Can the concept of political entrepreneurship help us to understand authoritarianism?

 

In this essay I discuss the relevance of the concept of political entrepreneurship to an understanding of political outcomes that have substantially affected personal and economic freedom in different countries. The essay has a particular focus on authoritarianism. My understanding of that concept is based on  the view of Hans Eysenck that people who have an authoritarian personality are attracted to the possibility of oppressing others. People who have authoritarian values see such oppression as justified. Authoritarian governments oppress people by restricting their personal and economic freedom to a greater extent than other governments.

The essay focuses on political outcomes which seem incongruent with underlying cultural values in a range of countries. It suggests that political entrepreneurship has influenced the ideologies currently reflected in personal and economic freedom in those countries. It also considers the current role of political entrepreneurship in harnessing cultural and economic grievances to pursue a range of different ends in the liberal democracies.

The essay draws on some of my previous research on the extent to which cultural values can explain authoritarianism and on the influence of cultural backlash and economic grievances on political outcomes in liberal democracies. That research is summarized prior to considering the nature and relevance of political entrepreneurship.

Can cultural values explain authoritarianism?

My answer to that question is that cultural values do not fully explain authoritarianism – the ideologies of some governments are at variance with cultural values. The best way to explain how I came to that conclusion is by referring readers to the accompanying graph which shows levels of economic freedom and personal freedom for 85 countries. Please note that the personal freedom scale on the vertical axis is in reverse order with highest levels of personal freedom at the bottom. (The graph has previously been published in an article in The Savvy Street in 2023.)

Please focus on the labelling of data points. I have attached country labels only to those data points where freedom ratings are substantially different from predicted levels based on indexes of emancipative and facilitating values which were constructed using World Values Survey data. The methodology for constructing these indexes is explained in the Savvy Street article and on this blog (here and here).

The colour of the labelled points depends on whether freedom is greater than or less than predicted—green if greater than predicted, red if less than predicted. The size of the labelled points is larger if both personal and economic freedom are greater than or less than predicted.

It is clear from the graph that freedom ratings of most of the countries with low personal and economic freedom are substantially lower than predicted by corresponding emancipative and facilitating values. The countries in which both personal and economic freedom is less than predicted include China, Iran and Venezuela. It seems obvious that suppression of liberty in those countries is a product of the ideologies of the governments concerned rather than the cultural values of the peoples.  

The graph also shows that a substantial number of countries with relatively high personal and economic freedom are performing better in that regard than can readily be explained on the basis of prevailing values. Most of the countries concerned are not the high-income countries of North America, Western Europe, Oceania, and East Asia that come to mind when one thinks of countries with relatively high levels of economic and personal freedom.

The existence of countries in which freedom levels are substantially greater than predicted by facilitating and emancipative values suggests that government support for economic and personal freedom may precede or accompany the evolution of facilitating and emancipative values. The transition to high levels of economic freedom often takes place over an extended period. As market-friendly economic reforms promote the growth of economic opportunities, this could be expected to lead to the gradual evolution of facilitating values supporting higher levels of economic freedom. The growth of economic opportunities could be expected to encourage people to place higher value on personal autonomy and to become more trusting of others.

Milton Friedman observed that economic freedom “promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other” (Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 1982, 9). As economic development proceeds, the evolution of emancipative values provides additional support for personal freedom.

The correlation between economic and personal freedom is strikingly evident in the graph. There are not many countries with relatively high personal freedom and low economic freedom, or vice versa. Argentina—which stands out as the only country having high personal freedom despite low economic freedom—helps illustrate why that is so. In the published article, I suggested:

“In Argentina, the decline in economic freedom over the last 20 years has been accompanied by worsening economic prospects, which seem likely to lead, before long, to an economic and political crisis. Hopefully, the political response to the crisis will be to restore greater economic freedom and make personal freedom more secure, rather than to restrict personal freedom to suppress criticism of government policies.”

A few months after that comment was published, Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina and has successfully introduced policy reforms to expand economic freedom. (Unfortunately, I cannot claim that my essay was influential in bringing that about.)

Cultural and economic grievances as explanators of political change

In the preceding essay on this blog I discuss the question: “Is cultural backlash a major determinant of political outcomes in the liberal democracies?” My intial focus was on the view which Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart presented in their book, Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism (2019),  that the spread of post-materialist values has induced a cultural backlash among cultural conservatives. They suggested on that basis that the combination of authoritarianism and populist rhetoric is a threat to liberal democracy.

In my view, Norris and Inglehart were mistaken in attributing cultural backlash to the spread of post-materialist values. I argued that it would be more correct to attribute cultural backlash to the illiberalism of progressives who have been advocating what Yascha Mounk has described as the identity synthesis (see: The Identity Trap, 2023). The identity synthesis has provoked a backlash because it rejects neutral rules like equal opportunity and free speech in favour of action to promote the interests of particular groups that have suffered from discrimination in the past.

Some recent research by John Burn-Murdoch, published in the Financial Times ‘Why the Maga mindset is different’, March 7, 2025) has suggested that over the last 20 years the values held by people who identify with the right wing of U.S. politics has moved closer to the values of people in Turkey, Russia and China than to people who identify with the right wing of politics in Europe. It remains to be seen what impact, if any, this apparent retreat from classical liberal values will have on the institutions of liberal democracy in the United States. 

Norris and Inglehart acknowledge that economic grievances also play an important role in encouraging people to support policy remedies proposed by populists. In that context, I have referred to some research published in an essay on this blog that has highlighted the adverse impact that slower economic growth can have on life satisfaction, particularly of young people. I suspect that the longer-term slowdown in economic growth in the liberal democracies might be more important in generating support for populist policies than are grievances that can be related directly to the impact of import competition or immigration.

However, we live in a world where the policies that political leaders sell to voters depend on how voters perceive reality. Those perceptions are not always accurate. Some opinion leaders on both the progressive and conservative sides of politics attempt to sell voters a distorted view of reality. As I wrote that I was reminded of a comment I made in my review of Michèle Lamont’s book, Seeing Others, 2023. I suggested:

“On the question of factual accuracy, Lamont’s narrative, which suggests that the workers have reason to be angry with the wealthy one percent, seems to me to be just as questionable as Donald Trump’s narrative which suggests that the workers have reason to be angry about globalization and immigration. Neither of those narratives promotes an accurate understanding of economic reality.”

