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Democracy, Teleology and International Ethics: In Defense

of an Institutional Pluralist World Order

Hsuan-Hsiang LinDepartment of Political Science

Fo Guang Universitysunyata_sean@yahoo.com.tw

Paper prepared for the conference of“Democratizing International Relations: NewThinking, Doing and Being,”at The Institute of Political Science at National SunYat-sen University, Taiwan, March 11th- March 12th, 2009.

Introduction

Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis (Fukuyama, 1991) has been mercilessly

besieged by theorists of various persuasions ever since its very genesis. And since his

triumphalism of liberalism has been widely discredited, it is now “politically

incorrect” to regard liberalism as the telos that all human societies should embrace.

Peculiarly, such teleological thinking remains quite resilient in various sub-fields of

political science. For example, in the literature of democratization, democracy is more

often than not taken to be an ideal that cannot be surpassed; as a political institution

democracy may still exhibit weaknesses, it nevertheless remains the least flawed

among the institutions that the human race has ever invented (Dahl, 1989: 84). Hence,

democracy is often implicitly assumed to be a goal to be attained by all human

societies. In the literature of international ethics, similarly, democracy is often

regarded as the norm,1 and thus how democracies should handle their relations with

non-democratic states becomes an important issue. It is thus not a coincidence that

both John Rawls (1999, §5) and Jürgen Habermas (1998: 171-178) , when thinking

1For example, Mervyn Frost takes democracy as one of what he calls “settled norms” in international ethics (Frost, 1996: 111).

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about this issue, appeals to the democratic peace thesis, according to which

democracies never fight each other. 2 This approach to the issue suggests that

democracy is the best guarantee for the peace, whereas undemocratic regimes are a

potential threat to the peace; if the peace is threatened, undemocratic states are

certainly more responsible for the situation than democracies. As such, in terms of

international ethics, the thesis of democratic peace allows democracies to occupy the

moral high ground from the very beginning. Scholars who believe in this thesis may

not subscribe to the idea that democracy should be exported by force, they

nevertheless find undemocratic states short of legitimacy and are thus subject to

intervention, or qualified for “toleration” at best. Even Rawls’s position, which

requires that liberal peoples tolerate “decent hierarchical peoples” (Rawls, 1999a:§7),

would appear politically incorrect and is thus criticized by many political theorists.3

This shows how trenchant is the idea that democracy should be the norm or telos of

human societies.

Arguably, the belief in democracy and democratization has its root in the

so-called “modernity’s project” founded on liberalism, which in turn is characterized

by individualism, egalitarianism, universalism, and meliorism. 4 Underlying the

liberal assumptions is the idea of the person conceived as an autonomous, free and

equal being. But as Fiona Robertson-Snape points out, this conception of the person

has been questioned by liberals with a communitarian bent (e.g. Sandel, 1982; Taylor,

1985), and thus its modernity project is not as universalisable as it appears to be. She

quotes John Gray’s statement to endorse her observation: “The conception of

ourselves as autonomous rational agents and authors of our own values bare patently

2 For a survey of the literature on this thesis, see Steve Chan (1997).3 For example, Pogge (1994), Tesón (1995), Beitz (2000), Buchanan (2000), Kuper (2000), Caney(2002), Nussbaum (2002).4 These four features of liberalism are derived from John Gray’s account (Gray, 1995: xii), cited in Robertson-Snape (2000: 509).

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upon it the marks of modernity and European individuality and has not universality as

an image of moral life.” (Gray, 1995: 50, quoted in Robertson-Snape, 2000: 512) In

addition, other theorists, some of them informed by postmodernism, are concerned

with the totalizing effect of universalism that tends to silence differences (e.g.

Connolly, 1991); for these theorists, value pluralism presents itself as a more

attractive alternative.5 And yet, this alternative is often accused of being tarnished by

moral relativism. Then, how can we get out of this impasse?

On the face of it, this impasse is very reminiscent of the old-aged

cosmopolitan-communitarian debate, and to this date many theorists have advanced

different approaches to overcome this dichotomy (e.g. Cochran, 1999; Hutchings,

1999; Shopcott, 2001). It seems to me, however, that the tendency of these accounts is

to theorize from the abstract to the concrete. But politics is an enterprise that involves

not only theoretical but also practical reason, and so normative arguments must entail,

in addition to theoretical argument, praxeological argument. 6 Therefore

Robertson-Snape is right in pointing to an alternative way of theorizing by drawing on

Luigi Bonanate’s account, which “proceeds to reconsider the problem of ethics in

international relations, not by continuing the search for universal and objective

foundation, but by examining the nature and reality of international politics.”

(Robertson-Snape, 2000: 513). This approach is akin to Mervyn Frost’s account

whose theorizing begins with “settled norms” (Frost, 1996), and as I have argued

elsewhere Frost’s approach is very much inspired by Rawls’s method of “reflective

equilibrium” (Lin, 2008a; Rawls, 1971: 20). Hence, I shall take Rawls’s account to be

a good starting point of this alternative approach.

5 For a brief survey of liberal theorists who may endorse value pluralism, see Baumeister (2003:750-4).6 This position is informed by Aristotle’s idea that politics is associated with the use of the facultycalled phronesis (practical wisdom or intelligence). For Aristotle, since phronesis is “concerned with action, it must possess both [the universal and the particular knowledge] or the [particular] more [thanthe universal].” (Aristotle, 1985: 1141b8-1142a30, 1180b30-1181b12)

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In this paper, I will begin with an exposition of Rawls’s toleration thesis and

argue that Rawls’s position is more reasonable than its critics’ pro-cosmopolitan

position. But the defense of Rawls’s thesis is only a springboard for a larger project,

which is to defend an institutional pluralist world order that does not take democracy

to be the ultimate end of human political associations. The institutional aspect is

emphasized because the idea of democracy is not only a value but also a form of

political institution.7 Hence what I am trying to defend in this paper is not value

pluralism per se but also institutional or regime pluralism. The two kinds of pluralism

are different in that different cultures may share the same political institution (e.g.

both the U.S. and Japan are democracies) while the same cultural value is compatible

with different political institutions (as exemplified by China and Taiwan). Thus,

though philosophical arguments for value pluralism can be mobilized to justify a

pluralist world order, they alone are not adequate. And as Andrew Linklater rightly

points out, a good account of international relations must include sociological,

normative, and praxeological analyses (Linklater, 1998: 8-10). Hence my defense for

a pluralist world order will be carried out on these three levels and not just

philosophical argument alone.

