Reading Walzer

Yitzhak Benbaji, Naomi Sussmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134636327
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Michael Walzer is one of the world's leading philosophers and political theorists. In addition to his best-known books such as Spheres of Justice, and Just and Unjust Wars, he has contributed to contemporary political debates beyond academia in the New York Times, the New Yorker and Dissent.

Reading Walzer is the first book to assess the full range of Walzer's work. An outstanding team of international contributors consider the following topics in relation to Walzer's work:

• the moral standing of nation states
• individual responsibility and laws governing the conduct of war
• debates over intervention and non-intervention
• human and minority rights
• moral and cultural pluralism
• equality
• justice
• Walzer's radicalism and role as a critic.

All chapters have been specially commissioned for this collection, and Walzer's responses to his critics makes Reading Walzer essential reading for students of political philosophy and political theory.

Part I

THE MORAL STANDING OF STATES

Summaries

David Miller: “Toleration, Self-Determination, and the State”

David Miller’s chapter opens the section devoted to Walzer’s discussion of the moral standing of states – and so, the book as a whole – by drawing our attention to the complexity of Michael Walzer’s political thinking. In particular, he focuses on the way in which Walzer does not merely recognize the intricate intertwining of politics, morality, and culture, but firmly and positively affirms it. As he argues, Walzer’s insistence on the moral standing of states is double-edged: on the one hand, it addresses the international community and its constituent states, requiring them to adhere to a strict principle of non-interference where others’ right to self-determination is at stake. On the other hand, it addresses those states themselves and, in particular, their majorities, requiring them to earn such immunity (from interference) by adhering to an “internal regime of tolerance” – which is to say, by both enabling minorities to exercise their right to self-determination and by ensuring their members’ fair treatment. As Miller reads Walzer, then, the ascription of moral standing to states rests on two intertwined principles: self-determination and toleration. It follows, however, that the next challenge Walzer ought to address according to Miller is that of pushing beyond the dichotomy of non-intervention versus (coercive) intervention, towards a clarification of the ways in which it may be legitimate to induce intolerant political communities to reform themselves and so of how such legitimate inductions might – indeed, should – actually look like.

Ruth Gavison: “Taking States Seriously”

Ruth Gavison’s chapter examines Walzer’s “moral standing of states” thesis from the point of view of human rights – which is to say, from the point of view of the international community, particular states, and, perhaps especially, NGOs concerned with the protection of human rights across the world. Put most concisely, her message is this: Recognizing the moral standing of states is crucial – for Walzer, as for herself – not because of any intrinsic value ascribed to states or to nations, but rather, because states are practically instrumental to the facilitation of people’s self-determination and self-government, and to the protection of particular cultures and ways of life most specifically. Hence, acknowledging “the moral standing of states” is essential to what Gavison herself advocates – namely, the need to “take states seriously.” As she puts it, both positions (of which, hers is the stronger in many ways) provide

a much needed corrective to some themes in liberal political philosophy, which make human rights, and especially, individual rights, the sole anchor of political morality. … Effective states – sustained by the powers, cultures and efforts of their residents, individuals and communities alike – are critical building blocks of an orderly society in which the rights of individuals and groups are taken seriously and properly protected.

In conclusion, Gavison demonstrates how a state-based world order, reflective of the recognition of states’ moral standing, works to reinforce plurality and diversity, thereby further consolidating the liberal-democratic commitment to tolerance.

Charles R. Beitz: “The Moral Standing of States Revisited”

As Beitz reminds us in the opening of his paper, Walzer’s “The Moral Standing of States” was published in response to four early critics (himself included) of Just and Unjust Wars, whose joint focus was the theory of non-intervention defended there. Beitz identifies the central point of contention as “what we might call global political justice” or, more mundanely put, the idea that there may be a single conception of (political) legitimacy applicable to each and every state or community across the globe. Overviewing the main principles of this broad conception, Beitz argues that Walzer construes collective self-determination as its central value and so leads to the effective subjugation of justice to autonomy, precluding intervention “even when a government’s conduct is sufficiently bad to undermine its claim to legitimacy.” The rest of the argument turns largely on Walzer’s distinctive reading of “self-determination.” Beitz contests that Walzer uses the term in a largely idiosyncratic – or better, particularly “loose” manner, reading into it more than is actually “there.” Hence, he conceives of it as providing a more solid and farreaching argument against intervention than it in fact does or should be allowed to make. In conclusion, Beitz considers whether and how the moral standing of states bears on the kind of cases of humanitarian intervention that the international community has had to face since Walzer’s major contributions to the debate, in particular since the end of the Cold War. He argues that the ideal of a world order of self-determining peoples is achievable only in conjunction with an increasingly robust internationalism that is both able and willing to challenge the moral standing of particular states in the name of the broader ideal.

