4. The Authority of Democracy

1. Naive majoritarianism
2. Deliberative democracy and legitimacy
1. The idea of deliberative democracy
2. Deliberative democracy as fantasy
3. The irrelevance of deliberation
3. Equality and authority
1. The argument from equality
2. An absurdly demanding theory of justice?
3. Supporting democracy through obedience
4. Is democratic equality uniquely public?
5. Respecting others' judgments
6. Coercion and treating others as inferiors
7. From obligation to legitimacy?
4. Conclusion

4.1 Naive majoritarianism

Once we recognize the unfeasibility of achieving unanimous consent to any nontrivial social arrangement, we might turn instead to majority consent. Can the agreement only of a majority of society's members - whether broad agreement to have a government or agreement to have specific policies or personnel - confer authority on government?

At first glance, it is unclear how this might be thought to work. The opinions or decisions of a larger group of people do not normally suffice to impose obligations on a smaller group or an individual who does not agree with the larger group, nor do they typically justify coercive behavior on the part of the larger group.

Imagine the following scenario, which I shall call the Bar Tab example. You have gone out for drinks with a few of your colleagues and graduate students. You are all busy talking about philosophy, when someone raises the question of who is going to pay the bill. A number of options are discussed. A colleague suggests dividing the bill evenly among everyone at the table. You suggest that everyone pay for his own drinks. A graduate student then suggests that you pay for everybody's drinks. Reluctant to spend so much money, you decline. But the student persists: 'Let's take a vote.' To your consternation, they proceed to take the vote, which reveals that everyone at the table except you wants you to pay for everybody's drinks. 'Well, that settles it', declares the student. 'Pay up.'

Are you now ethically obligated to pay for everyone's drinks? May the others collect the money from you by force? Most will answer no to both questions. Majority will alone does not generate an entitlement to coerce the minority, nor does it generate an obligation of compliance on the part of the minority. More precisely, majority will alone does not provide sufficient backing for a proposal to override an individual's private property rights (your right to your money in this example) or right not to be subjected to harmful coercion.

This sort of example places a dialectical burden on defenders of democratic authority, a burden of identifying some special circumstances that apply to the government that account for why, in the case of government, majority support provides adequate justification for coercion, even though it does not suffice for other agents.

4.2 Deliberative democracy and legitimacy

4.2.1 The idea of deliberative democracy

Recent democratic theorists have emphasized the value of decision-making procedures in a democratic society. One recent strand of thought seeks to articulate an ideal of 'deliberative democracy' - that is, an ideal of how citizens in a democratic society ought to deliberate with each other about matters of public concern.[1] Thus, according to Joshua Cohen, ideal democratic deliberation would have the following features:[2]

1. Participants take their deliberation to be capable of determining action and to be unconstrained by any prior norms.
2. Participants offer reasons for their proposals, with the (correct) expectation that those reasons alone will determine the fate of their proposals.
3. Each participant has an equal voice.
4. The deliberation aims at consensus. However, if consensus cannot be achieved, the deliberation ends with voting.

What does this have to do with political authority? In an ideal deliberative democracy, Cohen writes, 'citizens [ ... ] regard their basic institutions as legitimate in so far as they establish the framework for free public deliberation. [ ... ] For them, free deliberation among equals is the basis of legitimacy.'[3] Here, Cohen is not directly making a claim about what is a sound basis for political legitimacy. Nor is he making a psychological or sociological claim about what actual people take to be a sound basis for legitimacy. Rather, he is stipulating that citizens in an ideal deliberative democracy - a purely hypothetical scenario - take deliberation as the basis for legitimacy. I will assume, however, that Cohen himself takes some suitable deliberative process to provide a sound basis for political legitimacy.

How might democratic deliberation provide a basis for legitimacy? Cohen does not clearly explain this. Perhaps the thought is that the fairness, equality, and rationality of the decision-making procedure Cohen describes confers legitimacy on its outcomes. This is a tenuous argument - why should we assume that any procedure, however good, confers a content- independent, exclusive entitlement for the state to coerce people to comply with the decisions produced by that procedure?

Nevertheless, let us examine this line of thought more closely.

4.2.2 Deliberative democracy as fantasy

If there is one thing that stands out when one reads philosophical descriptions of deliberative democracy, it is how far these descriptions fall from reality. Of the four features of deliberative democracy that Cohen identifies, how many are satisfied by any actual society?

