Meritocracy vs. Solidarity

This is quite a topic. To begin with, compare and contrast the following five quotes.

(1) Bryan Caplan quotes Harford on peer sanctions/ostracism for "acting white":

[A]s long as African Americans remain disadvantaged and clustered together in ghettos, a black student who studies hard is acquiring the ability to escape from poverty, crime, and deprivation - and from those around him. That may not be popular. People don't like to see their friends developing escape plans; even the option to escape makes us nervous.

[There are] analogues of "acting white" in communities as diverse as the British working class (that certainly matches my experience at school), Italian immigrants in Boston's West End, the Maori of New Zealand, and... Japan's lowest caste.

(2) Caplan adds:

This all sounds great, until you realize that there are plenty of cultures that don't work this way! Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe were part of the working class when they arrived. But almost all of the social pressure in Jewish culture was to do well in school and make a better life, not remain in the working class. The same goes for earlier waves of Asian immigration. Japanese-American gardeners of the sixties encouraged the next generation to do well in school and move up; that's why I've haven't heard anyone talk about a "Japanese gardener" for twenty years, even though they were ubiquitous when I was a kid.

(3) Cf. Russell Arben Fox's communitarian perspective:

Read the church's "Black Value System" that Rev. Wright and TUCC uses, and see how he connects the disavowal of middleclassness to a disavowal of the meritocratic (and thus always at least potentially elitist and nonparticipatory and undemocratic) values which hold sway in a capitalist state like our, a state determined above all to discover the most talented individuals out there, and enable (and encourage) them to professionally and socially make lifestyle choices so as to seal themselves off from the rest of their community.

(4) From the linked PDF:

The highest level of achievement for any Black person must be a contribution of substance to the strength and continuity of the Black Community.

(5) Cf. H.E. Baber's The Multicultural Mystique:

White privilege is the privilege of self-invention. Immigrants and members of ethnic minorities do not have that luxury. Even when they are not locked out of the mainstream by discrimination and economic disadvantage, multiculturalist notions of authenticity, role obligation and group loyalty dog them.

Communitarianism creeps me out. It's so oppressive to discourage people from developing their own talents or pursuing their own dreams; to bind them forever to whatever local "community" they happened to be born into -- however parochial, intolerant, and limiting.

I'm so incredibly grateful to be where I am now, to have the opportunity to dedicate my life to the discipline of philosophy; I can't even begin to imagine being nearly so happy doing anything else. The academic philosophical community is the first to which I've felt that I truly belong. But if I had been born a Maori, if my skin were a darker shade, then suddenly I would have been obliged to remain with my ethnic community instead? *shudder*

That's not to defend any kind of egoism, of course. I certainly think we ought to care about more than just our own self-interest, and strive to make the world a better place. But there are any number of ways to do that, some of which may be better or worse suited to our individual talents and temperaments. The world is a big place, and we needn't limit our attention to the little corner of it that we're born into. Utilitarian benevolence sits better with liberalism than communitarianism, it seems to me.

Moreover, I'm not even a pure individualist. I think that self-chosen communities can matter a great deal, and their collective achievements may even outweigh the individual interests of their members. But this only holds insofar as the members endorse it; unchosen communities are not automatically trumps.

So, count me in favour of meritocracy and the upward-mobility (though not the crass materialism) of "middleclassness". Count me in favour of "elitism", understood as the claim that some ways of life are better than others, tempered by the cosmopolitan insistence that the best forms of life not be closed to anyone merely due to the circumstances of their birth. (Sadly, this demand is yet to be met. Much more still needs to be done to enable humanity. But entrenching class divisions in the name of "solidarity" is not the place to start. We should want as many people as possible to join the creative classes -- to vacate the working class and its culture, not hold people there and reinforce it.) Count me in favour of liberalism.

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Human Sovereignty

Here's another discussion I've long been meaning to return to. I point out a simple objection to the Free Will Defense against the Problem of Evil:

No-one thinks it impedes free will problematically when humans -- e.g. the police -- prevent acts of intentional evil. Why would it be any worse for God to do the exact same thing?

It doesn't seem that the mere source (human or divine) of an obstruction should make any difference to whether it impedes the criminal's free will. In response, Brandon acknowledged as much, but pointed the issue in a new direction:

[The FWD] can't work on individual autonomy alone; rather, it requires us to say that not only is individual autonomy a good to be valued, but the autonomy of the human race as a whole is a good to be valued.

Is it, though? Is collective self-determination or 'sovereignty' an intrinsic good so important that it could outweigh all the other goods that could result from the perfect enforcement of individual human rights? At the level of the nation, most of us think not. Indeed, we think it morally incumbent upon outside powers to step in to prevent genocide when they are able, to protect innocent individuals -- even those with the misfortune of living in the wrong 'sovereign' nation, under the wrong rulers. (Humanitarian intervention may be questioned on pragmatic grounds, of course. We're not omniscient, so the interference of fallible human actors may do more harm than good. But the principle seems clear enough.) Is there a difference at the level of the human species as a whole? Brandon offers the following thought experiment:

A powerful and very advanced alien species comes to Earth and begins intervening in human affairs, not by interacting with us as equals, but by, effectively, policing us. Even granted that the policing was entirely benevolent and beneficial, I think a great many people would feel, perhaps in virtue of a fellow-feeling with other humans that they don't share with non-humans, that something precious to human life had been exchanged for that benefit. Some, no doubt, would think the exchange worth it; some would forcefully reject it. I suppose how people would react in general would tend to depend on the precise details of the interference. But, regardless of how exactly the demographics would go, I think the scenario does suggest that we tend to assume that human affairs are human affairs, to be determined by human choices. And that suggests that, to the degree we treat the whole human race as an object of value, we treat as valuable the autonomy of the human race as a whole.

