Sri Lanka: The Illiberal Consequences of Liberal Institutions

Jonathan Spencer

Social Anthropology

University of Edinburgh

In the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, many commentators succumbed to the temptation to picture a world divided between liberalism, pluralism, tolerance and peace on the one hand, and illiberalism, intolerance and violence on the other. The stark choice for the world, we were told, lay between democracy and terror. This paper will use material from the 20-year war in Sri Lanka to challenge this somewhat facile view. In particular, it will argue that the origins of the ‘ethnic’ divide between Sinhala and Tamil, lie in the institutional structure and working dynamic of representative democracy in Sri Lanka.

Theoretically, I will draw on two particular sources: the model of ‘agonistic pluralism’ Chantal Mouffe has constructed from her reading of Carl Schmitt’s critique of liberalism, and Andreas Wimmer’s recent (1992) argument for the centrality of processes of ethnic exclusion in modern liberal political formations. The obvious comparison will be with the rise of the Hindu Right in India, which some commentators have seen as integrally linked to a process of increasing engagement with electoral politics - sometimes referred to as the ‘democratization of Indian democracy’. Politically, my analysis will raise questions about the problems confronting the peace process, still stumbling along in Sri Lanka, and the forms of sovereignty and political engagement that we might hope would emerge from the ashes of the conflict.