The structure of this paper is roughly like this: At the normative or philosophical

level, I will draw mainly on the work of John Rawls and Michael Walzer. But since

these two philosophical accounts hinge on certain empirical observations that need to

be borne out by sociological account. In this regard, I will mainly rely on the English

School’s discourse to do the job. By far, most theoretical accounts for pluralism focus

on these two levels. And since the theoretical resources are already in place, so what I

7 In terms of the institutional aspect of democracy, my usage of the term follows Robert Dahl’s lead.Dahl defines democracy as a political system that meets at least five criteria: (1) effective participation;(2) voting equality; (3) enlightened understanding; (4) public control over the agenda; and (5) inclusionof adults (Dahl, 1998: ch. 4).

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purport to do is to organize them in a more systematic way. But my mission does not

stop here. For politics is an enterprise that involves not only theoretical but also

practical reason, and thus a defense for pluralism must include praxeological

argument. Unfortunately, this is what is most wanting in the discourses of

international ethics. For this reason, I shall then turn to historical sociology to make

up for this deficiency. But because of the limits of space it is impossible to do a

complete historical sociological analysis in this paper, so I will offer only a sketch of

the direction this praxeological analysis will point to.

The practical reasoning runs roughly as follows: There is little doubt that most

people will prefer democracies to undemocratic regimes when choice is available.

Nevertheless, that which is desirable is not necessarily that which is actualizable. As

Larry Diamond famously remarks: “Democracy is the most widely admired type of

political systems, but also perhaps the most difficult to maintain.”(Diamond, 1990:

48) Students of democratization studies have also shown that democracy as a political

institution cannot be achieved and consolidated without sufficient conditions.8 This

suggests that it is especially difficult for a huge nation such as China to meet all such

requirements. If students of China studies and international relations cannot do away

with teleological mentality, they can hardly avoid being frustrated by the slow

progress of China’s democratization. Such frustration may eventually become the

source of “clash of civilizations.” To prevent the “clash of civilizations” from

becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, we must relinquish the teleological thinking. In

view of this, I will show that historical sociology is conducive to overcoming this

8 Several prerequisites must be met for a democracy to survive: (1) absence of foreign control orintervention; (2) civilian control of the means of violence or coercion; (3) absence of civil strifes orconflicts between subcultures; (3) an elite culture that favors consiliation, mutual accommodation andcompromise; (4) a non-authoritarian and cooperative political culture; (5) decent level of economicdevelopment (Dahl, 1989: ch. 18) Howard Wiarda adds two more preconditions: (6) idependentlegislative and judicial systems; (7) transparency in the management of public funds (Wiarda, ed., 2002:ch. 9)

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teleology because it takes what Justin Rosenberg calls “uneven development” to be

the nature of international system, and thus it will regard institutional or regime

pluralism as an unavoidable fact. Once this fact is accepted, students of international

ethics will not see democracy as a norm, and thus whether non-democracies should be

tolerated or not will no longer be an issue. Rather, students of international ethics will

be devoted to the study of peaceful coexistence and just relations between different

kinds of regimes.

Before I proceed, one disclaimer is due: The way I appropriate the work of

Rawls and Walzer may be objected by Rawls and Walzer themselves; I alone am

responsible for any distortion of their arguments.

Rawls’s Idea of Toleration

Let me begin with Rawls’s treatise on international ethics. In The Law of Peoples,

Rawls maintains that liberal peoples must tolerate nonliberal peoples that meet certain

degree of decency. The criteria for decency he specifies do not include democracy,9

so he literally means that democracies must respect undemocratic states so long as the

latter meets those criteria. For Rawls, tolerating decent hierarchical peoples is not out

of pragmatic considerations but a requirement of justice. And this requirement is so

stringent that liberal peoples are not supposed to offer incentives for nonliberal

peoples to change in a liberal direction, for Rawls believe doing so might lead to

serious conflict between liberal and decent peoples (Rawls, 1999: 84-5). Rawls’s

conception of toleration has drawn many kinds of criticism from cosmopolitan

liberals. How does he defend his position?

9 These criteria include: First, the society must not be aggressive towards other societies. Second, itssystem of law must accord with a common good idea of justice, which secures basic human rights forall its members. Third, its system of law must impose moral duties and obligations on all its members,and its judges and officials must possess a sincere belief that the law is guided by a common good ideaof justice (Rawls, 1999a: 64-6).

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To begin with, as I have mentioned earlier, the philosophical method Rawls

employs is called “reflective equilibrium.” The basic principle of this method is to

“render coherent” and to justify our considered convictions of justice or moral

judgments (1971: 19-21). Sibyl Schwarzenbach, one of Rawls’s students, likens this

method to Hegel’s idea that the task of philosophy is to comprehend the rationality

latent or embodied in what Hegel calls “objective spirit,” which refers to “the world

of concrete political institutions, customs, and social laws, as well as in the traditions

of their interpretation (Schwarzenbach, 1991: 544). This suggests that the normative

argument is not a one-way enterprise of theorizing from the abstract to the concrete;

rather, the concrete plays a crucial role from the very beginning of theorizing. For this

reason, Rawls stipulates that “the argument for the principles of justice should

proceed from some consensus,” and this in turn requires that justification must be

public in nature (Rawls, 1971: 581). In his later work, this principle evolves into a

famous statement, which merits quoting in length:

Justice as fairness aims at uncovering a public basis of justification on questionsof political justice given the fact of reasonable pluralism. Since justification isaddressed to others, it proceeds from what is, or can be, held in common; and sowe begin from shared fundamental ideas implicit in the public political culture inthe hope of developing from them a political conception that can gain free andreasoned agreement in judgment, this agreement being stable in virtue of itsgaining the support of an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensivedoctrines. (1996: 100-1, my emphasis)

This statement is crucial because its emphasis on public political culture substantially

increases the relevance of historical and social conditions to normative theorizing.10

And since for Rawls the modern condition is characterized by the fact of reasonable

pluralism, this fact must be regarded as the very starting point of normative argument.

10 As Schwarzenbach points out, public political culture in Rawls’s philosophy roughly plays the roleof “objective spirit” in Hegel’s philosophy, for Rawls assumes that the core of our political institutions are at least minimally “rational” (Schwarzenbach, 1991: 566, note 18).

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This emphasis on reasonable pluralism has far-reaching consequences for thinking

about international ethics. This requires further elaboration.

For Rawls, reasonableness entails the willingness to propose fair terms of

cooperation and the willingness to recognize the burdens of judgment and to accept

their consequences for the use of public reason when justifying our political

conception of justice to others (1996: 54, 97; 2001: 27). At the core of the idea of

public reason is the criterion of reciprocity,11 and the content of this criterion may

vary from one context to another. But why is the content of the criterion contingency

on its context? Rawls writes: “it is the distinct structure of the social framework, and

the purpose and role of its various parts and how they fit together, that explains why

there are different principles for different kinds of subjects.” (1993: 47) This idea is

further illustrated in Rawls’s discussion of why the principles of justice do not directly

apply to (though do impose considerable constraints on) the internal life of

associations such as family, church, university, and so on, which suggests that there

need to be “division of labor between different kinds of principles.” (1999a: 158-9)

This suggests that principles applicable to the domestic context cannot be extended

readily to international context, so long as these two contexts have different

structures.

