Philanthropy and democracy: Two kinds of authority

In 2000, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation tackled an issue concerning the American education system: unsatisfactory high school graduation rates and college entry rates, especially in urban school districts (Ravitch, 2011). Between 2000 and 2008, this foundation donated more than $2 billion to 2600 schools across 45 US states. Bill and Melinda Gates's aim was clearly spelled out: they saw the K−12¹ education system as “obsolete”² and in need of drastic reforms (Ravitch, 2011). The Gates Foundation's leaders observed that some schools in the United States could host up to 4000 or 5000 pupils, leading to the neglect of a portion of students who needed extra attention. Based on contemporary research and already-existing movements in civil society,³ they concluded that smaller schools were the key to students’ success.

In a context of public budget cuts, not many school boards could refuse a multimillion-dollar philanthropic donation. Hence, the Gates Foundation started to distribute money all over the United States, tying its gifts to conditions that would promote an effectiveness-based conception of education. At first, schools were asked to restructure and split themselves into independent units of no more than 400 students. Later, performance-based pay for teachers and national-standards tests, serving as effectiveness yardsticks, became mandatory for funding.

Although this system benefited some schools, it created more problems than it solved in the great majority of cases. For example, the fragmentation of large schools into small autonomous units increased conflict and competition for resources and deprived students of a significant range of activities that were only provided in larger institutions. Praised in the beginning, the Gates program was sharply criticized in 2005 when the first evaluations came out. In 2008, the foundation's directors recognized the bad start of their program and mostly put the blame on the lack of receptivity of the schools they helped or on teachers’ lack of competence. A few months later, the foundation decided to all but shut the program down.

In a democracy, there are good reasons to believe that the making of collectively binding decisions about such public goods as school infrastructures, education programs, and teachers’ salary should be carried out by citizens or people who speak in their name. However, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's case shows a sense in which some people or organizations, by virtue of their private resources, have an additional and sometimes larger say on such questions. This raises the question whether the logics of democracy and philanthropy are compatible. The question is more pressing because philanthropic donations are generally tax subsidized, representing therefore a redirection of public money (Pevnick, 2013) toward aims likely to advance donors’ personal interests.

Political philosophers have debated the role that philanthropy should have in liberal democratic states. On the one hand, a good amount of work argues that philanthropy should not assume a role in distributive justice, as private and voluntary redistribution of basic goods is too unreliable (Beerbohm, 2016), might affect egalitarian values (Cordelli, 2012), reinforces power asymmetries (Lechterman, 2021), and constitutes a paternalistic type of assistance (Saunders-Hastings, 2022). On the other hand, philanthropy may help promote social innovations (Reich, 2018), foster a vibrant cultural life (Pevnick, 2013), serve as a means for intergenerational justice (Cordelli & Reich, 2016), uphold public institutional action (Ceva, 2021), or supplement the provision of goods unrequired by justice (Lechterman, 2021). All in all, philanthropic actions have been praised for allowing a variety of interests to be included in collective decision-making while being criticized for the unequal manner by which it includes them (Saunders-Hastings, 2022).

While many political philosophers have thus discussed the normative question of why philanthropy might or might not be desirable in a democracy, few have paused to address the prior and more fundamental analytical question of what, if anything, makes philanthropy inherently specific in such a way that it may raise issues of compatibility with democracy. I argue in this paper that, although philanthropy and democracy aim at the same goal, they instantiate two distinct forms of political authority. Political authority is the morally and legally legitimate power of an individual or institution to give direction to public action.⁴ In a democratic society, such a direction-giving activity (the practice of authority) is carried out by collectively binding decision-making. I show how, while democratic practices enable people to make mutually binding decisions together, philanthropic acts allow them to give direction to public decisions and actions based on their own unilateral preferences. Building on this basic observation, I argue that philanthropic donations may be vectors of power, and when they are, they carry a specific form of authority that differs from that underpinning the democratic logic of authority.

This paper unfolds in the following way. I start with a brief sketch of democracy as a practice of authority (Section 2). I then offer a conceptual analysis of philanthropy, showing how it can be conceived of as an authority practice (Section 3). I then provide an overview of how we can conceive of the relationship between philanthropy and democracy (Section 4). Finally, I develop my account of philanthropy as an authority-constituting practice defined by the three constitutive rules of unilateralism; first & third personality, and externality of currency (Section 5).

The aim of this work is primarily analytical. Hence, when I point to a divergent relation between the democratic and philanthropic logics of authority, I do not defend one practice against the other. Of course, as is often the case in political theory, my analytical and conceptual work may serve to elucidate further normative issues. For example, my discussion suggests that the analytical distinction that philanthropy and democracy are different decision-making tools, which can inform the normative question of what tool a polity should choose, knowing that the choice would change, for better or worse, the nature of the relationship between those implicated in those decisions. In this sense, while my primary interest in the paper is analytical, the distinction I shall draw can usefully inform future normative appraisals of the role of philanthropy in a democracy.

