Several democratic theorists have recently sought to vindicate the ideal of equal political power (“political equality”) by tying it to the non-derivative value of egalitarian relationships. This chapter critically discusses such arguments. It clarifies what it takes to vindicate the ideal of political equality, and distinguishes different versions of the relational egalitarian argument for it. Some such arguments appeal to the example of a society without social status inequality (such as caste or class structures); others to personal relationships among equals, (...) like friendship. Each strategy faces problems. After discussing what social status consists in, the chapter argues that social status equality does not require an equal distribution of power, but only that unequal distributions are not justified on grounds incompatible with the citizens’ fundamental equal moral standing. By contrast, personal relationships among equals do require equal power; but establishing that their norms apply to our political community is challenging. (shrink)

Egalitarians often claim that well-off states’ immigration restrictions create or reinforce objectionable inequality. Standard defenses of this claim appeal to the distributive consequences of exclusion. This article offers a relational egalitarian defense of more open borders. On this view, well-off states’ immigration restrictions are problematic because they accord the citizens of well-off states a troubling form of asymmetric power over the disadvantaged. This creates an objectionably unequal relationship between affluent states’ citizens and disadvantaged immigrants. I show that this argument offers (...) a compelling diagnosis of a central problem with border control, defend the argument against objections, and explore its implications. (shrink)

The debate over rival conceptions of political legitimacy tends to focus on first-order considerations—for example, on the relative importance of procedural and substantive values. In this essay, I argue that there is an important, but often overlooked, distinction among rival conceptions of political legitimacy that originates at the meta-normative level. This distinction, which cuts across the distinctions drawn at the first-order level, concerns the source of the normativity of political legitimacy, or, as I refer to it here, the grounds of (...) political legitimacy. If we focus on the grounds of political legitimacy, there are three main conceptions of political legitimacy: will-based, belief-based, and fact-based conceptions. I present an objection to each of those main conceptions and defend a hybrid account of the grounds of political legitimacy. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed growing controversy over the “wisdom of the multitude.” As epistemic critics drawing on vast empirical evidence have cast doubt on the political competence of ordinary citizens, epistemic democrats have offered a defense of democracy grounded largely in analogies and formal results. So far, I argue, the critics have been more convincing. Nevertheless, democracy can be defended on instrumental grounds, and this article demonstrates an alternative approach. Instead of implausibly upholding the epistemic reliability of average voters, I (...) observe that competitive elections, universal suffrage, and discretionary state power disable certain potent mechanisms of elite entrenchment. By reserving particular forms of power for the multitude of ordinary citizens, they make democratic states more resistant to dangerous forms of capture than non-democratic alternatives. My approach thus offers a robust defense of electoral democracy, yet cautions against expecting too much from it—motivating a thicker conception of democracy, writ large. (shrink)

The democratic boundary problem arises because it appears that the units within which democratic decision procedures will operate cannot themselves be constituted democratically. The study argues that setting the boundaries of democracy involves attending simultaneously to three variables: domain (where and to whom do decisions apply), constituency (who is entitled to be included in the deciding body) and scope (which issues should be on the decision agenda). Most of the existing literature has focussed narrowly on the constituency question, endorsing either (...) the All‐Affected Interests Principle or the All Subjected Principle, but neither is satisfactory as a general solution. In particular, the former fails to explain why having interests at stake in a decision necessarily gives you the right to participate in making it, and the latter, although more plausible on that count, assumes that the domain and scope issues have already been settled. To make progress, we need to bring democratic values to bear on the boundary problem. The units we favour should be those that are likely to promote political equality and solidarity among members of the demos. Although this approach will often justify existing territorial states as sites of democracy, it can also generate arguments for making boundary changes along one or other dimension. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 122-164, May 2022. I argue that the consensus view that one must never level down to equality gives rise to a dilemma. This dilemma is best understood by examining two parallel cases of leveling down: one drawn from the economic domain, the other from the political. In the economic case, both egalitarians and non-egalitarians have resisted the idea of leveling down wages to equality. With no incentives for some people to work (...) hard social productivity will likely decline, further lowering people's wages and thus leaving everybody all-things-considered worse off as a result—hence “never level down.” On the other hand, however, the argument against leveling down does not appear to pass muster in the political sphere: denying political equality in the form of “one person, one vote”, for example, by giving a higher share of voting power to people with, say, more education seems straightforwardly objectionable, even if such a voting scheme would improve the outcomes of all people, including those who are ultimately left with fewer votes. Thus, a fundamental tension arises: we can either endorse the widely-affirmed “never-level-down” thesis, which says that sacrificing people's well-being exclusively for the sake of promoting equality can never be the right thing to do, or we can endorse the principle of “one person, one vote.” But we cannot do both. I defend this dilemma against a view I call the compatibility view: roughly, that because OPOV is strictly necessary to advance some weighty, non-egalitarian interest people have, accepting OPOV as a principle of justice is compatible with one's rejection of leveling down. (shrink)

