Nondomination and the Value of Democracy

Nondomination and the Value of Democracy

Christian F. Rostbøll

Draft of chapter to anthology on Freedom and Domination, ed. Cillian McBride and Keith Breen.

28 September 2012

Introduction

One great contribution of the revival of republicanism is that it brings freedom back into the debate about the value of democracy. Or if this is too strong a claim, the republican theory of Philip Pettit and others gives us reason to reconsider the argument for grounding democracy in freedom.[1] What I shall call freedom arguments for democracy have been discredited, because they have been relying on either an objectionable Aristotelian perfectionism (the idea that political activity is the highest good) or an untenable Rousseauian equation of the people in their collective capacity and the people understood severally. This (and more) has led many contemporary political philosophers to ground democracy in equality rather than in freedom. My point of departure is that the republican conception of freedom as nondomination contains some valuable insights and resources to overcome the objections to freedom arguments for democracy, while upholding the focus on freedom in the explanation of the value of democracy.The current formulation of freedom as nondomination and of its relationship to democracy, however, is only my point of departure. The most elaborate and systematic defense of republicanism, that of Philip Pettit, only achieves overcoming earlier criticisms of freedom arguments for democracy at great costs. Specifically, Pettit understands the relationship between freedom and democracy as an instrumental relationship in a way that is open to objections.

In this chapter I argue that republicanism should be seen as supplying a strong non-instrumental justification of democracy, because the latter inherently expresses a relationship of nondomination among citizens. In other words, the value of democracy is not merely that it instrumentally (or causally) promotes nondomination but also that it, non-instrumentally, is part of democracy torelate citizens to one another in a way where no one is in a position to dominate another. The latter is not an external product of democratic decision making but is internal to it; it is part of the democratic way of relating to others. The revised republican freedom argument for democracy that I advance is shown to have certain advantages compared to the equality argument for democracy of the sort found in the work of, e.g., Thomas Christiano. In particular, I argue that the freedom argument for democracy can better explain the importance of democratic procedures than can the equality argument, thus responding to a powerful objection to non-instrumental justifications of democracy suggested by David Estlund.My argument, however, requires that we go beyond Pettit’s justification of democracy, which has a tendency to reducedemocracy to“rule for the people” and downplay the importance of “rule by the people.”

I proceed as follows. In the second section, I explain the distinction between instrumental and non-instrumental justifications of democracy and suggest that the contribution of republican theory is to see this debate in new light by focusing on the value of freedom rather than equality alone. The third section considers positive freedom arguments for democracy and argues that while the common objections to positive freedom have some merit, we need to go beyond not only Isaiah’s Berlin’s two concepts of liberty (as republicans do) but also his excessive hostility to positive freedom (which neo-Roman republicans do not). The fourth section argues that Philip Pettit’s republican theory contains some resources for developing a freedom argument for democracy, but that his assertion that democracy has no intrinsic value must be rejected. Thus, we need to go beyond Pettit’s theory in order to understand the non-instrumental value of democracy for freedom. In section V, I go beyond Pettit’s republicanism and defend both the non-instrumental value of democracy and the idea that freedom must include a dimension of collective self-legislation. I show the advantage of this position over equality arguments for democracy and defend it against some important objections.

Instrumental and Non-Instrumental Justifications of Democracy

In discussions of the value of democracy and of the justification of democratic authority, political philosophers often distinguish between the instrumental and the intrinsic value of democratic decision-making and/or the democratic way of life.[2] The instrumental justification of democracy holds, first, that the form of government that ought to be instituted is the one with the best consequences, and, second, that democracy is the form of government with the best consequences.[3] Thus, on the instrumental view, the value and authority of democracy are derived from the consequences to which it is believed to be the best (feasible) means. The intrinsic justification of democracy invokes virtues inherent in democratic decision-making whose value is independent of their consequences. Thus, on the intrinsic argument the value and authority of democracy lies in something that is internal to and expressed by democratic decision-making or the democratic way of life.

The most prominent, contemporary non-instrumental justification of democracy defends “democracy as a non-instrumentally just procedure,” because it treats citizen as equals. “A political procedure may be considered intrinsically just when the rules or practices that constitute it treat persons in accordance with the requirements of justice” (Griffin 2003: 118). In Thomas Christiano’s(2008: 96) non-instrumental account, democracy “is a publicly clear way of recognizing and affirming the equality of citizens.” I shall call this the “equality argument” for the non-instrumental value of democracy and later contrast it to “freedom arguments” (instrumental and non-instrumental) for democracy. According to Christiano, the equality argument is a superior alternative to the freedom argument for the value of democracy. In short, he believes that it is not possible for democracy to make citizens free or self-governing, but democracy can treat citizens fairly or as equals (Christiano 1996: ch. 1, esp. p. 42). But is the public affirmation of equality of citizens sufficient to explain the value of democratic procedures as we know them?