Now, this idea begs the question: To what extent does the international context

differ from the domestic context? Rawls has little to say on this, and so this is where

Rawls is vulnerable to his critics. But this weakness is not detrimental, for it can be

made up by appealing to the English School’s discourse. What concerns us here is the

implication of Rawls’s argument: it implies that the unit of moral concern in

international ethics is people (or the state) and not the individual. This is so because:

In the domestic context, the reason we can appeal to the political ideal of free and

11 Rawls’s full exposition of the idea of public reason can be found in his “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” which now becomes the addendum toThe Law of Peoples. Rawls says that “The idea of public reason is also integral to The Law of Peoples, which extends the idea of a social contract to theSociety of Peoples.” (Rawls, 1999a: vi) This underscores the crucial role thatthis idea plays in Rawls’s theory of international ethics.

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equal citizens for public justification is because that ideal is part of the public political

culture in those societies. Yet in the global setting, as Leif Wenar aptly puts it,

There simply is no robust global public political culture which emphasizes thatthe citizens of different countries ought to relate fairly to one another as free andequal….It is peoples, not citizens, that international political institutions regard as free and equal, and so it is these ideas of peoples that Rawls thinks he mustuse to develop his global political principles. (Wenar, 2001: 87)

In other words, since respect for individual autonomy is not part of the global public

political culture, it is unreasonable, from a Rawlsian point of view, to appeal to such

conception at the global level. Or put it in a slightly different way: In so far as liberal

democracies value individual autonomy and treat each citizen as free and equal, so the

criterion of reciprocity applies, in the domestic context, among individuals. In the

global context, however, there is no such consensus in the public political culture. The

only widely acknowledged principle or idea is the equality of states (or peoples), and

so in the global context the criterion of reciprocity only applies among peoples or

states.

It should be noted that the foregoing methodological argument alone does not

justify Rawls’s claim for toleration; it must be supplemented by another argument that

grant certain moral status to peoples or states. In this regard, Rawls’s argument goes

as follows:

Leaving aside the deep question of whether some forms of culture and ways oflife are good in themselves (as I believe they are), it is surely, ceteris paribus, agood for individuals and associations to be attached to their particular culture andto take part in its common public and civic life…

This is no small thing. It argues for preserving significant room for the idea of apeople’s self-determination and for some kind of loose or confederative form of aSociety of Peoples. (1999a: 61)

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Admittedly, this argument is akin to Will Kymlicka’s idea that culture need to be

respected because it provides the individuals with a context for making meaningful

choices (Kymlicka, 2002: 340), and thus enthusiasts of liberal culturalism may not

find Rawls’s argument objectionable. It should be noted, however, Rawls’s critics may

still object by arguing that respect for culture cannot be transferred readily into

respect for political community, for culture and political community are not the same

thing. How can Rawls respond to this objection? Unfortunately, Rawls does not

address this problem fully in his treatise. But on closer reading one can still find

useful resources in his work to formulate a rejoinder to that objection.

To begin with, in A Theory of Justice Rawls argues that moral persons are

characterized by two moral powers, i.e. they are capable of having a conception of

their good and capable of having a sense of justice (1971: 505). Later Rawls says that

the term “person” may also be extended to refer to corporate entities including

“nations, corporations, churches, teams, and so on.”(1999b: 75) These two ideas

taken together will endow people or society with moral standing. Hence Rawls

explains in The Law of Peoples why liberal peoples have a moral character: “Like

citizens in domestic society, liberal peoples are both reasonable and rational.” Their

rationality is “organized and expressed in their elections and votes, and the laws and

policies of their government,” while their reasonableness is expressed in their being

able to offer and honor fair terms of cooperation provided other peoples do so as well

(1999a: 25).

Now, the question is whether this moral standing can also be granted to

nonliberal peoples or societies? Judging by the logic of his domestic theory, the

answer should be yes. This is so because in A Theory of Justice Rawls states that

“equal justice is owed to those who have the capacity to take part in and to act in

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accordance with the public understanding of the initial situation,” and “the capacity

for moral personality is a sufficient condition for being entitled to equal justice.”

(1971: 505, emphasis mine) Moreover, Rawls says:

I assume that the capacity for a sense of justice is possessed by theoverwhelming majority of mankind….That moral personality suffices to make one a subject of claims is the essential thing. We cannot go far wrong insupposing that the sufficient condition is always satisfied. Even if the capacitywere necessary, it would be unwise to withhold justice on this ground. (1971:506, emphasis mine)

The crucial point of this statement is that “the minimal requirements defining moral

personality refer to a capacity and not to the realization of it.” (1971: 509) And this

emphasis on potentiality is especially pertinent to our discussion in that “regarding the

potentiality as sufficient accords with the hypothetical nature of the original position.”

(1971: 509, emphasis mine) Now, if that is the right approach to the original position

at the domestic level, why should it be any different at the international level? In his

objection to the cosmopolitan view, Rawls says:

The intuitive force of equality holds, it might be said, only between individuals,and treating societies equally depends on their treating their members equally. Idon’t agree. Instead, equality holds between reasonable, or decent, and rational,individuals or collectives of various kinds when the relation of equality betweenthem is appropriate for the case at hand. (1999a: 69)

If this argument is sound, shouldn’t Rawls regard all peoples as equally autonomous?

In other words, to be self-consistent Rawls should not distinguish different kinds of

peoples in ideal theory; rather, he must assume that all peoples are moral persons in

so far they are capable of being rational and reasonable. This appropriation, or

perhaps revision, would require that the representatives of all peoples or states be

included in the international original position; in other words, no states should be

excluded on the ground that they are incapable of being rational and reasonable.

Rawls may well object to this revision of his theory, but I believe this revision accords

better with Rawls’s discussion concerning the basis of equality in A Theory of Justice.

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Admittedly, my revision does not deny that in reality some regimes may be

morally superior to other, but this only begs the question as to who is entitled to judge

the legitimacy of a regime. Rawls’s treatment of this question is to lay down a priori

the criteria for a regime to be qualified as legitimate. But on what basis is Rawls

entitled to do so? At this point Rawls seems to be assuming the role of God, and this

makes his theory vulnerable to the charge of being paternalistic.12 To avoid this

charge, I will turn to Michael Walzer’s work for a remedy.

Walzer’s Argument for the Moral Standing of the State

Walzer is probably the staunchest defender of the pluralist or communitarian

approach to international ethics. This fact may raise the question as to whether

Walzer’s argument can sit well with Rawls’s theory. Here I invite the reader to

suspend this doubt; as my exposition unfolds, I will points out the parallels between

the two theorists.

