Political Liberalism and Democratic Contestation

This chapter shows how political liberalism nourishes political parties, by leaving many controversial issues open to democratic contestation. It especially focuses on religious issues, and argues that neither moderate separation nor moderate establishment, intended as regimes of religious governance that fix specific interpretations of principles of social and economic justice, is compatible with Rawls’s political liberalism. The chapter then introduces an additional ideal model of religious governance called ‘democratic accommodationism’, which differs both from moderate separation and from moderate establishment. The chapter further examines the place of social and economic issues in Rawls’s political liberalism. It shows that political liberalism does not warrant the constitutionalization of either classical liberal rights or social rights, and therefore leaves socio-economic issues open to the democratic contestation of partisan politics.