Montreal Political Theory Workshop Settling Moral Acccounts: Law, Politics, and Morality

December 5, 2008

Citizenship and Political Responsibility in Modern Mass Democracies

*This is a draft. Please do not quote or cite without the author’s permission.*

Farid Abdel-Nour San Diego State University

Political Science Department 5500 Campanile Drive

San Diego, CA 92182-4427 abdelnou@mail.sdsu.edu (619) 594-6598

In this paper I examine whether, and if so how, the role of citizen burdens ordinary

persons with political responsibility for bad outcomes of state policy. Where political

institutions allow popular participation in political decision-making processes, potential causal

links connect citizens to bad political outcomes.1 Across the differences between direct and

representative democracies, the role of citizen, even when understood very minimally goes

beyond mere membership in a political community, obedience to the demands of a political

order, or identification with a national narrative. At a minimum, the role of citizen involves the

opportunity to participate, either directly or indirectly, in political decision-making processes.

This forges a concrete link unique to this role between the citizen and certain bad political

outcomes that are caused by policy decisions.2 Citizens almost never directly cause bad political

outcomes. They are however often connected in morally significant ways to the causes of such

outcomes. Via these connections they are burdened with political responsibility.

A robust exercise of citizenship can involve participating actively in political debates,

joining political mobilization efforts to exert pressure within the political system or beyond it

potentially challenging and resisting it. That citizens who exercise their role in a robust way bear

political responsibility is easy to grant. It hardly requires much argument to recognize that those

who participate actively in mass or other forms of political mobilization bear responsibility for

the outcomes they help bring about. Alas citizens rarely exercise their role in such an active

way. More common is a minimal exercise of citizenship, in which individuals either participate

or fail to participate in the political decision making procedures open to them. My goal in this

paper is to point to how in its most minimal expression, as it is most commonly practiced in

modern mass democracies, the role of citizen imposes a burden of political responsibility on

ordinary persons for bad political outcomes.3 These are outcomes that are caused by the

political decisions that citizens have the right and opportunity to participate in making.

My argument is in four sections. In the first I turn to Aristotle’s definition of the citizen

in order to bring out in relief the main features of the role of citizen, and to identify the main

conceptual challenges endemic to that role that stand in the way of my argument. Citizens

influence political outcomes via processes that pool their individual contributions into a

collective result. This means that before we can speak of citizen responsibility we must be clear

on whether, and if so how, an individual can bear responsibility for the outcomes of a process in

which she is merely one participant among many. Furthermore, an individual citizen may or

may not at any given point in time exercise her right to participate in the collective decision-

making processes available to her. Thus the question arises as to whether by withdrawing from

politics entirely an individual might spare herself the burdens of responsibility associated with

citizenship. In section two I address the first of these two challenges and argue that an individual

who participates in a joint project, such as an electoral process, can bear responsibility for the

bad outcomes caused by the result, even though she herself has no control over that result. In

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section three I argue that whereas participating in politics involves doing something that can

connect one materially to the causes of bad political outcomes, failing to participate involves

allowing bad outcomes to come about. And this comes with its own burden of responsibility.

After addressing the above two challenges that are endemic to the role of citizen, I turn in

the fourth section to the context of modern democracies in which citizenship for the most part

amounts to a right to vote in mass elections. There I argue that when faced with the right to vote

in an election with a morally significant political choice, a citizen can bear three types of

political responsibility. Once a citizen participates in the electoral process she owns the results

and is implicated in the bad outcomes caused by them. Furthermore, depending on the direction

in which she cast her vote she can bear an added political responsibility. Should she however

fail to vote she is not off the hook but can, depending on the circumstances, bear political

responsibility for failing to do her part to help prevent a bad outcome. Ultimately, citizenship is a

very burdensome political role in which ordinary individuals are thrust. It exerts conflicting

pressures on them. In escaping some of its burdens of responsibility they invariably risk

incurring others.

Citizens’ political responsibility is not only an intelligible and defensible idea, but is an

essential one to raise in public debate if we are to capture the few spaces in which ordinary

individuals who do not perform specialized political functions are political agents. The purpose

of raising the question of citizens’ political responsibility is not to identify individuals to punish,

point the finger of blame, or point the path towards a political life devoid of any burdens of

political responsibility. Far from it, the goal is to foster citizens’ moral education. By giving

them opportunities to reflect on the role they each play in the impersonal political processes of

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mass democracies. Injecting the question of citizens’ political responsibility in public debate can

help bring home to us all, our role in the larger social and political world.

I. Aristotle’s Definition of the Citizen

In this section I seek to identify the main features of the role of citizen that are

identifiable in all its variants across different contexts. Aristotle’s definition in Book III of The

Politics captures the core features of the role of citizen. He begins by clarifying what a citizen is

not. He writes: “a citizen proper is not by virtue of residence in a given place…nor can the name

citizen be given to those who share in civic rights only to the extent of being entitled to sue and

be sued in the courts.” 4 The idea that residence does not define citizenship is consistent with

modern institutional arrangements, as is the notion that citizenship is not captured by a person’s

status as a legal subject. For better or worse, in modern democratic states we recognize a

category of persons sometimes referred to as “resident aliens” who have legal rights and

obligations within a state’s territorial boundaries but who are not citizens.5

Aristotle proceeds “there is a sense in which the young … may … be called citizens, but

it is not altogether an unqualified sense: we must add the reservation that the young are

undeveloped … citizens.”6 By speaking of the young as “undeveloped” citizens, Aristotle makes

clear that even if they were to fulfill some formal criterion of inclusion such as birth to citizen

parents, there is still a sense in which they would not quite be citizens. In the midst of the

plurality of constitutions that were available in the fourth century Greek world, Aristotle sought

to understand whether there are common features of the role of citizen that by the use of different

formal criteria of inclusion is assigned in different constitutions to different categories of

person.7

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His most general and precise definition of the citizen reads as follows: “he who enjoys

the right of sharing in deliberative or judicial office attains thereby the status of a citizen of his

state.”(AP, 94-95)8 This definition highlights three basic features of citizenship.9 First,

citizenship is not exercised alone. It involves sharing or participating with others. Second,

citizenship is a status that merely opens up the possibility of sharing in a function. Thus any

particular individual citizen may or may not avail himself of that possibility. The third feature of

citizenship that this definition highlights is obscure from a first reading at the distance of over

twenty three hundred years. Aristotle ties citizenship to sharing in “deliberative and judicial

office.” To understand in detail what this entails we need to place it in its historical context. I do

this elsewhere. In this paper I simply adopt the conclusion that this function involves a role in

political decision-making processes. For our purposes this feature of citizenship appears in

modern mass democracies in the right to participate in elections on the results of which

significant political outcomes depend.

The three features of citizenship can be summarized thus: it is (1) a shared role that an

individual (2) may or may not exercise, in (3) political decision-making. The shared nature of

citizenship raises a significant challenge for the question of citizens’ political responsibility.

Since a citizen exercises his citizenship by sharing it with others, he is connected to political

outcomes via the mediation of a collective process. Even in the most direct democracy,

individual citizens are not connected to political outcomes directly. Institutional arrangements

and procedures translate the contributions of each to a collective result, which in turn affects

political outcomes. No matter what the exact nature of the institutions through which the

contributions of individual citizens yield a collective result, a basic conceptual challenge arises

from the moment that we understand the citizen’s function as shared. This is the challenge of

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connecting a collective result back to the individuals whose contributions are its constitutive

parts. A person whose individual contribution gets mixed in with those of others to yield a

collective result has no individual control over that result. But, does this mean that none of the

participants bear any responsibility for the result? I address this question in detail in section two.

The second feature of citizenship is that it is a status that merely entitles an individual to

perform a function that he may or may not in fact exercise. This feature raises its own challenge.

Aristotle, who in earlier versions of the definition of a citizen had spoken of “a man who shares”

(AP, 93) and of “citizens [as]… those who share,” (AP, 94) adds in his final version the caveat

“he who enjoys the right of sharing,”(AP, 95 My emphasis) thereby clarifying that someone is

not only a citizen if he in fact shares in the citizen functions, but is one even if he does not.10

Thus there is a difference between someone who is an “undeveloped” citizen, i.e. someone who

while included among the rank of citizens is not entitled or capable of performing the function of

citizenship, and someone who is entitled and capable but fails to exercise that function. Whereas

members of the first group cannot bear political responsibility on the basis of their citizenship,

members of the second can. When we reflect upon citizen responsibility it becomes necessary to

differentiate between those who actively perform their citizen function and those who while

entitled and capable of performing it fail to do so. They occupy fundamentally different

standpoints in relation to the results of collective decisions and the political outcomes connected

with them.

