Liberalism and Democracy Revisited

Journal ofApplied Philosophy, Vo1.12, No. 3, 1995

DISCUSSION ARTICLE

Liberalism and Democracy Revisited

DUDLEY KNOWLES

ABSTRACT I n JAP 9 ( I 992) Gordon Graham argued that liberals cannot be counted on to support democratic institutions since there are no conceptual or strongly contingent links between democracy and liberal ideals. This paper responds to Graham’s challenge by claiming that his model of liberal aristocracy is not liberal in several respects. I n particular, the liberal should recognise a right to democratic participation which individuals may plausibly claim as an element in a respectable conception of how to live well. The right to democratic participation is shown to stand alongside other important liberal ideals which may be justified in this fashion, e.g. freedom of religious worship and freedom of association. Furthermore, I argue against those who claim that political participation enacts delusory aspirations that the rights which are promoted and protected within a democratic constitution are necessary for both individual and collective autonomy - and so the liberal should defend them.

Liberal attempts to show that democracy is a good thing all fail. Those who seek to support democratic institutions by claiming a strongly contingent or conceptual connection between democracy and liberal ideals are misguided. So says Gordon Graham [l]. This is provocative stuff and I wish to rise to the bait. It suggests that Graham has reviewed all previous attempts to establish such connections and believes that the prospect of new and successful arguments is unlikely. His conclusion is not that anarchy or aristocracy (or any other candidate from the standard classification of constitutional arrangements) is better. More modestly, he claims that pragmatics - which I take to be a sort of political situation ethics leavened with an historical account of both the institutions we endorse and our perspicacity in selecting them - rather than principle, should guide our practice and judgement. I trust pragmatics would guide us in a democratic direction.

Still, we should look for principle if it can be found. Democracy has plenty of supporters nowadays (and even J. S. Mill believed that at the level of ideas the battle for democracy had been won [2 ] ) . It would be better, though, if non-democratic liberals could be got to champion the cause of democracy. We democrats should not conclude too hastily that there are no reasons of principle to persuade the liberal to climb aboard. In this paper, 1 shall try to find them.

Liberalism

Political argument would be easier if we had available a simple and uncontentious version of

0 Society for Applied Philosophy, 1995, Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxlord, OX4 IJF, UK and 3 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.

284 D. Knowles

the principle of liberty. Principles of liberty vary in their foundations (natural right, utility, Kantian autonomy, are all candidates) and in their prescriptions. For the most part, Graham believes these are issues which we can avoid ‘if what concerns us is the relationship of liberalism, in whatever way we understand it, to other political conceptions’ (p. lSO), notably democracy.

I have my doubts and so will spell out, but not defend in detail, the conception of liberalism I will employ. One implication that I will attempt to draw out of this sketch of the liberal position is that the aristocracy Graham describes, wherein ‘laws protect the rights and interests of the individual citizen in whatever way our particular brand of liberalism commends’ (p. 150) is a kind of contradiction. There are some rights and interests, notably rights of political participation, which an aristocracy, however liberal otherwise, cannot deny and yet be liberal overall.

I believe we are free to the extent that no human contrivance or omission hinders our pursuit of goals conducive to the good life. Along with Locke and the positive liberty tradition, I distinguish liberty and license but I have a catholic view of what the good life might consist in when fully specified by different individuals. Some such ways of life (deeply religious ones, for example) I find very puzzling. In others (the obsessive pursuit of health, physical fitness or sporting excellence) I see individuals doing themselves great harm. All this is intelligible so long as one recognises human well-being as an umbrella-concept sheltering a variety of legitimate and often incompatible aspirations rather than serving as the prescription of an optimal balance or harmony.

It follows from this view of the liberty value that two strategies are available for one who would defend it. These are not exclusive of each other. In the first place, one who values freedom of speech for example will seek to convince us of the value of public speech - of the place, to mix Mill and Hobbes, of thought and discussion in the conversation of mankind. Thus one justifies particular freedoms as instrumental, indeed necessary, to the achieve- ment of specified goods.

