Carl LeVan, Liberal visions of multiculturalism and majoritarianism
Liberalism advances democratic rights and representation through three principles. First, it seeks to protect individuals from abusive state power. Second, it shares an affinity with the epistemology of the Enlightenment, where an objective world can be discovered and observed. Third, it limits 鈥渢yranny of the majority鈥 through civil liberties that counter the weight of public opinion and political rights that enable political competition of ideas. Rapidly evolving demands for recognition in the United States have advanced a broad critique of liberalism, highlighting the boundaries it imposes on representation as well as its limited success protecting rights.
A new article in Frontiers in Political Science聽from SIS Professor Carl LeVan聽traces disenchantment with liberalism to two very different sources: first, many progressives who resent how the jurisprudence of equal opportunity obscures efforts to achieve聽actual聽equality reject 鈥渁nonymity鈥 under the law鈥攔emoving a core civil rights principle for promoting fairness. Such demands for more explicit rights and representation conflict with the majoritarian model鈥檚 application of liberalism, which biases cultural assimilation over multicultural integration. Movements for recognition increasingly challenge both assimilation and the institutional devices of multicultural integration. The other source of tension around recognition comes from the right, where populists have set out to revive nativist ideas of coerced assimilation or outright homogenization through exclusion (ie,聽non-recognition). Such failures of representation have promoted subjectivist views as a credential for contesting facts.
The paper argues for 鈥減luralist solidarity鈥 as a tool for reconciling multiculturalism with new rights and demands for recognition emanating from liberalism鈥檚 traditions of individual liberty. This device aims to help separate the quest for recognition and dignity from the subjectivity that contributes to post-truth politics.
Read the open access article .
A. Carl LeVan, Liberal visions of multiculturalism and majoritarianism,聽Frontiers in Political Science, Volume 6, 2024聽