The concept of political entrepreneurship

Catherine De Vries and Sara Hobolt have suggested that competition between political parties in European countries is like competition in economic markets. In both contexts long-standing dominant players (firms or parties) may be challenged by disruptive new players. The central objective for both challengers and incumbents is the control of government and the delivery of public policies. Political entrepreneurs play a key role because a party that engages in successful political policy innovation can enjoy an effective monopoly on an issue and reap the consequent electoral benefits. (De Vries CE, Hobolt SB. Challenger Parties and Populism. LSE Public Policy Review. 2020; 1(1): 3, pp. 1–8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31389/lseppr.3)

De Vries and Hobolt were writing about multi-party systems in which several political parties are competing for power. However, a similar form of competition occurs when an innovative political entrepreneur within a major political party challenges established leadership factions by offering a product that is more appealing to supporters of the party.

Valentina Ausserladscheider has contributed to an understanding of political entrepreneurism by providing a framework to consider reasons for the political success of Jörg Haider, the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party, during the 1990s. Haider’s winning formula was based on a policy mix of authoritarian and and neoliberal policies, which was particularly successful during a time of economic turmoil and uncertainty. (See Chapter 9 of Culture, sociality, and morality : new applications of mainline political economy edited by Paul Dragos Aligica, Ginny Seung Choi, and Virgil Henry Storr, 2021).

Ausserladscheider emphasizes that the strategies of political entrepreneurs are not determined solely by voters’ ideological positions. Successful political entrepreneurs don’t offer the same policies as their competitors. They advance their political ambitions by focusing on niches in the marketplace of ideas that established parties do not satisfy, and on winning support by emphasizing the problem-solving capacities of their ideas. For example, the entrepreneurial strategy of far-right parties is their “nationalist and nativist core ideology”, leading to policies such as immigration restrictions that are claimed to solve a range of problems.

As illustrated by the example of Jörg Haider, the strategies that political entrepreneurs follow to attract support can result in political programs that offer a mix of libertarian and authoritarian policies.

The influence of political entrepreneurs

From a cursory inspection of the accompanying graph, people who have rudimentary knowledge of global politics would have no difficulty identifying political entrepreneurs who have historically been major players determining outcomes in many jurisdictions where economic and personal freedom seems substantially at variance with underlying cultural values. There are good reasons for that. Media coverage tends to focus on political leaders, the challenges they face and the policies they adopt.

The role of political entrepreneurship is not always obvious in liberal democracies where the institutions of representative government have been respected for many decades. However, it doesn’t make sense to assume that changes in public opinion will be automatically reflected in public policy even in countries with representative government. In general, the responses of political markets to new information (e.g. poll data about shifts in public opinion on particular issues) depend to a much larger extent on decisions by big players than do responses to new information in financial and commodity markets.

A better understanding of the reasons why political entrepreneurs behave as they do might help us to assess whether current political developments are likely to expand or constrain economic and personal freedom. Those outcomes depend on both the motivations of the individuals concerned and on the social and economic context in which they operate.

Like other humans, political entrepreneurs are motivated by a range of factors. It is usually unrealistic to assume that they are motivated solely by a desire to maximize social welfare (whatever that means), to maximize the number of votes they obtain, to maximize personal wealth, or to obtain the perks of the office. Given the nature of their occupation, however, it seems reasonable to assume that political entrepreneurs obtain more satisfaction than most other people from constructing ideological narratives and selling them, and from exercising the political power required to implement policies.

In some instances, ideological predilections may play a dominant role. For example, while social and economic context helps to explain why revolutions occurred in China and Iran in the 20^th century, the repression of individual liberty following those revolutions stemmed directly from the ideologies of revolutionary leaders - Mao Zedong in China and Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.

Similarly, while the economic problems confronting the United States and Britain during the 1980s provided contexts in which substantial changes in the direction of economic and social policies could be contemplated, the responses of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher owe much to their respective commitments to economic freedom. The reforms currently being pursued by Javier Milei in Argentina seem to be similarly motivated.

Looking around the world, a range of different ideological predilections seem to be playing a role in policies advocated by political entrepreneurs. For example, we see ideological considerations playing a role among those seeking opportunities to expand the welfare state, to redistribute wealth, to promote “equity” for community groups which have suffered from discrimination in the past, to save the environment from CO2 emissions, to pursue international humanitarian goals, or to pursue nationalist goals by restricting immigration, raising trade barriers, and withdrawing from international organisations. Some of those policies have potential to impinge adversely on economic and personal freedom.

As we have seen earlier, even if political entrepreneurs are motivated mainly by a desire to exercise political power, the innovative aspect of their role requires them to focus on niches in the marketplace of ideas that established parties (or factions) do not satisfy. They seek to attract support from people who are discontented with current economic and social outcomes by emphasizing the problem-solving capacities of their ideas. Their success in attracting a loyal support base of customers who are willing to help them to sell their narrative depends to a large extent on the strength of competition from politicians selling different narratives, and on the extent of resistance by journalists and members of the public who consider their narratives to be incorrect or that their policy proposals are unworkable, unconstitutional, unethical, or otherwise unhelpful.

In my opinion, the ability of some political entrepreneurs (from both conservative and progressive sides of politics) to persuade large numbers of people to accept false narratives is posing an increasing threat to liberty in the liberal democracies. False narratives pose a threat to liberty because they often provide a basis for false beliefs that problems can be solved by restricting personal and economic freedom. For example, the personal freedom of people who refused vaccinations for Covid was restricted inappropriately in many countries because of false narratives that unvaccinated people were likely to spread infection. And economic freedom is currently being restricted in some countries through imposition of higher import barriers on the basis of false narratives about the impact of free trade.

A few decades ago, people seemed to have been more willing to put their trust in political commentators who took pride in remaining politically independent and well-informed. Those commentators were able to expose false narratives to a greater extent than now occurs, and thus to limit the influence of political entrepreneurs who base their policies on falsehoods.

In recent years, however, mainstream media has become increasingly polarized. The rise of social media seems to have aggravated the problem. Many exchanges of views about political issues on social media consist largely of recitations of false narratives promulgated by political leaders.

Some commentators who are independent and well-informed can still be found in both mainstream and social media, but prevailing cultures may need to give greater respect to the search for truth before those people will have sufficient influence to discourage political entrepreneurs from promoting false narratives.

Conclusions

Authoritarian and libertarian political outcomes don’t just appear out of nowhere. Underlying cultural values that have evolved over long periods of time go some of the way toward explaining levels of economic and personal freedom in different countries. However, political entrepreneurship also plays an important role.