Again, as in the standard humanitarian intervention case, I would be worried on pragmatic (indirect utilitarian) grounds. Alien or foreign powers are not generally known for being 'entirely benevolent and beneficial'. So in practice we should be suspicious, and a preference for self-determination may be for the best. But if we may stipulate that the outcomes here are, in fact, most beneficial for people, then that strikes me as a very desirable state of affairs. I would rather have a perfect police force than a local police force. Wouldn't you?

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Free Collective Speech

Peter Levine has a very interesting post on 'free speech for the public as a whole', in which he argues that courts should "require states to offer all the traditional benefits of marriage to gay and straight couples, but allow states to reserve the word 'marriage' for heterosexuals." Why?

I'm not keen on courts' dictating what governments must say (as opposed to what they may do).

For one thing, we should avoid abridging the collective speech rights of the people or their legislatures. In my view, not only individual people, but also "the people," should be able to say what they want (even if it's wrong). The remedy to bad public speech is to rebut or criticize the majority's view, not to ask a court to strike it down. One can also simply ignore what the government says by, for example, calling gay people "married" even if the state won't.

Further, I think we should be careful about striking down state language or expression that treats citizens differently, even when the differences are invidious. That opens the door to all kinds of litigation about governmental expression. Do we want courts to decide the content of textbooks in public schools, the meaning of public statues and monuments, or statements made on the job by teachers and police officers? The state can do wrong by speaking offensively, but lawsuits are not the best remedy.

It's an interesting question in political philosophy whether states should be in the business of "speech" and symbolism. Staunch individualists (e.g. classical liberals) are more likely to suggest that the government should remain neutral on such symbolic/moral issues, offering civil unions to all and no official mention of "marriage" at all. Those of a more communitarian bent, on the other hand, hope that the state might give voice to 'the people' (as Peter puts it).

I lean more towards the liberal end of the spectrum. On a contentious issue like this, what right has a mere majority to claim the moral mantle of "the people" as a whole? Especially given the increasing ease of group formation, I would sooner see civil society, not government, as the platform for collective expression. Churches and other groups in civil society may bestow their blessings, and the label 'marriage', as they please. There's no need to co-opt the apparatus of the State to give voice to such groups. On the other hand, perhaps it could have good consequences -- encouraging deliberation and the formation of civic identity? (I'm skeptical, though. These emotional symbolic issues do not seem to bring out the best in people.)

What do you think?

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What is Democracy?

I think it is possible for majority rule to be, in an important sense, undemocratic. Imagine a society split 60/40 into two comprehensive factions, such that people in the same faction always vote together, and against the other faction. In such a situation, I think it would be misleading to describe a system of majority rule as 'democratic'. It is not the people (generally) who rule here; what we have instead is a mere oligarchy, however large: 'rule by the majority faction'.

What more is required for democracy, then? Total consensus is an unrealistic ideal, and democracy still ought to be possible in the face of robust disagreement. I'd suggest that we instead understand 'rule by the people' to mean that everyone is able to make a meaningful contribution to the collective decision-making process, over time. The votes of a permanent minority are pointless, as they never have a chance of making a difference. But in a more flexible political culture, "the majority" is constantly in flux. Each person will be in the majority on some issues (and in the minority for others), so their will is at least sometimes heeded. In this sense, they all contribute to the state's decision-making. Even if they do not always get their way, there is still a meaningful sense in which we can describe this as a polity ruled by all (diachronically).

However, it is consistent with such 'diachronic democracy' that everyone be completely dogmatic. At least there are no stable factions, and thus no consistently oppressed (or effectively disenfranchised) subclass of the citizenry. But it would still be the case that for each particular decision, those in the minority were simply disregarded, their "contributions" effectively nullified. The system is effectively a rotating oligarchy, where everyone gets to take a turn.

This raises the question: is synchronic democracy - rule by all at once - possible? I want to suggest that it is possible, so long as the political system is sensitive to and responsive to reasons that any may put forward. In the absence of faction and dogmatism -- better, in the presence of civic respect -- even those who are initially in the minority have a real chance of affecting the outcome, by convincing others of the virtues of their position. Since the outcome is influenced (ideally: determined) by the strength of reasons, and these reasons may be contributed by anyone, it follows that any can make a meaningful contribution. 'Democracy' in the fullest sense is thus realizable in the form of deliberative democracy.

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Democracy, Setup and Control

In our political philosophy seminar we've recently been looking at the question of how 'democracy', understood as a kind of popular control, might be realized through representation. One obvious possibility involves the use of (e.g. election) incentives, sanctions, etc., to encourage political representatives to track the popular will. But this won't extend to citizen's juries or statistically representative assemblies, where the participants are ordinary people selected by lot and so not subject to any such incentives. In Pettit's terms, they act as 'proxies' rather than 'deputies', indicating rather than responding to the will of the general population.

Pettit argues that this still constitutes a form of popular control. After all, the assembly was set up in this way (i.e. by lot) precisely because it may be expected to accurately reflect what the population wants. If it didn't, they would've set things up differently. Still, we need to be clear about the scope of the control implied here.

I think it's not really the case that the population controls the assembly's decision in any strict sense. After setting things up, they have no further influence on the assembly, and so (a fortiori) cannot raise the causal probability of this assembly's decision going as they prefer (as per Pettit's analysis of control). Rather, stepping back to before the assembly was chosen, we see there is some popular control over the decision-making process in the abstract. For, by instituting the assembly, the people may raise the probability that the subsequent decision is made as they would wish (in contrast to, say, letting the richest person decide). At this level of abstraction, the possibility of alternative setups (decision procedures) is part of the comparison class. But this is no longer the case once we start talking more specifically about the assembly's decision. Popular control does not extend to this local specification of the event. It is merely general: control over the initial setup, not over the decision reached by the particular procedure.