This paper inquiries into philanthropy within a particular mode of social and political organization: democracy. To gain a clear idea of what I mean when I point to a divergent relation between the democratic and philanthropic logics of authority, I briefly introduce the former concept. To do so, I build on Ceva and Ottonelli's (2021) paper “Second-Personal Authority and the Practice of Democracy”, which offers a descriptive (nonnormative) account of democracy.

Ceva and Ottonelli identify the basic features of the practice of democracy. They do not offer reasons why we should prefer democracy over other types of political organization, nor do they concern themselves with defining democracy. Their aim is rather to understand what making democratic decisions and living under these decisions involve. For Ceva and Ottonelli (2021), democracy is a rule-based social and political practice. That means that democratic practices are defined by a set of rules that instantiate special actions and relations that exist only within these rules. It also means that those who engage in the democratic practices are assigned specific rights in the form of normative power and roles in a way that is particular to this set of rules (Ceva & Ottonelli, 2021).

One of the specific roles instantiated by democratic practices is that of maker of collectively binding decisions (Ceva & Ottonelli, 2021). Democratic actors (i.e., citizens) wield the authority to make decisions together, either directly (e.g., through referenda) or indirectly (e.g., by electing representatives), and those decisions bind citizens according to a specific relationship of rights and duties. What characterizes and differentiates this authority from other types of decision-making power (such as monarchic or oligarchic) is the set of rules that constitute the logic of the democratic practice.

In Ceva and Ottonelli's paper, these constitutive rules are twofold. First, democratic authority is mutual (Ceva & Ottonelli, 2021). Mutuality refers to how the democratic authority is exercised. It means that the democratic authority, and the decisions that result from it, is exercised jointly by all decision-makers. Eric Beerbohm (2012) suggests that this mutualism is what makes citizens both “cosubjects of the law and coauthors” (Beerbohm, 2012, p. 44). This contrasts, for example, with the power of a queen, who can unilaterally enact laws that will constrain her people but not herself.

Second, democratic practices are also second-personal (Ceva & Ottonelli, 2021). The notion of personality invoked here refers to the source of an authority, that is, the reasons that triggers person X's action. Second- personality is the idea that what triggers X's action is person Y's reasons, as in an I–you relationship (Darwall, 2006). Democracy involves second-personality because of the specific type of rights that are instantiated during this practice. Democracy generates what are called claim-rights. Following a Hohfeldian analysis, those who hold this kind of right can claim (i.e., they are the source of) certain treatment from specific individuals: the duty bearers (Hohfeld, 1919).

Say, for example, that I make an oral agreement (instantiating this specific type of aforementioned relationship between claim-rights and duties) with a friend giving him the right to use my guitar for a gig. By that agreement, my friend becomes bound by a duty to give me back my guitar at the end of the concert. Moreover, I will have the right to reclaim my guitar, and my friend will be the only person allowed to fulfill the duty. What triggers my friend's duty—his reason to give me back my guitar—is my claim-right. The practice of democracy binds citizens in their use of power in the same way. As all democratic citizens are claim-right holders, they also are duty bearers. This means that, for example, when citizens vote directly on a given topic,⁵ it gives them the authority to collectively decide the content of a law and it binds those citizens to respect the content of the newly decided law because each of them has a claim-right and a duty toward the others. Thus, by virtue of their participating in the democratic practice, citizens become the owners and sources of each other's rights and duties. This leads Ceva and Ottonelli (2021) to note that “the relations between democratic voters constitute a new ‘we,’ a collective of rights holders who, in that very capacity and no other, jointly recognize each other as the final authorities on their reciprocal claims and duties” (p. 6).

Mutualism hence enacts how the democratic authority is exercised (jointly by all decision-makers), while second-personality underlines the source of citizens’ reason for action (their reciprocal claim-rights and duties). I suggest adding a third constitutive rule of democratic authority to mutuality (exercise) and second-personality (source); it concerns the authority's currency. This rule concerns what gives an authority its effective action-power. By currency, I refer to the resources that empower the authority bearer in the making of collectively binding decisions. It is helpful to think about the currency of an authority as a token. In a democracy, citizens may only make use of one specific type of token. This token, which is at the root of all democratic decisions, is the democratic vote.⁶ When citizens enter the democratic decision-making process, they are granted voting rights.

