Multiculturalism as Anti-power

Chandran Kukathas

The multicultural dilemma

Has the multicultural moment passed? In the 1980s and

90s, particularly in the liberal democracies of the

developed West, multiculturalism may have peaked both as

an objective of public policy and the subject of inquiry

in political theory. Debates among policy makers and

among philosophers were about the nature and limits of

multiculturalism as a political and ethical ideal.

Difference and diversity, it was widely (though not

universally) proclaimed, ought to be accommodated, or

encouraged, or even promoted. People from minority

cultures did not wish to be assimilated or see their

traditions occluded or extinguished, and many thought

that this aspiration was not unreasonable. Liberal

political theory had been accused of neglecting the

concerns of cultural minorities and in response liberals

developed liberal theories of multiculturalism. Even

those who had been skeptical about the idea of

recognizing the place of cultural groups in society came

to declare that we are all multiculturalists now.1 Yet,

less than twenty years after Will Kymlicka’s landmark

work, Liberalism, Community and Culture, appeared,

multiculturalism appears to be on the defensive as a

political and ethical ideal.

There are two reasons why multiculturalism might be

on the wane. The first is political. The growth of

cultural minority communities in western democracies has

led to conflicts over a range of practical issues, from

the attire worn by school children, to the content of

public education, to the acceptability of particular

customs. The sensitivity of these questions has been

heightened by the rise to prominence of Islamic

radicalism, particularly in the wake of the destruction

of the World Trade Center in 2001, the wars in the Middle

East, and the murder in 2004 of Theo Van Gogh, the Dutch

film-maker shot by a Muslim radical. A consequence of

these and other events has been a rise in skepticism

1 Nathan Glazer,

2

about the feasibility of multiculturalism as a political

ideal, with many concluding that multiculturalism might

pose a threat to the values that underpin liberal

democracy.

The second reason for multiculturalism’s waning is

philosophical. The ideal of multiculturalism has been

presented by many (though not all) of its defenders as a

liberal ideal. Respect for individual autonomy or freedom

or equality, it was argued, mandated some form of

multicultural political order in which such values would

be best served. The problem, however, was that liberalism

and the multicultural ideal were also in tension. While

liberalism required respect for individual freedom and

equality, multiculturalism demanded respect for culture;

and since most cultures are not liberal cultures,

multiculturalism, by demanding respect for liberal and

illiberal cultures alike, posed a direct challenge to

liberalism. For liberals, here was the multicultural

dilemma: liberalism could demand that all cultures

conform to (minimal) liberal standards if they are to be

accepted, but thereby cast doubt on the genuineness of

3

its commitment to multiculturalism; or it could agree

that permitting cultural diversity would mean accepting

illiberal cultures in liberal society’s midst, thereby

casting doubt on the liberal character of such a

political order. Put most starkly, the choice was between

liberalism and multiculturalism. For many liberals, that

meant so much the worse for multiculturalism.

In the light of these political and philosophical

developments, does multiculturalism have a future? I want

to suggest in this paper that it does. Such an answer

depends, however, on how liberalism and multiculturalism

are understood, and on what are seen to be the virtues of

these two ideals. The thesis I wish to advance is that

the main virtue of liberalism is that it offers us a

theory of how to deal with the problem of political

power, and that multiculturalism is a theory of how to

deal with the problem of political power in culturally

diverse societies. Understood in this way, liberalism and

multiculturalism are not in tension but in harmony.

While multiculturalism might be a coherent

philosophical notion, however, this may not be sufficient

4

to ensure its feasibility as a political ideal. I want to

offer some reasons why multiculturalism is worth pursuing

as political practice, though in the end it may prove

difficult for the reason that the liberal ideal is a

difficult one to sustain in times of serious conflict.