Indeed, as I objected in class, it isn't clear that the status of the agent (assembly) as "indicative" of the principal (broader population) is playing any essential role here at all. Instead, I think all the work is being done by the principal's control over the setup, i.e. their ability to select the agent. Although it makes most sense to choose an agent that you expect to mirror your own preferences, there are other options. A perverse principal might select an "anti-indicator" agent who is expected to choose precisely the opposite of what they want! The control exercised by the principal over the ultimate outcome is exactly the same in either case. So, as came out in further discussion, what matters here is not that the agent is an accurate indicator of oneself (as principal), but just that they exhibit some systematic predictability, which the principal can aim at (perhaps perversely) in empowering them.

See also: Jane Mansbridge on selection vs. control.

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Implicit Interference

Does economic redistribution score badly in terms of negative liberty? A good friend recently suggested that I was advocating increased "interference" in people's lives on this basis. But this strikes me as mistaken (an incredibly common - almost universal - mistake, but no less wrong for that). As I explain in 'Wealth and Liberty', the institution of property is inherently coercive:

[I]n a wealthy society like ours, no individual lacks the physical or material capacity to meet their needs. There are plenty of resources nearby, sitting in shop windows. Anyone is capable of taking those resources. Their problem is that other people in society won't let them. Security guards will interfere, using force to block the individual's access, or to reclaim what they now call "stolen" goods.

(That's not to say we should do away with property, or anything silly like that. Some forms of interference are justified, after all. But we shouldn't let that blind us to its coercive elements, which - upon appreciating - we may seek to mitigate.)

Now, my friend objected that theft is relatively rare, and thus taxation licenses far more interference than do exclusive property rights. But this is irrelevant. Imagine a tyrant whose totalitarian control is so ubiquitous that nobody ever dares step out of line. He thus never actually has to actively exercise his power by interfering with people. That doesn't mean the people are free, of course. The violation of negative liberty instead comes from the threat of interference.

Contrary to my friend's suggestion, then, a relative lack of theft does not mean that property rights are less of an imposition against our negative liberty. Quite the opposite: the imposition is so complete that most of us would not dream of acting against it. We fully internalize the fact that we are not at liberty to take goods that are deemed to be "owned" by another. This societal ordering closes off to us actions that we could otherwise have performed. (Again, it's probably for the best, but one shouldn't pretend it's not a form of ubiquitous interference that has a huge impact on the options available to us every day of our lives.)

It's worth noting that this sort of implicit interference is distinct from Pettit's notion of domination (the modal capacity of one person to interfere with another). If Nora can do whatever she wants, but it is by her husband Torvald's leave - a general permission he could, but let us suppose won't actually, withdraw - then she has negative liberty but suffers domination. Pettit argues for the importance of domination by asking us to imagine that Nora learns of Torvald's power over her, and thus becomes servile, making extra efforts to please him and ensure that he never feels any need to exercise his power by interfering with her. Clearly, as Pettit says, Nora's freedom has not thus increased, even if active interference is now even less likely than before. But my earlier remarks show that this is no argument for non-domination. What Nora suffers here is an increase of implicit interference: the threat of potential interference shapes her behaviour, obstructing her from behaving the way she might prefer or freely choose to, were it not for the shadow of the tyrant.

The difference between negative liberty and non-domination is instead seen in cases where actual non-interference is guaranteed, e.g. by the potential dominator's reliable preference not to interfere. It may be that Torvald could interfere if he wanted, but so long as he actually doesn't want to (and this is certain not to change), who cares? David Braddon-Mitchell asks us to imagine a fantastic neuroscience which allows us to prove to Nora that there is zero probability of Torvald actually interfering with what she wants in life. Why, then, should she care about merely counterfactual coercion? (In practice, of course, there are no such guarantees. So we have very good practical reasons for fearing and opposing domination. But these thought experiments show that the value is instrumental.) Pettit responds that insofar as we think of each other as agents, such deterministic guarantees are ruled out. But that just shows the value of non-domination to be ineliminable, not non-derivative.

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Aggregate Impacts Matter

No Right Turn writes:

Demographers at Waikato University's Population Studies Centre say that unless New Zealanders start breeding more, New Zealand's fertility rate will slip below replacement level. And? I don't actually see why this would be a Bad Thing. Or why a growing population would be a Good Thing. Or indeed, why this should be any concern of government (or indeed anyone) at all.

Our fertility rate is an aggregate of people's individual reproductive choices. And those choices are fundamentally personal and the sole domain of the individuals concerned. It is no business of government how many kids I or anyone else has. It is no business of government whether any of us breed or not. Government simply has no legitimate interest in what goes on in our bedrooms, or in whether those activities result in children or not. It is simply None of Their Fucking Business.

That can't be right. It would clearly be a bad thing if the entire human race died out, for example. It's logically possible that the aggregate impact of individually permissible personal choices would have disastrous consequences for the world at large. If so, we have a legitimate interest in taking collective action to avert disaster or create a better world, and that's what politics is for. We all might reasonably agree to structure the general institutions of society so as to incentivize socially beneficial choices, e.g. to replenish the dwindling ranks of humanity. This can't plausibly be denied in principle.

In practice, of course, there are plenty of grounds for objection. For one, world population does not appear to be excessively low. So if some nations want to increase their local population, they should allow more immigration. (Cf. adoption.) And I assume NRT is worried about setting a bad precedent or 'slippery slope' for social conservatives to start meddling in personal lives in a more intrusive way. My point is just that as a matter of principle, our liberal individualism should not be so extreme as NRT's above. It's not really true that state interest in the individual sphere is absolutely illegitimate. Despite NRT's fears, we can draw a principled distinction between, say, saving the human race and persecuting gays. (Really.) The hard work is discerning the precise borderline. The absolutist can avoid this hard work, but only at the cost of being, well, you know, wrong.

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Ego-Depletion and Moral Demands

Despite my consequentialism, I have a fairly lax view of our moral obligations. I don't think we're obliged to directly help the less fortunate, or anything like that. If someone lives a basically decent life, I'm not about to criticize them for failing to do more. (It'd be great if they did, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect or demand it.) If a moral theory implies otherwise, then I think that's a count against it. The "demandingness objection" is, I think, a fair one.