Voting rights as tokens reflect the basic idea of a one-person, one-vote system: they are at the same time unique and similar. They are unique because each citizen disposes of their own single token. But all tokens are similar in the sense that they are worth the exact same amount of power. When a citizen casts a vote, they exercise no more authority than any of their co-citizens. Moreover, these tokens only exist (i.e., have currency) within the democratic decision-making process. They do not exist prior to, after, or outside the democratic institution. Friends do not have this type of authority over each other, nor is this kind of authority possessed by virtue of citizenship relationships alone. For example, it is not enough that a group of friends democratically vote in favor of building a new theater for asking other people in the neighborhood to contribute to the project. Voting acquires its binding capacity on a given constituency only if carried out within a special institutional settings; it is democratic when this setting implicates every other citizen, as they are engaged in mutual and second-personal relationships.

I revisit the constitutive rules of democracy in Section 5 when I discuss their differences from those of philanthropy. Before I do that, I must characterize the practice of philanthropy.

Now that the background of this work has been set, I proceed with a conceptual analysis of philanthropy. This section allows me to introduce the conception of philanthropy as a social and political practice.

An unanimously accepted definition of philanthropy does not exist. Various terms, such as charity, nonprofit sector, third sector, benevolence, eleemosynary acts, and alms, describe the action or context of giving. For Jenny Harrow and Siobhan Daly, this is because philanthropy is a clustered and essentially contested concept. It is clustered because it is “capable of being multiply defined by multiple stakeholders, so that parallel understandings of its nature and purpose coexist in research” (Harrow, 2010,p. 123), while its essential contestability is reflected by the internal complexity, diverse describability, the multidimensionality, as well as the continuous competition that exist between the different normative conceptualization of philanthropy (Daly, 2012).

One of the many conceptions of philanthropy views it as a practice: “the voluntary contribution of private resources (usually money, but also in-kind goods or time) for broadly public purposes, and for which the giver does not receive payment in the ordinary sense (though she may receive inducements, thank-you gifts, or special consideration of other kinds, e.g., access to concert tickets). Such voluntary contributions may be made by groups or legal entities like corporations as well as by individuals” (Saunders-Hastings, 2019, p. 1). More simply put, philanthropy can be outlined as the voluntary commitment of private property for public purposes (Ostrower, 1997), as a social and political practice that is regulated by formal and informal rules (Lechterman, 2021). From this perspective, philanthropy allows private individuals to have a say in what is considered of public interest.

Following this conception, I highlight four defining features of philanthropic practice. First, it can only be exercised by private individuals or organizations; it cannot be exercised by the state or its representative. A government can incentivize philanthropic actions, but it cannot give money or in-kind goods away in a philanthropic way. Let us imagine that, following a pandemic, elected officials decide to provide an exceptional grant, allocating money to their country's worst off. To fund this grant, the government decides to collect extra taxes from the richest 5%. It cannot be said that the people targeted by this grant benefited from charity from the richest 5%. They receive this money because, following a decision made with democratic logic, they have a claim-right to it, which triggers a second-personal reason for action by the taxpayers. This also differentiates philanthropy from actions exercised by public international organizations such as development-aid agencies, as in this case also the decision to provide resources emerges from public decisions. While states can be authors and recipients of charitable donations, only private individuals and organizations can make philanthropic donations.

Second, to be described as philanthropic, an action must aim at public purposes. For present purposes, I leave this concept somewhat open, as a public purpose can take many forms. However, not just any purpose can be considered as public. Following Lechterman (2021) “Public” can mean “open to all” (in the way that a “pub” is open to any customer with the means to pay for a drink), “universal” (in the way that “public utilities” are meant to cover all residents of a region), as well as “collectively authorized,” “collectively beneficial,” and “governmental.”⁷ Consequently, “private” would rather refer to acts benefiting definite individuals. In this sense, nonpublic or private purposes would include market exchanges, parents’ inheritance to their children, gifts one makes to one of his or her friends, or again donations to clubs of which one is a member. The necessary condition of publicity is that any philanthropic act aims at virtually benefiting the greatest number, where “virtually” means that it should be accessible to anyone. Obviously, cases like donations to research against orphan disease, which may concern a very restricted number of patients, would still count as philanthropic under this framework. Similar conceptualizations of accessibility may be found in the Anglo-American context where it is stated that philanthropy should benefit an indefinite number.

Third, philanthropy must be voluntary, understood as not being coercively imposed. Taxes cannot be considered as philanthropy because the state uses its coercive power to force citizens to pay what they must and what they are duty bound to pay (Murphy & Nagel, 2002).

Fourth, philanthropy is concerned with the transfer of private property. If money is the first type of resource that comes to mind when one thinks about philanthropic donations, it is far from being the only one. Time, goods, and services may all be donated as well. While elite philanthropy is often characterized by the amount of money that flows through organizations such as foundations (MacKenzie, 2021), cash is rarely the final contribution of these institutions. To be provided on a large scale, medical aid, new buildings, counseling, legal assistance, and water distribution may require a lot of money, but their recipients are not directly given cash.

