Even the Best Works are Sometimes Followed by Mediocre Sequels

Back in 2014, Maria Paula Saffon and Nadia Urbinati published a paper in the journal Political Theory entitled "Procedural Democracy, the Bulwark of Equal Liberty." It's a brilliant article whose contemplation these days gives me some pain, because, while I indicated my indebtedness to Urbinati in a number of places in my 2020 book on democratic theory, I had never seen that particular piece. That stings because the authors not only make a particularly fine case for bringing Hans Kelsen's unmatched justification of democracy to the attention of 21st Century theorists, but also because of the lovely way in which they bash the heads together of (i) epistemic democrats, (ii) advocates of (a certain type of) populism, and (iii) minimalist Schumpeterians as if those alternative theorists were Larry, Moe, and Curly pretending to give a joint talk at an APA convention. [KLONK!]

Saffon and Urbinati defend a position they call "Procedural Democracy" or "Proceduralism," a view that seems to me absolutely right insofar as it stresses the intrinsic value of self-government and pounds home the fact that all the theorists they criticise fail to demonstrate a real grasp of the fact that without a functioning democracy in place it's almost absurd to consider a polity free. Their Proceduralism, which they claim to have largely derived from Kelsen (as well as Norberto Bobbio), never stirs far from the essential point that the freedom and equality of a citizenry cannot be maintained without an adequately functioning democracy.*

Taking these opposing positions in turn, what do Saffon and Urbinati say caused those who defend epistemic democracy (e.g., David Estlund and Helene Landemore) to have entirely missed the main plot of the rise of democracy over the last couple of hundred years? According to the authors, their main mistake was to understand the value of democracy to be entirely extrinsic, a way for a group to produce the most desirable outcomes. This misses majoritarianism's essential contribution to liberty. In addition, they point out that if policy instrumentality really were the main point of having democratic governments, every outcome that is worse than might have been produced by a (either beneficent or confused) despot is a good argument against democratic rule.

I heartily agree with everything in this portion of the Saffon/Urbinati critique. In fact, I made many of the same points in this recent paper (but, you know, like a decade later....)

The authors also do a good job on populists, but only if you restrict "Populism" in such a way that it refers exclusively to particularly disgusting variants of what I believe is actually a fairly wide variety of theories.** Clearly, a Schmittian style fascism is inconsistent with representative democracy, and if that's what populism is or must become, it's silly to call a populist entity democratic.

Now, I'm not suggesting that it's absurd to claim that populism has a fascistic streak. Its forms of "radical democracy" often prefer identification with leaders to more traditional representation. And, of course, if the Leader just IS us, it doesn't make much sense to disagree with him/her. Thus, any desire for pluralism and minority voice in government is commonly cast aside by populist regimes as being detrimental to the real people, the sort of thing that can only be wanted by harmful "elites." Saffon and Urbinati accuse populist sympathizer Ernesto Laclau of that attitude, in spite of conceding his goal of combining "homogeneity (the project of unifying different citizens) with heterogeneity (allowing their plurality of interests to be voiced)." This is because they take several of Laclau's remarks to be antithetical to pluralism. Consider this one: "The classical theory of political representation, reduces the people to a pluralism of interests and values, because it makes of power an empty place occupied by formal rules of the game."

Perhaps they're right. But that attitude certainly does not comport with that of American populists like W.S. U'Ren, who worked tirelessly over a period of many years to give additional voice in government to various minorities. Whatever. I don't want to quibble about the definition of "populism" here. If we take the term to refer exclusively to Schmittian/Trumpian conceptions of government rule as Saffon and Urbinati do, it's hard to deny that Populism will turn out to be anti-democratic to its core.

Interestingly, the authors point out that in its way fascist-leaning populism is akin to epistemic democracy: both are focused on a single feature that is extrinsic to democracy proper, and thus ignore democracy's intrinsic capacity to increase the equal freedom of a populace. The relevant difference between the two theories is that for Populists, it is the unified and unstoppable "power of the people" rather than truth that is the holy grail.

Saffon and Urbinati contrast their rule-centric Proceduralism with one more general democratic theory here: a position they call "Minimalism," (or sometimes "Realism"), a theory that they say originated with Joseph Schumpeter. That position is minimalist in the sense that it calls for only that amount of democracy--and no more--that will prevent a system from being correctly identifiable as either anarchic or despotic. Minimalism is, as Przeworski indicates, basically a way to "get rid of governments without bloodshed," whether or not such governments make any attempt to figure out what the citizenry actually wants. In this way, it could be argued that Minimalism need only fool a populace into abandoning violence in favor of occasional elections that do nothing at all substantive in the area of policy choice. In addition, the Minimalist conception is said to "disregard equality as a key dimension of democracy."

Thus, by Minimalist lights, a little discrimination against this or that group is OK so long as the "rules of the game" are sufficiently kept to ensure that power can be transferred peacefully. In its fear (and arguably also loathing) of the masses, it generally allows no governmental power to be distributed to citizens other than the right to vote for one or more representatives occasionally. Obviously, however, having an election every so often isn't sufficient to produce a democratic polity, particularly if it's OK if these plebiscites are nothing but ruses.***

According to Saffon and Urbinati, the conclusion to draw from the defects of each of these alternatives to Proceduralism is that where authentic citizen preferences for this or that action, policy, and representative are downplayed--or even ignored, so will be the freedom of that populace to choose its own future.

So, in spite of a bit of hand-waving about what seems to me the intractable tension between majoritarian democracy and the problem of persistent minorities, this 2014 paper seems to me to have been a vital contribution to political theory, the sort of article that is sure to have made fans look forward to a sequel. And, within the last month or so, a follow-up paper called "Parties as Agents of Equal Freedom" did appear in the same journal. But, alas, as with so many sequels to excellent creations....