But it's important to be clear on precisely what the complaint is against. It is not that large costs are being imposed on the wealthy, or anything so object-centered as that. (There's nothing inviolate about the advantages held by the most fortunate, and nothing intrinsically problematic about redistributing these advantages.) Systematic redistribution is just fine. What's problematic, to my mind, is the very act of demanding action from another, and the psychological burden this imposes.

Humans have limited executive cognitive control or 'willpower' (cf. the psychological literature on ego-depletion). Decision-making and conscious action is draining. It's hard work. The immediate concerns of everyday life can be burdensome enough without adding all the world's ills to one's plate. Again, so long as one is leading a basically decent life, it just doesn't seem reasonable to condemn them or demand that they attend to more pressing concerns elsewhere. Most people have more than enough to attend to already!

It's worth noting the contingency of this concern. If we can make it cognitively easier for people to do good, then we could reasonably expect more from them. Habitual behaviours are less demanding, for example. Best of all would be to free them of the burden entirely: replace opt-in schemes with opt-out ones, automate charitable redistribution via taxation, etc. Don't demand, just take. (Liberty concerns may be mitigated by the opportunity to exercise one's agency in the deliberative-democratic processes behind this policy decision.)

My account of the demandingness objection thus leads to the rejection of Liam Murphy's constraint against imposing unrequired sacrifice. Brian Berkey introduces it:

The intuitive idea behind such a constraint is that if a person is not herself required to make a sacrifice, then it would be inappropriate for others to force her to make it.

This only makes sense on an object-centered view of demands. On my psyche-centered version, we see that it is less burdensome to dispose of another's material holdings appropriately than to demand that they do so themselves. The latter involves both material sacrifice and ego-depletion. If you can instead find your way to my wallet without bothering my mind, then that's just fine. (Unless you're acting within a context where this would qualify as 'theft', of course.)

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Efficiency and Value

I hate shopping. So I was delighted by my first ever visit to Wal-Mart yesterday. Very efficient, very cheap, I hopefully won't need to go again anytime soon.

Basically, I think the aim of such shops should be to minimize the amount of time we have to waste in them (or working to pay for such material things). I'm skeptical that commerce can have any deep value, so efficiency is all that's left for it. Give me Wal-Mart, then get me away from the blighted cityscape.

The alternative view, I suppose, would be to try to rescue commerce from the dull glint of the bottom dollar. Close down the factories, imbue production with a human touch, buy custom-made goods direct from the craftsman, and all that. The local market is certainly far more attractive than the mall, so all else being equal I'd jump at the replacement. But what are the opportunity costs? Their inefficiency means more time and effort must be invested to produce these material goods -- time and effort that might be better spent on non-commercial pursuits.

So my question is this: should we "invest" in improving the commercial sphere of society, or simply try to minimize it?

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Ideal Rulers

One often hears that the ideal government would be a "benevolent dictatorship" - the wise ruler would make the right decision every time, and implement it with a minimum of fuss. But if we are going to engage in such wishful thinking, why stop at one perfect person? Why not have an ideal democracy, where the populace would make the right decision every time, and implement it with a minimum of fuss? How is the perfect autocrat any more ideal than the perfectly united demos? Or how about a perfect anarchy, where everyone simply does what they ought, without need for legal coercion? So long as we're guaranteed our perfect outcomes in any case, why favour the most repulsive (dictatorial) process? (Is it because the wish is really to be the dictator oneself?)

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Direct Democracy

Over at Kiwiblog they're discussing the claim that direct democracy would lead to crazy and bigoted policies. I think that New Zealanders would probably not be such a bad mob as most, but in any case direct democracy should not be conflated with mob rule. As I explain in this old post, the democratic question is merely about who should wield power, not how much power they should get, nor to what end they ought to use it. Citizen participation may take place within constitutional constraints, and with an eye to what's objectively good.

I'm suspicious of typical 'direct democracy' proposals (e.g. binding referenda and ballot initiatives), however. Raw public opinion is not much of a guide to anything worth knowing. But I trust that ordinary people are capable of making valuable - reasoned - contributions in the right context, e.g. a "Citizen's Jury" where a small group (randomly selected from the population) come together to learn and deliberate about an issue. Perhaps this is "representative" democracy in the sense that the decision is being made by a few people rather than the whole population. But it is "direct" and participatory in the sense that it is ordinary citizens who are the decision-makers.

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Reading Benkler's Wealth of Networks

This is the "contents page" for a short series of posts that will highlight my favourite bits of Yochai Benkler's brilliant book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. (Though if you want to read the whole thing, download the free PDF of the book!)

The individual posts will cover:
1. "Growing Knowledge" - the economics of information
2. Cultural Transparency and Participation
3. Creative Values, Peer-Production, and Social Media
4. How the Internet Enhances Autonomy
5. Shifting from Passive Consumers to Active Citizens
6. Safekeeping Cyberspace

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Allocating Citizenship

Global justice concerns may be raised about not only material resource allocations, but also "social resources" such as citizenship, which arise from networks of permission and restraint. Note that whether someone is accepted as a member of a functioning society -- permitted to work and live within the nation's borders, bound and protected by its institutions -- makes an extraordinary difference to their life chances. Yet, Will Wilkinson writes:

Strangely, there appears to be next to nothing in the mainstream political philosophy literature (though maybe I’m missing something), that drives home the arbitrary distribution of citizenship. It’s funny, because citizenship, unlike wealth, can be created out of thin air, and is distributed according to a few largely arbitrary principles.

Further, in starkly physical terms, it's not as though citizenship is some positive entity that we're simply omitting to provide. A non-citizen is not lacking in any intrinsic capacity. What citizenship provides is permission -- it simply serves to remove the obstructions we would otherwise place in their way. In other words, social resources are liberties, and arguably should be considered the natural 'default' or baseline position. Citizenship isn't something we grant; it's something we cease to deny.

