 37. 53 For the most prominent arguments, see Joshua Cohen, “Is there a Human Right to Democracy?” and Charles Beitz, The Idea of Human Rights, pp. 174-186.

172 (UDHR).54 But such guarantees are minimal enough that many non-democratic signatories of UDHR have been able to argue that they are merely tantamount to collective self-determination, not representative government. In any case, a discussion about the breadth and limits of human rights, especially of social and political rights, although interesting, is simply beyond the scope of this chapter as regards the desirability of democracy promotion. Suffice it to say that arguments in favor of promoting human rights are far more compelling and urgent since they concern the basic conditions of human life across all societies and supersede prevailing norms of political legitimacy, cultural practices, and historical traditions.55

In the preceding, I hope to have shown the underlying flaws of the two most prominent instrumental arguments in support of democracy promotion. In the first case, the enduring argument in mainstream IR scholarship (especially in the American academy) that democracy leads to peaceful relations among nations in international society relies on too minimal a definition of democratic citizenship and government for it to serve as a convincing justification for democracy promotion. In fact, it risks weakening the normative appeal of democracy by defining it solely in terms of material and security interests of states. In contrast, the second argument – that democracy leads to justice – relies on too demanding (yet abstract) an understanding of both democratic ideals and justice for them to have general applicability across all societies. In both cases, the varying influence of contextual factors (socioeconomic, cultural, or political) are either

54 See Articles 6 and 21 of the Declaration: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml. 55 This is precisely why Rawls urges the promotion of human rights even by states, but leaves democracy promotion to the realm of “peoples”: “The Society of Peoples needs to develop new institutions and practices under the Law of Peoples to constrain outlaw states when they appear. Among these new practices should be the promotion of human rights: it should be a fixed concern of the foreign policy of all just and decent regimes.” The Law of Peoples, p. 48.

173 ignored or of secondary interest to proponents of democracy promotion. As I have alluded to above, however, neither of these shortcomings need discourage us from the important normative work of imagining and cultivating better democratic futures in societies suffering under authoritarian or unrepresentative forms of rule. To be sure, there is a middle way between the negligible and abstract considerations of democracy as an instrument for achieving peace and justice in international society. It is to a consideration of this concept that I wish turn to next.

II DEMOCRATIC SOLIDARITY: AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH

What I propose in the following is an alternative conceptual model to democracy promotion as an instrument of foreign policy in international relations. I do not wish to offer a comprehensive agenda for advancing democracy abroad, but rather to outline a set of principles – non-interference, inclusivity, reflexivity – that state and non-state entities should uphold in support of democratic ideas and movements abroad. Together, these principles form the basis of a global dialogue about the merits, pitfalls, potential scope, and limitations of democratic ideals. I call this alternative approach to advancing the causer of democracy abroad democratic solidarity, the purpose of which is twofold. First, to rescue the concern for democracy away from the ineluctable imperatives of statecraft by making it a subject of rigorous global scrutiny. Second, in order to affirm the counterintuitive notion that democratic ideals are minimally shared across different societies, but that they are nevertheless shaped in reference to a set of socioeconomic, political, cultural, and historical circumstances that are unique to each society.

Democratic ideals, as I argued in Chapter 2, are made legitimate through a process of social construction, whereby divergent historical experiences are exerted and transcended

174 in accordance to the underlying values of democracy. Democratic solidarity, in this regard, is a political disposition concerned with realizing and preserving democracy – at home and abroad – for its own sake. Embedded in this disposition is the understanding that, as Thomas Carothers puts it,

“On the whole, democracy programs are at best a secondary influence because they do not have a decisive effect on the underlying conditions of society that largely determine a country’s political trajectory – the character and alignment of the main political forces; the degree of concentration of economic power; the political traditions, expectations, and values of the citizenry; and the presence or absence of powerful anti-democratic elements.”56

To the extent that it is guided by any instrumental arguments, it is premised on the notion that democracy is normatively preferred to other forms of rule simply because it leads to more democracy – only democracy can sustain democracy. This may seem like a tautology, but it is the only disposition, I believe, most conducive to expanding democratic zones of engagement at the international level. In the next section I will explain the concrete policy implications of such a stance, but further elaboration of the principles involved is needed in order to understand what can legitimately be pursued by outside agents.

Non-interference

The principle of non-interference is in essence an expressive approach to advocacy on behalf of democratic ideals in international society. It obliges states and non-state entities (NGOs, IGOs, activist groups, civil society networks, etc.) to support the spread of democratic rights and values through acts of public expression, whether through open calls for democratic reforms, criticisms of anti-democratic regimes, or

56 Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad, p. 341.

175 simply articulating the qualitative benefits of democracy in comparison to the existing alternatives. This principle is of course largely adhered to in international society today.

Perhaps for the simple reason of the priority of national over normative interests, most democratic states limit their advocacy of democratic ideals to ceremonial speeches and grandiose declarations of support that seldom add up to anything more than mere rhetorical expressions of sympathy or solidarity. Indeed, many democratic states do employ coercive measures (sanctions and embargos, limited military strikes, or travel bans) against non-democratic states, but such means are usually employed to compel compliance with certain international legal obligations (e.g. non-proliferation) or to stop blatant violations of basic human rights (e.g. ethnic cleansing and genocidal campaigns).

Occasionally, states do employ limited coercive measures against non-democratic states in the aftermath of fraudulent elections or in response to crackdowns against peaceful democratic oppositions, as has been the case with American and European Union sanctions against states such as Belarus, Burma, Iran, and the Ivory Coast in recent years.

But such measures are often reactive and adopted on an ad-hoc basis, and at any rate do not interfere with the internal politics of the countries in question but rather seek to express the views of the international community by creating incentives for democratic change. As such, they are as limited as they are symbolic.

Of greater importance, moreover, are efforts by NGOs, think tanks, and advocacy groups to document, analyze, and disseminate information about the development and plight of democracy movements around the globe. Organizations such as Freedom

House, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Open Society Foundations,

Reporters Without Borders, etc. – however divergent their missions and visions may be –

176 raise awareness about the dearth of democratic practices and values (among other issues) around the world. Crucially, some offer a platform to oppressed and marginalized groups that are vying for democracy through advocacy campaigns especially designed to “name and shame” anti-democratic forces, and to compel a change in the behavior of complicit parties. These actions are consistent with the principle of non-interference because they do not seek to intervene in the internal politics of a given state, nor do they introduce new parties or actors to what is already taking place on the ground. Rather, by cataloguing the marginalization of ordinary citizens and their demands at the hands of self-appointed leaders and groups, they seek to offer citizens alternative platforms for airing their grievances and expressing their demands for democracy and the rule of law. For instance, since the advent of the reform movement in Iran in 1997, the organization Reporters

Without Borders has amassed an exhaustive inventory of government closures of opposition newspapers, Internet and media censorship, illegal imprisonment of journalists and bloggers, and countless assaults on reporters, writers, artists and public intellectuals.

As a result, their database of governmental abuses have become an important reference point for freedom of expression activists both inside and outside of Iran, for whom the organization’s goal of advocating on behalf of persecuted journalists and protecting press freedoms makes it neither a tool of foreign powers nor an umbrella group in service of a rigid ideology.