Secondly, against a background of respectful, if sometimes sceptical acknowledgement of a plurality of conceptions of how to live well, one may grant liberty an intrinsic value grounded in autonomy. This value is difficult to spell out but I think of it as encapsulated in the following thought. We aW carry with us the shades of blessings and burdens other than those we presently enjoy and suffer, a sense of other lives foregone, of turnings irrevocably taken, of choice and the paradoxical avoidance of choice as the source of happiness and regret. If, in the midst of this baggage and lumber, one can say of life that ‘it’s a poor thing- but mine own’, one recognises the worth of autonomy.

I want to argue, against Gordon Graham that a liberal, of each of these stripes and both, should find democracy attractive. Indeed, in the particular case of democracy, these approaches work very closely together.

Democracy

First I would like to make some concessions to Graham so that the points of dispute can be more effectively focused. Although I am temperamentally sympathetic to the idea of direct democracy and impressed by some of Rousseau’s (and more recently, Benjamin Barber’s [3]) claims on its behalf, I shall confine my attention to representative institutions. Moreover I shall not require strict universal suffrage. Universal, sane, competent adult

Q Society for Applied Philosophy, 1995

Liberalism and Democracy Revisited 285

suffrage will do for me, so long as the burden of proof is laid on the back of those who would impose restrictions. It’s hard to decide whether this burden is onerous or easy. It should be onerous since the end result - the exclusion of those who would otherwise have a right granted to all - is a serious business. Yet in practice the matter seems straightforward and standard exclusions look philosophically well-motivated. Peers (in the U.K.) have their own source of political potency which they can renounce in favour of the vote. Why should not the punishment of criminals require the forfeiture of their right to vote as it requires the violation of other of their liberties? Whatever level of insanity leads us to judge agents not to be responsible for their action should equally disqualify their voting powers. And some age should be settled on as fitting for minors to assume full voting status.

As a package these exclusions may suggest ad hoccely, their being grounded in common sense and elementary ethics, but all tests of competence beyond the application of such rough and ready guidelines are unnecessary since no party or programme has a monopoly of fools or ignoramuses and we can expect these to ‘cancel each other out’ on both sides of any question, much as Rousseau assumed [4].

As to the second mark of democratic decision procedures - majority voting - again I would concede ground in the face of Graham’s (and de Tocqueville’s and J. S. Mill’s) strictures. Of course a majority can make mistakes; it gets matters wrong, erring in a striking and significant fashion when the majority solidifies, for reasons of ethnicity, religion or whatever into a permanent or fixed majority and limits the legitimate liberties of identifiable minorities. When these sociological conditions are absent, one can fairly assume that most individuals are in a majority most of the time despite the technical possibility of failure [ 5 ] . For the purposes of this paper, we can agree on the limitation of majority rights by the imposition of entrenched constitutional clauses, say a Bill of Rights.

So now when we explore the relation between the principles of liberty and democracy we have as clear a picture of the democratic institutions that we have in mind as we need. They will be representative in form with near universal suffrage and limitations on majority rights.

Aristocracy and Democracy

None of this inclines me to agree with Graham that ‘democracy and its rival, aristocracy cannot be so far apart after all’ (p. 153). In the liberal aristocracy ‘everyone is appointed to office by existing office bearers, on the basis of their perceived fitness for government’ (p. 150). In democracy some are excluded as unfit on grounds such as criminality or incompetence. On this basis, Graham concludes that in some circumstances principles which select for fitness and principles which select against unfitness ‘would give us identical distributions of power’ (p. 153).

This is a neat result - but unconvincing. Graham is severely realistic in his survey of democratic vices but quite opaque in his characterisation of aristocracy. I would like to know a bit more about it. What principles do the existing office-holders employ to adjudicate perceived fitness to govern? This imaginary country is ‘one ruled by the best’ but we must ask: the ‘best’ in respect of which qualities or achievements [6]? History reveals no shortage of rotten answers to this question. Males, Anglo-Saxons or Aryans, Christians, members of ‘old’ families, holders of property: these are the sorts of quality which have distinguished the best amongst aristocratic regimes, and as grounds for selection they are

0 Society for Applied Philosophy, 1995

286 D. Knowles

either sinister or silly. The only serious answer is Plato’s; those are fit to rule who have a deep philosophical knowledge of what is good and the motivation to pursue it. Modesty should prevent any self-respecting philosopher from taking this proposal further.

