24. Democratic Justice: Theory

What this lecture covers

This lecture asks what we can reasonably expect from democracy and how democracy relates to justice. It first defends Schumpeterian, minimalist democracy by comparison with the alternatives, then addresses the gap between that minimalism and people's actual expectations when they demand democracy in the face of injustice. Building on Nelson Mandela's 1962 statement to the court, it introduces Shapiro's own theory of democratic justice: a broad, semi-contextual approach centered on collective self-government, institutionalized opposition, and a presumption against hierarchy.

After watching, you should be able to explain why Shapiro thinks democracy outperforms alternatives at protecting rights even without judicial review, describe the tension between minimalist democratic theory and popular demands for justice, and list the questions Shapiro proposes for interrogating whether a hierarchy has become a system of domination.

Key ideas

• "Compared to what?": judged against real alternatives rather than an ideal, Schumpeterian minimal democracy outperforms other systems at protecting rights and enabling competition of ideas, even without added institutions like judicial review.
• Minimal but not negligible: even the minimal turnover-of-power requirement is a substantial achievement, evident by comparison with countries that lack it.
• Reactive creatures: people demand democracy in response to injustice they can name, even without being able to specify what an ideal democratic outcome would look like, an idea Shapiro illustrates with Amartya Sen's sauna analogy.
• The Huntingtonian worry: loading unrealistic expectations of justice onto democracy risks disillusionment, and disillusioned people may turn to anti-democratic strongmen, but people cannot simply be talked out of expecting democracy to deliver justice.
• Principle of affected interest: people whose interests are affected by a decision presumptively deserve a say in making it, articulated forcefully in Nelson Mandela's 1962 statement to the court and echoed in "no taxation without representation."
• Broad conception of politics: political theory should track power relations wherever they occur, including in families and workplaces, not just in formal government institutions.
• Superordinate versus subordinate goods: every social activity has a superordinate good (playing good sport, producing goods, educating students) alongside subordinate power relations; democratic justice means democratizing the power relations while interfering as little as possible with the superordinate good.
• Two dimensions of democratic justice: collective self-government (a say in decisions that affect you) and institutionalized opposition (the ability to resist and change what does not work), the latter enacted largely through a presumption against hierarchy.

Walkthrough

What Can We Expect from Democracy? (0:00)

Shapiro defends Schumpeter's minimal, competition-based conception of democracy by asking "compared to what?" Citing research associated with Robert Dahl, he argues that democracy alone, without additions like judicial review, best protects individual rights, and that Schumpeterian competition institutionalizes Mill's ideal of truth emerging through competitive argument. Even a minimal requirement like Huntington's two-turnover test is far from negligible, as shown by countries, including the pre-1840 United States, recent Japan, and post-apartheid South Africa, that have struggled to meet it.

Democratic Justice (16:53)

Shapiro addresses the gap between minimalist democratic theory and the fuller justice people expect from democracy. Drawing on the experience of anti-communist and anti-apartheid movements, he argues people demand democracy in reaction to identifiable injustice, using Amartya Sen's sauna analogy: you do not need to know the optimal temperature to know the room is too hot. He presents Samuel Huntington's warning that overloading democracy with expectations it cannot meet risks a backlash against democracy itself, illustrated by South African polling showing nostalgia for the apartheid era's material conditions alongside a refusal to return to apartheid. Shapiro argues this realist response is naive, since people will not simply stop expecting democracy to deliver justice, which means the real task is designing institutions capable of meeting those expectations. He introduces this with an anecdote about a student asking why Rawls's theory of justice was never written into the Constitution once it was accepted as correct, using the class's laughter to draw out the point that principles of justice must be democratically legitimated, not simply imposed because philosophers judge them correct.

Democratic Justice: The General Argument (26:05)

Shapiro grounds his own theory in the principle of affected interest, quoting Nelson Mandela's 1962 statement to the court that he and his people had no say in the laws that governed them. He lays out three features of his approach. First, a broad conception of politics that tracks power wherever it occurs, including in the family, responding to feminist critiques (citing Susan Okin) that Rawls's theory of justice ignored household power relations. Second, a semi-contextual method that takes seriously, as MacIntyre does, how inherited traditions shape what people find acceptable, while still offering general principles that apply differently across different historical and cultural settings. Third, the distinction between superordinate goods, the genuine purpose of an activity such as playing good sport or producing goods and services, and subordinate goods, the power relations that inevitably accompany that activity; democratic justice aims to democratize the subordinate power relations while leaving the superordinate good as undisturbed as possible. From this Shapiro derives two dimensions of democratic justice: collective self-government, the idea that those affected by a decision should have a presumptive say in it, and institutionalized opposition, the ability to resist and change decisions, justified both by our fallibility in finding good arrangements and by the absence of any perfect decision rule. He closes by introducing the presumption against hierarchy as the main practical tool for institutionalizing opposition, offering a set of questions, whether a hierarchy is inevitable, appropriately sized, self-liquidating, symmetrical, and exitable, for judging when a hierarchy has degenerated into domination.

Before you watch

• Review the previous two lectures on Madison and Schumpeter, since this lecture builds directly on both the minimalist model of democracy and the concept of non-domination.
• Recall MacIntyre's argument about inherited traditions and practices, referenced in the semi-contextual method.
• Be familiar with Rawls's difference principle and the feminist critique of his theory of justice, discussed earlier in the course.

Check your understanding

1. Why does Shapiro argue that judicial review adds little to democracy's ability to protect individual rights?
2. What does Amartya Sen's sauna analogy illustrate about why people demand democracy without being able to specify an ideal outcome?
3. What is the "principle of affected interest," and how does Mandela's 1962 statement illustrate it?
4. How does Shapiro distinguish superordinate goods from subordinate goods, and why does the distinction matter for democratic justice?
5. What questions does Shapiro propose for judging whether a hierarchy has become a system of domination rather than a legitimate one?