Eric Cheng's "Hanging Together" (2022, CUP)

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

This roundtable considers Eric Cheng’s “Hanging Together: Role-Based Constitutional Fellowship and the Challenge of Difference and Disagreement” (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Cheng is assistant professor of political theory at Waseda University.
 
Hanging Together examines the challenge of political disagreement and social difference in liberal democracy. Advancing a metaphor of citizenship termed 'role-based constitutional fellowship,' the book argues that a series of ‘divisions of labour’ among citizens, differently situated, can help cultivate the foundational trust required to harness the benefits of disagreement and difference all the while preventing disagreement and difference from ‘overheating’ and leaving liberal democracy vulnerable to the growing influence of autocratic political forces. Hanging Together, however, recognizes that it is not always appropriate to attempt to cultivate trust, and acknowledges the important role that some forms of confrontation might play in identifying and rectifying undue social hierarchies (e.g., racial-ethnic hierarchies). Hanging Together thereby paves a middle way between deliberative and realist conceptions of democracy.
 
The roundtable will feature five discussants: Matthew Chick, Paige Digeser, Kevin Elliott, Paul Ludwig, and Lucas Swaine. Mary Scudder will serve as chair.

MATTHEW CHICK

Cheng argues that good manners are at the core of cultivating trust among democratic citizens. Chick is provisionally skeptical of this claim. Nonetheless, he will engage in a discussion of how manners might impact deliberation, ordinary civic life, and what this understanding implies for definitions of trust.
 
PAIGE DIGESER
 
Cheng argues that liberal democratic institutions can only withstand the strains of disagreement when citizens share a commitment to preserve the regime, something resembling Aristotlean political friendship. Central to this shared commitment is the cultivation of a culture of trust. This paper will focus on the idea of political friendship and the development of trust amongst the general citizenry. How are friendship and trust related to one another? Can friendship do the kind of work that Aristotle and Cheng want it to do? And is the aspiration of unity through generalized trust desirable (i.e., is Cheng moderate position aiming too high?)?
 
KEVIN ELLIOTT
 
Cheng develops an account of constitutional fellowship premised on broad shared commitment to liberal democracy. This raises anew the question of whether we should seek to ground democracy in the beliefs of citizens, rather than in institutions that shape citizen behavior in democratic ways regardless of their beliefs. Cheng doubts that institutions can do the job, but institutional reform may be able to address disagreement-driven problems. The role of institutions is also raised in the question of what to do about anti-democrats. His framework suggests skepticism toward militant democracy, since militant democracy seeks to limit disagreement through coercive state action. I suspect the "problem of enemies" intrudes further into this book than it seems, making militant democracy immediately relevant.
 
PAUL LUDWIG
 
Cheng addresses problems of initiating good dialectical cycles and preventing bad ones. Each dialectic is based on a binary. For instance, pragmatists help purists compromise, while purists keep pragmatists honest. A bad dialectic is also possible: the hypocrisy of pragmatists drives purists further into unrealistic fantasies, while purists’ lack of realism eggs on pragmatists to greater cynicism. Cheng addresses ways of keeping the dialectic mutually beneficial. This raises several questions. Do political actors divide their labor because they perceive their mutual benefit? And do policymakers nudge this division of labor into existence?  
 
Cheng’s vision presupposes a broad commitment to liberal democracy. Yet are Cheng’s interlocutors committed to *liberal* democracy? Aristotle is an aristocrat, Chantal Mouffe draws on Carl Schmitt, etc. Insofar as liberalism means a social realm of freedom, not subject to state coercion, its fundamental tenet has been questionable since the necessary correction of the civil rights movement. To what extent are any of us liberal democrats, as opposed to democrats simply?
 
LUCAS SWAINE

Freedom of thought grounds a citizen’s prerogative to refrain from disclosing her thinking, even given associated costs to information-sharing and transparency that such a prerogative provides. This point is especially pressing for more vulnerable citizens who may face significant prejudice or backlash for divulging their opinions or views to others. Swaine will discuss how fuller inclusion of this value in Cheng’s framework can help manage the problem of discursive “overheating”, motivate positive forms of “confrontation”, and guide normatively deliberative expectations and practices in more inclusive, respectful, and legitimate directions.

Sub Unit

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Chair

• Molly Scudder Purdue University

Presenters

• Eric Cheng Nanyang Technological University

• Matthew Bryan Chick Hartwick College

• Paul W. Ludwig St. John's College

• Paige Digeser University of California, Santa Barbara

• Lucas Swaine Dartmouth College

• Kevin J. Elliott Yale University