A Pragmatic Turn in Confucian Democratic Theory

Among moderate Confucian political theorists, there is more or less a consensus about the value of democracy. However, what the value of democracy entails is not so obvious. According to Kim, there is a false dichotomy in the contemporary literature between the Schumpeterian conception of democracy, which views the value of democracy in a strictly instrumental sense, and the Deweyan conception of democracy, which grants democracy intrinsic value beyond its institutional function. The important insight in Kim's study is that “the Schumpeterian model and the Deweyan model should not be understood as two distinct, mutually exclusive conceptions of democracy, but rather as illuminating different features of democracy, each salient (comparatively speaking) at a different stage.”Footnote ⁹ Specifically, two stages can be identified in Kim's account:

1. (1) In the transition stage—whether from early modern absolutism or modern forms of authoritarianism—the Schumpeterian model looms large because the instrumental value is the key motivating force of regime transition on which this model of democracy is undergirded.

2. (2) The Deweyan model gains its salient normative significance during the period of democratic consolidation in which democracy becomes “the only game in town,” attitudinally, behaviorally, and constitutionally, as well as perennially beyond… . Only at this stage can democracy, originally pursued for sheer instrumental reasons, attain its intrinsic value, becoming our democracy. Only then will citizens neither look back to their authoritarian past with nostalgia for a perpetual life of being ruled and provided for nor be tempted to trade the values of political autonomy and common citizenship (i.e., their sovereign status) with the goods (largely economic) that some nondemocracies claim to deliver better.Footnote ¹⁰

Based on this two-stage view that mediates between the two standard conceptions of democracy, Kim proposes what he refers to as “pragmatic Confucian democracy” that is supposed to be a superior model for the establishment and maintenance of democracy in East Asia where authoritarian history still haunts its modernization process.Footnote ¹¹

Pragmatic Confucian democracy, according to Kim, is first and foremost a form of democracy that “derives its value initially from its institutional and instrumental ability to effectively and legitimately coordinate complex social interactions among citizens with diverse moral and material interests,” and only then will it justify “values accrued in the course of living the democratic way of life, which make democracy intrinsically valuable.”Footnote ¹² When it comes to institutional justification, a pragmatic Confucian democrat is essentially “a moderate political consequentialist,” in the sense that her political support for democracy is “not primarily to best realize certain moral ends cherished by ancient Confucianism” but to advocate “an overarching and authoritative political institutional framework under which coercive political power is exercised legitimately, in the people's name.”Footnote ¹³ In other words, most people will likely be motivated by instrumental reasons for democracy during the initial phase of democratic transition. As democracy gains its footing, citizens will need to go beyond the instrumental view of democracy and develop the capacity to appreciate the intrinsic value of democracy. This is achieved with the guidance of the “mutual accommodation thesis,” according to which “a newly introduced democratic way of life should dialectically interact with the local Confucian civic culture, thereby generating the Confucian democratic culture, a new civic culture distinct from both liberal civic culture and traditional undemocratic Confucian civic culture.”Footnote ¹⁴ This mutually accommodating relationship “not only enables us to engage with various forms of local Confucianism that actually exist in modern East Asia with continuing social evolution, but more importantly in the present context, helps us make sense of the significance of Confucianism as a civic culture in the process of democratic consolidation and further maturation of the democracy afterward.”Footnote ¹⁵ Pragmatic Confucian democracy thus realizes both the instrumental and the intrinsic value of democracy without compromising Confucian civic culture in East Asia.

The pragmatic focus, supported by the mutual accommodation thesis, makes pragmatic Confucian democracy stand out among contemporary theories of Confucian democracy. However, it falls short in justifying the unique role Confucianism plays in accommodating democracy when it is only one among many comprehensive doctrines in contemporary East Asia. In the next two sections, I will first outline the problem and then situate it in Kim's broader project of public reason Confucianism in order to offer clarification and a response to potential objections.