Whereas the first two features of citizenship I have culled from Aristotle’s definition

highlight the form of citizenship, the third feature seeks to capture its content. Aristotle says

specifically that under “deliberative or judicial office,” he seeks to at least include the role of the

member of the popular assembly and of the popular courts. Although he intends his definition to

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be broad and to reach different constitutional types, it would be safe to assume that it is also

designed to include the role of the member of the Athenian assembly and the Athenian popular

courts of the fourth Century BCE. Suffice it to say here that historical investigations reveal that

these two roles were characterized largely by the opportunity to cast a vote in the assembly and

the courts, no more. In both institutions, the bulk of the citizens who participated did not speak,

but were merely the addressees of speeches by professional rhetors.11 Citizens served as parts of

a mechanism for making important political and judicial decisions.12 A citizen could perform

the specific function of his role without doing anything other than attending the occasional

assembly and voting, something that many presumably did, but by no means all. There is

continuity between the understanding of citizenship with which Aristotle captures the minim

way in which citizens could perform their function in fourth century Athens and modern

representative democracies. The core of citizenship as it is practiced in modern representative

democracies by the overwhelming majority of citizens is to vote in mass elections. After

addressing in sections two and three the two conceptual challenges that are raised by the form of

citizenship, I proceed in section four to examine how the lessons we learn from addressing thes

challenges apply to the content of the role of citizen when understood minimally as the role o

voter in a mass

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democracy.

II. Participation and Responsibility

Citizens share in political decision-making by participating in collective processes in

which the contribution of each to the end result is often negligible. Any conception of the

political responsibility of the citizen that is to be relevant for the democratic politics of modern

mass societies must address this challenge. In his book Complicity, Christopher Kutz develops

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an account of responsibility that is designed to meet this challenge. Citizens share their decision-

making function by inserting themselves in institutional structures and processes that yield

politically significant results. At first gloss it might appear that the most straightforward way to

think about each citizen’s responsibility for that result is to consider her individual contribution

towards producing it. Yet, according to Kutz,

“The most important and far-reaching harms and wrongs of contemporary life are the

products of collective actions, mediated by social and institutional structures. These

harms and wrongs are essentially collective products, and individual agents rarely make a

difference to their occurrence. So long as individuals are only responsible for the effects

they produce, then the result of this disparity between collective harm and individual

effect is the disappearance of individual accountability. If no individual makes a

difference, then no individual is accountable for the collective harms. And since

institutions and social groups consist ultimately in nothing but individual agents, no one

is accountable for what we do together.”13

If we insist on assigning responsibility on the basis of each individual’s contribution to the result,

we will find that whenever harms are caused by collective action, on one is responsible.14

Instead of considering each individual’s contribution to the outcome, Kutz proposes that

we consider the individual’s intention to participate in the collective process.15 An individual

need not have materially affected the result before we can meaningfully speak of her

responsibility for it. All that we need to know is whether the individual intended to play her part

in the collective process. He offers “a minimalist analysis of collective action… [which he calls]

the participatory conception of collective action, for its centerpiece is a distinctive, individual,

instrumental intention to play one’s part in a joint act.”16 Within this conception, the

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individual’s responsibility for bad collective outcomes is anchored in “the notion of an

participatory intention, or an intention to act as part of a group.”

individual

17 For Kutz, when “individuals

act with the intention of contributing to a collective outcome,”18 they connect themselves to the

outcome in a morally significant way.

Note that the key here is “the intention of contributing to a collective outcome.” This is

the intention to participate in a joint project that yields an outcome. It is NOT the same as the

intention to bring about the specific outcome that emerges. The joint project may yield

unfortunate, unexpected bad outcomes that none of the participants intended. This does not

change the fact that the individuals participated in the project intentionally even though they did

not intend to bring about the specific outcome that emerged. Kutz writes: “accountability for

unintended consequences manifests an acknowledgment of the fact that one’s projects have

interfered with another’s interests. This relation is present at the collective level as well.”19 The

intention to participate in a collective process merely allows us to ascribe the result to the

persons who participate in it intentionally.20 When that result causes a bad outcome,

responsibility for the outcome can be ascribed to those who participated in bringing about the

result that caused it.21 By participating intentionally in the joint process, the individual signs

onto it actively and forges a moral bond with the other participants. It is this bond that

implicates her in the result and burdens her with responsibility for the bad outcomes caused by

the collective result.22

Kutz’s argument allows us to meet the central challenge raised by the shared nature of the

citizen’s role in political decision-making. Whenever a number of individuals participate in a

common project intentionally, including when citizens participate in collective decision-making

processes, it becomes difficult to determine whose contributions are decisive to the outcome. By

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anchoring responsibility in participatory intention, Kutz bypasses this complication.23 Every

individual who participates intentionally in a collective process that yields a result, bears

responsibility for that bad outcomes caused by that result irrespective of whether we can pinpoint

the exact difference that her individual contribution made to the result. Kutz sums up his insight

with the following principle: “I am accountable for the harm or wrong we do together,

independently of the actual difference I make.”24 About someone who participates in a joint

project the result of which causes a bad outcome, we need to ask whether she had “control over

the character of her relationship to the other agents to whom the harm is causally ascribable?”25

To the extent that she did, and when she participates in a joint process intentionally she does, we

can say that she has connected herself to the outcome in a morally significant way, irrespective

of the magnitude of her individual contribution.

By anchoring the individual’s responsibility for the result in her intention to participate,

Kutz’s argument does not negate the possibility of reflecting about each individual’s contribution

to that result. His ingenious argument simply allows us to bypass this line of reflection and to

avoid the complications and controversy associated with it. Attempts to divide the burden of

responsibility by the size of each individual’s contribution involve serious difficulties. For

example, how does one respond to the participant who arbitrarily singles out her own

contribution as having made no difference to an outcome that would have come about without

her anyway? Kutz allows us to avoid all this by focusing only on the intention to participate. As

we will see in the third section below however, a path as straightforward as Kutz’s is not always

available. When we consider the political responsibility of those who fail to participate in

collective processes to prevent bad outcomes, we cannot avail ourselves of a similarly simple

path.

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III. Failure to Participate and Responsibility

So far we have seen how individuals can incur a burden of responsibility by virtue of

intentionally participating in a joint project the result of which causes a bad outcome. But what

about cases in which bad outcomes that could have been prevented are allowed to come about?

Kutz’s framework is broad enough to accommodate some such cases but not others.26

Individuals who participate in a joint project that fails to prevent a bad outcome can be ascribed

responsibility within Kutz’s framework. For example, if a chemical company failed to prevent a

disastrous but preventable accident, then shareholders who participate intentionally in that joint

enterprise might bear a burden of responsibility. Here the bad outcome is associated with a

collective failure or omission. But the individual’s connection to the bad outcome involves an

exercise of her own agency. She is associated with the group by means of her intentional

participation in a joint project that then fails to prevent a bad outcome. Kutz’s framework covers

such cases, allowing us to bypass the complexities and controversies of dealing with how each

individual’s contribution affects the final outcome.

However, because Kutz’s framework anchors the individual’s connection to the bad

outcome in her intentional participation in a collective project, it does not account for cases in

which an individual fails to participate in a collective process that could have prevented a bad

outcome. Individuals may allow a bad outcome to come about by failing to participate in a

collective process to prevent it. Our political and moral discourse is saturated with talk of our

failure to participate in collective processes that could potentially prevent bad outcomes such as

large scale starvation and the like. Kutz’s framework, based as it is on participation, does not

help us understand what responsibility we bear when we fail to participate. If there is a burden

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of responsibility that individuals bear for failing to participate in a collective process, it would

have to be one that considers their individual contribution to the failure of the prevention project.

This is in contrast with Kutz’s notion of participatory intention.27 For the rest of this section I

consider whether such a failure to participate can burden an individual with responsibility.

