Edited by DAVID SOBEL, PETER VALLENTYNE, AND STEVEN WALL
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Acknowledgments
Tis is the ffth volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. Te chapters assembled here were frst presented as papers at a workshop in Tucson, Arizona in October 2017. We would like to thank all those who attended this event, with special thanks to Rosie Johnson, who oversaw most of the organization. All of the chapters in this volume were reviewed by referees, most of whom serve on the editorial board of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy (see http://www.oxfordstudiespoliticalphilosophy.org). We very much thank these referees for their eforts in helping to make this ffth volume a success. Tanks also to the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona for providing funding for the workshop. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to Peter Momtchilof for supporting this series and for his expert guidance.
4. Justifying
5.
6.
7.
Sophia Moreau
List of Contributors
Stephen Galoob is Associate Professor at the University of Tulsa College of Law.
Ten-Herng Lai is a PhD student in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University.
Sophia Moreau is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.
Alan Patten is Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Politics at Princeton University.
Victor Tadros is Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Teory at the University of Warwick.
Daniel Viehof is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at New York University.
Fabian Wendt is Research Associate at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University in Orange, California.
Stephen Winter is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Auckland.
PART I POWER AND LEGITIMACY
1
Power and Equality
Daniel Viehof
A number of democratic theorists have recently sought to vindicate the ideal of political equality (that is, the ideal of an equal distribution of political power) by tying it to the intrinsic value of egalitarian relationships. According to these “social” or (as I will usually say) “relational egalitarian” arguments for distributing political power equally, such a distribution is an essential component of certain intrinsically valuable relationships, and required for ours to be a “society of equals.”1
Te motivation for adopting such a relational egalitarian account of political equality is twofold. Te frst is a matter of “ft.” Many citizens of democratic societies accept that there is distinctive value in democratic decisionmaking. Similarly, many citizens accept that there is distinctive authority associated with democratic decisions. Neither this value nor this authority seems to be fully accounted for by appeal to procedure-independent outcome considerations. Instead they appear to depend on the egalitarian character of democratic procedures: making decisions as equals is intuitively of independent moral signifcance. Yet articulating what the signifcance of egalitarian procedures consists in, in a way that accommodates its (at least partial) independence from non-procedural considerations, has been difcult. Relational egalitarian arguments, many of their proponents think, provide a relatively straightforward explanation of why procedurally egalitarian decision-making matters.
1 (Schefer 2015), p. 21. Relational (or “social”) egalitarian arguments for democracy or political equality are suggested in, e.g., (Anderson 1999, 2010, 2012; Kolodny 2014a, 2014b; Viehof 2014; Schefer 2015). Tough Tomas Christiano’s argument for democracy, in (Christiano 2008), shares some features with relational egalitarian accounts, it is sufciently diferent not to be easily subsumed under this header, and so I will set it aside here.
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But relational egalitarian accounts do not merely ft existing intuitions about the importance of political equality. Tey also (and this is the second reason for adopting them) promise to provide independent support for our commitment to this ideal. One of the main challenges in defending procedural egalitarian commitments is to escape the worry that one has simply restated, in slightly diferent terms, the very democratic intuition one is trying to justify. Relational egalitarian arguments avoid this concern by highlighting these commitments’ continuity with other values we care about outside of politics narrowly conceived. Even those who are not already wedded to democratic procedures, or who are uncertain of their democratic commitments, may recognize that equality is an ideal central to many of our relationships. If that ideal carries over—directly or indirectly— from these relationships to our political arrangements, and if it requires an egalitarian distribution of decision-making power, then this could provide independent support for democratic procedures and the demands they make on us.