As is well known, Walzer’s defense for the moral standing of the state hinges on

the ideas of self-determination and non-intervention. The prototype justification of

this approach is obviously J. S. Mill’s classic argument that “the question of

government ought to be decided by the governed.”13 Mill’s idea is later elaborated

and defended by Walzer, whose argument goes like this: “political freedom depends

on the existence of individual virtue,” and “just as the individual must cultivate his

own virtue,” so “the members of a political community must seek their own

freedom.” “Self-determination is the school in which virtue is learned (or not) and

liberty is won (or not);” it is “the right of a people ‘to become free by their own

12 For a critique of the paternalism in Rawls’s idea of toleration, see my earlier work (Lin, 2008b: ch. 5).13 John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government [1861]. In Collected Works ofJohn Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Robson, Vol. 19 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1977), p. 547. Quotedin Beitz (1999: 96, n. 63).

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efforts’.” (Walzer, 1977: 87-8) On this view, a people may fail to establish free

institutions for themselves, but this does not provides an excuse for foreigners to

intervene on their behalf.

Walzer’s argument has provoked strong objections; the main charge is leveled at

his thesis of “presumptive legitimacy.” According to this thesis, “the state is

constituted by the union of people and government,” and it is presumed that “there

exists a certain ‘fit’ between the community and its government and that the state is

‘legitimate’.” In Walzer’s own word, “This presumption is simply the respect that

foreigners owe to a historic community and to its internal life.” (1980: 212) And

foreigners are in no position to judge whether the “fit” is present or not because

They don’t know enough about its history, and they have no direct experience, and can form no concrete judgments, of the conflicts and harmonies, thehistorical choices and cultural affinities, the loyalties and resentments, thatunderlie it. (1980: 212)

This “lack of knowledge” thesis is probably the weakest link in Walzer’s arguments.

As David Luban has already pointed out, “There are, after all, experts, experienced

travelers, expatriates, scholars, and spies; libraries have been written about the most

remote cultures.” (Luban, 1980: 395) Hence it is implausible to argue for no-judgment

on the ground that we do not know enough about the state at issue. But it must be

noted that the real strength of Walzer’s account derives from another argument that is

often ignored by Walzer’s critics. That argument draws a distinction between two

kinds of legitimacy that are addressed to different audiences. The first kind of

legitimacy is addressed to the people within the state: It is the people who are entitled

to judge whether the “fit” between government and community exits. When they

judge the fit absent, they are free to rebel. The second kind is addressed to foreigners.

In this case “foreigners must decide whether to intervene or not,” but they are not

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supposedto intervene unless the absence of “fit” is radically apparent. For Walzer, the

first kind of legitimacy is likely to be singular in character, for the judgments we

make reflect our democratic values. In contrast, “the second kind of legitimacy is

pluralist in character,” for “the judgment we make reflect our recognition of diversity

and our respect for communal integrity and for different patterns of cultural and

political development.” (Walzer, 1980: 215-6)

In the foregoing argument, Walzer appeals to the idea of pluralism as the ground

for distinguishing the two kinds of legitimacy. But this appeal is again vulnerable to

cosmopolitan criticism. For example, Luban argues:

If human rights exist at all, they set a moral limit to pluralism. For this reasonWalzer’s appeal to pluralism begs the question, for making pluralism the overriding value is incompatible from the outset with a theory that grantsuniversal human rights. (Luban, 1980: 396)

In similar vein, Doppelt also suggests that a state with collective right as Walzer

conceives it may violate the individual rights of its citizens; in that case, the use of

force against that government may be justified (Doppelt, 1978: 5).

Indeed, Walzer does concede that “there are cases when sovereignty can be

disregarded.” (Walzer, 1980: 216-8) However, this does not mean that only liberal or

democratic states are legitimate. From Walzer’s point of view, people living under an

illegitimate regime have the right of revolution, but that right does not transfer readily

to foreigners, for foreigners “have no right to make their own principles or their own

beliefs definitive for other people.” (1980: 221) This shows that Walzer’s distinction

between two kinds of legitimacy is not based solely on the argument from pluralism;

rather, it draws on an additional anti-paternalism argument. But once again this

argument is vulnerable to cosmopolitan criticism. For example, according to S. Z.

Benn and R. S. Peters this argument brings in a theory of political development to

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explain why “the claims of a state’s members will generally be better served if they

are left to work out their own salvation.”14 And Beitz further suggests that this

explanation involves an empirical assumption that requires substantiation (Beitz, 1999:

86). He suggests that in reality the newly independent indigenous governments are

often just as brutal as their former colonial rulers to their people. Hence the caricature:

“Mill pictured self-determinationfrom repressive foreign ‘yokes’ imposed on peoples

without their consent. But if successor governments are similarly nonconsensual, one

might wonder what makes a domestic yoke more acceptable than a foreign one.”

(Beitz, 1979: 96)

To counter Beitz’s objection, I think we can appeal to Isaiah Berlin’s insight that

national self-determination is by nature not a struggle for equal liberty, but a struggle

for recognition (Tamir, 1993: 71). Berlin’s words deserve quoting in length:

I wish for the emancipation of my entire class, or community, or nation, or race,or profession. So much can I desire this, that I may, in my bitter longing forstatus, prefer to be bullied and misgoverned by some member of my own race orsocial class, by whom I am nevertheless, recognized as a man and a rival—that isas an equal—to being well and tolerantly treated by someone from some higherand remoter group, who does not recognize me for what I wish myself to be.This is the heart of the great cry for recognition on the part of both individualsand groups, and in our own days, of professions and classes, nations and races.15

This suggests that the force of the antipaternalist argument derives not from the

empirical assumption that the well-beings of the people are better served by their own

government; rather, it is the psychological desire to be treated as an equal that makes

paternalism a moral wrong. Arguably, this is also why Rawls maintains that a people’s

14 S. I. Benn and R. S. Peters, The Principles of Political Thought: Social Principles and theDemocratic State [1959] (New York: Free Press, 1965). Quoted in Beitz (1999: 85).15 Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 157-8. Quotedin Tamir (1993: 72).

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interest in amour-propre “shows itself in a people’s insisting on receivingfrom other

peoples a proper respect and recognition of their equality.” (Rawls, 1999a: 34-5)

Now, we can come back to the question as to who is entitled to judge the

legitimacy of a regime. Michael Walzer’s account would suggest that the members of

a political community are entitled to judge, and they are free to rebel if they deem the

regime illegitimate. But the crucial point is that their right to revolution does not

transfer readily to foreigners. This does not suggest, however, that outsiders can never

intervene on the insiders’ behalf. But absent a neutral referee, intervention is often

tarnished by parochial self-interests, self-righteous arrogance and paternalism. Hence

Rawls is right to argue:

In political liberalism we must distinguish between, first, the political case forintervention based on the public reason of the Law of Peoples and, second, themoral and religious case based on citizen’s comprehensive doctrines. In my estimation, the former must prevail if a stable peace is to be maintained amongpluralistic societies. (Rawls, 1999a: 84, emphasis mine)

Here we see Rawls echoing Walzer’s distinction of two kinds of legitimacy, and this is

what I mentioned earlier the parallel between Walzer’s argument and Rawls’s theory.

