Introductory Lectures in Democratic Theory

Democratic Theory PHIL2634

Semester 1, 2014

The University of Sydney

Dr Thomas M. Besch

[email protected]

“Democracy"?

• From the Greek δημοκρατία (dēmokratía): δῆμος (dêmos) "people" and κράτος (kratos) "power" or

"rule" --- this gives us: “rule by/of the people”

But what is “rule by/of the people”?

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“Rule by the people”?

Prominent possibilities include…..

1. All should be involved in legislating, in deciding on general policy, in applying laws and in governmental administration.

2. All should be personally involved in crucial decision making, i.e., in deciding general laws and matters of general policy.

3. Rulers should be accountable to the ruled; i.e., they should be obliged to justify their actions to the ruled and be removable by the ruled.

4. Rulers should be accountable to the representatives of the ruled.

5. Rulers should be chosen by the ruled, or at least by the representatives of the ruled.

6. Rulers should act in the interest of the ruled.

(See D. Held, Models of Democracy (Stanford UP, 2006), p. 2.)

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An minimalist, non-normative view…

T. Christiano: democracy is a method of group decision making that involves some form of equality among participants at an essential stage of the decision making.

Four clarifications…

(i) “democracy” concerns collective decisions made for groups that are binding on the members of the group;

(ii) different kinds of groups can be “democratic” -- e.g., families, voluntary associations, firms, states, transnational or global organizations, and so on;

(iii) “democracy” in this sense is value-neutral: to be democratic in this sense does not mean to good, desirable, right, and so on;

(iv) accordingly, “democratic” equality may not be deep or meaningful; e.g., it may be formal equality of one-person one-vote in an election, or richer, more robust equality, e.g., equal standing or influence in participatory processes of deliberation or coalition building.

(See Christiano’s http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/democracy/)

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A (much!) richer view…

Pogge’s view…

Democracy means that political power is authorized and controlled by the people over whom it is exercised, and this in such a way as to give these persons roughly equal political influence. Democracy involves voting (...) in accordance with the general idea of one person, one vote. But genuine democracy involves a lot more besides….

…what more does it involve?

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A (much!) richer view…

Pogge’s view…

Elections must feature alternatives that give voters a genuine choice. People must have a way to influence the agenda (...) or the list of candidates. Voters must be shielded from pressure and retaliation (...); they must (…) be safe from extreme economic need and from arbitrary physical violence and psychological duress (…). Voters must be free to assemble and discuss, and free also to inform themselves, which presupposes freedom of the press and of other mass media. Political power must be exercised pursuant to standing, public rules that ensure that the consequences of electoral results on political decisions can be assessed and at least roughly predicted by voters. (...)

[D]emocracy requires certain dispositions and conduct on the part of citizens: a readiness to accept majority decisions and a commitment to exercise their responsibilities as voters by informing themselves about candidates and political issues."

(from T. Pogge, "Achieving Democracy", Ethics and International Affairs 51/1 (2001))

.

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Democracy, acceptability, legitimacy?

Democracy as a condition of legitimacy? Estlund on democracy:

“What I will mean by democracy is the actual collective authorization of laws and policies by the people subject to them.” (from Democratic Authority (Princeton UP, 2008), p. 38).

Estlund and others take this sort of authorization to be a requirement of the legitimacy of laws and policies: democracy thus is construed as a condition of legitimacy.

Consider also Waldron on liberalism:

“The thesis that (...) is fundamentally liberal is this: a social and political order is illegitimate unless it is rooted in the consent of all those who have to live under it; the consent or agreement of these people is a condition of its being morally permissible to enforce that order against them.“ (From his “Theoretical Foundations of

Liberalism”, Philosophical Quarterly 37 (1987), p. 140.)

But what is the link between the acceptability of a political order and its legitimacy, or the (moral) permissibility of having/enforcing it?

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Some issues

“Democracy”: descriptive or normative?

“Democracy” as referring to a constellation of institutions of political organization, or as referring to the (substantive? formal?) purposes of political organization?

“Democracy” as referring to a decision making method only, or as referring (also) to the web of norms, values, practices, and agential character-traits that enable such a method to stably achieve good (desirable? obligatory?) outcomes?