The role of political entrepreneurs is most apparent in those countries where underlying cultural values are less supportive of economic and personal freedom. Political entrepreneurs have played an important role in some of those countries in promoting either more or less freedom than would be expected on the basis of underlying cultural values.

The role of political entrepreneurship has been more constrained in those liberal democracies where the institutions of representative government have been respected for many decades.

However, the ability of some political entrepreneurs (from both conservative and progressive sides of politics) to persuade large numbers of people to accept false narratives is posing an increasing threat to personal and economic freedom in the liberal democracies. Polarization of the media means that such claims are now less subject to independent scrutiny than they were a few decades ago.

Recent political developments are raising the question of whether cultural change in some liberal democracies has emboldened some political entrepreneurs to challenge conventions regarding government respect for judicial rulings on the legality of their activities. Governments that do not perceive themselves to be bound by judicial interpretation of laws and constitutions are unlikely to have much regard for individual liberty. Any government which claims that its actions are beyond legal challenge because they reflect the general will of the people is showing obvious signs of authoritarianism.

Addendum

Chris M Sciabarra has given me permission to publish the following comment, which he has provided by email:

"I just read the essay and enjoyed it; I'll have to give a bit more thought to it. You make some very good, persuasive points, though there are some claims that I need to process a bit more. I think the whole concept of political entrepreneurship has some weight here. I wonder how, for example, it might mesh not only with public choice thinking, but also with Hayek's insights about how the 'worst get on top' when political power becomes the only power worth having. If that's the case, then political entrepreneurship in a populist age morphs into a kind of political con game that attacks the very roots of liberal democracy---something you acknowledge in your conclusions.

One of the issues that concerns me is that while there was a backlash against the "identity synthesis" of illiberal progressives, I don't think that was the key factor that influenced the outcome of the election. Incumbent parties lost all around the world, whether they were perceived as 'right'- or 'left'-leaning. In the US, of course, Trump won over Harris. In the UK, the Conservative Party was defeated. The Liberal Democrats lost in Japan, while in France, a coalition of left-wing and centrist parties gained ground. And so forth. I think that inflation, stagnant wages, housing affordability, etc. led most incumbents to defeat because whoever is in power is the party that takes the blame for the conditions on the ground. 

That said, I also think that the "identity synthesis" on the illiberal left has only been replaced by a different kind of "identity synthesis" on the illiberal right, given the right's embrace of nationalism and, in many cases, a virulent form of nativism, riding on profound anti-immigrant fervor. Not to mention the illiberal right's obsession with scapegoating the smallest of minorities---like transgender-identifying people, who make up about 0.6% of the population. This is as much of an illiberal right-wing play on identity politics as anything we've seen on the left." 

Chris has now posted a more extensive review on Notablog . 

Notablog is also worth visiting for other reasons - including the opportunity to take a break from worrying about authoritarianism to listen to the "Song of the Day". 

An interesting diagram

I think the following diagram captures very well the illiberal cultures on the authoritarian socialist and authoritarian nationalist sides of politics, and the overlap between them.

Stephen Hicks posted the diagram on X and asked if anyone could tell him where it came from so that that he could give credit. I would also like to give credit to the person responsible for constructing this.

 

Is cultural backlash a major determinant of political outcomes in the liberal democracies?

 

In recent years, a major transformation has occurred in the politics of many of the liberal democracies as major political parties have increasingly been challenged, or taken over, by populists. What has brought this about? Can it be attributed to some kind of cultural backlash?

My starting point in this essay is the analysis of Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart in their book, Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism (2019). I then consider some problems associated with this analysis, focusing particularly on the authors’ definition of authoritarian values and some critical comments by Armin Schäfer. In the following sections, I consider the relevance of Yasha Mounk’s explanation of Tne Identity Trap, the nature of the backlash to changing economic circumstances, and John Burn-Murdoch’s outline of differences between conservatives in the U.S. and Europe in values and attitudes regarding international cooperation.

The Norris-Inglehart analysis

The book by Norris and Inglehart seemed like a good place to begin considering cultural backlash theory because Ronald Inglehart deserves to be remembered with great respect for his efforts in creating a cultural model which explains a great deal about the reasons why people from different parts of the world often hold widely different views on social and political issues. Inglehart’s cultural model has two dimensions: secular rational values versus traditional values; and self-expression values versus survival values. He documented a shift from materialist values, which emphasize safety and security, to post-materialist values, involving increasing emphasis on individual freedom, occurring as a consequence of ongoing economic growth.

Norris and Inglehart argue that the spread of post-materialist values has induced a backlash among cultural conservatives. The authors do not dismiss explanations of growing support for authoritarian populism which emphasize economic grievances associated with economic globalization, immigration, stagnant real incomes, and perceptions of growing inequality. They find that populist attitudes are strongly influenced by personal experience of economic insecurity and perceptions of the national economy’s performance. However, according to their definition, “authoritarian values” are more common among old people than young people, and are more strongly linked with the respondent’s birth cohort than with economic indicators.

The authors found that anti-immigration attitudes were more strongly linked with authoritarian and populist values than with protecting economic interests. And, even after controlling for a range of attitudes toward immigrants and economic conditions, the respondent’s birth cohort remains the most important predictor of authoritarian values.

Norris and Inglehart believe that “the combination of authoritarian values disguised by populist rhetoric” is “potentially the most dangerous threat to liberal democracy.”

To assess the threat to liberal democracy that may be posed by those values and attitudes it is important to consider how the authors define authoritarian values.

Have authoritarian values been measured correctly?

 The authors conceptualize “authoritarian” values “as a cluster of three related components, emphasizing the importance of (i) conformity (strict adherence to group conventions and traditional customs); (ii) security (safety and protection of the group against risks, justifying strict enforcement and aggression toward outsiders who threaten the security or the accepted group norms); and (iii) loyalty (supporting the group and its leaders).” They view populism “as a style of rhetoric reflecting first-order principles about who should rule, claiming that legitimate power rests with ‘the people’ not the elites.”

The main problem I have with the Norris-Inglehart definition of authoritarian values is that many of the people I know who emphasize conformity to group conventions, group security, and loyalty to the group and its leaders, would be more appropriately labelled as conservatives than as authoritarians. The conventions they seek to uphold are concerned with civility rather than oppression. They emphasize national security because they see it as necessary to avoid becoming the victims of oppression. They display loyalty to the group and elected leaders because they identify as citizens of the nation in which they live.