Begin with Cohen's first condition. Cohen writes, 'the participants regard themselves as bound only by the results of their deliberation and by the preconditions for that deliberation. Their consideration of proposals is not constrained by the authority of prior norms or requirements.'[4] This is not true of most actual people. Actual people frequently regard themselves as bound by things other than the results of public deliberation. For instance, some believe in natural law, many believe in divinely mandated moral requirements, some believe themselves bound by a constitution that was established long ago, and so on.

According to Cohen's second condition,

Deliberation is reasoned in that the parties to it are required to state their reasons for advancing proposals [ ... ] They give reasons with the expectation that those reasons (and not, for example, their power) will settle the fate of their proposal. In ideal deliberation, as Habermas puts it, 'no force except that of the better argument is exercised.'[5]

In actual democracies, no one is required (by the state or anyone else) to state their reasons for advancing policy proposals. Moreover, the quality of the reasons offered for a policy proposal is only one part of what determines the fate of that proposal, and nearly everyone knows this. The fate of policy proposals in actual democracies is determined at least as much by rhetoric as by reasoning, and rhetorical appeals are heard considerably more often than sober, rational arguments. Political outcomes are also influenced by self-interest. 'Deliberation', Cohen assures us, 'focuses debate on the common good'[6] - but in reality, competing interest groups vie for control of political processes in the hopes of using state power for selfish gain.[7] It would be extremely unusual to find citizens so naive as to think that only their stated arguments, not their political power, would determine whether their policy proposals were adopted.

Cohen's third condition requires that 'parties are both formally and substantively equal.' He elaborates:

[E]ach has an equal voice in the decision. [...] [T]he existing distribution of power and resources does not shape their chances to contribute to deliberation.[8]

There is of course no actual society in which these things are true. In any modern society, a small number of individuals - journalists, authors, professors, politicians, celebrities - play a large role in public discourse, while the vast majority of individuals play essentially no role in the discourse. The vast majority of people have no realistic opportunity to make their ideas heard beyond a tiny circle of acquaintances. And the existing distribution of power and resources almost completely determines one's chances to contribute to public deliberation. Wealthy citizens can buy advertising time or even own television stations or other media outlets; poor and middle-class citizens cannot. Individuals with political power can get their views aired in the national media - the President of the United States, for example, can call a press conference at any time; I cannot. It is difficult to imagine these facts changing. As of this writing, the United States contains over 300 million citizens. How could all of those voices be heard equally? What would society be like if every one of those individuals could call a press conference to discuss their latest policy idea?

Finally, according to Cohen's fourth condition, ideal deliberation 'aims to arrive at a rationally motivated consensus'.[9] This, too, is false of any actual society. In the United States, for example, there is a great deal of public discussion of such issues as abortion, gun control, and health care policy. Some participants in these discussions seek to influence citizens who remain undecided on the issue in question. Most are probably just trying to express their own feelings and opinions. Hardly any are aiming at a consensus. Most know that they have no realistic hope of reaching agreement with partisans of the opposite ideological standpoint, and they make no serious attempt to do so.

As these observations remind us, Cohen's ideal deliberative democracy is a purely hypothetical scenario. Given how distant that scenario is from reality, what purpose does the imaginative exercise serve? What role can it play in justifying the actions of any actual government?

Perhaps if some actual societies at least approximated the ideal, this might confer legitimacy on their political arrangements. Cohen, however, makes no attempt to argue that any actual society even approximates his ideal, and it would be difficult to make such an argument. It isn't even close to being true, for example, that all individuals have an equal voice in public discourse, unaffected by their wealth or power. Nor is it anywhere close to being true that political outcomes are determined purely by rational arguments or that public discourse aims at consensus.

Cohen writes that 'the ideal deliberative procedure is meant to provide a model for institutions to mirror.'[10] Perhaps Cohen's conception of deliberative democracy provides guidance for how society ought to change. While this may provide a useful role for Cohen's construction, it brings us no closer to deriving political authority. A description of an ideal that our society ought to aim at but of which we in fact fall very far short hardly constitutes an argument that our state has political authority.

Cohen goes on to claim that 'outcomes are democratically legitimate if and only if they could be the object of a free and reasoned agreement among equals.'[11] He does not argue for this thesis, nor explain exactly what it means. How should we understand the force of that 'could'?

