Rights, citizenship and political struggle
| Author | Guy Aitchison |
| Published date | 01 January 2018 |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1474885115578052 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2018, Vol. 17(1) 23–43
!The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885115578052
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Article
Rights, citizenship and
political struggle
Guy Aitchison
UCL Department of Political Science, UK
Abstract
This paper adds a new perspective to recent debates about the political nature of rights
through attention to their distinctive role within social movement practices of moral
critique and social struggle. The paper proceeds through a critical examination of the
Political Constitutionalist theories of rights politics proposed by Jeremy Waldron and
Richard Bellamy. While political constitutionalists are correct to argue that rights are
‘contestable’ and require democratic justification, they construe political activity almost
exclusively with reference to voting, parties and parliamentary law-making, neglecting
the vital role rights play in political struggle outside and against the official institutions of
democratic citizenship. In contrast to the political constitutionalist stress on the patient
and reciprocal negotiation of rights within formal electoral processes, this paper locates
the political nature of rights in their conflictual logic as ‘claims’ in multiple spheres that
function to mobilise oppositional support against powerful adversaries and challenge
dominant understandings. An activist citizenship of rights is frequently necessary, it
argues, given the structural barriers of power and inequality that distort legislative
decision-making and lead to the denial of fundamental moral entitlements to less power-
ful groups. The paper provides an illustration of activist citizenship taken from a con-
temporary squatting movement centred around the right to housing, Take Back the
Land. In exercising the moral right to housing, for which they demand political recog-
nition, through the occupation of vacant buildings, the practices of Take Back the Land
reflect the conflictual dimension of rights as claims in keeping with their historical role in
empowering subordinate groups to challenge unjust relations of power and inequality.
Keywords
Rights, social movements, citizenship, Jeremy Waldron, Richard Bellamy, political
constitutionalism
Corresponding author:
Guy Aitchison, UCL Department of Political Science, The Rubin Building, 29/31 Tavistock Square, London
WC1H 9QU, UK.
Email: guyaitchison@gmail.com
There has been a trend in the recent philosophical literature on rights to argue that,
in the absence of any authoritative stipulation of our moral entitlements – a stipu-
lation derived from natural law, metaphysical reflection or some foundational
moral theory, say – the concept of rights is inescapably ‘political’. This political
turn in the literature has brought with it a shift in focus from abstract questions to
do with the philosophical justification of rights to more concrete questions of how
they are to be realised in practical circumstances of disagreement. While one
important question, to which much of the recent literature is addressed, asks
how we should understand those rights known as ‘human rights’ in light of their
role within an international practice aimed at regulating the conduct of states with
diverse ethical and cultural traditions,
1
a further debate addresses the implications
of pluralism for how rights are achieved and protected domestically. Here, the
fact of pluralism provides a starting point for an argument by Political
Constitutionalists in support of electoral participation by citizens in the ongoing
definition of rights as an alternative to judicial decision-making associated with
apolitical modes of justification. Jeremy Waldron and Richard Bellamy provide the
most powerful and influential theories of this kind, which they link to a distinctive
conception of the nature of rights and the normative relations they entail.
2
They
argue that rights do not demarcate a domain of morality outside and against pol-
itics that functions to limit and constrain it, but instead exist within the ‘circum-
stances of politics’ as claims made by equal citizens upon one another regarding the
distribution of benefits and burdens within society.
3
Since citizens disagree pro-
foundly about rights, they ought to actively participate in how they are decided
through the election of representatives to parliaments with sovereign authority over
the content and distribution of rights and their weight in relation to other political
concerns.
Political constitutionalists have mounted a number of powerful arguments
against judicial review of rights on both normative and pragmatic grounds. I do
not intend to rehearse these arguments here, but instead explore the implications
for thinking about the nature of rights and the forms of politics necessary and
appropriate to their realisation once we agree that citizens have an active role to
play in their ongoing definition and enforcement. I argue that the political consti-
tutionalist account of rights-based citizenship misleads in important respects since
it construes political activity almost exclusively with reference to voting, parties and
parliamentary law-making, neglecting the vital role rights play as a vocabulary of
protest in practices of moral critique and social struggle outside and against the
official institutions of democratic citizenship. The aim is not to refute the argument
of Waldron and Bellamy that rights are ‘contestable’ and require democratic jus-
tification, but to broaden our understanding of the nature and dynamics of political
contestation beyond the institutional and temporal boundaries of elections and
parliamentary law-making. I argue that a commitment to the democratic justifica-
tion of rights entails recognition of the importance and legitimacy of an array of
contestatory activist practices that both render political decision-making more
equal and inclusive and serve as an important source of moral innovation. When
debate over the realisation of rights is framed as a choice between juridical and
24 European Journal of Political Theory 17(1)
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