When collective decisions should be made democratically, which people form the relevant demos? Many theorists think this question is an embarrassment to democratic theory: because any decision about who forms the demos must be made democratically by the right demos, which itself must be democratically constituted and so on ad infinitum; and because neither the concept of democracy, nor our reasons for caring about democracy, determine who should form the demos. Having distinguished between these three versions of the demos problem, (...) we argue that each of them can be solved. (shrink)

The concept of freedom as non-domination that is associated with neo-republican theory provides a guiding ideal in the global, not just the domestic arena, and does so even on the assumption that there will continue to be many distinct states. It argues for a world in which states do not dominate members of their own people and, considered as a corporate body, no people is dominated by other agencies: not by other states and not, for example, by any international agency (...) or multi-national corporation. This ideal is not only attractive in the abstract, it also supports a concrete range of sensible, if often radical international policies. (shrink)

In response to the democratic boundary problem, two principles have been seen as competitors: the all-affected interests principle and the all-subjected principle. This article claims that these principles are in fact compatible, being justified vis-à-vis different functions, accommodating different values and drawing on different sources of normativity. I call this a ‘function-sensitive’ view. More specifically, I argue that the boundary problem draws attention to the decision functions of democracy and that two values are indispensable when theorizing how to regulate these (...) functions: procedural fairness and political autonomy. While the value of procedural fairness is best promoted through a version of the all-affected interests principle, applied to decision making generally, it is argued that political autonomy is best promoted through a version of the all-subjected principle, applied to coercive decision making specifically. The article concludes by drawing out some practical implications of the function-sensitive view for the case of immigration and border controls. (shrink)

In a recent paper, María Pía Méndez (2022) offers an epistemic critique of epistocracy according to which the sort of politically well-informed but homogenous groups of citizens that would be empowered under epistocracy would lack reliable access to information about the preferences of less informed citizens. Specifically, they would lack access to such citizens’ preferences regarding the form that policies ought to take—that is, how these policies ought to be implemented. Arguing that this so-called Information Gap Problem militates against epistocracy, (...) Méndez instead recommends that we respond to problems created by widespread voter ignorance by improving the flow of information between political actors by adopting some participatory democratic institutions. In this paper I argue that the severity of the Information Gap Problem for epistocracy is overstated. After first sketching some background (Section 1), I argue that it is hard to see why information about citizens’ preferences for the form that policies ought to take is important enough that the expected costs of epistocracy outweigh its expected benefits if it selectively empowers people who lack access to such information (Section 2). Moreover, different forms of epistocracy are less threatened by the Information Gap Problem, assuming it is indeed a problem. For some forms of epistocracy, it may be no problem whatsoever. However, I conclude by suggesting that Méndez touches upon some more serious problems for epistocracy (Section 3). First, even setting aside the Information Gap Problem, there are open questions about the possible epistemic inferiority of epistocracy relative to democracy. Second, more comprehensive accounts of political competence that move beyond the possession of sufficient levels of political information are much harder to reliably test for, thus complicating the task of devising effective epistocratic selection mechanisms. Lastly, epistocracy arguably creates a serious risk of abuse that may outweigh any other benefits it brings. More research is needed to determine how (and whether) epistocrats can respond to such challenges. (shrink)

