It appears that global opinion has been shifting toward a preference for neoliberal policies over the past half century, despite growing inequality in many major economies. Dai Oba (Waseda University, 2020) used an SRG award to advance his research at the University of Oxford to investigate complexities behind  this trend among British voters, who appear to have embraced a loosely defined set of attitudes that the author calls “neoliberal folk justice.”

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In May 2023, Onward, a center-right think-tank in the UK, described millennials as “shy capitalists” based on the results of a questionnaire survey. Although millennials are thought to hold egalitarian values and downplay the importance of economic growth and individual effort, Onward found that they also prefer policies of low taxes and less redistribution.[1] This is a good example of how people’s economic views can be quite complex, defying neat categorization into right or left. Similarly to this finding, my research looks into people’s complex views that I call “folk justice”.

In the past half-century, the world seems to have become gradually and increasingly more “neoliberal,” by which I mean an orientation emphasizing the role of the market and associated ideas of the economic right, such as efficiency, personal responsibility, and autonomy. To be clear, most people do not necessarily identify themselves as adhering to a coherent set of beliefs like libertarianism. Rather, many tend to hold beliefs that are loosely defined and not always coherent, which might be described as neoliberal folk justice.

My research is focused on this loosely defined set of attitudes that seems to have a strong and stable hold on a large segment of the population. Increased support for the left, on the other hand, has been relatively rare and short-lived. This is surprising because the comparative merits of egalitarian institutions seem rather indisputable for the majority of the working public, especially in the aftermath of major economic crises in 2008 and 2020. How can this be explained? Is there anything we are not seeing?

 As a political philosopher, I am primarily interested in theories of justice and equality. But in analyzing the neoliberal trend, I wished to start with what folk neoliberals on the street believe. Clarity and coherence are extremely important for theories, but people’s beliefs and attitudes can often be unclear and incoherent. So, I wanted to first identify the core beliefs of neoliberal folk justice and build theoretical arguments from the bottom up in the hope they can serve as resources for reasoned democratic deliberation that are accessible to ordinary citizens.

In the following, I will describe my findings of an investigation into neoliberal folk justice, conducted with the help of an SRG award.

People’s deeply held convictions inform their political attitudes. Photo by Dylan Bueltel, https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-red-jacket-holding-a-cardboard-with-message-5233241/.

Complex Attitudes Toward Inequality and Wealth

The complexity of neoliberal-leaning attitudes has been documented by many scholars, whose research reveals some common themes.

Jonathan Mijs, for example, has noted the paradoxical acceptance of inequality in the face of fast-growing inequality and an apparent correlation between such acceptance and levels of inequality. Using International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data covering 23 Western countries and three different periods (1987–88, 1991–93, 2008–12), Mijs tested hypotheses regarding people’s acceptance of rising inequality. He “argue[s] that what explains citizens’ consent to inequality is their conviction that poverty and wealth are the outcomes of a fair meritocratic process.”[2] People’s belief in meritocracy tends to be stronger as society becomes more unequal because, Mijs claims, the affluent and the poor live increasingly separate lives in an unequal society. He posits that greater inequality goes hand in hand with stronger meritocratic beliefs and that stronger meritocratic beliefs, in turn, lead to reduced concerns about inequality.

He also tested the inverse relationships between inequality and notions of structural inequality (that is, lower inequality correlates with stronger awareness about structural factors of inequality, and stronger beliefs about structural inequality correlate with greater concern about inequality). He confirms the hypothesis, with the effect of meritocratic beliefs being stronger than the effect of beliefs in structural inequality. Mijs’s key finding is that economic inequality tends to be seen as acceptable when people believe their society embodies meritocratic principles, a belief which, in turn, is strengthened by a rise in inequality.

While Mijs’s findings suggest links with the idea of procedural justice, the notion of meritocracy is a vague one. In fact, Mijs construes meritocratic beliefs rather narrowly as people’s belief in the importance of hard work as a factor for economic success. There can be some variety in what people mean by the “importance of hard work” ranging from, for example, hard work in employment and non-paid work to being responsible and prudent in managing their finances and “giving back” to society.

 Regarding what makes inequality (appear) legitimate, Rachel Sherman conducted interviews with 50 wealthy couples in New York and found that the affluent feel a strong need to be able to justify their wealth. Her interviewees had household incomes within the top 5% in New York City—the most unequal large city in the US—and were characterized as the “new elite” who “believe in diversity, openness, and meritocracy rather than status based on birth.”[3] To Sherman’s surprise, many affluent New Yorkers expressed moral conflicts about their privilege and shared various narratives to demonstrate their worthiness, which she broadly categorized into three types.