I am sympathetic to the relational egalitarian approach. And yet I have come to think that vindicating the ideal of political equality on its basis is more challenging than has often been recognized. To explain what the challenge consists in is the purpose of this chapter. I begin, in Section 1, by explaining what the project of vindicating the ideal of political equality amounts to. Section 2 outlines the basic structure of the relational egalitarian argument for political equality, and highlights a signifcant ambiguity in it. Two diferent paradigmatic examples of egalitarian relationships commonly underpin these arguments for democracy: that of an egalitarian society, a society in which everyone has equal social status (rather than the kind of unequal status we associate with hierarchical societies governed by, e.g., caste or class structures); and that of egalitarian relationships, such as friendships or marriages among equals. Tese two examples, though plausibly related, are not neatly aligned. And, I argue in Sections 3 to 6, they have diferent implications for the distribution of power, and the applicability of relational egalitarian intuitions to our political community. While egalitarian relationships like friendship do include a positive requirement of equal power, the ideal of equal status does not. It merely demands that unequal power be socially justifed in some ways (ways that are compatible with our basic moral equality) and not others (ways that are not). And while the ideal of equal status straightforwardly applies to large political communities, it is open to doubt whether the ideals associated with friendship do; and even if these doubts can be overcome (or at least kept in check), the resulting picture makes the value and authority of democratic institutions much more conditional on the actual attitudes
of citizens (historic and contemporary) than defenders of the ideal of political equality may have hoped for.
Political equality is a matter of how political power is distributed among the members of a particular group. Political power is constituted by the opportunity to infuence political decisions, which usually take the form of laws and other directives that are regularly coercively enforced against, or widely considered binding for, the group’s members.2 So to have equal political power is to have an equal opportunity to infuence political decisions that apply to one’s group.3
What does it take to vindicate the ideal of political equality, by which I mean, vindicate that political equality is an ideal or value in its own right? It is not enough to show that egalitarian political institutions (institutions which distribute political power equally) are in fact valuable, as their value could derive from considerations that are quite independent of political equality. As Steven Wall has pointed out, “For the ideal of political equality to be vindicated, it must be shown to be more than a mere by-product of a sound justifcation.”4 Tis means, for instance, that a vindication of political equality cannot rest on purely instrumental defenses of democracy: even if these defenses could establish that some egalitarian distribution of decisionmaking power would best bring about good outcomes (suitably specifed), the value of the egalitarian distribution would be derived from the value of the outcomes, which is specifable without reference to political equality.
2 So not all power is political power, and a commitment to equal political power need not go hand in hand with a commitment to equal power more generally. But our concern with equal political power is plausibly not unrelated to a broader concern with equal power, and an account of political equality and its value should elucidate that relation.
3 Two points are worth fagging. First, the opportunity to infuence, rather than actual infuence, is what matters here because someone may have equal power yet fail to exercise it. Second, an opportunity to infuence must be distinguished from an opportunity to acquire an opportunity to infuence. If I can only vote at time t2 if I register at time t1, then I have an opportunity at t1 to acquire the opportunity to infuence the decisions at t2. But this doesn’t mean that I have the power at t1 to infuence the decision. And if I fail to register at t1, I lack the opportunity to infuence the decision at t2, and thus lack the relevant power. Tis is a conceptual point about power, separable from the normative question whether my having, but not using, an (equal) opportunity to register at t1 bears on whether I can complain that I lack (equal) political power at t2.
4 (Wall 2007), p. 417.
But even among theories that treat political equality as more than a mere by-product, it is worth drawing a distinction between those that treat political equality as an ideal in its own right, and those that do not. What would it be to treat political equality as more than a mere by-product and yet not as an ideal in its own right? On some views, equality simply sets a moral baseline from which distributions of political power must start. If there is no (adequate) reason for distributing power diferently—to move away from the baseline—then there is reason to distribute it equally. (In Isaiah Berlin’s words, “equality needs no reasons, only inequality does so . . .”5) But though equality is (on such views) special because it sets the baseline, and any move away from it requires justifcation, it is also nothing but a baseline. If there is a good reason to move away from the baseline—a good reason for an unequal distribution—then equality does not provide a countervailing reason to stick (or remain close) to an equal distribution. Putting the point slightly technically: On the baseline view, the presence of reasons for an unequal distribution does not simply outweigh the reasons we have to distribute power equally. Rather, insofar as equality is nothing but a baseline, the presence of suitable considerations favoring inequality cancels the reason we would otherwise have had to distribute power equally. Equality, in such cases, can make a non-instrumental contribution to the realization of some non-derivatively valuable good; but it is not itself an essential component of that good, insofar as that good can in principle be realized even under conditions of inequality.