In recent years the view that the non-instrumental value of democracy is a relational value, particularly relational equality, gained prominence. In this paper I challenge this relational egalitarian version of non-instrumentalism about democracy’s value by arguing that it is unable to establish a strong enough commitment to democracy. I offer an alternative view according to which democracy is non-instrumentally valuable for it establishes relationships of mutual service among citizens by enlisting them in the collective project of ruling the polity justly (...) together which is a self-standing source of value for them. Relating in the mode of mutual service is not a species of relating as equals; it is a distinct relational value. Democracy is uniquely suited to realize this relational value, for it renders citizens co-authors of the fundamental rules of the system of social cooperation under which they live, and only as co-authors of these rules are they able to mutually serve each other in a way that is appropriate within their relationship as citizens of the same polity. For this reason, a strong commitment to democracy can be based on the relational value of mutual service, which therefore better fits the theoretical purposes of non-instrumentalism than relational equality. (shrink)

The creation of increasingly complex artificial intelligence (AI) systems raises urgent questions about their ethical and social impact on society. Since this impact ultimately depends on political decisions about normative issues, political philosophers can make valuable contributions by addressing such questions. Currently, AI development and application are to a large extent regulated through non-binding ethics guidelines penned by transnational entities. Assuming that the global governance of AI should be at least minimally democratic and fair, this paper sets out three desiderata (...) that an account should satisfy when theorizing about what this means. We argue, first, that an analysis of democratic values, political entities and decision-making should be done in a holistic way; second, that fairness is not only about how AI systems treat individuals, but also about how the benefits and burdens of transformative AI are distributed; and finally, that justice requires that governance mechanisms are not limited to AI technology, but are incorporated into a range of basic institutions. Thus, rather than offering a substantive theory of democratic and fair AI governance, our contribution is metatheoretical: we propose a theoretical framework that sets up certain normative boundary conditions for a satisfactory account. (shrink)

Some authors have argued that legitimacy without authority is possible, though their work has not found much uptake in mainstream political philosophy. I provide an improved model how legitimate political institutions without authority are possible, the Transmission Model, which I couple with a thin substantive position, the Moral Value View. I defend the model against three common objections.

Discussions of political obligation and political authority have long focused on the idea that the commands of genuine authorities constitute content-independent reasons. Despite its centrality in these debates, the notion of content-independence is unclear and controversial, with some claiming that it is incoherent, useless, or increasingly irrelevant. I clarify content-independence by focusing on how reasons can depend on features of their source or container. I then solve the long-standing puzzle of whether the fact that laws can constitute content-independent reasons is (...) consistent with the fact that some laws must fail to bind due to their egregiously unjust content. Finally I defend my understanding of content-independence against challenges and show why it retains a place of special importance for questions about the law and political obligation. Content-independence highlights that it is some feature of the law or law-making process in general that is supposed to generate moral obligations for citizens, not the merits of particular laws. (shrink)

There are two classic principles for deciding who should have a right to vote on the laws, the All Affected Principle and the All Subjected Principle. This article is devoted, firstly, to providing a sympathetic reconstruction of the All Subjected Principle, identifying the most credible account of what it is to be subject to the law. Secondly, it shows that that best account still suffers some serious difficulties, which might best be resolved by treating the All Subjected Principle as a (...) subset of the All Affected Principle with which the All Subjected Principle must in any case be supplemented. (shrink)