Michael W. Doyle: “A Few Words on Mill, Walzer and Nonintervention”

Nonintervention has been a particularly important and occasionally disturbing principle for liberal scholars who, like John Stuart Mill and Michael Walzer, share a commitment to basic, universal human rights. On the one hand, liberals have provided some of the strongest reasons to abide by a strict form of the nonintervention doctrine: It was only with the security of national borders that peoples could work out the capacity to govern themselves as free citizens. On the other hand, when applied in different contexts, those very same principles (of universal human dignity) tend to provide justifications for overriding or disregarding the principle of nonintervention. In explaining this dual logic, Doyle presents an interpretive summary of Mill’s famous argument for and against intervention, presented in “A Few Words on Non-Intervention.” He illustrates what makes Mill’s “few words” both so attractive and alarming to us, and compares his arguments to those made by Michael Walzer in Just and Unjust Wars. He also engages in a one-sided debate with Mill as he explores the significance of the many historical examples he employs to support his argument. Do they really support his conclusions? Doyle concludes that, persuasive as the moral logic of Mill’s argument for liberal intervention sometimes is, the facts of the particular cases he cites actually tend to favor a bias toward nonintervention except in rare circumstances.

1

TOLERATION, SELF-DETERMINATION, AND THE STATE¹

David Miller

Introduction

In this chapter I want to examine some apparent tensions that arise in Michael Walzer’s work when we juxtapose his writing about international politics with his writing about the internal politics of democratic states. What is striking in both cases is Walzer’s deep commitment to a principle of toleration. The idea is that when men and women make a common life together, they have a very strong claim to be allowed to pursue it unhindered by outside interference, even when we, the outsiders, disapprove sharply of the life they have made. In the realm of international politics, this translates into a presumption of non-interference in the internal affairs of states, except in cases where these states commit or condone gross violations of human rights. But when we look at what Walzer has to say about the internal life of the political community – in particular a contemporary democracy such as the US – the picture we are given is one of radical pluralism: the community is made up of groups committed to very different ideas of the good life, and moreover, membership in these groups is not to be understood on the model of voluntary association. Such groups have strong claims to be self-determining, according to the principle of toleration. But where does that leave the state, which claims their allegiance and purports to act as their representative? How is self-determination for states to be reconciled with self-determination for the many separate groups that co-exist within their borders? That is the puzzle that I shall try to unravel in the course of this essay.

States’ rights of self-determination

Let us begin, then, with what Walzer has to say about international toleration and the self-determination of states. In his classic treatment of the subject in Just and Unjust Wars, he mounts a defense of the political sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, and endorses, with minor qualifications, what he labels “the legalist paradigm,” i.e. the rules of international society that single out aggression by one state against another as the only justification for war.² But Walzer’s justificatory argument does not terminate with the state itself; it is not the rights of states as such that concern him. Instead, the state’s right to exercise self-determination and resist aggression is grounded in the collective right of the people it represents. The key passage in which Walzer sets out the underlying story that he takes for granted here is the following:

The rights of states rest on the consent of their members … Over a long period of time, shared experiences and cooperative activity of many different kinds shape a common life. “Contract” is a metaphor for a process of association and mutuality, the ongoing character of which the state claims to protect against external encroachment. The protection extends not only to the lives and liberties of individuals but also to their shared life and liberty, the independent community they have made, for which individuals are sometimes sacrificed. The moral standing of any particular state depends upon the reality of the common life it protects and the extent to which the sacrifices required by that protection are willingly accepted and thought worthwhile.³

This argument does not presuppose that the state in question is a democracy. Walzer makes it clear that it is supposed to have virtually universal application. He cites approvingly John Stuart Mill’s essay on non-intervention, in which Mill argued that even states with tyrannical governments should be immune from outside interference.⁴ As Walzer puts it:

self-determination and political freedom are not equivalent terms. The first is the more inclusive idea; it describes not only a particular institutional arrangement but also the process by which a community arrives at that arrangement – or does not. A state is self-determining even if its citizens struggle and fail to establish free institutions.⁵

So the prohibition against outside intervention holds in all but three cases: where a state houses two or more political communities, one of which is already engaged in a military struggle for independence; where other foreign powers have already intervened in a domestic conflict; and where massive violations of human rights are occurring within the boundaries of the state – cases of “enslavement or massacre.”⁶

