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IDEAS THAT MATTER

i

Ideas Tat Matter

Democracy, Justice, Rights

Edited by Debra Satz and Annabelle Lever

1

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Satz, Debra, editor. | Lever, Annabelle, editor.

Title: Ideas that matter : democracy, justice, rights / edited by Debra Satz and Annabelle Lever.

Other titles: Ideas that matter (Oxford University Press)

Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Classifcation: LCC JC423 (ebook) | LCC JC423 .I342 2019 (print) | DDC 320.01—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018049121

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments vii

List of Contributors ix

Introduction 1

Debra Satz

Part One | Reinvigorating Democracy

1. Saving Democracy fom Ourselves: Democracy as a Tragedy of the Commons 9 Archon Fung

2. Collective Reason or Individual Liberty: Deliberative Democracy and the Protection of Liberal Rights 36 Assaf Sharon

3. Rousseau and the Meaning of Popular Sovereignty 68 Stuart White

Part Two | Confronting Injustice

4. Without the Loving Strains of Commitment 91 Christopher J. Lebron

5. Deliberation and University Governance: Te Case of Brown University’s Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan 110 Richard M. Locke

6. Accountability in an Era of Celebrity 151 Martha C. Nussbaum

Part Three | Principl es for an Interdependent World

7 Exploitation in International Trade 177

Helena de Bres

8. Sovereignty and Complex Interdependence: Some Surprising Indications of Teir Compatibility 201

Charles Sabel

9. Toward a Political Philosophy of Human Rights 231

Annabelle Lever

Afterword by Joshua Cohen 251

Publications of Joshua Cohen 253

Index 261

Acknowledgments

In pulling together this volume for publication, we have accumulated debts, which we repay here with our gratitude. In particular, we would like to thank Joan Berry of Stanford’s McCoy Center for Ethics in Society for all her help with the organization of the initial conference that were the occasion for these papers. Tanks as well go to Pam Goodman and Anne Newman for their help with logistics.

Tanks to Meica Magnani, who undertook the task of formatting and indexing the volume. We are also grateful to our editor at Oxford University Press, Peter Ohlin, for his support of this project.

Te Dean’s Ofce of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University provided support for the conference. We also wish to thank the authors whose work appears here, as well as their thoughtful commentators and many other conference participants, including Josh Cohen’s former dissertation students—now accomplished professionals in their own right—who traveled far and wide to attend. Finally, we thank Josh Cohen himself—for his tremendous mentorship and support of each of us over the years, and for his example.

Contributors

Helena de Bres is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College.

Joshua Cohen joined the faculty at Apple University in 2011, and is also a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Berkeley, in the School of Law, the Department of Philosophy, and the Department of Political Science.

Archon Fung is Academic Dean and the Winthrop Lafin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self Government at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Christopher J. Lebron is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University.

Annabelle Lever is Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po, Paris.

Richard M. Locke is the Provost of Brown University and the Schreiber Family Professor of Political Science and International and Public Afairs.

Martha C. Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, appointed in the Law School and the Philosophy Department.

Charles Sabel is the Maurice T Moore Professor of Law at Columbia University.

Contributors

Debra Satz is the Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Philosophy, and by courtesy, of Political Science at Stanford University.

Assaf Sharon is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Tel Aviv University.

Stuart White is Associate Professor of Politics and Tutorial Fellow in Politics, Jesus College, Oxford University.

Debra Satz

i Introduction

The chapters in this volume originated at a conference at Stanford University in January 2017 that celebrated the work and contributions of Joshua Cohen. Cohen has shaped much of contemporary political philosophy, with contributions that span the nature of deliberative democracy, freedom of expression, the interpretation of Rawlsian theory, Rousseau’s thought, justice in the international realm, labor standards in supply chains, campaign fnance, and human rights. (Less canonically, he has written on Glenn Gould’s music and the making of Central Park, a glorious municipal project that exemplifes the compatibility of the creation of beautiful public spaces with mass democracy.)

Cohen has trained and inspired scores of graduate students, myself included. Tese former students have not only established themselves throughout the academic world as formidable scholars but are also found in non-governmental organizations (NGOs), in community organizations, and in government. Cohen is also known for his editorial leadership of the Boston Review, an important magazine of ideas and poetry. (He is the magazine’s co-editor with Deb Chasman.) Trough Boston Review, Cohen has edited books on topics such as the tensions between multiculturalism and gender equality; the value of patriotism; the interplay between race and mass incarceration; and the ethics of climate change policies, among many other subjects.