The first narrative is that of the hard worker marked by such redeeming qualities as productivity, self-sufficiency, discipline, and independence. The second narrative is that of the prudent consumer. The rich New Yorkers cast themselves and their spending habits as “normal” in an attempt to distance themselves from the negative image of the “leisure class.” In line with the Protestant ethic, disciplined spending is considered part of the meritocratic ideal and thus a legitimator of their wealth. The third narrative is that of someone actively “giving back” to society typically by donating their money or time to charitable organizations.

We can see certain aspects of folk neoliberal values underlying these research findings, namely, the idea of meritocracy, under which economic success is ascribed to an individual’s personal merits; the value placed on hard work over idleness and dependence; the ideal of prudence and responsibility; and the imperative of “giving back” to society.

Four Values of Neoliberal Folk Justice

Rather than describing the minute details of people’s complex attitudes, I focused on the following two claims as being the core beliefs of neoliberal folk justice, namely, that redistribution is unfair and that government should not intervene in the market.

These claims can be unpacked  into the following four normative values. First, social cooperation should be on a quid pro quo basis, and freeriding  should not be allowed. This requires that there is  a certain equity between contributions and benefits. Second, those who rely on welfare do not deserve further assistance because they lack a sense of personal responsibility. This claim points to a  personal virtue of using of resources (including time and talent) in a prudent and thoughtful manner. Third, market outcomes are morally fair. This can be understood as an expression of trust in the market mechanism and its ability to legitimate distributive outcomes. Fourth, each person is the sole author of his/her life, and the government should not interfere or even offer any help. This expresses the moral ideals of self-sufficiency, independence, and, most importantly, the ability to advance one’s life as his or her own project and no one else’s.

In sum, the four core values of neoliberal folk justice are (1) reciprocity, (2) responsibility, (3) procedural fairness, and (4) autonomy.

Survey Findings

What do people believe about just economic policies? Photo by Karolina Grabowska, https://www.pexels.com/photo/quote-board-on-top-of-cash-bills-4386367/.

I conducted an online opinion survey of 2,065 adults living in Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) to directly test the above selection of core values. Along with two dummy values (“solidarity” and “efficiency”) and after explaining what each value stands for, I asked respondents to rate the importance of the four values when thinking about economic policies that are fair for everyone  (respondents were asked to select from ‘very important’, ‘fairly important’, ‘not very important’, ‘not at all important’, and ‘don’t know’).

The results of the survey confirmed my selection of the above four values. Comparing the percentages of those who answered “very important” or “fairly important,” the four values all scored 70% or higher (79% for “procedural fairness,” 78% for “responsibility,” 71% for “reciprocity,” and 70% for “autonomy”), while the dummy values scored significantly lower (59% for “efficiency” and 58% for “solidarity”). Additionally, correlations with respondents’ past voting behavior revealed that for both the 2015 and 2019 general elections, those who voted for the Conservatives supported the four values significantly more than those who voted for Labour (the difference ranging from 10 percentage points to 30 points). This supports my hypothesis that the four values have particularly strong resonance with folk neoliberals.

Toward Theoretical Arguments and Policy Consensus

Based on the above findings, the next stage of my research will offer repertoires of theoretical arguments regarding the four values of neoliberal folk justice, each of which represents a potential salient political position that citizens may adopt. As a final output, I aim to describe potential areas of policy consensus between those different arguments, showing that reaching an agreement on desirable and feasible social welfare policies for the twenty-first century is a realistic possibility.

[1] Jim Blagden and Sebastian Payne, “Missing Millennials,” Onward, May, 2023, https://www.ukonward.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/missing_millennials-1.pdf, accessed 19 October 2023.

[2] Jonathan Mijs, “The Paradox of Inequality: Income Inequality and Belief in Meritocracy Go Hand in Hand,” Socio-Economic Review, vol. 19, no. 1: 7–35 (January 2021), p. 29.

[3] Rachel Sherman, Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence, Princeton University Press, 2017, pp.13–15.

Given their emphasis on collective work, democratic decision-making, and dialogue in promoting members’ economic and social well-being, cooperatives encourage an openness to others, which can also enable different ethnic groups to work together toward common goals and achieve peaceful coexistence. Rui Lora (University of Coimbra, 2020-21) writes that in Bosnia and Herzegovina, cooperatives were a major factor in overcoming discrimination and fostering reconciliation.

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The economic, social, and political benefits of the cooperative movement—launched with the founding of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in 1844—have long been recognized. In recent years, such benefits have also been observed in such fields as international relations, diplomacy, and even peace studies (Macpherson and Paz 2015; Emmanuel and Macpherson 2007; Cooperatives Europe 2019). One way of identifying the nature of these contributions is to analyze the movement through the lens of what is called diatopic hermeneutics. This allows cooperativism to be perceived as an actor in international relations from the perspective of “cosmopolitanism”—which views all people as being entitled to equal respect and consideration, regardless or citizenship or other affiliations.

