Abstract

The double thesis sketched in broad strokes in this essay will be that modus vivendi conceptions do not qualify as viable alternatives to political liberalism. In order to be normatively plausible, modus vivendi conceptions depend on a liberal framework and on the normative reasoning justifying it. Within such a liberal framework, however, modus vivendi theory and modus vivendi institutions are necessary. Modus vivendi theory is analysed to be a normatively inconsistent approach that cannot be successful in its attempt to undermine liberalism’s aspiration to occupy a privileged normative position vis-à-vis other kinds of regimes. Pluralist theories of the modus vivendi kind, dissociating themselves from normative individualism which takes individuals as the core elements of the political and legal processes, are in danger of destroying the very base of a sound political idea of pluralism. The essay especially questions how much realism is found in the “realist turn” in recent political theory, of which the modus vivendi approach is part, given systematic underestimation of the legal system in modus vivendi theorizing.