While each of the chapters in this collection stands on its own, Cohen’s spirit animates them all.

What spirit is that? Specifcally, these chapters are committed to the idea that the analytical work done by philosophers and by philosophically oriented social scientists matters to our shared public life and to democracy itself. Such work can illuminate the values that underlie political disagreement, push to enlarge the space of possible policy options, and guide public reasoning. Each chapter brings imagination and critical reason to bear on perplexing problems in our world—problems such as the fragility of democratic institutions, the place of domestic sovereignty in a globalizing world, and the persistence of racial injustice in democracies. Rather than seeing these problems as intractable, the volume’s authors seek to ofer, if not solutions, then grounds for reasonable hope. Although the authors remain aware of the difcult constraints and trade-ofs that must sometimes be confronted, these chapters present ideas that matter to us—ideas that can guide us in understanding what we can and should do in response to pressing problems. In so doing, the authors, following Cohen, reject the thought that politics is nothing but a realm of power. It makes sense to think of these chapters as centering on three ideas. Te frst idea is about democracy, and specifcally about reinvigorating democracy improving collective decision-making by free and equal citizens. Democracy can, of course, be understood in diferent ways: as voting, as “government by discussion,” or as a form of bargaining among interest groups. Archon Fung’s chapter explores how even a less robust form of democracy than government by discussion nonetheless requires ethical norms to sustain it. Tese norms apply not only to politicians but also to the media, to the government’s bureaucracy, to NGOs, and to citizens. Picking up a theme that goes back at least to Aristotle, Fung argues that laws alone are not enough for democratic politics; we need morally motivated citizens, as well.

Assaf Sharon’s chapter implicitly grants this point, but sees a tension between the ethical norms needed to sustain deliberative democracy and the value of freedom of expression. He worries that in an age when information is fragmented and many citizens lack the tools to evaluate evidence, people are too easily swayed by hate speech and infammatory images and memes. Te marketplace of ideas under such conditions is likely to lead citizens to endorse policies and practices that are not consistent with democratic self-rule—for example, policies which target racial and ethnic minorities. Institutions need good citizens, and good citizens need to be created and reproduced; this may involve more restrictions in the realm of speech than liberals are usually comfortable with.

More optimistically, the chapter by Stuart White explores institutional responses to democratic decay. White, drawing on some ideas of Rousseau’s, explores the uses of constitutional conventions and popular referenda as devices for reanimating popular control. While such devices have well-known risks, White sees promise in their use as ways of increasing the voice of ordinary citizens.

Te chapters in part I present institutional innovations and normative principles that deserve greater consideration in public discussion. Josh Cohen’s work itself is full of ample evidence of such proposals, ranging from his earlier work with Joel Rogers on associational democracy to his more recent work with Chuck Sabel on new forms of global governance.

Te second part of this volume explores the importance of, and various paths for, confronting injustice. What reason do those who have been systematically excluded from democracy’s promise have to obey our country’s laws or work together with others who have turned a blind eye to their situation? Chris Lebron harnesses James Baldwin’s idea of love—not as an unconditional given but as a substitute for anger by those with a justifed grievance against complicit benefciaries of injustice. Moreover, the love Baldwin advises has a critical edge: its function is to help black people live in unjust circumstances and to help white people come to appreciate the humanity of their fellow citizens, as well as to understand white complicity as a part of the transitional path to reconciliation and redress.

Richard Locke, the provost of Brown University and an expert on labor standards, shows in his chapter how structured conversations among diverse groups can aid in imagining and constructing policies of rectifcation and inclusion. Acknowledging the unequal positions of provost, faculty, students, and staf, Locke sees in deliberation a tool for hammering out shared goals and exploring the best means to achieve those goals. He holds up Brown’s example of deliberative discussion in the face of legacies of racial injustice that persist in our educational institutions as a model for how we can move forward in responding to these legacies.

