Democratic institutions and recognition of individual identities

Identity politics and the promise of democracy

Since the rise of practical identity politics in the 1960s, it has become ever clearer that recognizing individuating identities is one of the central themes of contemporary political discussion (Thompson, 2006: 2). There is an acute perceived need in multicultural societies to include minorities in the decision-making structures of the society and to get everyone’s interests heard. Misrecognition and cultural disrespect obstruct integration and, in the extreme cases, lead to actions that threaten the social order as those who have fallen to the margins of the society may well become indifferent or hostile towards it.

It has been argued by recognition theorists that behind these practical problems of everyday politics are social and psychological mechanisms that are best understood through the Hegelian concept of recognition. From the influential formulations by Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth in the early 1990s onwards, recognition theories have emphasized, firstly, the personal side of recognition and, secondly, the politically motivating force of recognition. One of the core intuitions is that recognition, understood as positive attitudes and positive attribution of social statuses from others, is a ‘vital human need’ (Taylor, 1994: 26) and that getting recognition from others is necessary for achieving positive self-understanding of oneself as a fully-fledged person. ¹ Included in the idea of self-realization or self-understanding through recognition is the second central intuition that recognition is a political concept. If we need recognition to achieve a livable life, then the lack of social recognition drives us to struggle for it. Disrespect and misrecognition can truly cause us harm and thus avoiding them is seen to be the force behind social movements (Honneth, 1995) and, especially, the contemporary forms of identity politics.

Society as a whole is thus understood as a system of recognition. According to Honneth (Fraser and Honneth, 2003: 138), interpersonal forms of recognition get institutionalized and this, in turn, provides a view of society where institutions have a normative core that is dependent on individuals’ need for recognition. Ideally this means that our institutions and personal relationships with others ought to be arranged so that all parties can feel ‘at home’ with their personal identities. Recognition as positive affirmation from others is needed for personal psychological development and well-being, and this anthropological grounding is then used to evaluate how well the institutional world fulfils these norms of individual self-realization and social freedom that they are supposed to embody (Honneth, 2014).

This intuition about the importance of recognition can also be formulated in the terms of authenticity. Taylor (1994: 28) claims that we cannot be ‘true to ourselves’ and to our way of being without being recognized. Our authentic identities are formed through relations with others, but at the same time we invoke them when we demand recognition. According to Taylor (1994: 38), this ideal – or norm – of authenticity penetrates individual recognition as well as the politics of recognition. The politics of recognition, understood as identity politics, is based on the idea that we have our authentic identities that require recognition – be they individual identities in private interaction or collective (cultural) identities in the political sphere.

When the ideal of authentic recognition is combined with the view that the whole society and its institutions form a framework of intersubjective recognition, we can see how democratic societies emerge as promising candidates for social organization. Democracy gives all those who are affected by the institutional setting a say on how the setting itself is organized. Thus, or so the idea goes, a democratic society will offer the best possible surroundings for authentic recognition as the institutions of recognition are formed through participation in democratic decision-making that is sensitive to the recognition needs of all citizens. In short, people themselves decide how they construct their recognition-relationships.

However, before explicating the potential problems of the view presented above, a short detour into the meaning of ‘democratic institution’ is required. In the literature discussing recognition and deliberative democracy, democratic institutions refer mainly to state institutions and the government. However, as Tuomela (2007: 196–7) notes, by institution we can mean any norm-governed practice or system, from language as such to money to corporations with strict rules of tasks and rights. If this is combined with the broad sense of democracy as a decision-making mechanism that is based on majority voting, then any institution can be a democratic institution as long as it just uses a democratic decision-making mechanism to actually make its decisions. In principle any social organization that needs to collectively decide something can do it so in democratic fashion. The examples range from families and local communities to corporations and national elections to international institutions such as The European Union or the United Nations (List, 2011: 265). With such a large spectrum of informal and formal social groups that are potentially democratic, it becomes obvious that the democratic procedures may get a variety of realizations.