Voters have many motivations. Some vote on the issues. They vote for a candidate because they share that candidate's policy positions. Some vote on performance. They vote for a candidate because they think that candidate will produce the best outcomes in office. Some vote on group identities. They vote for a candidate because that candidate is connected to their social group. This paper is about these motivations. I address three questions. First, which of these motivations, were it widespread, would be (...) best for intrinsic democratic values? Second, how do the motivations of actual American voters affect the value of American democracy? Third, what motivations should individual American voters have? I argue that widespread issue voting would be best, followed by performance voting, followed by group voting. I argue that American voters do not much contribute to the value of American democracy. Their behavior makes it hard to achieve many democratic values. Finally, I argue that, were America an ideal democracy, American voters would have reason to vote on the issues. But, in their non-ideal democracy, American voters merely have reason to avoid voting on privileged group identities. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that on an equality-based theory of democracy's value, randomly selecting legislators is more democratic than electing them. In sections 1 and 2, I describe how a legislature composed of randomly selected legislators might operate and what an equality-based theory of democracy's value consists in. In section 3, I evaluate arguments made in support of election-based democracy by democratic theorists and demonstrate why these arguments fail on their own terms. In section 4, I argue that when (...) compared to electing legislators, randomly selecting legislators better answers to four democratic ideals embedded in equality-based theories of democracy's value. (shrink)

Are there any prima facie reasons that democracies might have for disenfranchising older citizens? This question reflects increasingly salient, but often incompletely theorized complaints that members of democratic publics advance about older citizens’ electoral influence. Rather than rejecting these complaints out of hand, we explore whether, suitably reconstructed, they withstand democratic scrutiny. More specifically, we examine whether the account of political equality that seems to most fittingly capture the logic of these complaints – namely, equal opportunity of political influence over (...) electoral outcomes – can justify disenfranchising older citizens. We conclude that equal opportunity of influence cannot ground a blanket disenfranchisement of older people and that, taken in conjunction with other general considerations that apply to all sound electoral policies, partial disenfranchisement proposals (i.e. proposals for reducing the electoral influence of older citizens via age-weighted voting) are both quasi-inapplicable and practically unrobust across a relevant range of political contexts. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Contemporary political philosophers often take for granted that for political purposes all humans are to be considered of equal worth. The difficulty, as Bernard Williams observed, is to find an interpretation of this claim that does not collapse into absurdity or triviality. I show that the principal attempts to solve this problem all beg the question against an Aristotelian proponent of natural hierarchy. I then explore existing proposals for dissolving the problem of basic equality, whether by denying the need for (...) justification altogether or by reframing justification in either ostensive or coherentist fashion, showing that each fails to account for our sense that basic equality is objectively true. In response, I outline a Hegelian approach that treats the commitment to basic equality as a social fact that constrains philosophical reasoning in contemporary liberal democracies. By itself that might suggest complacent conservatism or cultural relativism, but I argue that practices and institutions that reflect and foster a commitment to basic equality have a distinct value in permitting reciprocal recognition and thereby enabling us to make a distinct class of normative claims on one another. This Hegelian resolution of the problem is dialectically superior to its rivals and therefore warrants further development. (shrink)

In this article, I critically assess Hélène Landemore's new model of Open Democracy, asking whether it requires of citizens to blindly defer to the decisions of the mini-public. To address this question, I, first, discuss three institutional mechanisms in Open Democracy, all of which can be read to grant citizens democratic control. I argue that neither the capacity to authorize the selection mechanism (random sortition), nor the lottocratic conception of political equality, nor the self-selection mechanisms of Landemore's model deliver the (...) form of control that would insulate Open Democracy from the charge of blind deference. I then discuss the direct democracy mechanisms that Landemore incorporates into her model. Although these devices grant citizens control and, by extension, offer the resources for repudiating the charge of blind deference, they also, I argue, subvert the logic of Landemore's lottocratic model, rendering Open Democracy predictably unstable. Given the deliberative asymmetries between the mini-public and the citizenry, a high frequency of bottom-up challenges is to be expected that would throw the whole system into jeopardy. Thus, the challenge for lottocrats is to show how democratic control can be achieved in a lottocratic system without undermining the benefits of the legislature by lot. (shrink)