But my defense for regime (or institutional) pluralism does not end here, for the force

of Rawls’s statement quoted above cannot be fully appreciated unless we share the

same view of international society as a pluralist society, 16 and for this reason we

must turn to the issue of the nature of international society.

For a Pluralist Conception of International Society

We have seen earlier that Rawls’s argument for toleration hinges on the claims

that the domestic and the international contexts are structurally different and that the

international society is pluralist in nature. How can we substantiate these two claims?

16 Walzer also share the view that international society is a pluralist society: “the only global community is pluralist in character, a community of nations, not of humanity, and the rights recognizedwithin it have been minimal and largely negative, designed to protect the integrity of nations and toregulate their commercial and military transaction.” (Walzer, 1980: 226-7)

17

In this section I will draw on theoretical resources mainly from the English School in

IR to do the job. Let me begin with the first claim. To what extent can we say that the

domestic and the international contexts are two different domains? Here the secret lies

in the fact that the primary agents in world affairs are states and states are different

from persons in three ways, which is discussed in details as follows.

First of all, in the international system states’ fear of “violent death” is not as

strong as that of the individual persons in the imagined state of nature. This is so

because an individual human being can be killed by a single attack, but human beings

organized as states can provide themselves with the means of defense that protect

them from physical extinction (Bull, 1977: 49-51). Secondly, theoretically speaking

states are self-sufficient in a way that individual human beings cannot be. As Vattel

rightly argued,

It is clear that there is by no means the same necessity for a civil society amongNations as among individuals. It cannot be said, therefore, that naturerecommends it to an equal degree, far less that it prescribes it. Individuals are soconstituted that they could accomplish but little by themselves and couldscarcely get on without the assistance of civil society and its law. But as soon asa sufficient number have united under a government, they are able to provide formost of their needs, and they find the help of other political societies not sonecessary to them as the state itself is to individuals.17

Thirdly, states are different from persons in that the former have a constitution that the

latter lack. Kant, for example, has emphasized this point long ago when he argued

why an international Leviathan is theoretically unnecessary or even undesirable:

Yet while natural right allows us to say of men living in a lawless condition thatthey ought to abandon it, the right of nations does not allow us to say the same ofstates. For as states, they already have a lawful internal constitution, and havethus outgrown the coercive right of others to subject them to a wider constitutionin accordance with their conception of right. (Kant, 1970: 104)

17 Le Droit des Gens, preface. Quoted in Wight (1995: 31)。

18

It is these three differences joined together that serve to constitute the international

society as a distinctive domain that cannot be seen as the domestic society writ large.

The theoretical implications of these structural differences between the two

contexts are further elaborated by Hedley Bull (1966; 1979). For Bull, the foregoing

structural differences are crucial in that the very existence of government allows the

individual state to act as the “custodian” of the “common good” of a certain segment

of human kind, whereas the absence of government in the international context

forbids the idea of the common good at the global level. Instead, the society of states

is merely a “compact of coexistence,” which is based on a thinner set of common

values and institutions that give primacy to the individual state. And since the purpose

of international society is to maintain order and coexistence, it is considered a

“category mistake” to appeal to more demanding conception of the common good or

idea of cosmopolitan justice in the international context (Blaney and Inayatullah, 2000:

46-7). This characterization of the international society is markedly pluralist, and its

implications for thinking about international ethics can be shown by a contrast with

the solidarist vision of the international society. The contrast between the plural and

solidarist conceptions of international society can be traced to Hedley Bull’s seminal

discussion in “The Grotian Conception of International Society” (Bull, 1966). For

Bull, solidarism means that the solidarity in international society is strong enough to

enable enforcement of international norms, in particular waging war against the

law-breakers; by contrast, pluralism means that “states do not exhibit solidarity of this

kind, but are capable of agreeing only for certain minimum purposes which fall short

of that of the enforcement of the law.” (1966: 52). More specifically, pluralists hold

that states can only agree on a minimum of things including reciprocal recognition of

sovereignty and the rule of non-intervention, and that the rules to which states

subscribe are procedural and do not imply the idea of common substantive purposes.

19

By contrast, solidarists emphasize that states do have substantive purposes in common,

such as ensuring that states do not mistreat their citizens (Rengger, 2006: 42).

It should be noted that Bull was initially in favor of the pluralist conception on

the ground that solidarism was “set[ting] up the law over and against facts” and

“imposing upon international society a strain which it cannot bear” (1966: 73, 70).

But the later Bull is found to be more receptive to the solidarist conception (Linklater

and Suganami, 2006: 66-7；Rengger, 2006: 42-3), a move which literally triggers the

pluralism-solidarism debate. The positions of the two camps are nicely summarized

by Barry Buzan as follows: Pluralists are strongly state-centric, presupposing that the

states are the dominant unit of human society. They hold that states are “culturally and

ideologically unlike,” and thus pluralism is about “the preservation or cultivation of

the political and cultural difference and distinctiveness that are the legacy of human

history”. By contrast, solidarists lean towardKantianism and cosmopolitanism; they

regard humanity as one and hold that the rights of individuals must have a place in the

international society (Buzan, 2004: 46-7).

What is the relevance of this debate to the main theme of our discussion? In the

foregoing discussion, we have seen that the pluralist conception of international

society is more concerned with preserving the political differences among states. If

the pluralist conception can be proved to be superior to the solidarist conception, then

it will lend significant support to my case for institutional pluralism. How can this be

done? Let us begin with Bull’s own argument. Bull justifies his preference for the

pluralist conception by noting that the Gotian solidarism is associated with the natural

law tradition, and unfortunately, “natural law cannot accommodate the fact of moral

disagreement, so prominent in the domain of international relations” (Buzan, 2004: 54;

20

Bull, 1979: 181).18 This argument is akin to Rawls’s idea that the international

society is characterized by an even greater diversity of comprehensive doctrines and

thus liberal ideas or principles can not be extended readily to the international context

(Rawls, 1999a: 40). If that is the case, Bull’s argument adds little to the case for

institutional pluralism. For this reason, we must look to other resources to make the

case. In this regard, Robert Jackson’s account is probably the most prominent one.

