Reading Interrogations for Equality Seminar Week 13. Political Equality December 10, 2009 Alex Hyun I found the utopian representative democracy proposals described in Erik’s Social Empowerment and the State to be really interesting, and I’d like to discuss them in class – their viability and attractiveness. In particular, I found the idea of forming a national, randomly-selected “Citizens Assembly” very appealing, though I do have some concerns about it. I presume that if a person is randomly selected to be on the Citizens Assembly, they would have the option of opting out. Otherwise, a Citizens Assembly policy would be an objectionable strike against people’s autonomy, for it would force them to: (1) leave their jobs for several years, (2) move their immediate families to the state in which the Citizens Assembly gathers (or else be separated from them for the duration of Citizens Assembly duty, and (3) leave behind their extended families and closest. But in light of the above-mentioned serious inconveniences that go along with participation, it seems to me that most people would not want to be on a Citizens Assembly. I mean, most people strongly dislike jury duty, and Citizens Assembly duty would be a thousand times more disrupting to one’s life than jury duty. To ensure that there are enough ordinary people willing to make the sacrifices required to be on the Citizens Assembly, it seems that there should be some strong incentives to get enough ordinary folk to participate. Erik mentions that “remuneration would be set at a high enough level to create strong financial incentives for most citizens to agree to participate.” But for those who are already sufficiently financially secure, would mere financial remuneration really outweigh the inconveniences that go along with participation in the assembly? Gina Schouten One thing I really hope we can do in seminar this week is to talk through Joshua Cohen’s “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy.” I’m having a lot of trouble following the argument. In particular, I’m having trouble understanding the proposal that Cohen is making and how it differs from Rawls’s notion of democracy. At first I thought there was something like this going on: Suppose a democracy enacts the “right” policy. Is that policy the right policy because it was chosen democratically, or was it chosen democratically because it’s the right policy (and a democracy is particularly well-suited to recognize the right policy because it encourages inclusion of many different views, and because it helps inculcate the virtue of reasonableness, etc.)? I don’t want to defend this interpretation of what’s going on in this paper; in fact I think it’s probably not right. So what is going on? Cohen describes the disagreement this way: Rawls takes the ideals of fairness and equality as fundamental and the ideal of democracy as derivative; in contrast, Cohen thinks that democracy is a fundamental ideal. Can we talk more about what this means? Prior to reading this paper, if someone had asked me whether democracy is a fundamental value like fairness, I would have said that it’s not, and I would have thought the answer was fairly uncontroversial.Interrogations Sociology 915 & Philosophy 955. Session 13 2 Can someone help me understand what kind of moral status Cohen thinks deliberative democracy has? And if he thinks that democracy has non-derivative moral value, can someone help me understand why he thinks that? Justin Lonsbury Regarding deliberative democracy as Cohen describes it, I’ve just got a few questions. Cohen explains that deliberative democracy occurs among equals who are able to reason well enough to advance, support, and criticize proposals. This seems to make good sense to me. However, I’m left wondering 1) what counts as sufficiently reasonable and 2) who this determination might exclude from a deliberation among equals. Does sufficient reason have as prerequisites specific background knowledge, certain norms of discourse, or expectations as to the forms of argument? Are personal narratives as valid as quantitative data? It seems that emphasizing deliberation and reason overemphasizes persuasion and rhetoric, favoring particular people with particular histories. Even an emphasis on principles themselves is a particular way of thinking about things. Principles are abstractions, necessarily separated and distanced from the concrete lives of real individuals. This abstraction can end up creating dilemmas and problems out of real people, othering them in ways that can distort reason into simple and superficial rationalization of ugly ideas. Cohen does say that deliberation should involve a “full range of expression,” but I’m wondering what that really means when placed next to an emphasis on reason, rationality, and persuasion. Jeffrey Grigg Having once spent a week as a juror, I was initially skeptical of the “Random Selection Citizen Assemblies” proposal (Wright, 2009: 120-125). But upon reflection my qualms somewhat, particularly when considered in relation to our current legislative system. For example, my impression is that legislators spend an inordinate amount of their time securing their re-election; randomly selected citizens would get to spend that time on other worthwhile things. Also, these assemblies would likely be more representative than actual juries, given the ability that attorneys have to eliminate candidates from the pool. If being a member of an assembly was an honor in addition to a duty, then individuals selected would likely serve their term. I was impressed by the earnestness and sense of responsibility with which my fellow jurors assumed our task, the memory of which gives me some faith in the prospect of a randomly selected assembly. There would of course need to be bureaucrats and staffers to keep the system going (as is current practice), but I imagine that many of the questions an assembly faced would be no more technically and morally challenging—and in many cases less so—than those faced by a typical legal jury.Interrogations Sociology 915 & Philosophy 955. Session 13 3 I also look forward to hearing everyone’s ideas about Cohen’s chapter. Deliberation sounds appealing, and I think thanks to Cohen I can recognize it, but I missed the part about how our society will achieve such a goal. In particular, his assertion