One prominent criticism of John Rawls’s The Law of Peoples is that
it treats certain non-liberal societies, what Rawls calls ‘decent
hierarchical societies’, as equal participants in a just international
system. Rawls claims that these non-liberal societies should be respected as equals
by liberal democratic societies, even though they do not grant their citizens the
basic rights of democratic citizenship. This is presented by Rawls as a consequence
of liberalism’s commitment to the principle of toleration. A number of
critics have claimed that Rawls’s treatment of these non-liberal societies
is symptomatic of a more general problem with political liberalism, namely, its
reliance on toleration as its ‘fundamental principle’. Against
this view, I argue that the principle of toleration should not be understood as
political liberalism’s ‘fundamental principle’. This
is revealed through a consideration of the normative basis of what Rawls calls the
‘Liberal Principle of Legitimacy’. A correct understanding of
political liberalism’s ‘fundamental principle’, which
I claim is a principle of equal ‘civic respect’ for citizens,
shows that Rawls’s toleration of non-liberal societies is in fact a
misapplication of political liberalism to the global domain. Moreover, I explain
that political liberalism must assert that the principle of equal civic respect for
citizens is the correct principle to govern the public political relations of
citizens in all pluralist societies, and that most ‘decent hierarchical
societies’ are pluralist in nature. Identifying political
liberalism’s fundamental principle as that of equal civic respect for
citizens helps to render political liberalism, in both the domestic and
international domains, a more coherent and compelling approach to thinking about
fundamental political issues.
