Not I Do It”,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supp Vol.49 (1975) pp.171-209.
40 Op. cit. p.43.
41 I accept that there may be other non-consequential motivations. Citizens may feel that they have some
moral significance to such contributions or failures to render such contributions.43 At this stage in my investigation, then, it appears that this ability to contribute to the collective endeavour of voting for a preferred candidate may be a distinct benefit or freedom
offered by democracy – a freedom that may not be commensurable with liberal freedoms.
Thus, we can also note that the paradox of voting evaporates. I mean, here the apparent paradox that individual votes cannot cause the outcome of an election and yet we know
42 When considering contributions to the collective endeavour it makes no sense to conclude that
individuals do not contribute to overdetermined collective activities – unless there is some means of distinguishing between putative contributors so that we can tell that some do contribute and some do not.
43
It should be noted, though, that the existence of this contribution does not necessarily constitute a benefit for the voter nor does it necessarily create, in some moral schema, an imperative to vote. This disjunction will be considered below [will it?] but one particular factor worth commenting upon here is the role that additional knowledge plays. Up to now, the discussion of democracy has implicitly been of an idealised system where voters are unaware of the position and intention of other voters. But in the real world, voters may have a fairly good idea about how other voters will vote. They may know about the past voting habits of voters in their constituency. They may also know of opinion polls which cast light on the intentions of other voters.
Consider for a moment a variation to Parfit’s example of the four rescuers:
The alarm is raised. Unaware of how many others are available to counterbalance the lift, five men arrive at the scene. Only four can counterbalance the lift. No effort is required to
counterbalance the lift. Nothing is to be gained by being the one man not taking part in the rescue. There is no question of leaving the scene. Indeed, there is a sense in which the non-rescuing fifth man will miss out on the kudos of being an actual rescuer. Four out of the five are chosen. Do only those four share in the rescue? That seems wrong. Surely all five offered to contribute to the rescue. Surely they each share in the moral plaudits. Parfit thinks so. He posits the principle that,
Suppose that here is some group who, by acting in a certain way, will together benefit other people. If someone believes that this group either is, or would be if he joined, too large, he has no moral reason to join this group. A group is too large if it is true that, if one or more of its members had not acted, this would not have reduced the benefit which this group gives to other people. [Op. cit. p.83 (Section 30).]
Similarly, the knowledge of the intentions of other potential voters has a bearing on any moral imperative to vote on the basis of the outcome of the ballot. If it is clear from the demography of a constituency and the results of previous elections that the result is a foregone conclusion, then there can be no
consequentialist imperative to vote in order to secure the preferred outcome. In Parfit’s terms (see above), the group of voters is too large. The group of voters supporting the undoubted winner is already numerous enough to secure victory. The group of voters who would rather another candidate be elected will not be numerous enough to succeed. In effect, an individual voter who supports the inevitable victor can choose not to vote but probably has as much right to claim the plaudits for the election of that candidate. [Even if, for example, the act of voting involved a day long hike over rough and difficult terrain, in order to get to and from the polling station, it is not entirely clear why the non-voter does not share in the victory as long as there was a preparedness to vote if there was any uncertainty about the outcome. If enough people are already prepared to do the necessary to achieve some outcome, it is a waste of time and effort to duplicate their efforts.] However, as soon as the election is in doubt, then a potential voter must vote in order to claim a share of the rightness of the election.
that the number of individual votes does determine an election outcome. If voting is a corporate or collective activity then it makes no sense to claim that individuals cannot cause any outcome and have no influence and, for that reason, they gain nothing from voting. How could an individual cause an election result? Electing a candidate is a collective activity not an individual one. But voters do contribute to the collective endeavour and voters share in any victory or defeat. If any moral weight attaches to the victory or defeat of a particular candidate (i.e. the election of candidate A is bad because of the bad things he has promised to do), then voters will have acted rightly or wrongly depending upon their choice.44
Does Democracy Provide an Opportunity to Contribute to Collective Decision-Making that is a Morally Significant Freedom/Benefit for Citizens?
I have noted that pursuing a particular democratic outcome (i.e. the election of a preferred candidate or the approval of a referendum question) is a collective endeavour and have established that, while individuals do not cause the outcome when considered as isolated individual voters, they can contribute to the outcome – democracy offers the freedom to contribute to particular democratic ends. (Of course, a democratic system may not give individuals the chance to have much (or any) influence on, or contribute to, the identity of the choices available.45) This freedom is of a somewhat different ilk from other
44 So for example, consider that, in the face of a fascist candidature in an election somewhere in United
Kingdom, the three main parties agree to put forward a single anti-fascist candidate. There is a very large turnout in favour of the coalition candidate and the fascist candidate is trounced. It is both appropriate and correct to place moral value on the activity of each non-fascist voting elector. There is no pretence in stating that each anti-fascist voter has contributed to the outcome – that each voter shares in the victory, as it were.
45 In the case of referendums, there are polities which give voters the chance to propose referendum
individual freedoms. For type 3 activities, the freedom to aspect of the freedom is only a freedom to contribute to the preferred outcome.46 The individual cannot bring the outcome about by their own efforts. Of course, in the case of what we think of as liberal freedoms (freedoms to carry on type 1/2 activities), we are considering freedoms where the individual is considered to be free just because there is no societal restraint over a range of activities that the individual may wish to pursue by themselves and that may be
successfully pursued by themselves. The freedom to contribute to a collective endeavour,
though, is the freedom to contribute to a contingent outcome. The possibility that a contribution will not be efficacious is inherent. If a democratic outcome was bound to occur, then a contribution to that outcome would be redundant. In fact, there could not be any contributions at all. The outcome would have to transpire whether or not there were contributions and that, of course, would be paradoxical. A contribution can only be made to an endeavour that may fail through want of sufficient contributions. What voters are being offered is not the opportunity to contribute to an outcome that will transpire come what may but the opportunity to contribute to a collective endeavour that could fail, at least theoretically. Conversely, for there to be a freedom to contribute, it must also be the case that the individual voter can make a real contribution to the preferred democratic outcome – it must be the case that the preferred democratic outcome may occur – there must be the possibility of success. We can think of this as the inherent contingency of any type 3 collective activity. (There is another type of contingency or lack of it. In