You will object that I’m being quite unfair to Graham in pressing these questions since he isn’t advocating aristocracy. -<is purpose is merely to enquire whether the liberal qua liberal has any objection to aristocracy so long as constitutional protections are in place. And this is a legitimate philosophical enquiry. Graham’s answer, though, goes further than his model permits. He tells us that since the democrat has ‘to recognise competence as a criterion for power-sharing’ he has abandoned the moral ideal upon which the appeal of universal suffrage rests, ‘that whatever their merits, those who are subject to the power of the state have a right to a say in its governance.’ Hence it follows that ‘in this respect at least, liberal democracy enjoys no moral superiority over . . . liberal aristocracy . . .’ (p. 153).

Not in my view. The liberal democratic position is superior and this because its moral ideal is not abandoned through its admitting of qualification. It is still in use to justify the suffrage of those who possess it, although it is outweighed for good reasons, publicly acknowledged, where exclusions are appropriate.

What I am denying is that tests for competence and incompetence are symmetrical in their moral implications. That outcomes are isomorphic in their distribution of power does not show that the routes to distributional isomorphism have the same moral pedigree. An ‘- ocracy’ of the red-haired might coniprise just those individuals who under qualified universal suffrage would not be excluded as incompetent. But whereas the democratic distribution is grounded in a moral ideal (perhaps the one Graham mentions: ‘those who are subject to the power of the state have a right to a say in its governance’ (p. 153)) qualified by other explicit moral principles, the red-haired rulers have nothing to say for themselves.

This is why it is legitimate to demand the criteria of competence which the aristocratic office-holders employ. Furthermore, to address the point about symmetry, when questions of liberty are raised, tests for competence and incompetence should be sharply differ- entiated. Suppose it is legitimate to forcibly incarcerate those whom doctors judge on grounds of insanity to be a severe danger to themselves and others. It would be quite misleading to represent all those who freely walk the streets as having passed that test of competence which those judged insane have failed. It would be misleading because in such cases the liberal takes it that a presumption in favour of walking the streets, speaking up, associating with like-minded members of one’s community has been established. Such presumptions, grounded in the ways I sketched earlier, are defeasible. For the liberal it is not so much competence but liberty which is attributed to agents and the liberal will be alert when attempts to disqualify agents by the use of competency tests are proposed. This suggests to me that Graham’s attempt to equate liberal aristocracy in point of liberty must fail. However much freedom of speech, of religious observance, of association, of occupational opportunity is realistically protected within the liberal aristocracy, so long as freedom to participate in democratic decision procedures is deemed to be in the gift of examiners, liberal aristocracy is not liberal enough.

Liberty and Participation

I am supposing that we speak of freedom when we advocate opportunities for democratic participation. Why not? The answer seems to be that a significant tradition of political



thinkers has denied it, beginning with Constant’s report of confusion in Rousseau’s identificarion of the liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the moderns and re-emphasised in recent times with Berlin’s distinction of the questions of ‘How much am I governed?’ and ‘By whom am I governed?’ [7]

This ground is well-trodden over so I shall restrict myself to a couple of points which, though unoriginal, have been insufficiently well recognised. The first point is a reminder to the liberal that although it is often a test of liberal sentiments that activities of which one disapproves be tolerated, a strong case for freedom has often been mounted on the grounds that the activity to be protected has some independent value. The locus classicus of this defence - and remember it is argued to be exemplary- is J. S. Mill’s chapter in On Liberty on freedom of thought and discussion. True opinions promote utility as science benefits mankind. False opinions revivify true ones which are identified as defensible. Most opinions contain something of the truth which challenge and defence elicit. Fundamentally we need freedom of thought and discussion so that lively truths may become the vehicle of progress construed as utility. Knowledge is valuable so we demand the freedom to pursue it.

