RIGHTS, LIBERALISM, MULTICULTURALISM

Abstract

In my study, I deal with different positions regarding rights, liberalism and multiculturalism. For my investigation, I shall analyse the following studies:
-Will Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights and Multicultural Odysseys. Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity.
-Chandran Kukathas’ Cultural Toleration and The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom,
-Doriane L. Coleman’s Individualizing Justice through Multiculturalism: The Liberalsʼ Dilemma, and
-Brian Barry’s Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism.
In Kymlicka’s liberal theory of group rights, the acknowledgement of rights to groups is to be interpreted as an extension and development of the liberal tradition. Multinational states must face problems resulting from the presence of different cultural groups and from the relations between the majority and the minorities living in the state. A multinational state ought to guarantee equality between its members: group rights are the instrument to put limitations on the political space of the majority.
Kukathas considers the state as being exclusively an aggregation between groups: the state has therefore no authority of intervention in the groups. Since liberalism is toleration, the rules, traditions, and habits which exist in the different groups ought, in the opinion of Kukathas, to be tolerated, even though these rules, traditions and habits are oppressive, intolerant and illiberal for the members of the group itself.
The analysis of Coleman introduces us to the questions connected to the cultural defences and to the problems that the strategy of the cultural defences represents for the American and not only for the American tribunals: the question is whether a pluralistic interpretation of the law is to be accepted, as those who plead for the cultural defences maintain, or whether a pluralistic interpretation of the law is to be refused. The analysis of Coleman gives us highly valuable elements to understand the problems represented by some interpretations of multiculturalism for the equal protection clause of the US Constitution and for the citizens’ equality before the law.
Barry accepts as forms of group rights exclusively affirmative actions. In Barry’s view, rights may be conceded to groups exclusively for economic reasons: disadvantaged sectors of the people of a country may receive specific rights in the case that these rights can eliminate the economic difficulties in which these sectors of people live. These rights ought to be suppressed, though, when the economic difficulties disappear. Barry considers the concession of cultural group rights as a danger to the equality of the citizens in a country: individual rights may never be sacrificed to group rights.