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Abstract
In this essay, I evaluate Philip Pettit’s theory of republican political legitimacy and maintain that it fails to provide a more satisfactory account of legitimacy than consent-based theories. I advance two interrelated theses. First, I argue that in so far as Pettit successfully narrows the scope that his theory of political legitimacy has to address, his arguments could be adapted to support consent-based theories. Second, I argue that Pettit’s theory fails to satisfy the high standards it sets for itself and is thus unsuccessful. My critique focuses on Pettit’s notions of historical, political and normative necessity, before evaluating whether his requirement of equally individualised popular control of government should be endorsed.
Acknowledgements
An early version of this paper was presented to the Department of Political Economy research seminar at King’s College London. I would like to thank my colleagues for their probing and helpful comments, and for instructive feedback on earlier drafts of this paper, I am especially grateful to Timothy Fowler, Adam Tebble and the anonymous reviewers.
Notes
1. The best contemporary account of these challenges is supplied by Simmons (Citation1979, pp. 57–100).
2. In addition to stressing the distinction between the questions of legitimacy and social justice, one of the most striking features of On the People’s Terms is the emphasis Pettit places on the democratic credentials of his republicanism. For a recent example of the criticism that democratic politics and Pettit’s republicanism pull in different directions, see McCormick (Citation2013).
3. As Spector (Citation2010, pp. 786–789) argues, Locke, Montesquieu, Constant, J.S. Mill, Hobhouse, Popper and Hayek (amongst others) all endorse conceptions of freedom that share much with what Pettit views as a distinctively republican conception.
4. In distinguishing between these two questions, Pettit follows the lead of Simmons (especially Citation1999). See also Horton (Citation2012, pp. 132–137).
5. I leave aside here (as does Pettit) metaphysical questions about whether everything is necessitated. If hard determinism is true, and if matters of necessity cannot be controlled, then a control-based theory of legitimacy will be doomed from the outset (as will many other theories). Pettit (Citation2001, pp. 6–31) has long argued that his theory of freedom requires that individuals’ choices are not fully determined and they can be held responsible for them.
6. This is especially true of ‘weak a posteriori anarchism’ (Simmons Citation2001), which condemns existing states as illegitimate due to their contingent characteristics and not because it is theoretically impossible for any state to be legitimate.
7. It might be objected here that I am extrapolating too much from Pettit’s claims, but if ‘on pain of internal malfunction or collapse’ counts as political necessity in the case of opening borders, I cannot see (and Pettit offers no reasons) why other policies that would imperil the survival of a state would not count as political necessity. To be sure, Pettit (Citation2012, p. 162) adds that such policies should not be ‘discriminatory and dominating from the point of view of anyone’. However, any policy regarding border controls is by its very nature discriminatory and to suggest that it should not be dominating is question-begging, as whether or not it is dominating is precisely what is at stake in reducing the scope of political legitimacy by introducing the notion of political necessity.
8. Pettit notes that he is ignoring the question of whether a state could force you to reside there if this was necessary for its very survival, which would be the case in the standard slavery example. If forced residence counts as illegitimate, then, for the sake of the example, suppose that slaves were permitted to exit the state but no other states would allow them entry.
9. It may be objected that as slavery was based on race, or some other natural attribute that accorded different groups of people different statuses, then this could not be considered tough luck. But suppose that slavery was based on some system of lot which decided who would become slaves and who would remain free. It seems odd to think that republican objections should lose their force in such circumstances.
10. Is there such a plausible construal? Arguably advocates of a politics of difference endorse positions, in the name of equality, that require some (groups of) citizens having exemptions from certain coercive laws to which others are subject. Indeed, elsewhere Pettit (Citation1997, p. 200) allows for this, citing examples involving indigenous peoples in postcolonial societies or religious groups like the Amish in the United States. Such proposals, however, could plausibly be considered to violate egalitarian commitments to equality, as Barry (Citation2001) has argued at length.
11. Indeed, equalised control over government might actually conflict with other values that could be equalised to satisfy the egalitarian constraint. For related discussion of how equal availability of political influence might violate equality of resources and opportunity for welfare, see Brighouse (Citation1996, pp. 133–136).
12. Given that his proposals are not supposed to be otherworldly, Pettit persistently overlooks how little convergence there is on issues of justice and equality in the diverse societies in which we live (cf. Kukathas Citation2003). To be sure, Pettit (Citation2012, p. 279) acknowledges that citizens who participate in democracies will have their own conceptions of justice and that the republican side cannot expect full victory. The problem, however, regards whether it is at all realistic, given such disagreement, to expect citizens to accept the specific interpretation of the egalitarian constraint required to justify republican democratic institutions.
13. Even those who defend hypothetical contract (or consent) theories usually recognise that they are ill equipped to address the problem of political obligation (see Stark Citation2000).
14. Pettit (Citation2012, p. 240) argues that equally individualised influence might be insufficient for control as the influence could be exercised in a direction that does not count as equally acceptable to everyone.
15. Pettit focuses on equal access to influence, so that equal influence is not compromised by citizens choosing not to participate in the democratic processes. As my objections do not relate to this issue, I refer simply to equality of influence for ease of expression.
16. For related criticisms of Pettit’s contestatory forums, see Bellamy (Citation2008, pp. 168–172).
17. Why does impartiality have to be understood in the terms specified here? Simply because, whatever other merits a theory of impartiality might possess, to be subject to an impartial will over which you have no (equalised) control is to be subject to domination, on Pettit’s definition. Impartiality is a substantive moral position and any given theory of impartiality is unlikely to command widespread agreement, since what the impartial component of morality requires is itself contested. This point is brought out well by Nagel (Citation1987), even if doing so is not the main purpose of his article.
18. As Pettit (Citation2012, pp. 252, 260, 262, 279) suggests in a few places, it seems unlikely that the condition of equal acceptability could be satisfied without equal influence.