The early critics of Just and Unjust Wars found this aspect of Walzer’s argument implausible.⁷ They did not understand how Walzer could, on the one hand, justify the right of self-determination by portraying the political community as based on an historical social contract whereby individual members consented to the state’s authority through a “process of association and mutuality” while, on the other hand, extending that right to states that behaved tyrannically towards their subjects, so long as this did not constitute “enslavement or massacre.” His theory, in other words, was too “statist” in character, despite starting out from the idea of popular self-determination. Walzer, in reply, argued that it was essential to distinguish between two kinds of judgements that might be made about the legitimacy of states.⁸ There were the internal judgements that the citizens themselves might make when deciding whether to support an established government or rebel against it, and these will depend partly on criteria of legitimacy that are specific to the culture of the people in question. There were also the external judgements that would be made by foreigners when deciding whether a particular state should be granted the standing that protects it against intervention. But these latter should be guided by a strong presumption that de facto states are indeed legitimate. This is because outsiders are in no position to judge whether there is or is not an appropriate relation of “fit” between community and government. They are not adequately informed about the cultural and political traditions of the people in question, so they cannot justifiably claim that the state is unrepresentative of these people. In consequence, “states can be presumptively legitimate in international society and actually illegitimate at home.”⁹

In later writings, Walzer has made only minor modifications to his view about the moral standing of states. He has enlarged somewhat the set of circumstances in which humanitarian intervention might be justified, especially to include cases of ethnic cleansing;¹⁰ he has conceded that interference in the internal affairs of states might be justified by appeal to a somewhat wider set of human rights, such as the right to subsistence in the case of states whose policies expose their subjects to the risk of famine;¹¹ and as a corollary of accepting these extended grounds of intervention, he allows that outsiders cannot always avoid making judgements about internal legitimacy, since they may well find themselves in the position of having to reconstruct failed institutions.¹² In these circumstances

the intervening forces should aim at finding or establishing a form of authority that fits or at least accommodates the local political culture, and a set of authorities, independent of themselves, who are capable of governing the country and who can command sufficient popular support so that their government won’t be massively coercive.¹³

But such cases are treated as exceptions to the general principle of international toleration that gives all states, including non-democracies, rights of self-determination and protection against outside interference.

Politics in pluralist democracies

I do not wish to pursue here the question of whether Walzer’s considered position on external intervention is too wide or too narrow (I am inclined to think it is about right).¹⁴ I want instead to explore whether his view about the self-determination of states can be made consistent with his account of the internal politics of democratic societies in particular. A reader of Just and Unjust Wars might assume that Walzer’s normative understanding of domestic politics followed in the footsteps of Rousseau. His references to community and “the common life” might seem to place him in the republican tradition according to which citizens should come together and enunciate a general will which then forms the basis of the legislation enacted by the state. This would give us the strongest grounds for defending the self-determination of states as a way of protecting the collective autonomy of citizens. But such inferences would be unwarranted. Walzer clearly distances himself from Rousseau and the republican tradition generally when writing about democratic politics. He does so for at least three reasons. One is that this tradition assumes too homogeneous and close-knit a view of the political community, which contrasts ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• fm-chapter
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• INTRODUCTION The substantive unity of Michael Walzer's pluralism
• Part I THE MORAL STANDING OF STATES
• 1 TOLERATION, SELF-DETERMINATION, AND THE STATE1
• 2 TAKING STATES SERIOUSLY1
• 3 THE MORAL STANDING OF STATES REVISITED1
• 4 A FEW WORDS ON MILL, WALZER, AND NONINTERVENTION1
• RESPONSE
• Part II STATE AND CULTURE
• 5 WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A PLURALIST1
• 6 CATEGORIZING GROUPS, CATEGORIZING STATES Theorizing minority rights in a world of deep diversity1
• 7 BETWEEN SACRED AND SECULAR? Michael Walzer's Exodus Story1
• RESPONSE
• Part III POLITICS AND THE SPHERES OF JUSTICE
• 8 JUSTICE BEYOND FAIRNESS
• 9 PLURAL EQUALITY
• 10 WALZER'S RADICALISM1
• RESPONSE
• Part IV JUST WAR THEORY
• 11 THE PREVENTION OF UNJUST WARS1
• 12 AGAINST A COSMOPOLITAN INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF JUST WAR
• 13 RISK TAKING AND FORCE PROTECTION
• 14 THE MORAL PSYCHIC REALITY OF WAR
• RESPONSE
• Index