On the political and democratic preconditions of equal recognition

Abstract

Alan Patten’s Equal Recognition is a compelling justification of a liberal, procedural conception of recognition. This conception is built upon a convincing conception of moral equality, but it does not offer a full theoretical discussion of recognition. I argue that the liberal recognition provided by Patten is too formal and narrow to address all relevant issues regarding conflicts of recognition in democratic societies. In particular, it does not consider the political and democratic preconditions that should be granted to minority groups or immigrants in order to provide them fair opportunities to effectively (and not only formally) reach equal recognition.

Keywords:

• integration
• recognition
• citizenship
• democratic justice
• Muslims

Notes

1. The relation between rights and respect is a difficult one, and I cannot fully address it here. For the sake of my argument I rely on Galeotti’s (2010) reading of Darwall’s conception of respect, namely the fact that the generalization of rights does not necessarily and automatically bring about equal respect:

disrespect can be shown even while specific rights are fulfilled […]. Respect is a claim, a universal claim of each of us toward all others, […] which cannot be exacted in the pure and direct form of obtaining the relevant conduct from a recalcitrant other as it happens with other specific rights (Galeotti, 2010, pp. 84–86).

2. I agree with Phillips that ‘when policies are worked out for rather than with a politically excluded constituency, they are unlikely to engage with all relevant concerns’ (1995, p. 13). In the same perspective, for Young (1997, p. 370) ‘ensuring the representation of multiple perspectives gives voice to distinctive experiences in the society and relativizes the dominant perspectives which are assumed as normal and neutral’.

3. Some scholars prefer to use the concept of inclusion rather than integration (see Carens, 2013, Chapter 4). I use the notion of integration because it offers a more dynamic and process-oriented understanding of mutual adaptation than inclusion. I do not address the critical debate concerning integration policy, particularly the idea that integration can be seen as a technology of governance leading to a ‘technocratic depoliticization’ of social and cultural conflicts between majorities and minorities (see Lentin & Titley, 2011).