Some citizens find that religious observance is necessary if they are to live well. They demand the freedom to get on with it and there are many good reasons why these demands should be met. Some citizens value a life of artistic challenge, of making or listening to music, of painting or of visiting galleries. Again the liberal says ‘Let them get on with it.’ Most of the fortunate citizens of western democracies can describe their lives as a pattern of activities which they may or may not care to justify which engage their interest to degrees from the lukewarm to the compelling.

We should not forget that political activity is one of these. Think of Helen, the political activist. She is a paid-up member of her local party and goes to meetings dutifully. She proposes motions for her party conference and persuades her comrades to support them. She works (as someone must work) at election times, knocking on doors and stuffing envelopes. She corresponds with politicians about her particular causes - being especially concerned with the rights of travelling people - and is considered something of a nuisance by one government minister who answers her letters, his civil servants who draft them and her Member of Parliament whom she presses to ask questions on her behalf. And, of course, at elections she votes.

I’ve dwelt on the detail in order to show how political activity can comprise a central part of the well-being of intelligent citizens. I don’t pretend to have described the life of the average citizen and don’t attempt to justify such a life. As with religion, as with art, as with the pursuit of knowledge, people won’t stop wanting to live this way. If Helen was pressed hard, no doubt she could justify the place of politics in her life and even those who don’t share her aspirations and don’t fully understand the importance she attaches to it can endorse the institutional structure which permits and protects it.

To the non-participant there is always something puzzling (and engaging) in another’s enthusiasms. (A confession: with nothing to do at railway stations, I’ve had great pleasure eavesdropping on the conversations of groups of train-spotters. I suppose I’m a train- spotter-spotter!) The greater the intensity with which an activity is pursued, the deeper the human puzzle confronting observers.

The special value of representative democracy is that it affords the opportunity for a wide range of political activity by those with a strong concern to contribute to the political ordering of their community. At one extreme one finds the professional politician, at the other the occasional voter. Each finds a place for political activity in their lives more or less


288 D. Knowles

stringent in its demands. Brian Barry reports the frequent conclusion of political scientists, endorsed by Gordon Graham, that

Those ordinary people who say in response to the surveys asked by political scientists that they personally could do things to change a national or even a local political decision which they disapprove of are not so much fine unalienated examples of the democratic citizen as - if they mean it - sufferers from delusions of grandeur on a massive scale [%I.

This is not obviously true. Those ordinary people ‘could’ exercise such power in the clear sense in which I could own a Rolls Royce. Much depends upon just how important it is to me that I succeed, how much time, energy and money I wish to invest in my project. The woman who climbs Everest, the fellow who ticks off four hundred birds on the British List, the politician who achieves a significant reform; they will be lucky and able - but most of all they will be just more determined than the rest of us to accomplish something really hard. The liberal says: let us all have the opportunity to get on with these things, if that’s what we want to do. Contrast this approach with that of the aristocrat who conducts tests and issues permits, selecting, so he thinks, the best.

The strongest objection I can envisage to this defence of more or less strenuous political activism would characterise the activities described as positively pernicious. One can think of parallels. Plato’s condemnation of the work of the artist in Book X of the Republic and Marx’s blanket disparagement of the religious life can be employed in philosophical and practical assaults on aesthetic and religious freedoms. The artist peddles false opinions, the religious support and sustain false consciousness. If the liberal endorsed such claims she would be half-way to accepting the legitimacy of coercively proscribing these ways of life - half-way only, because she may still find them regrettable but tolerable. Furthermore, just as real art can be produced in the service of evil and strong religious belief be the cause of severe persecution, political activism at the Finland Station or in Munich beer-cellars can create unspeakable death and destruction. Examples of this sort must trouble the strongest liberal stomach.

