The Duty of Pressure

Abstract

Abstract This chapter starts our normative analysis of containment and, in turn, liberal democratic self-defence by looking at common citizens. Criticizing militant democratic accounts of self-defence, we argue that the liberal value of everyone enjoying equal rights is compatible with legal repressive measures only when softer containment interventions have been attempted earlier on in the build-up to a ‘real threat’ to existing liberal democratic institutions. Also, we demonstrate that although the state has an important (largely preventative) role to play in delivering such interventions, its work needs to be supplemented by the contributions of non-state actors towards soft containment. To start exploring what soft containment by non-state actors should look like, we derive from Rawls’s principle of liberal legitimacy a brand-new moral duty, called ‘duty of pressure’, calling on reasonable common citizens to press the unreasonable persons they know on their political views in an attempt to change their mind. This chapter carefully specifies the duty of pressure, including the circumstances of liberal democratic deconsolidation in which it applies and the range of tailored rhetorical strategies that are morally allowed under it. We also introduce right-wing populism to illustrate the workings of the duty of pressure in greater detail. Developing and re-adapting prominent Rawlsian concepts, this chapter suggests that the bulk of the supporters of right-wing populism display ‘unaware’ unreasonableness while holding partially comprehensive doctrines. In turn, these features illuminate what specific rhetorical strategies are apt to put pressure on them.