Gerry Mackie

Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Convention Account

This paper explores the close similarities between Chinese footbinding and female genital mutilation and categorizes each custom as universal where practiced persistent practiced by those opposed to it a way to control sexual access to females considered necessary for proper marriage and family honor sanctioned by tradition an ethnic marker spread by contagious diffusion exaggerated over time related to status supported and transmitted by women performed on young girls generally not initiation rites believed to promote health and fertility considered aesthetically pleasing considered an enhancement to male pleasure during intercourse and related to female slavery. After noting these characteristics the paper defends these assertions by tracing the history of female footbinding in China and defining and tracing the history of female genital mutilation in Africa. The authors conclusion that each practice is a self-enforcing convention (as defined by Shelling in 1960 and Lewis in 1969) is presented through a discussion of the convention hypothesis and game theory illustrated through coordination problems. This theory illustrates how people can be stuck in an inferior equilibrium which is maintained by what people believe about each other (daughters will be forced to undergo genital mutilation if people believe this is necessary to attract a husband). Such a convention is self-enforcing and in these cases the enforcement is derived by a desire for paternity confidence by a history of imperial female slavery and by belief traps. The mechanism necessary to allow escape from an inferior convention is then covered and it is recommended that efforts to end female genital mutilation adopt the successful tactics which eradicated footbinding in China in one generation. Quick convention change can be achieved by an education campaign by use of adverse international public opinion and by forming associations of parents who pledge not to submit their daughters to genital mutilation and not to let their sons marry mutilated women.

Does democratic deliberation change minds

Discussion is frequently observed in democratic politics, but change in view is rarely observed. Call this the ‘unchanging minds hypothesis’. I assume that a given belief or desire is not isolated, but, rather, is located in a network structure of attitudes, such that persuasion sufficient to change an attitude in isolation is not sufficient to change the attitude as supported by its network. The network structure of attitudes explains why the unchanging minds hypothesis seems to be true, and why it is false: due to the network, the effects of deliberative persuasion are typically latent, indirect, delayed, or disguised. Finally, I connect up the coherence account of attitudes to several topics in recent political and democratic theory.

Schumpeter's Leadership Democracy:

Schumpeters redefinition of representative democracy as merely leadership competition was canonical in postwar political science. Schumpeter denies that individual will, common will, or common good are essential to democracy, but he, and anyone, I contend, is forced to assume these conditions in the course of denying them. Democracy is only a method, of no intrinsic value, its sole function to select leaders, according to Schumpeter. Leaders impose their views, and are not controlled by voters, and this is as it should be, he says. I respond that his leadership democracy is implausible, both descriptively and prescriptively. Competitive election is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition of democracy, not sufficient even for the limited empirical purpose of regime classification. Any adequate definition of democracy must make reference to the common will, the common good, and other values, I submit.

Rationality, Democracy, and Justice: Why It’s Rational to Vote

The paradox of nonvoting claims that, because one’s vote is not pivotal, it is not instrumentally rational to vote. The paradox assumes that voters care only about whether an issue wins or loses, not about vote margins. But it is conceptually mistaken in insisting that redundant votes have no causal influence on the outcome. Next, if a voter also cares about margins, then each vote is pivotal towards that end. The paradoxicalist now objects that such a vote is imperceptible in advancing the public good. Smallness of benefit does not mean absence of benefit, however, and we observe that generally humans contribute imperceptibly to low-cost, continuous public goods. Many voters say they are motivated by duty to contribute and desire to influence the outcome. Thus, it is possibly rational to vote. The same arguments apply against the claim that citizens are necessarily in a state of rational ignorance about politics.

Values Deliberation and Collective Action: Community Empowerment in Rural Senegal

This book describes how a program of values deliberations–-sustained group reflections on local values, aspirations, beliefs and experiences, blending with discussions of how to understand and to realize human rights--led to individual and collective empowerment in communities in rural Senegal. The study explains what happens during the deliberations and shows how they bring about a larger process that results in improved capabilities in areas such as education, health, child protection, and gender equality. It shows how participants, particularly women, enhance their agency, including their individual and collective capacities to play public roles and kindle community action. It thus provides important insights on how values deliberations help to revise adverse gender norms.