The concept of diatopic hermeneutics was first presented by Panikkar (1982) and later expounded by Santos (1997). It is based on the principle that one culture cannot understand another from just its own viewpoint. Rather, it is “necessary to understand the other without assuming that it has our same self-knowledge or knowledge base” (Santos 1997). Diatopic hermeneutics thus seeks to “bring into contact radically different human horizons” in order to achieve true dialogue and the interaction of cultures (Santos 1997). It can be understood as the reciprocal translation of values, knowledge, and beliefs and is needed because the commonplace rhetoric of a given culture or tradition is often incomplete, incompatible, or potentially challenging from the perspective of another tradition. There must be dialogue between diverse cultural perspectives to enable the reciprocal translation of values, knowledge, and beliefs.

An examination of traditional principles of cooperativism reveals that they have much in common with diatopic hermeneutics. In fact, the cooperative might even be regarded as a practical instrument of the concept. The principles of cooperativism, for example, emphasize the importance of collective work, democratic decision-making, and dialogue in promoting the economic and social well-being of members. Such principles are aligned with the approach of diatopic hermeneutics in implying an openness to understanding the other and valuing cultural diversity.

Expanding Scope of Cooperatives

Historically, cooperativism has been a movement that, from the beginning, sought to build alternative economic models to capitalism through its emphasis on collective ownership and democratic management, while at the same time avoiding a state-centered economic model (Namorado 1999). Since its emergence after the Industrial Revolution, cooperatives have addressed a plurality of community needs, including in times of crisis (Vieta and Lionais 2015). In addition to making economic contributions, cooperativism is usually and directly related to many aspects of the social and solidarity economy (Singer 2018).

However, over the years, and particularly more recently, the scope and performance of cooperatives have expanded to other spheres. This has prompted the need to discuss the role of cooperatives from a cosmopolitanist perspective, as the globalization of the world economy and commercial liberalism have, according to some theoretical perspectives, deepened exclusion and wealth concentration, thereby threatening democracy and peace (Rodrigues 2008). In this context, cooperatives began to assume an increasingly prominent economic and political role with the emergence of an independent civil society around the world (Laville 2009).

The globalization process has greatly modified the way people interact in society in recent years. It has made possible the compression of time and space, reducing distances and speeding up information, and the promotion of the universalization of laws. But it has also highlighted differences in sociocultural identities in response to social homogenization, causing conflict between different human groups (Ioris 2007). This makes discussions of the tools and procedures that allow different segments of society—those with different worldviews—to communicate and meet the challenges of social and political coexistence quite important. Expanding the concept of diatopic hermeneutics with the aim of contributing to this discussion, especially with respect to diversity, may help bring together human groups that are isolated or in conflict due to globalization.

The author, top left, speaking with members of a multiethnic cooperative in Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of his SRG project.

Seeing cooperatives as an international actor reveals significant local and even global contributions that can be made by the cooperative movement in allowing actions and initiatives to transcend various disparities. Santos suggests that globalization can be understood through the lenses of “globalized localisms” and “localized globalisms,” referring to global perceptions of local customs and the impact of transnational practices on local conventions, respectively (Santos 1997, 14). These dynamics, characterized by asymmetries between central and peripheral countries, underscore the potential of cooperatives to contribute to regional integration by addressing such disparities.

An Actor in International Relations

In this context, cosmopolitanism emerges as a concept that enables actors, including regions, classes, and subordinate social groups, to interact transnationally in pursuit of common interests (Santos 1997). Cooperatives, rooted in cooperation among themselves and in contributing to the community, are connected to a global network through the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), for example. They play a crucial role in inclusive socioeconomic development and can also serve as a tool for subaltern and insurgent cosmopolitanism, addressing the aspirations of oppressed groups and fostering global solidarity.

Cooperatives can thus be understood as an actor in international relations from a cosmopolitanist perspective, advocating for common interests shared by marginalized, excluded, and subordinated groups globally. When viewed as part of cosmopolitanism, moreover, the principles and values of cooperativism acquire a practical dimension, enabling dialogue and the exchange of experiences among cooperatives and members. The organizational structure of cooperatives, both locally and regionally, as well as their international representation through bodies like the ICA, empowers marginalized groups in global governance mechanisms and contributes to addressing asymmetries in integration processes.

To avoid overly idealistic conclusions, though, it is essential to identify specific situations and contexts where this relationship between cooperatives and cosmopolitanism can be verified, even tangentially. This approach can ensure a more nuanced understanding of cooperatives’ role in fostering regional integration, such as in the Western Balkans. According to the report by Cooperatives Europe (2019), two projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina have demonstrated the capacity of cooperatives to promote interethnic dialogue and economic development of the region: the “Fruits of Peace” project of the Insieme Cooperative in the Bratunac region and the creation in Doboj of multiethnic cooperatives as a consortium of rural producers.