The Problem with Pragmatic Confucian Democracy

Although Confucianism has historically penetrated both the public and the private spheres in East Asian societies, it is both empirically and theoretically questionable to take Confucianism and its associated cultural heritage for granted and claim that it will necessarily serve as the civic culture that defines democracies in East Asia.Footnote ¹⁶ Many moderate Confucian political theorists clearly recognize the fact of reasonable pluralism.Footnote ¹⁷ For instance, one of the motivations behind Joseph Chan's moderate Confucian perfectionism is to show through “a piecemeal and moderate approach” that “certain Confucian values and principles can be endorsed by citizens who do not subscribe to Confucianism and serve to ground a number of basic institutions of liberal democracy.”Footnote ¹⁸ Kim is perhaps one of the most vocal theorists to clearly acknowledge reasonable pluralism in East Asian societies. In support of his public reason Confucianism, Kim says:

The case of South Korea is particularly noteworthy. Usually regarded as the most homogeneously Confucian country in East Asia, South Korea has seen an increasing lack of self-identification accompanied by lower visibility of Confucianism in politics and education. In politics, Confucianism “lost its most important function as the orthodox state ideology after the fall of the monarchy in the early twentieth century, and in subsequent years it could no longer claim any leading role in the modernizing and Westernizing republican polity.”Footnote ²⁰ In education, “Confucianism as a scholarly pursuit has disappeared since the introduction of modern education…. The hyanggyo, traditional Confucian schools in the capital and the provinces, and the sowon, private academies (Chinese: shu-yuan), survive only in their decaying edifices, having lost the functions of education and public opinion formation.” Thus, even in South Korea, Confucianism is “hardly visible on the surface and rarely manifests itself in any organization or institution. It survives only at the most basic level of the popular consciousness and in the routines of daily life.”Footnote ²¹ In a more recent survey by the Association of Religion Data Archives, South Korean citizens who practice Confucianism amount to only 10.9%, whereas those who practice Buddhism and Christianity amount to 24.8% and 33.4%, respectively.Footnote ²² In addition, Doh Chull Shin's comprehensive empirical studies demonstrate that South Korea is by no means an exception. In none of the five historically Confucian countries (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, and Vietnam) is the Confucian way of life the most popular cultural type. Instead, more people have embraced the egalitarian or individualist way of life, to the extent that East Asia as a whole is now even more individualistic than any of the four other non-Western cultural zones (South Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Muslim zones), and less so only in comparison with the democratic West and ex-communist West.Footnote ²³

Although these empirical studies by no means show that Confucianism has lost its sociocultural significance, they are strong enough to demonstrate that Confucianism has become one of the many comprehensive doctrines adopted by East Asians. Therefore, it is not surprising to see that the purpose of Kim's pragmatic Confucian democracy when it comes to realize the instrumental value of democracy is “not so much to faithfully serve what classical Confucianism requires ethically by means of state perfectionism as to theorize a principled way in which democracy both as a political system and as a way of life can acquire its instrumental and intrinsic values in a way intelligible to citizens of East Asia.”Footnote ²⁴ But if this is the case, then why does the further development of democracy, where its intrinsic value is recognized, have to happen within a Confucian civic culture rather than a civic culture constituted by a plurality of comprehensive doctrines, which more accurately reflect the empirical condition of East Asian societies? In other words, if Kim is correct, and I think he is, in saying that a pragmatic turn is needed to justify democratization in East Asia, which means that a fully or partially Confucian argument for democracy may be insufficient to convince all people of the value of democracy, why is there a need after the initial transition to resort back to Confucianism as the main source of political imagination in order to realize the intrinsic value of democracy? There seems to be a missing link between the instrumental argument and the intrinsic argument for the value of democracy when it is juxtaposed with Confucianism.