Following the work of Christian List and Philip Pettit, we can also identify certain shared features that prevail across various democratic systems. In his discussion on the possible logical spaces of democracy, List describes three common and initially plausible intuitions about what he calls ‘democratic platitudes’ (List, 2011: 274). These are (a) robustness to pluralism, (b) basic majoritarianism, and (c) collective rationality. In short, democracies are often understood (a) as systems that accept as an input any possible combination of individual attitudes on the propositions on the given agenda; (b) as systems where majority acceptance is a necessary deciding factor for collective acceptance of any proposition; and (c) as systems which strive for consistent and complete attitudes on the propositions that are on the agenda (List, 2011: 272–4). These are only taken as minimal requirements that are commonly held to be necessary for a decision-making procedure to be democratic, and even though List (2011: 275) argues that only two of the three conditions can be fulfilled in any given democratic procedure, we can still take all three of them as ideals that address (a) the input conditions of what we count as relevant inputs for democratic decision-making; (b) the responsiveness conditions of how the collective democratic decision should relate to the individuals’ attitudes on the matter; and (c) the output conditions of how rational or irrational we wish our collective decisions to be (List, 2011: 293).

These ideals are broad enough to allow multiple different practical realizations with a variety of vote-counting mechanisms. However, as List makes clear, these are only ‘necessary conditions on a democratic procedure narrowly construed’ (List, 2011: 274), while most people expect democratic institutions to fulfil stronger requirements.

This is the case with Honneth and Taylor ² as they conceive democracy not merely as a procedural method of counting votes and making decisions, but also as a way of collectively determining the form of our social world. That is, as a deliberative democracy. In Taylor’s (1998: 144) view, democracy includes not only deciding together but also deliberating together in a way that has the potential to change participants’ views on the matter at hand. Democratic consensus is not only about balancing and accommodating distinct viewpoints but changing them together. Similarly, Honneth (2007), in his interpretation of Dewey’s theory of democracy, argues that democracy is a social ideal, which includes cooperative problem-solving – by all those who are affected directly or indirectly by the decisions – that is based on a pre-political association amongst the agents. Democracy is deliberation that gets its orientation from a shared value basis. Honneth (2007: 235) follows Dewey in stating that for this sense of common good and participation in common matters to arise, a just division of labor is required.

In his broader analysis of deliberative democracy, Pettit (2001: 270) names three further constraints that those who endorse a deliberative form of democracy ought to subscribe to. These are the inclusive constraint, the judgmental constraint, and the dialogical constraint. These state, firstly, that all members should be entitled to vote; secondly, that the voters ought to deliberate which solution is the best for the matter at hand before casting their vote; and thirdly, that this deliberation should be carried out via an open and unforced dialogue. This simulates a Habermasian ideal speech situation but at the same time it is clear that without unlimited time and other resources to reason together, we need to vote to achieve decisions.

The above characterization of (deliberatively) democratic institutions is highly procedural and at the same time broader than the usual discussion that concentrates on state institutions and government. The broader notion gives us room to move beyond the formal state institutions to other potentially democratic but more informal cultural institutions, social groupings, and so forth. For the current purposes this is important as the aim is to discuss neither merely democratic states nor all democratic institutions, but democratic recognition institutions. In a (deliberative) democratic recognition institution, people ought to be able to come together openly to discuss how the recognition system itself is arranged. With the democratic ideals that List listed, the decisions should aim to be collectively rational, deferent to majority opinion, and open in the sense that everyone has a say and no option is closed out before deliberation.

All in all, democracy is then understood as cooperative problem-solving that in the context of recognition determines the practical ways in which ‘we’ arrange our institutions of recognition. The promise of democracy is that everyone has their say in the collective determination of our lifeform and, if we go as far as Honneth (2014) does in interpreting institutions of recognition as important elements of freedom, then democracy is a central part of our self-understanding and freedom. It is no wonder, then, that recognition and deliberative democracy are often seen as naturally fitting counterparts for each other (McBride, 2005: 497). However, as will become clear in the next section, this is a promise that may not be so easily fulfilled.

Democracy challenged

Piecing together the idea of recognizing individual identities in an authentic manner with democratic decision-making is not as straightforward as it may sound. The problems with a politics of recognition in deliberative democracies have been singled out on many occasions, and here the critical points developed by Cillian McBride (2005) are taken as a starting point in an attempt to show that democratic institutions have difficulties in providing successful authentic recognition for their members. This is partly because the authentic identities of individuals and groups may be understood in a problematic manner and partly because of the logic of democratic decision-making mechanisms themselves.

McBride’s argument is that in practice democratic institutions (or states) tend to aim for a group representation in a fashion that, while trying to ensure recognition of authentic identities, introduces counter-deliberative tendencies as the represented collective identities are themselves somehow pre-deliberatively filtered prior to being brought into the public sphere (McBride, 2005: 500). The worry is that, if the politics of recognition means formal group recognition, then the dissenting voices from within those groups may not be heard in the process of deliberation. In short, if the politics of recognition consists of institutional inclusion that relies on objectified collective identities, then the idea that deliberative democracy should be inclusive of all citizens, all relevant facts, and all relevant reasons is not fulfilled.