At a meeting with a cooperative in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The main success of both projects was the establishment of a flexible and progressive process for forming cooperatives, allowing exchange between different ethnic groups to develop within the cooperatives. The increased dialogue helped to overcome discrimination and promote peacebuilding, providing opportunities to correct misunderstandings and find a path toward peaceful coexistence. By promoting collective work, both projects also enabled the revitalization of sustainable rural economies and contributed to reconciliation by overcoming long-established divisions. Major factors behind their success were that the cooperative ensured continuous training and promoted constant dialogue for both its employees and producers.

An Analytical Lens for Understanding Global Dynamics in Local Contexts

Analyzing these cases from a cosmopolitanist perspective, one can argue that cooperatives have the potential to promote interethnic dialogue and build coexistence in diverse environments. By embodying such principles as cooperation, solidarity, and democracy, cooperatives provide a space for members of different ethnic groups to come together, work toward common goals, and build understanding to achieve reconciliation. The principles of cooperativism thus also incorporate the idea of diatopic hermeneutics, especially in seeking to understand cultural and legal diversity in different geographical contexts, as highlighted in examples like those observed in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

If, on the other hand, cooperatives are conceived within the framework of globalized localisms and localized globalisms, they can become subject to a complex and unequal power dynamic, which can manifest as oppression, exploitation, and marginalization. This may occur when global influences benefit dominant centers at the expense of those on the periphery. Diatopic hermeneutics can help us understand how these global processes are reinterpreted and experienced locally, and how communities like cooperatives resist and respond to these power dynamics.

In this context, the role of diatopic hermeneutics would be to offer an analytical lens for understanding how global dynamics are interpreted and experienced in specific local contexts, especially by the cooperatives in this case. In other words, diatopic hermeneutics allows an analysis sensitive to cultural, historical, and social differences in different places, recognizing that experiences and interpretations of globalism and localism vary according to geographical and cultural context. It helps us to understand how global influences are reinterpreted and adapted locally, and how these adaptations reflect and shape power relations, resistance, and identity.

Using diatopic hermeneutics to understand cooperativism in a cosmopolitanist scenario thus enables us to capture the nuances of the relationships between globalism, localism, and subalternity, providing a more holistic and contextualized approach to analyzing issues of justice, power, and social transformation in a globalized world and supporting the argument that cooperatives can contribute to interethnic dialogue.

References

Charles, Lorraine, and Kate Denman. 2013. “Syrian and Palestinian Syrian Refugees in Lebanon: The Plight of Women and Children.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 14.5: 96-111.

Cooperatives Europe. 2019. Cooperatives and Peace: Strengthening Democracy, Participation and Trust. A Case Study Approach. Cooperatives Europe and Cooperatives Europe Development Platform.

Emmanuel, J., and MacPherson, I., eds. 2007. Co-operatives and the Pursuit of Peace. British Columbia: New Rochdale Press.

Gijselinckx, Caroline, and Matthias Bussels. 2014. “Farmers’ Cooperatives in Europe: Social and Historical Determinants of Cooperative Membership in Agriculture.” Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics 85.4: 509-530.

Ioris, Rafael Rossotto. 2007. Culturas em choque: a globalização e os desafios para a convivência multicultural. Annablume.

Larkin, Craig. 2012. Memory and Conflict in Lebanon: Remembering and Forgetting the Past. Routledge.

Laville J. L. 2009. A economia solidária: um movimento internacional. Revista Critica de Ciencias Sociais 84.

MacPherson, Ian, and Yehudah Paz. 2015. “Concern for Community: The Relevance of Co-operatives to Peace.” Joy Emmanuel, ed. Victoria: Turning Times Research and Consulting.

Madulu, Ndalahwa F. 2003. “Linking poverty levels to water resource use and conflicts in rural Tanzania.” Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C 28.20-27: 911-917.

Menashri, David. 2001. Post-Revolutionary Politics in Iran: Religion, Society, and Power. Routledge.

Namorado, Rui. 1999. Estrutura e Organização das Cooperativas. Oficina do Centro de Estudos Sociais de Coimbra 138.

McNally, D., 1993. Against the Market: Political Economy, Market Socialism and the Marxist Critique. London: Verso.

Panikkar, Raimundo. 1982. “Is the Notion of Human Rights a Western Concept?” Diogenes 30.120: 75-102.

Rodrigues, Roberto. 2008. “Cooperativismo: Democracia e Paz – surfando a segunda onda.” OCB.

Santos, Boaventura de Souza. 1997. “Uma concepção multicultural de direitos humanos.” Lua Nova 39: 105-124.

———. 2004. “Para uma sociologia das ausências e uma sociologia das emergências.” In Santos, B. de S, comp., Conhecimento Prudente para uma Vida Decente: ‘Um Discurso sobre as Ciências’ revisitado. São Paulo: Cortez, p. 777‐821.

