Research overview
MOTIVATION
What is democracy? Why is it valuable? What does that value tell us about individual rights and liberties, the merits of different institutions and policies or about political theory, itself? These are the questions that animate my research and teaching, even when the topic seems to have nothing much to do with democracy, as with debates on the ethics of human gene patenting.
From some perspectives, of course, I am just injecting an obsession with democracy into places where it doesn’t belong, and exaggerating its importance as a value – compared, say, to security, freedom or equality. However philosophical accounts of rights, values, institutions and policies, historically, generally imply that people (or some people) should not govern themselves. If you think those views are wrong, why not start
from that assumption and then work out what that implies for philosophical or political controversy? Quite likely there are some contexts in which democracy is less valuable than other things ... but that needs to be shown and explained, not assumed. In the absence of democracy, it may be easier to ensure security for the well off by sacrificing the poor, or wrongly to assume that freedom of expression is a threat to the security of the state when, in fact, it would help to maintain it. As democracy can be valuable without being unconditionally or absolutely valuable – or, even, of ultimate value – merely assuming that it is valuable, if one does, leaves open a multitude of important questions about the nature, strength and implicitations of democracy. So if we think democracy is a legitimate form of government, why not make that explicit and build it into your philosophical investigations of politics?
Democracy and Elections
What does democracy have to do with elections? ‘Everything’, we might be tempted to answer, given that we commonly identify democracy with universal suffrage and majority rule. But that is wrong: democracy can be direct, not representative; and representation does not always require elections (rather than appointment or random selection). So what is the relationship between democracy and elections, and what does that tell us about the rights and duties of voters and candidates, about the ethics of voting and the ways we institutionalise and carry out elections?
Sub-topics
Must we vote? Must we vote for the common good? Or is voting just a matter of personal preference? And how to decide?
Democratic citizens have the right to govern, not just to decide who should govern on their behalf. But while the right to vote (and our tendencies to abstain) are the object of a substantial philosophical literature, the right to be a candidate for election has been all but ignored. My current research is an attempt to remedy this gap and to illuminate a right that, more than most, illustrates the differences between democracy and other forms of government.
We tend to associate elections with democracy but, historically, they were associated with aristocracy, on the assumption that the point of elections is to choose the best. So do elections have democratic value and, if so, what is it?
Democracy, Ethics and Public Policy
Until recently it was usual to think of ethics and public policy as a form of applied moral philosophy, in which we start by choosing what type of moral theory we will be assuming (e.g., consequentialist vs. deontological) and then try to pull out its implications for topics like abortion, pornography and recreational drug use. Such approaches assume that the distribution and justification of power are irrelevant to the answers we give to such questions, and that the point of democracy is ‘to do the right thing’, rather than to decide what is right. But if we think these approaches are mistaken, how should democratic values, institutions and procedures figure in the ethical appraisal of public policy?
Sub-topics
Equality is fundamentally comparative, but what comparisons may, or should, we make in order to treat people as equals and with what consequence for our rights and institutions?
Juries are often celebrated as a quintessentially democratic way of doing justice. The same cannot be said of judges, whose rights to review legislative decisions are so controversial. But are citizens any less prejudiced as jurors than as voters and legislators and is judicial review really undemocratic?
How should democracies approach the moral, political and legal challenges posed by satire? Satire can speak truth to power, but it can also vilify minorities and intensify prejudice. The murder in France of Samuel Paty in October 2020 lies at the heart of this project, and placed the comparison of France and the UK at its core.
Democracy and Method
Democratic government is a common object of philosophical examination (e.g., is it justified?). But perhaps reflection on democracy can tell us something useful about the value and limits of philosophy, and the place of truth in politics? This would be implausible if democracy were simply the aggregation of personal preferences, but it is not. So perhaps Dewey was right to think that democracy, as form of government and way of life, can tell us something useful about philosophy.
Sub-topics
Democracy implies that no special virtues, experiences, beliefs, capacities or resources are needed for people to take part in government. If democracy is justified, then, (and it is not a small ‘if’!) what does this tell us about political justification?
Security looks like a universal value, if there is one. But does security have the same content, value and political implications on democratic principles or on others, however liberal, republican, or otherwise attractive?
Intellectual property takes many forms and its justification is usually based on moral, economic and legal theories that abstract from political principles. However, democratic government itself constitutes a distinctive system of cooperation and competition that affects the form, content and justification we can give to intellectual property.