In response, the liberal must challenge these arguments in turn. Against the first she can properly sit back and wait until arguments of the strength and scope of those adduced by Plato and Marx, targetted against all political activity, are produced. I don’t see one in the offing. Against the second claim I think the liberals should retreat and regroup, but the tactic is promising. What is being challenged here is the practice of democratic political activity, represented in the mid-range by Helen and at the extremes by the active professional representative and the occasional voter. The liberal and the democrat together must draw some difficult line between acceptable and unacceptable political activity. In the same cause some genuine art may legitimately be censored and some religious practices forbidden. None of these considerations impugns the thought that some members of the community find in political work an element of what it is for their lives to go well. Just as one can have religion without human sacrifice and some art for adults only, so one can have a liberal democratic politics which disallows racist campaigns.

An active political life I find admirable in others. Some, to repeat, may find it deeply puzzling that others have the enthusiasm and energy for its engagement. (To these I commend Bernard Crick’s In Defence of Politics [9]) But until such activities are shown to be really harmful the liberal is committed to endorsing their pursuit.

The weakest version of this objection points not to the iniquity of the activities of Helen



and her fellows but to their incompetence. Energy and enthusiasm are no substitute for efficiency, and persistent inefficiency, a history of getting things wrong, gives one good reason to curtail or prevent their exercise of democratic powers. This argument is shadowed by Graham’s thought-experiment of government by the ‘best’; it echoes Plato’s enthusiasm for wise rulers and more recent calls for businessmen in government. It is perhaps exemplified by some of the contemporary constitutional despotisms of the Pacific Rim where a sustained increase in the Gross National Product is thought to vindicate the restriction of democratic powers to periodical endorsements of the status quo.

But again, I think, the liberal should come to the aid of democracy. Citizens may accept that the job they are doing is imperfect but still resist the thought that others should be doing it for them. Sceptics will doubt the claims of putative experts but even those who modestly accept their own imperfections may not believe these give good grounds for accepting the rule of others. Chesterton claimed that the government of oneself was one of those things, like writing love letters, that one should do for oneself, even if one does it badly. Liberals should recognise the ancestry of this nice analogy in J. S. Mill’s arguments against paternalism [lo]. Legislative bungling which may be corrected in the light of experience by a now wiser electorate should be a primary object of toleration.

Autonomy and democracy

Let me strengthen this conclusion with a final argument. The liberal cannot be fully satisfied when citizens are not prevented from living lives they believe to be worthwhile for this is compatible with those citizens being constrained to live in those ways. A related, but not quite the same, point concerns the liberal commitment to a measure of toleration - a practice best understood as a limited endorsement of activities that are believed to be wrong or damaging in some way. I don’t want to explore these elements of liberalism in detail here. I mention them because such considerations are thought to reveal the role of a principle of autonomy in liberal thought. Autonomy is exercised in fully informed rational choice, it may be said. And this chance of choice is denied when agents are constrained to do worthwhile things or penalised for not doing them. In a similar, but not the same fashion, a richer sense of autonomy requires that agents be able to make mistakes, to explore ways of life that turn out to be fruitless or even harmful to themselves. Our autonomy would be denied on these accounts if we were forced to vote or eat green vegetables in the first sort of case and prevented from smoking cigarettes in the other.

As mentioned earlier, I find autonomy a difficult, slippery ideal and gave an idiosyncratic account of the nub of it [ 111. If I ask now: Does the value of autonomy that prescribes liberal institutions also require democratic decision procedures? I hope my answer will illuminate the notion of autonomy as much as present the liberal case for democracy.

Graham makes easy work of arguments purporting to link these concepts. Considerations of autonomy succeed ‘in establishing a connection between liberalism and democracy only if we remain unclear about the nature of political power’ (p. 158) and since political power may be exercised by those who court, lobby and flatter the self-appointed aristocrats, democracy is not unique in the opportunities it provides. I suppose this is true - but don’t cancel your subscriptions to Amnesty International on the strength of it. The aristocracy which guarantees rights of participation which go beyond rights of audience is a democracy in wolfs clothing. The aristocracy which denies such rights (how? by jailing those who seek


290 D. Knowles

to effect political change?) is not liberal. To ascribe some reality of political power to those with the opportunity of constructive martyrdom (‘a causal role’) would be sickening.