Different arguments have been advanced for the idea that we cannot understand the value of democracy save by invoking the instrumental belief in its good consequences compared to other forms of government. I shall focus on David Estlund’s forceful argument that we cannot explain why citizens should have an equal say in political decision making – the core of democracy in any of its versions – purely with reference to the intrinsic value of fairness or citizenequality. If all we cared about were fairness or equal treatment, flipping a coin would do just as well (Estlund 2008: ch. 4). The best reason to favor the right of citizens to express their views and judgments over and above coin flipping is that we expect people’s views to be intelligent and contribute to the epistemic quality of political decisions in a way coin flipping does not (Estlund 2008: 6). In other words, Estlund’s argument is that we cannot explain the importance and specificity of democratic decision making procedures without appealing to their instrumental value.[4] I believe that any non-instrumental justification of democracy must meet Estlund’s challenge, and my suggestion is that substituting freedom for equality as the core non-instrumental value of democracy can help us doing so.

As we have just seen, both the non-instrumental justification of democracy and the epistemic critique of it regard equal treatment as the main candidate for explaining the intrinsic value of democracy. The importance of freedom is either ignored or rejected in this debate. Achiefcontribution of republicanism is its potential for bringing freedom back into the debate about the ground of democracy. My aim is to show that republicanism can contribute to giving new life to the freedom argument for democracy. On the one hand, the republican grounding of democracy in freedom as nondomination is less susceptible to the standard objections to freedom arguments for democracy. On the other hand, the republican freedom argument for democracy can meet the challenge to the equality argument posed by Estlund. Before we can show this, however, we need to review theobjections tofreedom arguments for democracy and to refine the republican freedom argument for democracy.Above all, we must reconsider the issue of whether freedom is instrumentally or non-instrumentally related to democracy in republicanism.

When we see the instrumental/non-instrumental-value-of-democracy debate in relation to freedom, as republicanism encourages us to do, the first question is whether democracy is instrumental to freedom or intrinsic to freedom. To say that democracy is instrumental to freedom is to hold that the value of democracy in relation to freedom is that of a means that furthers a valuable end. In the instrumental justification, democracy has no value in itself apart from the value it derives from being a (causal) means to freedom. To say that the relationship between democracy and freedom is an intrinsic one is to hold that democracy is an inherent part of freedom, and that freedom is not merely an external consequence of democratic decision making. On the intrinsic argument we also say that the relationship between freedom and democracy is necessary or internal, meaning that we (in some sense) cannot have one without the other. As is perhaps already clear in these formulations there are different ways of understanding these connections and hence different ways of understanding the disagreement between an instrumental and an intrinsic argument regarding the relationship between freedom and democracy. Here are three different interpretations of the issue: (1) We can/cannot bring about freedom without democracy (causal connection). (2) We can/cannot understand or define the concept of freedom without the concept of democracy (conceptual or definitional connection). (3) Democracy and freedom are/are not based on the same value, they are/are not normatively co-original (normative connection).

Beyond Berlin and Positive Freedom

Criticisms of freedom arguments for democracy are often framed within a Berlinian dichotomy between negative and positive freedom, and they often share Isaiah Berlin’s (1969: 130) contention that “there is no necessary connexion between individual liberty and democratic rule.”In other words, the rejection of freedom arguments for democracy share two ideas with Berlin, viz. that democracy is something conceptually and normatively different than individual liberty and that positive understandings of freedom tend to lead to or even justify oppression. Berlin also suggeststhat one can enjoy the same and as much liberty in a non-democratic as in a democratic regime. It is less clear whether critics of the freedom argument for democracy share this view, but I shall later suggest that in a sense they must, or at least they fail to entertain the possibility that the liberty enjoyed in a democracy is of a different kind than the one you can experience in non-democratic regimes. Now, the republican conception of freedom as nondomination is very much formulated in opposition to and as an alternative to Berlin’s two concepts of liberty (Pettit 1997: ch. 1; 1999: 164ff). My suggestion is that this revision of Berlin should also enable us to revitalize and strengthen the freedom argument for democracy.