This article offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of Eric Heinze’s book Hate Speech and Democratic Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 2016). Heinze’s project is to formulate and defend a more theoretically complex version of the idea (also defended by people like Ronald Dworkin and James Weinstein) that general legal prohibitions on hate speech in public discourse compromises the state’s democratic legitimacy. We offer a detailed synopsis of Heinze’s view, highlighting some of its distinctive qualities and strengths. We then develop a (...) critical response to this view with three main focal points: (1) the characterisation of democratic legitimacy as something distinct from (and whose demands aren’t identical with those of) legitimacy per se; (2) the claim that the requirements of democracy are hypothetical, rather than categorical, imperatives; and relatedly (3) the question of how we should reconcile the requirements of democratic legitimacy with the costs that may follow from prioritising democratic legitimacy. We argue that there are significant difficulties for Heinze’s account on all three fronts. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Children are among the few social groups that are systematically and universally disenfranchised. Although children are citizens worthy of equal moral treatment and rights, their right to vote is restricted in almost all states, and this is seen as legitimate by most democratic theories. What is particular about childhood that justifies the restriction of their right to vote? How can democratic systems legitimise the exclusion of a section of their citizenry? This article provides a critical analysis of the principles that (...) ground child disenfranchisement, and of the allocative mechanisms proposed for restricting the right to vote. It shows that most arguments in favour of child disenfranchisement are unsatisfactory, as they are inconsistently used to target the child population (but not other groups) or are incompatible with a commitment to equality. Among the principles for child disenfranchisement, only those that appeal to political incompetence may be valid for excluding children. Regarding the allocative method of exclusion, this article shows that age thresholds cannot be justified to restrict franchise, and that, while competence tests fare better in theory, there may be issues of implementation. The article contributes by providing a clear and systematic analysis of the core arguments in favour of child disenfranchisement, and the conditions that must be met to justify such a practice. (shrink)

This article aims to say what democracy is or what the predicate ‘democratic’ means, as opposed to saying what is good, right, or desirable about it. The basic idea—by no means a novel one—is that a democratic system is one that features substantial equality of political power. More distinctively it is argued that ‘democratic’ is a relative gradable adjective, the use of which permits different, contextually determined thresholds of democraticness. Thus, a system can be correctly called ‘democratic’ even if it (...) does not feature perfect equality of power. The article's central undertaking is to give greater precision to the operative notion of power. No complete or fully unified measure of power is offered, but several conceptual tools are introduced that help give suitable content to power measurement. These tools include distinctions between conditional versus unconditional power and direct versus indirect power. Using such tools, a variety of prima facie problems for the power equality approach are addressed and defused. Finally, the theory is compared to epistemic and deliberative approaches to democracy; and reasons are offered for the attractiveness of democracy that flows from the power equality theme. (shrink)

“One person, one vote” is wedded to the idea of democracy to such an extent that many would hesitate to refer to a system, which deviated from this, as a democracy. In this paper, I show why this assumption is hard to defend. I do so by pointing to the importance of baseline in justifying a system of “one person, one vote.” The investigation will show that the reasons underlying the most prominent views on democratic inclusion cannot justify “one person, (...) one vote” robustly. This ultimately means that democrats should be less confident in their judgment that 1P1V is a necessary part of democracy. (shrink)

Two crucial distinctions regarding political competence must be made. First, the mere probability that you will make a morally right decision (reliability) is distinct from your ability to skillfully make a decision (competence). Empirical and normative accounts have focused primarily on reliability, but competence is more important if we take central normative commitments seriously. Second, the competence you have on your own (direct competence) is distinct from the competence you have in contributing to some collective enterprise (contributory competence). Direct competence (...) is likely to be extremely demanding in a democratic context, so we should move to a contributory account of competence. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn Democracy for Realists, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels argue that voters are shortsighted and punish incumbents for politically irrelevant outcomes. These failings, in the authors’ view, mean that voters are incapable of holding politicians to account. But Achen and Bartels overstate voters’ failure to engage in effective retrospective voting. The authors also understate the degree to which accountability can be compatible with voters’ being myopic, such as when early- and late-term performance are correlated. Achen and Bartels also overlook evidence (...) that the American state acted as an insurer against social risk long before the New Deal, a fact that points to voters using relevant criteria when they appear to punish incumbents for natural disasters. Finally, while accountability is an important consequentialist reason for democracy, we should keep in mind non-consequentialist justifications for this system of government, in particular its instantiation of political equality. (shrink)

