Is there a human right to democracy? Beyond interventionism and indifference

Abstract

How can human rights be formulated so as to constitute an essential aspect of public reason in a pluralist world, in which differences of religion, culture and world-views are paramount? This article examines the answer provided to this question by Joshua Cohen in a series of recent publications. Proceeding from a Rawlsian framework, Cohen Maintains that human rights are about conditions of membership and inclusion in liberal as well as decent-hierarchical societies. He denies, however, that democratic self-government is among such conditions. There is no 'human' right to democracy. Through a close reading of Cohen's argument, it is shown that his position is self-contradictory, and that furthermore, the Rawlsian framework suffers from a sociological deficit in its characterization of human societies and world-views. The methodological 'holism' of the Rawls-Cohen approach minimizes competing narratives and traditions within other cultures and thus hinders a complex conversation to evolve within and across cultures - a conversation that has intensified in the modern age when the demand for democratic self-government has become a world-wide claim.