On Kukathas' Liberalism and elite (capture) Theory

This is not because the characterization of political society Walzer offers is untrue to reality. Political society is a substantive community, for there is no such thing as a purely procedural association. And associations with long histories will invariably develop substantial norms, and acquire deep allegiances. And yet, this is not so different from international society and, more particularly, that form of international society that is an empire. Thirty years ago every Australian school child recognized Empire Day, and Australians generally celebrated their membership of the former British Empire. Today, almost all school children are entirely unaware it ever existed. The polity whose history is taught has been contracted in size, and the story itself is being retold to place it more securely in the Asia-Pacific region and to sever the ties with Europe. But this is nothing new. Very few countries were never parts of empires; and some have grown so large as to subsume the parts the empire occupied. In many of these political societies the polity is the product of domination rather than the construction of the people. Political societies are built by elites, often against the wishes of many.
Of course, smaller political orders—whether small empires or larger states—are more likely to develop distinctive and substantial common normative commitments than are larger ones. Other things being equal, they might also be less likely to be tolerant of dissenting practices or associations—though other things are seldom equal. But this does not alter the fact that many societies are very much like close-knit empires. Some are federations of states which retain a substantial measure of independence. Some states have so much independence that they hover on the brink of secession and independent nationhood. Which way matters go is a matter of contingency. In the end nations are not so much the product of a common history as the creators of one. And what is sometimes left unmentioned is that they might have been created very differently, since there is a great number of ways of combining peoples to make a political society—as is reflected in the frequency with which political boundaries change.--Chandran Kukathas (2003) The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and freedom, pp. 35-26 (emphases added).

Regular readers will have noticed that I have been reading and reflecting on Kukathas' philosophy. In the Liberal Archipelago, Kukathas identifies himself with the "the classical liberal tradition" (167) of which he is a pre-eminent theorist. Unlike most of who self-identify as 'classical liberals,' Kukathas is not obsessed with (free) markets. In fact, while I would describe The Liberal Archipelago as 'a quite Lockean work' -- with its emphasis on moral diversity, mutual toleration, the significance of conscience to it, and the focus on association and exit --, it does not obsess over property rights at all. And this hints at another important deviation by Kukathas from classical liberals, who inherit (recall) the assumption of harmony of interests from nineteenth century liberalism. At heart, Kukathas' position is straightforward: we inevitably disagree about moral matters and the relative rankings we give them, and so the best thing we can do is to associate generally with the like-minded and find a modus vivendi with those that are indifferent to us, or worse. The main proper function of the state is to facilitate such modus vivendi in order to instantiate a cosmopolitan ideal.

Now, much of The Liberal Archipelago engages in moral argument often through the lens of (or constrained by) feasibility to defend such modus vivendi. If you think this is too thin, then in the conclusion of the work, Kukathas concedes that "the point of theorising the liberal state in terms of an archipelago of loosely associated authorities, is not that this fully captures an actual liberal state, or perhaps even a possible liberal state, but that it identifies an important dimension of it— one which connects up with particular values end or concerns, even if it does not embrace every aspect of, or aspiration found within, the liberal state." Fair enough. My interest here is not, in the first instance, with that important dimension, but with a kind of recurring motif through the work on the nature of politics. For, to speak bluntly, Kukathas does not only repeatedly diagnose (perhaps with a hint of melancholy) rent-seeking behavior and elite capture by various social elites (as Marxists (recall) also emphasize), but at times he also slides into an elite theory of politics (that one may associate with names like Mosca, Michels, Pareto, Burnham, Aron, etc.--although none of them are mentioned in the book) The quoted passage above illustrates what I have in mind.

Now, Kukathas is not the first classical liberal with such a view of politics. And I think it is important to distinguish him, at once, from somebody like (the public choice theorist) Richard Wagner who doesn't only use such an elite theory of politics sociologically, but also (repeatedly) endorses (recall here) the idea (to put it politely) that eggs need to broken in order to make an omelet. (Non trivially Wagner also draws on Schmitt.) Kukathas is not inclined to do so because he quite clearly thinks that the means (e.g., broken eggs) fail to be justified by the ends, but also in virtue of the means tend to produce outcomes that are not worth having (indirectly they produce more broken eggs this is the Spinozism Kukathasendorses). So, let's stipulate Kukathas is primarily interested in the elite theory of politics as a descriptive or sociological theory.

The problem for a reader of Kukathas is that it's not clear how the normative project fits with his elite theory of politics. I have two related concerns. First, the kind of political society Kukathas advocates requires political agents with a great deal of skill to pacify social disagreements (and to set up institutions -- forms of federalism, power sharing, etc. -- that would facilitate this) and whose characteristic quality is to promote social restraint and mutual indifference. Second, it is not obvious elite agents (of the sort that Kukathas posits in his sociological theory of politics) have an interest in pursuing the ideal, or at the least the dimension of that ideal, that Kukathas' theory prescribes. This is something Kukathas repeatedly observes himself when looking at elite agents among minority groups throughout the book.

My concern is not that Kukathas lacks a theory of transition to get from a sub-par status quo to the more normatively better political place he advocates. (I do think that's a problem, too.) But rather, that even by his own lights there is no reason to think any political agent that really matters politically by his lights would pursue his ideal.

At this point, Kukathas or somebody invested in defending him, might say, look: just like free markets require a certain amount of restraint by elites not to meddle in them and to focus on the institutions (rule of law, anti-trust, human capital, etc.) to keep the market order going and growing, the liberal archipelago also requires, as Kukathas emphasis throughout, civility and some such such restraint (and background activity to promote it). Arguably something like this insight is the great truth in common preached by Mencius, Machiavelli and (Kukuthas' key thinker) Hume. As Foucault would note, with the eighteenth century this became a matter of scientific valediction. 

Now, I do not want to deny that this response is realistic (I included Machiavelli for a reason there); in practice such social restraint is sometimes visible temporarily in elites (because of domestic or international circumstances). The very mechanism that allows elites to benefit from the growing pie of a market order also allows them to benefit from the fruits of modus vivendi. But it also makes such elites sitting ducks politically when new upstarts come along to deny them these benefits. So,  a politics that requires elite self-restraint is, thus, inherently crisis ridden (as liberalism is), especially if (as Schumpeter and others have noted) the mechanism of elite selection in liberal democracy has little connection to the requirements on politics that follow from normative theory.  

Perhaps, the periods of lucky tranquility between crises is then the best one can hope for (qua liberal with realist sensibilities).