“Democracy” as referring to a form of social or political organization that identifies/expresses the collective will that a given group of people actually has, or as identifying/expressing the collective will that a given group of people has good reasons to have, or would have if its members were reasonable & rational?

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Roughly: 3 parts…

• Part 1 (weeks 1-6): background. Origins of democratic thought; ideas/models and early criticisms of

classic democratic thought or practice.

• Part 2 (weeks 7-9): one important contemporary idea/model. Deliberative democratic theory; ideas and limits of public

deliberation; grounds and limits.

• Part 3 (weeks 10-12): some topics. Civic virtue; justice & democracy; identity & democracy.

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Schedule & readings…

Part 1

Week 2 Ancient democracy and critics No readings.

Week 3 Republicanism G. Sreenivasan, “What Is the General Will?”, (2000); R. Dagger, “Understanding the General Will” (1981).

Week 4 Liberalism (workshop!) J. S. Mill, On Liberty, chapter II, III. (1864) [lecture]; Considerations on

Representative Government, chapters II, III. (1862) [tutorial].

Week 5 In-class exam – a quiz, really…. No tutorials.

Week 6 Limitations of classical democratic theory? Q. Skinner, “The empirical theorists of democracy and their critics” (1973); J. Coleman, J. Ferejohn, “Democracy and Social Choice” (1987).

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Part 2

Week 7 Deliberative democratic theory: some themes J. Habermas, “Popular Sovereignty as Procedure” (1997); J. S.

Fishkin, “Deliberative Democracy and Constitutions” (2011).

Week 8 Deliberative democratic theory: justificatory approaches C. Larmore, “Political Liberalism” (1990); J. Rawls, “Justice as

Fairness: Political not Metaphysical” (1985).

Week 9 Deliberative democratic theory: cathartical approaches A. Gutmann, D. Thompson, “Why Deliberative Democracy is

Different” (2000). …. and on to part 3!

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Part 3

Week 10 Democracy and civic virtue R. Forst, “The Limits of Toleration” (2004); P. Jones, “Toleration,

Recognition and Identity” (2006).

Week 11 Democracy and justice R. Arneson, “Democracy is not intrinsically just” (2004); C. G.

Griffin, “Democracy as a Non–Instrumentally Just Procedure” (2003).

Week 12 Democracy and identity A. Honneth, “Integrity and disrespect” (1992); F. Fukuyama,

“Identity, Immigration, and Liberal Democracy” (2006).

Week 13 Overflow lecture & final essay consultations

No readings.

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Optional readings for lecture 2, "Ancient Democracy and Critics"

Pericles, “Funeral Oration". (Google this: there are numerous online sources for this – we’ll look at it together in the lecture.)

Plato, Republic, BOOK VIII 543a–588a. (Available online through the library.)

Aristotle, Politics, BOOK IV: 1288b10–1292a7; Book VI: 1317a40–1321a5. (Available online through the library.)

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This sample includes slides

for lectures

6, 8 and 11.

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Lecture 5

Lecture week 6

Limitations of classical democratic theory? (Themes from Schumpeter)

Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950)

Lecture 5

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942)

The “classical doctrine” of democracy

The upshot of CD:

The democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions which realizes the common good by making the people itself decide issues through the election of individuals who are to assemble in order to carry out its will. (CSD 250)

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Aspects of the classical doctrine

• There is a truly common good that is defined and can be known by normal people through rational means.

• This common good implies definite answers to many, if not all, policy issues.

• There is a “Common Will” of the people (seen as the will of all reasonable individuals) "that is exactly coterminous with the common good or interest or welfare or happiness." (CSD 250)

• By way of elections or other forms of political participation, every member of the community, “conscious of [the goal of promoting the common good], knowing his or her mind, discerning what is good or what is bad, takes part (…) in furthering the former and fighting the latter and all members taken together control their public affairs” (CSD 250).

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But the classical doctrine breaks down!

There’s deep disagreement about the nature of the common good.

There is no such thing as a “uniquely determined common good that all people could agree on or be made to agree on by the use of rational argument.” (CSD 251)

Even if it existed, any widely shareable idea of the common good would be too abstract and indefinite to govern policy.