Jackson builds his account of pluralism by drawing on a variety of theoretical

resources from Isaiah Berlin, Michael Oakeshott, Michael Walzer, Terry Nardin, etc.,

among which Oakeshott’s distinction between societas and universitas is of particular

importance. According to Jackson’s appropriation of Oakeshott, societas refers to

“human relations characterized by coexistence of independent selves who conduct

themselves by freely observing common standards of conduct” while universitas

refers to “human relations characterized by collective enterprise between mutually

dependent partners, or collaborators, in the pursuit a joint purpose” (Jackson, 2000: 61)

For Jackson, Europe before 1648 comes close to the idea of universitas in that it is

based on the solidarist norms of Christendom. After the Peace of Westphalia, however,

the system has undergone a transformation from universitas to societas, which is now

based on the pluralist norms of sovereign equality and political independence (2000:

156-67). This “pluralist architecture” is held together not by particular substantive

values or purposes but by common institutions that permit cooperation irrespective of

shared or divergent values. Or to borrow Terry Nardin’s terms, as Jacksondoes at

some point (2000: 121-3), contemporary international society is a “practical

association” rather than a “purposive association”. And since there is no common

purpose except coexistence between states, the idea and institutions of societas

18 In another place, Bull states a similar reason: “there is no consensus in the world behind theprogram of Western solidarists or global centralists for ‘transcending the states-system’.” (Bull, 1979: 120)

21

expresses not the “morality of the common good” but the “morality of mutual

accommodation”, the latter of which is a “morality of difference, recognition, respect,

regard, dialogue, interaction, exchange, and similar norms that postulate coexistence

and reciprocity between independent political communities.” (2000: 168)

Now, what concerns us most is the implications of Jackson’s account for

international ethics, the most important of which is his emphasis on normative

pluralism and political anti-paternalism (2000: 406-19). Jackson argues that pluralism

provides an alternative to both universalism (perhaps, for Jackson, a synonym of

cultural imperialism) and relativism (2000: 395). Pluralism avoids relativism via

affirming the possibility of mutual intelligibility and communication between

different civilizations; it also affirms common humanity, which for Jackson is

expressed in the universal principle of self-determination. On the other hand, owing to

the diversity of values and cultures, pluralism insists that international norms “must

be divorced or at least distanced from the norms of any particular civilization. That

must include those of Western civilization.” The ethos of pluralism is succinctly

captured in two mottos: “live and let live” and “tending your own patch” (2000:

406-10) Moreover, the moral purpose of international society is to preserve freedom

for each political community, and freedom implies responsibility. The pluralist ethics

also holds that the citizens of a political community are the best judges of their own

circumstances, and thus they are the only ones who are responsible for their own

affairs. “That means that no one value can justifiably be imposed on people who may

not hold that value.” This suggests that the pluralist ethics is also fundamentally

against paternalism (2000: 411-415)

It not difficult to see what bearing of this ethics of anti-paternalism has on the

discourses of democratization. In fact, Jackson does devote one chapter of his book to

discuss the status of democracy in world politics (2000: ch. 13). Jackson argues that in

22

international affairs freedom and responsibility are better goods than democracy, for

pluralism provides the very condition in which democracy can flourish (2000: 366).

In other words, freedom and pluralism must take precedence over democracy, and

self-determination trumps democracy when they are in conflict with each other.

Moreover, pluralism is not just tolerant of difference; it is intolerant of imposition.

Thus, the pluralist ethics must leave open a space for peoples and governments to

“pursue their own domestic enlightenment or unenlightenment, as the case may be.”

(2000: 361) If a people fail to institutionalize a democracy in their country, so be it.

As they are free to succeed, they are also free to fail. International community

provides no guarantee for success; to think otherwise is a category mistake (2000:

410-1). Furthermore, non-democratic states are not second-class citizens in the

international society; rather, once a country is admitted into the international society it

is deemed equal without discrimination (2000: 362-3). These arguments are supported

by the Millian idea that “Outsiders cannot readily give people in other countries

democracy: that usually is not in their power.” Hence the principle: “let other nations

alone” (2000: 362-3).

In Jackson’s account of pluralism, we can hear loud and clear the echo of

Walzer’s minimalist approach to a thin ethics in the international politics (Walzer,

1994: ch. 4).19 We can even say that it is Jackson’s account that drives home the

implication of Walzer’s (and perhaps Rawls’s) argument for the issue of democracy in

IR. However forceful Jackson’s accountis, there are nevertheless three lines of

19 At one point, Jackson (2000: 412) does invoke Walzer’s argument to endorse his defense foranti-paternalism: “As with individuals, so with sovereign states: there are things we cannot do to them, even for their own ostensible good.” (Walzer, 1979: 89) Also note that Jackson characterizes the political arrangement of international society as a “thin community” (Jackson, 2000: 344). Jackson’s motto of “live and let live” also appears in Walzer’s work: “Sovereignty guarantees that no one on thatside of the border can interfere with what is done on this side. The people over there may be resigned,indifferent, stoical, curious, or enthusiastic with regard to practices over here, and so may bedisinclined to interfere. Or perhaps, they accept the reciprocal logic of sovereignty: we won’t worry about your practices if you don’t worry about ours. Live and let live is a relatively easy maxim whenthe living is done on opposite sides of a clearly marked line.” (Walzer, 1997:19, underline added)

23

potential objections that need to be considered. I will discuss these objections in the

next section.

Objections Against and Rejoinders of Pluralism

The first objection I want to discuss is Robertson-Snape’s criticism that even

though the pluralist approach is sensitive to the otherness of states it nevertheless fails

to respect differences within states. Robertson-Snape argues that this approach

assumes that “the state is coterminous with community” and yet most modern states

are replete with cultural, ethnic, or even national diversities within, thus this approach

is not adequate in coping with this predicament of modern states (Robertson-Snape,

2000: 517; cf. Blaney and Inayatullah, 2000: 44-54). Moreover, she argues that the

states are often the worst abusers of human rights, and yet this approach grants

unconditional moral standing to the state; this makes the international society unable

to intervene on behalf of the oppressed in extreme cases (Robertson-Snape, 2000:

517).

To the first part of Robertson-Snape’s criticism, one can respond by arguing that

though the pluralist approach does emphasize the cultural differences between states,

this does not imply that this approach must assume the homogeneity within the state.

Indeed, this approach does subscribe to the idea that the domestic and the

international constitute structurally different domains. But the main reason for holding

this position is the absence of a central authority or government at the international

level; it is silent on or agnostic about the internal organization of the individual states.

Arguably, the fact that states are replete with diversity within does not render it

impossible to draw a distinction between the domestic and the international contexts.

For it is perfectly possible that despite the diversity within a state different cultural

groups may nevertheless“overlap” on a public political culture, which in effect makes

24

this country different from other countries. In other words, one can acknowledge that

there are differences within states while insist on the other hand that there are even

greater differences between states; there is no contradiction in holding these two

views at the same time.