To make this quite abstract point more concrete, consider an infuential position in democratic theory with such a “baseline” structure: David Estlund’s argument for democracy by appeal to a “reasonable acceptability requirement,” and in particular his proposal that democracy is distinctly acceptable because its justifcation can avoid making “invidious comparisons” among citizens.6 As some critics have pointed out, Estlund builds into his account of political justifcation a basic asymmetry between unequal and equal relations of rule.7 Tus, when Estlund concludes that a democratic—egalitarian— distribution of political power is acceptable where a non-egalitarian is not, the endorsement of political equality is not a mere by-product of a justifcation that is otherwise unconcerned with an equal distribution of power. Nonetheless, what Estlund is ultimately concerned with is not whether power is distributed equally, but whether its distribution can be justifed
5 (Berlin 1999 [1956]), p. 84.
6 (Estlund 2008), p. 37: “[i]nvidious comparisons purport to establish the authority and legitimate power of some over others in ways that universal sufrage does not, and so invidious comparisons must meet a burden of justifcation that universal sufrage does not.”
7 See, e.g., (Arneson 2009) and (Kolodny 2014a).
to all qualifed points of view. So if an unequal distribution can be justifed without invidious comparison, and is acceptable to all qualifed points of view, the fact that the distribution deviates from standards of equality is not regrettable, because an equal distribution of power is not a value in its own right.
By contrast, on other views, an equal distribution of political power is not simply a baseline, nor a mere by-product, but instead an ideal in its own right. On such views, there are non-instrumental reasons in favor of distributing power equally; and these reasons survive the presence of reasons against doing so. Many democratic theorists believe that these reasons in favor of political equality prevail against most competing reasons in favor of an unequal distribution of power. For the purposes of clarifying the conceptual point at issue, however, this is less important than another observation: even if the reasons for distributing political power unequally prevail, they do not cancel the reasons favoring political equality. Tey merely outweigh them. And so there is something to regret where we cannot realize simultaneously the value that speaks in favor of political equality and the value that speaks in favor of political inequality. On such a view, equality is either itself a nonderivatively valuable good, or (more plausibly) an essential component of such a good. In either case we can sensibly think of it as being an ideal in its own right, insofar as whatever gives us reason to realize equality can itself not be understood without it.8
Tis distinction, between views that treat equality as a mere by-product, a mere baseline, or an ideal in its own right, seems to me of general theoretical interest for thinking about political equality (and indeed equality more generally). But, more importantly for the purposes of this chapter, the distinction is relevant because, as I understand them, relational egalitarian arguments for political equality generally aspire to vindicating it as an ideal in its own right.9 Indeed, it may plausibly be among the main motivations for relational egalitarian views that they promise to establish something more than a mere by-product or baseline justifcation of equality (political and other). I do not purport to show here that this aspiration is worth sharing. I merely mean to point out that it sets a standard against which to assess the success of relational egalitarian arguments.
8 So to say that political equality is an ideal in its own right is not to say that it may not be in some sense derivative of some other good, as long as it is also the case that a complete specifcation of that other good makes essential reference to political equality. See (Viehof 2017).
9 I take this aspiration to be present, for instance, in both (Kolodny 2014a) and (Viehof 2014). More generally, insofar as relational egalitarians are (at least in part) concerned with establishing democracy’s authority, a mere baseline view will generally be inadequate, for reasons briefy discussed at the end of Section 4.
Te relational egalitarian account of political equality rests on the following line of thought:
(1) Relational Equality: Certain kinds of egalitarian relationships have non-derivative value.
(2) Equal Power: A (roughly) equal distribution of (some forms of) power among the parties is an essential component of such relationships.
(3) Political Relationships: Our political community should instantiate relationships of this sort.
(4) Political Equality: So (some forms of) power should be distributed equally among the citizens. Where it is, the institution has special value (Democracy’s Value) and special authority (Democracy’s Authority).
As it stands, this is evidently incomplete. In particular, even if (1), (2), and (3) are true, it does not yet follow that we should distribute political power equally because an equal distribution of power, though necessary, may not be sufcient for the instantiation of non-derivatively valuable egalitarian relationships. Under what conditions Political Equality does follow will depend on a more detailed account of egalitarian relationships and their instantiation conditions. I will briefy return to this toward the end of this chapter. But before I can get there, I need to discuss in more detail (1), (2), and (3).