[E]ven if a sufficiently definite common good – such as for instance the utilitarian’s maximum of economic satisfaction – proved acceptable to all, this would not imply equally definite answers to individual issues. (CSD 252)

But if there is no suitably definite common good, then the concept of the common or general will “vanishes into thin air”. (CSD 252)

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The democratic will?

The classical doctrine assumes that the individual will of citizens can be reasonable…

But actual citizens often do not take politics seriously, do not properly apply themselves to political issues, and are bad judges of their own political long-term interest:

[T]he typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyses in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again. (CSD 262)

If results that prove in the long run satisfactory to the people at large are made the test of government for the people, then government by the people [as conceived by CD] would often fail to meet it. (CSD 256)

In democratic elections, partly uninterested & misinformed citizens cast their votes according to partly irrational private preferences. The individual will lacks “rational sanction”. (CSD 258-260)

Voters have bad judgment regarding their own and other’s long term-interests (CSD 260-1).

Again, in reality, the people neither raise nor decide issues; instead, issues that shape their fate are normally raised and decided for them (CSD 264).

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The impact of political groups

The partially irrational will of the typical citizen yields to prejudice and extra-rational influence, and so is easily manipulated and steered by “political groups” (e.g., political parties, politicians, interest groups, etc).

The weaker the logical element in the processes of the public mind and the more complete the absence of rational criticism and of the rationalizing influence of personal experience and responsibility, the greater are the opportunities for groups with an axe to grind. These groups may consist of professional politicians or of exponents of an economic interest or of idealists of one kind or another (…) [T]hey are able to fashion and, within very wide limits, even to create the will of the people. What we are confronted with in the analysis of political processes is largely not a genuine but a manufactured will. And often this artefact is all that in reality corresponds to the volonté générale of the classical doctrine. (CSD 263)

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The “empirical” face of democracy

[T]he role of the people is to produce a government, or else an intermediate body which in turn will produce a national executive or government. And we define: the democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote (CSD 269).

The electoral process allows people to choose or dismiss leaders who follow not the common interest but their own agenda.

The electorate’s choice “does not flow from its initiative but is being shaped, and the shaping of it is an essential part of the democratic process.” (CSD 282) [a Voting Cattle Theory of popular sovereignty.]

Democracy, then, is not rule by the people, but rule by politicians (or other

elites) who compete over votes, influence, and opinion formation.

Competitive elitism 22

Workshop!

What’s your view about voting?

1. Some questions

2. Two problems & more questions

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Warm-up questions

1. Why choose rulers by vote in the first place?

2. Why respect the outcome of elections?

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Some problems

Kenneth Arrow’s “Impossibility Theorem” There is no consistent method by which a democratic society can make a

choice (when voting) that is always fair when that choice must be made from among 3 or more alternatives.

the problem of cyclical preferences

Coleman & Ferejohn: the matter of meaningfulness. In order to be meaningful, a social choice must be unambiguously

interpretable in terms of individual wills, preferences, or voter profiles.

Instability and ambiguity render social choice/voting meaningless.

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Instability: imagine 3 individuals and 3 alternatives...

In this group, there are majorities for

{x > y} (voters 1 and 3 defeat voter 2), {y > z} (voters 1 and 2 defeat voter 3), {z > x} (voters 2 and 3 defeat voter 1).

Thus, the majority preference ordering is {x> y > z > x}. Such an ordering is said to be cyclical, or instable.

Consider: what majority preference, if any, may we attribute to this group in relation to options x, y, and z?

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1st

choice

2nd

choice

3rd

choice

Voter 1 x y z {x > y > z}

Voter 2 y z x {y > z > x}

Voter 3 z x y {z > x > y}

Ambiguity: results of voting procedures are said to be ambiguous (roughly) if different procedures would have lead to different results...

Consider various possible voting procedures...

Condorcet voting. An alternative wins if and only if it defeats all other alternatives when paired against them individually.

Borda count. Each voter assigns points to his choices (e.g., five points to the first choice, four to the second, and so on). The points for each alternative are summed and the winner is the alternative with the highest total of points.