It seems to me that a more appropriate measure of authoritarian values is implicit in Christian Welzel’s work on emancipative values. The people who hold authoritarian values are those whose values are on the lower end of the scale of emancipative values. Welzel developed the concept of emancipate values to measure the beliefs that people hold about such matters as the importance of personal autonomy, respect for the choices people make in their personal lives, having a say in community decisions, and equality of opportunity. More information about Welzel’s research on emancipative values can be found here.

My understanding is that people who have an authoritarian personality are attracted to the possibility of oppressing others. That is the view of Hans Eysenck, who undertook some pathbreaking work on the personality predictors of political extremism. An important implication of that view is that authoritarian values are not the preserve of either the conservative or progressive side of politics.

That line of reasoning might suggest that the Norris-Inglehart analysis is more relevant to understanding a conservative backlash than the emergence of authoritarian tendencies that might threaten democracies. Nevertheless, as discussed later, there is some evidence that people who identify with the right wing of U.S. politics now have values more akin to Russians and Turks than to the supporters of right wing parties in western Europe.

How much do cultural attitudes vary by age?

In an article entitled “Cultural Backlash? How (Not) to Explain the Rise of Authoritarian Populism”, published in 2021, Armin Schäfer found that, on most issues, people in different age groups have similar cultural attitudes. His analysis suggests that older cohorts are slightly more likely to vote for authoritarian (right wing) parties but less likely to vote for populist ones. His conclusion is that generational replacement is unlikely to attenuate the rise of authoritarian (right wing) populism.

Schäfer does not dismiss cultural explanations of populism. He agrees with Norris and Inglehart that opposition to immigration is linked systematically to authoritarian (conservative) values and a lack of trust in politics.

A backlash to the illiberalism of progressives

 It is common for the spread of post-materialist values to be accompanied by conservative resistance, but much of that resistance seems to dissipate over time. Many cultural conservatives now seem to have accepted, however reluctantly, some of the social changes that they strongly opposed a few decades ago e.g. divorce, pre-marital sex and legalization of homosexuality, and they now also seem to be going through the process of accepting other social changes, such as same sex marriage.

In my view, it is the authoritarian tendencies of many progressives that has promoted a voter backlash, rather than the spread of post-materialist values. The best discussion I have read about the authoritarian tendencies of progressives has been provided by Yascha Mounk in his book, The Identity Trap, published in 2023. Mounk does not refer explicitly to “authoritarian tendencies” but the illiberalism that he discusses amounts to the same thing in my view.

In writing about what he refers to the “identity synthesis”, Mounk recognizes that its advocates are seeking to remedy serious injustices affecting marginalized groups that have historically suffered “terrible forms of discrimination”.  The identity synthesis is concerned with many different kinds of groups including those related to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and disability.  The distinguishing feature of the identity thesis is that its advocates reject neutral rules like equal opportunity and free speech in favour of action to promote the interests of particular groups. According to this thesis, the way the state treats each citizen – and how citizens treat each other – should depend on the identity group to which they belong.

Mounk’s main point is that the identity synthesis will ultimately prove counterproductive: 

“Despite the good intentions of its proponents, it undermines progress toward genuine equality between members of different groups. In the process, it also subverts other goals we all have reasons to care about, like the stability of diverse democracies.”

The identity synthesis subverts the stability of democracies because it makes it harder for people to broaden their allegiances beyond a particular identity. It is a political trap because it makes it harder to sustain diverse societies whose citizens trust and respect each other. It “pits rigid identity groups against each other in a zero-sum battle for resources and recognition.”

Much of Mounk’s book is devoted to a philosophical discussion of how the identity synthesis evolved. The story he tells is of a short march through the institutions, associated with postmodernism, rather than the long march of cultural Marxism. He suggests that since the identity synthesis is inherently about ongoing tension between different identity groups it lacks Marxism’s utopian promise of eventually abolishing all class distinctions.

There has also been a backlash to the authoritarian tendencies within the environmental movement. Although environmental activism is not part of the identity synthesis discussed by Mounk, he makes the interesting observation that in embracing “intersectionality” many voluntary organisations have broadened their missions in line with the idea that all forms of oppression are connected. He gives the Sierra Club as an example.

What about the economy?

The analysis in the preceding essay on this blog leads me to suspect that the longer-term slowdown in economic growth in the liberal democracies might be more important in generating support for populist policies than are grievances that can be related directly to import competition or immigration. Import competition and immigration may just be convenient scapegoats.

The preceding essay shows:

• The perception of having a lower standard of living than parents at a comparable age has a substantial adverse impact on life satisfaction ratings.
• Perceptions of standard of living relative to parents are positively related to past economic growth experience of the countries in which people live.
• In the high-income countries, low growth has a greater adverse impact on young peoples’ perceptions of their standard of living relative to parents than on the corresponding perceptions of old people.

A backlash to internationalism?

John Burn-Murdoch, a researcher who works for the Financial Times, recently made an international comparison of the values of people associated with different political parties in article entitled ‘Why the Maga mindset is different’ (March 7, 2025). His analysis, using data from the World Values Survey, suggests that in many respects (including attitudes to international cooperation) the values of people who identify with the U.S. right wing are closer to the values of people in Turkey, Russia, and China than to those who identify with right wing parties in Europe, or with the U.S. left. His analysis also suggests, however, that “the US Republicans of 20 years ago were no keener on autocracy than the average Canadian or Western European – and just as supportive of international co-operation.”

Perhaps that change of attitudes reflects a cultural backlash that can be partly attributed to 9/11 and the outcomes of the Iraq and Afghan wars. It may also be partly attributable to increasing dissatisfaction with the performance of international organisations, and a perception that U.S. taxpayers have been making excessive contributions to those organisations.

It is important to note that even where a substantial proportion of the population of a country endorses authoritarian values, that does not necessarily result in authoritarian political institutions. That finding emerges from some analysis published on my blog in 2023 in an essay entitled:  “To what extent do international differences in personal freedom reflect people’s values?”  The analysis uses Christian Welzel’s emancipative values data from the World Values Survey and personal freedom data from Cato. It indicates that international differences in personal freedom do broadly reflect the prevalence of emancipative values (the opposite of authoritarian values). However, there are many outliers. For example, personal freedom in China and Iran is lower than might be predicted solely on the basis of the prevalence of emancipative values, whereas personal freedom in Armenia, Georgia, Cyprus and Taiwan is higher than might be predicted on that basis.