On one reading, Cohen's principle is absurdly permissive. Imagine that you are walking down the street, when a boxer suddenly punches you in the face. 'What did you do that for?!' you demand. 'Well', the boxer explains, 'you could have agreed to be punched in the face.' Now suppose, analogously, that a certain law could have been the object of a free and reasoned agreement among all citizens, in the sense that citizens could have freely decided to agree to that law - but in fact no citizen has done so. It is, to say the least, unclear how this situation would give the state a moral right to impose that law by force.

Presumably, Cohen would opt for a stronger reading of 'could'. Habermas writes of what 'would meet with the unforced agreement of all those involved, if they could participate, as free and equal, in discursive will-formation'.[12] Perhaps Cohen, similarly, would say that a legitimate political system is one that we would agree to if we deliberated in the ideal way. On this reading, Cohen and Habermas are appealing to a hypothetical social contract theory. We have, however, already seen the problems with such theories in Chapter 3. Briefly, there were two main problems. First, there is no reason to think that the structure and principles of any actual state would in fact be agreed to after ideal deliberation. Second, even if the structure and principles of some actual state would be agreed to, there is no reason to think that this fact would confer authority on that state. Neither Cohen nor Habermas has addressed these two central problems.

4.2.3 The irrelevance of deliberation

Granted that no society satisfies Cohen's conditions for an ideal deliberative democracy, if there were such a society, would its government then have authority?

It is unclear why it would. Recall the Bar Tab example (Section 4.1). Your colleagues and students have voted, over your objections, to have you pay for everyone's drinks. Now add the following stipulations to the example: before taking the vote, the group deliberated. Everyone, including you, had an equal opportunity to offer reasons for or against forcing you to pay for everyone's drinks. The others advanced arguments that it would be in the best interests of the group as a whole to force you to pay. They attempted to reach a consensus. In the end, they were unable to convince you that you should pay, but everyone else agreed that you should pay. Are you now obligated to pay for everyone? Are the other members of the group entitled to compel you to pay through threats of violence?

Clearly not. You have rights - in this case, a right to choose whether and how to spend your money and a right to be free from harmful coercion - which are not negated or overridden by the mere fact that a decision to violate your rights was preceded by a fair and reasoned deliberative process. The fairness of the process does not enable it to somehow sidestep all preexisting ethical entitlements and restrictions. Likewise, it is obscure how the sort of deliberation Cohen describes, even if it were to actually occur, would confer political legitimacy on the state. Individuals have a preexisting prima facie right not to be subjected to coercion. Deliberation, however fair and reasoned, does not by itself eliminate that right. Reasons for overriding individuals' prima facie rights can of course be offered, and the offering of such reasons may be part of a deliberative process. But the deliberative process does not constitute a reason in itself for suspending individuals' prima facie rights.

4.3 Equality and authority

4.3.1 The argument from equality

I turn now to what may be the best developed contemporary argument for the claim that the democratic process confers political authority. The central idea is that we have a general obligation to treat other members of our society as equals and that this requires respecting democratically made decisions.

The argument raises questions about what counts as a democratically authorized law. Alaw that is the direct product of a popular referendum is the clearest case of a democratically authorized law (hereafter, 'a democratic law').[13] But what about laws that most voters do not support but that were passed by a democratically elected legislature? What if a law or political candidate is supported by a majority of voters but not by a majority of all citizens? What about regulations written by unelected bureaucrats? Or orders issued by unelected judges? Difficult as these questions are for democratic theorists, I shall set them aside to focus on deeper problems. Hereafter, I shall simply assume that we have a state whose laws are genuinely authorized by the people, whatever that may amount to. Even with this generous concession, as I shall argue, democratic theorists cannot establish political authority.

Thomas Christiano has developed the Argument from Equality as an argument for political obligation, roughly as follows:[14]

1. Individuals are obligated to treat other members of their society as equals and not to treat them as inferiors.

2. To treat others as equals and not as inferiors, one must obey democratic laws.

3. Therefore, individuals are obligated to obey democratic laws.

The obligation thus defended is content-independent, but it need not be taken as absolute: the advocate of the above argument can recognize the possibility of countervailing values that sometimes outweigh the obligation to obey democratic laws. One can also recognize some qualifications to principle (2): perhaps only when democratically made laws are within certain bounds - when they do not violate the constitution or blatantly oppress minorities, for example - does equal treatment of others require obedience to those laws.[15]

Why should we accept the premises of the Argument from Equality? Begin with premise (1). Christiano advances the following subargument, in paraphrase:

1a. Justice requires giving each person his due and treating like cases alike.