Bentham rule. Each voter assigns cardinal values to his choices (e.g., ten for the 1st choice, but only five for the 2nd if he prefers the 1st alternative twice as much as the 2nd). The total for each alternative is found by adding up the points each individual has assigned to it; the winner is the alternative with the highest total.

Nashian voting. Cardinal utilities are assigned to each alternative by each voter, and these utilities are multiplied to identify the winner with the highest value.

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Voter 1 Voter 2 Voter 3

1st choice Peter (1.0) Martin (1.0) Jones (1.0)

2nd choice Martin (0.5) Jones (0.5) Martin (0.5)

3rd choice Jones (0.3) Peter (0.3) Peter (0.3)

What to do about all this (including Schumpeter-type worries)?

• Abandon voting or downgrade its importance?

[→ e.g. through wide-ranging constitutional constraints on

popular sovereignty?]

• Enhance the rational quality of opinion-formation to enhance the rational quality of electoral behavior (and then hope for the best)?

[→ e.g. by attempting to weed out irrational and cyclical preferences through suitable discursive and deliberative mechanisms?]

• Other possibilities?

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Lecture 8 Deliberative Democracy:

Political liberalism and public justification

Recap: approaches to public deliberation

(More) cathartical approaches

… focus on the reasonableness/rationality-enhancing effects of public deliberation; the outcomes of such deliberation are seen as enhanced in their epistemic and moral qualities.

(More) justificatory approaches

… take it that public deliberation can (ideally?) in its own right constitute a form of (interpersonal) justification, or establish its outcomes as authoritative.

…a heuristic distinction best seen as a matter of degrees!

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Recap: public deliberation, catharsis, justification

Public deliberation (public reasoning or

discourse or dialogue) weak

WEAK normative

status

STRONG normative

status

Public deliberation as establishing

its results as authoritative (e.g.,

correct, valid, legitimate, reasonable)

Public deliberation as enhancing the

rationality/reasonableness of

preferences, interests, opinions

justification

Habermas, Forst,

Rawls, Macedo,

Larmore…

catharsis

Fishkin,

Ackerman,

Benhabib…

Gutmann &

Thompson

Three dimensions

Three dimensions in which to assess deliberative approaches…

Scope

Who carries out & is addressed in public deliberation? What conditions must people meet to qualify for full & equal membership or inclusion in public deliberation?

Depth

How fundamental are the issues on the agenda of public deliberation? E.g., are its very terms -- e.g., its criteria, presuppositions, scope -- on its agenda? Does it apply to all or only some (political) issues?

Foundations

On what grounds ought we to engage in public deliberation in the first place? What is good about it? How does it pay and what values does it serve?

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Political liberalism and public justification

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With an emphasis on John Rawls

(1921—2002)

Legitimacy

Recap: Rawls’s “liberal principle of legitimacy”:

[O]ur exercise of political power is proper and hence justifiable

only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to them as reasonable and rational.

(Rawls, Political Liberalism, 217)

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Legitimacy and levels of justification

This suggests:

LPL The exercise of political power is legitimate only if (i) it is exercised in accordance with a constitution that (ii) can be endorsed in the light of reasonably acceptable moral principles.

(LPL) demands political power to be justifiable at two levels: to meet (LPL) political power must be justifiable in light of constitutional principles/values/guidelines that are justifiable by reasonably acceptable moral principles.

What principles are “reasonably acceptable”? How do we select principles as “reasonably acceptable” ones? This brings in a third level of justification...

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A third level of justification?

Rawls writes:

Justice as fairness [i.e., Rawls’s own theory of political justice] is not reasonable in the first place unless in a suitable way it can gain its support by addressing each citizen’s reason, as explained in its own framework. (...) A conception of political legitimacy aims for a public basis of justification and appeals to public reason, and hence to free and equal citizens viewed as reasonable and rational.

(Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 63)

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A third level of justification?

Moral principles suit the second level of the justification of political power only if they can be established as reasonably acceptable principles by a theory of justice that is a “public basis of justification”.