In this sense, the principle of non-interference gives lie to the authoritarian regimes’ claims that pro-democracy activists championed by the international community are agents of foreign governments with insidious designs to weaken the country and compromise the national interest. Such assertions have in the past served to undermine

177 the legitimacy of efforts and organizations that were indeed in the employ of foreign intelligence or aid agencies. But as more state agencies and NGOs have adopted a policy of persuasion and affirmed indirect support for pro-democracy causes, the profile and legitimacy of local democratic activists and movements have steadily risen in the eyes of concerned publics. The principle of non-interference, therefore, operates on the pragmatic notion that political change and democratic developments are long-term, contextual, and indigenous undertakings vulnerable to reversals and unforeseen convulsions in the domestic and international settings. As I mentioned above, however, non-interference in this sense does not entail inaction; it merely implies that state and non-state entities seeking to empower democratic movements from without must employ persuasive and incentive-based strategies that not only compel anti-democratic regimes to cede power to the people, but, more importantly, enable pro-democracy activists and groups to establish their legitimacy as genuine and indigenous advocates of basic rights and freedoms.

Inclusivity

One of the major limitations of conventional democracy promotion programs, as I alluded to in the introduction to this chapter, is their exclusivity. Specific programs geared at electoral processes, institutional reform, and civil society movements are designed solely for elites and perceived “key players” within pro-democracy movements that are often handpicked by Western governments and aid agencies. This is often the result of the minimalist understanding of democracy, which reduces it to a competition between different sets of elites and entrenched constituencies for votes and benefits respectively. As such, these programs employ a set of “core strategies” that have very little to do with the plight of ordinary citizens at the local level. As Carothers explains,

178

“Various mixes of democracy-related workshops, training courses, equipment donations, study tours, expert consultancies, and small grants may certainly reach many of the main political elites. They do not, however, fundamentally reshape the balances of power, interests, historical legacies, and political traditions of the major political forces in recipient countries. They do not neutralize dug-in anti-democratic forces. They do not alter the basic economic level or direction of countries.”57

Conventional democracy promotion strategies fail to address any of these issues because they are ultimately concerned with bringing about certain results that would meet the approval of what are taken to be international democratic standards: free and fair elections, constitutional checks and balances, and basic press freedoms. In this respect, they are partial to elites and those in positions of power – and as the cases of Russia and many former Soviet republics demonstrate, such programs have historically resulted in the creation of what Fareed Zakaria has termed “illiberal democracies” (i.e. systems of government with basic democratic attributes such as elections and constitutional guarantees, but marginalized civil societies due to elite interference and gross power imbalances).58

In contrast to this exclusive approach, the model of democratic solidarity I have outlined above is premised on a principle of inclusivity. As I noted in Chapter 2, democratic institutions and practices are deemed legitimate when they are responsive to the varied historical experiences, political circumstances, and cultural traditions of a people. Self-government thus entails a consideration of the views and concerns of the many, not the few. The principle of inclusivity holds that any discussion about the future prospects of democratic governance must be inclusive of the views of a multiplicity of

57 Ibid. p. 305. 58 Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), see especially Ch. 3.

179 groups and organizations (be they ideological, religious, ethnic, gender- or class-based, etc.), even if some of the views involved are avowedly anti-democratic. Open debate and mutual respect – both key democratic ideals – must form the basis for any reasonable discussion about the shape of orders to come. In this way, the purposes and beliefs of different groups and individuals can be interrogated, revised, accepted or rejected by those involved in a general discussion about the terms of political coexistence.

Of chief concern to proponents of democracy promotion is the possibility of a takeover of the political process by anti-democratic groups. The impulse to include as many views as possible, they argue, allows for anti-democratic groups to insidiously present a more acceptable side of their views to win elections, but once in power, to purge political opponents, enact oppressive measures, and consolidate power through sham elections and intimidation. Indeed, there are historical precedents for this in the

Middle East. In the years leading up to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Ayatollah

Khomeini reassured members of secular and liberal groups (most notably feminist activists) also opposed to the Shah’s regime that not only did he valued the democratic rights of all individuals (especially women and members of religious and ethnic minorities) but that he also envisioned no political role whatsoever for members of the clergy in a post-revolution Iran. Religion and politics, he repeatedly said, were not meant to mix, and would only sully each other. His participation as the leader of the Revolution, therefore, was to be purely symbolic. In fact, as I chronicle in Chapter 3, Khomeini did the exact opposite upon his return to Iran: he usurped power, put forward a theocratic scheme for government, instructed his followers to purge any and all liberals and secularists from governmental posts and prominent social positions, and set about

180 imposing a particularist vision of religion and politics that bedevils Iranian politics to this very day. On the face of it, therefore, it would seem that the inclusion of Islamist groups with hidden agendas was in the long-term a strategic mistake that set the cause of democracy in Iran decades back.

This would amount to a misreading of both the historical record and the principle of inclusivity, however. As many leading liberal and secular democrats involved in the movement to replace the Shah have since explained, the major problem with the anti-

Shah coalition prior to the 1979 Revolution was that it was not inclusive enough.59 Pro- democratic views and debates about the right balance between civil rights and the rule of law or the tradeoffs involved in accepting an Islamic, as opposed to a liberal, view of gender equality, for example, were eschewed in favor of the singular goal of deposing the

Shah and standing up to Western imperialism. Time and again, activists struggling on behalf of women’s, workers’, and ethno-religious rights were admonished by the elites spearheading the anti-Shah coalition for engendering divisions and giving the impression to “the enemy” (i.e. the Shah and his Western backers) that the opposition was too heterogeneous in their aims to mount a serious challenge (ironically enough, the Shah and his backers, as troves of declassified documents have since shown, believed that anyway).60 Therefore, much of the mainstream discussion at this time was framed in

59 For excellent chronicles of the exclusion of pro-democratic views, see Fakhreddin Azimi, The Quest for Democracy in Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), Ch. 10; Ali Mirsepassi, Democracy in Modern Iran: Islam, Culture and Political Change (New York: New York University Press, 2010), Ch. 4; Haideh Moghissi, Populism and Feminism in Iran: Women’s Struggle in a Male-Defined Revolutionary Movement (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). 60 Just prior to the revolution, from his perch in Paris Khomeini issued a declaration that admonished the progressive elements within the coalition (mostly secular nationalists and communists) who expressed concerns about the tactics used, the overly-religious tone of his speeches, and the prominent role of the ulama in the movement: My dear ones! Avoid all disagreement, for disagreement is the work of the devil. Continue your sacred movement in unison for the sake of the ultimate goal, which is the overthrow of the

181 terms of anti-imperialism and social justice issues, and not about the future of democracy in Iran. As a result, pro-democracy activists and parties were excluded from the outset.

As the plight of the pro-democracy movements in pre-revolutionary Iran demonstrates, the absence of a principle of inclusivity based on democratic ideals of mutual respect and reasonable dialogue was a major contributing factor to the anti- democratic results after the revolution. But this example also highlights how inclusion serves as a democratic check on the rise of charismatic and high-powered elites whose views may not be consistent with the hopes and aspirations of ordinary citizens for a future democratic order. By demanding adherence to the principle of inclusivity as part of a global dialogue about the future of democracy in non-democratic societies, proponents of democracy not only would be articulating the importance of the underlying ideals of reasonable dialogue and mutual respect, but would also be exemplifying its normative benefits in practice. Inclusion, however, does not entail acceptance; the principle merely guarantees that different political viewpoints can be aired freely. It is important to note that I am not here concerned with the operation of a principle of inclusion in an established democratic society in lieu of “the fact of reasonable pluralism” à la Rawls.61

Rather, I am chiefly concerned with how a discussion about democracy itself can take place among those united in their opposition to a status quo regime, but who may nevertheless be opposed in their political views. In my view, a disposition toward

corrupt Pahlavi regime and the liberation of the destiny and resources of our country from foreign control. Fear nothing in your pursuit of these Islamic goals, for no power can halt this great movement.” Ruhollah Khomeini, “In Commemoration of the Martyrs of Tehran,” Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini (1941-1980) translated by Hamid Algar (Mizan Press, 1981), pp. 240-241. Emphasis added. 61 On the whole, I am in agreement with Rawls’s scheme for democratic governance, and especially for realizing the ideal of public reason, as laid out by him in Political Liberalism and Law of Peoples.