Personal freedom in the U.S. seems broadly consistent with the overall prevalence of emancipative values in that country (including both the left and right wings). The current U.S. government is clearly seeking to implement a major change in the direction of many government policies. I am not yet persuaded, however, that its actions will have a substantial adverse impact on the institutions of liberal democracy. 

Conclusions

Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart argue that the spread of post-materialist values has induced a cultural backlash among cultural conservatives. On that basis they suggest that the combination of authoritarianism and populist rhetoric is a threat to liberal democracy.

In my view, Norris and Inglehart were mistaken in attributing cultural backlash to the spread of post-materialist values. It would be more correct to attribute cultural backlash to the illiberalism of progressives who have been advocating what Yascha Mounk has described as the identity synthesis. The identity synthesis has provoked a backlash because it rejects neutral rules like equal opportunity and free speech in favour of action to promote the interests of particular groups that have suffered from discrimination in the past.

Economic grievances play an important role in encouraging people to support policy remedies proposed by populists. My previous research has highlighted the adverse impact that slower economic growth may have on life satisfaction. I suspect that the longer-term slowdown in economic growth in the liberal democracies might be more important in generating support for populist policies than are grievances that can be related directly to the impact of import competition or immigration.

Some recent research has suggested that over the last 20 years the values held by people who identify with the right wing of U.S. politics has moved closer to the values of people in Turkey, Russia and China than to people who identify with the right wing of politics in Europe. It remains to be seen what impact, if any, this apparent retreat from classical liberal values will have on the institutions of liberal democracy in the United States.

What were the highlights of my second trip to India?

 

The highlights of my recent trip to south-west India included visiting waterfalls and historical sites, seeing elephants and tigers in the wild, and enjoying some cultural experiences as well Indian food.

The waterfalls, elephants and history were included on my list when I discussed the possibility of a trip to southern India with Ms Bharathi of Tour Seed over a year ago. I knew before the trip that some lucky tourists also see tigers in the wild but I wasn’t overly optimistic about that. I knew I would enjoy the food but I didn’t expect the cultural experiences to be as enjoyable as they were.

My first trip to India occurred in 2022 and was confined to the north of the country. I wrote about it here. I enjoyed my first trip to India so much that I wanted to see more.

My recent trip began in Bangaluru. From there I went to Mysore, Kabini, Ooty, Athirappilly, Thekkady, Alleppey, and Kochi. The places I visited are shown as red dots on the map.

 

Since this post is about highlights, I will focus on a small selection of experiences.

The first highlight I have chosen is the palace of Mysore. It was the royal residence of the Wadiya family, maharajas, who ruled the Kingdom of Mysore from the late 1300s until 1950. The Kingdom of Mysore covered a large slab of southern India.

The Mysore palace is not particularly old. It was completed in 1912, replacing a wooden palace that had burnt down.

It is easy to see why the palace is a major tourist attraction. It is both opulent and beautiful.

The second highlight is the Kabini wildlife sanctuary, where I saw tigers, elephants, spotted deer and other animals.

 

Athirappilly falls is the third highlight. The person in the photo is my driver, Raju Gowda, who accompanied me to the base of the waterfall. Raju showed great skill in driving under fairly challenging conditions - on narrow winding roads in hilly country as well as in city traffic.

 

The fourth highlight was my visit to Thekkady. I enjoyed being shown spice gardens, and a trekking and rafting experience but the display of martial arts and gymnastics at the Kadathanadan Kalari Centre was an unexpected pleasure.

 

I have chosen a food experience as the fifth highlight. This is a meal I was served on a houseboat at Alleppey. I cannot claim to have eaten it all, but I was able to eat much more than I had anticipated when the meal was served to me.

Finally, there is my visit to Kochi. I enjoyed being shown the historical sites of Fort Kochi, including tourist attractions celebrating Vasco da Gama’s voyage of discovery. However, I have chosen the cannon ball tree, with flowers growing out of its trunk, as one of the highlights of my visit. I also enjoyed the Kathakali performance of the Mahabharata story. A handout in English explaining the story line helped me to understand what was happening.

 

Perhaps I should add a final word about the way my trip was organized. When I tell people that the trip was tailored to my specifications, that I had a driver, and stayed in excellent hotels, I sometimes also feel that I need to explain that it was not particularly expensive. In saying that, I am making a comparison with the cost of staying in similar hotels in group tours, or self-drive holidays, in countries such as Britain or Canada, rather than with the cost of backpacking. At this stage of my life, I feel inclined to leave backpacking to people who are younger than I am.

Should Libertarians be Attempting to Influence Culture: A Discussion with Winton Bates and Chris Matthew Sciabarra (II)

 

As the graphic might suggest, the focus of the second edition of our collaborative efforts is Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s view of the role of culture in the relations of power in modern societies. However, before Chris presents his view on that topic, it is appropriate to review comments on the first edition that have been left on our respective Facebook pages: Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Winton Bates.

Comments on the first edition

We are pleased that our efforts have attracted interest and perceptive comments from people who have visited our Facebook pages. The comments fall into three broad categories: differing views of thick libertarianism; whether it is possible to influence culture directly; and the distinction between the question of whether libertarianism (as a political philosophy) should be attempting to change culture and the question of whether libertarians (as individuals) should be attempting to influence culture.

Thick libertarianism

Roderick Tracy Long: I'm recalling an exchange I had with Walter Block over "thick libertarianism," the idea that libertarians should think of the struggle for liberty as bound up with the promotion of other values not strictly entailed by libertarian principles but entangled with them either causally or conceptually (locus classicus is Charles Johnson's piece). Walter said that thick libertarianism was dangerous because the attention to other values might distract or tempt libertarians away from libertarian consistency. I said: "So you think opposition to thick libertarianism is itself an additional value, not strictly entailed by libertarian principle, that libertarians qua libertarians nevertheless ought to embrace because of its causal connection with the libertarian goal?" He said yes! I thought I'd trapped him in a reductio, but for him my reductio was merely a modus ponens.

Jim Peron: I don't see how one can achieve a libertarian society without the wider range of values that underpin it. One indication is how utterly unlibertarian evangelicals are compared to others. I should say that it's been years since I read it but the Edward Banifeld books "The Heavenly City" and "The Heavenly City Revisited” were influential in this regard, as were my basic psychology classes in university. Also of influence was "Under Development is a State of Mind" by Lawrence Harrison. [This is the first paragraph of Jim’s comment. Please see Chris’s Facebook page for the remainder.]

