democracy

Here are podcasts from a lecture series on the state, which took place recently at the University of Oxford. The lectures are by Stefan Bird-Pollan (University of Kentucky), Nadia Urbinati (Columbia University), Thomas Pogge (Yale University), Erika de Wet (University of Pretoria), Paul Guyer (University of Pennsylvania), and Quentin Skinner (Queen Mary, University of London). Please follow this link: http://beta.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/state-state

Cheers, Reidar Maliks

Jason Brennan (Georgetown) and I (Bowling Green) have put together a conversation on public reason/political liberalism and its treatment of religious contributions to public life (which would not have been possible without the help of the great folks over at Phil TV, especially David Killoren). In the video, I argue that there are relatively unexplored versions of public reason that are considerably friendlier to religious contributions to public life than public reason’s proponents and detractors believe. Jason presents me with a number of sharp challenges and observations.

Watch us here.

Hi everyone,

I’m pleased to announce my book The Ethics of Voting (Princeton University Press) is now published. You can read the introduction here.

(I get about $3.00 in royalties if you buy it, so here are links to Amazon, which has sold out its initial batch, and Barnes and Noble.)

The main positions I defend in the book are:

1. There’s generally no duty to vote.

2. People can exercise exemplary civic virtue and pay whatever debts they have to society (if there are such things) without participating in politics. Political participation (and knowledge) is nothing special when it comes to civic virtue.

3. If people do vote, they have strong obligations to vote for what they justifiedly believe will serve the right ends of government, or otherwise they must abstain. This holds true even though individual votes are inconsequential. (I expanded and revised my argument from”Polluting the Polls”, as, for example, I realized that it didn’t cover cases of people voting for the right things for the wrong reasons, and it didn’t handle bad fringe voting very well.)

4. It’s okay to buy, trade, or sell votes, provided you don’t violate #3.

5. If social scientific work on voter behavior is correct, then most voters probably qualify as bad voters per my theory.

I’m going to be on CBC radio (I think on Sunday Edition) this weekend discussing some of these topics in light of the likely elections in Canada.

Hello all. I’ve recently published an article that may be of interest to readers of Public Reason, in particular those of you who are interested in questions relating to the normative status of political authority. I’m currently planning a sequel to the piece in which I expand upon some of the central arguments, so I would greatly appreciate some feedback, if any of you could spare the time. A brief summary follows.

The article begins with an interpretation of Nietzsche’s thought that emphasizes his preoccupation with genealogy as a critical method and his insistence that modern forms of political authority pose a peculiar threat to the emergence of the sovereign individual. In the second section of the article, I distill these reflections into a theory about legitimate political authority. My argument is that there are certain requirements that govern the accounts that state officials may give in order to justify their decisions to citizens. I derive these requirements from a series of thought experiments and call them the requirements of legitimate political reasoning. They are: (1) the requirement of right reasons, that is, publicly offered reasons must track the reasons that were actually operative in the decision-making behind closed doors; (2) the requirement of procedural propriety, that is, the account must not appeal to reasons that are inappropriate or extraneous to the decision in question; and (3) the transparency of reasons requirement, that is, within reasonable limits, the account should consist of the full set of reasons that are appropriate to the decision in question, without any concealment of reasons for political purposes.

I then apply these requirements, by way of example, to several controversial political contexts: the Iraq war, Israel’s ground assault on the Gaza Strip known as Operation Cast Lead, and the recent reclassification of cannabis in the criminal law of the United Kingdom. The overall thrust of the argument is that when political decision-makers make public pronouncements in defense of their actions which do not conform to these requirements, citizens are entitled to resist the reasoning of the state as illegitimate. In such cases, what citizens discover is that the state is attempting to coerce them without proper authority. The theory is Nietzschean in spirit, since it takes seriously the threat to individual autonomy posed by the operation of the modern state apparatus itself, and is genealogical in orientation, asserting that an investigation into the origins of a political decision might help impugn it at an epistemic level. It thereby arms the citizen with a critical weapon with which to challenge the authority of the state.

The article, entitled “Nietzsche, Genealogy and Political Authority,” can be found in the January 2011 edition of the journal Polity. Click here.

This chapter covers three empirical issues relating to democracy: 1) the connection between democracy (or public reasoning—Sen seems to use these terms interchangeably) and famine, 2) the connection between democracy and economic development and 3) the promotion of tolerance toward minorities. In what follows, I will first restate Sen’s account of democracy (given in the previous chapter), as this is relevant to his interpretation of the data he provides in chapter 16. Second, I will outline his discussions of each of the three topics he takes up, and, third, I will raise a few questions about the causal connections he proposes in the discussion of famine.

Democracy

Sen views democracy as not merely the presence of elections and ballots, but as “government by discussion,” which includes “political participation, dialogue and public interaction (326).” He believes that an unrestrained media is especially important to the functioning of democratic societies, for a number of reasons, one of which plays a central role in his discussion of famines: a free press, Sen tells us, contributes to human security by giving a voice to the vulnerable and disadvantaged and by subjecting the government to criticism. (More on this
below.)