So: is the current global allocation of social resources just? Or should, for example, functioning societies deny citizenship to fewer people?

[Cross-posted to the International Network for Ethical Issues in Resource Allocation blog.]

P.S. Note that money, likewise, is arguably more a social than material resource, in the above sense.

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Half-pie Atomism?

Is methodological individualism a stable position? It's atomistic in the sense that the value of society as a whole is reducible to the value of the individual lives it contains. But it is an incomplete kind of atomism, if we are holists about the value of a person's life, insisting that this value is not further reducible to the momentary time-slices of the life. Such "half-pie atomism" is under pressure from both fronts: if an atomistic approach is best, why privilege temporally extended persons over their momentary time-slices? Conversely, if the whole is more than the sum of its parts, why stop short of full-blown collectivism? These are the twin challenges that an individualist must answer.

Despite my individualism, I actually think that fully-blown (time-slice) atomism is the place to start. However, from this perspective in the here-and-now, I realise that I care about more than just my present stage. The present stage, on its own, lacks meaning. It is only by situating my present stage within the narrative arc of a whole life that it becomes comprehensible. Likewise for each other momentary stage. So I am willing to make momentary sacrifices in order to construct a whole life that has a certain coherence and value that outstrips the mere sum of its parts. Or so I conceive of life: it's the whole thing, rather than each moment, that I find myself concerned about on reflection.

But if we go this far, why stop there? Given Parfit-style reductionism about personal identity, I don't think there's any really deep metaphysical unity between my temporal parts. (At each momentary stage, I choose to "identify" with the larger, temporally-extended whole, but this a "rationally constructed" sort of unity, rather than anything that comes built into the world itself.) On a metaphysical level, I think there is a strong formal analogy between 'my present stage' vs. 'myself' (temporally extended) and 'myself' vs. 'humanity' (inter-personally extended). Should this lead us to identify more with the latter, as a collective that in some sense transcends us all?

My initial argument is easily reapplied:

Starting from this individual perspective of mine, I realise that I care about more than just my own life. This life, on its own, lacks meaning. It is only by situating my life within the narrative arc of a whole society (/civilization) that it becomes comprehensible. Likewise for each other individual. So we are willing to make personal sacrifices in order to construct a whole society that has a certain coherence and value that outstrips the mere sum of its parts. Or so we conceive of civilization: it's the whole thing, rather than each individual, that we find ourselves concerned about on reflection.

This clears plenty of room for what I call "super-human" values -- i.e. accomplishments of humanity, such as constructing the Great Pyramids, or exploring deep space, regardless of their impact on individual welfare. It could also legitimize the (otherwise irrational) practice of caring about a socially salient mass event more than the analogous aggregate of widely distributed events. (For example, compare 9/11 to car crashes. The threat of terrorism seems to have far greater social significance for Americans, out of all proportion to the mere aggregate-individual impact.)

But there are some important disanalogies, of course. Most importantly, perhaps, there is a greater rational unity among the stages of a life than among the individuals of a society. My momentary stages are bound together by psychological continuity -- a sameness of character, values, goals, etc. There is far more diversity and conflict among the individuals in our society. Arguably, we just don't have enough in common to construct a rationally unified entity from society, as we can for an individual life. What typically happens, of course, is that the "mainstream" or majority group claim to constitute the whole society, and so freely trample over dissenting minorities. But tyranny is not community, and majority will is not the same thing as the general will.

Still, perhaps we may be led to a form of communitarianism on a smaller scale, whereby a broad political liberalism enables people to enter (and exit) niche "communities" of choice. After all, some of the deepest satisfaction we can find in life is from contributing to projects that are larger than ourselves, and that we consider to have enduring worth. These may go beyond "weak" communities of convenience and mutually-beneficial cooperation, to the kind of so-called "strong" community that is valued by its members over and above their individual interests in it. In such a case, the methodology of rational expansion forces us to consider the strong community a locus of value in its own right.

That is, just as a unified person may be rationally constructed from appropriately related temporal parts, so too a unified community might be rationally constructed from appropriately related individuals. In either case, the value accruing to the whole may transcend the sum of its parts: something may be good for a person without being good for any particular momentary stage, or good for a community without being good for any particular individual. (But note that in either case the holistic goods will presumably be valued by the atoms, even if they are not, strictly speaking, valuable for the isolated entity alone.)

Sound plausible? (Yikes, I'm turning into a communitarian...!)

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Broad Deliberative Democracy

What does "deliberative democracy" really mean? At the broadest level, I'm committed to the notion that public debate has a vital role in flourishing democracies, such that "democratic legitimacy" derives from the free exchange of reasoned arguments rather than the whims of an ill-informed majority. In short, I think that politics should be driven by public debate about the common good. Call this position "broad deliberative democracy".

While I was in Arizona, Thomas Christiano pointed out to me that many prominent deliberative democrats today are really expounding a much narrower position, which adds further restrictions on what can count as 'public reason'. Any views which fall outside the 'overlapping consensus' must be excluded, for fear of forcing one's comprehensive moral views on others. But, Christiano pointed out, it's not clear what justifies the asymmetry here. In excluding the first group's views from consideration, isn't this effectively forcing on them the other group's rejection of their position? (This is, of course, a common argument against strict secularism.)

I'm not too sure what to make of all this. I'd like my position to remain as 'broad' as possible, but I wonder whether the internal logic of it entails further restrictions. I previously suggested that receptivity could guide us here. That is, we should welcome anyone (with any views) to join the public conversation, so long as they remain open-minded and receptive to the views of others. This criterion would at least rule out dogmatic sectarian groups that demand unshakeable faith (and hence are closed to opposing views). But is that enough? Is it really 'receptive' to offer the sorts of religious or otherwise 'private' reasons that you couldn't reasonably expect others to recognize? Or is it a precondition of reasoning together that we first commit to arguing only from the common assumptions that can be shared by all?

