Melissa Schwartzberg

Voting the General Will Rousseau on Decision Rules

Scholars exploring the logic of Rousseaus voting rules have typically turned to the connection between Rousseau and the Marquis de Condorcet. Though Condorcet could not have had a direct influence on Rousseaus arguments about the choice of decision rules in Social Contract, the possibility of a connection has encouraged the view that Rousseaus selection of voting rules was based on epistemic reasons. By turning to alternative sources of influence on Rousseau—the work of Hugo Grotius and particularly that of Samuel Pufendorf—a moral, and not purely epistemic, logic of rules governing collective decision making emerges. For Rousseau, as for Pufendorf, the proper choice of voting rule can elicit the appropriate attitude of an individual with respect to the decision of the whole, and can support the morally significant activity of acknowledging error upon discovering that one has voted against the general will.

Athenian Democracy and Legal Change

The ancient Athenians regarded their ability to modify their laws as a fundamentally democratic trait; indeed, the faculty of “pragmatic innovation” was well known throughout the Greek world and was widely viewed as a key advantage that Athens had over its rival, Sparta. The Athenian commitment to legal change endured despite disastrous consequences at the end of the fifth century, a comprehensive revision of the laws, and the complication of legal procedure in the fourth century. In an apparent paradox, however, the Athenians also used “entrenchment clauses” to make certain laws immutable. Through analysis of entrenched laws and decrees, it is shown that the innovativeness that made Athens enviable also made it a difficult ally; entrenchment enabled the Athenians to make its commitments more credible. Although today entrenchment is typically used to protect crucial constitutional provisions, such as rights, in the ancient world it served a strategic purpose.

Jeremy Bentham on Fallibility and Infallibility

Jeremy Benthams arguments regarding fallibility and infallibility comprise a fundamental and distinctive dimension of his democratic theory. Writing against the assertion of infallibility in religious, political, and legal contexts, Bentham claimed that authorities encouraged a popular belief in their own infallibility as a means of corrupting the peoples faculties of judgment. In so doing, rulers were able to secure their own interests against the public welfare and to inhibit the possibility of utilitarian reform. Such arguments may have influenced John Stuart Mills well-known discussions of fallibility and infallibility in works including On Liberty.

Between Science and Engineering: Reflections on the APSA Presidential Task Force on Political Science, Electoral Rules, and Democratic Governance

Political scientists have contributed to the world of electoral systems as scientists and as engineers. Taking stock of recent scientific research, we show that context modifies the effects of electoral rules on political outcomes in specific and systematic ways. We explore how electoral rules shape the inclusion of women and minorities, the depth and nature of political competition, and patterns of redistribution and regulation, and we consider institutional innovations that could promote political equality. Finally, we describe the diverse ways that political scientists produce an impact on the world by sharing and applying their knowledge of the consequences of electoral rules and global trends in reform.

The arbitrariness of supermajority rules

There may be good general grounds for the adoption of supermajoritarian thresholds, but no such general arguments can justify the selection of a specific threshold. Although the benefits of supermajority rules, especially in the context of constitutional-amendment procedures, may outweigh the costs of their ex ante indeterminacy, the technically unjustifiable nature of specific thresholds means that those who are disadvantaged under such rules can be given no rational or reasonable explanation for their defeat other than the de facto power of coordination on a threshold. Political theory has a potential remedy in cases in which good reasons are not available, and in which bad reasons (such as the desire to ensure a veto for a powerful minority) might be brought to bear: randomization. If the benefits of supermajority rules are worth the costs of arbitrariness, we may wish to randomize the choice of threshold, though the move to do so may have its own negative consequences. Il y a de bonnes raisons en faveur de l’adoption des règles de majorité qualifiée, mais aucun argument général ne peut justifier le choix d’un seuil de majorité précis. Les bénéfices attendus des règles de majorité qualifiée sont sans doute supérieurs, notamment pour les procédures de révision constitutionnelles, aux inconvénients de leur indétermination ex ante. Toutefois le caractère injustifiable, sur le plan technique, d’un seuil spécifique de majorité qualifiée signifie, pour ceux qui ensuite s’en trouvent désavantagés, qu’il n’y a aucune explication rationnelle ou raisonnable de leur défaite, si ce n’est le fait que le seuil incriminé a, de facto, bénéficié de la convergence des attentes des constituants. La théorie politique a une solution pour les situations où aucune bonne raison n’est disponible et où les mauvaises raisons (telles que le désir de garantir un droit de veto à une minorité puissante) sont supportables: le tirage au sort. Si les bienfaits des règles de majorité qualifiée sont supérieurs aux coûts du caractère arbitraire de leur fixation, nous pouvons souhaiter la randomisation du choix de leur seuil, même si cette méthode a aussi des conséquences négatives.