Doing and Allowing

The distinction between what an individual participates in doing and what she merely

allows to come about by failing to participate is significant. It necessitates two different ways of

thinking about responsibility because of the different ways in each case that the agent stands

towards the outcome. In his article “Doing and Allowing,” Samuel Scheffler explains the moral

significance of this distinction.28 He writes that it captures the difference “between cases in

which our agency is implicated in a primary way and cases in which it is implicated only

secondarily, if at all.”29 Scheffler conceives of the distinction between doing and allowing in the

following way. As responsible agents we are subject to certain standards and norms that regulate

the exercise of our agency.30 But, “to view oneself as subject to such norms is already to attach a

special importance to, and to see oneself as having a special responsibility for, what one does.”31

Thus we are responsible for what we do in a way that is associated with a primary exercise of our

agency.

When we speak of bearing responsibility for what we allow to happen, we merely

acknowledge that our individual agency is not exercised in a vacuum but in the context of a

causal order that constantly presents us with opportunities to intervene.32 The causal order in

which we are immersed is usually beyond our control as individuals. We can only make

interventions in it as they present themselves. These opportunities to intervene abound. In fact,

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they make overwhelming demands on us, which if we always followed would make it difficult

for us to recognize ourselves as individual agents at all. The reason that Scheffler insists on the

distinction between bringing about a bad outcome on the one hand, and failing to utilize

opportunities to intervene in the causal order to prevent a similar outcome on the other, is that

without this distinction, it becomes difficult to understand how we are to conceive of ourselves

as distinct persons.

He writes: “one of the challenges of being an agent—of making one’s way in the world--

is to reconcile oneself to the omnipresence of [causal]… opportunities. ..[and] our sense of

ourselves as agents is also conditioned by an awareness of our subsumption within the larger

causal web, and by the resulting recognition that missed opportunities, of many different kinds,

as an ineliminable feature of human life.”33 We live immersed in large and impersonal causal

processes in which we have burdens to intervene. These burdens however are not identical to the

ones we bear for what we participate in bringing about in the world. The harm we bring about is

an exercise and manifestation of our individual agency that is intimately connected to our

distinctness as persons. Whereas the harm we fail to prevent is not such an exercise. Thus it

weighs differently on us than does the harm we bring about. While we bear responsibility for

allowing bad outcomes to come about, it is not identical to the responsibility we bear for

bringing about bad outcomes. Both aspects of our responsibility are important, but they must be

distinguished and require separate treatment.34

So far I have relied on Scheffler to argue that there is an important distinction between

the responsibility we bear for doing and the one we bear for allowing. I have not yet explained

how this difference affects the types of arguments we can make for each. In the rest of this

section I argue that whereas when we consider what individuals do via collective processes we

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can follow Kutz and bracket controversies over the exact contribution of each to the collective

result, when we consider what individuals allow to come about, such controversies cannot be

bracketed. When an individual fails to participate in a preventive collective project, the relative

difference that she could make to the outcome is central to any talk of her responsibility for the

outcome. As the relative difference that her contribution could make to the outcome declines,

her responsibility for allowing it to come about recedes and becomes part of the background

noise of the human condition in which the causal order of the world makes incessant demands on

us all. This is different, more controversial, and harder to pin down than the responsibility we

bear for doing, which we can base simply on the individual’s intention to participate in the

collective process.

If hypothetically, by participating in a collective project, I could with my contribution

alone make the difference between allowing the bad outcome to come about and preventing it, I

would in such a scenario bear a heavy burden of responsibility for failing to participate. This

applies no matter how many people are in a position like mine. If I were the only person whose

intervention would make the difference or if I were one of millions each of whose intervention

would make the same difference, my responsibility would be the same. Those who feel morally

compelled to make charitable contributions to feed one hungry person, give expression to this

burden of responsibility in a particularly sharp way.35 They do not consider their burden to be

any lighter just because millions of others could have intervened to feed that same person.36

Once we turn our attention from the suffering of one or a few individuals to that of an entire

population, the dynamics of responsibility shift. To prevent the starvation of an entire population

the coordination of many persons’ efforts is needed. When none of us alone could have

prevented the bad outcome without coordinating our activity with others, the question becomes

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the following: do those whose coordinated activity could make the difference bear responsibility

for failing to do what it takes? When we fail to coordinate our efforts to prevent large scale

famine, do we each bear some individual responsibility for that failure?

Failure to Participate in a Joint Process to Prevent a Bad Outcome

Virginia Held sheds light on this question in her article “Can a random Collection of

Individuals be Morally Responsible?”37 She develops an example in which a number of

individuals fail to prevent a bad outcome by failing to coordinate their efforts. In her example

“three unacquainted pedestrians [are] on an isolated street. A small building collapses; a

man inside is trapped; he calls to the three for help. He is bleeding from a lower leg

injury and needs immediate assistance. All four persons know that a tourniquet should be

applied to his thigh, but this cannot be done until various beams are removed, and

removing any would require the strength of all three. The three observers do not agree on

how to proceed … While they argue, the man slowly bleeds to death.”38

Held uses this example to illustrate how “the random collection of pedestrians was morally

responsible for failing to turn itself into an organized group capable of taking action requiring a

decision.”39 She defines her “random collection of individuals” in contrast to an “organized

group [that is] capable of deciding which action to take.”40 Held neglects to add one more

requirement. Even if they were a group capable of making a decision, they would have needed

to participate in setting the decision-making mechanism in motion and implementing its result.

This point goes to the heart of one feature of citizenship that emerged in relief in

Aristotle’s definition namely, that citizenship is a status associated with a right to participate in

political processes, that an individual citizen may, but need not necessarily exercise. Citizens

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can fail to participate in existing organizational structures that are available to them, no matter

whether these are “official” such as electoral procedures, or “alternative” institutions and parties

that seek to resist official structures. Citizens will often not avail themselves of decision

procedures and other joint political projects that are available to them. If the members of a

random collection of individuals bear responsibility for failing to organize in such a way as to be

able to prevent a bad outcome, we can certainly say that they would continue to bear

responsibility for allowing the bad outcome should they succeed in establishing decision

procedures but fail to participate in utilizing them.

Consider a similar example to the one that Held provides. But this time the passersby are

five members of a club and the trapped person has passed out. Upon observing the situation, it

becomes evident to all that the cooperation (at a negligible cost to each) of at least three is

needed to move the beams. And, three different methods for how to proceed are proposed.

Immediately the five put into operation a standard procedure that they all learned when they

joined the club and that they committed themselves to applying whenever they disagreed with

one another on an urgent matter. Their procedure is to vote and see how many support each

proposed method, and vote again to decide between the two most popular methods, and in case

of a tie to flip a coin. Furthermore, their procedure is to make selections by lot whenever some

of them are needed to perform a task requiring no specialized skills. The vote they take reveals

that two support method (a), two support method (b), and one supports method (c). The

supporter of method (c) is in a bind. She is convinced that while both methods (a) and (b) appear

to make good common sense, they are both unnecessarily risky, although (a) is riskier than (b).

Method (c) however, which she is convinced is least risky, is counterintuitive. To try to

convince any of the other four of the benefits of (c) and of the risk distribution among the other

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two methods would take too long, and the patient would bleed to death while she is explaining

fine points about the laws of physics. Following procedure, in the second vote a choice is

presented between methods (a) and (b). While remaining committed to doing her part should she

be selected to move the beams, the advocate of (c) withdraws from the rest of the decision

procedure, walks away and awaits the outcome from afar. The remaining four reach a tie and

toss a coin that falls in favor of method (a). When they draw lots the advocate of (c) is not one

of the three selected to move the beams. When method (a) is executed, a beam falls on the head

of the patient and kills him.

The supporter of (c) did not participate in the process that ultimately led to the decision

that yielded the patient’s demise. The collective decision and the cooperative act that yielded the

bad outcome took place without her. She did not in any sense of the word do it. She simply

allowed it to happen by not participating in the final parts of the decision-making process. Does

she bear any responsibility for this outcome? After all, her failure to participate necessitated the

coin toss subjecting the patient to the risk that method (a) would be chosen. Had she participated

and voted for (b), she would have at least reduced the risk and may have saved the patient’s life.