If so, what would that leave?

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Guest Blogger: Killing me softly with his political theory

[By David Hunter]

Social Change, Suicide and Political Theory

Political theorists typically argue that radical changes to society are necessary to achieve some goal such as justice, or the appropriate respect for freedom or minority cultures. So to take distributive justice for example just looking at the major theorists, Rawls argued that resources to be distributed via the difference principle, namely that the worst off should be as well off as possible. This would be a significant change, Nozick in contrast argues that a free market distribution is fair, if and only if the starting distribution was just. However, as Nozick acknowledges the present distribution isn't just because of historic injustice, thus he advocates an initial equal redistribution, so still radical social changes. Dworkin, in seeking a distribution which is ambition sensitive and endowment insensitive envisages a society that is equally radically different from our own.

However there is increasing evidence that there is at least a strong correlation between significant social change and increased suicide rates. This can be seen in the former Soviet States, and in Northern Ireland following the Good Friday agreement. Likewise China’s high suicide rates have been attributed to the changes following the economic reforms in 1978.

Nor is this only associated with what might be considered negative social changes, in Northern Ireland for example, the signing of the Good Friday agreement, which seems clearly a great social good, still has been correlated with an increase in suicide rates.

It should be noted that this is only a correlation it does not show causation. It might well be that actually suicide somehow drives social change or a more likely alternative is that something else is associated with both social change and suicide and is caused by or causes one and then causes the other, such as perhaps a general lack of social cohesion. A popular theory to explain this correlation is that of Durkheim’s, who holds that in times of social change the influence that society exerts on its members is weakened and people are left to their own devices. This state Durkheim calls anomie in effect normlessness. Significant social changes promote anomie because they typically represent significant changes in the norms governing a society.

This explanation, though plausible may be incorrect so it may well not be the case that social change causes increased suicide rates. However it is plausible that the correlation indicates causation, and since this is a presently unsettled (and perhaps unsettlable, given the difficulty of avoiding confounding factors in social science research) question, it is reasonable that as political theorists we ought to play it safe and for the time being treat it as if it is for the time being.

This clearly creates a problem for political theorists, considering that most of us, myself included, champion significant social changes but hardly want to cause suicides. So should we not argue for significant social changes? There are a variety of responses that can be made to this problem which I will briefly explore in my next blog entry... But for now what do you think? Is this a serious problem for political theorists?

PS if you really want to hear what I think sooner, well I'm presenting a paper on it on Saturday at ETHICS AT THE MARGINS OF LIFE one hitch for those of you who are in the States, or Oz or NZ, its in Ireland...

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Religion and Deliberation

The upcoming Carnival of Citizens sports a "Church and State" theme. There's a lot that could be said here, but for this post I want to look at how religion fits with a deliberative conception of democracy.

The right policy is that which the general public would converge upon, following informed ideal deliberation. In reality, that ideal remains out of reach; but we do the best we can. As a deliberative democrat, I hold that we should promote informed deliberation among citizens, in hopes that the best-justified positions will ultimately carry the day.

Receptivity is a key value here: it's vital to note that public debate is not merely another instrument of power, manipulating others to do as you want. Rather, it is seen as a co-operative, rational enterprise. We all have the shared goal of promoting justice and the good. We may have divergent ideas about what exactly this involves. But, recognizing our own fallibility, we remain open to the possibility of changing our minds, if faced with stronger opposing arguments. In short, deliberative democracy is about civic respect, or the commitment to an inclusive and collaborative politics: working together to discern the right action, rather than unilaterally forcing my views on others.

So, where does religion fit into all this? I guess that depends on the nature of the religion, and the way one tries to bring it into politics. If one's religion is based on public reason, then I see no problem in principle. For example, if you think that God's hand is evident in nature, and his perfect character transparent to reason, then you may try to bring me to see this. If there are good reasons to think that scripture provides an accurate moral guide, then you can share those reasons with me. We might argue about the correct interpretation, or even about whether the purported Holy Book is a relevant guide at all, but those are issues to be settled through deliberation; the answers are not "given", or something we can know prior to inquiry. They are entirely appropriate for public debate.

On the other hand, the more dogmatic forms of religion have no place here, for they are inconsistent with civic respect. For example, if you are certain that the truth has been revealed to your group alone, and that all others are irredeemably blind to it, then you will be incapable of meaningful deliberation with them. The dogmatist is not receptive to alternative possibilities, and may see no point in collaborating with "morally degenerate" infidels. He has no respect for their civic autonomy -- their ability to reason about what sort of society ours should be, or how we should live together. To the dogmatist, sure of his own infallibility, people who disagree are merely obstacles to achieving what he already knows is "right".

There's nothing essentially religious about such attitudes, of course. Dogmatism comes in all stripes. But religion can be especially conducive to it, and the risk is heightened if a religious group happen to form a majority. They may seek simply to impose their private reasons ("faith") on the broader public, without any adequate justification. But that's not democracy. It's civil war.

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Political Equality and Equal Chances

Political equality requires that each citizen has an equal chance of exerting political influence, in some sense. Aggregating equally weighted votes, one per person, is a familiar way of doing this. A simple, non-aggregative alternative would be to randomly select whose vote will count as the winning one. So long as everyone has an equal chance of being chosen, that seems to satisfy political equality, even if most people do not thereby get to actually contribute to determining the outcome. (After all, coin-flipping is widely recognized as a fair way to settle disputes, when all else is equal.) This principle is crucial for securing the democratic legitimacy of citizens juries and the like, given that only a random subset of the population get to actually participate in them.

My question is this: how far back in time can we push the random selection? How about the "genetic lottery"? Could even aristocracies and racist regimes count as satisfying political equality, so long as everyone had an equal chance of being born into the privileged class? If not, why not?