Possibility of influencing culture

Boris Karpa: There are, of course, two issues:

1. It's very difficult to come up with a strategy to deliberately influence a culture (and to what extent some progressives have succeeded it was because they already had large institutional inertia).

2. It's not entirely clear how this is going to work even on the basic level. Either of us can name any number of libertarian or semi-libertarian writers, for example, who are reasonably talented, or at least as talented as any published mass-market writer. But writing is an 'industry' with a low barrier of entry. Of these many libertarian and semi-libertarian writers, how many of these writers have had a movie or a show made out of their works? Or a PC game? How are these writers treated by literary awards, etc.?

It's not that I'm suggesting that it's impossible to influence culture, it's that I'm suggesting that I'm not sure how it is possible to influence it in a *deliberate manner* beyond just 'create art that reflects your values and hope for the best'.

Political philosophy versus individual action

Douglas B. Rasmussen: Is there not a difference between saying libertarianism qua political philosophy should attempt to change culture and saying that a libertarian concerned in advancing libertarianism should attempt to change culture? The former concerns what the political/legal order should do, and the latter concerns what individuals should do.

Ed Younkins: The legitimation or justification of a minimal state that protects and defends freedom does not depend upon the existence of a particular type of moral-cultural order. Such a political order is objectively based on the nature of human beings who need a protected moral sphere for the possibility of self-direction.

Although a political order of metanorms is not necessarily coincidental with, nor dependent upon, a particular moral-cultural system, the establishment and support of such a political order would be easier to bring about if there were widely shared beliefs and articulations with respect to its underpinning political principles as well with certain moral principles. It follows that we should work as individuals, and in concert with others, to build a freedom-friendly culture of moral and virtuous people who strive to create a good life, to flourish, and to be happy.

Replies by Bates and Sciabarra

Please see our Facebook pages for our immediate responses to those comments and to additional exchanges. Our views on power relations in the cultural context of individual flourishing are presented below.

Winton Bates’s view of culture

My book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, contains a brief discussion of cultural change in Chapter Nine, “The Evolving Context of Human Flourishing” (pp 184-190). As the chapter title suggests, my focus was primarily on the nature of changes that individuals have to contend with rather than on what individuals might do, in concert with others, to influence the cultural context. Nevertheless, readers would have no difficulty in discerning that I strongly support what Steven Pinker has described as Enlightenment humanism:

“Emancipative values can also be viewed as an outcome of Enlightenment humanism, a term used by Steven Pinker, to encompass the ideas of thinkers like Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Astell, Kant, Beccaria, Smith, Wollstonecraft, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton and Mill. As I see it, a stronger case can be made for the emergence of a general consensus supporting Enlightenment humanism among leaders of political opinion, than for the existence of a coherent philosophy shared by a group of intellectuals. While the classical liberals would probably have seen little merit in the political views of rationalistic thinkers, and vice versa, many conservative and progressive political leaders have seen varying degrees of merit in different viewpoints and have sought to reconcile and assimilate them in developing their own views.

“Over time, it seems that Enlightenment humanist values have approached the status of a coherent world view, which is broadly supported by public opinion in the democracies, despite large differences between conservative and progressives on some important issues.  The process seems to be one in which disparate political philosophies, often going back centuries, act as tributaries to the broad streams of thought that flow into the rivers of public opinion. Enlightenment humanism is one of those broad streams of thought. The color of the water in the streams and the rivers changes over time, depending on relative contributions from the different tributaries.

“Such a picture is complicated by the existence of postmodernism, as a competing stream of thought, which has origins traceable to some of those Enlightenment thinkers. Whilst Enlightenment humanism has a preoccupation with reason and reality, postmodernism has a preoccupation with the use of power. Postmodernism’s disrespect for truth is often associated with the narratives presented by radical progressives but it is also present in the narratives of unprincipled populists of a more conservative disposition. Fortunately, persuasive rhetoric that influences the views of some people in ways contrary to reason and reality tends to provoke widespread opposition.” (p 186)

In retrospect, my view that Enlightenment humanist values are broadly supported by public opinion may have been too optimistic. I should also make clear that the problem I have with power relations has to do with preoccupation with the use of power, rather than with attempts to understand power relations in society.

Chris has made an important contribution to the understanding of power relations.

 

Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s view of culture

I greatly appreciate the comments that Winton and I received from our first installment in this series of discussions. In this section, I’ll discuss the Tri-level Model of Power Relations, which was first derived from my reconstruction of Ayn Rand’s critical analyses of social problems, outlined in Part Three of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. The model focuses our attention on the various reciprocally related levels of generality through which social relations of power are manifested. It is a model that I have adopted in my own analysis of various social problems and the systemic and historical contexts within which they are embedded.

Winton suggests that Enlightenment humanism has been preoccupied with reason and reality, while postmodernism has been preoccupied with the use of power. Hence, it is startling that Rand, who most certainly placed herself in the reason and reality camp, also emerged with a critique of power relations. Rand criticized modernism for its crippling dualities. She rejected the modernist dichotomies of mind and body, reason and emotion, fact and value, the moral and the practical, and so forth. Ironically, she developed a multidimensional critique of social relations of power that echoes many of the themes found in postmodernism.

The full case for this can’t possibly be presented in this installment, so I’ll do my best to summarize the implications of the Tri-Level Model illustrated above. This summary comes not from Russian Radical but from Chapter Nine of Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism, “The Dialectical Libertarian Turn” (pp. 379-383).

The model provides different levels of generality by which to interpret social relations. The personal, the cultural, and the structural can only be abstracted and isolated for the purposes of analysis, but never reified as wholes unto themselves. They are preconditions and effects of one another.

On Level 1 (LI), the personal level of analysis, social relations are examined from the vantage point of personal ethical practices and implicit or tacit methods of awareness (what Rand called “psycho-epistemological” practices). On Level 2 (L2), the cultural level of analysis, social relations are examined from the vantage point of language, education, ideology, and art. On Level 3 (L3), the structural level of analysis, social relations are examined from the vantage point of political and economic structures, processes, and institutions.

We can trace the implications of this model by grouping the levels into three distinct forms, in which the level placed at the center provides a specific analytical and strategic focus. Because these levels are abstractions from the whole, each reveals key dynamics even as it obscures others.

L1-L2-L3: Focusing on The Cultural

From this point of view, the cultural level is brought to the foreground of our analysis. This perspective allows us to investigate and evaluate the various cultural traditions, institutions, and practices that help to sustain the existing social system.