Liberalism

To understand how liberalism and multiculturalism might

be compatible it is necessary to look first at what

liberalism amounts to. Much of the discussion of

liberalism in the context of debates about

multiculturalism has been about liberalism as a

philosophical ideal. Liberalism, it is said, upholds the

ideas of individual freedom and individual rights against

those who assert that the claims of state or community

should take priority. Liberalism, by contrast, insists it

is the individual whose interests should be the primary

focus of any political order. While there is disagreement

about how those interests are best characterized—some say

it is an interest in autonomy, others that it is an

interest in equality, to take just two examples—the

5

individualist basis of liberalism is not in doubt. There

is much to be said for this picture of liberalism. Yet,

whatever, its merits, it neglects an aspect of the

liberal outlook that lies at the core of the liberal

tradition: its concern with power.

To understand what the term liberalism means it is

necessary to go back to liberalism’s beginnings; although

the ideas which lie at its core predate the term. The

political label ‘liberal’ first appeared in the Spanish

Cortes of 1810. The ‘Liberales’ were members of

parliament rebelling against absolutism. Spain was in the

midst of war against the invading armies of Napoleon and

King Ferdinand VII remained in exile in France. The

Central Junta and its successor, the Regency, recalled

the Cortes or Parliament in Cadiz to legitimize the

conduct of the war in Ferdinand’s absence. This

understanding of the purpose of the Cortes as conceived

by the Conservatives was opposed by the Liberals, who

wanted to go further than mere support of the war effort.

They wished to establish a constitution which would

restrict autocratic rule. The result was the Constitution

6

of 1812 which gave Spain a limited monarchy. The King was

required to work through his ministers, and Parliament

was recreated without special representation from the

church or nobility, while the central administration was

restructured in a system of provinces and municipalities.

The Parliament also enacted laws against entail, and

reasserted the individual right to own and dispose of

private property, while at the same time the Inquisition

was abolished. The liberals stood up against absolutism

and clericalism and, thus, lined up against the forces of

conservatism and reaction. Liberal success was short

lived and, in the ‘ominous decade’ of 1823-33, liberals

were purged as conservatives sought to re-establish

government control of the economy and the power of the

church and upper classes. But liberal ideas now had a

name.

While it is in nineteenth century Spain that the

term ‘liberal’ first gained currency (and indeed it was

first used in Britain by the Tories as a term of abuse

criticizing the Whigs by identifying them with the

Spanish liberales), the ideas at the core of liberalism

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are older still. Some trace liberalism’s origins back to

the Glorious Revolution, and to the century of struggle

for political and religious freedom that ended in the

overthrow of James II in 1688. Out of this century of

revolution, which saw the powers of absolutist monarchy

challenged and greatly reduced, came not only political

change but also a new theory of constitutional

government, which asserted the limited nature of

political authority. The role of government, according to

John Locke, was to look after the common good, and

protect the liberty and property of subjects — who had

rights which existed independent of the determinations of

any civil authority. Locke’s Two Treatises of Government made

clear that government was a trust, and rested on the

consent of the governed; and that subjects were entitled

to rebel against any government that broke that trust and

began to rule tyrannically.

Liberalism has its origins in hostility to

absolutist tendencies in government, which it equates

with despotism or tyrannical rule. But it was not only in

Britain that this challenge to absolutism arose. Nor did

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this challenge issue only in a doctrine of limited

government. Out of the challenge to absolutism emerged

arguments for religious toleration. This was particularly

notable in France in the century of religious strife

which reached its height with the revocation on 18

October, 1685 of the Edict of Nantes (1598), after which

400,000 French Protestants (Huguenots) fled as refugees

to England, Prussia, Holland, and America in anticipation

of religious persecution. The most important proponent of

a doctrine of religious toleration was the French

Huguenot, Pierre Bayle, whose treatise on toleration, A

Philosophical Commentary on the Words of Jesus Christ: Compel them to

come in (1686) marks the beginning of the French liberal

tradition. The call for toleration also rang out in

England in Locke’s attack on religious persecution in his

Letter concerning toleration.

But it was not only religious persecution that

prompted the development of liberal ideas. In Spain there

had already been a stirring of liberal ideas in the

sixteenth century in the School of Salamanca. Of especial

importance was the life and work of Francisco Vitoria

9

(1486-1546), who took up the question of the legitimacy

of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Vitoria argued

that the pope had no right to give European rulers

dominion over peoples in the New World, but could only

determine where they might pursue their missionary work.