This in effect suggests that LPL can be satisfied only on the basis of a theory of political justice that

(i) counts as a public basis of justification and

(ii) justifies some moral principles as reasonably acceptable principles.

It is the purpose of public justification to identify a theory of justice that satisfies (i) and (ii).

Whazzat???

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Public justification

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A theory of justice

Principles of justice

Constitutional “essentials”

grounding & governing

Exercises of political power

A “public basis of justification”

There

are

bounds

here!

What is public justification?

The importance of equal respect

According to (Rawls-type) political liberalism, the idea of respecting others as free and equal people must dictate the very form a moral justification of political principles may take.

The idea of respect thereby has the status of a guideline of theory construction. I.e., our view of “respect” is to shape & guide our construction of the apparatus by which we arrive at/pick political principles.

There are several features of public justification that (allegedly) flow from this idea of respect...

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Reciprocity; existence of reasonable disagreement

PJ1 A justification of political principles may pursue only those aims and employ only those means that are equally acceptable by free and equal people.

PJ2 A justification of political principles should acknowledge that free and equal people disagree deeply, permanently and reasonably about ‘comprehensive’ issues (e.g., conceptions of the good, moral, religious, philosophical and other issues).

(PJ1) and (PJ2) are put in terms of free and equal people, but can also be put in terms of reasonable people (or people political liberalism recognizes as reasonable): in PL, only reasonable people count as free and equal.

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A method of avoidance

PJ3 A justification of political principles should respect reasonable disagreement by arguing from ground that, despite such disagreement, is held (or can be held) in common by free and equal people.

RD is caused by burdens of reason, i.e., "the many hazards involved in the correct (and conscientious) exercise of our powers of reason and judgment in the ordinary course of our political life.“ (Rawls)

(PJ3) is at the core of PL’s view that public justification must be tolerant, follow a method of avoidance, be moderate, or neutral.

Thus, “political liberalism applies the principle of toleration to philosophy itself.” (Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 10)

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Constructivism

PJ4 A moral justification of political principles should take equal acceptability by free and equal people as genuinely justificatory.

Political liberals see equal acceptability (or reasonable agreement) not just as a desirable by-product of the correctness, rightness, or reasonableness, of political principles or their reasons.

Instead, they take it to constitute the correctness, rightness, or reasonableness of these things. This reflects that this view of public justification is constructivist.

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What this yields

PJ1 A justification of political principles may pursue only those aims and employ only those means that are equally acceptable by free and equal people.

PJ2 A justification of political principles should acknowledge that free and equal people deeply, permanently and reasonably disagree about ‘comprehensive’ issues (e.g., conceptions of the good, moral, religious, philosophical and other issues).

PJ3 A justification of political principles should respect reasonable disagreement by arguing from ground that, despite such disagreement, is held (or can be held) in common by free and equal people.

PJ4 A moral justification of political principles should take equal acceptability by free and equal people as genuinely justificatory.

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Two problems

Problem 1

The view that political principles must be publicly justifiable is contested: not everyone accepts constructivism. (Something similar holds viz. other components of public justification.)

But then some of the ideas that give rise to this view of public justification simultaneously rule out/undermine public justification??

Problem 2

Apparently, public justification must avoid any premise that informed and locally coherent anti-liberals (amoralists, egoists, Nazis, fundamentalists, racists, ethnicists, etc.) would reject.

But then it is mysterious how it can provide support for liberal principles of justice, or indeed any other (interesting) moral conclusions??

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A conjecture

Political liberalism avoids these two problems through a two-fold maneuver.

It imposes threshold tests of reasonableness – as a restriction on the scope of public justification, or its constituency: political liberalism includes only reasonable people on equal footing within public justification.

These threshold tests of reasonableness are rich in content: people are here seen as reasonable only if, amongst other things, they are committed to public justification itself and to certain abstract liberal ideas.

These abstract liberal ideas include views such as…

citizens should enjoy some set of basic rights and opportunities;

these rights and opportunities should enjoy some sort of special status;

citizens should enjoy some means to make fair use of these rights and opportunities.

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Conjecture

To avoid self-defeat & secure liberal content:

Public justification supposes

special threshold tests of reasonableness*

You are a fully included, equal

participant of PJ only if you are

reasonable*

Some concerns…

Is this two-fold maneuver reasonable?