How does culture perpetuate existing social conditions? This is achieved through linguistic, educational, and ideological means, among others. Distortions in language—through the use of anti-concepts, for example—will tend to undermine rational discourse, while serving the needs of the powerful. Certain educational institutions and pedagogical practices will tend to undermine autonomy, perpetuate conformity, inculcate obedience to authority, and subvert the development of critical thinking. Stultifying, rigid, intolerant, racist, sexist, or tribalist ideologies or belief systems (including dogmatic religious beliefs) will tend to foster exclusionary “thinking within a square.” Such cultural practices can undermine those humanist, cosmopolitan characteristics consistent with the development of human freedom and personal flourishing.

But a sole focus on dominant cultural traditions and practices tends to lessen our regard for people’s abilities to alter their ethical or psycho-epistemological habits (LI). Additionally, this focus minimizes the importance of the political and economic structures (L3) that both perpetuate and require a certain constellation of cultural practices.

Cultural contextualism—that is, paying attention to the importance of cultural context in the struggle for social change—is important. Indeed, as Hegel once declared: "No one can escape from the substance of his time any more than he can jump out of his skin” (Introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 112). That said, cultural contextualism is not cultural determinism. Though we are situated in a particular context of time and place, we are also creative, efficacious social beings capable of shifting that context over time.

L2-L1-L3: Focusing on the Personal

From this point of view, the personal level is brought to the foreground. This analytical focus emphasizes the importance of personal ethical and psycho-epistemological practices, which tend to perpetuate the dominant cultural and structural institutions.

Remember that even though this level is called personal, it is still a means of viewing social relations through a particular prism. Rand’s inspiring maxim—"Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today”—carries enormous weight here, as each person adapts certain virtues in pursuit of certain values, given their own unique and dynamic social context. Even if our struggle for autonomy and authenticity takes place within authoritarian social systems that are “airtight,” there is still a need for self-engagement and self-fulfillment. Living authentically requires introspection, the ability to articulate our thoughts, to accept our emotions, to experience psychological visibility and various degrees of intimacy in our engagement with others, to comprehend the nature of our actions, and to take personal responsibility for the social consequences generated by those actions.

But an exclusive focus on the personal level tends to diminish the importance of cultural and structural factors, which provide the context for, and have a powerful effect on, people’s abilities to achieve autonomy and authenticity. Certain cultural attitudes and tacit practices are so deeply embedded in our lives that it is extremely difficult—if not practically impossible—to call these into question. Likewise, any given set of political and economic realities will tend to constrain our ability to act autonomously. Folks who repeat the mantra, “free your mind and the rest will follow” (with apologies to En Vogue), fall victim to Level 1 thinking, divorced from Levels 2 and 3.

L1-L3-L2: Focusing on the Structural

From this point of view, the personal (LI) and cultural (L2) levels of analysis recede to the background, and the political and economic structures, institutions, and processes become the primary focus. This perspective makes transparent the dominant political and economic practices—the regulations, prohibitions, or guns—that constrain us. But exclusive attention to oppressive structural policies and practices tends to reduce the importance of, and need for, people to alter their ethical or psycho-epistemological habits. It also tends to obscure the importance of culture, which has a powerful effect on the kinds of politics and economics that are practiced.

Those who believe that it is possible to enact a nonaggression principle by edict are reifying a Level 3 analysis. An attack centered solely on the state in the absence of a supporting edifice of personal and cultural practices is doomed to fail. It will likely replace one form of tyranny with another.

With the aid of this Tri Level Model, our shifting points of view help to reveal the depth and breadth of the problems we face. By filtering virtually every social problem through the same multidimensional analysis and tracing the interconnections among social problems, we will be led to reject one-sided resolutions as partial and incomplete.

A couple of additional points must be kept in mind, however. All systems are mixed to some degree and no set of power relations is monolithic. Even within totalitarian systems, pockets of resistance and parallel institutions exist. Hence, each level of our analysis focuses attention on dominant tendencies within any given social system. Moreover, no social system is hermetically sealed from the rest of the world. The Tri Level model is one that must be adapted to different systemic and historical contexts. And it requires sensitivity to differences within cultures and among cultures—especially when we are faced with such an abundance of illiberal tendencies in our own society and across the globe.

I should add too that there is no “One Size Fits All” strategic approach to social change. Considering the unique conditions of any given context, it takes effort to investigate and examine the kinds of cultural formations that may nourish—or impede—both personal flourishing and an emancipative politics.

**

The authors welcome comments on the relevance of the Tri Level model in considering current illiberal tendencies in the cultures of the liberal democracies. We have in mind that the next instalment of this exchange will focus on that topic.

Should Libertarians be Attempting to Influence Culture? A Discussion with Winton Bates and Chris Matthew Sciabarra (I)

 

I have asked Chris Matthew Sciabarra to present his views on the question posed above because he has possibly thought more deeply than any other living person about the relevance of social context to the pursuit of libertarian ideals. The depth of Chris’s thinking on these matters became apparent to me when I recently reviewed his trilogy of books on the dialectics of liberty:

Marx, Hayek, and Utopia, State University of New York Press, 1995.

Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, second edition, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. (The first edition was published in 1995.)

Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.

My review has been published on “The Savvy Street”.

In his dialectical approach, Chris emphasizes the importance of contextual analysis across time. The most relevant example is his discussion of Murray Rothbard’s views. Rothbard held that nonaggression is all that is required of a libertarian society, and that could be assured through adoption of a libertarian law code after government ceased to exist. Chris argues that the experience of political freedom is not likely to be fully efficacious in the absence of a supporting edifice of cultural and personal practices.

Before asking Chris for his contribution to the discussion, I outlined why I am reconsidering my views on the question of whether libertarians should be seeking to influence culture.

Why am I reconsidering my views?

Until recently, I was definitely opposed to J S Mill’s position in the passage quoted above. It seemed to me to be woolly thinking to suggest that the sanctions imposed by “prevailing opinion and feeling” were akin to tyranny. I have argued in the past that libertarians should focus on reducing the tyranny of the legal order. It seemed to me that while individual libertarians might take a position supporting or opposing particular elements of cultural change, in their role as advocates of liberty they should focus on issues specifically related to government e.g. constitutions, laws, regulations, and actions of government officials.