For pagans no less than Christians had the right to their

own property, and to their own rulers. And although he

conceded that conquest might sometimes be justified in

order to protect the innocent from cannibalism or human

sacrifice, in general war was permissible only in self-

defence. In this Vitoria asserted the rights of

individual conscience against the claims of sovereign

authority, as well as the principle of equality of all

human beings.

The constitutional traditions of Europe had long

recognized the importance of keeping rulers in check so

that they might be less able to act tyrannically. But

what emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

were a more explicit emphasis on individual liberty, and

also a recognition that upholding the rule of law

required a greater separation of powers. The longing for

10

religious freedom became a claim for individual liberty

and a rejection of arbitrary government — government that

failed to respect the laws of the land. These points were

never made more forcefully than in England in the

seventeenth century when successive parliaments

challenged the attempts of the King to govern

autocratically. Governors did not make laws; they

governed according to law. The role of government was

thus a limited one. This point was made very clearly in

the Declaration of Parliament Assembled at Westminster (1660):

There being nothing more essential to the freedom of

a state, than that the people should be governed by the

laws, and that justice be administered by such only as

are accountable for mal-administration, it is hereby

further declared that all proceedings touching the lives,

liberties and estates of all the free people of this

commonwealth, shall be according to the laws of the land,

and that the Parliament will not meddle with ordinary

administration, or the executive part of the law: it

being the principle [sic] part of this, as it hath been

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of all former Parliaments, to provide for the freedom of

the people against arbitrariness in government.2

In the British tradition Parliament asserted the

right to check the power of government, and over the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the power of the

monarchy was almost completely eroded. But in the

American tradition, constitutional government developed

very differently, as executive power was checked by the

dispersal of power among states in a federation, and by

the deliberate separation of powers among the distinct

and independent executive, legislative and judicial

branches of government.

The American system of government was a particularly

important development in the history of liberalism. For

one thing, it represented an explicit attempt to design a

system of political authority that would limit the power

of government and protect individual liberty without

leaving government bereft of any capacity to defend the

public realm against external enemies or to attend to the

2 Quoted in F.A.Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty

(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), pp.169-70.

12

common good. The political theory behind this design was

advanced in 85 short articles published under the name

‘Publius’ by James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander

Hamilton, urging the voters of New York to ratify the new

Constitution. The Federalist Papers, as they came to be

called, offered the most considered case for a liberal

constitutional government, arguing that a federal

republic would not only be feasible in a country the size

of America but would also offered better protection

against tyranny than any alternative. Here power would be

divided, checked and kept in balance.

The importance of the development of American

constitutionalism is considerable. This system of

government emerged at a time when the recidivist

tendencies of the British model were leading to a return

to the principle of sovereignty on the other side of the

Atlantic. The doctrine of the collective sovereignty of

Crown and Parliament eventually saw the House of Commons

emerge as the new sovereign power, since neither monarch

nor the House of Lords could supply effective counters to

its authority. But American constitutionalism explicitly

13

rejected the principle of sovereignty, and expressly

recognized that a single polity might contain a diversity

of peoples living under different laws and different

authorities. Indeed, if anything, the challenge to the

federal principle in American government came from those

who thought the Constitution not federalist enough. For

the ‘anti-federalists’, a loose coalition of prominent

politicians such as Patrick Henry, the proposed

Constitution did not deserve support because it promised

too strong a central government, and threatened to weaken

the states. Fearing the loss of local control of public

affairs and domination by the upper classes, they argued

that, far from separating and dividing power, the

Constitution would lead to the creation of a single

national government which would dominate the political

system. Their agitations were instrumental in the

adoption of the first ten amendments to the American

Constitution which comprise the Bill of Rights.