1b. All members of one's society have equal moral status.[16]

1c. Therefore, justice requires treating other members of one's society as equals.[17]

Next, why should one accept premise (2)? There appear to be two subarguments for this. The first appeals to the idea of placing one's judgment above that of others:

2a. To disobey a democratic law is to place one's judgment above that of other members of one's society.

2b. To place one's judgment above that of others is to treat those others as inferiors.

2c. Therefore, to disobey a democratic law is to treat other members of one's society as inferiors.[18] (from 2a, 2b) The second subargument appeals to the obligation to support democracy:

2d. Treating others as equals requires supporting the equal advancement of their interests.

2e. Democracy is crucial to the equal advancement of persons' interests.

2f. To support democracy, one must obey democratic laws.

2g. Therefore, treating others as equals requires obeying democratic laws.[19] (from 2d-2f)

Christiano spends the most time justifying (2e). He argues that to truly advance individuals' interests equally, a social system must satisfy a publicity requirement, meaning that it must be possible for citizens to see for themselves that they are being treated equally. He then argues that only democratic decision making, as a procedural form of equality, satisfies this requirement. There are other, substantive interpretations of equality - for example, that one treats others equally by equalizing their resources or that one treats others equally by granting them the same liberty rights. But these interpretations of equality do not satisfy the publicity requirement, because they are too controversial; only those who accept certain controversial ethical views could see themselves to be treated as equals in virtue of the implementation of one of these substantive forms of equality. Hence, the public equal advancement of interests requires democratic decision making.

4.3.2 An absurdly demanding theory of justice?

As I have interpreted it, the Argument from Equality derives a duty to obey democratic laws, in part, from a requirement of justice that one promote the equal advancement of persons' interests [premise (2d)].

Taken without qualification, this putative requirement of justice is absurdly demanding. Suppose I have $50. If I spend the money on myself, I would be advancing my interests more than the interests of others. To advance persons' interests equally, I must spend the money on something that benefits everyone, or divide the money among all the members of my society, or perhaps donate the money to help people whose interests are presently less well advanced than the average. The same reasoning applies to any resource at my disposal. It would seem, then, that I must give away nearly everything I own. In fact, since the ground of the duty to treat other members of my society as equals is their equal moral status [premise (1b)], it seems that my duty must extend to promoting equally the interests of all or most of the population of the earth.

How might we avoid an absurdly demanding theory of justice, without renouncing the Argument from Equality? One possibility is to limit the demand of justice to an obligation to promote social institutions that equally advance others' interests, as opposed to an obligation to directly promote equal advancement of others' interests through one's own behavior in general.

But how would such a qualification be justified? The obligation to treat others as equals is supposed to be grounded in a principle of justice requiring us to give others their due and treat like cases alike. If others are due equal advancement of their interests, then it seems that, to act justly, I must advance their interests equally; there is no ground for limiting this obligation to actions supporting general social institutions. If, on the other hand, others are not due equal advancement of their interests, then it seems that I need not support equal advancement of others' interests, whether in the promotion of social institutions or in any other sphere of action.

Perhaps individuals have an obligation of justice to promote the equal advancement of each others' interests, but this is only a prima facie obligation, which may be overridden by countervailing reasons, including prudential reasons. Perhaps I need not spend most of my resources on others, because my prudential reasons for using resources to my own benefit usually outweigh the prima facie duty to promote equal advancement of others' interests. The government, on the other hand, must devote itself more thoroughly to the equal advancement of citizens' interests, because the government, as an institution and not a person, does not have genuine prudential reasons.[20]

This last suggestion leaves it unclear to what extent individuals have political obligations. Consider two examples:

Charity Case: I have $50, which I am considering either donating to a very effective antipoverty charity or spending on my own personal consumption. If I give the money to charity, it will reduce the inequality in society and bring society closer to the equal advancement of all its members' interests. However, I have already given a large amount of money to charity this year and do not wish to give more. I decide to keep the money.

Tax Case: Tax laws require me to pay a large amount of money to the government. I am considering either paying all of the required taxes or cheating on my taxes in such a way as to pay $50 less than the legally required amount, in which case I will spend the $50 on personal consumption. Assume that I am certain that, if I cheat, I will not be caught or suffer any other negative personal consequences. I decide to cheat.

