Lately, I’ve been wondering what it means to be a good citizen. I’ve been working to develop a liberal theory of civic virtue that is, I think, properly purged of certain republican ideas. That is, I think civic virtue for liberals is exercised primarily in non-political arenas, via activities we wouldn’t normally think of as expressing civic virtue. More on that some other time. As a piece of this broader project, I have a paper coming out in The Australasian Journal of Philosophy on the ethics of voting by this title.
Here’s the abstract: Just because one has the right to vote does not mean just any vote is right. Citizens should not vote badly. This duty to avoid voting badly is grounded in a general duty not to engage in collectively harmful activities when the personal cost of restraint is low. Good governance is a public good. Bad governance is a public bad. We should not be contributing to public bads when the benefit to ourselves is low. Many democratic theorists agree that we shouldn’t vote badly, but that’s because they think we should vote well. This demands too much of citizens.
So, in summary, on my view, citizens don’t in general have an obligation to vote, but if they do vote, they should vote well. What I do in the paper is outline broadly what it means to vote badly, explain why I think you ought not to do it, and then answer various objections.
An outline of the argument is: 1.One has an obligation not to engage in collectively harmful activities when refraining from such activities does not impose significant personal costs. 2. Voting badly is to engage in a collectively harmful activity, while abstaining imposes low personal costs. 3. Therefore, one should not vote badly.
Some of the worries about this argument that I respond to are (among others): A. If good governance is a public good as I say, shouldn’t everyone who benefits from this good contribute to it? B. Don’t individual bad votes have incredibly low expected disutility, and if so, why bother prohibit bad voting? C. Does this position imply epistocracy (Estlund’s term, meaning the rule of those who know better) or something like it? D. Is this view self-effacing? E. What if citizens are good at judging character, even if they are bad at judging policies?
So, if people are interested, I’ll be writing more about this in the next few days. Feel free to email me at Jason_brennan [at] brown.edu if you’d like a copy. (I’ve got to make a final few revisions over the next few weeks anyways, so any comments would of course be welcome.)
[Update: I’ve added a bloggingheads video of Jason and blogger Will Wilkinson (Cato Institute) on this paper below the fold — SCM]
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