182 democratic solidarity with such groups necessitates a firm commitment to the principle of inclusivity as I have outlined above.

Reflexivity

As a matter of historical construction, democracy changes with the world it reflects upon. Different social contexts, as I have argued throughout, produce different yearnings and struggles for democracy. It follows from this that those who seek to advance the cause of democracy abroad must themselves be sufficiently reflective to not only be able to offer an account of the historical rise, flourishing and faltering of democracy in different settings, but also to understand the limitations and possibilities presented by each context. The principle of reflexivity I have in mind here, therefore, is simply the extension of the central insight in critical theory, which “invites observers to reflect upon the social construction and effects of knowledge and to consider how claims about neutrality can conceal the role knowledge plays in reproducing unsatisfactory social arrangements.”62 This means doing away with the tired slogans that credulously tout the virtues of democratic rights and values in the abstract, and setting about ameliorating the social arrangements that fall far short of democratic ideals. As Michael

Ignatieff has noted in the case of democratic rights, for instance, “[O]ne of the ironies about rights is that people who win theirs don’t necessarily want anyone else to have them. What dead white males fought for, they then denied to everyone who came after –

62 Andrew Linklater, “The Achievements of Critical Theory,” in Steve Smith, Ken Booth, and Marysia Zalewski, International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 279.

183 women, blacks, working people.”63 Rectifying such inequalities requires a reflexive inquiry into the meaning and scope of particular democratic ideals such as autonomy and equality, but also more importantly as regards the historical and social circumstances that either preclude or engender disparities in the first place.

The existing American templates for democracy promotion, for example, conceive of the democratization as “consisting of a linear process from liberalization through transitional elections to eventual consolidation.”64 This understanding has formed the basis of a universal template for providing aid to political parties, civil-military groups, constitutional assemblies, and civil society groups for over three decades. Yet, given the lack of reflexivity about the varieties of democratic experience outside of the

U.S. example, the template is premised on a set of bureaucratic checklists that reduce the complexity and inconstancy of the democratic process to a kind of static scientific stratagem. As Carothers notes,

“If evaluation of democracy programs is to improve, aid providers must give up the false dream of science, the notion that the effects of democracy aid can be measured with calculators. They must accept that in-depth qualitative analysis is the only way to gain an understanding of political events and effects, and that many of the most important results of democracy programs are psychological, moral, subjective, indirect, and time-delayed.”65

The trouble with crude templates of the sort described here, in other words, is that they are not only unworkable but also deeply unethical in the sort of results they produce. In post-conflict situations, as in the case of sub-Saharan African or Southeast Asian countries, they trap diverse societies into interest sections along ethnic, religious, clan, or

63 Michael Ignatieff, The Rights Revolution (CBC Massey Lectures Series – Toronto: House of Anansi Press, Ltd., 2000), pp. 4-5. 64 Gideon Rose, “Democracy Promotion and American Foreign Policy,” p. 197. 65 Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad, p. 340.

184 class voting blocs, where governments become sites not of democratic representation but of existential rivalries and systemic corruption. The principle of reflexivity takes seriously the historical contingency of democratic ideals and thus affirms the

“psychological, moral, subjective, indirect, and time-delayed” facets of any discussions and actions concerning them.

Any social scientific endeavor either incorporating a set of theoretical insights, or resulting in generalizations about some aspect of the social world, begins with a particular objective in mind, a disposition to make explicit what has hitherto remained unexplored, and which nevertheless has been decidedly present. Given as it is, first and foremost, a purposeful enterprise, social analysis must therefore grapple with the ever- elusive boundaries between objective and subjective knowledge, constituted and constitutive selves, and “structured, structuring dispositions” found in and across spatial/temporal dimensions of cultural lives that give expression to them. The point can be made more specifically to stress the potentially harmful implications of a democracy agenda (i.e. the Bush “Freedom Agenda”) that relies on claims to value-neutrality. To paraphrase an oft-quoted insight in critical IR theory, all knowledge is “always for someone and some purpose”66 – and our knowledge about democracy is certainly no exception. As such, any democratic order is always representative of a certain set of interests and purposes over others. A reflexive perspective on democracy, therefore, would readily reveal the intricate connections between, say, vastly differential concentrations of political influence and economic wealth, on the one hand, and inegalitarian state policies and laws, on the other. That is, reflexivity enables those

66 Robert Cox, “Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1981): pp. 126-155.

185 concerned with advancing democratic zones of engagement (at home or abroad) to think through and interpret discrepant experiences of citizens otherwise endowed with the same abstract rights and obligations.

Central to this delicate balancing act, as Carothers’s evaluation of democracy promotion programs makes abundantly clear, is the recognition that indeed knowledge of the social world can only be realized through participation of the observers themselves, and that social rules and norms are constructed in the process of practice itself. It is only at the moment of democratic practice, therefore, that the interplay between objective claims and subjective experiences and among social structures and political agents are revealed. In this sense, the principle of reflexivity offers a great deal of insight as a certain methodological disposition toward the study of democratic forms. It is “critical” in the sense that it subjects prevailing social and political orders in all their constitutive force to “immanent critique” with the interest of uncovering alternative pathways, pointing to potential transformations, and continually examining the existing power configurations. For it is only through such an exercise that one can begin to grasp not only the purpose behind democratic yearnings and struggles, but also the entire assemblage of structures, stories, and actors that conspire to bring them about.

In summary, the principles enumerated above – non-interference, inclusivity, reflexivity – are meant to reformulate the terms of democratic engagement globally so that we may move beyond mere rhetorical flourishes about the self-evident virtues of electoral democracy. Needless to say, elements of each principle have at one point or another been observed and championed by state and non-state entities seeking to promote democracy abroad. But, as many failed cases of democracy promotion from Latin

186 America to sub-Saharan Africa, to the Middle East and Southeast Asia demonstrate, these principles have not been implemented either concurrently or consistently as part of a genuine effort to engage with the contextual bases of struggles on behalf of democracy and political reform in non-democratic societies. By decoupling the pursuit of democracy from the cold considerations of the national interest, exclusive prerogatives of elites, and rigid universal templates, the model of democratic solidarity I have sketched above aims to establish and assert the priority of the domestic sources of political legitimacy over any international concerns about the instrumental values of democratic change. The principles presented here thus seek to preserve a necessary separation between the universal appeal of democratic ideals, on the one hand, and their contingent forms and realization in different settings, on the other.