The American theory of constitutional government

addressed itself to the problem of limiting the power of

government to rule tyrannically, and looked to solve the

14

problem by judicious institutional design. Inspired by

the works of David Hume and the Baron de Montesquieu, the

American founders debated the merits of different

political arrangements, and how liberty and authority

might best be kept in balance. A part of their concern

was to keep in check not only the ruler who might govern

capriciously but also the ruler swayed by the cravings of

the majority. Republican government was supposed to keep

the ruler in check, without delivering power into the

hands of the mob. Democracy no less than autocracy

needed to be curbed. Nonetheless, one of the most

important developments in the history of liberal

constitutionalism was the emergence of popular democracy

in the eighteenth century in America, and in the

nineteenth century in Britain. Driving the process of

democratic reform was the liberal wariness of unchecked

or arbitrary power, as well as the liberal emphasis on

the virtue of government grounded in the consent of the

people.

Liberalism, in sum, has always been a political

theory that took as its starting point the fact that

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society was an ongoing order of communities, groups, and

traditions, whose independence was important. While

political order and the common good might require the

establishment of some greater political authority, it was

nonetheless necessary that any such power be kept in

check or limited. Equally, it was important to ensure

that no particular community, group or interest was able

to dominate others through its ability to capture or

manipulate the political structure. It is out of this

concern to limit power that the emphasis on individual

freedom emerged. Government and the state derived their

authority only from the people, whose interests they

served. The power of the state was, however, a threat to

those very interests.

Though this account might seem to offer nothing but

a commonplace description of liberal thinking, it is

worth noting what it emphasizes: that liberalism is a

political theory that focuses on the need to check the power

of the state. It contrasts (though it need not be

entirely incompatible) with views of liberalism that

present it as a system of ethics. Perfectionist theories

16

of liberalism, such as those of J.S. Mill, T.H. Green,

and (the early) John Rawls, present liberalism as a

substantive moral theory of the human good. These

thinkers, and also later defenders of liberal autonomy

and ‘liberal virtue’ put forward an account of liberalism

as a set of values that the state must not only honor but

promote. Liberalism thus turns out to mandate not so much

limits on state power as the expansion of state power to

ensure that liberal values are secured. The account of

liberalism I have presented above takes issue with this

understanding of liberalism. Indeed it repudiates it

altogether as insufficiently mindful of the preeminent

concern of the liberal tradition: checking the exercise

of power.

Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism is a political theory and a public

policy that regards cultural diversity as something that

should, at the very least, be tolerated, and perhaps

positively promoted. Advocates of multiculturalism

maintain that in a good society different cultural

17

traditions will coexist, for minority cultures will not

simply be forcibly (or surreptitiously) subsumed by the

traditions of the majority.

But what precisely does this mean? On this question,

multiculturalists are divided, not only against their

critics but also among themselves. Does multiculturalism

mean embracing diversity to the extent of accepting, or

even supporting, cultural groups whose members are unable

to relate at all to other members of society, perhaps

including groups whose customs might themselves be

intolerant of others or indifferent to human rights? Does

multiculturalism denote a value that supersedes all

others, to the extent that respect for diversity must

override concerns about liberty, or equality, or

democracy? Or does the idea of respect for diversity draw

its support from other more fundamental values that all

cultures and traditions must acknowledge? Quite simply,

what are the claims that people have upon their fellow

citizens or countrymen in virtue of their cultural

beliefs or attachments, and what is their basis in

principle? And do all people, including indigenous

18

peoples, immigrant minorities, religious communities, and

hybrid groups have the same claims to attention?

These and other related questions have gained

increasing attention over the past twenty years,

particularly in western liberal democracies, which have

found themselves confronting a range of new problems in

the post-colonial era. In this period, countries of the

developed world were transformed, to varying degrees, by

an influx of immigrants from a diversity of ethnic,

religious, and cultural backgrounds. At the same time,

national minorities such as the Basques in Spain, the

Quebecois in Canada, and the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq,

began (or continued) to press for greater autonomy or

independence from their states, citing their cultural

distinctiveness as reason for their demands. And in many

countries, indigenous peoples began to assert their own

claims to recognition of their special status as groups

with distinct cultural traditions, who had been wrongly

dispossessed and unjustly treated.

