February 2008

(I’ve switched the last two posts around, so that David E’s response to the chapter 6 discussion is now beneath David L’s chapter 7 discussion. Please don’t overlook the former. SCM)

In chapter VII, ‘Authority and Normative Consent,’ Estlund takes up the challenge of justifying one agent’s authority over another. X enjoys a morally justified claim to authority over Y if and only if the mere fact that X instructs Y to f provides Y with a (prima facie or defeasible) moral duty to f. Estlund seeks to offer a novel justification for authority, which he labels normative consent. On this view, if an agent acts wrongly in refusing to consent to another’s authority, then that refusal is void and the situation is as it would have been had the agent consented to the other’s authority. For example, if for some reason I act wrongly in refusing to consent to your determining how I should spend my afternoon, then my failure to consent is null and the situation is as if I had consented – or in other words, I have a duty to acknowledge your authority by spending my afternoon as you direct me to do.

I focus here on the three main tasks Estlund undertakes in this chapter: (1) making the case for normative consent as a (but not necessarily the only) genuine source of authority; (2) a defense of normative consent against some objections likely to be made to it; and (3) a brief description of how a normative consent argument for authority might encompass (and so improve?) some other arguments for authority extant in the literature on political obligation.

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Daniel gives a very nice summary of the chapter and raises a few questions. First, he wonders whether the fact that democratic procedures might generate trust, and so compliance, is an epistemic or non-epistemic reason in its favor. Before taking that up, however, I want to quibble with his description of the options. He says that I’m mainly distinguishing between values intrinsic to a collective decision procedure on one hand, and consequentialist considerations on the other. That might not be the best way to put it, since while my theory brings in non-procedural values, it is not consequentialist. (I should say, I’m using “consequentialist,” to contrast with “deontological,” not in the broader way that some use it so that virtually any normative theory could receive a consequentialist formulation. On the latter use, there’s no interesting question about whether there is a consequentialist theory of democracy, since there would be no contrast class.) On my view, democracy is not recommended on the basis of its maximizing good consequences. It is recommended because (and when) the laws that are passed are legitimate and authoritative. They are legitimate and authoritative owing, in certain ways, to the decision procedure’s having some tendency to produce just or correct outcomes. That part is instrumental in a certain sense, but not necessarily consequentialist. The accounts of authority, legitimacy, and justice could all be deontological for all I’ve said. I’m not suggesting that Daniel misunderstood this, but my view is always at risk of being misunderstood to be consequentialist, and so I’m at pains to use that term advisedly. (I address the issue at pp. 164-167, in Chapter IX.)

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This chapter, as I read it, has four main articulations. First, Estlund sums up the basis case for epistemic proceduralism, on the basis of the arguments of the foregoing chapters. Second, he considers and rejects a final form of procedural theory, termed rational deliberative proceduralism, which views the value of procedures as residing in their being reason-generating. Third, Estlund spells out the kind of normative authority that epistemic proceduralism does, and does not possess. Fourth, he elaborates on what it might mean for a procedure to be accurate with respect to the justice of a policy proposal.I will focus on the first three articulations. I will raise some questions, but also highlight what I take to be some philosophical IOUs that Estlund takes out in this chapter.

I take this to be a pivotal chapter in the book in the following sense: it is here that he moves from the critical case against correctness theories and pure procedural ones, and towards the statement of his positive cas for epistemic proceduralism. This chapter provides us with the main structural features of the view, and provides us with a sense of the burden of argument that it must take up to be vindicated. Some of my questions will attempt to show just how demanding that burden is. Read the rest of this entry »

The main issue that has come up in this week’s comments concerns my rejection of fair proceduralism. My argument against it was that procedural fairness can’t prefer a fair democratic procedure to a random selection of outcomes, since both are equally fair. The question arising now is whether, nevertheless, there isn’t something that can be said for fair democratic procedures favoring them over random procedure, but without bringing in any epistemic features.

One idea is that either the idea of fairness or the idea of equality incorporates a concern for more rather than less of the distributed power, as opposed to caring only for an equal distribution. I doubt that either of these concepts includes such a thing. A coin flip (which gives each person zero expected influence or power) is sometimes a perfectly fair way to decide something even if voting (which increases each person’s expected influence above zero) is available. As for equality, it is patently satisfied by a random procedure since all equally have no influence. Christiano argues that we would only care about an equal distribution of something if we also cared about having more rather than less of it. First, this doesn’t show that equality includes that second concern. We might (or might not) just have two concerns: equality of x, and more of x. Second, the concern for an equal share of procedural power looks like a counterexample to the claim that we never have the concern for equal distribution without also wanting more of the distributed thing. It seems perfectly comprehensible to be satisfied with a random procedure in some context, but to insist that if anyone is to have power or influence all should have it equally. Suppose the question is which of several designs should be chosen for the new public fountain. I might be happy to have this decided randomly. So I don’t care about having any influence. However, I would object if some were given a vote in the matter while I was not. I want equal influence but I don’t care if any of us has any. So it is not true, as a general matter, that to value an equal distribution of x entails positively valuing more x over less. So I think neither the idea of fairness nor the idea of equal distribution can favor voting over a random procedure.