Kim might respond that the mutual accommodation thesis serves as precisely such a link. Unlike the liberal congruence thesis, which posits that “nonliberal democratic citizens can only be ‘introduced’ to the intrinsic value of democracy if the intrinsic value of living according or their cultural way of life is replaced by, or transformed into, a new public mode of life (i.e. a liberal democratic life) that is extrinsic to their lifestyle and self-understanding,” the mutual accommodation thesis proposes a two-way transformation between Confucian culture and democratic culture that leads to a coherent Confucian democracy. But this response dodges the more fundamental question of “Why Confucianism?” with the assumption that Confucianism is in a unique place to accommodate the intrinsic value of democracy. Even granting the validity of the mutual accommodation thesis will not help, because other comprehensive doctrines can claim a similar capacity to accommodate and realize the intrinsic value of democracy.Footnote ²⁵ If there is a mutual accommodation thesis between democracy and Confucianism, should there not be a similar thesis between democracy and Buddhism, or between democracy and Christianity? If the answer is negative, the burden is on Kim to explain why Confucianism is in a unique position to accommodate democracy. If the answer is positive, which is already demonstrated by a wide variety of comparative political theories that aim to bridge the gap between democracy and different comprehensive doctrines, then Kim's claim that the end result of mutual accommodation is a “Confucian democratic culture” becomes questionable. Thus, acknowledging the fact of reasonable pluralism in East Asian societies is at odds with a democratic theory that is Confucian in nature. As I argue elsewhere, moderate Confucian political theories are often caught in an awkward position that invites criticisms from both the Confucian side and the democratic side.Footnote ²⁶ Pragmatic Confucian democracy is no exception: the Confucian side does not think it is sincerely Confucian because democratic institutions are not grounded on Confucian values, and the democratic side does not think it is genuine democracy because it leaves too little room for non-Confucian groups.

Public Reason Confucianism Revisited

So far, my critique has mainly targeted Kim's most recent proposal of pragmatic Confucian democracy. However, this proposal is supported by his broader project of public reason Confucianism that more comprehensively deals with such issues as Confucianism, democracy, and constitutionalism. It would thus be narrow-minded not to revisit Kim's fuller theory of political Confucianism. In fact, one objection to my critique might be that it is simply unfair to characterize Kim's pragmatic Confucian democracy as “going back to Confucianism,” because what Kim advocates is not an ethical and fully comprehensive but instead a political and partially comprehensive understanding of Confucianism, which means that the ultimate goal of pragmatic Confucian democracy is not to restore Confucianism in its classical glory but to produce mutually accommodating conversations between Confucianism and democracy, which Kim is at pains to show in his Public Reason Confucianism. In this section, I will respond to this objection by revisiting two central distinctions that Kim relies on to make the case for public reason Confucianism: the distinction between fully and partially comprehensive doctrines, and the distinction between direct and indirect constitutionalism. I will argue that this pair of distinctions will not resolve the earlier problem.

According to John Rawls, a doctrine is fully comprehensive if “it covers all recognized values and virtues within one rather precisely articulated system,” whereas a doctrine is partially comprehensive “when it comprises a number of, but by no means all, nonpolitical values and virtues and is rather loosely articulated.”Footnote ²⁷ The obvious benefit of using Rawls's somewhat underappreciated distinction is to highlight, as Kim does, the difference between reviving traditionalist Confucianism and accommodating Confucianism in a constitutional democracy. However, unlike Joseph Chan's piecemeal and moderate approach that is merely concerned with certain items, such as traits and relationships, that can be severed from a particularly Confucian way of life, Kim's public reason Confucianism, despite its qualification of being only a partially comprehensive view of Confucianism, is nonetheless still comprehensive in that it aims to promote a Confucian way of life and maintain a recognizably Confucian public character.Footnote ²⁸ This commitment to comprehensive Confucianism is even more explicitly demonstrated in the case-study chapters of Public Reason Confucianism, where Kim gives examples of how Confucianism and liberalism can negotiate with each other in a constitutional democracy that is directly liberal and indirectly Confucian.Footnote ²⁹ According to Kim, although certain Confucian values, such as filial piety, were never declared by the South Korean court as constitutional values, they are publicly acknowledged and even promoted in the cases Kim examines, which makes it possible to call these Confucian values “quasi-constitutional values.”Footnote ³⁰ Kim refers to this type of constitutionalism as “indirect constitutionalism,” according to which certain cultural values, though not constitutional values in a strictly legal sense, attain public-constitutional significance.Footnote ³¹ By distinguishing between fully and partially comprehensive Confucianism, and between direct and indirect constitutionalism, Kim is thus reserving a special place for Confucianism without introducing extreme Confucian perfectionism to the state.