Singer, Paul. 2018. Ensaios sobre economia solidária. Leya.

Vergalito, Esteban. 2009. “Acotaciones filosóficas a la ‘hermenéutica diatópica’ de Boaventura de Sousa Santos.” Impulso 19.48: 19-29.

Vieta, Marcelo, and Doug Lionais. 2015. “The Cooperative Advantage for Community Development.” Journal of Entrepreneurial and Organizational Diversity 4.1: 1- 10.

Tamas Dudlak, a 2021 Sylff fellow from Corvinus University of Budapest and a recipient of a Sylff Research Abroad grant in 2021, here discusses the concept of the civilizational state, developments surrounding it, and how it is exploited in politics. Confrontational civilizational narratives serve to create group cohesion by building on a sense of in-group pride, Dudlak points out, but efforts feeding on such differences cannot be the basis for peaceful coexistence.

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The discourse on civilizations has taken hold in international politics since Samuel Huntington’s famous book on the “Clash of Civilizations.” The emergence of the multipolar world order and the cultural turn in the 1990s has enhanced the importance of civilizational differences. The prominence of civilizational identity is not only a reaction to globalization but is itself part of the globalization process. The globalization process pluralized the identities within and beyond the state. Although civilization as a unit of analysis is highly contested, its importance lies in its frequent usage in cultural and political debates[1] and is often considered “an institution and an actor in international politics” (Yeşiltaş 2014, 69). Drawing on Johann Arnason, Fabio Petito (2011, 767) argues for “civilizations, defined in a fundamentally culturalist-religious sense.” Civilization is an essentially cultural entity based on imagined and/or actual cultural links between societies (nations) (Tetik 2021, 4).

Ideas Surrounding the Concept of the Civilizational State

As the political theorist Christopher Coker (2018) noted, we now live “in a world in which civilization is fast becoming the currency of international politics.” In his book, Coker analyzed the idea of the civilizational state through the examples of Western civilization, Japan, China, Russia, India, and the Muslim civilizations. The phrase “civilizational state” was popularized by the British writer Martin Jacques (2012), and Weiwei devoted a book to explaining the phenomenon in contemporary China based on “a new model of development and a new political discourse” (Weiwei 2012, x).

The discourse on civilization has been reactivated by three developments of global implications:

1. The crisis of the Western liberal establishment and Western countries. Europe’s crises continue after the global economic crisis. The West “lost its monopoly over the globalization process” as significant development models and opposing value systems exist (Sherr 2008, 9). A series of crises have shaken the Western world and the European Union: the identity crisis of the Union in the aftermath of the EU constitution referenda, euro crisis, financial crisis, weakening liberal democratic ethos, unfulfilled economic promises in East-Central Europe, foreign policy failures in the Middle East and Ukraine, migration crisis, and Brexit (Öniş and Kutlay 2019, 2–4). These events and processes have weakened the EU’s soft power, its main strength in the international arena. It is “a crisis of Western values, or defined more broadly, of the Western system” (Moreh 2016, 3).
2. The rise of identity politics and populism as cultural resistance (Kriesi et al. 2008) and the global resistance against the neoliberal mainstream parties—in the form of both right- and left-wing parties. Chryssogelos (2018) argues that the content of populism is ideologically not cohesive. However, the different national populisms are unified in their practices of defining themselves in opposition to the conception of an “internationalized state” (heavily influenced by international actors), and they promote the so-called “new sovereign state.”
3. The economic and political rise of Asian nations with large populations and historically significant independent cultures or civilizations (India and China) (Acharya 2020, 140). In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, modernization and Westernization went hand in hand, which in practice meant that the Western “recipe” for economic and political development was adopted. The rise of alternative and successful economic and political systems beyond the West (especially in Asia) has disrupted the unity of modernization and Westernization and given rise to the idea that it is no longer necessary to adopt Western “values” in order for a nation, community, society, or civilization to be economically and politically successful.

The discourse of civilization makes it possible to thematize the constant confrontation and cultural conflicts of values that affect the everyday course of life. These sites of disputes are exploited by strong leaders who take the lead as the central character of the narrative, creating their story through their rhetoric (wordcraft) and their performative action (stagecraft) (Uhr 2014). Confrontational civilizational narratives build on a sense of in-group pride, exceptionalism, and an essentialist understanding of a particular civilization. The rich and complex cultural foundation of a given civilization can be selectively used for the intended political purpose.

The importance of antagonisms lies in the fact that it is along these lines that the political identity of a group can crystallize and separate itself from its environment. The creation of group cohesion is the goal of all political actors. The most significant part of political image-building is about highlighting differences and putting things in antagonistic terms: “in-group versus out-group, good versus evil, moral versus immoral, nation versus anti-nation, pure people versus corrupt elite, and patriots versus traitors” (Selçuk 2016, 5).

