Steve Teles poses the question: 'Is social support for widely accepted
norms a reasonable definition of the Third Way?'
I think this is a very important question, one that gets right to the heart
of a major ambiguity in contemporary thinking about the Third Way.
In responding to it, I think it is helpful to distinguish three positions:
(1) Communitarianism: Yes, the state should design policies so as to
support widely accepted norms. The community has certain shared values and
policy should uphold these and penalize behaviour which violates these
norms. These norms have authoritative status simply because they are widely
accepted - they define the 'kind of people we are', 'the way we do things
around here'. In essence, this is the kind of position that Lord Devlin
took back in the 1960s in his book 'The Enforcement of Morals'.
(2) Neutralist Liberalism: A decent society is a liberal society; and a
liberal society is one that tolerates differences in philosophy and
life-style. Because it is committed to the value of toleration a liberal
state should try as far as possible to be neutral about norms and values.
Neutrality here means neutrality of intent: the state should not
intentionally seek to support any specific set of norms or values. This is
how liberalism is usually characterized in contemporary communitarian
writings (such as those of Michael Sandel and Amitai Etzioni).
(3) Civic Liberalism: A decent society is a liberal society; and a liberal
society is one that tolerates differences in philosophy and life-style.
However, the stability and healthy functioning of a liberal society depends
on citizens of a liberal state possessing certain 'liberal civic virtues'.
These civic virtues include, most importantly: tolerance, mutual respect
,and reciprocity. Liberal citizens must be tolerant, mutually respectful,
and, as an aspect of mutual respect, they must be willing to make a fair
contribution to the community, to reciprocate the benefits which other
citizens labour to provide for them. The liberal state does have a
legitimate job to do in supporting these specific civic virtues. What gives
these values their authoritative status, however, is not that they happen
to be 'widely accepted'; it is simply that they are intimately connected
with the maintenance of a stable liberal regime.
On the Civic Liberal view, then, the mere fact that a norm is 'widely
accepted' is certainly no reason for the state to support it. The liberal
civic virtues should be supported even if, as may be the case in nascent
liberal democracies, they are not (as yet) 'widely accepted'. And some
'widely accepted' norms (racist, sexist, heterosexist, etc.) should be
discouraged because, even though they are widely accepted, they are
incompatible with the liberal civic virtues.
What are we to make of these three views?
Communitarianism, the view which treats 'widely accepted norms' as
authoritative simply in virtue of their being widely accepted, is not an
attractive view. It is simply a doctrine of majoritarian bullying. It is
instructive to note that Lord Devlin was prompted to write his
Communitarian work, 'The Enforcement of Morals', to rationalize his
opposition to the decriminalization of homosexuality in Britain.
Neutralist Liberalism, on the other hand, invites the old joke about a
liberal being someone who refuses to take his/her own side in an argument.
A liberal state should obviously stand up for liberal norms and the
associated civic virtues.It should not try to be neutral with respect to
itself!
In my view, then, it is Civic Liberalism which has the most attraction for
those thinking about the content of the TW. Much so-called 'communitarian'
thinking in the US, e.g., that of William Galston and Amitai Etzioni, is in
fact Civic Liberalis in the sense defined above.
Even if we agree to be Civic Liberals, however, there is still a lot of
room for disagreement between Civic Liberals at the level of policy. We can
agree that the state has a legitimate role to play in supporting the
liberal civic virtues, but disagree about what the state needs to do to
support these virtues. Some Civic Liberals might argue, for example, that
the state should encourage two-parent families, discourage divorce, etc.,
because married two-parent families are better at nurturing citizens who
have the civic virtues that liberals want. Other Civic Liberals (of whom I
am one) will find this argument feeble because they think its key empirical
premise is unfounded.
Best wishes,
Stuart White
Department of Political Science,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
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