At its most fractious, cultural diversity has

manifested itself in vigorous, and even violent,

19

confrontations among groups, or between minorities and

the majority society. Indigenous peoples in Australia,

New Zealand, and Canada have waged legal and political

battles to try to secure property rights and political

recognition, and have at times resorted to civil

disobedience or violent protests. Muslims in Europe have

challenged laws requiring them to assimilate and lobbied

for legal recognition and accommodation of their

religious beliefs. In the United States, religious

minorities—notably some Christian groups—have tried to

influence the curricula of public education to protect

their children from exposure to a secular society that

undermines the teachings of their particular faiths.

Such conflicts are not confined to the West.

Cultural diversity poses a challenge in India, Malaysia,

and South Africa, as well as in such countries as Israel,

Turkey, and Fiji.

How should modern societies respond to the

difficulties presented by cultural diversity,

particularly when they are faced by the claims of groups

that are not content to be assimilated or relegated to

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life on the margins of society? Multiculturalism is one

kind of answer to this question. But what exactly is

multiculturalism, and is it a feasible or desirable

ideal?

The term itself first gained currency in Canada in

the 1960s, and in Australia in the 1970s, when it was

used to describe federal government policies that moved

away from the ‘assimilation’ of ethnic (and particularly

immigrant) minorities and toward greater acceptance and

integration of diverse cultural groups.3 It did not enter

the British lexicon until the 1980s, when it also entered

American debates, notably in discussions about public

education.4

Multiculturalism, then, is a term that describes one

particular way of responding to the fact of ethnic

diversity. ‘It is a position that rejects assimilation

and the “melting pot” image as an imposition of the

dominant culture, and instead prefers such metaphors as

the “salad bowl” or the “glorious mosaic,” in which each

3 Lopez 2000: 2-3

4 Glazer 1997:8

21

ethnic and racial element in the population maintains its

distinctiveness.’5 Yet in reality there is no single

multiculturalist position but rather a range of views of

what multiculturalism requires. For some,

multiculturalism requires moderate changes to social and

political institutions to enable cultural minorities to

preserve their languages and their distinctive customs or

practices. For others, however, multiculturalism requires

much greater social transformation to turn modern society

(and for many theorists, western liberal democratic

society) into a social order in which racism has been

eliminated and ‘difference’ is nurtured rather than

repudiated, or simply tolerated as an acceptable source

of disadvantage.

But if multiculturalism is a way of embracing

diversity, this still leaves open the question of how

diversity is to be embraced. If a multicultural society

is one in which different religions, cultures, languages,

and peoples can co-exist without some being subordinated

to others, or to a single, dominant group, how can this

5 Glazer 1997: 10

22

be achieved, and what principles would describe such a

society? This issue arises because even if there is

diversity, many believe that there must be some kind of

unity for a society to exist. Unless we aspire to a

borderless world in which people could move about freely,

unimpeded by national (and other) boundaries, even a

multicultural society would have to settle on some basic

institutions, decide what official language or languages

to use, and define itself as a nation, membership of

which it controls by determining who (and how many) may

join it.

The most notable response to the problem of how

diversity might be embraced is Kymlicka’s.6 A political

system of multicultural citizenship, in which national,

polyethnic, and other groups were guaranteed group-

differentiated rights, he argued, could allow the

interests of cultural minorities to be protected without

sacrificing liberal commitments to respect for individual

freedom and equality. Liberalism and multiculturalism,

according to this account, were entirely compatible;

6 Kymlicka 1989, 1995.

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indeed, taking liberalism seriously required accepting

multiculturalism. Liberalism demanded that all

individuals be shown equal respect and concern as

autonomous persons, and this meant, on the one hand,

protecting them from collective domination by the

majority culture and on the other hand protecting them

from individual domination by their own cultures. If

there is any role for the state, it is in protecting

particular groups from dereliction at the hands of

society and individuals from dereliction at the hands of

their groups.