Is it not dogmatic & unacceptably exclusionary to require liberal convictions in those who are admitted on equal footing to the deliberations of public justification?

How can legitimacy for liberals only be legitimacy at all?

Is this attempt to reconcile popular sovereignty, reason, and liberal content more than a form of liberal “secular fundamentalism” (Paul F. Campos)?

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Another conjecture…

If public justification seeks equal acceptability by all relevant others (or something like it, e.g., general & reciprocal acceptability, followability, shareability), the following holds:

The greater the diversity of ideas, perspectives, points of view (etc.) that are included on equal footing in public justification's scope,

i. the thinner, more minimal in content, or less substantive must it be in its suppositions, premises or starting points (more substance more disagreement [??]),

ii. the less content can qualify as publicly justified, or as equally acceptable by the relevant others (little content in the premises little content in the conclusions [??]).

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Lecture 11 Democracy and justice?

Roadmap

1. Workshop!

What (if anything) is the relationship between democracy and justice? We’ll start with a brainstorm…

2. Themes from Arneson: instrumentalism about democracy? A right to a democratic say?

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Aspects of the theme?

Preferences, private wills, interests

conceptions of the good, etc.

***

Enfranchised?

reasonable? free &

equal?.... PEOPLE

(actual? possible? idealized?)

Collective choice

***

Voting?

Public justification? Public deliberation?

(actual? possible?

idealized?)

Brainstorm: democracy & justice?

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Political principles and

values?

Political institutions?

Exercises of political power?

(actual? possible? idealized?)

INPUT OUTPUT

INFLUENCE (actual? possible? idealized?)

Brainstorm: democracy & justice?

Obviously, what we make of the relationship between democracy and justice depends, as well, on how we understand “justice”!

Some mainstream ideas…

1. Justice as doing right …. being just as doing right (e.g., by complying with what we owe to each other, or what we are morally obligated to do)?

2. Justice as impartiality … justice as a matter of impartial concern for relevant other people?

3. Justice as fairness … justice as a matter of the fair allocations of goods?

4. Justice as equal respect … justice as a matter of according to others equal respect (e.g., by respecting their rights, their autonomy, or by following a principle of justificatory reciprocity)?

5. Justice as promoting the (human) good … justice as a matter of promoting good consequences (e.g., by maximizing utility; or rights-satisfactions; or promoting human development/flourishing)?

… the list continues! 52

Procedural justice: perfect, imperfect, pure

Perfect and imperfect procedural justice: decision procedures (D) in the presence of independent standards of just/correct outcomes (S)…

D is perfectly procedurally just if D necessarily (always & non-accidentally) arrives at outcomes that are just as per S.

The essential thing is that there is an independent standard for deciding which outcome is just and a procedure guaranteed to lead to it. (Rawls, TJ, p. 86.)

D is imperfectly procedurally just if D tends to, but does not always, arrive at outcomes that are just as per S.

The characteristic mark of imperfect procedural justice is that while there is an independent criterion for the correct outcome, there is no feasible procedure which is sure to lead to it. (Ibid.)

Pure procedural justice: decision procedures without independent standards of just/correct outcomes!

D is purely procedurally just if D is the standard of just outcomes. In this case, where the procedure has fully been followed, every outcome is just.

[P]ure procedural justice obtains when there is no independent criterion for the right result: instead there is a correct or fair procedure such that the outcome is likewise correct or fair, whatever it is, provided that the procedure has been properly followed. (Ibid.)

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Values: “instrumental” and “intrinsic”?

Instrumental (“extrinsic”) values?

To say that X has instrumental value is to refer to X as being good for something else, or as being valuable as a means to an end; it is to say that X’s value derives from, or can be explained in terms of, the value of another thing that X is related to, e.g., by promoting or enabling it...

Roughly, X has instrumental value if X is a means to Y, and Y has value while Y’s value imparts X with value.

Intrinsic values?

To say that X has intrinsic value is to say that X has value not in virtue of its relationship to something else, but in virtue of what X is in its own right; it is to say that X’s value inheres in X, or derives from X’s constituents, necessary components, or nature.

