Shared Agency and the Ethics of Democracy

Shared Agency and the Ethics of Democracy

EMILEE CHAPMAN*

ABSTRACT

Democracy is a collective activity that entails the creation and operation of collec-

tive agency. The importance of collective agency to democracy raises some impor-

tant puzzles about the ethics of democracy, especially regarding the status of existing

democratic institutions and practices. Foremost among these is the paradox of con-

stitutionalism. On one hand, citizens ought to have the power to change the institu-

tions and practices that structure their interactions and affect the kinds of things

democratic communities are able to do with their public power. On the other hand,

citizens can only exercise power democratically through institutions and practices

that organize their disparate activities into a form of collective agency. How we

resolve this paradox—that is, how we understand the normative status of existing

democratic institutions and practices in practical deliberation—depends on which

model of collective agency we use. This paper argues that the “joint intentions”

model of shared agency is most compatible with mainstream theories of what democ-

racy is for and what it must be able to do. The joint intentions model of collective

agency has a number of important implications for the ethics of democracy, includ-

ing for resolving the constitutional paradox. The joint intentions model of collective

agency suggests that we might think of existing institutions and practices as part of a

shared plan for democracy. If existing institutions and practices have the normative

status of plans then they must have a special status in citizens’ practical deliberations

about how to contribute to democracy.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. MODELING DEMOCRACY AS A JOINTLY INTENTIONAL ACTIVITY . . . 707

A. A Shared Intentions Conception of Democracy. . . . . . . . . . . . 710

B. Shared Intentions and Reciprocity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 715

II. SHARED INTENTIONS AND THE IMPORTANCE OF PLANS . . . . . . . . . . 717

A. Shared Plans and Normative Reasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 719

III. SHARED AGENCY AND THE PARADOX OF DEMOCRACY . . . . . . . . . . 720

A. Democracy, Plans, and a Task of Political Theory . . . . . . . . . 722

* Assistant Professor, Political Science, Stanford University, emileebc@stanford.edu. © 2021,

Emilee Chapman.

705

IV. SCALING UP SHARED INTENTIONS: WHAT MUST MASSIVELY

SHARED AGENCY BE LIKE? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 724

A. What does democracy implicitly commit us to?. . . . . . . . . . . . 729

CONCLUSION: PLANS AND CONVENTIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 731

Normative democratic theory often understands itself as – at least in part – a refor-

mative project. That is, normative theorists aim not only to understand the concept of

democracy and to imagine what ideal democracies might look like, but how to, in light

of this understanding, offer guidance for how citizens and political leaders ought to

behave. This guidance can operate at various levels of abstraction, from identifying

and def‌ining the principles that ought to govern behavior to characterizing the sorts of

institutional proposals citizens ought to support.

Wandering into the territory of recommending reform or pronouncing duties

raises a distinctive concern in democratic theory: how should we think about the

role of existing institutions and practices in an ethics of democracy? A “people”

cannot act (and perhaps cannot even be said to exist) without a set of procedures

for making decisions or taking actions that can plausibly be attributed to the

agency of the people as a whole. Democracy depends on institutions and practices

of public decision making to create a community capable of collective agency

out of what would otherwise be an assortment of individuals. The identity and

character of “the people” depends on the nature of these processes of decision

making. Consequently, the institutions and practices that shape public decision

making are among the most impactful social structures of a political community.

This points to a puzzle at the heart of democracy. On one hand, the people ought

to have the power to change these institutions and practices that structure their

interactions and affect the sorts of things citizens are able to do or even imagine

doing with their public power.

1

On the other hand, citizens can only exercise

power democratically through institutions and practices that organize their

1. The point of democratic institutions is to constrain and structure political activity, channeling it

into forms of collective agency and maintaining conditions of political equality. This function of

democratic institutions is in one important way empowering. Jeremy Waldron argues that the task of the

constitution of a democracy “involves empowering those who would otherwise be powerless, the

ordinary people who in most polities are the subjects, not the agents of political power.” JEREMY

WALDRON, POLITICAL POLITICAL THEORY: ESSAYS ON INSTITUTIONS 37 (2016). But in doing so,

democratic constitutions (and the institutions and practices that compose them) also limit the agency of

the community to shape their shared public life. Constitutions do not just preserve democratic rights and

procedures. They also help preserve particular identities, cleavages, and coalitions, as well as the forms

of social organization and political culture that arise in response to and/or f‌lourish in the structural

conditions created by particular democratic institutions. The entrenchment of particular rights and

procedures, even if on the whole enabling to democratic agency, makes it harder to contest certain

political realities and in this sense, constrains democratic agency. Moreover, as constitutions age, the

balance is likely to shift away from their empowering aspects toward their disempowering aspects. This

may be true both because the entrenchment of particular political realities comes to be increasingly

experienced by citizens as oppressive and alienating and because the constitution no longer functions as

intended, as institutions become subject to corruption and capture.

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