We need not think that doing and allowing are equivalent before we recognize some room for the

responsibility she bears for allowing this bad outcome to come about by failing to participate. It

is evident that by walking away she incurred a burden of responsibility. A heavier one than if

she had continued to participate in the decision-making process, voted for method (b), and things

had still gone wrong. The supporter of method (c) was thrust in a causal order that presented her

with limited and inflexible opportunities to intervene. This was a man-made causal order. But

the fact that it is a constructed order that could have been otherwise does not change the situation

of the individual facing it. Because of the structure of the causal order in which she was thrust,

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the supporter of (c) could have single-handedly reduced the risk to the patient by simply voting

for (b), thus altering the result of the decision procedure.

We learn two things from this example. A person who is part of an organized group with

established decision-making procedures can bear responsibility for failing to participate in these

procedures if her participation could have altered the result in such a way as to prevent a bad

outcome from coming about.41 However the extent of the burden of responsibility that she bears

depends on the structure of the procedure and on the difference she could make to its result. The

above example was designed to produce a limit case. The supporter of (c) alone could have

made the difference. A different permutation of the same example reveals how the burden

becomes harder to pin down when it takes the participation in the right direction of more than

one to make a difference in the result of the collective procedure.

Consider the same example but this time with sixteen passers-by who are club members,

seven vote for (a), five for (b), and four for (c). No one supporter of method (c) could by herself

make a difference to the result. Only if two of them voted for (b) could they alter the result and

thereby reduce the risk by triggering a coin toss, and only if three of the supporters of (c) voted

for (b) would they have guaranteed a result that would have led to the implementation of the less

risky method. Any one supporter of (c) could withdraw entirely from the second stage of the

decision procedure and make no difference to the result. If only one of the supporters of (c)

voted for (b) in the runoff, that too would have made no difference in the result. As soon as the

numbers get larger than one it becomes less clear that a particular individual is the one who made

the difference. This however does not mean that it ceases to be meaningful to speak of the

responsibility of those who could have reduced the risk and potentially prevented the outcome.

Rather, to speak of their responsibility one is compelled to present counterfactual scenarios and

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probability calculations. So that the larger the number of persons whose participation would

have been necessary to make the difference, the smaller the burden of responsibility that each

bears for failing to participate. The larger the number whose participation would have been

necessary to make a difference in the outcome, the more does the situation of each become

absorbed into the larger causal order of the human condition, and the more the individual agency

of each recedes into the background. The smaller the number the more does each individual’s

agency come to the fore. When for example, the party of evil wins the election by one thousand

votes out of tens of millions of possible ones, those who failed to participate bear a heavier

burden for that outcome than if the same party had won by a margin of two million votes.

A question of probability, of the likelihood that an individual’s participation would have

made a difference becomes a factor with moral meaning. And, the responsibility of those who

by failing to participate in collective decision-making processes, allowed a bad outcome to come

about becomes embroiled in controversy over how such likelihood is to be quantified and

measured, and in controversies over hypothetical and counterfactual scenarios. This is

unfortunate but unavoidable. While it makes the responsibility that individuals bear for failing to

participate hard to pin down, it does not eliminate it or render it nonexistent. It merely requires

that claims to political responsibility framed in this manner be qualified and accompanied by

hypothetical scenarios and probability calculations. And those who make these types of claims

in public discourse must be prepared to defend these scenarios and adjust them. The burden of

their challengers is not simply to point out these complications but to offer more credible

scenarios and better probability calculations. The mere existence of these complications

however, does not take individuals off the hook.

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A person who is unmoved by whether she and another thousand could have prevented a

bad outcome, or whether she and five million would have been needed, is morally obtuse. In

political processes, including electoral ones, one individual’s contribution is almost never

decisive. From any individual’s point of view the results are always overdetermined. But, those

who show no concern for the relative difference they could make in “overdetermined contexts

make themselves vulnerable to the suspicion they will be indifferent even when they could make

a difference.”42 An individual’s indifference to the relative difference she could have made to an

outcome by participating in a collective process tells us something about her moral character but

does not in any way relieve her of the burden of responsibility that she bears regardless of her

willingness to bear it. Failure to participate in joint processes, including political ones such as

voting, can be a way of avoiding responsibility as well as a way of incurring responsibility for a

bad outcome.

My argument in this section has gone against the grain of Kutz’s argument that I

elaborated in the previous one. But that is because the responsibility we bear by virtue of

participating is unlike the one that we bear when we fail to participate. The responsibility we

bear for doing is more directly identifiable and more easily ascribable to individuals than is the

responsibility we bear for allowing. When we fail to participate in a joint process and thereby

allow a bad outcome to come about we bear responsibility for it, but it is one that depends for

each of us on our individual potential relative contribution to avoiding the outcome. This type of

contingent responsibility based on probabilities and relative contributions to an outcome is not

absent when we consider the burdens that individuals bear by participating in joint processes. It

is simply bypassed by Kutz’s ingenious argument. In order to ascribe responsibility to

individuals for the outcomes caused by the results of collective processes, we simply need to

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point to their intentional participation in these processes. However, to ascribe political

responsibility to individuals for the bad outcomes they allow to come about when they fail to

participate in collective processes we are forced to take the highly contingent, messy route of

quantifying the difference they could have each made to the outcome. Individuals can easily find

ways of denying the latter type of attributions of responsibility. However, hypothetical and

counterfactual scenarios accompanied by probability calculations can bring this responsibility

home to them and can give it intuitive meaning.

IV. Citizen Responsibility in Popular Elections

In section one we saw that the shared nature of citizenship, as well as the fact that some

of those who enjoy it may fail to exercise it, are two features that raise challenges and

complications for thinking about citizens’ political responsibility. In sections two and three I

argued that these challenges can be met and ought not to obstruct raising questions of citizens’

political responsibility in public discourse. We must simply be cognizant of different directions

of argument that are meaningful to make in public debate when the question of citizen

responsibility arises. If a bad outcome is attributable to the result of a collective process in

which citizens participated, it would be meaningful to speak of a responsibility that they each

bear for that outcome by virtue of their intentional participation in the collective process, even if

they did not intend the result. However, if citizens allowed a bad outcome to come about that

could have been prevented if enough of them had participated in a joint process, the type of

argument would need to shift. In the latter case, it becomes essential to produce hypothetical

scenarios and to calculate the numbers of added participants it would have taken to prevent the

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outcome. Far from being an idle exercise, engaging in debate over such hypothetical scenarios is

essential to the moral education of citizens.

The two challenges I discussed in sections two and three have to do with the form of

citizenship and not with the content of the function of the citizen. At a minimum this function is

to serve as part of a mechanism for making some political decisions. By participating or failing

to participate in collective political processes citizens make individual decisions that are

processed via institutional procedures to yield collective decisions. Whatever else citizens do,

this function is the minimal one that justifies speaking of a distinctive role that they play above

and beyond merely being members of a community or subjects of a political order. The

decisions that citizens have the opportunity to participate in making, can and usually do include

the selection of political personnel. But as in direct democracies, they can also include decisions

on substantive matters of policy. In this section I am interested in how the citizens of modern

mass democracies are connected to bad political outcomes via their participation, or failure to

participate in political decision-making processes, notably mass elections.

Whatever other legitimating purpose they may serve, popular elections in modern

democratic states are procedures which utilize the popular vote as a mechanism for making some

important decisions. As eligible voters, citizens have opportunities to select candidates for

political office or sometimes to select policy positions from a limited list of options on a ballot.43

On the basis of this function alone, I argue that citizens who are entitled to take part in elections

can incur three burdens of responsibility. First, a citizen who participates in an electoral process

bears responsibility for its result just by virtue of participating in it, irrespective of how she

voted. Second, a citizen can bear an added burden based on how she participates, so that those

who vote in favor of a candidate or policy that ends up yielding a bad outcome, bear an

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additional burden of responsibility above and beyond the one that all other participants bear.

Third, citizens can also incur a burden of political responsibility for failing to participate in

elections, if their participation could have potentially helped avert a bad outcome.

Throughout the discussion that follows, I make six assumptions. 1) I assume that the bad

political outcomes that trigger the question of political responsibility are caused by the result of

the electoral process. 2) I assume that we are looking retrospectively, with a good understanding

of the causal steps that connect bad political outcomes to the results of the electoral process. 3) I

assume that the electoral process yields morally significant results, so that the differences

between the choices on the ballot could yield significantly more or less evil political outcomes.