Rousseau on Fundamental Law

How can we understand Rousseaus use of entrenched fundamental law? Given that absolute sovereignty is of paramount importance to Rousseau, and given that he rejects the possibility of binding the future, fundamental law might be viewed as a paradoxical restraint on the sovereign. However, through a consideration of their substantive form, and of the procedural mechanisms of enactment and abrogation, these laws are shown to serve an ‘enabling’ purpose. For Rousseau, fundamental law does not constrain the sovereign will, but is constitutive of the sovereign or transforms its operation with respect to morality and justice. Fundamental law should be understood to enhance the capacity of the sovereign; this reading also explains the most familiar limitation that does not take the form of a fundamental law, the double-generality requirement.

Between Science and Engineering: Reflections on the APSA Presidential Task Force on Political Science, Electoral Rules, and Democratic Governance: Designing Electoral Systems: Normative Tradeoffs and Institutional Innovations

Political scientists have contributed to the world of electoral systems as scientists and as engineers . Taking stock of recent scientific research, we show that context modifies the effects of electoral rules on political outcomes in specific and systematic ways. We explore how electoral rules shape the inclusion of women and minorities, the depth and nature of political competition, and patterns of redistribution and regulation, and we consider institutional innovations that could promote political equality. Finally, we describe the diverse ways that political scientists produce an impact on the world by sharing and applying their knowledge of the consequences of electoral rules and global trends in reform.

Book Review: Law’s Abnegation: From Law’s Empire to the Administrative State, by Adrian Vermeule

egalitarian grounds, then citizens need a robust account of how to evaluate the considerable religious politicking that will be an inevitable part of choosing between them. Laborde has thus shown that liberal egalitarianism demands robust criteria for the democratic evaluation of religious politics, criteria that political theorists have yet to clearly supply.4 Liberalism’s Religion is thus a major theoretical accomplishment, one that ought to shape theoretical analysis of religion and politics by liberal egalitarian, democratic, and critical theorists long into the future.

A Discussion of Josiah Ober’s The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece

Ancient Greece has long exercised a powerful hold on the imagination of modern political science. But until fairly recently, this influence has largely been philosophical, related to the origins of many theoretical concepts—including the concept of politics itself—in the ancient world. In The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece , Josiah Ober offers a synoptic and ambitious social theoretical account of the ancient Greek world, the sources of its power, the causes of its decline, and the lessons that can be drawn from this story for contemporary social and political science. We have thus invited a range of political scientists to comment on Ober’s account of classical Greece and its relevance to contemporary political inquiry.

SymposiumGreen’sJeffrey E.The Eyes of the People: Democracy in an Age of Spectatorship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, ISBN 9780195372649, Hardback, 296 pages,

Jeffrey Green’s The Eyes of the People (EOP) outlines a basic distinction between two models of popular power in a democracy. On the one hand, there is what Green calls the vocal model, which has dominated the way popular power has been conceptualized since the rebirth of democracy at the end of the eighteenth century. According to this model, the People is understood as a legislative voice—as a set of preferences waiting to be translated into laws and policies. EOP demonstrates that despite the diversity of approaches to democratic theory, the vocal model has informed virtually all philosophies of democracy. For example, it informs not only democratic idealists of the nineteenth century, like Mill and Tocqueville, but equally contemporary models (like aggregationists and deliberative democrats) who, even if more skeptical about popular self-legislation in any simplistic sense, continue to envision the People as a vocal, decisional force. The problem with the vocal model, Green explains, is twofold: failing to account for the fact that most citizens most of the time are not engaged in political decision making, it is disconnected from reality; second, it is hegemonic because, leading ordinary citizens to exaggerate their political capacity, it blinds them to the distinction between an elite with special decision-making authority and the great many without power. It is not surprising, then, as Green notes, that the very notion of the People has come under pressure in recent years, as numerous scholars of democracy (e.g., pluralists), unwilling to treat the People as a monolithic vocal being, have argued for jettisoning the concept altogether. But rather than abandon the idea of the People, Green develops a competing model of popular power, which he calls the ocular model—or also the plebiscitary model. Within the ocular model, the People—the mass of everyday citizens in their collective capacity—is conceived as a spectating rather than decision-making being: it watches leaders and other elites who appear on the public stage. If the central ideal of the vocal model is autonomy (the People’s self-authorship of the laws), the central ideal of the ocular model is 516414 PTXXXX10.1177/0090591713516414Political Theory research-article2014