Although these two distinctions indeed help Kim's public reason Confucianism to be distinguished from extreme forms of political Confucianism, they are not enough to address the problem discovered in the last section.Footnote ³² The question of “why Confucianism” still stands, even if Confucianism is understood as partially comprehensive and Confucian values are understood to be indirectly constitutional. According to Kim, the central goal of public reason Confucian constitutionalism is “to produce a coherent public identity of Confucian and democratic citizens by weaving two perfectionist commitments—liberal and Confucian—into a single coherent constitutionalism.”Footnote ³³ In order to achieve this goal, cultural negotiations will take place between Confucian values and practice, and liberal democratic values and rights. But this sort of cultural negotiation cannot be reserved exclusively for Confucianism and liberalism, since there is an undeniable plurality of other comprehensive doctrines, even if Confucianism is still the most influential one. Kim is fully aware of this fact when he says that “public reason Confucianism allows citizens to negotiate their comprehensive moral values with Confucian public reason, then with particular rights, duties, and liberties.”Footnote ³⁴ However, it is highly problematic to say that citizens who adopt non-Confucian doctrines will have to negotiate with Confucian public reason first, and only then can they negotiate with particular rights, duties, and liberties. This directly liberal and indirectly Confucian model, when applied to the constitution, only adds to the impression that in a Confucian democracy imagined by Kim, the constitution becomes a playground between Confucianism and liberalism, whose rules must be followed in order for citizens who endorse alternative comprehensive doctrines to negotiate their way into the democratic polity. We arrive at the same problem of justifying the unique role of Confucianism in a Confucian democracy.

At this point, one might choose instead to cast doubt upon the question of “why Confucianism” by contradicting the empirical studies cited earlier. Many, Kim included, firmly believe that East Asian societies are still saturated with Confucian values, mores, habits, and moral sentiments, which leaves Confucianism in a unique position to engage with the new democratic life. In other words, instead of asking “Why Confucianism?” one has good reason to ask, “Why not Confucianism?” But this change of question can lead to a dangerous implication that Kim desperately tries to avoid. The question of “why not Confucianism” is often raised together with “why democracy” among comprehensive and meritocratic Confucian political theorists, such as Jiang Qing and Daniel A. Bell. These comprehensive and meritocratic Confucian political theories, as Kim correctly points out, are problematic because “they try to have both (bits of) meritocracy and (bits of) democracy in their proposed way(s).”Footnote ³⁵ If these theorists prefer Confucian democracy over liberal democracy only because of the Confucian values and practices that such theories can bring out, then why do they care about democratic institutions at all? Kim rightly asks: “Why not simply advocate a traditional Confucian one-man monarchy, operating on the idea of a benevolent government (renzheng 仁政) or Platonic philosopher-kingship?”Footnote ³⁶ In other words, extreme forms of Confucian meritocratic perfectionism are inherently inconsistent.