Advocates of democratic authority would surely wish to deny that my action is permissible in the Tax Case, yet to avoid an absurdly demanding ethical theory, they would wish to allow that my action is permissible in the Charity Case. Suppose we hold that in the Charity Case, my prudential reason outweighs my prima facie duty to promote the equal advancement of others' interests. But my prudential reason for cheating on my taxes in the Tax Case is just as strong as my prudential reason for keeping the $50 in the Charity Case. Furthermore, sending $50 to the charity is likely to promote equal advancement of persons' interests to a much greater degree than sending $50 to the government. Therefore, if my action is permissible in the Charity Case, how can it be impermissible in the Tax Case?

One might appeal to the idea that the total benefit provided by the government, vis-a-vis the equal advancement of persons' interests, is much greater than the total benefit provided by any charity organization. There are two problems with this argument. The first is that the claim need not be true. A large and efficient charity might do more good than a small and inefficient state, yet defenders of political authority would still claim that the individual is obligated to pay taxes to the state and not obligated to donate to the charity. Second and more importantly, the claim is irrelevant. The total good done by an organization should not be confused with the good done by the individual's marginal contribution to that organization. It is the latter, rather than the former, that determines the strength of one's reasons for contributing. The marginal impact of $50 of my taxes on the equal advancement of persons' interests is negligible.

I have focused on the case of taxation because it is among the least controversial and least dispensable exercises of governmental authority among those who believe in political authority. If the obligation to pay taxes cannot be defended, there is no hope for defending political obligation in more controversial cases, such as the putative obligation to report for the draft when so ordered.

The upshot of this discussion is that the defender of the Argument from Equality faces a dilemma: either the obligation to promote equal advancement of interests is implausibly demanding, or it is too weak to support basic political obligations.

4.3.3 Supporting democracy through obedience

One strain in the Argument from Equality [(2d) and (2f)] claims that democracy is so crucial to the equal advancement of persons' interests that to support equal advancement of interests, one must support democracy. Furthermore, to support democracy, one must obey democratic laws. Hence, one must obey democratic laws.

The obvious problem with this inference is that a particular individual's obedience or disobedience to a particular law has no actual impact on the functioning of the state. For instance, the government persists despite a large number of people who evade a large amount of taxes every year.[21] One tax evader more will not cause the government to collapse, nor will it cause the government to become undemocratic. The same holds for nearly all other laws. Christiano tells us, 'Each person must try to realize the equal advancement of the interests of other human beings.'[22] But obedience to democratic laws appears to have little or no connection with this. An action that can be predicted in advance to have no impact on the attainment of a given goal is not a rational way of trying to bring about that goal.

Admittedly, while the impact of a single individual may be negligible, general obedience on the part of most of the population is a genuine requirement for the success and stability of the state. If most people regularly violated most laws, the state would likely collapse. However, most modern societies are nowhere near the threshold level of disobedience that would be required for government to collapse; thus, the individual's marginal impact on the state's survival is zero. (See Chapter 5 for discussion of whether disobedience nevertheless unfairly 'free rides' on others' obedience.)

4.3.4 Is democratic equality uniquely public?

Even if we have an obligation to try to bring about equal advancement of persons' interests, the interpretation of this goal is highly controversial. Some may believe that it requires equalizing individuals' material resources. Others may believe that it requires only granting everyone equal liberty rights. Still others may believe that it requires giving each an equal say in the political process.

Christiano argues that only the last interpretation - democratic equality, as I shall call it - satisfies the crucial publicity principle, the principle that 'it is not enough that justice is done; it must be seen to be done.'[23] There are at least two ways of interpreting this principle, one stronger than the other. On the weak interpretation, publicity requires that individuals be able to see that they are being treated in accordance with a certain conception of equality, whether or not they see that that is the correct interpretation of equality and whether or not they see that equality is essential to justice. On the strong interpretation, publicity requires that individuals be able to see that the way they are being treated is just.[24]

If we adopt the weak interpretation of publicity, then democratic decision making satisfies the publicity constraint, as do many other conceptions of equality. For instance, suppose one holds that the proper way to treat others equally is by according everyone the same liberty rights (roughly, rights to do as they wish, free of government interference). Individuals would be able to see that they were accorded the same liberty rights, even if they did not agree that this was a satisfactory way to interpret equality. So the liberty-rights interpretation of equality satisfies the publicity condition. Asimilar argument could be made for most other interpretations of equality.

On the other hand, if we adopt the strong interpretation of publicity, then no interpretation of equality or justice satisfies publicity, because there is no conception of justice that all can agree on. Not all rational thinkers have agreed even that democracy is just.[25] It thus remains unclear how one might think that democratic equality uniquely satisfies the publicity requirement.