4) In the case of citizens who fail to participate, I assume that a convincing argument can be

made that a likely alternative electoral result in the process under examination would have

prevented the bad political outcome. 5) I assume that we recognize that politicians and

functionaries bear their own far greater burdens of political responsibility than do citizens. 6)

The point of considering citizen responsibility is to enrich public political debate and to

contribute to political education, not to name villains or find individuals to punish.

The Burden of Participating in an Electoral Process

Following Kutz’s account from section two we can say that citizens who participate

intentionally in a collective process such as an election, implicate themselves automatically in its

result, even if they did not intend that result at all. This conforms to the way we treat elections in

modern mass democracies. Those who vote in a competitive political election declare with their

vote their willingness to accept the open-ended result, no matter how much they might disagree

with it. This has morally significant implications for how they stand in relation to the possible

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results. By participating in an electoral decision procedure, voters make clear that although they

might disagree strongly with some of the choices on the ballot, they do not consider any of the

possible results to be beyond the pale. Thus no matter how much they might disagree with the

result of an election in which they participate, they own it because they do not consider it to be

entirely unacceptable. This gives intuitive meaning in the context of popular elections to Kutz’s

general insight that those who participate in a collective process bear responsibility for its result.

One challenge to this line of argument can come from those who not only did not intend

the result that emerged from the process in which they participated, but who participated

precisely in order to oppose it. Having utilized the electoral system to resist a particular result,

such participants would have more than merely “disagreed” with it. They would have actively

opposed it. How can one then burden them with responsibility for that result and argue that they

do not consider it to be beyond the pale? It may have been precisely because they consider it to

be beyond the pale that they were motivated to participate in the first place. There is an

exception to the argument I have presented in the above paragraph. It applies to citizens who

participate in an electoral process to oppose a particular result, and who if that result comes

about are also prepared to resist it actively beyond the confines of the electoral system. These

are citizens who are prepared to organize to challenge the result of the election beyond simply

preparing for the next election. Instead, should a particular result emerge from the electoral

system, they are prepared to challenge the entire mechanism of political decision-making by

engaging in revolutionary acts of resistance. The participation of such citizens in the electoral

process would not burden them with responsibility for results that they would oppose in this

manner. However, all others for whom the question of how to organize and undermine the

result outside of the electoral process does not arise in a serious and practical way declare loudly

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through their participation that they judge the result not to be beyond the pale. Thus they bear

responsibility for it just by virtue of participating in the process that yielded it.

Depending on the structure of the electoral process the result that might trigger questions

of political responsibility will differ.44 In the case of a winner takes all election, the result is the

victory of a particular candidate, party, or policy position. In a proportional representation

system the result can be either 1) when a party passes the minimal threshold needed before it can

be represented at all, or 2) when a party gains enough influence to become a potential governing

coalition partner. Imagine a parliamentary election in which a racist party runs. If the electoral

system in place is of the winner takes all variety, then only one winner is expected to emerge

(whether by a majority or plurality of the votes), and reflection on the citizens’ political

responsibility for the bad result is triggered by the racist party’s victory in the election. At that

point those who participated in the electoral process to oppose this party but who still accept the

result reveal that they are not treating it as beyond the pale. For this they bear responsibility, and

thus bear some responsibility for the evil it brings about after it wins.45

If the electoral system in place is one of proportional representation in which each party

is represented in proportion to the number of votes it receives after a certain minimum threshold,

the situation is somewhat different and the question of citizens’ political responsibility in relation

to the racist party can arise at two stages. If the racist party crosses the minimum threshold for

securing some seats in parliament that constitutes a result for which the citizens who participated

in the electoral process bear some responsibility as long as they tolerate that party’s presence in

parliament. If the racist party achieves the level of representation that allows it a significant role

in policy making (usually by becoming part of the government either alone or in coalition, as a

junior or senior partner) that would amount to a result that resembles victory in the winner takes

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all system. When the racist party achieves either of these two results in a proportional

representation electoral process, those who voted and accept the result bear a burden of

responsibility for that result, even if they voted to oppose this party.

This aspect of citizen responsibility that burdens all of the participants in the electoral

process alike is not to be dismissed or minimized. It is central and comes most into focus in

contexts where the question arises for large numbers of citizens, not whether to ignore the

electoral process as so many do in the U.S., but to actively and vociferously boycott it. To

boycott an electoral process is to declare that some of its likely results are beyond the pale and to

refuse to accept them. Opposition parties and social movements and their supporters frequently

find themselves in such situations in parts of the world in which electoral processes are relatively

new and where the limits of the spectrum of acceptable political alternatives are still under

negotiation. There are results that they see as realistic to expect and that they consider to be

beyond the pale. These are results that they are unable to live with, and by extension unwilling

to take responsibility for. Thus they boycott the elections. Those who boycott an electoral

process bring out in relief the responsibility of those who participate, and the moral burdens the

latter bear irrespective of the direction in which they participate.

The Burden of Failing to Participate in an Electoral Process

So far I have talked about a minimal burden of political responsibility that citizens incur

simply by participating in an electoral process. I have however bracketed the direction of their

participation in the process. I have for example not considered whether those who voted for the

racist party would bear an added political responsibility. I will continue to bracket this question

for now in order to highlight a burden of political responsibility that a citizen may incur by

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failing to participate in an election. This is a burden she bears whether her failure to participate

is in the manner of a boycott or a simple failure. It applies when her failure can be connected to

allowing a bad electoral result to come about.

This burden of responsibility becomes clear once we apply the logic I utilized in section

three above. Consider again the example of the racist party running for parliamentary elections.

If the party wins under a winner takes all electoral system, the first question we must ask is by

what margin. Where the margin of victory is small, those who failed to participate no matter

what their motive was, bear a significant burden, which if the margin is wide might be

negligible. They bear responsibility for allowing a bad outcome to come about that they could

have easily contributed to averting. But the argument for their responsibility for the result would

need to be accompanied by some qualifications. For them to have participated in the collective

process in a way that would have prevented the outcome, they would have needed to have voted

for the party most likely to defeat the racist party. A vote for any other party on the ballot would

not have yielded the desired result. Thus a claim for the responsibility they bear for allowing the

racist party to win must be accompanied by an argument demonstrating the moral significance of

the difference between the victorious racist party and its closest competitor. Only those who find

the second argument convincing, and recognize the closest competitor as a lesser evil than the

racist party, are susceptible to the claim that those who failed to participate bear responsibility

for the electoral result. Furthermore, this claim would need to be supplemented by a probability

calculation showing the likelihood that the addition of any particular vote could have altered the

outcome. If the electoral system is one of proportional representation, a similar logic applies.

The bad result might be that the racist party has achieved the minimum threshold for

representation (usually a percentage of votes cast). The racist party might be in a position to gain

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a sufficient number of seats as to make it a potentially valuable coalition partner in the

government. Here again the failure to contribute to weakening its relative standing in relation to

the other competitors arises as a question of citizens’ responsibility.

Eligible voters who fail to participate in the electoral processes can bear a burden of

political responsibility for bad political outcomes. Unlike Held’s passersby they do not have the

burden of devising a decision procedure. Rather like the members of the club, a procedure is

available to them. At the moment of decision the available procedure shapes an artificial

environment into which eligible voters are drawn, at times against their will. Their right to vote

draws them into a situation that forces on them a moral choice with associated burdens. This

artificial environment created by the decision procedure catapults them into the role of decision-

makers and determines on the basis of its dynamic and criteria whether the individual citizen’s

failure to participate amounts to a morally significant or negligible decision.

The citizen may complain that she did not ask to be in this situation. She may also resent

the entire logic of strategic voting on which this argument relies.46 In fact, she may not approve

of the available options at all. She may have serious misgivings about the system that yields a

ballot that offers her a choice between very unpalatable options. Her failure to participate may

be her small way of resisting a corrupt system in which she has lost faith. I am very sympathetic

to such a stand especially in the context of modern mass democracies. However, at the moment

of decision, on the day in which the ballot is available to be marked, a failure to mark it does not

help address these concerns. The ballot confronts the eligible voter with an opportunity to

intervene in the way that other causal orders of the world confront us with opportunities to

intervene. No matter how constructed such causal orders may be, and how artificial the ballot,

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its artificiality does not render its structure subject to manipulation and adjustment on the day of

the election.

