In Chapter 1 of Sen's Development as Freedom, I was drawn to the somewhat fluid conception of freedom in different societies. As opposed to Smith's understanding of purely subjective propriety, Sen appears to capture something which is much more in line with my intuitions, allowing for a combination of objective and subjective determinations about what freedom should entail in a society. While development as freedom calls for placing "the perspective of freedom at the center of the stage," an analysis of public policies has to be "sensitive" to diverse "conceptions of justice and propriety" which "depend on [particular] social associations."
I thought the turn to tradition/culture vis-à-vis democracy was exactly the right move to make in filling out this picture. Regarding the source of authority and legitimacy, Sen writes, "There is an inescapable valuational problem involved in deciding what to choose if and when it turns out that some parts of tradition cannot be maintained along with economic or social changes needed [for development of different types of freedoms]. It is a choice that the people involved have to face and assess" (31). To be sure, Sen understands that this will result in different schemes of individual liberties, and he would probably say this is one of the strengths of his theory. Although there will "no doubt remain differences in possible overall rankings," these differences "are not embarrassing to the purpose at hand" (33).
According to Sen, the strength of political freedom is that it allows citizens to "discuss and debate -- and to participate in the selection of -- values in the choice of priorities" (30). Yet again and again, Sen seems to allude to necessary background conditions for participation, without which the region-specific prioritization of certain instrumental freedoms doesn't even obtain. For example, "denying the opportunity of schooling to any group -- say, female children -- is immediately contrary to the basic conditions of participatory freedom...that elementary requirement cannot be escaped in [any] freedom-oriented perspective" (32-33). In this sense, participatory freedom and culture-specific understandings are (to borrow a phrase from Rawls) lexically ordered.
While this makes sense, Sen's dynamic scheme isn't perfect. Some results of tradition can severely undermine many of Sen's instrumental freedoms; he seems to admit this and account for it, writing, "If a traditional way of life has to be sacrificed to escape grinding poverty or minuscule longevity....then it is the people directly involved who must have the [final say]" (31). However, can't grinding poverty or minuscule longevity be as significant of barriers to civic participation as lack of childhood education (in just one example, consider voter ID laws)? This is one of my primary concerns, because it highlights that Sen's interplay between objective and subjective conceptions remains somewhat nebulous.
Since we're talking about pervasive cultural norms and the attainment of political freedom, it's only logical to move to the Middle East, where these two forces have recently and robustly come into conflict. In the aftermath of the Egyptian Revolution, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood became Egypt's first democratically elected president. Annoyingly, instead of providing me with a case study of tradition/culture/religious-oriented leadership following genuine democratic procedures, Morsi went and instituted an effective dictatorship for a couple of years. However let's consider what it would look like if he didn't do that. Given that in the hypothetical case, Morsi's party would still restrict various instrumental freedoms, what would be the minimum conditions for successfully attaining "freedom" in an Egyptian state run by a democratically committed Muslim Brotherhood?
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