One might suggest that I never really had a chance of being born a prince -- the apparent possibility may be merely epistemic. (That is, the scenario is conceivable, but not one that ever had a real chance of eventuating.) But it would be a bit odd for questions of political justice to be held hostage to such abstruse modal metaphysics.

So I see two basic options here. One is to bite the bullet and simply accept that there's nothing intrinsically illegitimate or unfair about aristocracies and the like. Their flaws are purely pragmatic: unaccountable rulers tend to do a crummy job.

Alternatively, we could reconceive of political equality, in a more demanding fashion, as concerned with the ongoing relationship between the rulers and the ruled. It's not enough that everyone initially has an equal chance of influence, or whatever. Political equality must be maintained, by limiting the extent (power and duration) of the inevitable actual inequalities. In particular, those who receive power must be precluded from exercising it in an oppressive fashion. On this conception, political equality requires civic respect: the ongoing recognition of other citizens' political agency or potential to contribute to future decision-making.

What this means in practice is that political inequalities, though unavoidable, must never be entrenched. The moral requirement of "equal chances" cannot be ultimately satisfied by any one chance of selection. Instead, the chances must be revisited and maintained, so that those who are powerless today retain a real chance of becoming empowered tomorrow. In short: the ideal of political equality requires that our actual inequalities of power be always in flux.

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A Democratic Taxonomy

The following explores various dimensions of democratic participation. It has two goals: to develop a helpful and comprehensive taxonomy of participatory forms, and to assess their relative merits. Suggestions are welcome on either count...

“Who” participates?

This question spans two dimensions: first, how many citizens participate, and secondly, how representative they are of the general population.

Universal participation would yield a perfect score on both scales. This is the ideal for elections, but may be impractical for more intensive forms of political activity (such as deliberation over specific policy proposals). So some forms of consultation might reasonably sacrifice breadth for depth of participation, e.g. citizens’ juries. This then raises the question: should participants be self-selecting partisans, elected politicians, or randomly selected citizens?

I recommend the latter: random sampling would allow our democracy to benefit by hearing other voices besides “the usual suspects”. Self-selection, by contrast, can have a distorting, undemocratic effect, giving disproportionate weight to vocal extremists. Elected representatives, on the other hand, are more likely to be constrained or influenced by career motivations (e.g. to preclude any perception of “flip-flopping”). The average citizen avoids these institutional barriers to open-minded, conscientious, deliberative participation.

The standard objection at this point is to claim that the average citizen lacks the capacity for good political decision-making. But the empirical data [PDF] from Deliberative Polling suggest otherwise: participants often learn a lot through the deliberative process, and those who do are also the most likely to change their mind – suggesting that the deliberative context succeeds in eliciting more informed judgments from participants.

“What” opinion: private vs. public goods

Does the democratic process ask individuals to contribute their self-interested preferences (“private goods”), or instead to vote according to their sincere opinion of the public good? Put another way: is the general will simply a matter of aggregated self-interest – the most popular option for economically “rational” agents in the political marketplace? Or does it require a distinctively civic way of thinking? Only the latter protects against exploitation and the “tyranny of the majority”.

Opinion Depth: raw or refined?

Does the general will reside in raw public opinion? Or should we instead associate democratic legitimacy with the community’s considered view, or what citizens would conclude upon informed reflection? The latter seems obviously preferable in principle, though open to abuse by external agents who seek to impose their own speculative views about others’ “true interests”. Ideally, we ought to actually inform the citizens in question, so that no such dodgy speculation is necessary.

“Where”: private vs. public sphere

Is this “refinement” to occur through private reflection or interactive, public deliberation? An advantage of open, deliberative democratic processes, as noted long ago by J.S. Mill, is that the associated norms force participants to reason in terms of the public – rather than narrowly private – interests. It also seems more likely to bring people to consider other perspectives and arguments that they would overlook or misunderstand on their own. In short, public deliberation allows us to learn from one another.

This may lead us to rethink typical consultation procedures such as individual surveys. While voting by secret ballot is of course entirely appropriate to guard against electoral coercion, we may wish to see it supplemented by more open forms of political participation, such as group deliberation. (Though this will require measures – including skilled moderation – to protect against domination by a vocal few. One possibility is to allot each member a right to equal speaking time.)

“How”: Individual aggregation vs. Collective verdict

A further issue is how to obtain output from the deliberating group. One option is to demand a verdict from them, as from a jury, which creates pressure towards building a consensus. On the one hand, this might be thought to embody the general will of the “community”, understood as more than just the sum of its parts. But it might also be worried that these pressures towards conformity will undercut dissenting minority opinions, in an illegitimate and undemocratic fashion. This problem could be alleviated, as in Deliberative Polls, by not demanding any such verdict from the group. Instead, each individual may be surveyed post-deliberation to obtain their informed opinion, and the results later aggregated in a similar process as for non-deliberative opinions.

“Why”: the role of citizens – inputs or agents?

Traditional approaches typically treat citizens merely as a source of unrefined data points that can be utilized as inputs for the government decision-makers. A very different approach would be to understand citizens as political agents in their own right, capable of participating in the decision-making process themselves – as rational subjects, and not merely input objects.

On this conception, democratic participation should aim to harness local decision-making skills to assess reasons and weigh conflicting values, rather than merely serving to highlight pre-existing opinions. Citizens then actively contribute to the making of collective decisions, rather than merely being a passive, objectified “factor” that others might take into account. In other words, governments should seek to engage the public in collaboration, and not just consultation. [Cf. IAP2 Spectrum - PDF.]

