Domination and democratic legislation

Politics, Philosophy and Economics 21 (2):97-121 (2022)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 97-121, May 2022. Republicans hold that people are unfree if they are dominated, that is, if others have an insufficiently constrained ability to frustrate their choices. Since legislation can frustrate individuals’ choices, republicans believe that the design of legislative institutions has consequences for individual freedom. Some have argued that if legislative institutions are democratic, then they need not be sources of domination at all. We argue this view is incorrect: the introduction of legislative authority, even if democratically organized, always creates a new site of domination. However, republicans can defend democratic procedures as the best means of minimizing the degree to which citizens are dominated, subject to the constraint of equalizing everyone’s freedom. We formulate and prove this claim within a simple model of legislative authority and domination.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 98,098

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-02-02

Downloads
38 (#473,266)

6 months
12 (#235,758)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Sean Ingham
University of California, San Diego

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Group agency: the possibility, design, and status of corporate agents.Christian List & Philip Pettit - 2011 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Philip Pettit.
Republicanism: a theory of freedom and government.Philip Pettit (ed.) - 1997 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Null. Null - 2016 - Philosophy Study 6 (9).
Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government.Philip Pettit - 1999 - Philosophical Quarterly 49 (196):415-419.

View all 20 references / Add more references