Disagreement among philosophers over the proper justification for political institutions is far from a new phenomenon. Thus, it should not come as a surprise that there is substantial room for dissent on this matter within democratic theory. As is well known, instrumentalism and proceduralism represent the two primary viewpoints that democrats can adopt to vindicate democratic legitimacy. While the former notoriously derives the value of democracy from its outcomes, the latter claims that a democratic decision-making process is inherently valuable. This (...) article has two aims. First, it introduces three variables with which we can thoroughly categorise the aforementioned approaches. Second, it argues that the more promising version of proceduralism is extrinsic, rather than intrinsic, and that extrinsically procedural accounts can appeal to other values in the justification of democracy without translating into instrumentalism. This article is organised as follows. I present what I consider to be the ‘implicit view’ in the justification of democracy. Then, I analyse each of the three variables in a different section. Finally, I raise an objection against procedural views grounded in relational equality, which cannot account for the idea that democracy is a necessary condition for political legitimacy. (shrink)

It has been suggested that neuroenhancements could be used to improve the abilities of criminal justice authorities. Judges could be made more able to make adequately informed and unbiased decisions, for example. Yet, while such a prospect appears appealing, the views of neuroenhanced criminal justice authorities could also be alien to the unenhanced public. This could compromise the legitimacy and functioning of the criminal justice system. In this article, I assess possible solutions to this problem. I maintain that none of (...) them qualifies as a satisfactory general solution to it, a solution that could reasonably be taken to solve the problem or to suffice for dealing with it in at least most cases. Yet I also suggest that, depending on contingent empirical circumstances, the responses – either singly or together – can sometimes amount to a sufficient answer to it. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 480-495, December 2021.

Since field experiments in democratic politics influence citizens and the relationships among citizens, they are freighted with normative significance. Yet the distinctively democratic concerns that bear upon such field experiments have not yet been systematically examined. In this paper, we taxonomize such democratic concerns. Our goal is not to justify any of them, but rather to reveal their basic structure, so that they can be scrutinized at further length. We argue that field experiments could be democratically objectionable even if they (...) are not decisive – even if they do not swing the results of elections or other political decisions. Rather, if a class of campaign experiments is objectionable, one reason for this is that they undermine citizens’ equal standing. The ideal of equal standing affords nuanced judgments about the permissibility of field experiments in democratic politics. (shrink)

Recently, political models which employ lottery-selection instead of ballot voting have been proposed. Proponents argue that such lottocratic models can improve the representation of the population and reduce undemocratic influences. In this paper, I argue that these proposals also satisfy the egalitarian requirement of democracy. I claim that having an equal chance to be selected by lot is equally egalitarian as having an equally weighed vote for two reasons: first, having a chance to be selected by lot satisfies the requirement (...) for political justice better than electoral democracy, and second, it provides citizens with equal political influence and not merely equal impact. (shrink)

This article sets out an argument from legitimacy for the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament in Australia. The article first sets out an understanding of political legitimacy and of legitimacy deficits and argues that the Australian Government faces a legitimacy deficit with respect to its exercise of political power and authority over Indigenous Australians. The deficit arises, it is argued, because Indigenous Australians face significant structural injustice and there is little hope of redressing this injustice within the prevailing governing conventions. (...) The article then argues that the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament ought to be seen as part of a package to address this legitimacy deficit by resetting the governing conventions of Australian society. The argument from legitimacy is then compared favorably with more familiar arguments from sovereignty and the right to self-determination. (shrink)