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While the place of political parties was not a highly visable feature of the earlier work, the new paper is focused on the claimed indispensibility of parties to any functioning democracy. However, the authors don't try to hide the fact that historically parties have often been less than virtuous. They write, in fact, "Parties have often turned into oligarchic structures disconnected from their bases." "They have also frequently become cartels who [sic] live off the state, protect vested interests, and engage in collusive practices," and note that they are "increasingly immoderate in their opinions and practices, stretching the democratic rules of the game." Saffon and Urbinati nevertheless mostly attend to the positive aspects of political parties, partly because they don't believe it's possible for democracies to amount to much without their crucial contributions to pluralist thought.

Thus, while Saffon and Urbinati maintain that parties are necessary to democracy and at least can be healthy supplements to sound democratic practices, their affection extends only to the good kind of parties, not, e.g., National Socialism or Trumpian Republicanism. That makes sense, of course, but rather than extend this quite reasonable attitude to advocates of non-Procedural democratic theories, they claim that Populists, Minimalists, and "Epistemics"# are antithetical to parties no matter how the latter institutions happen to be constituted or act in actual practice.

[Chart by a Reddit contributor with the moniker Mgmfjesus]

Unfortunately, the conclusions of the critique here are almost entirely predestined by the paradigms they choose for each of their adversaries. We have already seen this with respect to Populism in the first article, when they chose Schmitt as its primary spokesperson. I mean, to take a couple of the most famous Schmittian Populists, both Hitler and Mussolini were quite explicit that there should only be ONE political party. So, if "Populist" is a term for those sorts of positions only, it's pretty clear that there will not be a place for any parties but the single good one. Fascism is simply incompatible with pluralistic democracy of any kind.

In the sequel paper, this same kind of distortive conceit is applied to epistemic democracy, when, instead of Condorcet, they use Rousseau as the original model for that theory. And to make things worse, they imply that epistemic democracy is essentially tied up with deliberationism. Now, it can't be denied that several epistemic democrats (e.g., Elizabeth Anderson and Helene Landemore) have stressed the importance of deliberation in their writings, and that view has also contributed to their hostility to parties. But it also should be clear that the two ideas of deliberative and epistemic democracy are entirely separable. The point of epistemic democracy is that voting is the best way to determine "correct public policies." A primary focus on deliberation is consistent with having no elections at all. While deliberation may be useful in the determination of what proposed policies an epistemic democrat thinks ought to be voted on, jury theorems do not depend on that detail. The two independent theories seem to me to have been conflated here for the sole purpose of insisting that epistemic democracy must be hostile to political parties. Furthermore, Anderson and Landemore notwithstanding, it's not obvious to me that even stand-alone deliberationism must be incompatible with strong parties: it will continue to depend on how the parties operate.##

It is also worth noting that several well-known exponents of epistemic democracy have not taken the position Saffon and Urbinati have set aside for them. Estlund has said almost nothing about this matter, Thomas Christiano, while sometimes antagonistic to parties (particularly when they display features that Saffon and Urbinati also criticize), has pushed for proportional representation, something that is generally considered dependent on a system that includes at least two parties. And for his part, Robert Talisse has mostly been focused of late on expressing the same sorts of concerns about the hyper-polarization of contemporary parties### that Saffon and Urbinati do in their paper.

Again, this misconstrual is not surprising: it's true that Rousseau may not have seen any need for political parties in determining the "general will," but he was not an epistemic democrat at all. And, again, deliberation is neither here nor there in this fight. In fact, although some deliberationists have been epistemic democrats (and vice-versa), it probably would have made more sense to make an additional place for deliberation-focused theorists rather than just lumping them with "Epistemics."

Turning finally to Minimalists, we may take Schumpeter and Riker as our guides. And we will find that, largely because of their dismissive attitude toward general electorates, they both saw parties as indispensible to democracy, even if more along the lines of necessary evils than as anything to get excited about. And it should be remembered that even an "evil" (the party system) that is necessary for something that is itself taken to be a necessary evil (plebiscitary democracy) should be understood to be a "positive influence," rather than, as our authors put it, nothing but "factions that devour the common good." In other words, if democracy is (even reluctantly) considered a good, and parties are necessary to it as Schumpeter and Riker clearly believed, parties are themselves good things. These Minimalists were quite clear about why they thought parties were essential. The sole purpose of democracy on their view is to retain the ability of a population to throw one group out and replace them with another. And for them, it is only parties that can outline the alternative batch of these alternating ne'er do wells in a manner that can be grasped by the plebes.(Przeworski's attitude is along the same lines.)

Now, I don't want to imply that there is nothing worthwhile in this article. There are, in fact, a good many useful recommendations regarding how contemporary parties should be run. And it may be a valuable piece if taken simply as a paeon to the importance of political parties for democratic polities. Indeed the work makes a number of important points along those lines, points which are, no doubt, regularly ignored by political theorists.

But the paper should not have contained the suggestion that either Minimalism, Epistemic Democracy, or Populism (as correctly understood) are necessarily antithetical to parties. There are, certainly, difficult problems to consider when attempting to make parties (and federal structures as well!) consistent with majoritarianism. But that perhaps unpleasant fact is largely an entailment of simple mathematics, and does not have to be connected with any disdain for pluralism. Certainly, those types of thorny problems connected with voting and elections need have nothing whatever to do with the sort of democratic theory one happens to prefer.

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*While I also discuss Kelsen's importance to democratic theory in my book, I put more weight on the (likely less-well-known) work of Everett Hall in my provision of a somewhat similar justification for majority rule. Like the Kelsen/Urbinati/Saffon take, the Hall/Horn version also focuses on the intrinsic value of free choices in accordance with principles that I take to be foundational regarding the equal weight assignable to both persons and their wishes. 

**For a more comprehensive approach to populism I recommend both of Margaret Canovan's books on the subject. See also this paper, and/or my reviews of Canovan's The People and the Elgar Handbook on Populism here. 

***I wrote a bit about "fake elections" here.

#I admit that their frequent use of "the Epistemics" in this paper sometimes caused me to wonder whether they were referring to an 80's boy band or a group of ESP-powered arch rivals to Professor X.

##The soup gets even murkier when the authors mix in sortionism as though it too were intimately connected with either deliberation or epistemic democracy or both.

