I think that this is a great public forum topic: it relates to a current event that will educate students on some of the nuanc
PARTICULAR POLICIES AND DECISIONS RATHER THAN ENSURE THAT EVERYONE
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Lesson 4.2 Day 3
| PARTICULAR POLICIES AND DECISIONS RATHER THAN ENSURE THAT EVERYONE PARTICIPATES EQUALLY. Ben Saunders – 2010 University of Oxford. Increasing Turnout A Compelling Case Politics. Vol. 30(1), 70-77. Moreover, it has recently been argued not only that equality may not be necessary to democracy (Estlund, 2008; see Saunders, forthcoming, but that there may even be democratic reasons for unequal voting (Brighouse and Fleurbaey, forthcoming Heyd and Segal, 2006). Suppose we accept the principle that all affected interests ought to have a say in decision-making (Goodin, 2007). It is puzzling why those who are unequally affected by a decision ought nonetheless to have equal votes. Instead, it seems that fairness requires those who have more at stake to receive a greater say in the decision, and one way to grant them this is to give them more votes or more weighty votes. There are, of course, various ways that this could be done – for instance we could give all individuals the same number of votes to divide as they wished across a number of issues to be decided simultaneously, thus in effect allowing individual voters to engage in intra- personal logrolling, by giving up their vote on one issue in exchange fora greater say on another. Few, if any, democracies use such formal weighted voting mechanisms. The freedom to vote, or not vote, however, may have just this effect. Lijphart is right to suggest that differential voting rates are, in effect, like weighted voting, but wrong to assume that this is necessarily a problem – it may in fact be a merit of voting systems that allow individual choice. Since voting carries some, albeit moderate, cost, we may assume that individuals are less likely to vote unless they have good reason to do so. Those who bother going to the polls are likely to have some cause, whether self-interested or otherwise, that makes it worth the cost to them of voting. While it is probably true that all members of the polity are somewhat affected by its decisions, if only because they bear collective responsibility for them, it is plain that some are more affected than others. Many of those who abstain do so, either out of apathy or principled deference, because the issues involved do not concern them greatly. Of course, it might be that this is shortsighted on their part, if they simply do not recognise that their interests are affected. It is unclear, however, whether forced participation will lead them to engage with the issues or whether they will be able adequately to protect their interests via the vote without a proper understanding of how decisions affect them. If these people were forced – or incentivised – to vote, there is a danger that they would do so randomly, potentially distorting electoral outcomes (Jakee and Sun, 2006, pp. 67 –69). The costs of voting make probable that those who really have significant interests at stake are more likely to vote, and thus that they have more influence on decisions that affect them In effect, this is to restate the familiar pluralist solution to the problem of intense minorities. Robert Dahl suggests that those who feel strongly about a given issue can have greater influence on outcomes through means such as persuasion and protest, affecting how others vote (Dahl, 1956, pp. 134 –135). Because this extra influence is mediated through the need to convince fellow citizens, it is compatible with formal equality. It maybe objected that not all groups are equally easily mobilised or able to explain their position to others, which is a problem if we rely on them persuading others to take their interests into account when voting (Rehfeld, 2005, pp. 233 –234). However, we can assume that those who are more affected by a given decision are more likely to vote on it, ceteris paribus. A low turnout from those who are not greatly affected by a given decision thus increases the likelihood that the decision is actually made by the relevant constituency Download 2 Mb. Share with your friends:
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