Introduction: New frontiers in global justice

In the ongoing global economic crisis, the question of global justice has become more urgent than ever. No longer are we faced merely with the problem of articulating what global justice is, who is responsible for denying it, who is responsible for addressing it, and how; but these largely academic questions must now be considered against very urgent practical constraints. The world’s most vulnerable populations were hit first and hardest by the fallout of the global economic crisis and the retraction in global aid and investment in emerging markets. There is a palpable sense today that the very principles of distribution that underlie our global political economy have failed miserably for too many people – that the intellectual foundations of the international economy are too in crisis. Indeed, from the perspective of global justice, the moment is urgent. And yet, discussion about global justice among academics today too often floats high above the earth. Perhaps this is an inevitable consequence of thinking, talking, and writing about human misery from the vantage of relative security and affluence. But the tendency toward abstraction is partly a result of the discipline in which academic discussions of global justice have been most vibrant in recent decades. Since its publication, John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971) has been the most celebrated and influential analytic theory of distributive justice in the Anglophone world. And in the last decades, as many scholars have refocused their energies from local forms of injustice – notably, American welfare politics, where Rawls’s theory of the ‘difference principle’ bolstered arguments for redistribution toward the least well off – and toward global inequalities, an entire academic enterprise has emerged that has attempted to refashion the analytics of the Rawlsian model into a plausible theory of global distributive justice. Although noble in its aims, the Rawlsian model has struck many as a flawed approach to global justice. One dominant position is that it tends

The Values of Democratic Proceduralism

A standard justification of democratic voting is that it is a fair procedure, providing for the equal treatment of voters. Democratic theorist David Estlund challenges the adequacy of that justification: flipping a coin between alternatives is also a fair procedure, but no one would propose substituting random draw for voting. Estlund provides several arguments that fair proceduralism is an untenable view, and this article counters those arguments. He concludes that what distinguishes democratic voting from random choice is its better epistemic value in approximating a standard of justice independent of the procedure. The author replies that a less controversial distinction between voting and coin flip is that voting tends to select what is thought best by the most people.

Community Values and Aspirations as the CEP Arrives

This chapter describes the social and personal values of respondents at the outset of Tostan’s Community Empowerment Program (CEP). Several themes or categories emerge from the interviews gathered after the first session and from recollections expressed later in the Democracy and Human Rights Sessions (DHRS). The themes and subthemes (italicized below) provide a baseline from which changes are tracked over time. Participants’ hopes (Beyond the Individual) are for increased well-being of their families, finding the right path and desiring honesty and forgiveness in relationships. Their Commonly Shared Personal Values include working to achieve one’s goals (Working Hard), fulfilling gender roles (Being Men and Women), and raising children (Caring about Children). Their Commonly Shared Aspirations are Education, a Better Future, Better Health, Working Together, and Being in Public.

Learning and Values Deliberations During the Democracy and Human Rights Sessions (DHRS), 2010

The chapter summarizes how respondents’ values and aspirations developed as the Democracy and Human Rights (DHR) deliberations progressed, and how those changes created new intentions to act for the benefit of all. From participants’ discourse, the authors trace the process of change and the key topics that animated deliberation and sparked re-assessment of practices. Respondents learned to deliberate publicly; engage in organized diffusion, from class members to a broader public; imagine a better future; develop new self-understandings; and work together to realize a better future. Justice and rights, equality, and peace are now salient values needed to create enhanced community well-being. New practices in healthcare, education, gender relations and child protection are needed to end what they call bad habits and take up good habits.

Tostan’s Instructional Strategies

The chapter opens Tostan’s classroom doors by close examination of how participants described their learning experiences during class sessions. Participants appreciate that they are taught in their native language, Pulaar, so that all can understand. They find the curriculum engaging, frequently citing culturally relevant references, such as proverbs, songs, and examples from daily life. They say facilitators draw out their experiences and beliefs during discussions, intermixing new information presented in the sessions with what is familiar. Respondents speak about importance of facilitators’ questions for their learning and thinking anew about their communities’ practices. But what they find most engaging are the skits performed in class. Active learning skills increase over time and help them practice democratic citizenship skills that they use in expanded public settings.