Answer to Question #284388 in Political Science for Mike

Question

WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS RELATED WITH IDENTITY POLITICS ACCORDING TO FUKUYAMA?

Answer 1

If there is any principle, any political concept that can lay claim to being dominant in our time, it is identity. For some, "identity politics" is a byword, an anti-liberal principle that threatens the benign cohesion, the softer, thinner forms of political belonging on which liberal democracy depends by breaking the body politic up into micro-groupings. For others, identity represents a thick moral claim, an expression of solidarity in the face of historical injustice, oppression, lack of recognition, humiliation.

According to Fukuyama some of the problems related to identity politics include the Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. Fukuyama provocatively argues that demands of identity politics are at the root of anti-immigrant populism. He also states that Christian Democratic and Kantian roots in contemporary European doctrines of human dignity which often aim to ground human rights as subsidiary as another problem associated with identity politics.