###See my review of one of his recent books.

Yet Another Conception of "Wasted Vote"

 

Back in March of 2024, I wrote a piece about the ambiguity of the term "wasted votes." In it I reproduced three or four inconsistent meanings of the expression that can be found around the web and are used by advocates for various reforms. But after reading Steven Hill's useful 2023 Substack essay, "Which Proportional Representation Method is Best for America?" I see that I left out an important conception of the term, one that Hill relies on extensively as a reason for preferring Ranked Choice Voting ["RCV"] to several popular Proportional Representation ["PR"] alternatives. 

While Hill doesn't actually define "wasted vote" in that piece, it is fairly easy to infer that he takes a vote to be wasted just in case it produces zero representation or voice for the voter who cast it. So, for example in an election for President or Senator in our winner-take-all system, if you voted for any losing candidate, Hill considers that to be a wasted vote. Where there is PR on the other hand, it is possible to vote for a second- (or third- or fourth-) place candidate and still get representation or voice. So, according to this conception, when that happens the votes are not wasted. 

That particular understanding of waste is somewhat different from each of the publicly available explanations I considered in my blog last year, including the definition that FairVote, an organization with which I believe Hill is closely associated, provides (or at least at one time provided) on its website; but it can't be denied that Hill's version has an intuitive, even  somewhat comforting, ring to it. I mean, one really might sensibly think I guess I could just as well have stayed home if it turns out that, subsequent to the next swearing-in ceremony, nobody will be representing one's views in the legislature, or council, or whatever. 

I think there are a couple of problems, however. First, it seems to me that it actually does make a difference whether a candidate wins by 30% or .02% of the vote. That is, the votes for losing candidates do matter in some sense, so long as they are counted and publicly published. Since close elections may constrain winners, it may be better to vote for a loser than stay home. So it could be reasonably concluded that such votes aren't really wasted.

Nevertheless, votes for losing candidates do seem wasted in SOME sense: what does the voter get for it? The problem is that if we consider RCV, Hill's favored way to reduce wastage, it seems wrong to infer that, so long as Smith has ranked Crawford at all, and Crawford wins a seat, that Crawford should be thought to be providing a "voice" for Smith. For example, I may prefer Vance to Trump--and may have strategic reasons for ranking Vance at all--but one can't reasonably infer from this that I want Vance, or that he will be speaking for me should he get elected. 

The idea that every ranking is a wanting is simply a problem for all ordinal voting methods: not even a top-ranking should automatically be thought to be a wanting. This is one reason that I believe Approval Voting ["AV"] is superior to every ordinal method in the search for proportionality--or at least would be if we could depend on voters to faithfully follow AV rules and vote for all and only those candidates of whom they actually approve. (Please note that I acknowledge with regret that voters may very well not follow those rules. See this article.) 

In fact, Hill's conception basically makes the determination of whether or not a vote is wasted depend on something that might be entirely extraneous to who one takes to be an appropriate representer of one's views. 

Take this cuckoo example. Suppose there is a PR voting rule that says "Put a mark next to all those candidates you have heard of, making the size of the mark bigger based on how frequently you have heard of him/her. If you have heard of this candidate a LOT, make a very large mark, and if you have only heard of him/her very infrequently (or you think you've heard of him/her but aren't entirely sure whether you've heard of him/her at all), make your mark very small. The votes are to be tallied as follows: the size of all marks made are to be "added up" and the five candidates producing the largest aggregated mark are to be declared winners. 

Under this rule and Hill's definition of "waste," a ballot will be wasted only if it includes no vote cast for a candidate among those who amass one of the five biggest splotches. In other words, in this scenario, those who voted only for candidates that most people hadn't heard much about would be considered to have wasted their votes, but those who cast ballots that included a smudge for any of the five best known candidates would NOT be wasting their votes. Obviously, that produces a very odd and unacceptable conception of voice.

Now, I am not suggesting that under RCV the rule requiring the ranking of candidates by how one compares them to others running for the same office should be considered tantamount to the crazy voting rule specified above. But I do think that if wasting a vote is thought to be a matter of not getting ones "voice" heard in the future chorus of representatives, a vote must be a matter of APPROVING a candidate as being someone one believes to be fit for the job, someone who is better than nothing; not just a matter of whether one likes him/her a bit more than some alternative considered to be almost equally awful.

A Drop of Good News Falls From the Pervasive Dark Clouds of Doom!

 

Something good has actually happened for the future of democracy someplace! Not in the U.S., natch, but in the land of Viginia Woolf and Thomas Hobbes. You know, our (one-time) close ally, England. Those hiding in their American basements between their meat freezers and their dart boards may wonder what it is that I believe ought have their populace absolutely chuffed. So, I will keep them in suspense no longer: ENGLAND HAVE/HAS LOWERED THE VOTING AGE IN NATIONAL ELECTIONS TO 16! 

There will, no doubt, be those who doubt that  this is really a good thing. In fact, the U.S. is home to a burgeoning new movement that advocates for the removal of suffrage from women (or, I suppose, those assigned Female at birth, or conception, or whatever this group thinks is the Godly way to put this sought after restriction). What those concerned gentlemen (mostly gents, anyhow) are quite sure of is that women don't "have what it takes" to be allowed to make a difference in their country based on their views--unless any difference-making opportunity they're given consists solely in begging their husbands, and that is something for which I think it's deemed OK by this group to beat them.

Now, of course, the proportion of the U.S. population that denies that 16- and 17-year olds have the mysterious something required to be eligible for voting rights is considerably larger than the fringe group that would remove women's suffrage. Indeed, the anti-youth vote segment even contains multitudes of women! It's not a marginal group at all. It's just those people who can be heard to say, "Teens simply aren't ready. I mean, have you ever talked to one? Let me get Bracey away from his screens for a minute and you'll see what I mean!"