Whether China should be more democratic has been a continuous debate among political theorists inside and outside of the country. Over the last decade or so, much scholarly discussion on the question surrounds the ideas of the political meritocrats, who hold that democratically elected officials should be constrained, if not replaced, by meritocratically selected officials, chosen by means of, for instance, examinations and peer recommendations. This institutional arrangement, most of them argue, is particularly suitable for the circumstances of China. The (...) political meritocrats construct the dichotomy between democracy and political meritocracy by showing that political meritocracy is intimately connected to Chinese culture, and that democracy is in many ways Western. I argue, however, that this dichotomy is artificial and misleading. First, the ‘Chineseness’ of political meritocracy as well as ‘Westernness’ of democracy are often exaggerated by the political meritocrats. Second, the cultural considerations underpinning the Chineseness of meritocracy and Westernness of democracy are not taken as seriously by the political meritocrats’ view on the superiority of ideal meritocratic politics to non-ideal democratic politics, which renders the political meritocrats’ argument about the democracy–meritocracy dichotomy inconsistent. (shrink)

Within democratic theory, electoral competition is typically associated with minimalist and realist views of democracy. In contrast, this article argues for a reinterpretation of electoral competition as an important element of an egalitarian theory of democracy. Current relational egalitarian theories, in focusing on the equalization of individual power-over, present electoral institutions as in tension with equality. Against this view, the article contends that electoral competition can foster equality by incentivizing the equalization of cooperative power. The article develops the normative category (...) of equal opportunity to access cooperative power and shows how it can generate an egalitarian defense of electoral competition. Yet this ideal is not an affirmation of the status quo. Rather, it points to the need to reform electoral systems to make them more competitive and so more likely to foster cooperative power, as well as reforms to provide direct support to associations like unions that equalize cooperative power. (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss a recent attempt of justifying democracy and its authority. It pertains to recently published papers by Niko Kolodny, which complement each other and taken together practically assume a form of a monograph. It could be said that Kolodny's approach is a non-standard one given that he avoids typical ways of justifying democracy. Namely, when a justification of democracy is concerned, Kolodny maintains that it is necessary to offer a kind of an independent justification. It (...) is not so much that he insists that the usual approaches are wrong as much as that an independent justification is necessary in order to discern what it is that gives them their significance. Kolodny's independent justification of democracy is based on the idea of social equality. In this paper I will try to reconstruct and critically assess Kolodny's approach by paying special attention to the question of democratic authority. (shrink)

Empirical research has transformed our understanding of autocratic institutions. Yet democratic theorists remain laser-focused on ideal democracies, often contending that political equality is necessary to generate democratic authority. Those analyses neglect most nonideal democracies and autocracies – regimes featuring inequality and practices like gerrymandering. This essay fills that fundamental gap, outlining the difficulties of applying theories of democratic authority to nonideal regimes and challenging long-standing views about democratic authority. Focusing on autocrats that lose elections, I outline the democratic authority of (...) nonideal, flawed procedures. Flawed elections are unjustifiably biased toward incumbents. But under certain conditions, ignoring an incumbent’s loss would require not treating one’s fellow citizens as equals. Under those conditions, therefore, citizens are bound to obey those electoral outcomes – that is, flawed procedures can possess democratic authority. (shrink)

Some corporations use their disproportionate lobbying power to obstruct policy. This obstructive lobbying violates most people’s claims to equal political influence. Occasionally, however, other corporations respond by using their disproportionate power to lobby in support of policy. Does this supportive lobbying violate claims to equal influence too? This paper argues that it does, using climate policy as an example. Supportive lobbying does not, in many cases, work to cancel out the influence from obstructive corporate lobbying. Moreover, supportive lobbying violates claims (...) to equal influence even in cases where this lobbying helps equalise the distribution of influence, helps equalise the likelihood of congruence between policy and people’s policy preferences, and helps enforce claims to equal influence held by people in the supportive corporation. (shrink)

