Pluralism, democracy, and citizenship

Résumé du document

‘Most people think that democratic decisions have special moral force – which we have good reasons to obey laws that are democratically chosen. If this is true, why is it true? If it's not true, why is it not?' Democracy is commonly regarded as the best, or the least bad, political system available in our societies. The war in Iraq, in example, aimed at reversing Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in order to set a democratic system, which was expected to bring freedom and prosperity to Iraqi people. The roots of the word democracy refers to popular sovereignty, as ‘demos' means in Greek ‘the people' and ‘kratos' means power. However, this popular sovereignty can't go along without the necessary ‘political equality' referring among other things to the rule of law, the fact that all are allowed to run for office, and equal voting power. Another characteristic which is also often linked to democracy is the ‘popular accountability' which refers mostly to the fairness of the system .

Extraits

[...] Here again, I will choose a French and an American example in order to support my assertion. The French example refers to the Armenian lobby, even if divided in many associations, which has managed to achieve the vote of a law punishing the negation of the Armenian genocide by the Turks[13]. Many analysts accuse this law of contradicting the principles of the Constitution, as the duty of the law is not to teach history, however this law gained support from political leaders of each camp and was passed despite the controversy. [...]

[...] Foreign Policy”, March 2006, http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06- 011/$File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf American Israel Public Affairs Committee, www.aipac.org. Jonathan Quong, “Pluralism, Democracy and Citizenship”, Course notes, (University of Manchester, 2007). Richard J. Arneson, “Debate: Defending the Purely Instrumental Account of Democratic Legitimacy”, The Journal Of Political Philosophy, (Blackwell, 2003), p122. Thomas Christiano, Authority of Democracy”, The Journal Of Political Philosophy, (Blackwell, 2004), p290. Laurent Douzou, Histoire de la France Contemporaine, Course notes, (Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Lyon, 2005) Thomas Christiano, p276. Thomas Christiano, p285. [...]

[...] The instrumentalist philosophers consider that democracy produces better outcomes than any other available political system in the world. However I assume that many unjust decisions are taken in order to protect and export our imperfect democracies. The example of the last Iraqi war is then again quite striking. The coalition has used false reasons to go into war, these authorities has publicly lied to their citizens, leading to the deaths of many soldiers and civilians. One of the main aims of this war was to overthrow Saddam Hussein and to democracy in Iraq. [...]

[...] When the “special moral force” of democracy justifies compliance towards democratically chosen laws. This idea of a “moral force” recognized to democracy is relatively claimed both by proceduralists and instrumentalists but this “moral force” reside in the legitimacy of the procedures for the first ones while the others argue that it lies in the good consequences democracy brings to people. Richard J. Arneson, a philosopher classified as instrumentalist, explained that “what renders the democratic form of government for a nation morally legitimate (when it is) is that its operation over time produces better consequences for people than any feasible alternative mode of governance.”[2] On the proceduralist side, Thomas Christiano sums up a key asset of democracy by saying that “democratic-making retains its justice even when many of the outcomes are unjust. [...]

[...] The martial court judge didn't let him argue about the legitimacy of the war, even after all the evidences of lies from the coalition authorities especially on the existence of weapons of mass destructions and the alleged links between Iraqi's regime and the 9/11 attacks. Ehren Watada's decision should be praised, as these types of decisions help to improve our democracies, while simply obeying to unjust decisions such as this one could only led our democracies to become even worse[12]. The fairness of the procedures defended by proceduralist political philosophers should also be questioned in our democracies. [...]