These sorts of pronouncements aren't new: "They don't pay taxes! They don't know anything! They can't buy a rifle or get a mortgage! They never work! They don't care about anything but video games, halter top styles, muffin recipes, fantasy football or porn! For heaven's sake, if you think about this even for a minute, you'll see that it's a ridiculous-- even disgusting--idea!"

Of course, the same charges have long been--and in numerous quarters still are--aimed at non-caucasions--regardless of gender. 

I discuss this matter at some length in Chapter 6 of my book on democratic theory (which if you haven't yet read in its entirety, tsk, tsk). However, I am so delighted at seeing this news about what's happening in the Parliamentary world of dear Bertie that I will provide an excerpt from that book here. [For those who are already sick of reading at this point, the bottom line is: midteens should be allowed to vote, and democracy is that much worse where this right is not granted.]

First, there are a few pages spent on discussing the numerous arguments that have been brought against teen voting for centuries. I omit them here, as well as any footnotes to what I will reproduce. The text continues as follows:

So, what should voters be able to do? According to Vivian Hamilton (2011, 53), “a minimally competent voting decision involves the appropriate application and coordination of various reasoning processes to make a choice that could be justified by a good reason.” This is because, on her view (2011, 52-62), the ability to cast a non-random vote requires minimal competence in all of the following:

• The ability to learn and retrieve information.

• The ability to form mental representations of information.

• At least some ability to reason inductively, deductively and analogically.

• The ability to apply and coordinate reasoned inferences to some goal, like the solving of a problem or the making of a decision.

Once there is agreement on these, settling on a minimum voting age is simply a matter of consulting the literature on the stages of psychological development. That is precisely what Hamilton does, with patience and care. I will not rehearse her generous summary of the research here, but simply report the absolutely decisive conclusion that, (i) prior to the mid-teens (i.e., 16 or thereabouts) there is, on average, arguably insufficient maturity to meet Hamilton’s criteria; and (ii) after the mid-teens, there is, on average, no development in those areas significant enough to be declared relevant.

This result will not be surprising to anyone who has adult children. That something dramatic happens during the high school years is quite obvious. Athletes begin to have 90 miles-per-hour fastballs, close in on Olympic records, even get notifications of interest from professional teams. Musicians, visual artists, and actors begin to give performances or create pieces that could be staged without embarrassment anywhere in the world. Writers begin to compose publishable works of poetry and prose. Mathematicians suddenly make progress on matters that have stumped the world since the beginning of time. Chess and video game players become masters. Actors start to show multiple levels of depth and nuance of expression. Comedians become funny in original ways. Of course, some kids develop earlier, and some are late bloomers. But those of us who have gone to plays, concerts, games, showings, etc. at our children’s high schools will know that an incredible change takes place among the rank and file there. Clearly, if what the people in some polity want is a strict function of what the individuals in it want, 16-year-olds must be allowed to express their desires and aversions in the same manner as older members of society.

Will the votes of 16-year-olds be independent, or will they just ape the votes of their parents or teachers? It really doesn’t matter: nobody’s vote is entirely independent of those around them. What about the danger of teens simply being instructed to cast their votes in a particular manner by those who feed and house them? The secret ballot is a wonderful protection against coercion of that type. Will they not care enough to vote, based on the belief—correct or incorrect—that most of the issues won’t affect them? That is entirely up to them. Electoral indifference also provides useful information about the state of the populace. (And if they are made to go to the polls against their will, they can always write in Rihanna, Payton Manning, Zippy the Pinhead, or one of the Mutant Ninja Turtles: no harm will have been done). 

Let us agree then to take a break from either mourning or protesting--or whatever you think is most called for in these desperate times--and celebrate this brave British revision of its electoral rules. The new youth vote in England is estimated to constitute only 2% of the total electorate, and the new voters will remain ineligible to hold office themselves. But, in spite of its limits nobody should deny that this is a wonderful moment for democracy in the world. May more soon follow!!

 

 

Democracy Criteria From the Woodstock Days

 

Back in 1968, Professor David Braybrooke published his book Three Tests for Democracy. Much of that work focuses on rights and welfare, but the final third proposes tests for whether a polity is a democracy based on whether "collective preferences" are satisfied there.

While the writing may seem a bit stilted to the modern reader--especially one with no extensive background in either analytic philosophy or welfare economics (I admit to briefly wondering whether Braybrooke's style might have benefitted from cutting down on what I imagine to have been a hefty diet of G.E. Moore)--the main idea is fairly commonsensical: criteria for democratic government must have "something to do with majority rule" As Braybrooke puts it, "Consider a community of sane adults for which a number of mutually exclusive policies P1, P2, P3....Pn have been proposed. Suppose that it is known that a majority of the members of the community prefer P3 to all of the other policies--i.e., it is known that with one vote each to cast [a majority] would would vote for P3. Nevertheless the policy adopted for the community is not P3, but P2....[A]dvocates of democracy would find this result objectionable....[I]t is a flagrantly undemocratic result."

Now, Braybridge doesn't suggest that that adoption of P2 in all such cases is sufficient to show that the group in question is a democracy. Other requirements must also be met. He proposes, in addition, an Adoption Condition, according to which the government in question must sincerely attempt to get P2 put into practice, and a Participation Condition, which looks into both who gets to vote, and who actually does so. For example, if only 5% of the eligible voters bother to cast ballots, and 95% of that cohort are from a minority class, gender, social class, geographic region, ethnicity or race, it will be doubtful that the majority is ruling just because it the polity is apparently functioning in accordance with the results of that election.

I bring this 60s sentiment up because there is an awful lot of gnashing of teeth these days due to a fear that the loss of 'our democracy' is imminent. This keening can be heard on both the left (because of the alleged increase in fascist tendencies among Republicans) and on the right (because of an alleged increased reliance on "fake voters" and other types of election fraud by Democrats). 

Well, whoever may be right about what's happening in the country these days (and I hope my own views about this are known to my readers), it's pretty obvious that to lose something, you first must have it. Set aside for the moment the problems produced for U.S. democracy by the Electoral College, the Senate (and its Filibuster), the effects of gerrymandering, and all the other well-known defects in the American governmental structure. In a recent Substack piece, Lee Drutman displays in broad, dark strokes something particularly depressing about the U.S.: wealthy people are much more likely to vote here than poorer people are.

