144 The Nature of Political Theoryor established manner as to how things are done. Certain kinds of movement—by
convention—are considered meaningful. There is, as it were, a ‘tacit social agreement’
about what it means, socially, to do or say ‘x’, that is, say, to promise or vote. Bodily
movement in terms of a rule—embedded in a convention—makes an action mean-
ingful in a particular social context. The correctness or incorrectness of an action
(in specific contexts) confirms that a rule (qua convention) is present. Conventions
also act as predictors for future action. Conventions, as such, are not instruments of
something else. There is nothing behind or outside conventions. There is no logically-
primitive reality underpinning them. Conventions are the shared practicesthrough
which we think, speak, and act. In this sense, political action is rooted in conventions.
They are the ground on which humans think, act, and speak politically. However, it
is also important to grasp the point that there is a wide range of ‘conventionalisms’ in
contemporary political theory.
Consequently, the arguments considered in this next section are viewed as examples
of conventionalist argument. In this sense, conventionalism entails the very general
assertion that, for example, the public culture, nation, state, community, republic or
ethos, are the conventional mediums through which rights, freedoms, obligations,
and the like, are recognized, articulated, and legitimized. The logic of the convention-
alist argument states, on a formal level, that the convention is primary and the right or
freedom claim is derivative. The alternative universalist ahistorical scenario is where
the right or value is articulated independently of any conventional attachments. For
many critics, the conventional character of, for example, rights is afait accompli.Itis
daydreaming to think otherwise. It is therefore just a mistake to try to find a universal
moral theory that could serve as a justification or foundation for, for example, rights.
In the last two decades of the twentieth century a great deal of political theory has
moved in a conventionalist direction. Conventionalism, like the thin universalism
of 1970s liberal justice theory, premised itself on a rejection of the richer or thicker
variants of metaphysical universalism. Thus, the opprobrium directed against tradi-
tional metaphysics, begun in the 1930s and 1940s, continued up to the end of the
century within conventional normative theories. However, the groundwork for the
development of virtually all forms of conventionalism in the 1980s, with some notable
exceptions, was formed out of a rejection or scepticism of the thin universalism of
liberal justice theory. The first and most well-known of these critiques to develop in
the 1980s was communitarianism. However, conventionalism was, as noted, a broad
church. It embodied an amalgam of theories. Thus, the last decade of the twentieth
century has seen a rash of conventionalisms: such as nationalism, patriotism, neo-
Aristotelianism, and republicanism. Rawls’ own response to conventionalism was
his work on political liberalism.
One major point to stress, concerning these various conventionalisms, is that they
werenotcalled into being by a rejection of foundationalismper se. Most convention-
alists argue that the thin universalism of justice theory does not provide a clear enough
foundation for reason, politics, and morality. In fact, to pursue this universalist path
is effectively to destroy the possibility of sound foundations. Consequently, they sug-
gest that communities, moral systems and human identities are in immanent danger