Democracy and Famine

In 1982, in an article in The New York Review of Books, Sen made the observation that “no major famine has ever occurred in a functioning democracy with regular elections, opposition parties, basic freedom of speech and a relatively free media (even when the country is very poor and in a seriously adverse food situation) (342).” Further, while India was under autocratic British rule, famines were regular occurrences; once India achieved democratic self-rule famines ceased. (Apparently, Sen’s observation about democracy and absence of famine was initially met with a fair amount of skepticism. Now it is widely accepted.) Sen infers from the observed correlation that democracy prevents famine. He offers two reasons in support of this inference. First, democratic governments are accountable to their citizens and subject to uncensored criticism from the media. So, in order to maintain power, democratic governments have a strong incentive to eradicate famines. (Indeed Sen argues later in the chapter that the famine case is really an instance of a broader phenomenon whereby democracy advances human security by giving political incentive to rulers to respond to vulnerable citizens.) Second, because of the informational role of the free press, democratic governments are likely to know about the plight of citizens and therefore about the need for amelioration. By contrast, authoritarian regimes, which suppress public discussion, may be simply uninformed about the severity or extent of a famine and fail to provide assistance for that reason.

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In chapter 15 of The Idea of Justice, “Democracy as Public Reason,” Sen defends the idea that democracy is a universal value. Can democracy flourish outside the west? One reason for thinking it can’t is that it (supposedly) has never done so before. To answer this charge, Sen distinguishes between the “institutional structure of the contemporary practice of democracy,” which is “largely the product of European and American experience over the last few centuries” (pp. 322-323), and the political ideals that underlie it. By the former, Sen seems to have in mind the institutions of electoral conflict (competitive elections, secret ballots, political parties, etc.). But these institutions, Sen argues, are simply the latest effort to institutionalize certain fundamental ideals, ideals of “political participation, dialogue and public interaction” (p. 326). These ideals, Sen suggests, are well-nigh universal in their appeal. But once one sees that the institutions are of use primarily as means to the realization of deeper ideals, then one has reason to avoid running the former and the latter together. In particular, one should not assume that because a certain type of institutional structure is up and running (i.e., there are elections, the votes are counted properly, the loser concedes power to the winner) that a satisfactory level of democracy has been achieved. This has been done by many comparativists, such as Sam Huntington. To do this is to focus (once again) on niti to the exclusion of nyaya.

Sen believes that an overly-institutional focus on democracy has caused particular trouble at the global level. John Rawls and Thomas Nagel may be right that there are no democratic global institutions–indeed, no institutions at all comparable to states. But this need not mean that there is no way to realize democratic ideals such as public discussion internationally. There already exist tentative practices of global deliberation, and they are worthy of support and encouragement, whatever the proper scope and limits of international institutions.

Of course, globalized public deliberation is only conceivable if the ideal of public dialogue has universal appeal. Sen believes that this ideal does have deep roots all around the world, including in areas that have little experience with popular elections. Of course, Sen also suggests that the divide between western and nonwestern experiences with democratic institutions is not as clearcut as the democracy-is-a-western-value story would have it. India was inspired by ancient Greece to experiment with formal democratic institutions (at least on a local level) long before the barbarian tribes of northern Europe. But societies have undeniably assigned value to public reason–the ideal underlying these institutions–for a very long time, and virtually everywhere. Sen illustrates this point using the Indian experience. He also discusses the Middle East in this context.

Sen concludes the chapter with a few words about the role of the media in a democratic society. (The transition to this topic is a bit abrupt.) Obviously, to the extent that the idea of public reason underlies and democratic practice, the media matters quite a lot. Sen argues that a well-functioning free press 1) enables the free expression of ideas, which is intrinsically valuable; 2) spreads information and subjects it to critical scrutiny; 3) protects the weak by subjecting the strong to the gaze of the public eye; 4) facilitates the formation of common values by the public; and 5) contributes to the pursuit of justice (though this last contribution is not clearly specified).

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CEU Budapest: 22-23 July 2010 | CFP: 30 April 2010

Please submit a 400 words abstract, suitable for blind review to molesA [at] ceu.hu or to MiklosiZ [at] ceu.hu before the 30 April 2010. The conference is fee of charge, but participants will need to provide for their own travel costs.

Twenty years after the fall of Communism we witness an important rise in support for right wing political parties across Europe. In the last European elections the vote shifted to the right dramatically. Worryingly, far right political parties have fared well recently in the UK, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands and Hungary. All of these countries have representatives from far right wing parties in the European Parliament. Many analysts suggest that people are turning to the far right groups as a reaction to (what they perceive as) shortcomings in democratic regimes.

In the face of these developments several questions arise: what resources does democracy have to resist far right parties? And more generally how should liberal democracy respond to illiberal groups? In many cases, these groups challenge the limits of free speech, making necessary to reflect once again on to what extent and why even “hate speech” ought to be protected against legal restrictions. On a related note, some governments have reacted against some groups by restricting the scope of free association or by interfering with the entry policies of some groups. Are there any limits to private association?

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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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