A Democratic Taxonomy

We may distinguish two variations on each of three core opinion bases: (1) raw opinions, (2) individually refined opinions, and (3) deliberatively refined judgments. The first two types may concern either (a) private interests or (b) the public good. Deliberation only makes sense in pursuit of a shared public good, but it offers alternative outputs, of either: (a) aggregating individual judgments as per usual, or (b) forming a collective group verdict. Hence we have the six options:

(1a) Aggregate raw opinions on private interests
(1b) Aggregate raw opinions on the public good
(2a) Aggregate individually refined opinions on private interests
(2b) Aggregate individually refined opinions on the public good
(3a) Aggregate post-deliberative opinions on the public good
(3b) Collective verdict formed via deliberation on the public good

Finally, we may expand this by incorporating the dimension of who participates: (i) self-selected; (ii) elected representatives; (iii) randomly selected; or (iv) everyone.

This would yield 24 theoretical possibilities. But in practice we can rule out universal participation in intensive deliberation (3*iv) or even private refinement (2*iv), and there is little to be said for aggregating raw opinions of non-representative subgroups (1*i or 1*ii), thus leaving us with 16 realistic combinations.

Current consultative practice tends towards (1a-i), typically aggregating the individual opinions, often narrowly self-interested and/or minimally informed, of self-selecting groups. My claim is that it would be worth trying to shift towards more deliberative, representative, and public-minded participatory practices –- e.g. Deliberative Polls (3a-iii) and Citizens Juries (3b-iii).

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Political Representation: selection vs. control

I went to an interesting lecture the other day by Jane Mansbridge, arguing that the public should focus more on electing the right politicians (and "kicking the bastards out" when they go wrong), rather than trying to control them once elected.

The standard "accountability" model assumes that politicians are unprincipled actors with no intrinsic political motivations besides the desire to get re-elected. Hence voters need to control their representatives through re-election incentives. We always need to know what politicians are up to, so that we can scare them away from bad policies by threatening to change our votes. Good governance thus relies upon "monitoring and sanctions" to keep representatives in line. High incumbency rates are bad because politicians confident of re-election will have no incentive to behave themselves.

Mansbridge proposes an alternative, "selection" model. This view assumes, more plausibly, that people have diverse intrinsic political motivations. The key for voters, then, is to select representatives with "aligned objectives", i.e. who want the same things as they do. There will never be perfect alignment, of course, but we should hopefully be able to find politicians whose goals are close enough to our own. We can then sit back and let them do their job, trusting that they will achieve what we want, since - after all - they want the same thing. (On this view, a high incumbency rate need not be a problem after all: perhaps the politicians really are that good!)

Compare choices made regarding tenure for academics, lifelong appointment of judges, selecting a school or college for a student, and hiring a nanny. All of these cases follow the "selection" rather than "accountability" model. We take care to choose the right person from the start -- someone we trust to have objectives aligned with ours -- rather than trying to micromanage their behaviour through intrusive monitoring and sanctions. Mansbridge suggests that we might add politicians to the list. We should take advantage of their intrinsic motivations. And as psychologists have shown, such motivation may be undermined through the "crowding out effect" of manipulative external incentives.

Indeed, Mansbridge made the stronger claim that it's practically impossible to change the basic direction of a politician. (Incentives are only effective at the margin.) The only way to achieve real change is to "kick the bastards out", and select a new representative whose objectives are better aligned with ours.

The selection model has ambiguous implications regarding the need for "transparency" in government. Mansbridge claimed that we should demand less transparency in process, but more transparency in reasons. Representatives need to be allowed to negotiate and deliberate tentatively, free from the silencing, oppressive gaze of the public eye. But of course they remain ultimately accountable to the public, and hence they must seek to justify the decisions they finally settle on. Here Mansbridge suggested an analogy to Supreme Court opinions: they generally offer well-reasoned explanations of the Court's decision. But the process of deliberation, by which the judges reached their decision, takes place in confidence.

In assessing the competing models, I guess there are two key issues:
1) To what extent are representatives intrinsically motivated in ways aligned to the public interest?
2) Will politicians be more effective if allowed to exercise their discretion, or if instead answerable to the public for their every move?

On the first question: if we are able to select well-aligned politicians, this would seem more efficient, because it relieves the need for costly monitoring and sanctions. We can leave them to do as they wish, just as we do with nannies, teachers, judges, and so forth. (Of course, we can still assess them afterwards, and fire them if need be. The crucial point is that we don't try to micromanage them in the meantime. Absent evidence of gross incompetence or corruption, they should be trusted to do their job.)

As for the second issue, it seems plausible that an unhampered executive will be more effective. A related question here is what to do in case of an unforeseen crisis, e.g. 9/11. If a fast response is required, the executive will be able to react more flexibly. The risk here is that they might turn in a very different direction from what the public want or expect (cf. Tony Blair). Must we wait until the next election? Or should the public try - perhaps in vain - to control their renegade representatives in the meantime? I won't even attempt an answer.

One thing worth noting is that the selection model still recognizes the vital importance of communication. It doesn't reduce democracy to mere voting. Citizens should follow political events, to ensure that their representatives are still aligned with them. They should voice concerns, and assess the reasons offered in response. And if they don't like what they hear, they should vote for someone else at the next opportunity. But the focus here is on communication and selection, not micromanagement and control.

Also, it highlights the need to be better informed about candidates and their accomplishments (or lack thereof). Yet electoral campaigns are designed to mislead rather than inform the public. This undermines the public's ability to select well-aligned representatives. (Apparently 3/4 of those who voted to re-elect Bush believed that there were WMD in Iraq. A similar number believed that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks. Now look at them.) Something must be done to improve this aspect of democracy. But what?

I'll leave that as another unanswered question, and move on now to a local application: NZ Greens co-leader Russel Norman has criticized the "undemocratic secrecy" surrounding the NZ government's trade negotiations with China. But if Mansbridge is right, then it may be entirely appropriate for such negotiations to take place out of public view. What democracy requires is that the results be made public, and that our governing representatives subsequently explain and justify their decisions. Whether the justification is good enough, is something voters can judge for the next election. But in the meantime, the decision is our representatives' to make, and there's nothing necessarily "undemocratic" about that.

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• democracy

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