Drutman's fine piece can be read in its entirety here.

But, of course, that distressing piece of news just provides a bit of the causal story behind what we already ought to have known to be true: quite substantial majorities in the U.S. are simply not getting most of what they are known to want. As I mentioned on page 30 of my 2020 book on democratic theory, a now classic study of this issue, [Gilens and Page (2014)] "looked at about 1,800 policy positions considered by Congress between 1981 and 2002, and found that the views of the majority of Americans on those issues were largely ignored in favor of the the views espoused by powerful (mostly corporate) lobbyists." 

This situation has not improved since 2002. According to the most recent credible polling, substantial majorities are not getting what they want in such areas as gun control, abortion rights, climate change policy, marijuana legalization, student debt, and healthcare coverage. There is no doubt that we are far from a passing grade on Braybrooke's test here.

In a word, all this mournful talk about "losing our precious democracy" is a little nonsensical--whether we're hearing it on MSNBC or FOX. A facade is crumbling: that's all. Furthermore, in my own view, the widespread grief over this loss of something we never had is part and parcel of the blanket disparagement of "populism" as a political theory always to be feared. What IS indisputably bad is autocracy, but, in reality, whether or not it has entirely descended into some sort of fascist tyranny, autocratic rule is the very opposite of (any appropriately "distilled") populism, for the latter insists that democracy must be real, rather than merely imagined--with or without any accompanying flag.

A Few Key Quotes From Robert Jones's Book on White Supremacy

In his excellent book on the history of American racial domination and genocide, Robert Jones focuses on "The Doctrine of Discovery," according to which it is always perfectly acceptable--indeed, required--for civilized, Christian (i.e., white, European) peoples to wrest land from darker savages--whether that latter group were already long established somewhere (like the indigenous people living in North America or Australia) or  arrived later--whether brought against their will like black slaves from Africa, or came voluntarily, like current immigrants from Mexico or Haiti. 

Jones puts the date at which he takes the The Doctrine of Discovery to have become the foundational principle of the future United States of America at 1493, but notes that its official enshrinement into legality here was accomplished by Chief Justice Marshall in a 33-page decision on the 1823 case of Johnson v. M'Intosh. Marshall there opined that 

[The rights of the Indians to sovereignty as independent nations] were necessarily diminished, and their power to dispose of the soil at their own will, to whomsoever they pleased, was denied by the original fundamental principle that discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it. 

While the different nations of Europe respected the right of the natives, as occupants, they asserted the ultimate dominion to be in themselves; and claimed and exercised, as a consequence of this ultimate dominion, a power to grant the soil, while yet in possession of the natives.

The Chief Justice seemed a little embarassed by this proclamation when he also noted in his opinion that, 

The potentates of the old world found no difficulty in convincing themselves that they made ample compensation to the inhabitants of the new, by bestowing on them civilization and Christianity, in exchange [for giving up their] unlimited independence.

But Marshall himself didn't rely on any exchange  being made here, fair or not. In his view, precedence was enough. Might has always simply made right.

Unlike Marshall, Jones, a Ph.D. in religion and a graduate of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, remains troubled by the Christian  background of these power grabs. Jones has not been alone in that sentiment. In fact, his book provides this excerpt from a 1955 sermon given in Montgomery, Alabama by the 26-year old Rev. Martin Luther King:

The white men who lynch Negroes worship Christ. That jury in Mississippi, which a few days ago in the Emmett Till case, freed two white men from what might be considered one of the most brutal and inhuman crimes of the twentieth century, worships Christ. The trouble is that all people, like the Pharisee, go to church regularly, they pay their tithes and offerings, and observe religiously the various cermonial requirements. The trouble with these people, however, is that they worship Christ emotionally and not morally. They cast his ethical and moral insights behind the gushing smoke of emotional adoration and ceremonial piety,

I get what King is saying here, but I'm not sure he was focused on quite the central problem. 

I see the use of Christianity in this context as being not very different from the employment of a claimed love of democracy as being a key reason for rapacious activities. Both are absolutely absurd. As Jones tells us, in the few weeks after a particularly disgusting display of violence in the Mississippi counties of Warren and Hinds in which white mobs killed 50 black Americans, including children and a state senator, taking over the of levers of "democracy" became the goal of the supremacists. 

"[W]hites engaged in a broad effort to rig the elections, including vigilante violence, voter intimidation, bribery of election officials and ballot tampering." Many blacks were hiding in the woods on the next election day. In fact, in one key county in which, thanks to  Reconstruction, blacks had briefly done well, only seven Republican ballots were counted as compared to 4,000 Democratic ballots. Naturally, once in power, the white minority did all they could to impeach any remaining black office-holders. These acts may have been proclaimed to be "redemption" by the self-described pious  Christian whites in Mississippi, but they weren't actually connected with anything in the Bible, or even with the Doctrine of Discovery. Supremacists have long touted religion or democracy (or whatever else they thought might help) when useful, but their actions have always been about getting their money, power, and self-respect back. And, of course, about simple hatred and fear of "the other."

If Jesus had specifically preached against any such domination principle as the Doctrine of Discovery (and I presume that many scholars would say he did!), it would have made no difference at all to those conducting their  lynching parties on their way to watch baseball games. Their "faith" has been no more important than their "patriotism" or "love of democracy" as  inducements to their appalling activities. It has been their cotton revenues, their exclusive right to hold public office, their position as kingpins, and their feelings of repulsion that have always been the significant incitements.

Well, what about now? Same deal. Any spiel about the deep Christianity woven into some "nationalistic" movement is as phony as current Republican claims of a desire to "save our democracy" by such methods as stringent voter ID requirements. I.F. Stone made what was going on perfectly explicit as long ago as the Emmett Till trial when he wrote, 

The South must become either truly democratic or the base of a new racist and Fascist movement which could threaten the whole country and its institutions. 

