policies. His version of liberal multiculturalism has been widely criticized (see
Spinner-Halev and Kukathas in this volume); and many continue to see
liberalism as at odds with multiculturalism (for example, Okin 1998 , 2002 ;
Barry 2001 ). But in analyzing the ‘‘problem’’ of multiculturalism through the
paradigm of liberalism, Kymlicka very much exempliWes theWeld of debate.
Liberalism simultaneously makes itself the deWning tradition and notices the
awkwardness in this. Its very dominance then seems to spawn an increasing
awareness of traditions other than itself.
It is not entirely clear why this has happened now (liberalism, after all, has
been around for many years) but that useful shorthand, globalization, must
provide at least part of the explanation. It is diYcult to sustain a belief in
liberalism as the only tradition, or in secularism as the norm, when the
majority of the world’s population is patently unconvinced by either (Gray
1995 , 1998 ). And although political theorists have drawn heavily on the liberal
tradition in their explorations of human rights or global justice, the very
topics they address require them to think about the speciWcity of Western
political thought. Political theory now roams more widely than in the past,
pondering accusations of ethno-centricity, questioning the signiWcance of
national borders, engaging in what one might almost term a denationaliza-
tion of political theory. That description is an overstatement, for even in
addressing explicitly global issues, political theory draws on concepts that are
national in origin, and the assumptions written into them often linger into
their more global phase. Terms like nation or state are not going to disappear
from the vocabulary of political theory—but the kinds of shift Chris Brown
(in this volume) discerns from international to global conceptions of justice
are being played out in many corners of contemporary political thought.
It is hard to predict how this will develop, although the combination of a
dominant liberalism with a concern that Western liberalism may have illegit-
imately centered itself looks unstable, and it seems probable that pockets of
resistance and new alternatives to liberalism will therefore gain strength in
future years. It seems certain that moves to reframe political theory in a more
self-consciously global context will gather pace. This is already evident in the
literature on equality, democracy, and social justice, where there is increasing
attention to both international and global dimensions. It is also becoming
evident in new ways of theorizing religion. Religion has been discussed so far
in political theory mainly in the context of the ‘‘problem’’ of religious toler-
ation, with little attention to the internal structure of religious beliefs. But
other dimensions are now emerging, including new ways of understanding
introduction 25