To the second part of Robertson-Snape’s criticism, one can respond by arguing

that though the pluralist approach grants the state moral standing, it does not grant the

state absolute moral status. It is true that pluralism emphasizes sovereign equality, but

this emphasis does not entail the idea that sovereignty permits the state to do whatever

it pleases. As Onora O’Neill argues convincingly,

States as they have really existed and exist never had and never have unlimitedsovereignty, internal or external…States as they currently exist are committed bynumerous treaty of obligations to a limited conception of sovereignty and adegree of respect for human rights…(O’Neill, 2000: 51; ch. Buchanan, 2000:699-700)

It should be noted that this observation constitutes no objection to the pluralist

position. For pluralists, the question is not whether there should be limits to

sovereignty, as indeed there are and there should; the real question is who is entitled

to set limits to sovereignty. To this question pluralists would say that it is the states,

acting collectively, who are entitled to set the limits. By emphasizing the

collectiveness of action, this approach rules out the alternative that some states can

legislate for others. In other word, the essence of the moral standing of the state is

about sovereignty equality or, putting in Alan James’s term, “constitutional

independence” (James, 1986). It does not preclude the possibility that states may

surrender their freedom of action to their co-legislated law. But as with individuals, so

with sovereign states: autonomous agents do not lose their autonomy simply because

they agree on a social contract that set limits to their action. Hence when states

choose to abide by the “global covenant”, one cannot say that they have lost their

25

moral status as an autonomous agent. Even if states choose to agree on more intrusive

norms of human rights, one can still argue along with Buzan that “doing so is an

exercise of their sovereignty, not a questioning of it.” (Buzan, 2004: 49)

At this point, it may be objected along with Stephen Krasner that states were

never and are not really equal and thus the idea (or ideal?) of sovereignty is nothing

more than an “organized hypocrisy” (Krasner, 1999). On the face of it, this

observation appears to discredit the pluralist assumptions that states are autonomous

and equal. But here we need to draw a distinction between empirical description and

normative ideal. It may be true that the pluralist account is not an undistorted

reflection of the reality of world politics, but this does not mean that pluralism as a

moral ideal is undesirable. In fact, one can argue along with Alexander Wendt that the

principle of sovereignty provides the guarantee that states cannot be “killed”

arbitrarily, and this helps to transform the international society from one of the

Hobbesian culture to one of Lockean culture. 20 This is why the principle of

sovereignty equality should be respected. In other words, in the real world the states

are rarely equal in power, and it is for this very reason that states must be treated as

morally equal. One can even say that it is the very fact that states are never really

equal that paradoxically renders the ideal of sovereign equality so attractive.21

Let us turn to the second line of objection. Now it is commonplace to suggest

that the flourishing of global civil society (GCS) and the blurring of territorial

boundaries under the currents epitomized by “globalization” have rendered obsolete

the pluralist conception along with the Westphalian system (Hurrell, 2006) If that is

20 Wendt argues that the core of the Westphalian institution of sovereignty is “the expectation that states will not try to take away each other's life and liberty.” And because this sovereign right is recognized by international law, which is adhered to by most states, this institution helps to constraininter-state rivalry in accordance with the logic of “live and let live” (Wendt, 1999: 280-1).21 Hence Jackson is right to stress that an international society based on state sovereignty is anenormous achievement, not only because it provides a framework for personal security and freedombut also because it provides for the accommodation of human diversity (Jackson, 2000: ch. 8, 178-82).

26

the case, appealing to the solidarist conception will become a more attractive

alternative. How can pluralism respond to this line of objection? There are two kinds

of rejoinders: First, pluralists can reply, along with Jackson, that NGOs “operate

under the political condition of international peace and order that the states system

alone creates and upholds. In the absence of that political condition they would face

great operational difficulties.” (Jackson, 2000: 107) In other words, without the

infrastructure laid down by the states, NGOs simply cannot operate; as such, in world

affairs the role transnational society plays is at best secondary or auxiliary. It should

be noted that this does not mean that NGOs and GCS have no place in world politics;

any serious theorist would not doubt that they are playing an ever more important role.

The argument only suggests that the growth of GCS itself does not render the role of

the state less significant.

The second rejoinder is to argue that those who emphasize the force of GCS or

“transnational society” “appear both to underestimate the importance of transnational

relations in the past and to exaggerate their present significance.” (Nardin, 1983: 47)

Arguably, whether the Westphalian states system is on the verge of disappearing is an

empirical question that needs further investigation, and careful studies may suggest

that the role of states in world affairs is on the rise and not on the decline. As George

Lawson argues forcefully, until the post-Cold War era world politics is better

characterized as hegemonic hierarchy than by sovereign equality, with the former

largely subsuming the latter.

As such, if we are to speak of a Westphalian political imaginary, we shouldrecognise that it has reached its zenith rather than its nadir in the post-Cold Warworld, a period in which state sovereignty - both as aspiration and practice - hasbecome much more extensively available than in previous epochs. For thosewho fought so long for freedom, particular in the Third World, Westphalian statesovereignty is both a source of emancipation and the first line of defence against

27

fundamental sources of inequality, whether these are historical, economic orgeographical in origin (Lawson, 2008: 890).22

Hence, if sovereignty provides the weak states with a “fire-wall’ or “protective

umbrella”, and for the Third World nation-building is still largely an “unfinished

project”, than the rhetoric of “wither Westphalia” appears rather Eurocentric

(Dannreuther and Kennedy, 2007: 377). Even if the EU is becoming an ever more

solidarist community, one can still argue along with Jackson that in the rest of the

world “international society still seems to be not very ambiguously a societas of

sovereign states” (Jackson, 2000: 128).

Finally, I want to point out the internal tension in Hurrell’s objection. On the one

hand, Hurrell argues that a retreat to pluralism is unattractive. On the other hand,

however, he stresses that the problem of “premature global solidarism” cannot be

underestimated, for diversity is even more prominent at the global level than the

domestic level and “global moral values” tend to be “contaminated” by the “massive

inequalities of power, wealth and capacity.” To find an alternative out of this impasse,

he appeals to Fred Dallmayr discussion of praxis, which reminds us of the danger of

universalist privileging of morality over politics (Dallmayr, 2003). Building on

Dallmayr’s idea, Hurrell argues:

the fragile, precarious and limited society that exists in world politics shouldpush us to think hard about the minimal preconditions for an acceptableinternational political process. At a minimum this might include someacceptance of equality of status, respect and consideration; some commitment toreciprocity and to the public justification of one’s action; some capacity for autonomous decision-making….Perhaps the hardest question for those whowish to take forward the normative legacy of The Anarchical Society is how farachieving even this minimum will require a redistribution of political power, a

22 Jean Bethke Elshtain also makes a parallel observation: “Aggrieved peoples want, not an end to the nation-state, or to sovereignty, or national autonomy, but an end to Western colonial or Soviet or otherexternal dominance of their particular histories, languages, cultures and wounded sense of collectiveidentity.” （Elshtain, 1995: 270; cf. Bull, 1979）These observations can be borne out by the fact that somany people in Taiwan and Tibet are still struggling tenaciously for independence from China.

