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⁸ Pluralism has a long history and comes in various forms. See Schlosberg, David, “Resurrecting the Pluralist Universe,” Political Research Quarterly 51, no. 3 (1998): 583–615CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am concerned with a specific version of pluralism, which I refer to as political pluralism, whose underlying normative motivation is, I argue, the actual freedom of citizens.

⁹ Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Knopf, 1985), 4Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Jacob T. Levy, “Contra Politanism,” European Journal of Political Theory, published online July 2, 2017, p. 2, https://doi.org/10.1177/1474885117718371.

¹¹ What Levy (ibid.) refers to as the teleology of political forms.

¹² For problematizations of this perspective, see Tully, James, “On Global Citizenship,” in On Global Citizenship: James Tully in Dialogue (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 3–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Young, Iris Marion, “Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship,” Ethics 99, no. 2 (1989): 250–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ Skinner, Quentin, “A Genealogy of the Modern State,” Proceedings of the British Academy 162 (2008): 351–54Google Scholar.

¹⁴ The power of the state, even if supreme, may not be absolute. The limits on its power will typically be thought following the first assumption.

¹⁵ Muñiz-Fraticelli, Structure of Pluralism, 109n35.

¹⁶ Joseph Raz, “Why the State,” Legal Studies Research Paper Series paper no. 2014–38, The Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London, London, 2014. SSRN http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2339522.

¹⁷ I follow Tully in using the term “modern” to describe this perspective, but this usage is independently supported when we consider the extent to which modern thinkers have vilified what they called “irregular republics” in which unsubordinated political authorities are “like wormes in the entrayles of a naturall man” (Hobbes, Thomas, Hobbes's Leviathan [Oxford: Clarendon, 1929], 257Google Scholar). See also Pufendorf, Samuel, On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 142, 144Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Miller, David, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2003 [1995]), 27Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Ibid., 98.

²⁰ Beiner, Ronald, editor's introduction to Theorizing Citizenship (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 6Google Scholar. This refers to Scruton, Roger, “In Defense of the Nation,” in Philosopher on Dover Beach (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's, 1989)Google Scholar.

²¹ Kymlicka, Will, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989)Google Scholar; Kymlicka, Will, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2003 [1995])Google Scholar.

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²³ As noted by Scott: “for thinkers such as Walzer, Kymlicka, Kukathas, Carens, and Taylor, what is at stake is … rethinking from the standpoint of liberal democracy… . The privileged status of liberal democracy is not itself in question” (Scott, David, “Culture in Political Theory,” Political Theory 31, no. 1 [2003]: 96CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

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²⁵ Tully, Global Citizenship, 17.

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²⁸ Blackburn, Carole, “Differentiating Indigenous Citizenship: Seeking Multiplicity in Rights, Identity, and Sovereignty in Canada,” American Ethnologist 36, no. 1 (2009): 69, 71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a list of related objections, see Kymlicka and Norman, “Return,” 372n25.

²⁹ Patten, Equal Recognition, 9. See also Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 116–17, 120.

³⁰ Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 118; Owen, David and Tully, James, “Redistribution and Recognition: Two Approaches,” in Multiculturalism and Political Theory, ed. Laden, Anthony Simon and Owen, David (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 283Google Scholar; Tully, James, “The Struggles of Indigenous Peoples for and of Freedom,” in Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ed. Ivison, Duncan, Patton, Paul, and Sanders, Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 36–60Google Scholar.

³¹ Iris Marion Young, “Structural Injustice and the Politics of Difference,” in Laden and Owen, Multiculturalism and Political Theory, 86–87.

³² Muñiz-Fraticelli, Victor, “The Distinctiveness of Religious Liberty,” in Mapping the Legal Boundaries of Belonging: Religion and Multiculturalism from Israel to Canada, ed. Provost, René (Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2014), 99–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³⁴ Patten, Equal Recognition, 2 (emphasis added).

³⁵ Anthony Simon Laden, “Negotiation, Deliberation, and the Claims of Politics,” in Laden and Owen, Multiculturalism and Political Theory, 198–217.

³⁶ Owen and Tully, “Redistribution and Recognition.”

³⁷ Ibid., 266.

³⁸ Honig, Bonnie, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

³⁹ Laden, “Negotiation,” 200.

⁴⁰ Muñiz-Fraticelli, Structure of Pluralism, 23. See also Laski, Harold J., Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (New York: Howard Fertig, 1968), 19, 23Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Cover, “Nomos and Narrative,” 53.

⁴² On the idea of political power making sense, see Williams, Bernard, In the Beginning Was the Deed (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

⁴³ Cover, “Nomos and Narrative,” 47.

⁴⁴ Cf. Muñiz-Fraticelli, Structure of Pluralism, chap. 8.

⁴⁵ For a critical survey, see Festenstein, Matthew, Negotiating Diversity: Culture, Deliberation, Trust (Cambridge: Polity, 2005)Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Muñiz-Fraticelli, Structure of Pluralism, 38–39.