I began to reconsider my views before reviewing Chris’s books. After reading The Individualists, an excellent history of libertarian ideas Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi, I was prompted to write on this blog on the question: Where is the soul of libertarianism? That question stems from the subtitle of the book: “Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism”, and from the discussion, in the final chapter, of the battle between bleeding heart libertarians, left libertarians and paleolibertarians for control of the Libertarian Party in the United States. The Individualists left me wanting to promote the view that the soul, or essence, of libertarianism stems from the nature of human flourishing. I suggested that I would have preferred to see the book end by acknowledging that libertarians are engaged in an ongoing struggle against authoritarianism, as people on opposing sides of the culture wars seek to enlist the coercive powers of the state to pursue their interests.

Another reason for reconsidering my views is because it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between the actions of governments and those of some other organisations.  For example, when interest groups lobby private businesses to adopt particular environmental or social policies, there is an increasing tendency for political parties to become involved by threatening regulation either in support of or in opposition to interest group advocacy. There also seems to be increasing acceptance that governments should take an active interest in codes of conduct adopted by organisations that have traditionally been viewed as independent of government (e.g. universities) particularly if they receive substantial government funding. Another example is the non-transparent influence of governments on the publication policies of social media outlets. It has become increasingly difficult for free speech advocates to distinguish between government censorship and the editorial policies of media proprietors.  

The only reason I can think of right now why libertarians should not be attempting to influence culture is the difficulty they would have in agreeing on what kinds of cultural change they would like to promote. Libertarians are, almost by definition, independently minded people.

With that thought in mind, I will now hand over to Chris.

Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s view

I want to thank Winton Bates for inviting me to participate in this ongoing dialogue, which began with his discussion of my Dialectics and Liberty Trilogy. Next year, I will formally mark the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of the first two books of that trilogy—Marx, Hayek, and Utopia and Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical—and the twenty-fifth anniversary of its finale, Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism. I will devote more attention to each of these books as we approach their birthdays!

My appreciation notwithstanding, I’m somewhat overwhelmed by Winton’s view that I have “possibly thought more deeply than any other living person about the relevance of social context to the pursuit of libertarian ideals.”

Recently, several articles have been published, lamenting the state of libertarianism—how it has lost its relevance and practicality, how it has lost its way. I can attest to the fact that whatever libertarianism is today, it is not what it was when I first encountered it in the late 1970s. As a twentieth-century offshoot of liberalism, libertarianism emphasized the centrality of individual rights. But this was not a purely propertarian vision. It was a liberal ideal that situated intellectual, political, and economic freedom within an inclusive cosmopolitan social framework.

I often heard the mantra that libertarianism was about getting the government out of the boardroom and the bedroom. I took seriously Ayn Rand’s view that a “new intellectual” movement was necessary to unite the “homeless refugees” in American politics: the nontotalitarian “liberals” and the nontraditional “conservatives.” I took seriously Murray Rothbard’s call “for a new liberty” that transcended the limitations of left and right.

Even more importantly—and in complete agreement with Winton—I took seriously the neo-Aristotelian perspective that any struggle for human freedom is simultaneously a commitment to the project of personal flourishing. Each implies the other. Each requires the other. And each depends upon a culture that nourishes both.

Alas, we are facing a political climate here in America—and in many other countries throughout the world—in which there is a struggle between competing forms of illiberalism on both the left and the right. I have not concealed my view as to which is the greater threat. But illiberalism of any kind anywhere is a threat to human freedom and personal flourishing everywhere.

The opening epigraph of John Stuart Mill hints at the importance of focusing on how power manifests itself in reciprocally reinforcing ways. The approach of so-called “thin libertarians”—that is, those who have argued that freedom does not require a robust defense of anything beyond a nonaggression principle—is so myopic that it collapses in on itself. Somehow, someway, such “thin libertarians” have ushered in, through the backdoor, cultural presuppositions that they believe are necessary to the achievement and sustenance of human freedom.

Indeed, even Murray Rothbard, who once declared the sole importance of the nonaggression “axiom,” notably shifted his support toward what he called “Liberty Plus.” This was an acknowledgement that some kind of cultural matrix was necessary to nourish the freedom project. Rothbard argued that the paleoconservative values of a Christian culture, a “shared ethnicity,” and a “shared religion” were the only bulwark against the “modal” libertines who had taken up the banner of freedom. Hans-Hermann Hoppe furthered this view with a vengeance, arguing that libertarianism could not survive the conditions of “moral degeneracy and cultural rot” brought on by those who engaged in what he saw as the sordid promiscuity, vulgarity, obscenity, and illegitimacy of alternative lifestyles (in other words: anyone who identified as LGBT+).

Given that anarcho-capitalists like Hoppe advocate a society based on the creation of private propertarian fiefdoms, in which property owners can expel any groups upholding non-approved religious, cultural, or sexual practices, or even people whose skin color they don’t like, the very idea of a cosmopolitan liberal order was anathema. In other words, such libertarianism simply dispensed with liberalism, the very tapestry from which it emerged.

That’s not what I signed up for.

I believe that it is partially because of these developments in some libertarian circles that the radical liberal project remains stillborn, despite the gallant efforts of so many fine thinkers who have worked so hard to make the more robust case for freedom and flourishing. That project requires us to examine the systemic nature of tyranny and oppression—that is, the ways in which power relations are manifested on multiple levels in any given society. The cultural level is perhaps the most crucial of all.

And make no mistake about it: Power is not a purely political phenomenon. As Mill suggests, “prevailing opinion and feeling,” can be just as tyrannical as anything political. Indeed, James Madison warned that liberty could be destroyed from the top-down by political compulsion and from the bottom-up by the cultural imposition of conformity. Madison understood that liberty thrives on diversity.

So, in response to the question, “Should Libertarians be Attempting to Influence Culture?”, I can only say that this presupposes an understanding of more basic issues. First, libertarians should be focused on exploring the role of culture in shaping political and social outcomes. And in a global context, this also entails exploring how different cultures may or may not support the radical liberal project.

I have championed the dialectical method because, as the art of context-keeping, dialectics demands that we examine any problem, issue, or event on different levels of generality and from different vantage points. By shifting our perspective on any problem, issue, or event, we emerge with a fuller understanding of the varied ways in which these phenomena manifest themselves. We can then begin piecing together how the parts interrelate and function in a system examined across time.

I will have a lot more to say about these issues in forthcoming exchanges. For now, I’m delighted that Winton has invited me to participate in this unfolding dialogue.

Addendum:

Chris Mathew Sciabarra has also posted this discussion on his blog, Notablog. Please take a look at Chris’s blog.