The civilizational discourse is usually centered on the idea of restoration, feeding on the image of greatness in the past, its moral and material success, and its predictability. (The historical time is divided into two sections: the first is the recent past that must be changed, and the second is the distant past, which provides the ideal for changing the recent past.) The civilizational state discourse places the past in a macro-historical perspective and thus seeks to “restore” the meaning of history (Coker 2018, 18). The attachment to the past also indicates future possibilities and directions for action in the present. Moreover, the past is not only a guiding line in the present but is often projected “as an aspirational vision for the future” (Akçalı and Korkut 2012, 611).

The Hagia Sophia Museum—originally a Christian church, converted into a mosque in 1453—was reconverted into a mosque in the summer of 2020. This step manifests the serious commitment of the Turkish government toward the Ottoman past. Photo taken by the author in Istanbul in 2015.

Use of Civilizational Discourse by Governments

In one of my recent works, supported by a 2022 SRA grant, I utilize the concept of civilizational state based on Coker (2018) to understand the domestic and foreign policy choices of the current Hungarian and Turkish governments. The civilizational discourse is the narrative that civilizational states employ, and it constitutes a political-ideological formation relying on the idea of distinctive identity traits and the representation of these identity constructions in the international arena. The civilizational discourse of the Hungarian and Turkish governments is connected to the global rise of identity politics and serves to strengthen the power of the states amid the constant challenges against state sovereignty. Both the Turkish and Hungarian political systems rely on a mixture of national and religious legitimacy (Islam and Christianity, respectively) and use these to extend the scope of foreign policy activism. Acharya (2020, 141) calls this self-aggrandizement and identifies it as one of the critical features of civilizational states. These states can enlarge their area of interest and influence through extensive identity politics.

To be effective, the discourse does not have to be valid or accurate; what matters is its plausibility. Civilizational states selectively draw on their respective civilizational “heritage” to create a thorough and coherent Weltanschauung, a worldview that can be projected onto everything, making political struggles more palpable for the audience. These narratives function as simple storytelling so that one can live, connect, and empathize with the story. A successful narrative explains past grievances and offers a tale of the future. Yuval Noah Harari argues that in the age of mass media, political communication needs to tell a story whose coherence, rather than its veracity, is essential (Harari and Kahneman 2021). The coherence must be both internal and emotional. The former implies that while having its own logic, the story has a specific explanatory power, while the latter principle requires that the story contain the clash between good and evil. In politics, therefore, the success of political organizations increasingly depends on effective communication rather than ideological and political coherence.

The Hungarian Parliament refurbished in “Eastern” style, referring to the growing interest of the Hungarian government in Eastern powers. Photo taken by the author during the ARC 2021 exhibition in Hungary.

The culture war, or the practice of securitization of culture, is based on resistance to the free flow of culture. Supporters of culture war aim to confront identity groups within and outside the country to change the mainstream and achieve cultural hegemony by taking identity politics to an imagined cultural battlefield. Culture war starts from the premise that the political opponent has a coherent cultural system, but its intellectual and philosophical foundations are inappropriate (disconnected from reality). These are means in the hands of ideational regimes to challenge their opponents over the meaning and principles of politics. For example, in the discourse of the current Hungarian government, the stakes of the liberal versus conservative debate have risen to the level of civilization, as the two opposing sides fight each other over the interpretation of the philosophical foundations and values of Western civilization.

The conflict between civilizations is far from inevitable, as many claim. Indeed, peaceful coexistence between civilizations has dominated daily life for most of history. However, invoking antagonism between civilizations in an age of uncertainty is undoubtedly simple. To strengthen the identity of political-cultural communities, the question “Who are we?” and “Who are we not?” must be answered. But efforts that deepen the differences between civilizations cannot be the basis for peaceful coexistence.

[1] Lately, the French president Emmanuel Macron attached importance to the “civilizational battle” for defending liberal values and democracies. “We must give content, perspectives and meaning to our liberal values, in the political sense of the term, in the philosophical sense of the term, and show the strength of our democracies. … It is the backsliding in the minds and mentalities. And as such it is a cultural, civilizational battle that we must fight.” (Petrequin 2021)

References

Acharya, Amitav. 2020. “The Myth of the ‘Civilization State’: Rising Powers and the Cultural Challenge to World Order.” Ethics & International Affairs 34, no. 2 (Summer): 139–56.

Akcali, Emel, and Umut Korkut. 2012. “Geographical Metanarratives in East-Central Europe: Neo-Turanism in Hungary.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 53 (5): 596–614.

Chryssogelos, Angelos. 2018. “State Transformation and Populism: From the Internationalized to the Neo-Sovereign State?” Politics 40, no. 1 (February): 22–37.