Martha Nussbaum’s chapter looks at another area where the promise of equality remains unfnished business. Despite progress in improving women’s civil and social status, women remain disproportionately the victims of sexual violence. Laws have evolved in some positive ways, but there is an underlying sexist culture in almost all societies. Tat culture ofen portrays men’s sexual urges as beyond their control. To the extent that rape and violence are viewed as such, it will be difcult to hold men accountable. Nussbaum shows that the problem of accountability is exacerbated when big money and celebrity are involved. To combat sexual violence, we have to work on both the legal and the cultural fronts; we must change norms, as well as formal rules.

Te chapters in part II explore the place of emotions, social norms, and culture in democratic politics, showing when and how these might enter into deliberations, sustain people in the face of injustice, or lead us in politically dangerous directions. Tese chapters thus pick up another theme in Cohen’s work: the role of institutions and norms as mutually reinforcing. Taking people as they are, these chapters also show us what we might realistically become and ofer us ways forward—ways of

reforming our practices and motivations in the service of creating a fair and decent society.

Ideas presented in the third part of this book might be understood loosely in terms of political principles and values for an interdependent world. Where some modern theories of justice take the nation or the state as the scope for principles of distributive justice, the rise of new institutions has put pressure on that bounded conception. Increasingly, forms of cooperation are emerging outside the state. Helena de Bres argues that there are principles of fairness that apply to the realm of trade, that trade is not an arena where mere might makes right. At the same time, she argues that attempts to locate these principles with respect to exploitation are unsuccessful. Such attempts are either over- or under-inclusive. Exploitation certainly can occur in trade agreements, but not all exploitative trades are objectionable nor are all objectionable trades exploitative.

Some have argued that globalization threatens national sovereignty. Tis is because global rules—either by the World Trade Organization (WTO) or by trade agreements—impose constraints on national autonomy. Charles Sabel draws on emerging practices in inter-state regulatory agreements to show that there is a place for both shared rules and diferential practices among countries. Tese new forms of regulation in sectors such as civil aviation or food and pharmaceuticals recognize the equivalence of regimes that are not strictly identical. As Sabel notes, these emerging institutions of regulatory equivalence are a kind of existence proof for the possibility of integrating democracy and normative engagement that goes beyond the nation-state.

In the volume’s concluding chapter, Annabelle Lever considers whether human rights can be a tool to extend democracy in a world that includes many nondemocratic nations. She shows why traditional attempts to fx the limits of human rights—in a conception of human nature or in a conception of simple international agreement— fail. Because limits on human rights are less fxed than has been imagined, and because not all currently recognized such rights are equally important, there is work to be done. She suggests that accounts that focus on the “inclusion” aspect of human rights can go some way toward shaping the contours of our attractive theory of human rights.

Te ideas in part III fnd resonance in Cohen’s work on the nature of human rights, global regulations, and the shifing and open nature of what is possible.

So, we have three themes presented here: of reinvigorating democracy, of confronting existing injustice, and of fnding political principles and values for an interdependent world. Taken as a whole, the chapters in this volume establish that political philosophy has much to contribute to current practice and aspirations—in America and abroad. While there are many essays and books that explore ideas from

political philosophy, there are few which are framed so as to address existing social problems and which engage so closely with the best social science research.

I believe that too much contemporary work in political philosophy is written for narrow specialists. By contrast, the chapters in this book, written by experts in their felds, employing nontechnical language, take inspiration from Josh Cohen’s many contributions to address central and timely issues in public morality and politics. Believing that our world’s future is still open, we hope these chapters can contribute to its improvement.

Debra Satz Stanford, California

Reinvigorating Democracy

i 1

Saving Democracy from Ourselves

Democracy as a Tragedy of the Commons

Archon Fung

1.1 INTRODUCTION: DEMOCRACY AS A TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS

The continuing success of democratic governance institutions depends upon the willingness of those who govern—and in turn those who are governed—to restrain the pursuit of their own self-interest for the sake of preserving and improving those institutions.* Te notion that citizens have moral obligations that fow from their participation and membership in democratic society is familiar to democratic theorists and political philosophers. My contribution is not primarily philosophical; I do not make much progress on whether these obligations are best justifed by a notion of fair play or through a conception of citizens as members of a political society or a deliberative democracy.1

Instead, I would like to clarify some important responsibilities of specifc actors in modern societies from the consequentialist perspective of what they should to do if they don’t want to lose their democracy. I explore the ethical responsibilities of three diferent kinds of actors in modern democracies: politicians, media professionals, and citizens themselves. Whereas we ofen think of the primary democratic obligation as obedience to law or perhaps participation in the democratic process— minimal levels of responsibility—I argue that healthy democracy requires us to act in ways that are substantially more demanding.