Perhaps the idea is that democratic equality is far less controversial in its application and interpretation than other conceptions of equality of the same level of generality. Equality of rights has no uncontroversial interpretation; there is enormous disagreement on what rights individuals possess and what laws count as implementing equal rights. Similarly, equality of resources is open to interpretation. Does it require only that individuals have equal wealth? Equal incomes? Incomes proportioned to their needs? Must incomes be adjusted for differing costs of living in different locales? But equality in the decision-making process has a single uncontroversial interpretation: one person, one vote.

Or does it? Does equality of decision-making power require direct democracy, or is representative democracy sufficient? Does it require that all citizens have the same chance to stand for public office? If so, is it sufficient that all citizens are legally permitted to stand for public office, or must individuals also have financially and socially realistic opportunities to run for public office? If representative democracy is permitted, must representation be strictly proportional to population, or may some parts of a nation have representation in the legislature out of proportion to their population (as in the case of the representation of states in the U.S. Senate)? Is democratic equality violated if public officials draw districts in unusual shapes for voting purposes (as in the American practice of gerrymandering), with the specific intent of maximizing the representation of a particular party in the legislature? Is democratic equality violated if some persistent minorities rarely or never get their way? If so, what sort of minorities count? Do members of all third parties in the United States (parties other than the Democrats and the Republicans) count as persistent minorities who are not treated equally?

These are all controversial questions. I do not expect that anything close to unanimous agreement could be obtained on how to answer them. And all are questions about the interpretation of democratic equality. That is, they are not just questions about what the best way of organizing the electoral system is. They are questions about what ways of implementing the system truly treat persons equally. Thus, if the publicity constraint requires lack of controversy in the application of a given conception of equality, then the democratic interpretation of equality does not satisfy publicity.

4.3.5 Respecting others' judgments

Another strand in the Argument from Equality holds that, when one disobeys a democratic law, one thereby treats others as inferiors by placing one's own judgment above the judgments of other citizens.

In response, we must first clarify the principle that individuals ought to treat each other as equals. There are many respects in which one might take persons to be equal. One might think persons have equal rights; that their interests are of equal weight; or that they have equal capacities for moral judgment, equal intelligence, or equal knowledge. What 'treating persons as equals' amounts to depends upon the respect in which one takes persons to be equal. Presumably, one is only morally required to treat persons as equals in those respects in which persons actually are at least roughly equal.

Now suppose one disobeys a democratic law on the grounds that the law is unjust or otherwise morally objectionable. In most cases, one will thereby be expressing a rejection of the judgments of those who made the law.[26] Assume that the law was made by a referendum of all the citizens. Then one is rejecting the normative judgments of the majority of one's fellow citizens. This entails that one takes those other citizens to be unequal to oneself in at least one respect: that of having less accurate normative beliefs about this particular law. Perhaps one is also committed to some such general claim as that other citizens are less reliable than oneself at forming correct normative beliefs about the subject matter of this law. Of course, all this is perfectly compatible with one's recognizing that others have equal moral rights or that their interests are equally important as one's own.

Is there anything in this that is unjust or otherwise objectionable? This presumably depends upon whether others are in fact unequal to oneself in these respects and/or whether one is justified in believing that they are. Justice does not demand that we refrain from treating other persons as having some characteristic that we justifiably and correctly take them to have.

Many people are both strongly justified and correct in taking themselves to have more accurate and reliable normative beliefs about certain laws than the majority of members of their society. How does this come about? First, there are many who correctly and justifiably believe themselves to be of significantly greater than average intelligence. Second, there are many who correctly and justifiably believe themselves to have significantly greater than average levels of knowledge relevant to certain political issues. Many surveys and many casual observations have provided evidence that, for example, the average level of political knowledge in the United States is extremely low.[27] It is therefore not difficult at all to know that one has significantly exceeded it. Third, many people correctly and justifiably take themselves to have devoted significantly greater time and effort to identifying the correct positions on certain political issues than the average member of their society. All of these factors - intelligence, knowledge, time, and effort - affect one's reliability in arriving at correct beliefs. No one seriously maintains that persons are anywhere near to being equal in any of these dimensions, let alone all of them. It is therefore very difficult to see how one could argue that all persons are equally reliable at identifying correct political beliefs.