III FROM PROMOTION TO SOLIDARITY

In this section, I wish to make the alternative model of democratic solidarity more concrete through a critical examination of American democracy promotion in the Middle

East since the advent of the Freedom Agenda under George W. Bush and the adoption of a different course of action by Barack Obama. Given the magnitude and variety of changes underway in the Middle East – from the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq to the onset of the Green Movement in Iran in 2009 to popular uprisings in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt,

Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria in 2010 and continuing to this very day – there is hardly a more opportune time to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the programs on offer. I am not interested, however, in providing a detailed comparative account of the different approaches to democracy promotion under each administration; many fine critical examinations of Bush’s Freedom Agenda already exist, and at any rate the Obama

187 administration is only beginning to formulate a coherent strategy on democracy promotion at this juncture. Instead, by highlighting the crucial differences between the two administrations on the principles of non-interference, inclusivity, and reflexivity, I hope to demonstrate how a gradual shift away from a universal template for democracy promotion has helped to both engender a truly contextual discussion about the prospects for democracy in the Middle East and empowered local activists and political parties to pursue their struggles on their own terms.

Democracy promotion was not a central feature of the Bush administration’s agenda until after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when the United States military forcibly removed from power the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein. Although the preemptive attack against Iraq was justified in reference to Saddam’s illegal possession of weapons of mass destruction, when no such weapons were found the administration mounted a public campaign to justify the war and the continued presence of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a mission to cultivate democracy in the wider Arab and

Muslim world. In a speech commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the National

Endowment for Democracy that same year, Bush announced “a forward strategy of freedom” premised on the familiar instrumental argument that “the advance of freedom leads to peace.”67 Indeed, the administration employed a variety of instrumental justifications for promoting democracy in the Middle East in subsequent years: democracy as a means to development, ending terrorism, national prosperity, female empowerment, eradicating poverty, and global cooperation. From the beginning,

67 “Remarks by President George W. Bush at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy,” Washington, DC, November 6, 2003: http://www.ned.org/george-w-bush/remarks-by- president-george-w-bush-at-the-20th-anniversary. (Last accessed: June 1, 2011).

188 however, the administration’s strategy was viewed with much suspicion by the international community and regarded as part of an insincere strategy to, on the one hand, reframe the terms of debate regarding the invasion of Iraq, and to serve as a cover for the

United States’ increasingly unilateral posture in various global fora, on the other. After all, America had a long history of supporting authoritarian regimes in the region that served its national interests, and even now the administration was being selective about the targets of its Freedom Agenda in the region – oil-rich repressive kingdoms such as

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were counted as allies while hostile countries like Iran, Iraq and

Syria were deemed ripe for “regime change.”

Furthermore, it did not help matters that not only was the management of the war bungled from the very beginning, but also that many of America’s cherished values and civil liberties such as freedom of information, due process, and adherence to the rule of law were increasingly under attack in the so-called “global war on terror.” As James

Traub observes,

“At the very moment when officials were trying to repair the damage done to our image by decades of steadfast support for Arab dictators, the worldwide media were dominated by stories of American torture at the Abu Gharib prison, perpetual imprisonment without judicial recourse at Guantanamo Bay, the clandestine smuggling of detainees to third world countries with scant regard for human rights. America had tried to promote democracy abroad while showing contempt for it at home.”68

Together, these developments conspired to characterize democracy promotion as a guise for the naked pursuit of imperial interests. Except for a handful of neoconservative outfits and right-wing thank tanks in Washington, D.C., virtually every well-meaning pro-

68 James Traub, The Freedom Agenda: Why America Must Spread Democracy [Just Not the Way George Bush Did] (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), p. 6.

189 democracy advocacy group was either forced to devote its resources to critiquing various programs proposed by the administration or minimize its activities abroad out of fear of being associated with the twin policies of preemptive strike and regime change. In the

Middle East, paranoid security forces found a convenient excuse in the Bush administration’s policy of regime change to routinely harass, jail, and torture, pro- democracy activists, opposition leaders, journalists and aid workers.

In spite of these disturbing developments on the ground, however, the Bush administration was unrelenting in its coupling of democracy promotion with America’s national security interests. In his second inaugural address, President Bush asserted that

“The concerted effort of free nations to promote democracy is a prelude our enemies’ defeat,” adding “In a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of liberty.”69 In a more conciliatory and concrete manner, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a much-touted speech in Cairo, where she not only acknowledged the complicity of U.S. in supporting authoritarian governments in the

Middle East, but also spoke specifically about the plight of pro-democracy activists in

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, and even Egypt.70 But with little change in the actual policy approach of the U.S. toward its authoritarian allies in the region, these rhetorical gestures were greeted with skepticism and critiqued by progressive Arab and

Muslim intellectuals and activists as condescending and disingenuous.71 It is little wonder

69 George W. Bush, “Second Inaugural Address,” Washington, D.C., January 20, 2005. 70 “For 60 years,” admitted Rice, “the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East – and we achieved neither.” At the American University of Cairo, June 20, 2005. See the full text of her remarks at http://www.arabist.net/blog/2005/6/20/condoleezza-rices-remarks-from-her-cairo- speech-at-auc.html. (Last accessed, June 1, 2011) 71 Hassan Nafaa, a professor of political science at Cairo University, called Rice’s speech an exercise in “smoke and mirrors.” Al Ahram Weekly, July 14-20, 2005: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/751/op8.htm. (Last accessed: June 1, 2011); Ameer Makhoul, a Palestinian activists also expressed his doubts about the

190 then that in a 2007 Pew Research Center survey of global attitudes toward the United

States a majority of respondents from the Middle East viewed the U.S. role in the world as “mainly negative.” In both Egypt and Jordan, 78 percent of respondents expressed an

“unfavorable view of the U.S.,” while in the Palestinian territories such sentiments stood at 86 percent. Most shockingly, only 9 percent of the respondents in Turkey, which has been a historical ally in the region, expressed a “favorable view of the U.S.,” a huge drop from 52 percent in 1999-2000.72 These sentiments beg the obvious question aptly phrased by Traub: “How can you seek to universalize your values in places where ordinary citizens think you stand for something deplorable?”73

Perhaps the best demonstration of the difficulties encountered by the Bush administration in promoting democracy based solely on instrumental reasons (i.e. regime change) was Iran. In 2006, the U.S. Congress appropriated $75 million to fund the “Iran

Democracy Program” at the State Department. The State Department spent most of the funds on broadcasting outlets such as the U.S.-backed Radio Farda, Voice of America

(Persian Service), Radio Free Europe (Persian Service), and other Iranian satellite stations based out of the U.S. and Europe. An undisclosed portion of the funds is alleged to have found their way to Iranian opposition groups in exile and other activities such as pro-democracy workshops and conferences. The aim of the program, according to the only official statement about the program, was to “assist those inside Iran who desire basic civil liberties such as freedom of expression, greater rights for women, more open

Rice speech to Radio Free Europe: “No, this is not progress. If we look in Egypt, the regime, or in Kuwait or in Saudi Arabia, they are allies of the United States policy. It is such a double-standards policy.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, June 21, 2005: http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1059409.html. (Last accessed: June 1, 2011) 72 Pew Research Center, “47-Nation Pew Global Attitudes Survey,” The Pew Global Attitudes Project, June 27, 2007, http://pewglobal.org/files/pdf/256.pdf. (Last accessed: June 1, 2011) 73 James Traub, The Freedom Agenda. pp. 5-6.

191 political process, and broader freedom of the press.”74 And yet it generated the exact opposite effect among opposition groups and pro-democracy activists inside Iran and in the diaspora.

