This global politics of identity was often portrayed as antithetical to
the left–right cleavage. The relatively ordered bipolar world of the Cold
War, it was argued, was giving way to a chaotic universe of cultural
conflicts, which were primordial and much more dangerous. On the
right, in particular, commentators spoke of a rising “tribalism” that
expressed “ancient hatreds,” and they foresaw a “pandaemonium,” a
“coming anarchy,” or a “clash of civilizations” whose manifestations
would encompass harsh ethnic conflicts in post-communist countries,
brutal civil wars in the South, and endless multicultural demands
in affluent democracies.^3 Less pessimistic, many observers on the left
nevertheless concurred in seeing this new politics of identity as con-
trary to the conventional politics of left and right, and as a develop-
ment that risked distracting political actors from more important
debates about equality, redistribution, and justice. While the left was
“marching on the English Department,” quipped Todd Gitlin, “the
right took the White House.”^4
The politics of identity undeniably has a logic of its own. Rooted in
strong cultural traits and in emotions that help define interpersonal
trust and the worth of one’s social group, collective identities run
deeper than the relatively Cartesian politics of left and right.^5 Around
the world and across the political spectrum, parties and social move-
ments have regularly tried to bypass or dissolve divisions based on
identity, but most of the time they ended up acknowledging and
accommodating them. Likewise, in the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies, authoritarian, liberal, and communist regimes made colossal
efforts to build new nations out of distinct ethnic and national groups,
but they rarely succeeded in displacing or entirely assimilating resilient
P. Huntington,The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,3 New York, Simon & Schuster, 1996, pp. 19–20.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan,Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics,
Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 6–25; Robert D. Kaplan, “The Coming
Anarchy: How Scarcity, Crime, Overpopulation, Tribalism, and Disease Are
Rapidly Destroying the Social Fabric of Our Planet,”Atlantic Monthly,
vol. 273, no. 2, February 1994, 44–76; Huntington,The Clash of Civilizations,
4 pp. 19–29.
Todd Gitlin, quoted in Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka, “Introduction.
Multiculturalism and the Welfate State: Setting the Context,” in Keith Banting
and Will Kymlicka (eds.), Multiculturalism and the Welfate State: Recognition
and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies, Oxford University Press,
2006, pp. 10–14.
(^5) Smith,Stories of Peoplehood, pp. 56–59.
200 Left and Right in Global Politics