28

scaling back of at least some of the normative ambitions of liberalsolidarism…(Hurrell, 2006: 214, emphasis mine)

Upon reading this passage, one cannot help but wonder how much substantive

difference there is between Hurrell’s alternative and Jackson’s global covenant.

Indeed, if Hurrell’s solution is to create a global moral community that builds upon

some “minimal notion of just process” that “prioritizes institutions that embed

procedural fairness, and that cultivates the shared political culture and the habits of

argumentation and deliberation” (Hurrell, 2006: 212-3), then the difference between

Hurrell and Jackson appears rather marginal, or nominal at best. More importantly,

Hurrell’s solution shows that awareness of the relevance of praxis could prompt us to

see things very differently. Therefore, I shall conclude my defense for institutional

pluralism by adumbrating on the implication of this turn to praxis for thinking about

international ethics in general and democracy in particular.

Concluding Remarks: Bringing Praxis and Historical Sociology Back In

By far my defense for a pluralist world order draws heavily on philosophical

reasoning from political theory and theoretical reasoning from IR, the persuasiveness

of which both hinges on the value of diversity and anti-paternalism. Such way of

defense is very akin to the universalist top-down theorizing, and thus exhibits the

same weakness pointed out by Dallmayr—the privileging of morality over politics. To

avoid this problem, we must bring praxis back to moral theorizing. But apart from

being more attentive to the diversity of moral values and respect for the otherness of

the other, does this turn to praxis has anything new to say about international ethics?

As I have indicated earlier, institutional pluralism is slightly different from value

pluralism. They are different not merely because the same culture value may develop

different political institutions. More importantly, institutions do not come from the

thin air; rather, they have a history. As such, although one can mobilized value

29

pluralism to make a case for a pluralist world order, a full account of a defense for

institutional pluralism has yet to consider the historical dimension of institutions. This

points to the necessity of bring historical sociology back in to the discipline as well as

exploring its implication for international ethics. This enormous undertaking is

certainly beyond the scope of this paper, so in the remainder of this paper I offer only

a sketch of where this new direction may take us.

In the previous section Jackson’s last remark draws our attention to another

characteristic of world politics: uneven development. The idea of uneven

development is further elaborated by Justin Rosenberg (2006), who argues that

Leonid Trotsky’s idea of “uneven and combined development” is intrinsic to the

historical process itself. According to Rosenberg, the unevenness of the historical

process not only means that different civilizations or countries are at different

“stages” of development, it also suggests that even the development within a society

is also uneven. Moreover, the unevenness includes not only a spatial but also a

temporal dimension, which implies that development is intrinsically multilinear along

multiple axes. But if unevenness is the nature of the historical process itself, this will

problematize the very idea of “stages of development,” for this idea posits a telos of a

linear development. On the other hand, the “development” of historical process is

combined in the sense that any region, society or country in the world is never

isolated from the rest of the world; they are inevitably intertwined and interactive with

the outside world. And since inter-societal dimension is always present in the process

of the very constitution of any society, so the constitution of society cannot be

regarded as analytically prior to its interaction with other societies. Through the lens

of the Trotsky-Rosenberg idea of uneven and combined development the texture of

world politics can be reconceptualized as a decentered, multipolarized “quilt”

governed by “multi-perspetival” causality, which means that “its pattern cannot be

30

imagined from a single point of view” (Rosenberg, 2006: 323). Needless to say, this

reconceptualization of world politics challenges the “teleological fallacy” and

“ethnocentric prejudice” inherent in many accounts of development theory.

Now, if uneven development is the intrinsic nature of the historical process itself,

what is its implication for thinking about democracy in IR? Doesn’t it mean that we

should not naturalize democracy as the only, single destination of human political

development? And if diversity is the existential condition of world politics, wouldn’t

it be more reasonable to let very society develop its own political institution? I am not

suggesting that non-democratic societies will be free from the influences of

democratic societies, as the idea of combined development already rules out that

possibility. But subjecting to external influence does not mean it will follow the

dictate of the others’ expectation, for every society has its own internal dynamic that

is beyond the control of the world outside. Take China as an example. The fact that

China has been subject to Western influence for more than a century and yet its

“authoritarian” rule is still resilient (Nathan, 2003; Nathan, 2006) should make us

pause and rethink if the West’s expectation of China’s democratization is reasonable

in the first place. Perhaps it is wiser to let China develop its own political institution.

Here I cannot help but want to invoke the philosophy of Zhaung-zi (or

Chuang-Tzu), a great Daoist, to conclude my paper. Like Rosenberg, Zhuang-zi holds

that the unevenness among the myriad of things is the existential condition of the

universe, and it is thus futile (or perhaps against the Dao) to attempt to make things

even. For Zhuang-zi, that which suits one thing does not necessarily suit another, for

everything has its own distinct nature. Hence, if one tries to impose a universal

standard on everything, it amounts to seeing oneself as the measure of all things. The

consequence of such imposition is nicely portrayed in Zhuang-zi’s metaphor: “The

duck's legs are short, but to stretch them out would worry him; the crane's legs are

31

long, but to cut them down would make him sad.”（鳧脛雖短，續之則憂；鶴脛雖

長，斷之則悲。）23 This metaphor suggests that the West may find “resilient

authoritarianism”inconvenient, but perhaps that is the regime that suits China here

and now. This certainly does not mean that China will never change; rather, the point

is that one should not decide on behalf of China the pace and direction of change.

Moreover, Zhuang-zi would even prompt us to query if democratization is in the best

interest of China. Let me quote his allegory to make this point:

The emperor of the South Sea was called Shu [儵 Brief], the emperor of theNorth Sea was called Hu [忽 Sudden], and the emperor of the central region wascalled Hun-tun [混沌 Chaos]. Shu and Hu from time to time came together for a

meeting in the territory of Hun-tun, and Hun-tun treated them very generously.Shu and Hu discussed how they could repay his kindness. "All men," they said,"have seven openings so they can see, hear, eat, and breathe. But Hun-tun alonedoesn't have any. Let's try boring him some!"

Every day they bored another hole, and on the seventh day Hun-tun died.24

This allegory suggests that we should think twice before we try to push China for

democratization, for we really don’t know whether the Chinese will be happier and

China will be a better place when China is democratized. And perhaps the lesson from

all this is that we need to refrain from being self-righteous and attempting to mold the

others’world according to our own image. In brief, we need a little dose of skepticism

about the whole project of democratizing the whole world.

23 The Book of Zhuang Zi, ch. 8,“Webbed Toes,”translated by Burton Watson,http://www.terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu.html#7, last visit March 1, 2009.24 Ibid, ch. 7,“Fit for Emperors and Kings”.

32

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