Let me begin with Relational Equality. Te starting point of the relational egalitarian approach is the observation that certain egalitarian relationships have non-derivative value. Tus Elizabeth Anderson has argued that egalitarians are fundamentally committed “to creat[ing] a community in which people stand in relations of equality to others.”10 According to Samuel Schefer, “equality is an ideal governing certain kinds of interpersonal relationships,” and egalitarians should care about “the establishment of a society of equals, a society whose members relate to one another on a footing of equality.”11 And the editors of a recent volume on relational (or, as they say, “social”) equality ofer the following characterization of the position their book elucidates: “[E]quality is foremost about relationships between people . . . When we appeal to the value of equality, we mean the value primarily of egalitarian and nonhierarchical relationships.”12
I am sympathetic to the thought that equality is a constitutive component of certain non-derivatively valuable relationships, and that societies in which the relevant form of equality is instantiated realize an ideal of which other societies, which do not instantiate it, fall short. But these claims, even if
10 (Anderson 1999), p. 289. 11 (Schefer 2015), p. 21.
12 (Fourie, Schuppert et al. 2015), p. 1.
true, are open to signifcantly diferent interpretations. To see this, consider the two quite diferent sets of examples from which discussions of relational equality commonly start.
One case to which relational egalitarians regularly appeal to illustrate the ideal of relational equality is that of a society not governed by social hierarchies assigning positions of inferiority or superiority to diferent people. Tus David Miller invokes the ideal of a society “that is not marked by status divisions such that one can place diferent people in hierarchically ranked categories, in diferent classes for instance.”13 Niko Kolodny, when introducing the idea that “in virtue of how a society is structured, some people can be . . . ‘above’ and others ‘below’,” ofers some paradigm cases of problematic social hierarchy: “Te servant is ‘subordinate’ to the lord of the manor, the slave ‘subordinate’ to the master . . . Te plebian is ‘lower than’ the patrician, the untouchable ‘lower than’ the Brahmin, and so on.”14 At their most extreme, such caste societies (as I will, for ease of reference, call societies that paradigmatically violate the ideal of equality Miller, Kolodny, and others are concerned with) assign a place in the hierarchy based on parentage or similar features beyond a person’s control.15 But caste societies, in the sense at issue here, may exist even where someone had control over the fate that led them to be assigned a lower rank on the social ladder. (Consider societies permitting peonage, in which people essentially discharge their debts by selling themselves into temporary slavery, and are viewed as equivalent to slaves while the peonage relation lasts.) Te contrast to such a caste society is then a society that assigns equal social status to all citizens, and disallows inequalities that would be incompatible with it.
Another case often invoked by proponents of relational equality is a wellfunctioning friendship or similar relationship.16 Friendship and (at least more recently, and in some societies) marriage are commonly seen as quintessentially egalitarian relationships.17 We have a reasonably straightforward grasp of the ideal that friends should be one another’s equals, and we can think of a
13 (Miller 1997), p. 224.
14 (Kolodny 2014b), p. 292. See (Anderson 2012), p. 40, for a more detailed list of historically signifcant forms of social inequality.
15 Elizabeth Anderson refers to a specifc prohibition on consigning people “to inferior ofce on the basis of identities or statuses imputed at birth” as “the anticaste principle.” (Anderson 2012), p. 106. I use the notion of a caste society in a more general fashion.
16 Friendship, marriage, etc. are discussed in some detail by (Schefer 2015), Sect. 1.2, (Viehof 2014), Part IV. Even those who do not discuss them in detail recognize these relationships as examples that fall within the general purview of relational equality. See, e.g., (Kolodny 2014b), p. 304.
17 For a thoughtful discussion of friendship’s egalitarian character (that does, however, overemphasize the signifcance of consensus among friends), see (Mansbridge 1980), pp. 8–14.
Daniel Viehof
variety of ways in which a friendship may fall short of this ideal. Imagine, for instance, that one friend considers herself entitled to special treatment that her friend has no claim to (the friend owes it to her to be attentive, or grateful for her friendship, but she has no reciprocal duty to him), or asserts power over her friend that her friend lacks or that she denies to him (as when she insists that she gets to decide where they go on holiday together if she pays, or that she should pick their destination because she has better taste). Such a friendship, in which one friend efectively deems herself the other’s superior (or inferior), would intuitively be defcient because it falls short of an ideal of how friends should relate to each other—specifcally, as equals.