In summary, philanthropy can be conceived of as a social and political practice, defined as being only exercised by private actors, aiming at a public purpose, being voluntary, and being concerned with the transfer of private property.

Before going further, it is important to clarify a point. It is often noted that the word philanthropy derives from the Greek for “love of humanity.” This etymology points to the conception of philanthropy as a motivation: “the love of humanity or concern for the common good (whether of humanity in general or of a more circumscribed group)” (Saunders-Hastings, 2019, p. 1). Following this, as long as donors act with certain motives, they are acting philanthropically. However, I want to argue that the motives as well as moral standards underlying giving are not relevant to a political examination of philanthropy. Individuals have their own reasons for acting in a generous way. Maybe they do it because they think it is morally important, maybe simply because their pockets are too heavy, maybe to show the world that they are good human beings, or maybe to change society. What is crucial, however, is that whether the decision is made for X or Y reason does not substantially alter the kind of power one has when exercising authority derived from philanthropic acts.

In the case of the Gates Foundation, it has been demonstrated that its generous donation served to promote businesslike organization and new-public-management methods in schools (Ravitch, 2011; Saltman, 2011). After all, it is well known that philanthropy does not only derive from altruistic feelings (Andreoni, 1990) but may be an instrument of private political advocacy or agenda setting (Reich, 2018). However, this feature of philanthropy should not be seen as fundamentally problematic in liberal democracies. The Gateses’ program, after all, probably reflected a conception of education that was shared by many other US citizens at that time. And as citizens themselves, the Gateses are free to advocate for their preferred conception of education. Nevertheless, the tension raised by this case stems from the way this specific conception of education was conveyed to the public: it is one thing to cast a vote for businesslike organization in the education system, and another to bypass democratic processes by defining and setting the political agenda of a nation's education just because one has the resources to do so, as Bill and Melinda Gates did. But whatever the reasons one may have to practice philanthropy, the kind of authority that will emerge from it will remain the same.⁸

One crucial point that the conceptual analysis of philanthropy as a practice exposed is that philanthropy and democracy are, to some extent, both pursuing public causes. They are both tools to give direction to concrete actions that may advance social justice, foster a vibrant cultural life, fund basic and higher education, nurture democratic innovation, advocate visions of a better society, or tackle health-related issues. Hence, philanthropy and democracy can be interpreted as different and possibly competing decision-making tools for public causes. One way to interpret the competition is that democratic societies in nonideal contexts may face scarcity of resources, and a choice may have to be made between public and private funding of goods and services. A second way, the one I am interested in here, concerns the different implications of philanthropy and democracy for the making of collectively binding decisions.

For many scholars, the most striking feature of philanthropy is that it allows donors to exercise a form of power that revolves around material resources (Beerbohm, 2016; Cordelli, 2016, 2020; Cordelli & Reich, 2016; Lambelet et al., 2019; Lechterman, 2021; Lechterman & Reich, 2020; Reich, 2018; Saunders-Hastings, 2018, 2019). Given that feature, most of them argue that philanthropy is at odds in democratic societies where decisions should, in principle, be taken collectively and equally. For Emma Saunders-Hastings, philanthropy “gives donors influence and authority, in public life and over particular beneficiaries. It shapes public options and the choices available to individuals” (Saunders-Hastings, 2022, p. 5). Philanthropic foundations are, according to Rob Reich (2018), “institutional oddities in a democracy,” (p. 144) as they represent plutocratic, unaccountable, and nontransparent vehicle of political power, while, for Lechterman (2021), philanthropy is a form of private power with plutocratic tendencies.

These observations have flourished in a myriad of interesting normative propositions.⁹ However, the issue lies in the fact that the aforementioned authors do not adequately inform us about what inherently distinguishes philanthropy in a way that might raise concerns regarding its compatibility with democracy. What remains lacking is a systematic analytical framework that delineates the fundamental differences between philanthropy and democracy concerning their roles in making collectively binding decisions.

Ryan Pevnick has taken an initial step in this direction. In his work “Philanthropy and Democratic Ideals,” while acknowledging the discomfort that philanthropy often experiences within democratic regimes, he expresses his aim: “My goal in this chapter is conceptual. I seek to move beyond the initial tension between philanthropy and democracy by providing a careful account of the role philanthropy might properly claim in a well-functioning democracy” (Pevnick, 2016, p. 227). He accomplishes this by comparing the potential role of philanthropy in two distinct ideals of democracy: market democracy and democratic equality.