McBride (2005: 502) challenges what he calls politics of authentic recognition partly on the grounds that while we can respect others as equally worthy persons in moral and political deliberation, esteem for particular identities cannot be demanded in such fashion. ³

The demand for recognition of my particularities risks becoming implicated in a dangerous narcissism, for if my overriding concern is to see myself mirrored in the reactions of others, then the extent to which I am genuinely engaging with them as others, that is as independent centres of thought and agency, is thrown into question. (McBride, 2005: 503)

McBride’s solution to this is politics of egalitarian recognition where identity-based claims are also seen as open to challenges and deliberation. ‘Identities […] should not be taken as “givens” but rather as candidates for moral scrutiny and potential revision’ (McBride, 2005: 505). The claims for recognition should not be seen as mere demands to rectify unjust misrecognition or to correct situations where due recognition is lacking. Rather, those claims ‘call upon us to deliberate and judge’ (McBride, 2005: 506) whether the claims for recognition are indeed justified. Thus they can also be seen as supportive of the greater ideal of democratic politics. That is, deciding and understanding together what is socially just.

The move towards egalitarian recognition is a move against a corporatist model of group recognition where only a particular official collective identity of a group is recognized by the state and included in its decision-making mechanisms. McBride (2005: 506–7) sees that a politics of authentic recognition makes it more difficult for an individual to become an author of her own identity because solidifying only one facet of their identity pressures the individual to conform to that particular identity in order to count as ‘authentic’. The worry is that:

State recognition of group difference in the form of formally corporatist systems of representation may appear to strengthen inclusivity, but will set in motion a politics of authenticity that will filter out dissenting perspectives as ‘inauthentic’ and ‘unrepresentative’. Inclusive deliberation is best served by institutions that will make it easier to unseat elite hegemonies, not by institutions that will entrench the rule of a new elite of identity-entrepreneurs. (McBride, 2005: 507)

All of this is a good reminder of one of the key assumptions behind recognition theories. That is, that identities are dialogical in character. ⁴ The argument for egalitarian recognition assumes that identities can be changed through deliberation. While it is true that identities are not ‘given’ in a strong sense, it is also clear, as McBride (2013: 148) points out elsewhere, that we have resistance to recognition. Though we are constituted through recognition relationships, this does not mean that all or any attitudes that others have towards us are straightforwardly mirrored in our understanding of ourselves. ⁵ If this is combined with the idea that, while we may not be able to justifiably demand positive esteem – rather, only toleration of our identities – we still need to be esteemed to achieve a strong enough sense of self (Honneth, 1995: 121) for a livable life, then the positive promise of egalitarian recognition seems weaker. While McBride is right in criticizing the homogenizing ‘authentic’ collective identities, it is not as clear if deliberative democracy understood through a politics of egalitarian recognition can guarantee that everyone is free to ‘become the author of her own identity’ and ‘to narrate and negotiate her own version of her self’ (McBride, 2005: 507). At least not in a fashion that would guarantee that this particular identity gets esteemed.

McBride (2005: 505) is right in saying that some differences in identities might be a product of inequality. However, if one agrees with the ‘fact of pluralism’, then deliberative democracy in its egalitarian form begins soon to show homogenizing tendencies of its own. That is, if the framework of esteem is decided through shared deliberation, then the result presents a universal framework of esteem – or to use Honneth’s (1995: 122) terms, a shared value horizon. Though everyone is free to pursue esteem for their identities within this framework, the frame itself is the same for all. What Taylorian cultural recognition aims to do is to justify a plurality of such frameworks that could coexist with one another. If individuals are left alone in their pursuits for changing the value horizon for esteem, they will be less powerful than in the context where they could struggle for the change as an identity group. Thus, while deliberative democracy combined with egalitarian recognition is understood to avoid group related domination, dealing away with real cultural diversities might simplify the issues behind plural identities and struggles for transformation of recognition systems themselves.

The same point is reflected in Thompson’s argument that ‘it is for the citizens in a democracy to decide which claims for recognition, redistribution and representation are just; but this is possible only if inclusive deliberation is underpinned by just recognition, redistribution and representation’ (Thompson, 2009: 1080). There are two relevant claims present here. The first is that the relationship between just forms of the institutional world and recognition is circular in the sense that the just institutions require prior pre-political recognition, while recognition itself is mediated through the institutions. ⁶ This highlights the worry that a mere formal deliberatively democratic institution does not guarantee just outcomes. Secondly, if it is up to citizens or members of a group to decide what is just, this opens up the possibility that there are many rival conceptions of the good life and of a just organization of society. However, we do not have the space here to analyze this any further. Instead, the focus is turned to one specific issue that follows from shifting the emphasis on collective identities towards individual identities.