In violating a democratic law, one may well be treating others as though they were epistemic 'inferiors', in the sense of persons with less reliable normative beliefs in a particular area. But there is nothing unjust in this if, as is very often the case, one knows this to be true.

4.3.6 Coercion and treating others as inferiors

When one violates a democratic law, one treats others as inferiors in an epistemic sense. But there are other, more serious ways of treating persons as inferiors. If a person does not agree with some plan, for example, attempting to obtain that person's cooperation through threats of violence is normally an extremely disrespectful approach, fundamentally incompatible with treating that person as an equal.

To return to an earlier example: You have gone out for drinks with some colleagues and students, and one of the students has proposed that you pay for everybody's drinks. Over your protests, the other parties at the table vote to have you pay for the drinks. You tell them that you will not agree to do so. They then inform you that, if you do not pay, they intend to punish you by locking you in a room for some time and that they are prepared to take you by force.

Apart from the fact that you need some new drinking partners, what can be said about this scenario? Who in this scenario is doing an injustice to whom? Who is treating whom as an inferior?

One might argue that by rejecting the decision of the other persons at the table, you are placing your will or normative judgment above that of the other members of the group. They all think you should pay, and there are more of them than there are of you. So who are you to disagree? You must think you are some sort of godlike being whose wishes take precedence over the wishes of several other people.

But that argument rings hollow. Surely it is the behavior of your colleagues and students that is disrespectful of you rather than the other way around. It is they who are unjustly setting themselves up as your superiors by using threats of punishment and physical force to obtain your cooperation with their plan.

Christiano argues that one fails to show proper respect for the judgment of other members of one's society when one refuses to go along with democratic laws. These laws normally come with threats to impose punishment on those who do not follow the law, backed up by credible threats of violence against those who attempt to avoid punishment. On the face of it, the disrespect for persons and the violation of equality involved in issuing and carrying out such threats are far more palpable than the supposed disrespect shown by those who do not comply with the laws. Amajority that votes for a given law is authorizing this kind of coercion. Prima facie, therefore, it is this majority that is guilty of violating the requirement to treat other persons as equals.

The point here is that it is impossible to justify political authority if the moral principle that is supposed to generate political obligation also rules out political legitimacy. In this case, the principle is that justice prohibits treating others as inferiors. If this shows the existence of an obligation to obey democratic laws, it shows much more clearly the illegitimacy of most of those laws in the first place. Since political authority requires both political obligation and political legitimacy, it seems that political authority is impossible.

Perhaps this conclusion is drawn too quickly. It is not always objectionably disrespectful to use physical force against others. If, for example, A is threatening B with unjust violence, then B may use violence to stop A from carrying out his threat without thereby unjustly treating A as an inferior. This suggests that at least some laws - for example, those that prohibit unjust violence - grad students of society) pay less than 1 percent of all federal taxes and actually have are not rendered objectionable or unjust by the coercion required to enforce them.

But many other laws, it seems, are rendered objectionable by the way in which they call for coercion. I have no comprehensive theory to offer of the conditions under which coercion is objectionable. But on the surface of it, the state's collection of taxes is analogous to the collection of money from you in the Bar Tab example. In both cases a majority votes to take someone's property for the benefit of the group, and in both cases the decision is to be enforced through threats of punishment, backed up by threats of violence. One difference is that the burdens of taxation are more widely distributed than the bar tab, which we imagined being placed on a single person. One might instead suppose that, rather than placing all the burden on you, a student proposes that you pay half of the total bill, the other professors pay smaller portions, and the students each get a free ride.[28] Few will say that the wider distribution of the burdens now renders permissible the coercive imposition of this plan.

One might still worry that the Bar Tab example trades on the apparent unfairness of the student's proposal and that our intuitions would change if the group had voted for an essentially fair and equitable way of paying the bar tab. But advocates of democratic authority explicitly claim that one must comply with a democratic decision regardless of whether the decision is in itself just.[29] Hence, it is perfectly appropriate to consider a hypothetical in which the majority votes for an unfair plan, as in the Bar Tab case.