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In the previous chapter, David showed that procedural fairness could not by itself justify democracy. According to “fair proceduralism”, a law that is the outcome of a democratic vote is legitimate because everyone had an equal role in determining the outcome, regardless of whether it is good or just by other standards. Yet since a coin flip also provides equal input, fair proceduralism must incorporate some substantive value, such as the principle that outcomes should be positively sensitive to voter preferences.

Chapter 5 confronts a possible response to this argument, a response based on a partial concession. Yes, we have to appeal to substantive values to justify democracy, but we can do so with respect to the intrinsic characteristics of decision-procedures, without making any claims about their tendency to yield good decisions or (incidentally) to generate other desirable outcomes. We thus avoid any substantive assessment of political decisions / outcomes (except for endorsing the preservation of democracy, which is an outcome, but the outcome that consists in the continued functioning of our intrinsically-valued procedure). David calls this position “intrinsic democratic proceduralism” (86). The chapter criticizes 3 versions of this doctrine: Habermas, Cohen, and Waldron. Read the rest of this entry »

As usual, I’d like to offer some comments in response to points and questions raised in this week’s comments following Ben’s terrific summary of my Chapter 4. Sorry again for the length, but I’ve tried to briefly address most of the points that have come up.

First on Ben’s comments: Ben grants that a random choice procedure is procedurally fair, but denies that it is democratic. I agree that obviously it isn’t democratic. But that is not yet any argument against it, because it may be that the decision procedure needs only to be procedurally fair. So any attempt to justify democracy solely on the ground that it is procedurally fair seems forced to say that a random (and non-democratic) procedure is equally justified, being equally fair. Ben argues that democracy includes some element of what I call aggregativity. I agree. He says that the theorist who wants to ground democracy in fairness might just mean that what’s required is a procedurally fair treatment of everyone’s votes or preferences. I agree. My argument is that this shows that they appeal to something more than mere procedural fairness. They add a principle requiring a link between the output and individual inputs, a principle that is not part of the concept of procedural fairness (as shown by the example of a random choice procedure). So I think there’s nothing in that first comment of Ben’s that we disagree about, but I hope this clarifies what I’m arguing for.

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Here is the fourth installment of our reading group on Democratic Authority, which focuses on chapter 4, “The Limits of Fair Procedure.”

Summary

Estlund starts this chapter by applying the Euthyphro problem to democratic decision-making: are outcomes good because they are democratically chosen or democratically chosen because they are good? Estlund accepts that democracy is a matter of the collective authorization of laws, which is a procedural arrangement. While an infallible benevolent dictator might be able to bring about substantively just outcomes, there would be nothing democratic about that. Estlund’s argument, however – which occupies this chapter and the next – is that recent democratic theory has focused too exclusively on fair procedures to the exclusion of the independent rightness of decisions. This chapter criticizes the idea that procedural fairness can alone justify democratic procedures and begins criticizing normative social choice theory (e.g. Arrow), while chapter five continues the argument with focus on ‘deep deliberative democracy’.

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Again, I really appreciate all the excellent and challenging discussion so far. I am glad to have the chance to reply. Sorry this is rather lengthy, and still doesn’t address nearly all the points.

I assert and employ what I call a “qualified acceptability requirement” in a schematic form, leaving largely open which views count as qualified (although I fill in bits of it at crucial points). I don’t go deeper into moral philosophy in order to provide a moral argument for it. Many people object to the whole approach, which is very similar to that of Rawls’s political liberalism. What I do by way of defense is to defend it against several lines of objection. Several commentators have wished I gave a “direct” argument for it. To say, however, that the theory “needs” to do so seems to require an awful lot. Is a theory not entitled to any beginning premises? If there are objections to the premises, that’s one thing. I defend against what I take to be the more important ones, and no doubt there are others that would need to be answered. But apart from the evaluation of specific objections, the theory doesn’t seem much damaged by noting that the premises are not themselves supported by deeper argument. What theory could be immune from that objection?

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