Market democracy and democratic equality, both grounded in fundamental liberal principles, diverge in their conceptions of individual citizens, governance, and justice. These differing conceptions yield contrasting assessments of the role philanthropy should assume within these democratic systems. Market democracies view individuals as responsible self-authors, governance revolves around a minimal government, and justice leans toward respecting market outcomes due to reasons of desert and efficiency (Pevnick, 2016). Advocates of market democracy thus see philanthropy as pivotal in providing noncoercive aid and fostering self-governance. Conversely, democratic equality emphasizes individual citizens as equal participants in a cooperative scheme, features a deliberative democracy, and champions justice marked by liberal egalitarianism. While proponents of this democratic ideal might view philanthropy skeptically, fearing it might undermine the idea of a community governed by equality, Pevnick argues that democratic equality should endorse philanthropic support for cultural projects.

This comparison has the merit to suggest that although philanthropy and democracy may appear in tension within democratic societies, this does not automatically render them incompatible. The degree of compatibility hinges on the specific type of democracy, such as its conception of freedom or equality. However, while this work acknowledges the difference between philanthropy and democracy without asserting inherent contradiction, it falls short in providing a robust analytical account of what fundamentally distinguishes the two. This shortfall arises because Pevnick's conceptual differentiation relies on normative ideals of democracy.

One approach to circumvent this issue could involve creating a taxonomy that catalogs every conceivable ideal of democracy, studying the role philanthropy should play in each, and identifying recurring themes. Another option might involve a descriptive (nonnormative) analysis of democracy followed by a comparative analytical study of philanthropy.

Emanuela Ceva and Valeria Ottonelli's characterization of democracy serves this purpose and is therefore the basis for my proposal of a conceptual analysis of philanthropy as an authoritative practice defined by constitutive rules.

One advantage of this analytical approach to philanthropy lies in its ability to make sense of the diverse philanthropic practices that exist. For instance, a difficulty that political theorists might encounter concerns the distinction between small-scale and large-scale (or elite) manifestations of philanthropy. Saunders-Hastings (2018) acknowledges this disparity in the following way: “Compared with ordinary donors, the very wealthy can influence the behavior of recipient organizations in more significant, sustained, and structured ways. This is especially true where they manage giving through their own institutions, of which the private foundation is the most important.” (p. 151) This is also reaffirmed when she states that ‘‘Mass philanthropy can be undemocratic or inegalitarian in its aggregate effects’’ (Saunders-Hastings, 2022, p. 122). Thus, she admits that while philanthropy generally conflicts with democracy, she perceives more issues in massive philanthropic donations compared to smaller, individual gifts.

While I also believe that that mass philanthropy, when aggregated, may present as many issues as elite philanthropy, my idea is that any kind of philanthropic action (whatever their amplitude) lacks basic democratic credentials. For sure, to differentiate between the consequences of small and big philanthropy is relevant, yet it is relevant only because of the exponential nature of the plutocratic form of authority that philanthropy exercises.

In a pure plutocracy, in which the wealthy rule, the more one owns, the more powerful one is. And Bill and Melinda Gates's potential power is unmistakably greater than that of a taxi driver who gives 100 Swiss francs to the local migrant associations every month. But looking only at who enjoys the most power neglects the full picture of the relationship between democracy and philanthropy. The fundamental difference between philanthropy and democracy concerns how someone acquires and exercises authority—that is, how they give direction to political action and how they do it. As authority is acquired and exercised in the form of donations, the logic of this authority will always be different from that which underpins democratic decision-making, which is mutual and second personal and in which currency is external to the decision-making process.

Obviously, when one donates 10 Swiss francs to a local school foundation, one may very well exercise less power than one who votes in an election. But this authority is still different from democratic authority. In this sense, although a small donation does not concretely change the state of affair of a society, they nevertheless carry the logic of authority that allow them to give direction to what is of public interest (and therefore to change the nature of the relationship between those implicated in those decisions) in a way that diverges from a democratic way of taking decisions.

Another advantage of my analytical approach lies in its ability to distinguish between two methods for making collectively binding decisions, which in practice are closely interlinked and often overlap. Consider, for instance, the cases involving tax incentives for philanthropy. One issue with such incentives is that they tend to blur the distinction between public and private actions.

Tax incentives are utilized by governments to encourage taxpayers to contribute philanthropically to causes deemed publicly valuable. When individuals donate money to these specific causes or institutions like philanthropic foundations engaged in such causes, they are permitted to deduct a portion or the entirety of their donations from what would have been their income tax obligations. The rationale behind these tax exemptions varies, but political theorists generally agree that donors are entitled to a tax reduction in order to ‘‘decentralize the process of producing social goods and promoting the pluralism of associational life by diminishing state orthodoxy in defining its contours’’ (Reich, 2018, p. 158). Consequently, it becomes challenging to argue that philanthropy represents a strictly distinct form of private power from democratic practices when incentivized by public institutions firmly rooted in democracy.