Roughly, X has intrinsic value if X has value and X’s value is non-instrumental.

These values are not mutually exclusive. E.g., democracy may have instrumental (“extrinsic”) value as a means to some valuable end while some of democracy’s necessary components simultaneously are non-instrumentally valuable.

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Some possibilities…

1. Democracies can be just and a just social order can be democratic: democracy and justice can overlap.

2. An ideally just social order is democratic: ideally speaking, justice entails democracy.

3. Ideal democracy is just: ideally speaking, democracy entails justice.

4. In the world as we know it, democracy tends to be unjust: in reality, justice often calls for different things than democracy allows.

5. Democracy and justice are similar in source: some values, widely conceived, require justice and democracy: there is no deep conflict between the two (if understood & done properly).

6. Democracy is not necessarily just, but democracy is the best available mechanism to politically promote justice, or at least to politically avoid injustice.

7. Other possibilities?

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On to Arneson…

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Richard Arneson

Arneson’s view

What (for the purposes of A’s view) counts as democracy?

Let us say that in a democracy all non-transient adult residents are eligible to be citizens and each citizen is free to vote and run for office in free elections that [on a majoritarian basis] determine who shall be law makers and top public officials. (Arneson, “Debate: Defending the Purely Instrumental Account of Democratic Legitimacy,” JPP 11 (2003), 122.)

The choice of a regime should follow a best result standard:

The political decision procedure that should be established is the one that in existing circumstances would maximize the fulfilment of significant individual rights over the long haul. The choice among democracy, monarchy, aristocracy, communist party autocracy, and other possible governance regimes is to be made by selecting the regime whose implementation would maximize the attainment of this moral goal. (Arneson, “Debate”, 124.)

Hence, democracy has instrumental (“extrinsic”) value, if any:

I hold that what renders the democratic form of government for a nation morally legitimate [or valuable, or just] is that its operation over time produces better consequences for people than any feasible alternative mode of governance. (Arneson, “Debate”, 122.)

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Arneson’s view

In other words…

The choice between democracy and other systems should depend on the results of the respective systems, as determined by an independent standard: in particular, it should depend on what, in the long run, maximizes fulfilment of basic human rights. That is why democracy has instrumental value, if any (i.e., is instrumentally just).

However…

If democracy was in its own right necessary to fulfil the basic rights of people, then it was (also) intrinsically valuable, or just.

If people have a right to a democratic say as a basic right, then democracy would in its own right be necessary fulfil the basic rights of people.

But…

People do not have a basic right to a democratic say. Who gets to have a what kind of say, if any, should depend on the best consequences overall; that is, it should depend on what, in the long run, maximizes fulfilment of basic human rights.

…..Let’s unpack this!

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A basic right to exercise power?

A basic right to a democratic say would be a basic, fundamental right to exercise power over others. But no-one has a basic, fundamental right to exercise power over others.

Parents standardly have extensive power to control the lives of their children (…) My position is that there is no basic moral right to have such power. The system of parental control is justified just in case it is maximally conducive to the flourishing of those affected. In the same way, no-one has a basic moral right to be a chief warden of a prison or the director of an insane asylum. (Arneson, “Democracy is not intrinsically just”, p. 46.)

Rights to power over others as non-basic, derivative rights:

[They] are rights to serve as steward for the interests of the affected parties. The moral test for the correct assignment of such stewardship rights is that they should be passed out so as to maximize fulfilment of the rights of those people affected by this rights assignment and exercise. (Arneson, “Debate”, p. 126.)

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A first concern

But does not denying a basic right to a democratic say run up against the demand to show equal respect to people? Does not equal respect require equal opportunity to influence political arrangements?

Arneson: the concern is off the wrong foot…. Equal respect is best satisfied by a system that maximizes fulfilment of

basic human rights (other than an alleged right to a democratic say): we show “concern and respect for people by showing concern and respect for the fulfilment of their rights.” (Arneson, DNIJ, p. 49.)

Given this aim, ideally reasonable persons would require a measure of competency for any entitlement to exercise political power over others to ensure morally best results. But people vary significantly in their capacities and competency. Therefore, it is an open question whether all people, some, or only few people should get any right to exercise power over others.