Nearly all reformist factions locked in a power struggle with conservative forces publicly denounced the initiative out of Washington and interpreted as part of a plot to eliminate the Islamic regime in Iran wholesale and not just the unsavory elements within it. But more importantly, Iranian NGOs and ordinary activists strongly protested the move because in effect it gave the regime license to cast its opponents as foreign agents conspiring to undermine or topple the regime. As Haleh Esfandiari, a U.S.-based academic charged with just such a crime while on a family visit to Iran in 2007, explained in an article with Robert Litwak,

“Current U.S. policy precludes broad government-to-government talks with Iran and seems to permit only episodic ambassadorial discussions in Baghdad on Iraqi issues -- meetings that serve as a forum for dueling talking points. U.S. law places formidable restrictions on the ability of American NGO's to operate in Iran. Meanwhile, while eschewing official contact, the United States attempts to financially support Iran's own nascent NGO's so that they can become agents of change within the society. Yet this program of democracy promotion has had the unintended consequence of further reducing the political space for open debate in Iran. In this new climate of intimidation, NGO's and journalists are subject to censorship and are defensively engaging in self-censorship. Prominent Iranian activists, such as the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, declared their opposition to the U.S. program because of continued sensitivity about foreign, particularly American, intrusion in Iran's domestic politics. The fact that the identity of Iranian recipients of U.S. aid is regarded as classified information by the U.S. government feeds the regime's paranoia and casts suspicion on all Iranian NGO's.”75

74 Office of the Spokesman, U.S. Department of State, “Update on Iran Democracy Promotion Funding,” Washington, D.C., June 4, 2007. Archived at: http://merln.ndu.edu/archivepdf/iran/State/85971.pdf. (Last accessed: June 1, 2011) 75 Haleh Esfandiari and Robert S. Litwak, “When Promoting Democracy is Counterproductive,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 19, 2007, http://chronicle.com/article/When-Promoting- Democracy-Is/14051/. (Last accessed: June 1, 2011)

192 Worst still, the Iran Democracy Project created much distrust among members of Iranian opposition groups in the United States, where those with closer ties to American political parties were viewed with suspicion and even open hostility by others.76 Conferences and workshops with the terms “democracy,” “civil society,” or “elections” had to be carefully screened and vouched for well in advance for any respectable Iranian academic or intellectual to participate in them. These apprehensions would continue for the remainder of the tenure of the Bush administration, and for some they still linger to this day.

As this track record shows, the Bush administration’s approach to democracy promotion did not adhere to any of the three principles of democratic solidarity necessary for advancing the cause of democracy abroad. By so triumphantly announcing the policy of regime change in the aftermath of the twin terrorist attacks on New York City and

Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001, and consistently affirming it before and after the invasion of Iraq – a war which many ordinary citizens regarded as having been waged for sinister and illegal premises – the administration’s Freedom Agenda served as a cover for intervening in the domestic affairs of countries the United States labeled as “rogue” and threatening. Moreover, by providing covert and overt aid to a selected group of opposition groups and activists in the exile, and without engaging the wider community of pro-democracy activists, the administration undertook an especially exclusivist approach to affecting change in places like Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Jordan. Lastly, the Bush administration refused to revisit its tactics and strategies in lieu of the overwhelming

76 As another prominent U.S.-based Iranian academic, Hamid Dabashi, wrote at the time, “[A]ny investment in the self-promotional promises of the so-called Iranian oppositional forces and their neo- conservative cohorts in major US think-tanks is a waste of taxpayers' money in the US and an affront to the dignity and agency of Iranian people themselves.” Hamid Dabashi, “Iran: Let the Democratic Process Work,” Asia Times, April 28, 2006, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD28Ak02.html. (Last accessed: June 1, 2011).

193 backlash to the Freedom Agenda throughout the Arab and Muslim world. In sum, these factors demonstrated to the intended publics in the Middle East that democracy promotion was simply a rhetorical guise for pursuing a more sinister agenda of eliminating regional enemies of the United States and further securing its geopolitical interests in the region. The Bush administration may very well have genuinely intended to spread democracy in the Middle East, but given the choice of strategies and means to pursue such a goal it offered the exact opposite impression to the region and the world.

Hence, not only did it manage to lose the trust and support of democracy activists in the region and abroad, but also emboldened authoritarian regimes to increase crackdowns and become even more repressive.

By the time Barack Obama took office, democracy promotion was in deep disrepute, and the new administration even began signaling during the transition period that it would abandon the Freedom Agenda altogether. In his inauguration speech,

President Obama did not mention the term “democracy” once, and uttered the word

“freedom” only three times, each time in reference to economic prosperity (by contrast,

George W. Bush referred to the same terms three and twenty-seven times, respectively).

More importantly, in signaling a major shift from Bush era approaches to the Muslim world, the President stressed engagement and bilateral cooperation over confrontation and isolation, and instead of heaping empty praise on democratic ideals shifted the focus to domestic sources of political legitimacy:

“To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

194 To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”77

The significance of this overture cannot be overstated, for given the tenor and improbable nature of the Obama candidacy – which was followed very closely by officials and ordinary citizens in the Middle East (along with the rest of the world) – it signaled a genuine shift away from the status quo. From Tehran to Damascus to Cairo, the worst any authoritarian leader could say about the new policy of engagement was that they hoped the actions of the administration matched the words.78 Domestically, too, the speech offered a sense of renewal, a return to a more humble, sincere, and on the whole benevolent approach to asserting American values abroad.

All this is worth mentioning because it provides us with the context in which the subtle move from aggressive democracy promotion in the Bush years to a more benign approach toward engagement in the first three years of the Obama presidency began to take shape. Although many of the promises the Obama administration made early on (e.g. closing detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, putting an end to enhanced interrogation tactics, repealing the more invasive provisions of the Patriot Act) have failed to materialize since (much to chagrin of democracy activists and the delight of autocrats), there is little doubt that the doctrine of unilateral preemption along with the policy of regime change have be laid to rest. This is a very important development indeed, not least because it has uncoupled support for democracy from security and strategic interests, and hence opened the way for a broader discussion about democratic

77 Barack H. Obama, “Inaugural Address,” The White House, Washington, D.C., January 21, 2009. http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/inaugural-address/. (Last accessed: June 1, 2011) 78 “World Media on Obama Inauguration,” BBC News (online), January 21, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/obama_inauguration/7842752.stm. (Last accessed, June 1, 2011)

195 values independent of instrumental considerations. By continually emphasizing “mutual interests” and “mutual respect,” the administration has adopted a dialogic approach to democracy promotion that comes much closer to observing the three core principles of democratic solidarity I outlined in the previous section than any previous administration.

Moreover, as the popular uprisings in the region over the past two years have shown, this approach has paved the way for the burgeoning of genuine grassroots pro-democracy movements informed and aggrieved by local concerns. A brief review of the administration’s approach to these upheavals would further illuminate the varying degrees of support enjoyed by each.

On June 4, 2009, President Obama delivered a widely anticipated address to the

Muslim world in Cairo. Beginning with the admission that “No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust,” the President noted that the sources of mistrust between the

United States and the Muslim world must be addressed head on, and in their own terms.