⁴⁷ Owen and Tully, “Redistribution and Recognition,” 267; Tully, James, “Struggles over Recognition and Distribution,” Constellations 7, no. 4 (2000): 469–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁸ On jurisdictional disputes without culture, see Muñiz-Fraticelli, Structure of Pluralism, 40.

⁴⁹ Festenstein, Negotiating Diversity, 15.

⁵⁰ Tully, James, “The Unfreedom of the Moderns in comparison to Their Ideals of Constitutional Democracy,” Modern Law Review 65, no. 2 (2002): 220Google Scholar.

⁵¹ This refers to Kukathas, Chandran, The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵² Daniel Weinstock, “Liberalism, Multiculturalism, and the Problem of Internal Minorities,” in Laden and Owen, Multiculturalism and Political Theory, 258.

⁵³ Blackburn, “Indigenous Citizenship,” 70.

⁵⁴ Weinstock, “Liberalism,” 261. Note in passing the use of the possessive “its.”

⁵⁵ I wrote those two last sentences before encountering this one: “in the pluralistic view of the State, there are … ‘real losses and real losers,’ in the clashing of its parts; nor do these add mysteriously to the splendour of the whole” (Laski, Studies, 11).

⁵⁶ Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 181–82; Young, “Self-Determination,” 140.

⁵⁷ Young, “Self-Determination,” “Hybrid Democracy,” and “Two Concepts.”

⁵⁸ Tully, James, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁹ This manner of extending the case of indigenous peoples to make sense of issues of diversity may seem problematic: indigenous peoples typically appeal to decolonization as a ground for their distinct political status. It is because they were forcefully and unjustly incorporated that they demand and would be entitled to self-government. In affirming that what matters is the strength of their present-day attachment, I would be at odds with the strategies they themselves adopt.

Yet decolonization without present-day attachments is meaningless: self-government to a colonized people that does not form a distinct normative order and that does not attract normative commitment is like extending self-government to a people that does not exist. It is because indigenous peoples have present-day attachments that sustain their distinct normative orders, and because colonialization was and is still an attack on the ability of indigenous peoples to live in accordance with their own normative orders, that we can make sense of their political claims to decolonization and that it may give rise to a right to self-government.

But once decolonization is no longer seen as sufficient or necessary to support the claims of indigenous peoples, religious groups and other associations having strong present-day attachments are on par with indigenous peoples for political standing. This might seem odd, but it is a consequence of the pluralist assumptions. Political authority is no more than the authority exercised by an entity, or settlements achieved following the interactions of such entities, that attracts normative commitments extending to the authoritative direction of human conduct.

⁶⁰ Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 184.

⁶¹ It can also be concerned with offering suggestions that will themselves be the object of a political assessment. See Owen and Tully, “Redistribution and Recognition,” 266.

⁶² Laden, “Negotiation,” 201.

⁶³ Owen and Tully, “Redistribution and Recognition,” 266.

⁶⁴ Tully, James, Public Philosophy in a New Key, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 211.

⁶⁶ See the notion of jurisgenerative communities in Cover, “Nomos and Narrative.” See also Tully's discussion of freedom based on Arendt in Tully, “Agonic Freedom,” 162.

⁶⁷ Cover, “Nomos and Narrative,” 18.

⁶⁸ Coulthard, Glen, “Beyond Recognition: Indigenous Self-Determination as Prefigurative Practice,” in Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence, and Protection of Indigenous Nations, ed. Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake (Winnipeg: ARP Books, 2008), 194Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Ibid., 195. See also Alfred, Taiaiake, Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (Peterborough: Broadview, 2005)Google Scholar; Corntassel, Jeff, “Toward Sustainable Self-Determination: Rethinking the Contemporary Indigenous-Rights Discourse,” Alternatives 33 (2008): 105–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Corntassel, Jeff, “Re-envisioning Resurgence: Indigenous Pathways to Decolonization and Sustainable Self-Determination,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 86–101Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Krog, Antjie, Begging to Be Black (Cape Town: Penguin Random House South Africa, 2009), 156Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Williams, In the Beginning, 71.

⁷² Young, “Self-Determination”; Tully, “Agonic Freedom”; Tully, “On Global Citizenship.”

⁷³ A referee raises this relevant worry: following people's actual freedom, we might have to consider the self-government rights of indigenous peoples as on par with those of the Ku Klux Klan. Putting aside that the KKK seeks domination, this worry nevertheless misinterprets the point advanced here. The point is not that we should, as the modern perspective would have it, exercise authority so as to extend self-government rights. It is that we better account for people's freedom and thus make better sense of the political world by interpreting these groups as already self-governing. What this entails is that if Klan members are coercively prevented from living in accordance with their normative commitments, we should recognize that this is a loss for them in terms of freedom. It also means that were negotiations on terms of governance to take place, again ignoring the dominating nature of the group, the resulting arrangements may be an expression of people's freedom while most imposed arrangements, following, say, a theoretical conception of liberty of association, would be coercive. An appeal to liberty of association to legitimately coerce the KKK divides freedom from the ways in which people actually exercise their freedom; it seems to entail that people can be forced to be free. We make better sense of the situation by recognizing forced compliance for what it is.