However, despite tax incentives publicly indicating which philanthropic practices are favored, they do not render philanthropy more democratic in terms of exercising an authority that is mutual, second-personal, and whose currency is internal to the decision-making process. For instance, an incentive can, at best, be interpreted as an encouragement to exercise one's liberty or as a form of supererogatory duty. Therefore, incentives do not evoke a relationship of rights and duties between two parties, as is observed in relationships characterized by second-personality.

Thus, even if philanthropic acts are particularly incentivized by public entities, they remain fundamentally distinct from democratic practices. This differentiation arises due to a crucial aspect of constitutive rules, which is their creation of a unique relationship among those implicated by them. This relationship exists exclusively within their defined boundaries and defines the activity as long as these rules remain unchanged (Rawls, 1955). Altering even one of the constitutive rules of democracy, even slightly, would significantly modify the interactions individuals experience within the authoritative practice. In essence, democracy maintains its democratic nature only when the type of authority exercised by every citizen remains simultaneously strictly second-personal, mutual, and an internal currency.

To understand how philanthropic authority differs from democratic authority in this manner, I now turn to the constitutive rules that underpin the logic of philanthropic practice.

In the two previous sections, I presented a conceptual analysis of the practice of philanthropy and a characterization of democracy defined as a practice with a form of authority whose currency is internal. In this section, I characterize the practice of philanthropy as authority conferring and distinguished by a set of constitutive rules. In this sense, by showing how the constitutive rules of the practice of philanthropy differ from those of the practice of democracy, I argue that the difference between philanthropy and democracy is that they instantiate two different logics for the making of collectively binding decisions.

Philanthropy's three constitutive rules are: (1) its authority is exercised unilaterally, (2) its source of authority is at the same time first-personal and third-personal, and (3) its authority's currency (which materializes its action-power) is external to the practice of decision-making.

Consider the first claim: philanthropic authority is unilateral. Philanthropy can be viewed as a specific form of plutocratic and dictatorial authority, understood as authority that is imposable on others. As a donor, and at least in the first instance, one exercises their authority in the form of donating without having to consult with or gather the opinions of those who will be subject to the decision (Table 1). Returning to the Gates Foundation example, Bill and Melinda Gates made a series of decisions in a way that could have never happened under a democratic process of decision-making. For example, all by themselves, they targeted the American education system and defined what its aim should be and what tools they would use to achieve it. More than that, the foundation has also defined conditions that schools must accept in order to receive funding. In this sense, Bill and Melinda Gates unilaterally exercised their authority. That, as Ravitch (2011) notes, the Gateses have been advised by well-trained experts does not change the unilateral nature of their acts. What make their acts different from democratic ones is that the final decision was in their hands alone. And this would have remained true even if the Gateses had consulted teachers, students, or even elected officials. However, as this paper aims at being purely descriptive, I do not discuss whether the Gateses had legitimate business in deciding how to use their money, provided that the purported aims were not against the law or general morality nor relied on stolen money.

This is thus what I mean by unilateral authority: rather than being mutually considered, shared, and taken, decisions flow from one individual or a group of individuals to another. This goes against the logic of democracy, in which no wielder of democratic authority can impose their own decisions on others, as the democratic collective body is self-legislating: the rulers are also the ruled. Or in Ceva and Ottonelli's (2021) words, “[…] when citizens vote, they do not make an individual final decision, but activate their portion of normative powers that will only contribute to the final decision in combination with the same kind of acts by other voters” (p. 5).

This is not to say that decisions made within a philanthropic context are never jointly taken. For example, foundations as big as the Gates Foundation may have internal mechanisms that ensure that the final decisions are the result of an equal balance of power between all members of the board. Bill and Melinda Gates may have had the same decision-making power as the researchers who suggested how to reform the American school system. But as close to democratic as they may be, these mechanisms remain internal to the institution, making their authority similar to that of a jury or a cardinal council in the Catholic Church.

Unilateralism highlights a fundamental, perhaps commonsensical, feature of any private practice aimed at guiding the making of collectively binding decisions: private individuals and institutions express, promote and act in ways that reflect their own conception of society. As Barkan (2013) says about philanthropists, “They may act with good intentions, but they define ‘good’.” (p. 636) However, this is an important point to raise, as it helps us to understand how these private entities can influence public action. Philanthropists, by definition, act for public purposes. However, unilateralism teaches us that this greater good is defined by the small number of individuals who participate in these practices, and not by the public as a whole.

