Tag: Equality

Equality of Political Participation versus Equality of Political Capabilities: A Fundamental Dilemma at the Heart of Democratic Theory

I’ve written a piece for Isonomia on the tension between the democratic commitment to ensuring all citizens are able to participate in politics and the worry that some citizens are more capable of participating effectively than others. It’s a bit of a history of thought piece, albeit a bit zoomed out. I discuss ancient perspectives, 18th and 19th century liberal views, Marxist critiques, and 20th century attempts to bring these different commitments together. It was a really fun piece to write, and I hope it’s fun to read. There’s no paywall. You can read it here:

https://isonomiaquarterly.com/archive/volume-1-issue-1/the-heart-of-isonomia/

Also, if you haven’t heard, I have a book out. If you want to read it, the best deal is the paperback, available here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-28210-2

My First Book is Out

I’ve written a book! The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way is Shut is now out with Palgrave Macmillan. This book is not an adaptation of my PhD thesis. It’s written in plain language. If you like my blog, you’ll like the book. The paperback is the best deal, and you can find it on Amazon and on Springer’s website:

https://a.co/d/d59Zbkh

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-28210-2

The paperback should retail for no higher than $49.99. It’s never higher than $49.99 on Springer’s website, where they call it the “softcover.”

The argument of the book is provocative. Chapter 1, “The Unsolvable Problem,” argues that the American economic system is gradually subjecting Americans from many classes and backgrounds to enormous amounts of psychological stress. Chapter 2, “False Hope,” argues that none of the existing political movements in the United States are capable of responding to these economic problems. But because professionals in politics and in the media need to stay employed, they find ways to distract us from these problems and their inability to solve them. Despite all of this, Chapter 3–“Chronic Crisis”–argues that Americans remain committed to democracy as a political system. Even when we confront the system’s failures, we do not abandon it. Instead, we look for ways to revitalize it. We get excited about things like electoral reform, campaign finance reform, reforming the justice system, or devolving federal powers to state and local government. But most of the reforms we’re interested in don’t pass, and the ones that do pass do not actually enable us to solve the economic problems. Chapter 4, “Dream Eating Democracy,” examines how, over time, our understandings of liberty, equality, equity, and representation have been watered down, making it harder for us to use these terms to make meaningful critiques. Chapter 5, “No Escape,” argues that as the problem continues to go unresolved and our political discussions become more and more disconnected from it, most Americans sink into political despair. We go looking for other things to care about, and we try to hide from politics in enclaves. But the failures of the political system eventually affect every part of American culture, distorting every activity we get excited about. Chapter 6, “What If This Book is Wrong?” asks whether the book is too negative and explores whether there is any way out of the crisis.

I am really excited to talk about this book. If the argument is right, then the political professionals are failing the American people. It’s a critique that implicates every part of the political class–the left, the right, and the center. I wrote this book because I feel that people who write about politics have a duty to actually help ordinary Americans understand how and why the system fails to respond to them and meet their needs. The book is dedicated to all those who labor so that others may write.

I want to encourage people to get creative and imagine more fundamental ways of confronting our problems. I’m also interested in talking about this stuff. I would love to be convinced by somebody that there’s an easier way out of this mess than I think.

If you want to help me, there are three things you can do:

  1. Buy the paperback!
  2. Ask your library to buy the book.
  3. If you have a platform, invite me on it to talk about the book. I can request reviewer copies for people with some level of media presence. This includes podcasts! If you have a podcast, I’d love to do it.

Tell your friends!

Liberal Hypocrisies and the Alternatives to Them

All social orders are supported by “legitimation stories”. These are the reasons orders give us to support them, or at least to stay out of their way. Legitimation stories don’t have to be true, but they have to be persuasive. The social order has to create a set of conditions that are similar enough to the stories that we mistake what we have for what we were promised. Legitimation stories are chiefly about “good order”. Order is straightforward–social orders promise to protect us from violence, starvation, instability, and precarity. They promise to make us feel secure. “Good” is less obvious, because “good” tends to mean different things to different people in different contexts. Liberal legitimation stories understand “good” in three senses:

  1. A good order is one in which the subjects of the order are “free” or have “liberty” in some relevant sense.
  2. A good order is one in which the subjects of the order are treated as “equal” to one another in some relevant sense.
  3. A good order is one in which the order “represents” the subjects in some relevant way.
  4. A good order is “dynamic”, it is capable of delivering real change.

The trouble is that terms like “free”, “equal”, and “representative” don’t have stable social meanings. Our understandings of these terms can easily slide out of alignment with the understandings we need to have for legitimation stories to work. If we understand “equality” to mean “a fair distribution of resources” but the liberal order wants us to understand “equality” as “everyone gets to have their say”, the order has to convince us that we’ve misunderstood the meaning of equality. It has to get us to think about it in a whole different way. When gaps open up between the conditions the order produces and our expectations, it is often because the order has lost control over how we understand the words it uses to tell its stories. When this happens, the order appears “hypocritical”–it appears to say one thing and do another, to tell stories it has no intention of realising. That’s what today’s post is about–the liberal order’s hypocrisies.

Continue reading “Liberal Hypocrisies and the Alternatives to Them” →

I’m a Political Theorist, and I Hate the “Equality”/”Equity” Chart

Have you seen it? There’s this chart that goes around and around the internet, with three people of different heights attempting to watch a baseball game. I hate it so much, but I suppose I have to show it to you, in case you’re not familiar:

Image result for equality equity Continue reading “I’m a Political Theorist, and I Hate the “Equality”/”Equity” Chart” →

Are We Trying to Make Everyone an Aristocrat or a Peasant?

On the left, we care a lot about equality. But we really, really don’t agree on what that means. Some of us want everyone to be an aristocrat. Some of us want everyone to be a peasant. Some of us want everyone to be a worker. Some of us want everyone to be middle class. Some of us want everyone to spend some time doing all of these things. We don’t talk about this difference very much, but it seems kind of important, because these proposals are not at all the same thing.

Continue reading “Are We Trying to Make Everyone an Aristocrat or a Peasant?” →