Stone saw where we were heading back in the 1950s, and it was not toward anything that can correctly be called "Populism," which is a type of authentic, if arguably radical, democracy. It was in exactly the opposite direction.

Jane Austen on the Difference Between Moral and Prudential Values

For at least a decade, I have been trying to get more respect for prudential values (that which is good for individuals and groups), based on the view that they have been badly mistreated by philosophers who seem to care only about what is morally right or good. I take up that cudgel once again in my latest book review, that of Bas van der Vossen's Political Philosophy: The Basics. In that piece I complain that theorists are all too prone to worry about what makes a state or a law legitimate, without much care about what makes that state or law good for the people who are subject to it.

But I feel myself chastised! Near the end of her novel Mansfield Park, Jane Austen spends perhaps the longest time she ever devoted to a philosophical problem, on having the somewhat priggish cleric Edmund Bertram castigate (his then crush) Mary Crawford for making prudential values not just first, but only! That is, Mary is discovered by him to have been absolutely incapable of distinguishing between the two sorts of value. When Edmund finally comes to realize her blindness--something the book's heroine Fanny Price had understood for some time--the both devastated and astonished lover is able to get over his feelings for Mary and (finally!) attach them to (the also somewhat priggish) Fanny. 

It's a brilliant multi-page passage. Edmund gives a detailed account to Fanny of his final talk with Mary, in this way trying to explain how Mary has fallen from his grace. 

Fanny suggests that Mary has been cruel. But Edmund demurs. "Cruelty do you call it? We differ there. No, hers is not a cruel nature. I do not consider her as meaning to wound my feelings. The evil lies yet deeper: in her total ignorance, unsuspiciousness of there being such feelings....Hers are faults of principle, Fanny; of blunted delicacy and a corrupted, vitiated mind." 

Edmund tries to make this clearer by explaining the way Mary treated the "dreadful crime committed by her brother and my sister [running off together, in spite of Edmund's sister's recent marriage to another man]....giving it every reproach but the right; considering its ill consequences only as they were to be braved or overborne by a defiance of decency and impudence in wrong; and...recommending to us a compliance, a compromise, an acquiescence in the continuance of the sin on the chance of a marriage." Mary did admit that the affair had been handled badly, but her thought was that whatever could now be done to mitigate the damage was in order. In her view, the whole kerfluffle might have been avoided if her brother had first married someone else for whom he apparently had feelings (Fanny). This would have been much better, Mary felt, because she believed it "would have all ended in a regular standing flirtation, in yearly meetings..." 

What Mary advised Edmund and his family to now do was just be quiet about the whole matter and "let things take their course." On her view, it would surely be bad for Edmund's sister to leave her brother as a result of family interventions. She says that if anything is done to separate them now, "there will be much less chance of his [eventually] marrying her." And it is that which Mary thinks everyone should understand to be the main goal now that a clandestine elopement has taken place.

Edmund is thunderstruck by all of this. For he has come to see that Mary can think only of what course of action will conduce to the highest level of future well-being and never considers what is morally appropriate. She is unable even to comprehend that there might be some right or wrong here, regardless of what would work out for the best.

Well, I am concerned that my own above-linked comments on van der Vossen's treatment of whether Socrates "should" have fled Athens as his friend Crito wished may be construed to reflect a Crawfordian blindness to the question of what action would be right--and not just prudential--for Socrates under the circumstances. For I, too, generally focus on what can be expected to be most beneficial for all parties. So I want to stress here that I do not deny the existence of moral truths. Nor am I a relativist--cultural or otherwise--on these matters. I understand the distinction that Austen is highlighting and agree wholeheartedly with her. Furthermore, I believe the distinction she makes is important, and even insist that many self-described moral skeptics are confused on this score.

But I do resemble morality deniers in being doubtful about our ability to know that this or that proposition counts as a moral truth. Because I am unlike Edmund and Fanny in failing to trust to religious foundations for ethics, and because moral claims seem to me to be unlike empirical assertions in having no likely foundation other than "intuitions" and prudential considerations, I am hesitant to place much confidence in any conclusions claimed to emanate from some alleged "moral sense." 

So, unlike Mary Crawford, I don't make prudential values to be either the "be-all" or "end-all" of value theory (and I include aesthetic values in this judgment). But I do think that we often have little else than humble prudential considerations to rely upon. As I have said elsewhere, I am comfortable putting prudential values at the kiddie table, but I have little faith in the pronouncements descending from the fancier place-settings--no matter how loudly and confidently they are declaimed. 

I therefore hope I can be excused for thinking that it's possible that Socrates ought to have given a bit less weight to Austenian arguments here and paid significantly more attention to the pleas of his friend Crito.

Populism, Then and Now

 

Possibly better known for her books on Arendt and Chesterton, Margaret Canovan was surely one of the most important British theorists of the early 21st Century in the now burgeoning field of political science sometimes called "populist theory." Canovan wrote her final book, The People, in 2005 and died in 2018. 

I have only now gotten around to reviewing one of her books, although her 1991 Populism was one of the works that first got me interested in earlier and later versions of the American "Progressivism" of the late 19th and early 20th Century. And it had been the advocates of that sort of "populism," folks like Oregon's W.S. U'ren, who struggled (only occasionally with success) to bring reforms like Recall, Referendum, proportional and vote ranking systems, the "short ballot," and the Single Tax, to various states or municipalities around the country. I can't deny that it was learning about those movements that first nudged me into democratic theory. In fact, it was an old Single Taxer from central Massachusetts who told me that his father had also been a Georgist and his grandfather an abolishonist, who got me to read Progress and Poverty when I wasn't yet 30. (For good or ill, that isn't the sort of book one is introduced to in graduate programs in analytic philosophy.) 

Canovan spent much of her career explaining both the foundations and importance of those types of populist movements. And her discussions of what "popular sovereignty" is and who "We, the People" might be referring to on the various occasions of its use remain of great importance.

Anyhow, my new review of Canovan's last book is now in 3:16 AM Magazine and can be found here.