The second constitutive rule of the practice of philanthropy is the first- and third-personal nature of its authority. To gain greater precision, let us turn to an example of Stephen Darwall (2006). Imagine that someone, named Jackie, is stepping on your feet and that you are trying to find normative reasons (i.e., reasons that give her reasons for action) for her to stop doing so. One way to do it would be to appeal to reasons that are internal to Jackie's moral conscience. For example, you could convince Jackie that stepping on your feet hurts and that she herself would never want to feel this pain. This discussion might strike Jackie and make her think that yes, she should not be acting like that. This is a first-personal reason in the sense that it appeals to Jackie's inner morality to decide whether to do something. Another way would be to appeal to external reasons to act or not act. For example, you could draw a knife from your pocket and threaten to stab Jackie if she does not take her feet off yours immediately. If she decides to comply because of your threat, she is compelled by a reason that is primarily external to her own choice. Call it a third-personal reason. Interpreting this case from a second-personal perspective, you could ask Jackie to remove her feet because, based on your relationship, you have an appropriate claim on her to do so. In doing so, you would give Jackie a valid reason to comply. This reason is second-personal because it takes another agent's reason, yours, as a reason for action. In this case, the source of normativity is neither Jackie's own reason for action nor an external rule but the relation between you and Jackie. Thus, where a second-personal source of normativity is relational, first- and third-personalities are, respectively, internal and external.

Now that we have a clearer picture of the different sources of normativity, let us return to the philanthropic form of authority. Philanthropy is both first- and third-personal. This authority triggers these two forms of normativity, and not the second-personal one, because the philanthropic practice is a different type of Hohfeldian right from the claim-right. It can be viewed as a privilege-right (Hohfeld, 1919). It relates to first-personal reasons because, when donors decide to act for a public purpose, they are referring to reasons that are internal to themselves. Such reasons can take many forms: providing better education for people in impoverished regions of the world and saving the ocean from pollution or again stimulating cultural activities. What is specific with these internal reasons is that through their donations, a philanthropist fond of ecological conservation is not answering to the claim-right of whales to have clean oceans because humans are polluting them. Put into the democratic vocabulary, this means that Bill and Melinda Gateses’ source of authority is nowhere to be found in their co-citizens’ demands, that is, they did not act because they were legitimately asked to do so. As Darwall (2006) would put, they decided to reform the American school system based on their “state of the world regarding” (p. 6) reasons, on their very own conception of the good.

Philanthropic authority is also third-personal: it applies an external source of normativity to those who will be subject to it. By making donations, one imposes—based on their own will—on others their vision of how public purposes should be arranged. By giving money to put forward a certain conception of how to organize the school system, Bill and Melinda Gates gave third-personal reasons for parent–teacher associations and students to act in a certain way. The resources they gave, tied to a number of clauses, transformed the living conditions of those involved in those schools by defining how to work, how to learn, and what is worth learning. Importantly for my comparison with the second-personal form of authority, these changes happened for normative reasons that were unrelated to the relation shared by those affected by the Gateses’ decision. In contrast, saying that democracy instantiates second-personal relations means that citizens recognize the special authority to hold other citizens accountable for what is done to them. Hence, the philanthropic mode of decision-making alters this relation of joint recognition as the final authority over their reciprocal claims and duties.

To summarize this second constitutive rule, philanthropy is at the same time first- and third-personal, as a philanthropist's reasons for action originate in their internal reasons and as those reasons create, for citizens, external obligations that do not rest on their interactions. As stated in the previous section, these constitutive rules also help to understand why publicly encouraged act of philanthropy such as those encouraged by tax incentives does not make philanthropic authority less distinct from democratic one. Although incentivized philanthropy answers to what could be conceived as a state's call, the source of their authority remains first- and third-personal. It remains first-personal because philanthropists make use of their own internal reasons for actions, in the sense that it is not a duty trigger by citizens’ claim-rights. It is also third-personal in the sense that the way philanthropists give direction to public activities are not anchored in a mechanism of joint recognition of authority.

This constitutive rule highlights the type of relationship that philanthropy establishes within a polity. Philanthropy offers donors the opportunity to give direction to society on the basis of their own reasons for actions. However, philanthropy's third-personal authority also risks changing the lives of citizens for reasons that are external to them. Second-order reasons for action, as found in democratic decision-making, may be demanding because of their relationship of rights and duties, nevertheless they bind citizens in a different way than philanthropy does. Second personality guarantee citizens that each decision and public action is implemented for reasons with which they are associated.

The distinction between first- and third-personalities and second-personality could be stated as follows: Who should decide how public purposes are pursued? Individuals acting voluntarily out of their love for humanity, or all citizens acting through a collective system based on interrelations of accountability?