Having disclosed the quality of political power enjoyed by aristocratic subjects, Graham tells us that democratic citizens, possessed of a vote, can make no such claims - or, if they do, they show themselves to be ‘sufferers from delusions of grandeur on a massive scale’, quoting Barry (above). I think I have already said enough to show that Barry and Graham - wise about the nature of political power - misunderstand the nature of political activity in a representative democracy. Rousseau’s quest for the conditions of equal political potency is hopeless. What the democrat subscribes to is equality of opportunity in its exercise, together with appropriate safeguards (secret ballots, limited duration of assemblies etc . . .) [ 121.

Further, Graham feels able to challenge the central premise of the argument from autonomy through liberty to democracy - ‘that respect for the autonomy of the individual requires us to acknowledge his or her right to a part in political decision-making’ (p. 158). The crucial claim is that democratic decisions can harm the interests of individual citizens. Stable majorities can render minorities powerless by tabling their own agendas for decision and deciding every question in terms of their independently formed preferences. ‘It is precisely concern with the rights of individuals to determine their own affairs that can lead to doubts about conceding everyone a right to participate in political decision-making’ (p. 159).

I have already conceded that unconstrained democracy has identifiable weaknesses but the problem identified here is not that everyone is conceded the vote (as though this is an over-generous concession - and by whom?) but that some of those who possess it are prepared to use it to infringe rights and indeed autonomy. The problem cannot be solved by restricting the franchise to those concerned with the protection of liberal rights. This thought, together with the observation that it has only ever been representative democracies that have attempted the constitutional protection of rights (as contrasted with the spasmodic indulgence of the benevolent tyrant or the window-dressing double-speak of seekers of trade and aid) suggests that the liberal democrat can bracket off the problem.

Thus far I have been examining political activity as an individual project made possible by democratic institutions and autonomy as an individual aspiration underpinning liberal democracy. This presents an unbalanced picture which I hope to correct by a few concluding remarks.

There are some projects which individuals may cherish as central to their well-being which make no sense unless seen in the context of common endeavour. Much religious worship is of this kind, expressed not merely in solitary prayer and good works but pursued as a church amongst an (often structured) community of fellow believers. One of the lessons of Hegel’s description of civil society concerns ‘the mediation of the particular by the universal’ - the phenomenon of individuals driven by private interests who coalesce into groups, all the better to pursue these interests; which groups then take on a life of their own, transcending the individualism which motivated their foundation [ 131. Thus prudent individuals may join a trades union and find subsequently that some instinct for solidarity has been drawn out from them, along with the subscription.

A democracy can function in both of these ways. Either political activity can be seen from the start as a joint endeavour or a sense of common purpose can emerge as individual projects become aufgehoben in the political practices of a community. This is not a dialectic I can explore here; I take it that I am describing what are often the facts of the matter.


Liberalism and Democracy Revisited 29 1

Notice, though, how these facts open up another liberal commitment to democratic institutions. Even the minimum political activity integral to a democracy - the recording of a vote - is now seen as an opportunity to act in concert with others. What might initially be viewed as the registering of a preference can come to express the meaning of a joint commitment [14] - a commitment which is deeper the more of one’s fellows endorse it. Of course, if one’s focus is on personal power, the less that power will be the greater the number of a community who choose to exercise it. As Rousseau noticed, the smaller the fraction of the aggregate of votes one’s own vote represents, the less power one exercises [15]. Other things being equal, this counts as an argument for small democracies. But other things are never equal - the size of the political community must be taken as given for its citizens.

But what is a problem if democracy is seen primarily as a mechanism for co-ordinating the activities of individual power-seekers becomes no problem at all if democracy is understood as the opportunity for joint decisions in matters of common concern. ‘I will if you will, so will I’ is a better characterisation of democratic motivation than ‘I want’. Suppose everyone but you got wrong the date of an election and suppose your vote was decisive. If you welcome this as you might welcome the strange contingency that only you had bought tickets for a raffle - on my view you are no democrat. Voting, like watching football matches, is best done alongside lots of other people. The greater the level of participation, the more satisfying the activity.