I think that relational egalitarian arguments for political equality must pay attention to diferences between these two examples, and the associated intuitions underpinning Relational Equality, because they have quite diferent implications for Equal Power and Political Relationships. In a nutshell: If we start from the anti-caste intuition to defend relational egalitarianism, we have an easy time explaining why our fndings apply to political relations in society at large. After all, caste is an essentially societal phenomenon. But we have a hard time explaining why relational equality requires equal power: unequal distributions of political power need not amount to objectionable social hierarchy of the sort we associate with caste or class structures. On the other hand, if we start from the example of friendship, we have a relatively easy time explaining the need for equal power. But we have a hard time establishing that the relevant norms apply to political society.
Let me conclude this section by contrasting the relational egalitarian arguments for political equality that are the focus of this chapter with other arguments with which they may easily be confused. On the relational egalitarian arguments I discuss, equal power is itself an essential component of a non-derivatively valuable relationship. By contrast, there are other arguments that also appeal to the non-derivative value of certain relationships (including, perhaps, relationships we tend to associate with equality), but grant at best indirect signifcance to equal power. Tus one might, with Rousseau’s Second Discourse, greatly care about the relational (dis)value of dependence, and favor political equality because it inhibits dependence relations.18 Or one might, in line with neo-republican views, take nondomination to be the central value governing relationships among co-citizens, and argue that democracy contributes to its realization.19 It would be unsurprising if someone attracted to the ideal of relational equality also felt the pull of some of these other relational ideals. Indeed it is natural to think
18 Cf. (Neuhouser 2014). 19 (Pettit 2012).
that an ideal egalitarian relationship will instantiate not only the ideal of equality, but also other ideals of roughly the sort just gestured at. Yet the support for political equality that these other relational ideals provide is structurally sufciently diferent, and subject to sufciently distinct worries and objections, that this chapter will limit itself to discussing the more direct arguments for political equality that ft the schema outlined at the beginning of this section.
Tis section discusses the anti-caste paradigm of relational equality. Behind this conception of relational equality lies the following thought: Caste societies, in which some people are socially “above” and others “below,” are intuitively morally problematic. Tere is something objectionable about a society that distinguishes between peasants and lords, plebeians and patricians, untouchables and Brahmins. And, relational egalitarians propose more specifcally, what is objectionable about such arrangements are not merely their instrumental consequences, or the fact that those deemed “below” are treated in ways that are anyway problematic quite apart from the fact that others are “above,” or even that those who are below act in obsequious ways we fnd demeaning. Instead the social hierarchy is inherently problematic. Someone can say: “Te social arrangements under which we live treat me as another’s social inferior, and him as my superior,” and that is meant to be an objection in its own right to these arrangements. Finally, for those who appeal to this conception of relational equality to defend political equality, inequality in power is (unless qualifed in certain quite specifc ways) itself constitutive of social hierarchy, rather than being merely a causal antecedent of certain hierarchical social relations.
To assess the plausibility of this position, this section discusses what precisely social hierarchy of the sort we associate with caste or class amounts to, and why such “social status hierarchy” (as I will call it) may be deemed distinctly problematic. Section 4 considers whether the absence of social status hierarchy requires an equal distribution of political power.
To determine what is morally problematic about social status hierarchies, we need to understand what they are. Tis is not, in the frst instance, a moral inquiry but a conceptual one: an attempt to identify, and properly characterize, core features of a particular social phenomenon. Still, part of what seems to unify diferent instances of the phenomenon is that we view them as morally problematic; and we would expect this to matter for our analysis of the phenomenon’s central features. I treat as paradigmatic
instances of the phenomenon the kinds of caste or class20 societies mentioned earlier: societies in which some are peasants and others lords, some untouchables and others Brahmins, some plebeians and others patricians. I focus on three characteristics of such societies: they involve status inequality; the inequality is not a matter of mere diference, but instead establishes a hierarchy; and the hierarchy structures society as a whole. Clarifying these characteristics should in turn help us identify what is distinctly morally problematic about paradigmatic instances of social status inequality.
i. Society as a Whole
Let me consider the last point frst. Te existence of a caste structure (like the existence of a class hierarchy, a patriarchal structure, etc.) is a feature of a society as a whole, rather than of a particular relationship. When we think, for instance, of the sense in which the servant is “below” the lord of the manor, we do not just mean that, within their particular relationship, the servant is subordinate. We also mean that their positions as master and servant generalize, and shape all other social relationships that they have. Te servant, we may say, it not just his master’s servant. Even if he currently has no master, he remains a servant, and others will relate to him as such. Similarly, the master is not just his servant’s master. He will be a master even if he currently has no servants, and others will relate to him in what they think is a manner appropriate to his status.