Where electoral procedures yield authoritative results that shape the direction of public

policy irrespective of the level of participation, all of the citizens’ larger concerns about the

limits of the available options are misplaced at the moment of decision. The moment in which

votes are collected and tallied is not a moment in which one can meaningfully question the shape

of the electoral process and show up its limitations. To insist on doing so is to fundamentally

misunderstand one’s situation. The electoral machine in a particular context yields only certain

preprogrammed results. No amount of manipulation at the level of operation can coax it to

change these options. That is a job at the level of design, engineering and programming. A

citizen can legitimately dedicate every minute of her life to questioning the structure of the

electoral process and the limits of its options. However once the moment of decision comes and

she is faced with a vote she cannot avoid responsibility for taking a stand. Faced with a ballot,

the citizen must choose from the available choices. And when she does not choose, she chooses.

To justify her failure to participate, an eligible voter would need to argue that she

considers the choices between likely victors to be morally equivalent. Only then can she truly be

indifferent to the exercise. Should she turn out to have been mistaken, and should the victory of

one party turn out to be disastrous in a way that is beyond anything one could reasonably expect

from its main competitor, it is not enough for her to change the question and turn to big picture

questions. The preprogrammed choices of political electoral processes are often between two or

more evils. Eligible voters ought to strive for the victory of the lesser evil, or at least the defeat

of the greatest of the evil options. If the lesser evil wins, or the greater evil is defeated without

the participation of some, then they are off the hook. But if it is not, then the question

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immediately arises about how much of a difference those who failed to participate could have

made. If the margin by which the greater evil won is relatively narrow, then it is only natural for

the question of the responsibility of those who failed to participate to come up. No matter what

the intentions were of those who failed to participate, their hands are not clean. If the margin of

victory is wide, then any burden of responsibility they bear for failing to participate will be

relatively small. When citizens boycott an election to avoid bearing responsibility for the result,

they only avoid political responsibility associated with doing, but not one associated with

allowing.

The Burden Citizens Bear for the Direction of Their Electoral Participation

We saw above how citizens bear burdens of political responsibility for the bad outcomes

caused by an electoral result depending on whether they participated or failed to participate in

the electoral process. The participants’ burden I have considered so far is borne irrespective of

the direction of the citizens’ participation. However, it cannot be that there is no difference in

the burden of the one who voted for the racist party and the one who did not. Whereas all

participants in an electoral process share a burden of responsibility for the result, there is an

added burden for them to bear depending on how they participated. To make sense of this

burden that citizens bear for the direction of their electoral participation, we need to distinguish

between two types of collective projects that are intertwined in any election. On the one hand is

the project of arriving at a collective decision into which all eligible voters in a particular

electoral procedure are drawn. On the other hand are the different collective projects around

each of the options on the ballot. Those who vote for the same party or the same candidate have

joined with all others who vote in the same way in a collective project, not merely that of

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arriving at a decision, but that of intentionally furthering a particular result. Thus elections

involve two types of collective project, a partisan as well as a nonpartisan one.

Someone who intentionally furthers a particular result is connected to it in a robust

way.47 Should it be the result of the overall process, she would stand towards it in a relationship

that is distinct from the relationship of those who participated in the process in manner that

furthered another potential result. Those who despite their opposition to an electoral result are

connected to it morally because they do not treat it as beyond the pale bear some responsibility

for it, but their burden is lighter than the burden of those who participate in a manner that

intentionally furthers that result. Each citizen is responsible for her ballot choice. Thus in an

electoral process there are two distinct intentions to participate. One is the intention to

participate in a process whereby a decision is made between competing options. The other is the

intention to participate in the process of furthering or obstructing a particular agenda or politic

program. When an individual citizen votes for a particular party or candidate, she intentionally

participates in the process of furthering a political program and agenda and obstructing others.

She intends to bring about a set of political conditions. When she intentionally participates in

furthering the electoral victory of the party that succeeds and causes bad political outcomes, she

bears a special added political responsibility

al

for these outcomes.

We have seen that those who vote in favor of the victor of an electoral process bear a

special responsibility (above and beyond that of all other participants) for the bad outcomes that

this victor causes. As to those who vote for a different option, they do not all have an equivalent

stand. Their responsibility for the bad outcomes caused by the electoral result depends not on

the political agendas of their ballot choice, but on the relative standing of that choice to the result

that is associated with the bad outcome. In a situation in which among the alternative choices on

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the ballot some, perhaps morally compromised ones, have a realistic chance of defeating the

racist party or candidate but other more virtuous alternatives do not, a dynamic is created that

resembles the one surrounding non-participation. Citizens who do not in such a context vote

strategically but instead vote for a virtuous alternative that has no realistic chance of defeating

the racist party, may thereby incur a significant burden of responsibility for the result. If the

margin with which the racist party wins is such that the votes of those who voted for one or more

of the virtuous alternatives could have altered the results had they voted strategically in favor of

the morally compromised but less bad alternative, then we can say about such citizens that by

participating in the common project of voting for these virtuous alternatives, they failed to

prevent a bad outcome. In addition to the burden of responsibility they incurred by simply

participating in the electoral process, they incurred an additional burden that ironically is very

much like that borne by those who failed to participate.

Those who vote for the morally compromised but main competitor of the successful

racist party do not bear this type of responsibility. It is immaterial whether they voted in this

way out of moral commitment or strategically. Their burden is confined to the overall one borne

by all participants. Those who vote for the racist party’s closest competitor bear no added

burden of responsibility for the bad outcomes caused by the racist party other than the general

burden of responsibility they bear for intentionally participating in an electoral process that

yielded that result.

Conclusion

In modern mass democracies, the question of citizens’ political responsibility ought to

come into focus whenever an electoral result causes a bad political outcome. A causal

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connection between that result and the bad political outcome is a necessary condition without

which the question of citizens’ political responsibility has no meaning. Once such a causal

connection is established, citizens are necessarily drawn into the orbit of the question. Those

who participated as well as those who failed to participate in the electoral process under

consideration would need to be encouraged to reflect on their role in it. Only citizens who at the

time of the electoral decision were ineligible or incapable of exercising their vote can stand as

observers in debates over citizens’ political responsibility. All others have a direct moral stake.

When the role of those who failed to participate is raised, we can expect some deep controversy.

For, arguments about their political responsibility will have to be accompanied by counterfactual

scenarios with probability calculations about how their participation could have altered the

result.

There is no clear hierarchy of citizens’ political responsibility with which to structure

public debate on this subject. There are however patterns of argument that can add clarity.

Those who voted in favor of the electoral result in question would need to understand that they

bear a burden above and beyond that borne by the rest of their fellow citizens. And those who

failed to participate would have to understand that their failure does not automatically make them

innocent. They must be prepared to defend their failure to participate against accusations of

having facilitated the electoral result. Depending on the context, they may be able to argue that

their role was insignificant, but that is an argument that would have to emerge from an

engagement with alternative counterfactual scenarios. Those who participated in the electoral

process would need to understand that just because they voted against the ultimate result, they do

not stand towards it as do outside observers. They may have not participated in the joint project

of furthering that result, but they did participate intentionally in the joint project of arriving at a

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collective decision between alternatives of which the result was one. Thus they treated it as not

beyond the pale. As agents in a process that yielded a result that in turn caused a bad outcome;

all those who were eligible to vote and were capable of doing so, each bear responsibility for that

outcome.

It would be unfortunate if in thinking about political responsibility, citizens were to

highlight the role of policy makers and political leaders at the expense of understanding their

own role. The role of political leaders, which would understandably take center stage in debates

over political responsibility, cannot be allowed to obscure the role of the citizens, no matter how

small. If we value and cherish the political agency of ordinary persons then it is incumbent upon

us to identify the concrete ways in which citizens can and do exercise their political agency in

the limited spaces available to them in modern mass democracies. To do so requires that we

resist two extremes that are all too common in our political thinking. On the one hand we must

resist indulging too much in our idealized fantasies of “self-rule” and of citizens agonistically

making a life in common. On the other hand we must resist resigning ourselves to the dismal

image of an administered world in which ordinary individuals have no political agency. In such

an image ordinary persons are understood merely as cogs in political machines, serving the

purposes of impersonal interests and classes. To focus on the concrete ways in which ordinary

citizens who perform no specialized political function exercise their political agency in modern

mass democracies, is to avoid these two extreme images of politics. By focusing on citizens’

political responsibility for the limited political roles they play, I take seriously both citizens’

political agency as well as the narrow confines within which they are constrained to exercise it.