A liberal critique of multiculturalism

According to some of multiculturalism’s liberal critics,

these two objectives are not compatible. Protecting

groups from the majority society often means protecting

communities or traditions whose illiberal ways were by

their very nature oppressive of individuals—particularly

of women, children, and internal minorities. According to

Brian Barry, multiculturalism is simply incompatible with

the liberal commitment to equality. And in Susan Okin’s

24

view it is in tension with (liberal) feminist commitments

to equal freedom for women.

For Barry7, multiculturalism is inconsistent with

liberalism firstly because multiculturalism demands

respect for cultures that do not respect individual

persons. Respect for persons, he argues, is central to

liberalism, and this means that there can be no reason

for the state to stand by when illiberal groups try to

enforce sanctions against their members who violate group

norms. He further argues that respect for diversity

provides no warrant for tolerating such groups for what

liberals value, ultimately, is not diversity but

individuality. Drawing on Mill, he argues persistently

that the point of liberalism is not to draw a protective

cloak around families and groups as protected spheres of

freedom but to challenge the sanctity of those spheres

and thereby defend women and children against illiberal

communities and parents. This does not mean that every

group must be denied the right to handle their affairs in

accordance with the wishes of its members. Individuals

7 Barry, Culture and Equality,

25

must retain their freedom to associate. But this freedom

of association can only be enjoyed by consenting adults,

and those adults must be assured of the freedom to

dissociate from groups they dislike without incurring

unreasonable costs. This means that states must be

empowered to protect the interests of all group members,

particularly those who might find it too difficult to

resist the power of the group if unaided.

Susan Okin8 takes a similar view to the extent that

she sees a fundamental tension between the interests of

women and the claims of groups to cultural rights. In her

view, the liberal state should take steps to re-educate

and, if necessary, punish groups whose practices are

harmful to women. It is an important task of the state to

foster and protect the freedom of individual women. This

means that the state should make it easier for women to

leave groups which oppress them but also uphold their

right to be treated fairly within their groups and to

8 Okin, ‘Feminism and Multiculturalism’,

‘Mistresses of their own destiny’, Is Multiculturalism Bad for

Women?

26

change the groups norms and practices if they wish to. In

particular this means that the state should involve

itself in the practices of cultural groups to ensure that

everyone, but women in particular, acquire the capacity

to leave. In many groups, she contends, they do not

acquire this capacity because group socialization

instills in them attitudes and outlooks that reinforce

gender roles and gender hierarchy.

What we find in the writings of these two theorists

is a liberal critique of multiculturalism. But it is a

critique from a liberal perspective of a particular kind.

Their complaint is that any principle or policy that

promotes, protects, or tolerates cultural diversity will

be suspect if it fosters, or fails to prevent, the

development of particular kinds of persons. What this

amounts to, in the end, is a critique of multiculturalism

that asserts that multiculturalism fails to conform to

the demands of a perfectionist liberalism. For them,

liberalism turns out to be not merely a political

doctrine about how conflicting ethical views might be

accommodated but a distinctive ethical view about the

27

nature of moral rightness as something grounded in the

value of individuality and human development.

In effect, Barry and Okin, accept the perfectionist

outlook implicit in Kymlicka’s defense of liberal

multiculturalism but deny that liberalism and

multiculturalism can successfully be reconciled. For

liberalism rests on one ideal of human perfection, while

multiculturalism insists that when such liberal

conceptions come into conflict with the demands of

culture liberalism should give way.

To the extent that this is how liberalism and

multiculturalism should be understood, critics of

multiculturalism such as Okin and Barry have a strong

case. Multiculturalism and liberalism are indeed at odds

with one another, for the ideal of cultural protection is

inconsistent with the liberal aim of promoting or

upholding the ideal of the development of individuals as

equal and autonomous beings. The question is whether

there can be a conception of multiculturalism that is

compatible with liberalism—or whether there is a

28

conception of liberalism that is compatible with

multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism as anti-power

Reconciling liberalism and multiculturalism in the end

requires conceptions of liberalism and multiculturalism

that are modest or minimalist in their scope. In the case

of liberalism, this means reducing the emphasis on

liberalism as a perfectionist theory and stressing its

origins as a doctrine of limited political power. In the

case of multiculturalism, this means placing much less

emphasis on the importance of culture as such and greater

stress on the importance of limiting the power of any

authority to enforce social conformity. Multiculturalism

thus understood is a theory that is entirely compatible

with liberalism. Indeed it is an idea that is highly

liberal in its orientation. But what exactly does

multiculturalism as anti-power amount to?

