Liberalism and multiculturalism

Today's nation-state systems are shaped on a liberal intellectual background. The cultural claim for the rights of different groups in the liberal states and today's liberal state's reactions upon these demands are at the main focus of current political debates. Liberal states' certain malaises regarding to political stability and legitimacy as a result of developing policies within traditional boundaries inevitably lead to the formation of new political theories. Generally, multiculturalism as a new approach in terms of meeting the minority groups' demands for their rights and as a significant critique of liberalism in terms of revealing its limits in accommodating group claims within an individualist rights takes a central place in today's political debates. Particularly, Will Kymlicka and Charles Taylor's multicultural approaches provide us certain reasoning not only questioning the liberalism itself concerning its capability through group-based rights but also criticizing multiculturalist agendas in the possibility of erasing individual autonomies in certain communities. This study aims at displaying two faces of "liberalism and multiculturalism relationship" by analytically comparing and contrasting Taylor and Kymlicka's political theories.