4.3.7 From obligation to legitimacy?

The Argument from Equality faces serious difficulties in accounting for political obligation. But even if we could account for political obligation, there would remain the challenge of accounting for political legitimacy, the state's right to rule by coercively imposing rules on society. Christiano explains the origin of this right as follows:

[T]he democratic assembly has a right to rule [ ... ] since one treats its members unjustly if one ignores or skirts its decisions. Each citizen has a right to one's obedience and therefore the assembly as a whole has a right to one's obedience.[30]

The central problem in accounting for a right to rule is the problem of justifying coercion. Thus, if the above reasoning is to succeed, it must provide a justification for coercion. Perhaps the justification is along the following lines:

4. If justice requires (forbids) a person to do A, then it is permissible to coerce that person to do (not to do) A.

5. Justice requires obedience to democratic laws.

6. Therefore, it is permissible to coerce a person to obey democratic laws.

Premise (5) is supposed to be established by the Argument from Equality, as discussed above.

But why should we accept (4)? In many cases it is plausible that one may enforce the requirements of justice by coercion.

As we have seen above, it is plausible that one may use coercion to prevent a person from unjustly harming another person. It is also plausible that one may sometimes use coercion to prevent a person from unjustly damaging or stealing another person's property or to recover stolen property or extract compensation.[31] In all of these cases, it seems that coercion is an appropriate means of inducing a person to do what justice requires or of preventing a person from doing what justice forbids. So there is some plausibility to the generalization that one may coerce persons to comply with justice.

But now consider two other sorts of alleged obligations of justice: the obligation to give equal respect to the judgments of other persons and the obligation to promote the equal advancement of persons' interests. Perhaps these are requirements of justice; perhaps not. But how plausible is it, in any case, that these particular (alleged) obligations may be enforced through coercion?

Consider an example in which I appear to violate one of these duties. I am out for drinks with some friends. Several of them are discussing what an excellent President Barack Obama is. I chime in, 'You people are fools and your opinions are worthless. I do not respect your judgment. You are all inferior to me.' I then plug my ears so I don't have to hear what they say and turn my back on them.

In this case, I have both failed to respect my friends' judgments and treated them as inferiors. This strikes me as much more evident than the claim that I fail to respect other citizens' judgments or treat other citizens as inferiors whenever I disobey a democratic law. But would my friends (or anyone else) now be justified in using physical force to impose punishment on me?

Now consider a case in which I violate the other alleged duty of justice. Suppose I have recently learned that Amnesty International is working to promote democracy in the little-known country of New Florida. AI is appealing for monetary donations and contributors to letter-writing campaigns. I think AI has a reasonable chance of being reasonably effective in this endeavor, and I recognize that I could support democratic institutions by helping AI at this time.[32] Because democracy is crucial to the equal advancement of persons' interests, I would thereby be promoting the equal advancement of persons' interests. Nevertheless, I fail to support Amnesty International.

In this case, it is very plausible to say that I have (a) failed to promote the equal advancement of persons' interests and (b) failed to help bring democratic institutions into being. And perhaps I have done wrong. But am I now an appropriate target for threats of violence?

Not every duty is appropriately enforced through coercion. The above examples suggest that the obligation to treat others as equals by respecting their judgment and the obligation to promote equal advancement of persons' interests by promoting democracy are not obligations that one may enforce through coercion. Either these are not obligations of justice, or some obligations of justice may not be coercively enforced. In either case, Christiano's argument for political legitimacy fails.

4.4 Conclusion

Relatively speaking, democracy is admirable. In large and obvious ways, it is superior to all other known forms of government.[33] But it does not solve the problem of political authority. The fact that a majority of persons favor some rule does not justify imposing that rule by force on those who do not agree to it nor coercively punishing those who disobey the rule. To do so is, typically, to disrespect the dissenters and treat them as inferiors. Matters are not altered if one adds that the majority deliberated in a special way before deciding to impose the rule.

The need to respect the judgments of other members of one's society does not generate general political obligations in democratic countries, for at least two reasons: first, because many people know themselves to have better judgment with respect to many practical questions than the majority of citizens; second, because the obligation to respect others' judgments does not have sufficient force to override individual rights, such as an individual's right to control his property.

The obligation to promote equal advancement of interests likewise fails to establish political obligations. Among other things, it is unclear in what sense democratic equality is a uniquely publicly realizable conception of equality, and it is unclear how obedience to democratic laws constitutes meaningful support for democratic institutions. But even if obedience to democratic laws constituted meaningful support for equality, deriving political obligation from this fact would require postulating a very strong duty to promote equality. Such a strong duty would most likely entail implausible demands requiring one to virtually devote one's life to promoting equality. In the end, democratic authorization can account for neither the obligation to obey the law nor the right to impose the law on unwilling persons by force.

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The Problem of Political Authority

An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey

Michael Huemer

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