These “tensions” were identified as the following: violent extremism, the Arab-Israeli peace process, nuclear proliferation, democracy, religious freedom, women’s rights, and economic development.79 The speech garnered much international attention for its warm reception throughout the Muslim world, but most importantly for what it said about democracy. Conceding that recent efforts at democracy promotion in the region had generated much controversy due to the Iraq war, the President affirmed that “No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation over any other.” The rest of the

79 Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, “Remarks by President Barack Obama on a New Beginning,” Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president- cairo-university-6-04-09. (Last accessed, June 1, 2011)

196 remarks on democracy are worth quoting at length because they go to the heart of the changes in approach that I want to highlight here:

“That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere.

Now, there is no straight line to realize this promise. But this much is clear: Governments that protect these rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure. Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them. And we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments -- provided they govern with respect for all their people.

This last point is important because there are some who advocate for democracy only when they're out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. So no matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who would hold power: You must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.”80

These three paragraphs reveal, in concise form, the Obama administration’s understanding of democracy and the possibilities and limitations afforded to outside parties in promoting it. The first paragraph describes the rationale for supporting democracy without direct interference in the domestic affairs of any country. It describes

80 Ibid.

197 democracy as a contextual construct representative of the hopes and aspirations of local communities, and which is also sustained by universal foundations that any human society can endorse. The second paragraph affirms the principle of inclusivity by respecting the views of any person or group willing to abide by the rules of the democratic process, no matter how disagreeable those views may be to the United States or others. The last paragraph nicely captures the reflective essence of democratic legitimacy by prizing consent over coercion, mutual respect over hostility, and the common good over narrow interests. Together, the principles laid out by the President in

Cairo promised a shift away from the tired ideas and templates for democracy promotion that had informed U.S. foreign policy for so many decades.

The speech also came in the last week of a heated presidential elections campaign in Iran, where a nascent but widely popular “Green Movement” was projected to propel the embattled reformists once again to power. For many pro-democracy activists concerned with the timing of the Cairo speech, Obama’s pledge to non-interference and his message of solidarity was a welcome shift that now placed the burden of legitimacy squarely on the shoulders of those in charge of conducting the election. On June 12, only eight days after Obama’s speech, Iranians went to the polls en mass, with an unprecedented 85 percent of eligible voters turning out to vote. What took place next was nothing short of a badly orchestrated electoral coup. Merely two hours after the polls closed, the Interior Ministry (mostly run by former members of the Revolutionary

Guards, a paramilitary outfit sympathetic to the incumbent president Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad) rushed to declare Ahmadinejad the winner with nearly 63 percent of the vote, an impossible feat given the latter’s meager showings in virtually all public opinion

198 polls in the days before the election and the shriveling of his own base of support among conservatives. Indeed, the final certified results were so skewed that even the conservative candidate and former wartime commander of the Revolutionary Guards,

Mohsen Rezaie, had to protest the final vote tally that showed him with fewer than 2 percent support. The violent events and crackdowns in the ensuing days and months were well-documented in the world media, and thanks to such outlets as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, what was then only a Green Wave of support for reformist candidate Mir-

Hossein Mousavi’s candidacy soon transformed into a full-fledged opposition movement encompassing a range of groups and views both inside and outside of the country.81

The advent of the Green Movement, therefore, served as the first serious test of the Obama administration’s new approach to democratic developments in the Middle

East. Internal developments in Iran were doubly important from the U.S. perspective, moreover, because of the longstanding showdown with Tehran over its nuclear program.

From the outset, the administration held a consistent and measured line, with Secretary of

State Hillary Clinton expressing solidarity and support with the Green Movement while at the same time insisting that the outcome of the election was ultimately an internal

Iranian matter.82 Given the sordid history of U.S. involvement in Iranian domestic affairs

81 For a definitive collection of essays, reportage, and commentary documenting the emergence, evolution and plight of the Green Movement in Iran and abroad, see Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel, eds., The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future (New York: Melville House, 2011). 82 In an unusual but important symbolic gesture to the Iranian people, the State Department requested the social networking service Twitter to postpone its planned maintenance which happened to coincide with the height of the nationwide protests in Iran and would have deprived activists of the ability to communicate with each other and the outside world and to coordinate their efforts on the ground. As Secretary Clinton put it at the time, “The United States believes passionately and strongly in the basic principle of free expression… And I think keeping that line of communications open and enabling people to share information, particularly at a time when there was not many other sources of information, is an important expression of the right to speak out and to be able to organize."

199 – starting with the 1953 CIA coup that toppled the democratically elected government of

Mohammad Mossadeq, and stretching to military and economic backing of the brutal

Pahlavi regime – this reaction was understandable and indeed welcomed by leaders of

Iranian opposition parties. But as time wore on and the security forces loyal to the supreme leader Ali Khamenei ruthlessly cracked down on peaceful demonstrations and opposition groups, critical voices both inside the U.S. and in the Iranian opposition urged the administration to become more directly involved.83 The U.S. used its leverage with foreign-based companies and broadcast organizations to publicize the brutal tactics of the regime, but beyond such measures and public expressions of support the administration did not take any further actions.

Now, it would be wrong to characterize the Obama administration’s response as one purely based on principles outlined in the President’s Cairo speech. It was also motivated by practical concerns related to Iran’s clandestine nuclear program and the

Revolutionary Guards’ growing influence in the region. But whatever the reasons behind the administration’s cautious approach, the implications where clear: the opposition

Green Movement was afforded the space to organize and confront the regime on its own terms. As a result, it gained the trust of the public at large and was viewed even by its detractors outside the country (liberal and secular groups, primarily) as an organic

“Hillay Clinton: Twitter Important for Iranian Free Speech,” Alternet.org, June 17, 2009, http://www.alternet.org/rss/1/62367/hillary_clinton:_twitter_important_for_iranian_free_speech/. (Last accessed: June 1, 2011) 83 Hamid Dabashi captures the dilemmas facing the Obama administration in dealing with the unexpected popular uprising. On the one hand, the administration wanted to leave the door open to future nuclear negotiations with the regime; but, on the other hand, it did not want to alienate the public and derail the positive developments on the ground. See, Hamid Dabashi, Iran, the Green Movement and the U.S.A (New York: Zed Books, 2010).

200 movement for civil and political rights.84 In this sense, the Obama administration’s response to the post-election developments in Iran more closely approximated what

Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman call “ethical realism,” a worldview characterized by

“prudence, patriotism, responsibility, study, humility, and ‘a decent respect’ of the views and interests of other nations.”85

The biggest test of the administration’s commitment to the principles outlined in the Cairo speech, however, came in the period of popular uprisings in the Arab world, which have seriously undermined and even toppled some of the United States’ allies in the region. It would be imprudent to comment on these developments here since the revolutions and uprisings in almost all of the concerned countries – Algeria, Tunisia,

Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and Syria, to name the most volatile – are still undergoing at the time of this writing. But so far the public evidence shows that in almost every case the United States government has refrained from directly intervening in the internal affairs of the concerned countries. In the case of Egypt, perhaps the closest Arab ally of the U.S., the Obama administration expressed solidarity with the public from the outset and repeatedly insisted on the suspension of decades-old emergency laws and security courts, and “a gradual and orderly transition” toward new elections, and has pledged assistance with the conduct and monitoring of future elections to be held some time in the next six to nine months. So far, despite dire warnings by certain policy experts in

Washington about an impending calamity of a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated

84 Hamid Dabashi, “Iran’s Green Movement as a Civil Rights Movement,” in Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel, The People Reloaded, pp. 22-25. 85 Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman, Ethical Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World (New York: Random House Inc., 2006), p. 53.