There are two salient respects in which agents are

subject to power in political society. First, individuals

are subject to the power of the groups or associations to

29

which they belong since groups set the terms by which

individuals associate. Second, groups themselves are

subject to the power of the wider society to induce or

enforce conformity to its own social standards.

Multiculturalism as anti-power must be mindful of the

power of society over the groups that comprise it, but

also of the power of groups over individuals. The

question is how to satisfy both these requirements.

The answer, I suggest, is a conception of

multiculturalism that understands it as the kind of order

that prevails under a regime of mutual toleration, in

which individuals are free to associate or live by the

understandings of their particular communities but in

which such associations or communities cannot claim any

special protection such that they might force their

beliefs or practices on dissenting individuals. It would

be a regime under which groups as such do not enjoy

special rights but in which those who choose to associate

in such groups are at liberty to live by the terms those

groups set down. In such a regime the state has no

authority, and so, no power, to control the group, but

30

the group has no authority over the individual except

insofar as the individual is willing to acquiesce in the

group’s demands.

The main objection to this position is that it

places all the emphasis on the limitation of the formal

power of established authority, but neglects more subtle

and less overt forms of power that operate in any

society. Power is supposed to be held in check by the

absence of any recognition granted to the authority of

any group over its members—whether that group be a

cultural community or the state itself. But why think

that non-recognition makes any difference to the working

of power? Can power really be limited simply by denying

the legitimacy of the claims of group authority?

For groups, the objection to this view is that it

fails to appreciate the extent to which they are subject

to pressures from the wider society to conform or to

adjust to its norms. Even a liberalism emphasizing

toleration of diversity exerts a powerful assimilative

tendency. If groups are not offered any guarantees or

special dispensations to enable them to sustain

31

themselves they are likely either to be transformed or to

disappear altogether. For individuals, the objection is

that groups can exercise very similar pressures upon

persons, socializing or goading—if not forcing—them to

conform to collective norms, and perhaps preventing the

development of certain forms of individuality. From both

these perspectives, a principle of not recognizing the

authority of either the state over groups or of groups

over individuals does not change the fact that power will

be exercised over them—that power will transform them.

What is needed, it might therefore be argued, is

something more than simple non-recognition. What is

needed is institutions that create sources of ‘antipower’

in society by giving people in society resources that

enable them to resist the exercise of power over them.

This is the argument advanced by Philip Pettit in his

notable paper, ‘Freedom as Antipower’.9 Various kinds of

protective, regulatory, and empowering institutions, he

contends, could serve to supply those in danger of

subjugation with sources of antipower so that they might

9 Ethics 106, 3, 1996, 576-604.

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resist the exercise of power over them. An example of

such an institution is the rule of law. In a regime of

the rule of law ‘the laws satisfy constraints such as

generality, transparency, nonretroactivity, and coherence

[that] make it more difficult than it might otherwise be

for the law to become a resource for the domination of

any one individual or group.’10

There is much to be said for this view, which is in

many ways quite consistent with the account of liberalism

advanced in this paper. I don’t wish to decry the

importance of many of the institutions Pettit defends.

What I would take issue with, however, is the argument

that antipower is to be promoted by ‘regulating the

resources of the powerful’. Pettit suggests that it is

important that there be regulation not only of

governmental power but also of other sources of

domination. Aside from regulation to limit the exercise

of economic power, he suggests, there needs also to be

regulation of cultural power.