A social hierarchy is properly attributable to society as a whole if it structures relationships among members of the society in general. Te relevant notion of generality bears on both the content of social norms and the norms’ existence conditions. First, if you know that I am an untouchable in a caste society, you know not only how you should relate to me (in this regard), you also know the relation in which I stand to all other members of society, since that relation is itself determined by caste. Social status is, in Hohfeldian language, a “multital” relation (like property), not a “paucital” relation (like contract).21 (And like property, the social status associated with caste or class is insulated from certain forms of detailed attention to individual peculiarities. I will return to this point below.)
20 So class, as it fgures here, is centrally about social status. Tere are infuential alternative notions of class, indebted to Marx or Weber, which focus instead on a person’s relation to the means of production, or capacity to generate income in the market. Class understood in these latter ways is evidently important in its own right. But the moral questions it raises are (at least in the frst instance) distinct from relational-egalitarian concerns about inequality. For discussion, see (Turner 1988).
21 (Hohfeld 2001).
Second, for our society to be structured by a particular hierarchy, the norms governing relations among people with diferent status must have social reality: they must be “systematically sustained by laws, norms, or habits” that are sufciently widespread to properly count as representative of society as a whole.22 We may call these “societal norms” for short. A full-blown account of social status hierarchy (which is beyond the scope of this chapter) would need to explain under what conditions norms are properly attributed to society as a whole, rather than refecting the view of just a single person or a small sub-group. It would, in particular, have to explain how disagreement among members of a society about which norms properly govern it will afect the existence of societal norms, norms representative of society as a whole. Often the legal system will function as a mouthpiece for society’s view of norms. But not all social norms will be embodied in legal norms. And sometimes legal norms are in fact in tension with social norms; and it cannot be taken for granted that in such cases, the former prevail. (Tink of the long struggle about caste in India after the ofcial legal rejection of caste structures.)
Let me add three clarifcatory observations. First, we need not assume that a society is governed by a single social status hierarchy. Instead societies are usually structured by various intersecting social status hierarchies: gender, race, class, and so on. To say that a social status relation governs society as a whole is thus not to say that it governs it exclusively.
Second, the features just highlighted are not unique to status hierarchies, but apply more generally to social diferentiation that is attributable to society as a whole. Tus in a society that distinguishes between the status of child and the status of adult yet does not treat one as superior to the other, the fact that I am an adult structures all of my relations to everyone else qua child or fellow adult, and the norms involved are sustained by society. (Te distinction between status diferentiation and status hierarchy is discussed further below.)
Tird, a society in the relevant sense is not limited to a group the size of a modern political community. For instance, a high school may be a “society” in the relevant sense, governed by internal norms that structure relations among all students and are sustained by the students’ attitudes and actions.23 (Tis matters mostly because it expands the range of examples with which we can work to get a grip on the phenomenon in question.)
22 (Anderson 2012), p. 42.
23 Perhaps a friendship too counts as a “society” so understood, and the demands of social status equality also apply to it qua small-scale society. Tis would, I think, be a feature rather than a bug. More importantly, it would not prevent us from also insisting that additional norms apply among friends qua friends (rather than qua fellow members of a small-scale society).
Daniel Viehof
Tat caste or class is a feature of society as a whole in turn explains why not all instances of inequality amount to status hierarchy of the sort we associate with these phenomena. For example, that some people think of themselves as superior to others (and perhaps even that those particular others happen to think of themselves as inferior) is compatible with the absence of castes and classes if the claim to superiority is not sustained by societal norms. And even if it is recognized that one person has a special claim on another, and that claim is supported by societal norms, the asymmetry in claims need not amount to a hierarchy that mars society as a whole if the socially recognized relation is limited to the two parties, and does not structure their relations to many other people.24
ii. Status
But even inequalities that are socially recognized, and structure relations among all members of society, need not create social hierarchies of the sort we associate with caste or class. To see this, consider the somewhat mundane, but also relatively tractable, example of a high school. Te school could be structured by caste hierarchies: the jocks reign supreme, the geeks are somewhere near the bottom, and so on. But it need not be. And it need not be even if there are socially recognized inequalities that structure relations among all students.