The role of citizen comes about in contexts in which ordinary individuals have the

opportunity to participate in political decision-making processes. Via this role citizens are thrust

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into situations where their participation or failure to participate in political processes is an

exercise of their political agency. To take seriously citizens’ political agency requires that we

treat them as responsible agents. This however is complicated by a universal feature of

citizenship. The citizen role wherever it has come about in societies as different as ancient

Athens and modern mass democracies, does not and cannot involve any institutional mechanisms

for citizen accountability. Only citizens themselves can hold themselves responsible for the bad

political outcomes they help bring about through that role. This makes it more urgent for us to

inject a discourse of citizen responsibility into public debate. Public intellectuals and artists can

through such debate nudge citizens to hold themselves responsible for the role they play in

bringing about bad outcomes. But ultimately citizens themselves must be the ones to do so.

This is why it is particularly important to understand citizens’ political responsibility at the level

of the individual citizen, as a burden that each bears individually for the common political life.

Whereas it may be unavoidable that citizens will always be politically unaccountable for

what they help bring about in performing their role, it would be a deep moral offense for them to

conceive of themselves as beyond all political responsibility. Where the role of citizen is

exercised without any consideration of citizens’ political responsibility, Edmund Burke would be

correct in his characterization of democracy as “the most shameless thing in the world.”48

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1 These links can be direct where citizens make important political decisions themselves, as they did in ancient Athens, or as they do where there are referenda on policy questions, such as in California and Switzerland or they can be indirect where citizens elect representatives to make decisions on their behalf. 2 More than any of the other political roles mentioned above, the role of citizen evokes the image of concrete self-conscious political activity Pericles’ funeral oration famously evokes this idea of self-conscious political activity as a mark of Athenian democracy. 3 By modern mass democracies I mean states that grant citizens basic liberal rights and liberties and provide them with the opportunity to participate in politics by giving them a role in impersonal political decision making processes via mass elections. These can be processes that either involve direct referenda or the election of representatives, or a combination of both. 4 Chapter I of Book III of The Politics of Aristotle. Ed. & Trans. Ernest Barker. 1958. New York. Oxford University Press, p.93. 5 In his Spheres of Justice Michael Walzer takes on this idea and makes a case for why no such category ought to exist. 6 The full quote makes a qualification for the old as well. While the one he makes for the young is consistent with our current understanding, the one he makes for the old is not. The overall point stands, no matter whether one applies it to the young, old, or both. Chapter I of Book III of The Politics of Aristotle. Ed. & Trans. Ernest Barker. 1958. New York. Oxford University Press, p.93. 7 This was the Athenian formal criterion of citizenship since 451/50 BCE during the time of Pericles. (John Thorley The Athenian Democracy Second edition. 2004. New York, Routledge, p. 59). Aristotle considers this criterion in detail, but only later on, when he focuses specifically on the question of who ought to be included among citizens. (In Chapter II of Book III, Aristotle brings up this criterion only to dismiss it as a “popular and facile definition.” (Politics p. 96.)) But before he can determine who ought to be a citizen, Aristotle clarifies some of the salient features of citizenship. 8 Chapter I of Book III of The Politics of Aristotle. Ed. & Trans. Ernest Barker. 1958. New York. Oxford University Press, pp.94-95. There appears to be a serious ambiguity in the original Greek, as translations of this definition can vary quite significantly. Consider for example the translation offered by Arlene Saxonhouse. She writes: “Aristotle now defines the citizen as ‘one for whom there is the freedom [exousia] to share in the offices [arch!s], deliberation [bouleutik!s], and judging [kritik!s] of the city’.”[ (Arlene Saxonhouse Athenian democracy: Modern mythmakers and Ancient Theorists 1996 Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, p. 125)]’. The major difference between this translation and Barker’s is that in the latter it is not a core part of the function of the citizen to have the right or freedom to share in state offices in general. In the Barker translation citizens can be those who do not have such a right but who only have the right to share in deliberation and judging. Aristotle’s discussion of the excellence of the good citizen weighs in favor of Saxonhouse’s translation. For, there he tells us that “the excellence of a citizen may be defined as consisting in ‘a knowledge of rule over free men from both points of view’ [i.e. that of the ruler as well as that of the ruled].” (AP, p.105) Why would a citizen need to have knowledge of how to rule, unless part of being a citizen is to have the freedom to share in the offices of the state? This is not a minor discrepancy. On it hangs the fate of the “mechanics” whose exclusion from citizenship Aristotle justifies by their inability to “achieve the excellence of the good citizen [which requires an experience of ruling as well as of being ruled].” (AP, 108) In Chapter V of Book III Aristotle argues that it makes sense to exclude “mechanics” from citizenship because they “can never achieve the excellence of the good citizen” (AP, p.108) In his note on p.107 Barker comments that “Aristotle here seems to vary his view. Previously he has made only a share in judicial and deliberative office a requisite for citizenship: and this is a requisite which a mechanic might satisfy. Now he makes a share in the ‘offices of the state’, which would seem to mean the executive offices, a requisite. …Perhaps the cause of this change of view is the argument of the previous chapter, with its emphasis on knowledge of ruling as a part of good citizenship.” This controversy is central to the question of inclusion. We cannot escape it when we are considering who ought to be citizens. However, it recedes into the background when we direct our attention to understanding the function of the citizen as citizen. Whether or not someone has the right to share in the offices of the state merely tells us whether he is part of the pool from which the officers of the state can be elected or selected by lot. But once such a selection has been made, is there a function that those who remain and are not selected serve simply as citizens? Once we direct our attention to this question we find that Barker’s translation focuses our attention on this function. 9 First we find that “the citizen in [the unqualified] strict sense is best defined by the one criterion, ‘a man who shares in the administration of justice and in the holding of office.’”(Politics p.93) He then proceeds to explain that by office he does not mean any function that one performs for a set term. On the contrary, the function he is

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referring to is one that is performed for an “indeterminate period.” Furthermore, with his definition he seeks to capture a function that encompasses the role of judge in the popular courts and that of member of the popular assembly. Thus the second stage of his functional definition of the citizen is that “citizens are those who share in the holding of office as so defined [namely as “‘indeterminate office’ [i.e. office held for an indeterminate period]].”(Politics p.94) However, having refined his definition in this way to include “particularly and especially the citizen of a democracy,” he finds he has to refine it further to widen its scope. (Politics p.95) To make the definition more encompassing, and to accommodate different regimes, he reformulates it so that it does not merely encode the practice of Athenian democracy but applies more generally. The third stage in Aristotle’s functional definition of the citizen is the most useful for us today, as our political practice in modern democracies is quite distant from that of ancient Athens. 10 Saxonhouse relies on this point to argue that “the opportunity for participation exists, but there is no requirement that the opportunity be exercised. Herein Aristotle seems to express the two models of citizenship that dominate contemporary debates in democratic theory and that authors such as M.I. Finley and Cynthia Farrar find are separated by two and a half millennia: the active citizenry of ancient Athens versus the apathetic modern citizens.” (126) 11 Mogens Herman Hansen. The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles and Ideology. Trans. J.A. Crook. 1991. Cambridge, Mass. Blackwell, p.143-145. 12 By no means did Citizens make all important decisions. Magistrates had a great deal of power. Although citizens had many more rights, freedoms, and opportunities to participate more actively in politics, these involved a more specialized “office” than that of citizen. 13 Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, p. 113. 14 It may appear at this point that I am using the terms “accountability” and “responsibility” interchangeably. I understand accountability as a subset of responsibility. Questions of responsibility are broad they arise whenever a bad outcome has been brought about by human beings. Sometimes there are institutional channels of accountability through which someone can be brought to account and made to offer the appropriate response for the bad outcome in question. If such mechanisms are either in place, or if it would be desirable to have them, then accountability is the appropriate term. At times however, not only do such mechanisms not exist, but it would also not be desirable to have them. At times all we can hope for is to bring ourselves and one another to account informally. In such instances accountability carries the wrong connotation. I rely on the broader term responsibility. In the case of citizens’ political responsibility, I am not looking to argue for the establishment of formal mechanisms of accountability, but merely to foster a way of speaking in public debate. Kutz uses “accountability” because he is writing in a legal context, and with an eye to legal mechanisms. 15 “Philosophers studying collective action have tended to focus only on the fully cooperative form, the string quartet paradigm. Such examples inevitably generate a conception of collective action thick with mutual obligations and egalitarian dispositions: an account unsuited to the depersonalized, hierarchic, bureaucratic, but nonetheless collective institutions that characterize modern life.” Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, p.11. 16 Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, p.11. 17 Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, p.67. 18 Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, p.67. 19 Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, p.143. In his discussion of “shareholder liability” in Chapter 7, Kutz makes this clear, especially in the example of Johns-Manville shareholders. Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, p. 248. “investors who purchase shares in corporations, or who authorize others to purchase shares on their behalf, as through a mutual fund, do have control over their exposure to the risk that the enterprise’s activities will go awry. Their intentional participation in the collective endeavor does not make them blameworthy…but it does render them accountable in the domain of repair.”Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, p.246. 20 Thus intention to bring about a bad outcome is NOT the lynchpin of responsibility. Rather, responsibility is anchored in causality. Bernard Williams’ broad understanding of responsibility as he articulates it in Shame and Necessity in which cause is the lynchpin is the one I rely on. Only when a bad outcome was caused in an intuitively