Coker, Christopher. 2018. The Rise of the Civilizational State. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Harari, Noah Yuval, and Daniel Kahneman. 2021. “Daniel Kahneman & Yuval Noah Harari in Conversation.” YouTube, April 13, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yhg7NmTeVg.

Jacques, Martin. 2012. “China Is a Civilization State.” The Economic Times, July 19, 2012. http://www.martinjacques.com/when-china-rules-the-world/china-is-a-civilization-state/.

Kriesi, Hanspeter, Egar Grande, Romain Lachat, Martin Dolezal, Simon Bornschier, and Timotheos Frey. 2008. West European Politics in the Age of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moreh, Chris. 2016. “The Asianization of National Fantasies in Hungary: A Critical Analysis of Political Discourse.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 19, no. 3 (May): 341–53.

Öniş, Ziya, and Mustafa Kutlay. 2019. “Global Shifts and the Limits of the EU’s Transformative Power in the European Periphery: Comparative Perspectives from Hungary and Turkey.” Government and Opposition 54, no. 2 (April): 226–53.

Petito, Fabio. 2011. “In Defence of Dialogue of Civilisations: With a Brief Illustration of the Diverging Agreement between Edward Said and Louis Massignon.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39, no. 3 (May): 759–79.

Petrequin, Samuel. 2021. “Macron: EU Needs to Fight ‘Illiberal Values’ inside Bloc.” Associated Press, June 25, 2021. https://apnews.com/article/europe-government-and-politics-5467b6be4d12a71764fa48788eb30740.

Selçuk, Orçun. 2016. “Strong Presidents and Weak Institutions: Populism in Turkey, Venezuela and Ecuador.” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 16 (4): 571–89.

Sherr, James. 2008. “A Dangerous Game.” The World Today 64, no. 10 (October): 8–10.

Tetik, Mustafa Onur. 2021. “Discursive Reconstruction of Civilisational-Self: Turkish National Identity and the European Union (2002–2017).” European Politics and Society 22 (3): 374–93.

Uhr, John. 2014. “Rhetorical and Performative Analysis.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Leadership, edited by R. A. W. Rhodes and Paul ‘t Hart, 253–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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In this contribution, 2017 Sylff fellow Max Steuer presents his insight on the first session of the European Citizens’ Panel (ECP) on democracy, jointly organized in Strasbourg by the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission in September 2021, which he attended as a “citizen participant.” He highlights a key risk as well as opportunities of the European Citizens’ Panels for developing a more robust and inclusive democracy in the EU.

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The Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) is a flagship initiative in deliberative democracy and experimentation. The Joint Declaration of the EU institutions organizing the CoFoE speaks about “open[ing] a new space for debate with citizens to address Europe’s challenges and priorities” that will generate authoritative conclusions by 2022, including on the potential needs for a structural reform of the EU. The European Citizens’ Panels (ECPs), of which there are four, are at the heart of the “experimental face” of the initiative: they provide randomly selected citizens with the opportunity to articulate their visions of the EU in a structured environment with the possibility for the outcomes to be taken seriously by policymakers.

While the impact of the expected conclusions from the CoFoE is uncertain, the ECPs can already be seen as a success from a symbolic perspective after the first sessions in September and October 2021; as the European Parliament was the venue for all four meetings, citizens replaced parliamentarians for a (very) short while and presented their ideas in the Strasbourg Hemicycle.

Based on my experience as one of the approximately 200 “citizen participants” of the ECP on democracy (second ECP), I argue that the key challenge ahead of the ECP is an approach to EU values that divides them into separate streams and limits the discussion about them as integrally connected and inseparable. On the bright side, three moments from the second ECP—where an alternative, holistic approach to EU values surfaced in a bottom-up fashion—point to the ECPs’ potential to foster EU democracy.

The start of the first ECP plenary session in the European Parliament Hemicycle in Strasbourg, September 24, 2021. All recordings of the plenary sessions are publicly accessible. (Photo: Max Steuer)

The Procedure in a Nutshell

The second ECP was set out to focus on “European democracy/values, rights, rule of law, security.” The title itself is puzzling, because the list of EU values, as defined in the Treaty on the EU (Article 2), encompasses “respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities”; hence, the rule of law and (human) rights are part of EU values, alongside democracy and others, rather than standing separate from them.

During the first session of the ECP, citizens were invited to articulate their visions of the EU in 2050 by drawing their “EU vision trees” and then “zoom in” on specific questions that they consider important to be debated during the subsequent sessions. Most discussions unfolded in working groups composed of around a dozen citizens. These were accompanied by a few plenary meetings introducing the session, which also included discussions with experts, and a final plenary devoted to approving several main topical “streams” to be addressed during subsequent meetings as they emerged from the “sum total” of the working group discussions.