Recall Berlin’s conceptualization of negative and positive liberty, which has been so influential and, I think, unfruitful for a proper understanding of the relationship between freedom and democracy. Berlin defines negative freedom as the absence of “deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act” (Berlin 1969: 122). Pettit calls this view “freedom as non-interference.” It is this understanding of individual liberty that Berlin thinks has no necessary connection to democracy. In Berlin there is clearly no conceptual relation between negative freedom and democracy, and even in empirical or causal terms he notes that a liberal-minded despot sometimes allow more negative freedom than democratic majorities (Berlin 1969: 129). But “on the whole,” Berlin accepts that democracies may better protect negative freedom than non-democratic regimes (Berlin 1969: 130). The positive concept of freedom is less clearly defined by Berlin, and perhaps it involves more than one idea (Miller 1991: 10). At one point Berlin differentiates negative freedom as a question of “What am I free to do or be?” and positive freedom as a question of “By whom am I ruled?” (Berlin 1969: 130). Positive freedom is about ruling oneself and connects directly to democracy as the only form of government in which the ideal is to be ruled by oneself. For Berlin the desire to be negatively free and the desire to rule oneself “is not a desire for the same thing” (Berlin 1969: 131). Thus, there is no normative connection between the two ideals in his view either. Berlin’s view that one can be as negatively free under a despot as in a democracy presupposes that the freedom enjoyed under the two forms of regime is the same kind of freedom. Such a view was explicitly formulated by Thomas Hobbes[5]: “Whether a commonwealth be monarchical, or popular, the freedom is still the same.”[6] It is exactly this view that republicans reject.[7] My question is if a rejection of that view does not us push in the direction of awarding democracy intrinsic value.

While contemporary republicanism criticizes Berlin’s two concepts of liberty for concealing “from view the philosophical validity and historical reality of a third, radically different understanding of freedom” (Pettit 1997: 19) and finds fault with Berlin’s understanding of the relation between freedom and democracy (Pettit 1999), it shares his fear of positive conceptions of freedom (Urbinati 2012: 610). It was Quentin Skinner who first argued that republican thinkers in the neo-Roman tradition did not, as many commentators had thought, favor a positive conception of freedom. Republicans, Skinners writes, “work with a purely negative view of liberty.”[8]Following in the footsteps of Skinner’s historical studies, Pettit (1997: 27ff) insists that his interpretation of republican freedom, freedom as nondomination, is a negative conception of freedom.[9] What distinguishes republicans from Berlin is not the abhorrence of positive conceptions of freedom, but the idea that what one must be free from is not interference but rather domination. In focusing on domination, Pettit wants to make two main points against the notion of freedom as non-interference. He claims, first, that not all interference compromises freedom; and secondly, that not only interference compromises freedom. The first point is meant to show that there are qualitative differences between forms of interference. Specifically, Pettit wants to show that only arbitrary interference compromises freedom.The latter point is important for the alternative understanding of the relationship between freedom and democracy that one finds in republicanism compared to Berlin. But before we get to that, I consider two objections to positive conceptions of freedom, conceptions that are also the basis of intrinsic freedom arguments for democracy.

One classical freedom argument for democracy is the Rousseauian idea that in a democracy people are free because they are governed by themselves, the people.[10] According to Pettit, the idea that when “the people” rule, “people” cannot be dominated rests on a “fallacy of equivocation.”The trouble is that “the people” who rules refers to a collectivity, while “people” who are ruled refer to individuals taken severally or distributively. And “it is quite possible that the people, understood collectively, should dominate the people, understood severally” (Pettit 1999: 174). Since the people understood collectively in most instances actually denote the majority, we have here also the background for the classical fear of the tyranny of the majority. Now, there is nothing particular republican about this objection to the Rousseauian freedom argument for democracy, we find it in a very similar formulation also in John Stuart Mill: “The ‘people’ who exercise the power are not always the same people as those over whom power is exercised; and the ‘self-government’ is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest” (Mill 1989: 7f). Mill goes on to talk about the tyranny of “society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it” (Mill 1989: 8). While this is an important challenge to the freedom argument for democracy, we should note that it follows in the footsteps of liberal criticisms of positive freedom and offers no specifically republican argument.

There is a second way in which the relationship between freedom and democracy may be said to be intrinsic and which also relies on (what might be called) a positive conception of freedom. The idea is that democracy (and only democracy) provides all citizens with the possibility of taking part in a specific form of activity, political action, which in itself is the only true exercise of freedom. This idea differs from the Rousseauian argument, because the value of political action and the freedom involved in it might not be seen as a matter of collective self-determination, but might lie in the praxis of acting among other free citizens in itself. Often this view is attributed to Hannah Arendt[11] and other neo-Athenian and neo-Aristotelian theorists (Sandel, Pocock). Pettit distances his own republicanism from this neo-Athenian freedom argument, insisting that “while the republican tradition finds value and importance in democratic participation, it does not treat it as a bed rock value. Democratic participation may be essential to the republic, but that is because it is necessary for promoting the enjoyment of freedom as non-domination, not because of its independent attractions” (Pettit 1997: 8). In other words, Pettit affords political participation only instrumental and not intrinsic value in relation to freedom. Part of his reason is to show that “the [republican] ideal is compatible with modern pluralistic forms of society” (Pettit 1997: 8). Like liberalism, then, he rejects conceptions of freedom that in a perfectionist way favors one conception of the good life over others (Kymlicka 2002: 294ff).