I argue that the use of elected political representatives undermines the political equality of citizens. Having elected representatives politically stand-in for individual constituents makes ordinary citizens the political inferiors of their representatives. This in turn creates democratically problematic social inequality between elected politicians and their constituents. I then offer an alternative to representative politicians that does not face the avatar of the people problem: representative mini-publics. Through these bodies, we can achieve a representative system without a class of political elites, (...) where citizens share the responsibilities and powers of government as equals. (shrink)

This article grounds the morality of secession on two forms of collective self-determination: one manifests the communal goods of secessionists and the other the value of shared political institutions. Secession is morally valuable when the two are incompatible such that the claimant confronts persistent alienation. For remedial rights theories, only ‘strict violations’ permit secession. For primary rights theories, ‘broad violations’ grant secession as a last resort, and so this thesis, ‘collective self-determination as nonalienation’, should be accepted regardless. First, as the (...) two collective forms of self-determination develop two forms of territorial rights, it supplements cogent accounts of territorial justification for, and claims to, secession. Second, as persistent alienation can have both strict and broad interpretations, it also provides moral grounds shared by remedial and primary rights theories if they concede the value of collective self-determination. The strict sense refers to persistent coercion that violates personal autonomy and nullifies state legitimacy. The broad interpretation denotes long-term political frustration caused by unreasonable prevention of greater collective autonomy that even legitimate states may achieve. Third, to verify whether this amounts to long-term political frustration and to address persistent alienation, secession should be regarded as a last resort, despite its support from the primary rights account. (shrink)

Democracy is the form of government in which citizens have an equal say in political decision-making. But what does this mean precisely? Having an equal say is often defined either in terms of equal power to influence political decision-making or in terms of appropriate consideration, i.e., as a matter of attributing appropriate deliberative weight to citizens’ judgement in political decision-making. In this paper I argue that both accounts are incomplete. I offer an alternative view according to which having an equal (...) say is having a say as an equal. That is, having an equal say is to be defined in terms of citizens’ occupying a role of political decision-makers, i.e., the political office of the democratic co-ruler of the polity, such that no citizen is a secondary or auxiliary decision-maker; they rule together as equals. This view aligns with the traditional understanding of democracy as rule by the people while providing a coherent conceptual framework for specifying what it means for democratic citizens to have an equal say which incorporates the strengths of alternative accounts and overcomes some of their challenges. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the political and economic domains are analogous for distributive purposes. The upshot of this conclusion is that because we normally think that an unequal distribution of votes is objectionable even if these inequalities are strictly necessary to improve the lives of less informed voters, so we should conclude that an unequal distribution of resources might be similarly objectionable even if strictly necessary to make the worse off better off. Leveling down economic resources is therefore (...) sometimes morally permissible. I consider and reject three types of objections to this view. (shrink)

Social egalitarianism holds that individuals ought to have equal power over outcomes within relationships. Egalitarian philosophers have argued for this ideal by appealing to features of political society. This way of grounding the social egalitarian principle renders it dependent on empirical facts about political culture. In particular, egalitarians have argued that social equality matters to citizens in political relationships in a way analogous to the value of equality in a marriage. In this paper, we show how egalitarian philosophers are committed (...) to psychological premises, and then illustrate how to test the social egalitarian’s empirical claims. Using a nationally representative survey experiment, we find that citizens will sometimes prioritize equality over competing values, but that the weight of social equality diminishes when moving from personal to political cases. These findings raise questions for thinking about how to explain the normative significance of social equality. (shrink)

Can states permissibly enforce mandatory participation in the provision of public goods? Usual justifications of state action here appeal to the fact that such goods are very good for people. Arthur Ripstein argues that states can compel provision of public goods, but that the best explanation of this is grounded, not in the costs and benefits of the provision to the compelled parties, but in the parties’ moral status as independent agents. I argue that Ripstein’s alternative account poses more problems (...) than it solves. Our best hope in grounding mandatory cooperation is to do so with reference to the duties that we have to serve people’s interests, including interests in autonomy, welfare, and being respected on account of one’s moral status. (shrink)