Imagine, for instance, that each term the school publishes a complete ranking of all students’ academic performance. So everyone knows where they are vis-à-vis anyone else when it comes to academic standing. And imagine too that there is a social norm in the school that students are expected to care about, and admire, academic success, and express that admiration toward those who do well. Te social life of this high school, though it sustains inequality, need nonetheless not instantiate status hierarchies. Just imagine the relation between two students, one ranked close to the top of the class,
24 Consider peonage. Tere is evidently something intrinsically bad about it: the person who is indebted must work for the other, without (at that moment) adequate compensation, and without signifcant control about whether to do such work. Tat alone likely sufces to make peonage objectionable, and deserving of abolition. It may also follow that the relation between debtor and creditor is one that is importantly unequal, unequal in a way that undermines certain relations between them. (Friends, for instance, would have to forgive another’s debt for the friendship to be sustainable.) But as long as what has changed is only the debtor’s relation to the creditor, and not the debtor’s relation to others in society, peonage does not introduce the kind of status hierarchy with which we are currently concerned. Te fact that historically, peonage was associated with social hierarchy refects in part the fact that peonage existed in societies where those working for others in various positions were generally deemed to be of lower status. It is this further association that explains why peonage creates a distinctive problem of social hierarchy, of the sort we associate with caste or class.
the other close to the bottom. Tat one has performed better academically, and is thus worthy of admiration, and that such admiration ought to be expressed—the more successful student ought to be congratulated, say— does not, I think, justify the judgment that the higher-ranked student has superior social status in the school.25
What distinguishes positive judgments, or even rankings, in general, and judgments of social hierarchy of the sort associated with superior or inferior status in particular? It is a central feature of status that it attributes to us a range of rights and duties that are one step removed from the characteristics on which the attribution of that status seems to rest. Tink of the legal status of “minor”: It attributes to someone a whole range of legal incidents that are at least partly mediated by the very idea of “minor,” rather than directly justifable by appeal to the characteristic that make us one (viz., being below the age of majority). And this is not a feature of legal status alone. Sociologists concerned with social status also emphasize in their studies “the prestige accorded to individuals because of the abstract positions they occupy rather than because of immediately observable behavior.”26 Even moral status may plausibly be thought to have this character.27
Generalizing from these observations, I propose that status involves a gap between what triggers the attribution of a particular status to someone (their quality) and what response to the bearers of superior status is thought to be appropriate given that status (their claim). Status, in other words, is a non-eliminable intermediate step in the justifcation of its bearer’s claim, a step that makes the claim about something other than simply the underlying quality (age, behavior, performance).28 Tis explains why we need not think of the high school as instantiating status inequality: while social norms require responding in certain ways to other students’ academic performance,
25 Tis is not to say that the judgment that is being made is normally inert or irrelevant. A lower-ranked student may envy the higher-ranked student, or resent her for her success, and yet not take the other to be her social superior.
26 (Gould 2002), p. 1147. See also, e.g., (Chan and Goldthorpe 2004), p. 383: Status order is “a set of hierarchical relations that express perceived and typically accepted social superiority, equality or inferiority of a quite generalised kind, attaching not to qualities of particular individuals but rather to social positions or to certain ascribed attitudes.” Note that some sociologists discussing status are ultimately interested in the microprocesses that determine how individuals evaluate others, and how various evaluations interact in establishing mutual (but not necessarily societal) rankings. See, e.g., (Jasso 2001). See (Turner 1988) for a general treatment of status in sociology and social theory.
27 See, e.g., the discussion of “range properties” central to moral status in (Waldron 2002), and of “evaluative abstinence” and “opacity respect” in (Carter 2011).
28 Cf. Kolodny’s discussion of “consideration,” or “those responses that social superiors, as social superiors, characteristically attract.” (Kolodny 2014b), p. 297. As Kolodny explains, “although their basis may be some narrow and accidental attribute of the person, the responses constitutive of consideration are focused on the person and his or her interests, claims, or imperatives as a whole.” (Kolodny 2014b), p. 298.
