There is a wide range of arguments about what makes a state legitimate or what gives a state authority in such a way that it creates a duty of obedience. There is a type of argument that I have always found unsatisfactory, and recently, thinking about it, I realized why it always seemed to fail in my mind.
The argument I have in mind can be found in the works of thinkers like Thomas Christiano, author of The rule of the many: fundamental questions of democratic theory. Christiano argues that democracy gives authority to government because of the obligation to treat members of our society as equals and show them the respect they are due. According to Christiano, when a law is adopted democratically with the support of the majority, to disobey that law would be to place one’s own judgment above that of one’s fellow citizens. This would amount to treating these fellow citizens as inferiors, which would be a mistake. There is therefore an obligation to respect democratically passed laws.
There are several reasons to be suspicious of this argument. Why should we believe that there is a moral obligation to defer to the judgment of others if that judgment happens to be more popular than your own? And even more, what would make this obligation a enforceable obligation – an obligation that can be enforced by coercion? A few decades ago, the majority of Americans disapproved of interracial marriage. However, some people got married anyway. Those who did so clearly believed (rightly!) that their judgment on this issue was better than that of the majority of their fellow citizens. It obviously seems wrong to say that in doing so they did something wrong in thinking they had better judgment than the majority, let alone that they made an unconscionable mistake in a way that makes the acceptable coercion.
But there is a more fundamental reason why I find this line of thinking unconvincing. What’s missing in arguments like this is an idea that is much more emphasized in the classical liberal and libertarian tradition: the idea of reciprocity.
I think libertarians’ increased emphasis on reciprocity is why libertarians are so disproportionately likely to cite the work of Ronald Coase. It’s not that Coase’s work is particularly sympathetic to libertarian politics – you can’t start with the Coase theorem and follow a straight line to anarcho-capitalism. But Coase pointed out that economists had conceptualized repercussions in the wrong way. Previous economic analyzes treated externalities as a one-way imposition of costs. But Coase emphasized that externalities are reciprocal: imposition goes both ways, between the two parties. (This conclusion was also reached independently by the fictional physicist Sheldon Cooper!) For this reason, trying to correct externalities by saying “we should impose taxes on the party that creates the externality” does not succeed.
Christiano’s argument suffers from this same lack of reciprocity. Even assuming that placing one’s judgment above that of others is an unacceptable fault, the situation remains mutual. If my fellow citizens say that I must do what they have decided because if I do not I consider my judgment superior to theirs and I treat them badly, I can also say that by trying to force me to do what they decide, they place their judgment above mine, placing me as inferior and treating me poorly. The situation is mutual. And in treating the so-called “error” of valuing one’s own judgment over the judgment of others in this non-reciprocal way, Christiano’s theory only treats people equally as part of a doublespeak: “some animals are more equal than others.
I had it before argued Yoram Hazony’s fear that an inflexible commitment to free trade could undermine the bonds of mutual loyalty on which a nation depends suffers from the same flaw. I gave a hypothetical example of being faced with the choice between buying cheap lumber from a Canadian named Carl, or paying more for the same lumber from a fellow American named Walter:
Presumably, Hazony believes that there is an obligation rooted in loyalty to buy from Walter rather than Carl, but it is unclear why. After all, what Hazony so often evokes is the idea of mutual loyalty – and the problem with mutual loyalty is that it’s mutual. The obligation goes both ways. So why would we say that I am not showing loyalty to Walter by purchasing from Carl? Why not say that Walter would not demonstrate appropriate loyalty to me by insisting that I buy from him despite the enormous additional financial burden it would impose on me? Simply saying “mutual loyalty” does nothing to solve the problem.
One of the best recent works of libertarian political philosophy (in my humble opinion), Govern the least by Dan Moller, makes a similar point about treating the wrongfulness of certain actions in a reciprocal way:
I want to emphasize that, perhaps unlike other presentations of classical liberal ideas, the fundamental impulse is not outrage at being asked to giveit is first of all a perplexity at the idea that we have the right to request. The impulse travels through the conjunction table: I I could not make such a request; on reflection, it would be scandalous to You make such a request to them; and it therefore becomes clear that they should not make such a demand of us.
Moller argues that “if we recognize even modest restrictions aimed at making others worse off in order to improve our lot” – and if we apply these restrictions reciprocally and equally among citizens – then “we quickly run into a form of libertarianism.”
Of course, these are not the only theories of political authority that exist. But I find it striking that so many theories of political authority, such as those based on mutual loyalty and adequate respect for the judgment of others, must assume – or ignore – the questions of reciprocity that these principles seem to pose.