Tink of a democracy as a common-pool resource like a fshery. We all beneft from the existence of democratic institutions. Indeed, our very lives and fortunes depend deeply upon their continued operation. As with a fshery, however, each of us has a powerful temptation driven by self-interest to take from the commons at unsustainable levels. If we fail to restraint ourselves, then we deplete the commons. Because we have not provided for it, it will no longer provide for us. Elinor Ostrom, the great scholar of common-pool resources, saw civic education as one key to solving democracy’s collective-action problems:2

At any time that individuals may gain from the costly action of others, without themselves contributing time and efort, they face collective action dilemmas for which there are coping methods. When de Tocqueville discussed the “art and science of association,” he was referring to the crafs learned by those who had solved ways of engaging in collective action to achieve a joint beneft. Some aspects of the science of association are both counterintuitive and counter intentional, and thus must be taught to each generation as part of the culture of a democratic citizenry.

Tis metaphor of democracy as a common-pool resource departs from some more familiar ways of thinking about our democratic responsibilities. By contrast, consider the kinds of duties that fow from a notion of fair play in a society governed by just democratic institutions. First, the image of “fair play” suggests that violators cheat each other when they fail to do their part—for instance, by not paying their taxes. Compliance is the usually the norm. For common-pool resources, such as a fshery or the carbon capacity of the earth, widespread violation may be even more common than compliance (we all probably drive too much). Second, the notion of “fair play” evokes a certain clarity. We know when we are playing fairly and when we aren’t. Perhaps this is because there are clear rules in the form of laws and norms to guide us. Maintaining a common-pool resource, on the other hand, is a more ambiguous matter. It is ofen difcult to know what levels of fshing are sustainable or how much driving is too much, how to create and monitor that norm, and how to mitigate or repair the damage once it has been done. Tird, the common-pool analogy introduces the notion of cumulative damage. When violators fail to do their part, they pollute a well of collective resources that has been built up over time through the joint activity of all. Tose resources include citizens’ trust in institutions, politicians’ habits of compromise and deliberation, and regard for a system of democratic inclusion. Te incremental efects of that pollution are difcult to detect and by the time the damage is evident, it may be too late to repair.

Finally, and perhaps most signifcantly, we rely largely on institutions and laws to enforce the requirements of fair play. Well-designed institutions and regulations are also necessary for the preservation of common-pool resources. But problems with common-pool resources ofen emerge not because of the widespread violation of laws and social norms. Te temporal order is reversed: we ofen notice that common-pool resources are in danger of being depleted, and then we adjust our laws and norms to regulate social behavior in ways that protect those common-pool resources. When we, socially speaking, fail to produce those new laws and norms, we destroy the common-pool resource—whether a fshery, a forest, or climate itself. In the protection of common-pool resources, laws work with ethics and norms in two ways. First, changes in ethics and norms seem likely to precede changes in laws because popular sentiments seem apt to generate the political will for legal reforms. Applied to the case of democracy, it seems to me that institutional reforms such as campaign fnance reform are unlikely without frst increasing the popular, civic commitment to the health of our republic. Second, laws and norms work together to reinforce professional and civic behavior that sustains common-pool resources. Neither alone is likely to be sufcient. Refect upon the considerations that prevent you from throwing an empty water bottle out of your car window. Perhaps they are a complex combination of your own internal code and taboos, social sanctions, compliance with anti-littering laws, and fear of detection and punishment by the highway patrol?

Tis chapter is occasioned by worrisome trends in the health of governance in the “mature” democracies, and in particular in the United States. Tese patterns include increasing political polarization at the mass and elite levels, disafection of citizens from politicians and political institutions, incumbent entrenchment, legislative gridlock, and fragmentation of the public sphere. Tese changes have occurred arguably without severely or obviously violating basic democratic norms. Yet, the aggregate efect of these trends may have been to reduce governance in America to a hollow shell of democracy.