Is Democracy Good Because Majority Votes "Track Public Policy Truths"?

In what is likely to be my last "scholarly paper" (journal publishing is just too aggravating for my delicate constitution), I argue against what is currently the most widely held view regarding the benefits of democratic government.

Marquis De Condorcet, the French Revolution supporter and eventual victim is justly celebrated for his "jury theorem" according to which majorities (of unbiased, independent, sufficiently knowledgeable, etc.) voters are more likely to be "right" than any smaller group. Partly because of the violent terror resulting from the very movement that whacked Condorcet, democracy has long been viewed with suspicion. (Since antiquity it has been claimed that the hungry masses aren't just stupid, but also rapacious and therefore dangerous; after all, there's a LOT of them.) Then, in the middle of the 20th Century, things got worse for majoritarians when Kenneth Arrow proved that, in addition to those other problems, it's also the case that elections are incoherent. 

What could democracy supporters say in reponse to these objections other than "Well, anyhow, nothing is more likely to get us to true public policies!" So that's what they have mostly said.

That's what I respond to. First, I don't think the idea of public policy truths makes much sense; and second, I believe both of the two main objections to democratic arrangements listed above can be overcome. A good deal of my 2020 book is on this stuff, as are many of my (nagging?) blog posts here at luckorcunning. But I wanted to try to distill my thoughts on this until they were reduced down to a single, article-length piece. And I have finally done so--whether I've gotten everything quite right or not.

Here's the abstract: 

According to supporters of epistemic democracy, the most important virtue of democratic forms of government is that they provide the best method for determining correct public policies. On their view, this does not primarily result from the fact that any policy a democratic government enacts will reflect conjoined citizen interests and so be more likely to satisfy them, but from the fact that, as they believe Condorcet has demonstrated, majorities are more likely to get things right than any minority is. I argue that any such view fails to capture what is usually meant by self-government, and that, due to this critical shortcoming, epistemic rationales for democracy should be abandoned in favor of voluntaristic, aggregative theories of the kind that were popular prior to mid-20th Century objections generally claiming either that collective preference aggregations are necessarily incoherent or that pervasive injustices must result from unconstrained, and hence tyrannical, majorities.

You can read the whole magilla either at SSRN or direct from Croatia at Prolegomena. So, pick your poison.

Yarvin v. Kofman on Monarchism and Democracy

In her excellent New Yorker portrait of monarch-loving, narcissistic tech bro, Curtis Yarvin, Ava Kofman points out a couple of things that those who (at least think they) like democracy should worry about. She notes that Yarvin's approach seizes on the reality that most Americans have never learned how to defend democracy; they were simply brought up to believe in it. I believe that concern is absolutely appropriate. I mean, although nobody will ever convince Yarvin of anything (as the piece points out repeatedly, Yarvin is a devout know-it-all who never listens to anybody else, even when he has asked them a question) there may nevertheless be significant benefit in those who think of themselves as (small "d") democrats having a sense of just why democracy is a good thing.

Apparently, Kofman and I aren't the only ones who consider this inability to defend democracy to be a problem for Yarvin doubters, whether they are liberals, conservatives, neolibs, communitarians,  communists or whatever. Kofman quotes one Yarvin devotee who says that what drew him to that contrarian's blog was the fact that it makes me feel like I've got something that people in Washington who think they're really smart can't actually make a compelling argument against. 

I don't think there's any question that this is  a legitimate problem. Indeed, almost everything I've written in the last decade myself has been part of my (obviously feeble) attempt to explain why democracy is a good thing--whatever problems it may engender. No Yarvin myself however, it is likely that very few (of my very few) readers will have taken much from my repetitive lectures. 

Sadly, I note that even Kofman may not quite get this stuff right--in spite of her surely getting Yarvin's flaws down beautifully. She writes, for example, that Without a vigorous system of checks and balances, one man's crank ideas--like starting an incoherent trade war that upends the global economy don't get filtered out. They become policies that enrich [Trump's] family and his allies. But that's not really the problem at all, and what's worse, checks are intended to be brakes on democracy, and thus cannot be sensibly used to support the very notion of majoritarianism. Kofman lets slip a sense of what she thinks is basic when whe writes that Yarvin has little to say on the question of human flourishing. Clearly she thinks that's a misstep on his part. But if flourishing is to be the ultimate goal, it's likely that those looking for an all-powerful CEO or philosopher king are just as likely to win the day. Sure, democracy may bring about human flourishing, but it also may not. That's part of its DNA: it simply allows a populace to (within limits*) get what it wants at the time, whether sensible or nuts. If the appropriate search is simply for happy endings, whether democracy is most likely to provide the best road is a purely empirical matter. 

Kofman seems also to conflate democracy with liberalism, forgetting--at least for a moment--that democracies may be (minimally in my view) illiberal.* She says, e.g., In the past decade, liberalism has taken a beating from both sides of the political spectrum. Its critics to the left view its measured gradualism as incommensurate to the present multiple emergencies; climate change, inequality, the rise of an ethno-nationalist right. Conservatives, by contrast, paint liberalism as a cultural leviathan that has trampled traditional values underfoot. Whether or not liberalism requires the reaching of any of the specified goals, is unclear, but democracy certainly need not. Again, it's a mistake to suggest that we can measure how democratic a polity is by how well it is doing in terms of  "human flourishing," as if a polity could not be democratic if its stupid and/or cruel citizens cannot govern in anything but stupid or cruel ways. Such a position actually falls into a Yarvinesque trap by accepting the view that democracy is bad idea if a populace is ignorant or easily fooled. 

I don't want to try to get into anything like a detailed defense of democracy and democratic values in a little blog post. I will only (again) suggest that those interested in my views should take a look at a bunch of relevant entries here at luckorcunning, my published papers on those subjects, or (best of all, imo) my book on democratic theory. But I will say here that if one is most in search of democratic means to prevent self-enrichment by an office-holder, the best answers seem to me to be robust Recall and Referendum provisions, rather than anything like bicameral legislatures, Filibuster capabilities, Executive vetoes, or requirements for supermajorities. Beefing up Madisonian "checks" (i.e., impediments) to authentic self-government are certainly neither the answer to Yarvin nor to the current problems besetting the United States under Trump.