Thus, the design of the sessions—and that of the ECPs more generally—was intended to work in a bottom-up fashion. The problem here is that democracy does not come with its exclusive pool of questions. All major questions on the EU’s future are also questions of democracy. Moreover, if “democracy questions” are not to be reduced to those of elections, they are integrally related to other EU values, including human rights and the rule of law.

Citizens were not constrained to engage with particular values while formulating the topics. Yet the limitations posed by the separation of individual values became apparent during the final plenary. Here, based on the citizens’ identifications of key questions, the moderators presented the key topical areas (called “streams”) for subsequent sessions. These, in the version voted and approved by the plenary of the panel, encompassed rights and nondiscrimination, protecting democracy and the rule of law, institutional reform, building European identity, and strengthening citizen participation.

A Key Challenge

As noticed by some citizens, questions categorized under human rights could equally be discussed under democracy, and vice versa. For example, the protection of human rights in the context of pandemic-induced restrictions is not merely a question of democracy, and gender equality is not merely a question of human rights. The danger in preparing neat “streams” is that connections between the topics become less visible and the final recommendations less informed.

One of the “EU vision trees” produced in the ECP working groups. Participating citizens were encouraged to place their visions near those of their fellow citizens that are most appealing to their own vision. September 25, 2021. (Photo: Max Steuer)

In addition to topical separation of EU values in the ECP discussions and emerging “streams,” the risk of failing to achieve a holistic approach to EU values stems also from the formal “eligibility requirement” that needs to be met in order to “have a voice” at the ECP: EU citizenship. The exclusivity generated by this requirement comes across as particularly pertinent when “democracy” is explicitly listed in the ECP’s title. In short, the CoFoE that sets out to address the future of Europe is not open to all Europeans. Even if accepting the (by no means obvious) assertion that the future of the EU can be debated between EU citizens on their own, the future of Europe as a continent is hardly limited to EU citizens, with other Europeans standing “on the outside” of democratic deliberations.

While there appear to be no easy solutions to this conundrum, one could potentially be found directly in Strasbourg. The Council of Europe brings together all Europeans (except the citizens of Belarus, whose plight clearly falls within the subject areas of this ECP). Yet there are virtually no signs of collaboration between the Council of Europe and the EU on the CoFoE. Inviting representatives of the Council of Europe, including those of the European Court of Human Rights, to interact with the conference participants could help foster knowledge about both institutions and emphasize their common goals. Furthermore, discussing human rights as sources of legal protections in Europe via an intertwined web of mechanisms and institutions could provide very useful impulses. Ultimately, an involvement of all Europeans, and not just EU citizens, is necessary for an inclusive debate on the future of Europe.

Another possible solution is specific to the five discussion “streams” as they have been approved for the second ECP. An increased focus on noncitizens could also have been part of their formulation. While migration is one of the main themes of the fourth ECP, it should not be absent from the ECP addressing EU values.

Three Signs of a Unique Opportunity and Potential

The impact of the second ECP on the discussions about democracy as an overarching basis for all ECPs remains to be seen. Challenges ahead encompass the capacity to foster holistic approaches to EU values and inclusive conversations. This does not require embracing the unity of value, but it does invite discussions that avoid “us” (EU citizens) versus “them” (everyone else without EU citizenship) dynamics.

Yet the first session of the second ECP still generated several particularly promising moments for a holistic, as opposed to fragmented, understanding of EU values. One is the connection between democracy and key societal issues that were not originally anticipated to be discussed by the second ECP—notably, climate change and socioeconomic development. Discussing climate change as a question of democracy, fundamental rights, and the rule of law might yield refreshing perspectives and facilitate bridges with the other three ECPs, reinforcing the impact of all of them on the CoFoE plenary.

Secondly, an emphasis on connecting economic security to democracy, understood as the possibility to effectively participate in public life, was added as a result of the “feedback round” to the thematic streams preceding the final plenary. This indication of a more democratic understanding of security may open the door for including security as a public good into the discussion on EU values and democracy, rather than seeing it as potentially justifying restrictions on fundamental rights that are the bedrock of democracy.

In front of the EP Hemicycle after the end of the ECP, September 26, 2021. (Photo: Max Steuer)

A third promising moment lies in the emphasis on education on democracy as a matter of EU values. As pointed out during one of the expert presentations, one is not born a democrat but learns to be one. Education as a tangible life experience of the ECP participants may raise awareness of the importance of free media and open communication, fostered by independent institutions, and encourage a “tree-like” perspective, much in the spirit of the “EU vision trees” drawn by the working group participants.

This post is an edited and abridged version of a contribution that appeared via Verfassungsblog.de, a major forum for debates on constitutionalism in Europe and beyond. Since its publication, the ECP on democracy completed its work in December 2021 with a series of recommendations that are currently being considered by the CoFoE plenary.