201 government in Egypt,86 the administration has refused to force the Egyptians to delay elections and has left that decision to the Egyptian authorities, a move largely welcomed by the Egyptians themselves across party lines.

In fact, it how now emerged, that American organizations such as the

International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, Freedom House, and others played an active role in training and financing some of the civil society groups involved in the Arab uprisings. As the executive director of one such group, the Project on Middle East Democracy, explained to the New York Times, “We didn’t fund them to start protests, but we did help support their development of skills and networking…. That training did play a role in what ultimately happened, but it was their revolution. We didn’t start it.”87 That such training and funding programs have been in place since the establishment of the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983 (which funds the organizations named above) is evidence enough of them having played a relatively minor role in the recent uprisings. But throughout those years, the United States government had articulated a vision of democracy based primarily on instrumental arguments for security and “regional stability” in the Middle East. What changed with the Obama administration, however, was a definitive move away from such instrumental arguments.

Starting with the President’s inaugural and Cairo speeches, and exemplified by the administration’s response to the post-election protests in Iran, the American approach to

86 Both Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Stephen Hadley, former National Security advisor to George W. Bush argued this: “Beware Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood,” The Daily Beast, January 29, 2011, http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-01-29/beware-egypts- muslim-brotherhood/; “How Should the U.S. Respond to the Protests in the Middle East?” Washington Post, January 30, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2011/01/28/AR2011012805611.html. (Last accessed, June 1, 2011) 87 Ron Nixon, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” New York Times, April 14, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/15aid.html. (Last accessed, June 10, 2011)

202 democracy in the Middle East has changed from promotion to solidarity. This is indeed a welcome development, for, as Traub recently noted, “the most effective way for the

United States to shape outcomes in an increasingly democratic Arab world is to be seen as a champion of popular aspirations.”88

In a recent speech on the developments in the Middle East and North Africa,

President Obama himself echoed this very point: “[F]ailure to speak to the broader aspirations of ordinary people will only feed the suspicion that has festered for years that the United States pursues our interests at their expense.”89 In the remainder of the speech

– which was almost universally applauded by civil society leaders and pro-democracy activists in the region – the President outlined a series of specific diplomatic, economic and strategic initiatives that commit the Unites States to promot[ing] reform across the region, and to support[ing] transitions to democracy.” Of course, these initiatives go far and beyond the limited notion of democratic solidarity that I outlined in the previous section. But given the magnitude of changes in the region and the fact that in places like

Tunisia and Egypt the ruling families are no longer in power, such efforts amount to a form of democratic assistance, not democracy promotion. They are carried out with the full consent – indeed, invitation – of civil society groups and political parties themselves, and not imposed from the outside. It would be a futile exercise at this juncture to offer any predictions on the future of the Arab and Iranian upheavals, but it is surely a welcome development that reverence for democratic ideals is once again accompanied by a deep an abiding appreciation for the contextual sources of political legitimacy. As

88 James Traub, “Let’s Try This Again,” Foreign Policy, February 3, 2011, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/03/lets_try_this_again. (Last accessed, June 10, 2011) 89 Office of the Press Secretary, The While House, “Remarks by the President on the Middle East and North Africa,” State Department, Washington, D.C., May 19, 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2011/05/19/remarks-president-middle-east-and-north-africa. (Last accessed: June 10, 2011)

203 President noted at the end of his remarks, “There’s no straight line to progress, and hardship always accompanies a season of hope.” In affirming the core principles of democratic solidarity in this “season of hope,” therefore, the Obama administration’s approach to democracy may more accurately be described as reflexive idealism.

CONCLUSION

I started this chapter with a quotation by Mill that I can only hope the ensuing material have helped to substantiate as a rationale for adopting a more principled position on assisting the cause of democracy abroad. The essence of Mill’s commentary, it seems to me, centers on an understanding of “the political” as a product of human labor and circumstance. Concepts such as democracy and freedom, according to Mill, are neither fixed nor timeless, but rather contingent and contextual. It stands to reason, therefore, that

“the feelings and the virtues needful for maintaining freedom” could only be attained through “an arduous struggle to become free.” This explains not only why Mill came to regard any outside attempt to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries as neither

“judicious [n]or right” (except in self-defense) but also why he thought that “a contest in which many have been called on to devote themselves for their country, is a school in which they learn to value their country’s interest above their own.”90

Premised as they are on a set of familiar instrumental arguments that conceive of democracy as a means to peace and justice, conventional approaches to democracy promotion have overlooked the contextual sources of political legitimacy. In their place, I have offered an alternative approach – democratic solidarity – based on the contextual

90 John Stuart Mill, “A Few Words on Non-Intervention,” [1859] in Chris Brown, Terry Nardin and Nicholas Rengger, eds., International Relations in Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 491.

204 conception of democracy I offered in Chapter 2. This approach is anchored by the three core principles of non-interference, inclusivity, and reflexivity, which are designed to turn the disposition to advance the cause of democracy abroad into a global dialogue about the contextual sources of political legitimacy. In the last section of the chapter I have attempted to demonstrate what democratic solidarity would look like in practice through a comparison of the Bush and Obama administrations’ respective approaches to democracy promotion in the Middle East. Dispensing with conventional templates and tired strategies that conceive of democracy as a mere institutional arrangement, the

Obama administration has made a welcome turn away from instrumental arguments by addressing the underlying contextual grievances that have animated myriad reform- minded and pro-democratic movements in the Arab and Muslim world today.

Beyond demonstrating the futility of using democracy promotion as a tool of statecraft, the chief aim of this chapter has been to show how the cause of democracy ought to be advanced in places where it is either nascent or missing. It has not been my intention, however, to discourage any efforts by state and non-state entities to assist and cultivate the emergence of democratic movements abroad. Democratic solidarity obliges us to continually engage with the plight of those seeking to attain their basic rights and freedoms; in doing so, it also commits us to constantly interrogate, in Mill’s words, “the feelings and the virtues needful for maintaining freedom.”

205 CONCLUSION

At the beginning of this dissertation I made the claim that democratic theory lacks an adequate understanding of how local circumstances and historical context affect the mediation and internalization of democratic ideals. Indeed, this is something already well recognized in certain works of political philosophy, and the “contextual theory” of democratic legitimacy I am advocating seeks to build on certain “contextualist” trajectories of thought that have stopped just short of considering the implications of their queries for normative theorizing in democratic theory. Furthermore, it has been my intention to advance a normative theoretical framework for thinking about context, and not merely advocate sensitivity to context in descriptive or empirical terms. Context, as I hope the preceding has made clear, is not merely the imprint of historical events upon social and political institutions, but an intellectual framework comprising multiple and intersecting sets of ideas, actors, and systems of rule. As such, a contextual conception of democracy must be at once faithful to the historical contingency of political forms and the longstanding intellectual traditions with which democratic ideals intermingle.

In Chapter 1, I demonstrate that contemporary democratic theory is dominated by two different, but by no means mutually exclusive, modes of thinking as regards the sources of democratic legitimacy. According to the universalist school of thought, democracy’s legitimacy is derived from the underlying ideals – e.g. autonomy, equality, mutual respect – that render meaningful the practice of self-government. The minimalist variation of this perspective, by depicting democracy as a mere means to the institutional management of politics, ignores a great deal about the substantive and contextual appeal of democratic ideals to people of different backgrounds. I am generally more sympathetic

206 to the maximalist iteration of democratic legitimacy with its considerations of the deliberative process, the underlying substance of democratic ideals, and the universal appeal of democracy as a political value. Constructive though this view has been, it tells us very little about the social construction of democracy across time and space.