10 Ibid., 590.

33

…those in culturally privileged positions will also

dominate others, given the resources of indoctrination,

misinformation, and manipulation at their control, unless

there is some regulation of their activities.11

Now, a great deal here turns on what Pettit

envisages in the way of cultural regulation. The

difficulty, however, is that empowering individuals

against their groups may also mean disempowering groups

against society more generally, and this means

disempowering some members of the group in order to

defend the claims of others. In effect, it would mean the

dominant power in the wider society joining with the

subordinate power within the group to overcome the rest

of the group.

How could this be justified? The only possibility is

by appeal to values it is thought the group is failing to

respect when it attempts to ‘misinform’, ‘manipulate’ and

‘indoctrinate’ its members. Perhaps the group is failing

to recognize the interests of its members as autonomous

individuals. This would mean invoking a perfectionist

11 Ibid., 591.

34

standard of some kind by which to assess the practices of

the group. The problem, however, is that this returns us

to the difficulty that the only form of cultural

diversity that could be accepted is one in which there

was space for cultural groups that did not stray too far

from majority norms—and in a liberal society that would

mean the norms of perfectionist liberalism.

The alternative is a conception of multiculturalism

as antipower that understands antipower in a rather

different way. A multicultural society is one that

challenges power insofar as the existence of a diversity

of groups supplies a check against the power of any

potentially dominant group or a majority of groups. A

political order which does not claim a right of the

majority or the powerful to direct the activities of or

set the standards upheld within each group is one in

which power is, in effect, limited to some degree. It

would be further limited, however, if such an order

equally denied to each group any form of recognition of

its authority over its members should those members wish

to repudiate it by either transforming the group or

35

leaving it. Society cannot exercise power either to

defeat power or to promote it. In a regime of this kind,

power is in effect dispersed.

Multiculturalism as antipower is, in other words, a

theory about the dispersal of power. It is consistent

with a liberal view of politics because it is consonant

with the liberal view defended here, which sees the

checking of political power as the primary aim of

political institutions. However, power is checked not so

much by the establishment of laws and regulatory agencies

as by tolerating the exercise of power by many groups.

The feasibility of multiculturalism

There are two main objections to this form of

multiculturalism. The first is one put by perfectionist

liberals. This form of multiculturalism is insufficiently

mindful of the interests of individuals who might be

oppressed by their group. To say that this argument is

deficient because it invokes a perfectionist standard is

unconvincing because all political theories, including

liberal ones, must invoke some kind of theory of value.

36

The second is an objection of a more pragmatic kind: the

consequence of allowing different sources of authority to

proliferate and flourish will be not only local tyranny

(at least in some instances) but also political

instability. In particular, a liberal political order

cannot survive unless the regime itself is one in which

liberal norms have been embraced by society’s basic

institutions. Multiculturalism threatens such an order to

the extent that it tolerates groups whose outlook might

be so hostile to liberalism that they would seek to

overcome and supplant it. In such circumstances, can

multiculturalism have a future?

In response to the first concern it must be said

that it is difficult to see how any political theory,

even a liberal one, can avoid a commitment to any theory

of value. In this regard, the critical issue is whether

it might be possible to articulate a theory that rests on

a less demanding account of what it is that gives human

life value.12

12 I have tried to do this in The Liberal Archipelago,

ch.1.

37

In response to second concern, that multiculturalism

poses a threat to the liberal order it must also be

admitted that this worry is not without foundation.

Though any political order is to some degree a modus

vivendi sustained by a balancing of the power of

competing interests, no political order is ever purely

the product of power. Much does depend on what people

think and what they accept. In the end, if the members of

the various groups that comprise society do not

assimilate to some degree so that the possibility of

sharing a civil life is sustained, political order will

be impossible.

On the other hand, this very fact also tells against

the idea of trying to defend a liberal society against

cultural groups that are hostile to it by attempting to

use power to bring about the assimilation necessary. It

will almost certainly be resisted and is unlikely to

succeed. If anything, what is most needed is to bring the

different groups within society into political dialogue.

It would be difficult to insist that success is assured.

What is also clear, however, is that the effort to

38

enforce some kind of cultural conformity will founder on

the rock of diversity. For all its difficulties,

multiculturalism may be the best option open to a liberal

society.

39