McBride’s move from monolithic collective identities towards more individualistic agency in politics is a good reminder that we need to be wary of the power relations that are included in the identity formation of groups that are democratic or that take part in democratic will-formation. This practical worry is well heeded by theorists ⁷ but what we want to show here is that even if there is no abuse of power present in democratic will-formation, the logic of democracy itself – even in its deliberative form – might hinder the possibilities for attaining recognition for individual selves. That is to say that, although the obvious practical problems of power exist, there is also a logical issue underneath.

In their work on collective decision-making, Christian List and Philip Pettit (2002, 2004, 2011; also List, 2011) have highlighted the fact that democratic decisions are likely to be compromises between various actual positions held by the participating individuals. They argue that it is not possible to find a decision-making mechanism that manages to incorporate successfully the three democratic ideals – openness to pluralism, responsiveness to the majority, and collective rationality. According to their general impossibility result, ⁸ there is no formal procedure for collective decision-making which obeys the condition that ‘the collective judgment on a proposition must depend exclusively on the number of individuals accepting that proposition, and the number of individuals rejecting it’ (List and Pettit, 2004: 227) that would at the same time ensure that if the individuals’ judgments are rational, then the collective judgment achieved through the decision-making procedure will be rational too. In other words, there is no such decision-making mechanism for a democratic group that would retain, without limiting voting options, responsiveness to individual attitudes and collective coherence.

This is a technical issue that applies to majority voting systems but it also has relevant implications in regard to forming recognition systems through deliberative democracy. That is, though we might want to avoid any forms of the tyranny of the majority that plague purely proceduralistic forms of democracy by moving towards deliberative forms of democracy, even deliberative democracies require compromises. For example, there are cases in which some members’ or even every members’ opinion will be passed over or issues on the agenda need to be limited beforehand. This follows from the commitment to collective rationality that especially deliberative democracies need to make if they want to be seen as collective reasoning processes that further a common goal (Pettit, 2003: 177). ⁹ Thus, it is possible that through democratic formation of institutions of recognition, no one gets their individual recognition wishes or needs fulfilled, no one gets recognition for their authentic or self-defined self. The emphasis on individuals and their self-definitions in deliberative democracy aims to avoid collective pressure and biased power-relations, but at the same time, in the name of collective rationality, we are forced to accept compromises. This is no news to anyone who follows everyday politics – compromises are always necessary when there are different identities and reasonable disagreements at play. However, from the compromise-like nature of democratic decisions it follows that the recognition institutions themselves provide recognition in a compromised manner.

Thus, even if collective identities at the level of cultural groups and political movements are ‘deliberatively open’ or non-essentializing, the logic of democratic decision-making ensures that whatever is decided may not meet the recognition needs of the individuals as such. Thus, the solution of moving authentic recognition from the collective level into the individual level by giving room for self-definitions of individuals and opening collective identities for deliberation does not seem able to reconcile (individual) recognition with democratic institutions. The claim that a politics of authentic recognition delegitimizes dissenting voices (McBride, 2005: 507) applies to a politics of egalitarian recognition too.

This issue has two further consequences. The first is that recognition needs are best met in homogenous groups with a strongly shared framework of esteem. This is part of what Taylor (1998, 2002) has claimed in his discussions of the dynamics of democratic exclusion. In his (Taylor, 2002) view, democracies need a sense of ‘we the people’ that may not leave room for proper multiculturalism. This observation can be extended to the claim that deliberative democracy in fact causes homogenization, as members need to commit to the collective decisions made by the group.

Secondly, if the institutions cannot provide feasible surroundings for individual self-realization, it is highly likely that individuals will be reluctant to identify with them. This, in turn, leads into the widely experienced legitimization crises of democratic institutions. As McBride (2005: 511) notes: ‘In the absence of adequate institutional conduits between voters and the parliamentary public sphere we should not be surprised to find rising levels of voter apathy or outright hostility towards professional politicians combined with a concern for political issues.’ According to the ‘collective acceptance’ view, institutions need to be accepted and identified with for them to have any power over us (Searle, 1995; Tuomela, 2013). Individualistic claims for recognition cannot be directly fulfilled in recognition institutions that are based on compromises – unless they are strongly homogeneous. Thus, it seems that we face a dilemma of either accepting recognition of unauthentic identities in order to ensure the existence of democratic institutions or letting go of democracy in search for authentic recognition.

