¹ After I had submitted the original version of this article to the British Journal of Political Science I learnt of the forthcoming publication of Goodin's, Robert E., Manipulatory Politics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980).Google Scholar The author kindly lent me a typescript copy of the book, but, because of the wide range of problems he examines compared with the narrower focus presented here, I decided not to rewrite the article to point out where our arguments are similar or different. Needless to say, Goodin's book represents a major step towards the development of a proper concern in political science for ‘hidden’ aspects of politics. In this context the work of Benjamin I. Page on the politics of ambiguity is also of importance; see Choices and Echoes in Presidential Elections (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).Google Scholar

² For example, see the report of a case in the International Herald Tribune, 26–7 03, 1977.Google Scholar

³ A sumary of research into the ‘counter’ and ‘corrective’ advertising policies of the US Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission is contained in Wilkie, William L., ‘Research on Counter and Corrective Advertising’, in Divita, S. F., ed. Advertising and the Public Interest (Chicago: American Marketing Association, 1974).Google Scholar

⁴ For a brief discussion of the history of the argument that parents own their children see Becker, Lawrence C., Property Rights (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), pp. 37–9.Google Scholar

⁵ As will become clearer later, we may approve of the results of manipulation, and may believe that these justify a particular process in which a person remains unaware of how others have directly affected the way he chooses. Indeed, the person himself may want this to happen. However, this does not mean that approval is thereby extended to cover the process. We always evaluate a process negatively when a person is prevented from acting as a self-determining agent.

⁶ On the concept of indoctrination see, for example, the essays in Snook, I. A., ed., Concepts of Indoctrination (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972).Google Scholar

⁷ It is redundant because both the following instances then count as conflict of interest, thereby making the concept the same as either ‘conflict of opinions’ or ‘conflicting choices’, thus depriving it of its content: (1) B wants the results of x but, through ignorance of means-ends relations, does not want the policies (x) to realize it, and (2) B wants the results of x and wants x, but in specific circumstances feels unable to implement x, when in both cases A wants x. Whatever the disagreements amongst contemporary ‘liberals’ and ‘radicals’ over the nature of interests, there is now a widespread consensus that wants and interests are not the same.

⁸ Plamenatz, J. P., Consent, Freedom and Political Obligation, 2nd edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 15–16.Google Scholar

⁹ In the United States the ‘long ballot’, introduced in the Jacksonian era, was criticized by Progressives because, in making so many offices elective, it allegedly extended party graft. It was argued that voters did not know anything about candidates for minor offices, and would vote a straight-ticket at all levels of office more readily than they would have done with a ‘short ballot’. This was a source of patronage for party bosses who selected the party's nominees.

¹⁰ However, Hobbes does allow that in the case of ‘naturall limorousnesse’, including those ‘men of feminine courage’, there is no absolute duty to serve as a soldier against the Sovereign's enemy. Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, Everyman edn (London: J. M. Dent, 1914), p. 115.Google Scholar

¹¹ As Peter Gardner has pointed out to me, my notion of education is similar to one outlined by Peters, R. S., Ethics and Education (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966), Chap. I.Google Scholar

¹² On the issue of children's rights see Haydon, Graham, ‘Political Theory and the Child: Problems of the Individualist Tradition’, Political Studies, XXVII (1979), 405–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar (especially p. 416). I am grateful to an anonymous referee for pointing out some of the problems of my original argument in respect of children.

¹³ A recent analysis of manipulation, and its relation to power, follows the tradition of David Easton and others in identifying manipulation in terms of the power holder concealing his intent from the power subject: see Wrong, Dennis, Power (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979), pp. 28–32.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Connolly, William E., The Terms of Political Discourse (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1974), Chap. 3.Google Scholar The analysis of responsibility presented here is partly derived from an as yet unpublished critique of Connolly's analysis of power and responsibility by Reeve, Andy, ‘Power without Responsibility’.Google Scholar

¹⁵ In this paper reference is made to the ‘spread’ of responsibility in cases of manipulation as well as to its ‘transference’. In assigning responsibility we do not always proceed as a court does in assigning damages – that is assess the total amount of the damage done and then assign proportions of this sum amongst the parties involved depending on their responsibility for what happened. In cases involving the assignment of moral responsibility, we may wish to say that A was more blameworthy than in some parallel case without this affecting the extent to which we blame B. That is, the cases are not always ‘zero-sum’ in character.

¹⁶ The distinction between liberal and populist theories of democracy is introduced in Ware, Alan, The Logic of Party Democracy (London: Macmillan, 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar By a ‘liberal’ is meant one who would accept that the object of government in a democracy is to promote citizens' interests, where these interests are conceived as being related to, but not identical with, the citizens' wants.

¹⁷ This would seem compatible with the three criteria for freedom as autonomy established by Benn, S. I. and Weinstein, W. L., ‘Being Free to Act and Being a Free Man’, Mind, LXXX (1971), 210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ Lukes, Steven, Power (London: Macmillan, 1974).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Bachrach, Peter and Baratz, Morton S., Power and Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 27–8.Google Scholar

²⁰ Lukes, , Power, pp. 31–2.Google Scholar

²¹ It is important to recognize that to speak of cases where ‘B allows himself to be manipulated’ is not to refer to what might be called cases of ‘moral blackmail’. Particularly with parent-child relationships, it is sometimes said: ‘I knew what little B was trying to get me to do, but I couldn't really do anything else; he really knows how to manipulate both his parents’. The point about this is that it is not an example of manipulation; by claiming that it is, the parent is seeking to justify an action that he did not want to do, or should not, have done. But the parent cannot reduce his responsibility for what happened by claiming he was manipulated, if he understood what the cunning child was doing. The parent may have been ‘blackmailed’ by his offspring, but it is simply misleading to say he was manipulated.

²² Steiner, Hillel, ‘Individual Liberty’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LXXV (1974–1975), 38–9.Google Scholar For an alternative view to Steiner's see Day, J. P., ‘Threats, Offers, Law, Opinion and Liberty’, American Philosophical Quarterly, XIV (1977), 257–72.Google Scholar

²³ An attempt to distinguish sanctions and inducements, within the context of the analysis of power, is contained in Wagner, R. Harrison, ‘The Concept of Power and the Study of Polities’, in Bell, Roderick, Edwards, David V. and Wagner, R. Harrison, eds., Political Power (New York: Free Press, 1969), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar The first explicitly exchange theory of power was developed in Blau, Peter M., Exchange and Power in Social Life (New York: Wiley, 1964).Google Scholar A critique of this theory is contained in Heath, Anthony, Rational Choice and Social Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).Google Scholar