Coercion, Authority, and Democracy by Grahame Booker A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2009 c Grahame Booker 2009 Library and Archives Bibliothèque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l’édition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-55483-8 Our file Notre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-55483-8 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non- L’auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant à la Bibliothèque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par télécommunication ou par l’Internet, prêter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des thèses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, à des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non- support microforme, papier, électronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. 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This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii Abstract As a classical liberal, or libertarian, I am concerned to advance liberty and minimize coercion. Indeed on this view liberty just is the absence of coercion or costs imposed on others. In order to better understand the notion of coercion I discuss Robert Nozick's classic essay on the subject as well as more recent contributions. I then address the question of whether law is coercive, and respond to Edmundson and others who think that it isn't. Assuming that the law is in fact coercive, there is still a question,as with all coercive acts, as to whether that coercion is justified. Edmundson thinks that this places a special burden on the state of justifying its existence, whereas it simply places the same burden on the state as anyone else. What I reject is the longstanding doctrine of Staatsr¨ason, namely that the state is not subject to the same moral rules as its subjects. With respect to the relation of morality to law, Edmundson thought that another of the fallacies of which philosophical anarchists were guilty was that of assuming that there was a sphere of morality where law had no business. On the contrary, our concern is with spheres of law which appear to have little to do with morality, which is to say laws against wrongs of the malum prohibitum variety, as opposed to wrongs which are malum in se. I then turn to a matter with which Edmundson begins his study, namely how it is that states acquire the authority to do what they do, namely coerce their subjects. While the fact that the philosopher's stone of political obligation has proved rather elusive may mean that a legitimate state lacks the authority to demand obedience pure and simple, Edmundson contends that it can at the very least demand that we do not interfere in the administration of justice. I argue that this attempt to sidestep the justification of the authority of the state fails and that we seem in the end to be having to take the state's word for it that we must do X on pain of penalty P. Nor, as I go on to argue, is it any help to appeal to democracy to remedy a failed justification of the authority of the state. There either is a moral justification of state coercion in order to prevent harm to innocent subjects, or there isn't, and this holds,if it does, not only at the level of individuals, but also at the level of the state, regardless of its constitutional form. After concluding that the attempts of Edmundson and others to refute the anarchic turn in recent political philosophy have failed, it would seem that the withering away of the state foreseen in Marx's eschatology is not as improbable as maybe it once appeared. iii Acknowledgements One of the benefits of leaving it till later in life to set down some thoughts about the state is that one has a chance to listen to many eminent people who in some way or another have influenced what I have had to say here. It also means that the list could be very long indeed, so I shall be rather selective in those that I mention. At least one predates my arrival in Canada 40 years ago, namely, Julius Stone who lectured at Sydney on \States, Men and International Justice." A decade later, I was fortunate enough to be offered a SSHRC fellowship at Oxford where I heard Ron Dworkin and Charles Taylor on liberalism, John Mackie on Rawls, John Rawls himself on Sidgwick, and first learnt something about prisoners' dilemmas from Derek Parfitt. Dinner meetings of the Univ. Bentham Society gave me the opportunity to meet such luminaries as A.J. Ayer, Elizabeth Anscombe, Gareth Evans, John Finnis and Saul Kripke. In more recent years I have attended many interesting gatherings held under the auspices of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State, notably \Natural Rights Liberalism from Locke to Nozick." I was also grateful to have the opportunity to discuss the proposal for the present work at the Austrian Scholars Conference at the Mises Institute in 2005. I have also benefited from discussions with visiting scholars in the Waterloo Philosophy Department such as Daniel Shapiro, John Kekes and Russell Hardin. Indeed I am grateful to the De- partment for their help and encouragement when I decided to use my retirement to pick up from where I had left off many years ago. Special thanks are due to my supervisor, Jan Narveson, who in his own retire- ment still sets a pace I have a lot of trouble keeping up with. I have been greatly influenced by his work both in Philosophy and chamber music, where his celebrated series offers some of the best music to be heard anywhere. Thanks also to fellow student, Ethan Wilding, who helped me overcome my rudimentary computer skills; and to my readers Jack Sanders, Brian Orend and Colin Farrelly, who had to con- tend with a longer than average essay. Finally, my ever patient family who tolerated the various research episodes I managed to fit in to my teaching career. iv Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Coercion 5 2.1 Nozick on coercion . 6 2.1.1 Threats v. Offers . 7 2.1.2 The drug addict . 7 2.1.3 The drowning man . 8 2.1.4 A fair price? . 9 2.1.5 Nozick's slave case . 11 2.1.6 Blackmail . 13 2.1.7 Threats/Warnings . 13 2.1.8 Rhodes on Coercion . 14 2.2 Edmundson and the supposed non-coerciveness of the state. 17 2.2.1 Plea bargains and coercion . 17 2.2.2 Sea rescue and coercion . 19 2.2.3 The coerciveness of law and the presumption of liberty . 25 2.2.4 Malum prohibitum v. malum in se. 26 2.2.5 The coerciveness of the state's monopoly on enforcement . 28 2.3 Summary . 31 3 Authority 32 3.1 Consent . 34 3.1.1 The appeal to estoppel . 37 3.1.2 Possible salvation in associative obligations . 38 3.2 Fairness as a possible foundation of political obligation. 43 v 3.2.1 From fairness to prima facie obedience. 47 3.3 Edmundson's response to philosophical anarchism . 49 3.3.1 Authority indistinguishable from arbitrary rule . 56 3.3.2 Moral discovery as a possible source of authority . 58 3.3.3 Law and ethics do not necessarily overlap . 61 3.3.4 The morality of taxes in particular . 62 3.4 The Public Goods' defence . 67 3.4.1 Public goods via decentralized coordination. 77 3.4.2 The authoritative solution of prisoners' dilemmas . 95 3.4.3 The principal-agent problem . 100 3.5 Summary. 101 4 Democracy 102 4.1 Singer on Democracy . 102 4.1.1 Voting as quasi-consent. 108 4.1.2 Fair play as a solution to consent . 110 4.2 Democratic rules . 112 4.2.1 Wollheim and the paradox of democracy . 115 4.2.2 The relevance of Singer's models to large scale democracies . 118 4.2.3 Representation and authority . 120 4.2.4 Political parties . 126 4.2.5 The supposed virtues of polyarchy .