My argument begins with a basic account of democratic governance that many diferent kinds of democrats should be able to endorse. Tis account advances two kinds of legitimacy: procedural and output. Te following section develops fve sociopolitical “underwriting” conditions that I regard as necessary for the formal procedure to produce those two kinds of legitimacy. Tose conditions are (1) commitment to process over outcome, (2) social coherence, (3) a spirit of compromise, (4) responsive government, and (5) epistemic integrity. Te following three sections then describe how diferent kinds of actors in the democratic systems—politicians, media professionals, and citizens—have powerful self-interested motives to “pollute the commons” of democratic procedures and their underlying conditions. For the

most part, these polluting activities are not wrong in the sense that they violate the liberty of others or violate structural democratic norms. Nevertheless, these activities have severely eroded the quality of democracy and may eventually lead to its breakdown. Each of these sections ofers the beginnings of a role-specifc account of the ethical responsibilities—the civic duties—that these actors ought to embrace in order to make our democracy successful.

1.2 LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR DEMOCRACY

1.2.1

A Basic Formal Procedure

A very basic notion of democracy begins with four formal procedural components. First, democracy begins with a group of people—the demos—who compose a political association. Pluralism is the second component: those individuals have diverse values and interests that may confict with one another. Members of the political association agree to advance their interests and regulate their interactions through a government that makes various laws and policies in ways that give citizens equal consideration. Finally, in part to ensure equal consideration, the individuals in the demos participate as political equals in making those laws and policies.

Tis account is meant to be basic enough to accommodate many diferent conceptions of democracy. For minimal democrats such as Joseph Schumpeter or Adam Przeworski,3 political equality requires little more than free and fair elections in which citizens have the opportunity to select the team of elites that will govern for some term. For aggregative democrats, the relationship between political equality and government is more demanding. Democratic procedures such as referendums, elections, and representation tally up the interests and preferences of individuals— respecting political equality because each counts for one and none for more than one—in order to generate social choices about policies for government to implement. In deliberative democracy, the connection between politically equal citizens and government is even more demanding. Citizens must constrain their public positions and preferred policies to those that they can justify to other citizens. Public deliberation requires citizens to ofer other citizens—especially those with diferent interests and values—reasons why they too should accept their proposed laws and policies. Others must take these reasons seriously by modifying their own positions accordingly. Joshua Cohen writes that “Deliberation is reasoned in that the parties to it are required to state their reasons for advancing proposals, supporting them, or criticizing them. Tey give reasons with the expectation that those reasons (and not, for example, their power) will settle the fate of their proposal.”4 In a deliberative democracy, the institutions that connect citizens to one another and to

their government must facilitate this kind of public reasoning and then harness the actions of government to its results.

1.2.2 Legitimacy: Procedure and Output, Normative and Sociological

Ideally, these formal democratic procedures generate laws and policies that are legitimate in two ways. First, citizens accept their government as procedurally legitimate because they have enjoyed opportunities to participate in determining its policies as political equals. Second, citizens regard the actions—the outputs of their government as legitimate because the government acts afer duly considering the interests and views of citizens in electoral and deliberative processes.

Accounts of democracy ofer diferent notions of “due consideration.” For minimal democrats, due consideration requires only that government be steered by the team of elites that prevailed in the last election. For aggregative democrats or pluralists, government ought to act according to the interests and preferences of citizens, perhaps as manifested through election results and fair bargaining processes. In doing so, laws and policies advance citizens’ welfare and desires in the political domain. For deliberative democrats, output legitimacy is secured when government acts in fdelity with the public reason that citizens exercise in a wide range of social and political arenas.

Many analysts of legitimacy make a critical conceptual distinction between normative and sociological legitimacy. Standards of normative legitimacy establish the conditions under which a democracy regime ought to be considered legitimate. For example, are citizens treated as equals? Do laws and policies result from appropriate consideration of interests (in aggregative accounts) or reasons (in deliberative accounts) of citizens? Te question of sociological legitimacy, by contrasts, asks whether citizens actually, as a matter of fact, regard their system of government as legitimate. Normative legitimacy does not necessarily confer sociological legitimacy and most citizens can (sociologically) regard their regime as legitimate even if that regime does not deserve (normatively) to be regarded as legitimate. In this conceptual bifurcation, political philosophers typically focus on normative legitimacy and political scientists and sociologists on the empirical dimensions of legitimacy.

