Bill’s point is a little different, I think. He seems to think that people don’t generally vote self-interestedly (I think he’s right) but thinks that they should. That asks us to compare general self-interested voting to general “sociotropic” voting and ask which is epistemically better. Some people think that self-interested voting is likely to do better because people know their own interests better than those of others. But, whether that’s true or not, the idea that my interests only get addressed if there are enough others with my same interests is patently inhumane. I discuss related issues in this week’s chapter on the democracy/contractualism analogy. If people voted only in their own interests the small percentage of people whose well-being is normally at stake in the threat of a famine would not have a voice. If, instead, others noticed the danger to those few and registered, in their vote, the obvious barbarity of letting them starve, they would be less likely to starve (as Sen famously argues with empirical evidence).

Bill’s right, though, that if the rich are few, and the poor are many, self-interested voting would tend to harm the position of the rich, potentially increasing distributive justice. But that’s just the flip side of the coin I’ve been discussing. If the very poor are few and the less poor are many then self-interested voting would leave the very poor out in the cold.

This doesn’t settle the question of the epistemic comparison between general self-interested voting and general sociotropic voting. But it looks to me far from obvious that self-interested voting would do better. In the case of ideologically concentrated self-interested voting their might be a case for retaliatory self-interested voting (or, even better, voting in the common interest of all except the class that is voting self-interestedly). However, it’s not clear that self-interested voting takes that particular form.

My conjecture is that when people hear about something like inheritance tax hitting the top 15% say, a lot more than 15% of voters think it may affect them. This is aggravated by two further factors: i) The ‘American Dream’ - people aspire to upward mobility so, even if aware that they’re not in the top 15% now, a lot of people think they - or their children - might one day be so. ii) Higher rates of participation (voting and in other forms) among the rich, which leads politicians to favour their interests (See Lijphart APSR, 1997, who uses this as an argument for compulsory turnout).

I think these considerations go some way to explaining why we don’t see more redistribution, though voters vote self-interestly (or, at least, try to).

I agree that pretty much all David says here sounds very sensible although, thinking about it, I’m not so sure why we can’t ‘fight fire with fire’ even in the formal sphere. I agree that more restrictive rules are appropriate here, for the reasons David gives. But then, it’s a separate question what to do when those rules are broken.

David claims it’s not that rules lapse in the face of non-compliance, they simply have different content, but I’m not sure how they differ - is it only in how to respond to the non-compliance of others? For instance, suppose we have a norm against lying. Would that norm, in the formal sphere, effectively be ‘don’t lie and, if others lie, don’t lie’ but in the informal sphere ‘don’t lie, but if others lie you can lie to redress the balance’? Or would the first part of the norm alter too?

Finally, Jonathan’s question interested me, because his example of the magazine writer supposes someone deliberately setting out to redress the balance, even though it means promoting a cause contrary to their own interests or what they think right. I’d assumed that it was the silenced minorities that were justified in breaking deliberative norms (like suffragettes or the civil rights movement).

Does David think that third parties can act, in the way Jonathan suggests, to correct distortions? And, if so, would he say they are not only permitted to but have a duty to do so?

Like you, I would be very interested to hear more from David regarding what kinds of departures from the ideal he thinks might be justified by the breakdown model. David doesn’t actually offer any specific examples of what behaviour might be permissible under the breakdown theory (the voucher system is not a response to non-compliance and so raises different issues). One suggestion David does make is that when power interferes with reason ‘the remedy might sometimes be the conscientious suppression of an overrepresented message’ (p. 194). In particular, I was wondering if the breakdown theory would permit people to speak insincerely about political issues?

Suppose the government is deliberating over a new health care plan, and there are two main choices, X and Y. Let’s say X already has the support of powerful interest groups such as the health insurance industry, and so the arguments in favour of X are overrepresented in the informal political arena whereas arguments in favour of Y are underrepresented. A writer at a prominent political magazine (something like The New Republic) happens to believe X is the best proposal, and that its main competitor, Y, has serious defects which render it unsuitable. Nevertheless, the writer is aware of David’s breakdown theory, and so is committed to levelling the playing field with regard to the debate. The writer was going to submit to the magazine a very well-researched analysis piece which carefully lays out the merits of X and Y, and strongly suggests that Y suffers from fatal difficulties. But, in the interests of levelling the playing field, they decide not to offer that analysis piece, and instead they publish a long essay extolling the virtues of Y, even though they don’t believe the essay’s conclusions are sound.

If the writer’s action is permissible under the breakdown theory, this raises a couple of worries. One is that it suppose citizens’ duties of civility (such as the duty to be sincere) are justified instrumentally, in terms of their ability to deliver the epistemic goods. I’m not sure this accords with my sense of what justifies the various duties of civility I might be under (e.g. sincerity, reasonableness, willingness to listen to others, etc…). Though these duties might have epistemic benefits under certain conditions, I’m not sure those benefits are the primary grounds for the duties. Second, if everyone knows that in circumstances of non-compliance the duty to be sincere no longer applies, then surely this might have very serious epistemic costs? Once we can’t believe what anybody is saying, how will it be possible to have any kind of fruitful dialogue in the informal political arena? Micah Schwartzman raises some of these issues in a terrific paper, ‘The Sincerity of Public Reason’.

The broader point I want to make here is one that is structurally similar to the very familiar critique of act-utilitarianism. If everyone knows that everyone else is going to behave like an act-utilitarian, then act-utilitarianism might be self-defeating when construed as a theory to regulate individual behaviour. We will fail to maximize aggregate utility if we all behave like act-utilitarians. I’m worried that a similar problem might afflict David’s breakdown theory, and the sincerity example was only meant as an illustration of the problem. If everyone knows that everyone else is directly aiming to achieve the epistemically best result, we may fail to achieve the epistemically best result. If we all know that each individual is taking epistemic matters into his or her own hands by suppressing certain ideas, overrepresenting other ideas, and generally trying to correct for perceived distortions in power using whatever means are at their disposal, we might (rationally) lose faith in the results of our political dialogue. Truth, like utility, might be one of those things that is best attained by having individuals follow second-order rules (e.g. always speak sincerely) even when non-ideal conditions obtain and departures from those rules look necessary from an individual point of view.

But maybe I’ve not got the right sense of what kinds of behaviour would be permitted by David’s breakdown theory.