Achieving authenticity

So far we have seen that, on the one hand, if recognition is based on a collective sense of authenticity, it will have counter-democratic tendencies. On the other hand, if recognition is taken in the egalitarian sense that emphasizes individual self-definition, then democratic institutions cannot guarantee that individuals will be recognized in an authentic manner. In this section, a conceptual route to reconcile individual recognition and democratic institutions is sought through clarifying the conditions of how needs for recognition are constituted.

The problem of fulfilling individuals’ recognition needs or their ‘recognition deficit’ in democratic institutions follows from considering those needs to be somehow stable and well-defined before entering the public sphere of democracy. One way to try to circumvent this problem is to claim that, fundamentally, our recognition needs are the same and thus any deep discrepancies of democratic decision-making follow from misunderstanding the claims of the others. If our recognition needs coincide, then democracy becomes the means to organize our resources (and recognition) in a just manner. Though there is some basis for seeing the need for recognition as an anthropological constant that is shared by all human beings, this is only a very abstract claim (Iser, 2013). Even if everyone needs recognition and even if everyone needs similar kinds of recognition, it does not follow that it would be possible to fit together the different cultural realizations of needs for recognition or that some shared needs for recognition would not be in competition with each other. An example of the latter case is described by McBride (2013) when he shows that individuating esteem is hierarchical in nature and based on differences and comparisons between individuals. Thus, even if this longing for esteem is shared, that fact does not make it any easier to arrange the institutional world so that everyone’s needs would be fulfilled. ¹⁰

However, this does not yet mean that recognition needs would be essentially individualistic either. Though the anthropological basis of recognition does not yet provide the means to say that recognition needs are similar or compatible in any strong sense, it is possible to find stronger arguments for this from the institutional constitution and mediation of recognition. As an intersubjective theory of selfhood, it has been part and parcel of Hegelian theories of recognition to claim that agents are constituted in relation and in dialogue with others. For example, McBride’s (2005: 502) argument for egalitarian politics of recognition includes also a rejection of an atomistic ontology in favor of an intersubjectivist sense of self. However, the claim suggested here goes even further in saying that the intersubjective interaction does not take place only between two interdependent individuals but that there is always a collective institutional framework of recognition that gives meaning to the whole practice. This is to say that our understanding of our recognition needs is dependent on the broader institutional recognition order or a broader social order.

From this it follows that an agent’s recognition needs are not necessarily fully defined before she takes part in (potentially democratic) recognition institutions. Instead they are defined in these institutions and thus the compromise-like nature of democratic decision-making does not go against any authentic needs of the individuals as such. Rather, what is authentic is defined in relation to the institutions themselves.

Though authentic recognition needs and democracy might be understood as fitting together in this manner, the view proposed here is not without its own problems. The first is the practical issue that even if we are socially constituted beings, there are multiple sources for constitution and the ego is often quite well-formed when people enter democratic institutions where they have a say in how the institution as such is formed. It would require an unrealistic amount of plasticity on the individuals’ part to be able to change their identities and recognition needs according to what has been declared in the democratic decision-making processes. As we are – up to a certain point – resistant to recognition, the identity changing power of democratic institutions might be overstated.

However, this practical problem can be turned into an argument for democratization of those recognition institutions that are not democratic. If justice is seen not only as the fulfilment of recognition needs but also as socially free self-determination in recognitive institutions (Honneth, 2014), then it is exactly democracy that gives individuals the power to be co-determinants of the contents of those recognitive institutions. Democracy gives them power to define themselves – and here the plural is intentional as one does not define just oneself but the ‘we’ that is also determinant of the individual. In more Taylorian terms, democracy enables dialogical selves to determine together the dialogue that constitutes them.

This normative claim can, in turn, be considered as too idealistic. It is clear that democracy does not guarantee in itself that the decisions or the resulting system of recognition is just (Thompson, 2009). Practical power relations need to be accounted for as it is clear that those in weaker positions will have problems in getting their voices heard even if the system as such is democratic. Unjust power-relations may well create vicious circles in democratic systems that reinforce and reinstate those unjust practices.