Individuals and groups in different societies struggle for and affirm democratic principles based on reasons unique to their personal and collective experiences; correspondingly, the discourse and practice of democracy differs from one habitation to another. By failing to take stock of the interaction of democratic ideals with local contexts, universalist conceptions of democratic legitimacy run the risk of portraying democracy as a mere political template capable of flourishing in any and all contexts.

This worry forms the basis of my argument in Chapter 4 against Western democracy promotion programs, which operate on misconceived universalist conceptions of democratic legitimacy. Given the specific regional focus of the preceding on Muslim- majority societies of the Middle East, my aim in the last chapter was to show how instrumentalist arguments for democracy promotion as a means for achieving peace, prosperity, and justice fail to take into consideration both the complex history of democratic struggles from within societies and the self-interested nature of foreign interventions. This does not preclude, however, expressions of solidarity with agents of democratic change in non-democratic societies. As I demonstrate through the examples of the Iraq war and the recent pro-democracy uprisings in Iran and the Arab world, the cause of democracy can best be served through a contextual understanding of the sources of political legitimacy – be they particular actors, intellectual traditions, or institutions – within these societies. The latter approach, I argue, has been employed (however

207 imperfectly) by the Obama administration, which perhaps for the first time in the history of American involvement in the Middle East and North Africa seems to have placed the legitimate aspirations of people in the region ahead of its longstanding economic and military interests.

The second dominant tradition in contemporary democratic theory which I identify in Chapter 1 is that of particularism. The exponents of this school of thought conceive of politics as the management of commensurate and conflicting identities.

Accordingly, particularist conceptions of democratic legitimacy tend to focus on the longevity of local customs and values as they condition individual and group identities.

The minimalist strand of this tradition can be found in the works of radical/agonistic democrats for whom the situated nature of identity/difference foreclose the possibility of there ever emerging a rational and equitable democratic consensus (hence the agonism). I applaud the radical/agonistic project for its promotion of pluralism and sensitivity to the ideational sources of democratic legitimacy, but find its conception of democratic politics deeply problematic. At its core, I argue, liberal democracy is about crafting consensus as regards the terms of political coexistence, and not a rationalist project bent on obliterating deeply held and divergent beliefs about the good life. In this sense, the radical/agonistic perspective places too much emphasis on the hazards of identity/difference at the expense of the manifold possibilities for cooperation and critical engagement that a contextual understanding of political legitimacy can provide. Even more reductive than this view, however, is the maximalist account of communal identity provided by communitarians.

According to this view, the legitimacy of democracy is derived from the shared understandings and traditions of the community as a whole. Communitarians do allow for

208 a plurality of viewpoints within a polity, but argue that ultimately democracy is a means toward achieving a common morality in the institutions of civil society such as the family, public schools, civic associations, and neighborhoods.

I object to the communitarian project on both descriptive and normative grounds – for its monolithic depiction of human communities, but most especially for its relativist take on the sources of democratic legitimacy. The inherent flaws of such a view are made evident, I hope, in the latter part of Chapter 2, where I demonstrate the false debates surrounding the compatibility of Islam and democracy to be the consequence of highly essentialist understandings of both Islam and democracy. In this regard, the particularist emphasis on shared understandings and traditional values obscures the very contentious and heterogeneous character of human societies. This descriptive flaw in turn results in particularist prescriptions for legitimacy that privilege communal identity and comprehensive believes over reasonable dialogue and reflective understanding, both key democratic ideals that can and have been endorsed by different cultures and communities.

In part, this is what I endeavored to show in Chapter 3 through my case study of Iran. The century-long pursuit of democracy in Iran demonstrates, firsthand, the pitfalls of subjecting an otherwise heterogeneous society with multiple intellectual and political traditions to singular forms of identity. Both the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic

Republic under the ayatollahs had attempted to legitimize their rule in reference to a set of particularist practices and values. In the case of the Pahlavi Shahs, citizens’ rights and obligations were treated as secondary to the divine prerogatives of the monarch, with parliament and the courts merely executing his wishes (elections and abstract democratic entitlements notwithstanding). In the case of the Islamic Republic, too, the otherwise

209 republican constitution of the state – with its enumeration of basic rights and freedoms for all, and separation of powers – has been made impotent by the principle of velayat-e faqih (rule of the jurist) based on a highly exclusivist reading of Shari’ah by Ayatollah

Khomeini and his followers. Neither one of these particularist projects, however, was viewed as legitimate in the eyes of the Iranian public. What is more, due to the existence of a strong tradition of constitutionalism in Iran, these particularist obstacles to reform and democratic change have become important reference points for activists and dissident intellectuals seeking to forge a more representative and contextual path toward democratic legitimacy. The so-called “Green Movement” has begun this task, and in

Chapter 3 I highlight the relative strengths and weaknesses of the coalition that comprises this opposition movement.

But simply pointing out the relative import of local context to achieving democratic legitimacy is not sufficient. Understanding specific contexts is certainly key to uncovering the sources of discontent as well as the common aspirations of a given society. More importantly, however, democratic theory is in need of a normative framework for thinking about context. If democratic legitimacy is so intricately tied to the vicissitudes of context, then the challenge is to construct a conception of democracy that is cognizant of the imprint of local traditions and values upon social identity, yet one that is also faithful to the underlying values of democracy as a system of rule. I have attempted to offer just such a theory of democratic legitimacy in Chapter 2, which I term a “contextual” conception of democracy. Building on liberal theories of popular sovereignty that ground democratic legitimacy on the principle of equal respect for persons, I argue that the moral and political legitimacy of democracy is derived from its

210 reflective capacity to be responsive to a multiplicity of life experiences, belief systems, and historical circumstances – in short, contexts. This view of democratic legitimacy does not reduce democratic ideals to a set of abstract values, but nor does it lapse into relativism when considering the influence of local context on politics. Rather, it offers a normative framework for thinking about a range of ideas, life experiences, and cultural/political values in relation to the terms of coexistence. By requiring each citizen to justify his or her political beliefs in lieu of its effects on the general welfare, it seeks to engender respect and cooperation through reflective understanding.

The urgency of a contextual understanding of democracy at the turn of the twenty-first century cannot be overstated. Since at least the advent of American and

French revolutions, democrats and scholars of democracy have rightly extolled the virtues of a multitude of rights and freedoms that have been enshrined in the founding documents of modern (mostly Western) democracies. Yet too often such accolades leave out the innumerable iterations democratic ideals have been, and are continually, subjected to in multiple settings. The “inalienable” and “self-evident” claims to liberty and equality conjured up different understandings of democratic legitimacy in 1950s America, France, or Iran (at the height of its period of parliamentary democracy), for instance, than they do in the aftermath of numerous rights-based movements both local and global (based on race, gender, class, sexual orientation, citizenship, etc.) in 2011. A contextual understanding of democratic legitimacy does not beatify democratic ideals, but rather insists on regarding them as products of human labor and historical conditions. It does so not in order to merely check the excesses of universalist as well particularist iterations of

211 basic rights and values, but to strive for a more morally and politically legitimate democratic order.

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