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Acceptable Inequalities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Jane J. Mansbridge
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Extract

The immodest purpose of this essay is to analyze the traditional arguments for political equality, and, with the help of a case study, to determine when these arguments apply and when they do not.

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Articles
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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , July 1977 , pp. 321 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 Dahl, Robert, ‘The Concept of Power’, Behavioral Science, II (1957), 201–15, P. 202.Google Scholar In the context of the concept of ‘equal power’, many people – including some of those whose experiences provide the starting point for this analysis – use ‘power’ with the meaning of control over outcomes. Cf. Nagel, Jack H., The Descriptive Analysis of Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).Google Scholar The provocative questions this raises, however, do not substantively affect the present analysis. I will discuss later (p. 327) the effects of restricting the use of ‘power’ to circumstances in which A threatens sanctions or acts against B's interests, as suggested by Bachrach, Peter and Baratz, Morton, ‘Decisions and Non-Decisions: an Analytic Framework’, American Political Science Review, LVII (1963), 632–42, p. 632CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Lukes, Steven, Power: A Radical View (London: Macmillan, 1974).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 The other data derive from a New England town meeting and a women's center largely organized on anarchist principles.

3 Some contemporary exponents of liberal democratic theory adopt similar formulations, e.g. Dahl, Robert, After the Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), p. 67Google Scholar, and Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 221–8.Google Scholar The problems raised by these formulations deserve full-length discussion elsewhere, as do questions of the cost in other values of increments in political equality.

4 Col. Rainborough in the Putney Debates, 29 October 1647. See Woodhouse, A. S. P., Puritanism and Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 59.Google Scholar In these debates the Levellers were most likely to stress the traditional rights of Englishmen and the consent of the governed.

5 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, Laslett, Peter, ed. ([1690] New York: New American Library, 1965), p. 419.Google Scholar

6 See, however, Wolin, Sheldon, Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960)Google Scholar for an extended critique of interest-based politics.

7 For purposes of this discussion, I will adopt Connolly's definition of interest: ‘Policy x is more in A's interest than policy y if A, were he to experience the results of both x and y, would choose x as the result he would rather have for himself.’ Connolly, William E., ‘On “Interests” in Polities’, Politics and Society, II (1972), 459–77, p. 472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This is not a definition of fully ‘objective’ interests, since it refrains from determinations of interest by human needs or by what is right and finally determines interest by subjective individual judgement. I have tried to indicate this balance in the text with the phrase ‘objective interests and ultimate desires’. Although a full discussion of political equality would of necessity enter far more deeply into the questions of power, equal opportunity for power and interest than I have done here, the central argument of this paper does not depend on a prior disposition of these issues. The identity of interest in the text refers to both ends and means.

8 See, e.g., Held, Virginia, The Public Interest and Individual Interests ([1960] New York: New American Library, 1965), pp. 99–161.Google Scholar My reading of Marx, however, differs from hers. She understands Marx as concluding that ‘the proletariat will eventually succeed in achieving a society in which interests no longer conflict’ (p. 148).Google Scholar It seems clear to me that Marx was interested in eliminating only differences between classes. While other conflicts of interest would remain in the eventual socialist society, these would not deeply affect the fundamental relationship between human beings.

9 For example, Bentley, Arthur, in The Process of Government ([1908] Evanston, III.: Principia Press, 1949), p. 222Google Scholar: ‘We shall never find a group interest of the society as a whole’; Truman, David, in The Governmental Process (New York: Knopf, 1959), p. 51Google Scholar: ‘we do not have to account for a totally inclusive interest, because one does not exist’; MacIver, Robert, in The Web of Government (New York: Macmillan, 1947), p. 416Google Scholar: ‘We should never imply that the people are a unity on any matter of policy. The people are always divided’; or Sorauf, Frank H., in ‘The Public Interest Reconsidered’, Journal of Politics, XIX (1957), 616–39, p. 625: ‘it seems clear that no interest motivates all citizens’.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Bachrach, and Baratz, in ‘Decisions and Non-Decisions’, pp. 638–9Google Scholar, and also Lukes, , in Power, p. 32Google Scholar, suggest that whatever was exercised in this situation should be termed a form of ‘authority’ rather than ‘power’. Under the Bachrach-Baratz definition of ‘power’ no power was exercised in this decision because no one got anyone else to do anything by threat of sanction, even the smallest sanction like threatening to be angry. Threats were made in the course of a heated two weeks; one man implied that he would be personally very hurt if the decision went one way rather than the other, and another implied that he might leave the organization. But as far as I was able to judge by observing the decision and talking with people afterwards, everyone in the service group made up his or her mind on the question on the basis of the issues. If interests were identical in this decision, no power was exercised under the Lukes definition of power as well, because no one got anyone else to do anything against his or her own interests.

11 Barnlund, Dean C., ‘A Comparative Study of Individual, Majority and Group Judgement’, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, LVIII (1959), 55–60, p. 55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 For the parallel in a religious community, see Zablocki, Benjamin, The Joyful Community (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971), pp. 184–6.Google Scholar

13 Dahrendorf, Ralf, ‘On the Origin of Social Inequality’, in Laslett, Peter and Runciman, W. G., eds., Philosophy, Politics and Society, 2nd series (Oxford: Black well, 1969).Google Scholar

14 Walzer, Michael, ‘In Defense of Equality’, Dissent, XX (1973), 399–408, p. 403.Google Scholar

15 Kaufman, Arnold, ‘Human Nature and Participatory Democracy’, in Friedrich, Carl J., ed., Responsibility: Nomos III (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1960), p. 277.Google Scholar

16 ‘The Port Huron Statement’, (1962) in Jacobs, Paul and Landau, Saul, eds., The New Radicals (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), p. 156.Google Scholar The Statement attributes bringing people out of isolation to participation in national political life, and the following goods, to ‘self-direction’ in the workplace.

17 Pateman, Carole, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 45–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Bachrach, Peter, ‘Interest, Participation, and Democratic Theory’, in Pennock, J. Roland and Chapman, John W., eds., Participation in Politics: NOMOS XVI (New York: Lieber-Atherton, 1975).Google Scholar One's interests, however, in Bachrach's characterization, are not always in conflict with those of others.

19 Pateman, , Participation and Democratic Theory, pp. 22–5, 35–40.Google Scholar

20 Mill, John Stuart, On Representative Government ([1861] Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), p. 214.Google Scholar

21 Wolin, , Politics and Vision, p. 1077.Google Scholar

22 Carole Pateman is the only writer who explicitly argues for equal power (pp. 43, 69–71). Peter Bachrach contents himself with ‘roughly equal’ power (1967, p. 101Google Scholar; 1975, p. 41). Kaufman and the Port Huron Statement do not specify equality of power.