Te fve “underwriting conditions” described in the next section are largely empirical conditions: for example, whether citizens regard the integrity of the governing process as more important than obtaining their preferred policy outcomes, whether society is divided against itself, and whether government is responsive to the views of citizens. Tough empirical in character, these conditions underwrite both the normative and the sociological democratic legitimacy of a regime. Tat

is, the institutions of a regime are unlikely to operate in ways that are normatively legitimate—say, on an aggregative or deliberative account—unless the underwriting conditions obtain. Furthermore, most citizens are unlikely to actually regard their regime as legitimate in the absence of these underwriting conditions.

1.3 UN DERMINING DEMOCRACY’S UNDERWRITING CONDITIONS

Formal procedures will not by themselves successfully secure either procedural or output legitimacy. Certain vital normative commitments and sociopolitical conditions underwrite the success of those formal procedures. I believe that these conditions are being undermined by mass and elite actors across the American democratic system. Tough these trends have been building for several decades, my focus on these empirical conditions is in part an efort to characterize and explain the bitterness of the 2016 American general elections and their afermath. Tis section examines how fve such conditions are crucial to sustaining democracy but now are in jeopardy. Tose conditions are: (1) regarding democratic processes as more important than outcomes, (2) social cohesion, (3) governmental responsiveness, (4) the spirit of compromise, and (5) epistemic integrity.

1.3.1 Te Priority of Procedure: Commitment to Democratic Process over Partisan Outcomes

Most fundamentally, democracy requires citizens and ofcials to abide by democratic procedures even if they fail to achieve their preferred policies or the results that they regard as supported by the best reasons. For all democrats, even minimalists, this commitment takes the form of the basic principle of ballots over bullets. Tat principle is what separates the most minimal democracy from a transition back to authoritarianism, in which one set of political elites refuses to accept the results of free and fair elections. When losing candidates congratulate winners and deliver gracious concession speeches, they perform rituals that demonstrate and consolidate their normative commitment to the democratic process over the outcomes that they fought hard to achieve. When citizens fail to abide by this commitment, they no longer regard democratic procedures as sufcient to generate governmental legitimacy. Tis may be because they regard their preferred outcomes as more important than the procedures. Tey may regard the other side’s views—or simply the other side—as odious and intolerable. In this case, they deny the political equality of other citizens because they refuse to regard others’ input into the democratic process as equal to their own.

Tese failures amount to the erosion of a central tenant of democracy: the priority of procedure.

Public opinion research provides indirect evidence that the priority of procedure may be fagging in American democracy. Te Pew Research Center reports that the percentage of Americans who regard the other party as a fundamental threat has been growing steadily over the last decade. In 2014, 35 percent of Republicans saw the Democratic Party as a “threat to the nation’s well-being” and 27 percent of Democrats regarded Republicans that way.5 Perceptions of the other political side have grown even more negative. In an October 2017 report, the Pew Research Center reported that “about eight in ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (81%) have an unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party” and that “81% of Republicans and Republican leaners have an unfavorable impression of the Democratic Party.”6

For citizens who regard the other side as a threat to the political association itself, commitments to diferent parts of the basic democratic process outlined here— preservation of the political association versus abiding by the results of an election that regards citizens as equals—come into confict when the other side wins.

Citizens or political elites might regard existing procedures of democracy as so fawed that they confer little legitimacy on winning candidates or issues. Perhaps this is what Donald Trump had in mind when he argued throughout 2016 that “the system is rigged” against him owing to large-scale voter fraud. Tis echoed a note that John McCain sounded in the 2008 election, when he said in a presidential debate that the organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) may be “now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” But procedural criticisms are not limited to the political right. Liberals, too, believe that voting is rigged through voter suppression and disenfranchisement eforts. A large majority of Americans—85 percent in recent opinion polls—believe that “money has too much infuence on elections.” In the same poll, two-thirds of respondents believe that “the wealthy have more infuence on elections” and thus that the principle of political equality is widely violated.7 To the extent that citizens regard the existing procedures as fawed in this way, they regard their democracy as fawed. At the limit, political procedures do not deserve priority because they have lost democratic quality.

1.3.2 Social Cohesion

Social cohesion is a second condition of successful democracy. Te procedural account just described requires that citizens constitute—and regard themselves