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A first concern

Writes Arneson… People vary significantly in the degree to which they are motivated to discover what is just and conform to its requirements … [and] in their capacity to figure out what ways of life and conceptions of the good are choice-worthy… [and] in the extent to which they are motivated to exercise whatever practical reasoning abilities they have in order to bring it about that they end up affirming more rather than less reasonable conceptions of what is valuable and worthy in human pursuit. … The differences in competence render it the case that it could be that under some types of circumstances some autocratic constitution of society would predictably and reliably bring about morally superior outcomes to the outcomes that any feasible form of democracy would reach. In such circumstances (…) autocracy would be the morally superior form of governance. (DNIJ, p. 49.)

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Political competence?

However, reasonable people disagree about justice & rights, and thus “about proposed criteria of competency and about who is more qualified than others to rule” (DNIJ, p. 51). Thus, epistocratic rule, or rule by an (allegedly) knowledgeable elite, would be wrong.

Arneson: the objection misfires – for where should we place the threshold for reasonableness in the first place? If reasonable people make no cognitive errors and deliberate with full rationality, they

will “agree in selecting the conceptions of justice and rights that are best or tied for best” (ibid).

If a criterion of political competence is defined in terms of such conceptions, it will not be contested by the “reasonable”. Thus, if “a ‘reasonable person’ is identified with the idea of a maximally reasonable person, a notion of competence can be non-arbitrarily selected.” (ibid.)

The threshold of reasonableness should not be set any lower! [W]hy set the threshold at any particular less than maximal point? (…) Given that the political rulers will be charged with the task of designing and administering laws and policies that will maximize fulfilment of human rights, it is incorrect to accept any [lower, non-maximal] standard. Only the best is good enough. (Ibid.)

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Political competence?

But how can it be respectful of the capacity for rational agency in citizens to assess their competency by tests that ideally reasonable people (rather than them) would endorse and that may qualify great many of them as not sufficiently competent?

Arneson: again, the concern has it backwards!

[A]ppropriate respect for an agent’s rational agency capacity is shown by recognizing it for what it is. It shows no wrongful disrespect to me to notice that I am imperfectly rational and to take efficient steps to prevent my proclivity to mistakes from wrongfully harming others (…) Respect for rational agency should not be interpreted as requiring us to pretend that anyone has more capacity than she has or to pretend that variation in capacity does not matter when it does. Respect for rational agency requires treating them according to principles best supported by moral reasons.

[If] there is a divergence between the principles that threshold [i.e., not maximally] reasonable people would unanimously accept and the principles that ideally rational people would accept, I submit the latter (…) are the norms acting on which manifests respect for persons (beings with rational capacity). (DNIJ, 52.)

I.e., it does not wrongfully disrespect you if, given your lesser political competency, we accord you a lesser political status. If what should count as proper respect depends on acceptability, it should depend on what ideally reasonable people would accept (not you).

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Recap: the view

1. Democracy at best instantiates (im)perfect procedural justice: at best, it is a procedure such that its outcomes are just by a independent standard, i.e., the standard of maximal fulfilment in the long run of basic human rights.

2. Accordingly, democracy is at best instrumentally just: it is just only to the extent that it leads to just outcomes. (And it is possible that non-democratic governance is (sometimes) more just by this standard than democratic governance.)

3. The right to a democratic say is not a basic right since no-one has a basic right to exercise power over others.

4. The right to a democratic say should be allocated to people if and where this best promote just outcomes.

5. A right to a democratic say (or to exercise political power) should be allocated to people depending on political competence – competence is to be defined by a standard that maximally reasonable people can or would agree on.

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Some questions

Is there a basic right to a democratic say?

E.g., consider Article 21, UDHR, the Right to Participate in Government and in Free Elections:

Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

How could a basic (?) right to a democratic say be justified, if at all?

If there is a basic right to a democratic say, should this right be conditioned by a competency test? And if so, how can competency tests reasonably be set?

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Introductory Lectures in Democratic Theory

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Transcript of Introductory Lectures in Democratic Theory