In Defense of a Permissive Principle of International Toleration

In his Law of Peoples, Rawls argued that decent hierarchical societies have a principled claim to international toleration. This Rawlsian principle of toleration has attracted sustained criticism, with critics insisting that only democracies can be members in good standing of the international community (Beitz, Moellendorf, Tan). This article draws on an under-theorized aspect of Kant's political thought – Kant's notion of "permissive law" – to formulate a novel midway position in the debate over the international toleration of undemocratic regimes. The article defends a modified principle of toleration, according to which hierarchical societies can have a principled claim to toleration, but only if their governments work towards the transition to democratic rule as effectively as can reasonably be expected under current political conditions. This modified principle of toleration is more restrictive than the Rawlsian principle, but it is more permissive than the view that hierarchical societies cannot have a claim to international toleration. Moreover, it is permissive in the specifically Kantian sense, which denotes exceptions from general moral principles that reflect necessary conditions for the realization of rightful relations. The article argues that this permissive principle of toleration provides a compelling alternative to the Rawlsian view and the views of his critics. The article also explores the political implications of this permissive principle of toleration for debates over global justice and the ethics of humanitarian intervention. The argument in defense of this modified principle of toleration has two main steps. The article first responds to a prominent objection to the Rawlsian principle of toleration. According to this objection, authoritarian regimes cannot have a claim to toleration because only domestically legitimate regimes can have such claims, and regimes must be democratic to be domestically legitimate. The article draws on the Kantian account of "permissive law" to reject the second premise of this argument. While the view that only democracies can be domestically legitimate has strong roots in the Kantian tradition (Stilz, Kleingeld), Kant's own view seems to have been that authoritarian regimes can also be legitimate, in a permissive sense, if (i) democracy is currently not politically feasible, for instance because smaller states find themselves in the sphere of influence of a larger undemocratic power, and if (ii) these regimes work towards the implementation of democracy in a "republican spirit" (Perpetual Peace, Metaphysics of Morals). Building on a larger ongoing research project, the article defends the claim that authoritarian regimes can be permissively legitimate under these conditions. In the second step, the article presents the positive case for granting such permissively legitimate authoritarian regimes claims to international toleration. Kant already suggested that such regimes can be members in good standing of the international community, but the permissive dimension of Kant's international political thought has only recently attracted systematic attention (Ypi, Corradetti). Drawing on this recent scholarship, the article argues that permissively legitimate authoritarian regimes should be treated as the rightful representatives of their subjects on the international stage.