{"title":"Racial Vote Dilution and Gerrymandering","authors":"James L. Wilson","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvdf0kn3.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvdf0kn3.13","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores one important controversy bedeviling nonproportional, territorial-districting systems such as those that exist in the United States: the problem of racial minority vote dilution. Vote dilution is indeed a serious political injustice, and consideration conception demonstrates why. In some circumstances, districting schemes diluting minority votes reflect and promote broader deliberative neglect of certain minority groups-that is, they reflect and promote failures of consideration. Recognizing these injustices does not commit one to supporting the proportional representation of groups in the legislature. The discussions of proportional representation and vote dilution together reveal that the fair representation of groups requires a variety of forms of consideration, and that there are few institutional means that will universally guarantee those forms of consideration in all political societies. These analyses also explain what is objectionable about partisan gerrymandering—that is, efforts to draw districts to favor a particular political party. Such efforts deny various forms of consideration to supporters of other parties.","PeriodicalId":185107,"journal":{"name":"Democratic Equality","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121401759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Oligarchic Threats","authors":"James L. Wilson","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvdf0kn3.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvdf0kn3.14","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter discusses how the influence of wealth in political processes undermines democracy—despite formal equality in voting rights—by promoting the deliberative neglect of poorer citizens. This conflict between the disproportionate influence of the rich and the appropriate consideration of the poor and economically middling results from general conditions of deliberative scarcity. In these conditions, more speech for some—or, more precisely, more consideration for some, provoked by certain kinds of speech—really does come at the expense of consideration for others. Political equality requires a fair division of responsibility among advocates and listeners for ensuring this consideration is granted. Wealth inequality threatens such fairness. The chapter then defends a reformist response to this oligarchic threat in the form of policy solutions aimed at limiting the use of wealth for political power. The difficulty of truly severing economic and political power, however, suggests that political equality may, as a practical matter, be incompatible with great economic inequality, whatever the formal nature of democratic institutions. When one views democracy as primarily about the distribution of formal political power one ignores this practical incompatibility.","PeriodicalId":185107,"journal":{"name":"Democratic Equality","volume":"121 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126831165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Democratic EqualityPub Date : 2019-09-03DOI: 10.23943/princeton/9780691190914.003.0012
James L. Wilson
{"title":"Judicial Review","authors":"James L. Wilson","doi":"10.23943/princeton/9780691190914.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691190914.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter assesses whether judicial review of legislation is compatible with political equality. Judicial review typically involves the right of some group of judges—often with very distant, if any, electoral authorization—to overturn acts of elected legislative authorities. In empowering the unelected over the elected, many lawyers, philosophers, and ordinary citizens believe that such review is undemocratic. The chapter argues that a well-designed system of judicial review could be compatible with political equality, despite the institutional inequalities it involves, if such review reliably promotes the consideration of citizens' judgments that would otherwise be neglected by the legislative process. Notably, this is not an argument that judicial review is justified because it protects individual rights from democratic abuse. It is an argument that judicial review is justified because it contributes to a regime that as a whole better instantiates political equality than would a regime without such review. However, the systems of judicial review in place in the United States and elsewhere likely require reform if they are to meet this standard.","PeriodicalId":185107,"journal":{"name":"Democratic Equality","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133427154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Against Equal Power","authors":"James L. Wilson","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvdf0kn3.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvdf0kn3.7","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter addresses what is probably the most common and most influential view of political equality: the view that political equality requires institutions that guarantee citizens equality of power over common decisions. This view implies that rule according to majority vote of all citizens is necessary and sufficient to satisfy the demands of political equality. The chapter argues that this position focuses too narrowly on one moment of the decision-making process: the moment of translating citizens' judgments into legislative outcomes. As a result, it neglects the need for fair processes both preceding legislative votes—processes of agenda setting, deliberation, and representation, for instance—and succeeding those votes; for instance, in administrative procedure. It also fails to respond to the need to secure political equality over multiple iterations of collective decision making. Instead of the equal-power view, then, there is a need for a conception of political equality that reflects the democratic demand for equal political status over time.","PeriodicalId":185107,"journal":{"name":"Democratic Equality","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124280367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Democratic Deliberation","authors":"James L. Wilson","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvdf0kn3.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvdf0kn3.10","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines how the requirement of appropriate consideration regulates institutions and practices of political deliberation. These institutions and practices do not directly determine what the political community will do, as legislation does, but they shape the character of these decisions. Accordingly, they determine in significant part whether the regime is truly democratic. The chapter also critiques a family of views that claim fair deliberation requires equality of influence among citizens. The most basic problem with these views is their narrow conception of citizens' interests in fair deliberation. This narrowness leads the views to largely ignore a variety of affective, unconscious, arbitrary, and discriminatory ways in which citizens respond to efforts at influence. By contrast, the appropriate-consideration conception of political equality properly responds to the plurality of citizens' deliberative interests. The chapter then suggests what appropriate consideration requires of common deliberation, and how people should vary the scope and character of the consideration granted to different citizen judgments under different circumstances. These requirements attend both to individuals' claims for direct hearings for their views, and to broader concerns about a fair structure for synthesizing the various and conflicting judgments rendered by different citizens.","PeriodicalId":185107,"journal":{"name":"Democratic Equality","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129366381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Democratic EqualityPub Date : 2019-09-03DOI: 10.23943/princeton/9780691190914.003.0008
James L. Wilson
{"title":"Unequal Voting","authors":"James L. Wilson","doi":"10.23943/princeton/9780691190914.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691190914.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter assesses how the inequalities in voting power involved in the US Senate and in the Electoral College used to elect the president violate the requirements of political equality. The Senate comprises two senators from each state. States with large populations get the same number of votes in the Senate as do states with small populations. Because the states vary considerably in population, there are large inequalities in how many citizens are represented by a senate delegation. This unequal representation of individuals in the Senate constitutes objectionable political inequality. The Senate is thus unjustifiably undemocratic. This conclusion has implications for the election of the US president, as the Electoral College process for such election tracks what the chapter argues is the malapportionment of the Senate. This inequality, too, is objectionable, and it should be eliminated. The reasons for a more egalitarian election of the president are all the more urgent given that the inequalities in the Senate are much more constitutionally entrenched, and thus likely to remain. The election of the president should mitigate that inequality rather than exaggerate it.","PeriodicalId":185107,"journal":{"name":"Democratic Equality","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123650928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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