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Fairness, Democracy and Lotteries

Tuesday, 3 June 2008 in Posts, Working Papers by Ben Saunders | 2 comments

Last night I gave a talk to the Moral Philosophy Seminar in Oxford, which received particularly good questions from Joseph Raz and John Broome (among others). As often, the paper has been posted for discussion on the blog Ethics-Etc (direct link to the paper here). Since it’s really political philosophy, I thought I’d draw attention to that here, for any interested readers.

Abstract:  

This paper challenges the common assumption that democracy requires majority rule. I assume that we can adopt a contractualist approach to uncover the demands of political equality and argue that contractors would not necessarily accept majority rule to make decisions in their society. I first reject broadly consequentialist arguments, arguing that firstly no procedure guarantees ideally best outcomes, secondly that in cases of pluralism there is no need to suppose there is a uniquely best outcome, and thirdly that we need to be fair between different individuals. I develop this need for fairness into a case for weighted lotteries, drawing on the Taurek-Scanlon ‘saving the greater number’ debate. This leads to my conclusion that democratic ideals can be realized by selecting a random vote to determine the outcomes of decisions.

2 comments

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1 - Saturday, 26 July 2008 at 12:14 pm

Annabelle Lever

This sounds very interesting, and I think that democratic government is too often identified with majority rule, when it is only one decision procedure amongst many that democracies can use to make decisions - alternatives include appointments/personal choice (in certain circumstances) and, as you say, lotteries. Peter Stone, at Stanford University is very interested in the topic. But it’s not a deliberative procedure, and seems suitable only where the fairness of the outcome has nothing to do with the consideration of the merits of different views. Reasonable pluralism scarcely means we should be indifferent to logic, preference, alternative interpretations of value/desirable ends. So while lotteries (weighted or not) seem really useful in some circumstances, they are unlikely to be generalisable across democratic decisions. Still, thanks so much for alerting me to your piece, which sounds really interesting. Annabelle

2 - Friday, 29 August 2008 at 10:27 am

Ben Saunders

Thanks for the comment Annabelle and apologies for the length of time taken to reply.

It is true that the lottery is not a deliberative procedure, but it operates only at the voting stage - in place of a simple majority vote, which itself is no more deliberative. The lottery is still quite consistent with deliberation taking place beforehand - indeed, I would say it may well produce more incentives for deliberation: it is always worth trying to win more support to your side, even if you have no hope of winning a majority (or already have one).

I know of Peter Stone’s work and am looking forward to meeting him next month at the Workshops in Political Theory in Manchester.

Thanks again for your comment and taking the time to read my paper. Ben

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