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Voting and Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Thomas Christiano
Thomas Christiano*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ85721, USA
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Extract

Analysis of the nature of voting is fundamental to an understanding of the nature and value of democracy. Three questions ought to be distinguished concerning voting. First, how are we to conceive of the activity of voting? What is its nature? Second, what is it that people aim at when they vote? What are the grounds on which people vote, the reasons with which they justify their vote? And third, what ought people to aim at when they vote? What are the relevant grounds for voting in one way or another? These last are explicitly normative questions. At times individuals vote on the basis of concerns which are not appropriate to the issues involved. The first question is not a question of psychology or of value; it is a metaphysical question. What is the nature of voting? How is it possible to count votes? Two answers are widely given in the literature. The first is that voting consists in the expression of preference. On this kind of view, either a vote is a preference or it is a fairly direct and unambiguous expression of the preference of the voter.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 395 - 414
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1995

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References

1 For more direct arguments for an egalitarian conception of democracy see Christiano, Thomas ‘Social Choice and Democracy,’ in Copp, David Hampton, Jean and Roemer, John eds., The Idea of Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993) 173-95.Google Scholar

2 Coleman, Jules and Ferejohn, John ‘Democracy and Social Choice,’ Ethics (1986) 5–26, esp. p. 7Google Scholar; Barry, Brian ‘Is Democracy Special?’ in Fishkin, James and Laslett, Peter eds., Philosophy: Politics and Society Fifth Series (New Haven: Yale University Press 1979), 157Google Scholar

3 See Estlund, David ‘Democracy without Preference,’ Philosophical Review (1990), 411.Google Scholar

4 See Christiano, Thomas ‘Political Equality,’ in Chapman, John and Wertheimer, Alan eds., Majorities and Minorities: NOMOS XXXII Yearbook of The American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (New York: New York University Press 1990)Google Scholar and David Estlund, ‘Democracy without Preferences,’ for some arguments along these lines.

5 See Popkin, Samuel The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1990), 44Google Scholar, for evidence of this kind of strategic voting in presidential primaries in the US.

6 See Gibbard, Allan ‘Manipulation of Voting Schemes: A General Result,’ in Barry, Brian and Hardin, Russell eds., Rational Man in Irrational Society? (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications 1982)Google Scholar for a proof of a theorem which states the point more precisely.

7 See Estlund as well as Cohen, Joshua ‘An Epistemic Conception of Democracy,’ Ethics (1986) 27–40Google Scholar for another description of this view.

8 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques The Social Contract and Discourses. Cole, G.D.H. trans. Brumfit, J.H. and Hall, John C. rev. (London: J. M. Dent & Sons 1973), 250Google Scholar

9 See Horowitz, Donald A Democratic South Africa? (Cape Town: Oxford University Press 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a discussion of conflicts of opinion as well as conflicts over the nature of the conflicts.

10 For this distinction see Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words (London: Oxford University Press 1962).Google Scholar

11 A worry suggested to me in discussion by Roy Sorensen.

12 See Popkin, Ch. 7 for examples of this.

13 I criticize the Rousseauist conception of democracy in my ‘Freedom, Consensus and Equality in Collective Decision Making,’ Ethics (1990) 151-81, and I argue against the aggregative view in ‘Social Choice and Democracy.’

14 Allen Buchanan, Bernard Gert, Julian Lamont, Roy Sorensen, and J. K. Swindler as well as two referees and an editor of this review provided helpful comments on a earlier draft of this paper. This paper was written with the support of an NEH Summer Stipend as well as of the Philosophy Department of the University of Arizona.