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meaningful way by some common project, does the question arise as to whether the participants in that project bear responsibility for it. When I say intuitively meaningful way, I am following Hart and Honore in trying to avoid the trap of the cone of causality. So that cause is not literally everything that caused an outcome, but one that is morally significant, that involves human agency, and is meaningful to us intuitively. 21 The connection between the different participants is not “causal.” In other words it need not be the case that the individual participant herself caused someone to do something before we can speak of a moral link that connects her to the causal process that yielded the bad outcome. 22 “intentional participation generally shapes agents’ normative relations to the consequences of collective action. … Because of their participation, agents can be accountable for acts and outcomes attributable to the group as a whole, as well as for acts attributable to other participating members.” 23 He writes: “I intend to participate in our ‘G-ing’, even if what I intend to do in fact makes little difference, or even hinders, G’s realization.” Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, p.84. 24 Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, p.122. He elaborates further “intuitively, marginally effective participants in a collective harm are accountable for the victims’ suffering, not because of the individual difference they make, but because their intentional participation in a collective endeavor directly links them to the consequences of that endeavor.” Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, 138. He writes further : “just as my actions reflect my will, our actions can reflect my will to the extent I intentionally participate in them.” Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, p. 256. 25 Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, p. 246. 26 Kutz argues“I will argue that intentional participation in a group’s activities is the primary basis for normative evaluation, both when agents contribute to collective harm, and when they fail to contribute to collective goods.” Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, p. 67. 27 When with Kutz I agreed that one’s exact contribution to the bad outcome is not decisive, that was in order to highlight that even when one cannot pin point one’s individual contribution, or isolate it, this does not take away from the intuitive meaning of the enterprise as a joint one. By participating in it each individual has connected himself to the outcome, even if it cannot be ascribed to him individually. Here something similar is going on. The individual’s failure to participate rarely by itself determines the outcome. Usually there are others who if they jumped in could avoid the bad outcome. Here however, the individual has not done anything, but only allowed something to happen. 28 Samuel Scheffler. “Doing and Allowing.” Ethics 114 (January 2004):215-239. 29 Scheffler. “Doing and Allowing.” Ethics 114 (January 2004):215-239, p.216. 30 Scheffler writes “bringing one’s conduct into conformity with norms of individual responsibility is itself something that one does, and not something that one merely allows to happen…from the perspective of the individual agent, the internalized demand that one live up to a standard of responsibility always presents itself as a demand that one do something, namely, that one regulate the exercise of one’s agency in conformity with the relevant norms.” Samuel Scheffler. “Doing and Allowing.” Ethics 114 (January 2004):215-239, p.222 When we either violate these norms of behavior or when we bring about a bad outcome we have broken these standards. This means that this argument does not take a side in the Kantian, consequentialist divide. 31 Samuel Scheffler. “Doing and Allowing.” Ethics 114 (January 2004):215-239, p.222. 32 Scheffler writes: “any plausible set of norms will need to attach some weight to the responsibilities of causal position, since to do otherwise would be to ignore the way in which the exercise of human agency is embedded within the larger causal order.” (“Doing and Allowing.” Ethics 114 (January 2004):215-239, p.238). 33 Scheffler. “Doing and Allowing.” Ethics 114 (January 2004):215-239, pp238-239. 34 When for example we consider public discourse about global warming, the question could be framed in terms of our failure to do our part to save the planet, or in terms of our active participation in processes that destroy the planet. Why is it so essential for public debate for us to know whether global warming is man made? If the planet were of its own accord warming, then we could by reducing our carbon emissions help retard that process, and contribute to saving it and ourselves. But for purposes of public debate about global warming it is not enough to know what we can do to ameliorate the situation and forestall a disaster, but also to know whether we are the ones who have brought the problem about. Once it was established widely that the phenomenon is man-made, the debate

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gained a heightened urgency. I think that the difference between these two ways of thinking about responsibility is of the utmost importance. We can demand of any particular individual to do her part to save the planet. We can also bring individuals to account for the damage they each are doing to the planet. Both arguments are available from within our moral vocabularies, but they are distinct arguments and cannot be collapsed. Whereas it may be easier in public debates to argue from the point of view of what we have done, we are also capable of arguing from the point of view of what we allow to happen. 35 They do so, even though they understand that in feeding one they are still letting millions of others starve. 36 I am not here getting into the details of how far such a burden extends. That will depend on the context. As an individual, I can always feed one, ten, or more persons. The burden of responsibility I have in this regard will not only depend on the difference I can make in each of these lives, but also on how arduous the cost is to me. At some point my individual resources will become insufficient, and the cost to me will become too high. How this calculation is made and where the equilibrium point lies will vary. 37 Virginia Held. “Can a Random Collection of Individuals be Morally Responsible?” The Journal of Philosophy, Volume 67, Issue 14 (Jul.23, 1970), 471-481. 38 Virginia Held. “Can a Random Collection of Individuals be Morally Responsible?” The Journal of Philosophy, Volume 67, Issue 14 (Jul.23, 1970), 471-481; p. 479. 39 Virginia Held. “Can a Random Collection of Individuals be Morally Responsible?” The Journal of Philosophy, Volume 67, Issue 14 (Jul.23, 1970), 471-481; p. 479. 40 Virginia Held. “Can a Random Collection of Individuals be Morally Responsible?” The Journal of Philosophy, Volume 67, Issue 14 (Jul.23, 1970), 471-481; p. 476. See also p.471. 41 To say this is not to suggest that she bears an equivalent responsibility to those who unknowingly voted for the riskiest method. This comparison can for now be bracketed. 42 The context in which Kutz makes this point is unlike the one in which I raise it. He is concerned with overdetermined contexts in which an individual participates in a process that yields a bad outcome. I think that the same moral intuition he relies on there, however applies in overdetermined contexts in which an individual fails to participate in a process that could prevent a bad outcome. Christopher Kutz. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. 2000. New York. Cambridge University Press, p. 190. 43 (the write-in option notwithstanding) 44 For comparisons between different electoral systems see Giovanni Sartori’s Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An Inquiry into Structures, Incentives and Outcomes. 1997. New York. New York University Press. 45 Unless they are willing to breach the contract of democratic procedure and resist the result by engaging in what might amount to a civil war or revolutionary action. If the racist party lost, then those who participated in the process were at risk of having to bear responsibility for an evil result, but they were spared because the matter became moot. 46 See Sartori on strategic voting and wasting one’s vote. An electoral system he discusses in some detail that I have not raised is the double ballot system, in which voters can vote their conscience the first time without need for any strategic voting. In a few weeks time when faced with the second (run off) ballot then they may find themselves ot vote strategically. 47 This applies even if the result she intentionally furthers is a compromise about which she has serious misgivings. 48 Edmund Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France. Hackett, p.82.