But if the justification for preferring Confucianism over other comprehensive doctrines is merely the deep saturation of Confucian values and practices in East Asian societies, then Kim's own theory is susceptible to a similar criticism. If Confucianism is so culturally relevant and so sociopolitically strong among citizens in East Asian countries that the question of “why Confucianism” need not arise, then why bother with liberal ideals and democratic institutions in the first place? It will be remembered that the mutual accommodation thesis in pragmatic Confucian democracy is used to justify the mutually beneficial relationship between Confucianism and democracy. But if citizens in East Asian countries are so saturated by Confucianism, even in a partially comprehensive sense, then the necessity of democracy becomes questionable, at least from the perspective of citizens. Is a decent hierarchical Confucian society not equally appealing to citizens who still follow or should still follow a Confucian way of life? However, Kim is against any form of Confucian meritocracy. Unlike Chan who is suspicious of certain liberal values and practices, Kim is highly sympathetic to liberalism, which motivates him to develop public reason Confucianism that aims to incorporate the best of both worlds. In other words, like the political liberal project that aims to accommodate reasonable pluralism in a well-ordered Western liberal democracy, public reason Confucianism aims to accommodate liberalism by way of a democratic polity in East Asia. But if Kim is willing to admit both Confucianism and liberalism into the process of cultural negotiation, why not do the same with other comprehensive doctrines, such as Daoism and Islam? Once again, we arrive at the same problem of justifying the uniqueness of Confucianism. In order for citizens who subscribe to non-Confucian doctrines to be able to participate in cultural negotiation, they will have to first negotiate their comprehensive moral values with Confucian public reason, and then with particular rights, duties, and liberties. In addition to the unnecessary burden placed upon these citizens, the cost of such a move is equality among a plurality of comprehensive doctrines in a polity, which is a defining feature of genuine democracy. Therefore, Kim's public reason Confucianism is confronted with a dilemma. On the one hand, fully acknowledging reasonable pluralism will cast doubt upon the validity of public reason Confucianism. On the other hand, insisting on a cultural justification of the priority of Confucianism will likely lead to a similar sense of inconsistency found in more extreme forms of political Confucianism. This dilemma is then carried over to pragmatic Confucian democracy and manifests itself in the difficulty of balancing between the commitment to acknowledge reasonable pluralism in East Asian societies and the necessity to justify the unique role of Confucianism in democratic theory.

This problem nevertheless points to an interesting direction already found in Kim's account. Once we take “Confucian” away from “pragmatic Confucian democracy,” what remains is a pragmatic theory of democracy. It is pragmatic because it does not expect nonliberal people to endorse democracy for either liberal or comprehensive reasons, at least not at the outset of democratization. But it seems that pragmatic Confucian democracy is ironically not pragmatic enough, in the sense that it does not take into consideration all the possible reactions to democratic transition. To be truly pragmatic about democracy is to hold a pluralistic attitude toward how people will come to terms with it. Kim's theory points in the right direction but ultimately falls short. In the next section, I will propose an alternative model of democracy that follows through this pragmatic tendency.

Multivariate Democracy in East AsiaFootnote ³⁷

A false dichotomy has appeared in recent literature on Confucian political theory, especially when it comes to the relationship between Confucianism and democracy. At one extreme, there is the tendency to fully revive Confucianism for the purpose of establishing an extreme form of state Confucianism. At the other extreme, there is also the tendency to eliminate Confucianism from the democratic discourse. Both public reason Confucianism and pragmatic Confucian democracy are laudable for their desire to take the middle ground, where Confucianism and liberal democracy share a dynamic relationship with each other. However, as my previous analyses have shown, pragmatic Confucian democracy is susceptible to criticisms from both the Confucian side and the democratic side. In the rest of this section, I will propose another model of democracy that tries to take the middle ground. Specifically, this alternative model of democracy will have three theoretical components. First, I will draw from Alessandro Ferrara's recent discussion of “hyperpluralism” and what he calls “multivariate democratic polity,” and I will argue that the structure of a healthy and sustainable democracy in East Asia must be multivariate in structure, meaning that citizens can relate to constitutional essentials in a diversity of manners from within their comprehensive doctrine, or for partially or even fully prudential reasons. Then, in light of the problem with Kim's pragmatic Confucian democracy, I will argue that democracy in East Asia ought to include a neutral state, which means that Confucianism should neither be officially endorsed by the state nor hijack the neutral language of public reason to directly influence policymaking and legislation. Finally, I will qualify the previous point by arguing that having a neutral state does not necessarily mean that Confucianism will be banished to the private sphere. On the contrary, it can have a very active public role to play so as to make an indirect yet substantial contribution to the domain of the political.