Notice, too, that when a collective acts together in this way (and we have seen them do so recently in South Africa - happy, singing and queuing for hours) a sense of national autonomy may be felt. This may, as in the above case, be euphoric ‘At last, we can participate, we can be responsible for the political direction our country takes’. But the cost of autonomy is guilt and shame and this is recognisable when I tell you ‘It’s a poor shape we’ve got ourselves into . . .’ - speaking of the universities, the health service, the condition of manufacturing industry . . . whatever institutions the malign hands of government may have touched. These presentiments of collective autonomy are precious; they can easily be lost in disgust and disillusion. But so long as they are felt and witnessed, democracy is their essential precondition.

Conclusion

Liberals should, as a matter of principle, endorse democratic institutions. An individual’s well-being may have a political dimension. The liberal will generally understand how political activity can be the focus of continuing or episodic attention but even if he does not, he will recognise that others should be permitted to engage in it. Letting individuals choose the quality and amount of such activity, we respect their autonomy. But individuals may also attest a common project and recognise even political antagonists as engaged in its service. In this, they may recognise a collective autonomy. Whatever our political predicament, it is ours; the fruit of past efforts, our opportunity now to make and mend. This aspiration, ambitious but not delusional on the part of citizens taken individually, makes perfect sense for voters and activists who seek to act in concert with each other. And again the liberal must say: let them get on with it.

If citizens as a matter of fact value their community and value the opportunity to take


292 D. Knowles

part together in decision-making the liberal should endorse institutions which permit and sustain this activity.

Dudley Knowles, Department of Philosophy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow GI2 SQQ, UK.

NOTES [l] GORDON GRAHAM (1992) Liberalism and democracy,yournal of Applied Philosophy, 9, pp. 149-160. [2] JOHN STUART MILL On Liberty Ch. 1, Representative Government (same edition), Ch. 3. Both printed in

[3] BENJAMIN BARBER (1984) Scrong Democracy (Berkely, University of California Press). [4] JEAN-JAQUES ROUSSEAU (1973) The Social Contract (London, Dent Everyman’s Library), Bk. 11, Ch. 3. [5] G. E. M. ANSCOMBE (1976) On frustration of the majority by fulfilment of the majority’s will, Analysis, 36,

pp. 161-168. [6] As with many other questions: Does the property of being the best admit of degree? If so, do we include the

2:l’s as well as the firsts? Do we aim at the best so many per cent? If so, how many per cent do we seek? [7] BENJAMIN CONSTANT (1988) The Liberty of the Ancients compared with that of the moderns, in Political

Writings ed. B. FONTANA (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) and ISAIAH BERLIN (1969) Two Concepts of Liberty, in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford, Oxford University Press).

[8] BRIAN BARRY (1989) Is it better to be powerful or lucky? in Democracy, Power andJustice (Oxford, Clarendon Press), p. 301.

[9] BERNARD CRICK (1964) In Defence of Politzcs (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books).

Utiliarianism, Liberty, Representative Government (London, Dent: Everyman’s Library, 1910).

[lo] J. S. MILL (1910) OnLiberty,Chs. 4-5. [ 111 Good discussions of autonomy and its place as a political value include SCHIER, Flint, The Kantian Gulag, and

JOHN SKORUPSKI, Autonomy in its place, both in DUDLEY KNOWLES and JOHN SKORUPSKI (eds) (1993) Virtue and Taste (Oxford, Blackwell).

[12] For a strong sense of this, see JAMES MILL, Essay on Government (New York, Hackett: Library of Liberal Arts, 1955).

[13] G. W. F. HEGEL (1991) Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ALLEN W. WOOD (ed) (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), $182-256.

[ 141 Something of this is intimated in ROBERT NOZICK (1989) The Meaning of Life (New York, Simon and Schuster) pp. 286296.

[15] JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1973) Book 111, Ch. 1.


Documents

Liberalism and Democracy Revisited