Sabrina Ramet, an acknowledged scholar of Central European politics and author of nine books, sets about to find out why political transformation in some countries has been successful, while in others it has failed. In her view, liberalism conveys legitimacy to a political system and thereby assures successful transition. But she views liberalism differently from its common understanding. Ramet argues that moral relativism, nationalism and capitalism all undermine the ideals of authentic liberalism. What makes liberalism genuine is its connection with natural law, which is understood in the book as a universal common denominator of goodness and righteousness across cultures and time. Ramet however believes that rather than being viewed in such universal terms “liberalism—in general—is too often identified with American society, which cannot be interpreted as a pristine embodiment of classical liberal principles” (5).
This short volume contains nine chapters. The introduction links natural law philosophy to liberal idealism. Chapter 2 provides a brief overview of various approaches to natural law through history and prepares an explanatory framework for this project based on a theory of classical liberalism, where liberalism is a moral frame, while democracy is its political formula.
In chapter 3, the author depicts capitalism as problematic for the liberal project and shows that capitalism has assumed in Central Europe a form inimical to liberalism. The departure of capitalism from natural law, in Ramet's view, started with the removal of “equality and sufficiency” as natural law limits on property rights. In chapter 4 the concept of sovereignty and its evolution through European history are examined. The main argument is that aspirations to national homogeneity and nationalist ideology are contrary to natural law. In chapter 5 the idea of a right to national self-determination is subjected to a “moral critique” to reach the conclusion that this right is organically connected with the tradition of realism, which rejects natural law.
In Chapter 6 she examines models of church-state interaction, or what she terms, “condominium”: clerical democracy in Poland, laic democracy in the Czech Republic. The author concludes that the contemporary Roman Catholic Church has taken positions “that may be criticized from the standpoint of natural law.” Chapter 7 extends the analysis to the situation of women in Central Europe and concludes that equality of women is intrinsic to the liberal project. Chapter 8 is dedicated to the big question: What is the purpose of political association or the state? She then examines the correlation of democracy and liberalism. Chapter 9 summarizes the chief argument of the book regarding legitimacy and its moral underpinning by natural law.
Mixed feelings prevail when reading this book. We can hardly consider this work methodologically rigorous and conceptually precise, starting with the definition of natural law. “Murder, torture, the killing of infants, mass rape, pickpocketing, lying, slavery, cruelty, insulting one's hosts, and other forms of hurtful behaviour” are without doubt contrary to natural law, while honesty, generosity, hospitality, kindness, loyalty and mutual aid form behaviours in accord with natural law. But can one operationalize natural law using these indicators to measure not merely individual behaviour but also the legitimacy of a political system? Professor Ramet suggests that system legitimacy can be understood “as the degree to which a state's citizens judge the system to be in conformity with moral standards, its own political rules (law), and notions of economic equity” (3).
One of the suggested indicators of the adherence of a post-communist country to natural law is tolerance to nontraditional sexual orientations. In other words, if local legislation is not harsh on gays and lesbians, then the country evinces signs of successful transition. If domestic legislation is influenced by clerics, conservatives or former communists and, as a result, is unsympathetic to gays, the country's political reform is not a success story. Tolerance here is equated with the do-no-harm principle of natural law.
I often discuss interesting readings with my students. When I raised this issue in a political science class, one student responded, “How can natural law be used with reference to homosexuality, which by itself is not so natural,” reveling that the notion of natural law is not generally equated by the average person with tolerance and individual autonomy.
Stretching the no-harm principle to encompass tolerance to gays and lesbians contradicts the condemnation of homosexual relations by the Roman Catholic Church, whose contribution to the articulation of natural law is undeniable. To address that, Ramet divorces natural law from Divine law and conceptualizes it more in line with Richard Hooker and John Locke. In other words, she makes two natural law postulates central—the broadly understood “do-no-harm principle and the moral equality of all persons.”
In my view, linking natural law to the success or failure of democratic transition makes sense. But it is hard to prove that there is a cause-and-effect relationship. What is more, I am almost certain that, because of their communist backgrounds, the constitution drafters in, say, Poland, the Czech Republic or Slovakia, the main countries that provided empirical data for the book, had any idea of natural law.
The majority of the chapters collected in this book were published previously either as journal articles or book chapters, which makes this book a little bit disjointed, but a strong introduction and an elaborate conclusion tie these somewhat jumbled parts together in a reasonably coherent manner.
Quite common for this kind of work are overgeneralizations. The conclusion in chapter 3, for example, that asserts that “with the exception of the Czech Republic and Slovenia, the post-communist societies of Eastern Europe have not been building liberal democracies at all … [but rather] plutocratic-colonial structures” (32) is not substantiated by empirical evidence. In fact, abstract philosophizing is sparsely illustrated by quotes from constitutions; by no means is the evidence presented sufficient to discern patterns and regularities.
The author is a master of prose and conviction. The colourful vocabulary combined with a jaunty style make for enjoyable reading.
In general, this work is without doubt an interesting contribution to democratic theory, and students of transition, political reform, system legitimacy and political philosophy will be richly rewarded by reading this work.