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* I won't attempt to specify all the limits I believe must constrain majoritarianism for authentic democracy to obtain. But to give the general idea, there must at least be equal treatment and protection for all, a right to vote and run for office for all competent residents, free speech, free association, and free assembly.  

Is There Any Real Hope for a "Balance" of Governmental Powers?

Many readers in my age bracket will know that many, perhaps most, of the desiderata of the Trump Administration have been around a long time. Republicans have been pressing the object of ridding the Federal government of "waste, fraud, and abuse" at least since Reagan's day. They have also sought to eliminate the Department of Education, make English the only allowable language, get rid of PBS, abolish any form of affirmative action or other minority assistance, relieve businesses from the alleged hassles produced by "harmful and expensive" regulations, make it easier for sick people to get any drug they may want, strike any restrictions resulting from "the climate change hoax," make it harder for certain cohorts to cast ballots, and on and on and on. None of that stuff is new.

Some of the more "conservative" Presidents have made headway on a number of those measures, but they have been constrained from reaching their hearfelt goals by the fact that, well, they weren't kings: they had to deal with Congress and the courts. The current administration in Washington is sick of those constraints. They want quick and comprehensive results, and have therefore attempted to bypass every institutional brake and dissenting voice and simply do whatever strikes their (perhaps momentary) fancy by way of Executive Order. 

According to Montesquieu and Madison, the democratic way to stop Executives from acting like dictators is to make sure your constitution has a plentiful supply of "checks and balances." We have a lot of those devices in the U.S., so ...maybe we're OK? For remember, the Congress can impeach and remove a President and the Judiciary can declare his or her edicts--whether by Executive Order or otherwise--null and void. Indeed, before the absurd and dangerous Presidential Immunity decision, Presidents could even be prosecuted for criminal behavior.) 

It can't be denied that these "checks" often work in practice, and a judicial one is currently grinding away even as I write this. For in a decision in the case of AMERICAN FEDERATION OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES, AFL-CIO, et al., v. DONALD TRUMP, Judge Susan Illston of the Southern District of California has issued a temporary restraining order that requires a number of gutted and/or moved Federal agencies to be put back where they were, along with the resources and employees that Congress originally intended for them when they gave them specific jobs to do. 

Based on her decision, Judge Illston seems to have been very taken by the briefs of the agencies, unions, municipalities, etc. and not been terribly impressed by the replies to the plaintiffs in this case. And she was also cognizant of a number of precedents. For example, she quotes  this remark from Youngstown Sheet & Tube (1952): 

In the framework of our Constitution, the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker. The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad. And the Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to execute.

One can also find this telling remark from Clinton v. City of New York (1998) in her decision:

The President may create, reorganize, or abolish an office that he established [but the Constitution does not authorize him] to enact, to amend, or to repeal statutes.

Presidents have regularly asked Congress to expedite their authority to reorganize the executive branch, and sometimes have been given that power. In fact, Trump asked for such  authority during his first term and was turned down when the accompanying legislation died in Congress. Thus, Judge Illston concludes, 

The simple proposition that the President may not, without Congress, fundamentally reorganize the federal agencies is not controversial.

I don't disagree with any of that; I just note that the idea that one branch makes laws, another executes them, and a third interprets them, will always make for a highly unstable compound. After all, this decision itself indicates that Congress must be entitled to its own share of executive powers. For it insists that failure to at least attempt to make workplaces, food, air travel or whatever else safer in precisely the manners they have required by their enactments may not be ignored by Presidents or their appointees. Not every type of administration is allowed to the Executive branch.

In addition, two recent Supreme Court opinions, in decisions that were actually sought by Trump supporters at the time, overturned the Chevron deference doctrine, which had allowed agency experts to write regulations that looked, smelled and quacked an awful lot like laws. Furthermore, if the courts end up agreeing with the Trump Administration and overturn this District Court's decision, while there will have been a temporary check, there can hardly be said to have been any  real balance. 

Look at it this way: on the one hand, Congress may pass laws, but the Executive may ignore them and/or the Judiciary may just bat them away. On the other hand, with a friendly court the Executive will be able to legislate via its regulatory powers. That's not all: the Judiciary sometimes does what is essentially both legislating and administering via consent decrees. And, of course, just as Judge Illson will be accused of joining hands with the Democrats in Congress here, the executive and legislative branches sometimes gang up on the judiciary by quickly jiggering laws and administrative methods to get around their decisions. I suppose some Madisonians among us may think that these Rube Goldberg flourishes are patently lovely, but the sad point is that, one way or another, some branch or ugly combine of two of them will always have the upper hand. No "balance" is ever more than momentary. 

Thus, instead of a democracy in which the electorate is the ultimate decider of policy, the only tally that really matters in a Madisonian style government involves, not the citizens, but only the three branches. That is, it makes the crucial question: Which side has at least the votes of two of the branches? That, in a word, is why an authentic democracy must shift some governmental power back to the citizens. And the only sensible way to do it is to guarantee Recall (the power to remove any elected official); Referendum (the  power to repeal any enacted statute or regulation*) and Reversal (the power to overturn certain types of judicial decisions).# 

Without all three of those, periods of dictatorship or other sorts of tyranny are not only ever-possible, but are generally ever-present and operative, whether that condition is obvious or not.

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* In my opinion, these powers should not include the Initiative Petition (the power of the electorate to make rather than repeal laws or regulations). There are a number of reasons for this which I discussed in my book and will not go into at present, though I might discuss this issue again here in a later post.

# Reversal should not be allowed in criminal or civil complaints against individuals. To that extent at least, the judiciary must remain "independent." There is more in my book on this topic as well, though I think the line between appropriate and inappropriate cases for Reversal has probably been better explicated by Ganesh Sitaraman.