Part of the problem is that seeing democracy through a recognition theoretical perspective has often ended up in concentrating on identity politics (Taylor, 1994; Fraser and Honneth, 2003). This may hide the fact that most political groups in democratic struggles can still be seen as interest groups struggling for their own gain in a world with a scarcity of resources. The recognition-redistribution debate between Fraser and Honneth (2003) touches exactly this issue. Fraser argues that there are both economy and identity based claims in politics and that these are separate spheres, while Honneth subsumes economic issues under recognition. Here we do not need to take sides on this debate but only glean two further points from it. Firstly, the debate makes it clear that issues related to identity and recognition are indeed a relevant part of modern politics – even if they would not be the only relevant matter. Secondly, within the democratic sphere, economic interest groups can be seen as more eager to participate in cooperative compromising than merely identity based groups. Though negotiating powers are rarely even, interest groups are presumably more willing to trade and to let go of some of their aims in order to reach a political solution to the issue at hand. Identity groups, on the other hand, may not be as willing to trade off what is their whole existence and thus politics centered on identity claims are potentially prone to avoiding compromises ¹¹ – even if the identity claims are based on a false sense of ‘authentic’ collective identity.

Moving away from too strong a sense of authenticity and essentialized identity towards an open and deliberative sense of collective recognition might not solve this issue. Even if collective identities, like individual identities, are dialogical, collective identities are much more self-sufficient. While ‘external recognition’ and relations to others surely have some effects on collective identities, they are not necessary to uphold a collective identity. Instead, it is enough that the members ‘internally’ recognize – or constitute – the collective. In short, ‘internal recognition’ or ‘I-we’ recognition between the group and its members is sufficient for upholding collective identities. ¹²

If collective identities are relatively independent from each other and if their senses of common purpose and the good life are defined within themselves, we face the big question of multiculturalism: how to solve the cases of claimed cultural incompatibility? Even if the group identities were not defined in any objectifying manner, and even if they were open for redefinitions, discourses, and challenges from within, there is no guarantee that clashes between these ‘deliberatively open’ cultural groups would be possible to solve. The question is far too broad to be tackled here, though some potential answers can be found from at least two sources that are not mutually exclusive. First, one could claim that the shared psychological or anthropological basis for recognition needs – despite its cultural and historical variance – is such that at least a shared basis for tolerance and the acceptance of the existence of different conceptions of the good and recognition needs can be found. Second, the solution can be searched for from another direction: larger, perhaps global, institutions could provide a framework within which different identity groups come together to deliberate how to arrange their reciprocal relations in a manner that enables flourishing co-existence.

In short, the above argument aims to show that while deliberatively democratic institutions might be successful in reaching ‘in-group’ authentic recognition through recognizing ourselves as part of the ‘we’ – and thus avoiding essentialized collective identities or too atomistic or individualistic views of agency ¹³ – when we get to the level where collective self-sufficient identities are established, deliberative openness alone might not help us to deal with the clashes of identity groups. Although clashes of cultures could in principle be unsolvable, some of the problems could potentially be lessened through enabling tolerant coexistence at the state level or the global level institutions, ensuring that the group identities themselves are the results of deliberative practices, and fostering deliberative practices between the identity groups.

Conclusion

Deliberative democracy has showed promise and potential as a form of self-government that would allow fulfilment of authentic recognition needs. However, combining a theory of recognition with deliberative democracy in this way requires a middle-ground conception of individual agency and of the recognition needs of individuals that forgoes rigid collective identities and instead sees individual identities as constituted in collective contexts and through ‘I-we’ relationships. Theories that assume too strong collective identities have counter-democratic tendencies, while the theories that are driven by an unquestioning modern individualism cannot motivate agents to take part in democratic decision-making that necessarily requires consensuses. ¹⁴ Although the strong sense of ‘us’ is partly homogenizing and partly creates divides between collective identities, that need not leave us in deep trouble. Though, as Taylor states, there is a danger that ‘the democratic age poses new obstacles to coexistence, because it opens a new set of issues which may deeply divide people, those concerning the political identity of the state’ (Taylor, 2002), we do not need to assume that the recognition of collective identities will necessarily lead into multicultural divides and the problems of defining a strong sense of ‘we the people’ of a democratic state. While Taylor is worried that strong cultural identities lead into exclusion which, in turn, ‘goes against the legitimacy idea of popular sovereignty, which is to realize the government of all the people’ (Taylor, 2002), perhaps all that is needed on the state level is the possibility for discourse, understanding of democratic processes, and tolerance for different frameworks of esteem – combined with a democratic and fluid understanding of the cultural identities themselves. That is, instead of a strong homogenizing democratic practice, minimal cohesion might do the job just as well.