Focusing on the source of authority also allows to show how interrelation changes in function of the preferred practice. For example, one redistributive system based on taxes and another one based on voluntary donations do not share the same implications and social meanings, even if the outcome is identical. In the first case, the state redistributes resources from those who have benefited more from social cooperation to those who benefited less. There is the idea that some citizens owe something to others. In the second situation, we are appealing to the generosity (in opposition to their obligation) of individuals to make the world more just.

Finally, philanthropy's third constitutive rule concerns the currency of its authority. Recall that by currency, I refer to the resources that empower the authority bearer to make collectively binding decisions. In the case of philanthropy, its currency consists in external resources. Philanthropic donations can take the form of money, time, and services (Figure 1). This is why philanthropy is generally seen as a form of plutocratic power: the currency of its authority is derived from concrete resources. This makes plutocracy different from aristocracy, which used to derive its power from social resources such as titles of nobility and social status.

Unlike democracy, what gives philanthropy its substantive action-power exists prior to and outside its decision-making process. Money, for example, is a resource that individuals gather and possess before they even decide to act in a philanthropic manner. This is fundamentally different from what happens in a democracy. Imagine that instead of having one token each, citizens have unequal amount of tokens. By taking as legitimate the authority derived from material resources, philanthropy creates a fundamentally asymmetric form of decision-making, as the source of this authority—wealth or time—is unequally distributed. Since some individuals have more of these resources than others, poorer individuals must accept the decisions of richer ones. And since philanthropic resources exist prior to and after the decision-making process, the tokens may be used with much more flexibility than democratic ones. Instead of waiting on elected official's decision or popular votations, philanthropy might offer my friend and I two options for the creating a new theater: First, we could pool our money and fund it ourselves. Second, we could use our resources to advocate that theaters are an important part of a rich cultural life and that the local government should fund one. The options are not strictly the same, as the first one would probably leave the philanthropist with more decision-making power over the theater's activities, but the example nevertheless shows the impact of authority based on external resources. In both options, calling on philanthropic resources allows us to realize public purposes rather than relying on the democratic process.

Disparities between large and small philanthropic foundations clearly illustrate how difference in resources shape philanthropy's action power. It is clear that the Bill and Melinda Gates’ foundation disposed of much more resources to shape the American system than a smaller local philanthropic organization. However, conceptually, it should not be assumed that the political authority derived from these entities are more or less distinct from democratic authority solely based on the tangible impact they have on policy-making or public decision-making. Democracy is democratic as long as the kind of authority exercised by every citizen remains at the same time strictly second-personal, mutual and its currency is external. Even the slightest number of external resources aimed at giving direction to public decisions and actions will be incompatible will change the nature of relationships instantiate by such democratic forms of collectively-binding decision-making.

In this section, I have explained that philanthropy embodies a specific logic of authority. Philanthropic authority is unilaterally exercised, allowing the donor to have a direct and individual say in public decisions. It takes its normativity from a mix of first-personality and third-personality, appealing to reasons that are not linked to any relations of claim-rights between decision-makers. And the currency of philanthropy—what materializes its action-power—is external to the decision-making process rather than being internally created as in a one-person, one-vote system. Given these constitutive rules, authority emerging from philanthropic practices is fundamentally different from that emerging from democratic ones, which is characterized by the rules of mutualism, second-personality, and externality of currency.

My characterization of philanthropic authority is important in at least two manners. First, it allows us to clearly understand what philanthropy involves for public decisions and how it relates to democracy. This characterization thus shows what should be taken into consideration when determining which kind of decision-making tool should be employed for public decisions. Clarifying how these two logics of authority differ seems to indicate how difficult it might be to reconcile them. Introducing philanthropy in a democracy changes, for better or worse, the relations of accountability shared by citizens. My characterization of philanthropy points to its inherently political nature. It emphasizes that philanthropy is not purely benevolent (as it can be used as a tool to affect the making of public decision) without assuming that it is always aimed at secretly pulling the strings of government.

A second manner in which this characterization is significant is that of making sense of the numerous philanthropic practices that exist. Focusing on the kind of authority that emanates from philanthropy allows us to gain a clear account of what different forms of philanthropy share, from the smallest donation to the largest sum given by the richest individual. This paper shows that giving is not voting, and even if the final result of these two decision-making methods may be the same, or even if their action power is weaker, the methods nevertheless change the nature of the relationship between those affected by the decisions.

Similarly, my characterization enables an understanding of mixed or in-between cases, such as when philanthropy is encouraged publicly through tax incentives. Constitutive rules teach us that practices characterized by them cannot be changed, even by a little, without risking the nature of that practice. In this sense, it is not possible to make philanthropy analytically more democratic by giving it a public varnish. Public incentives or public–private partnerships¹⁰ represent normative positions concerning philanthropy within a democracy. They articulate the types of philanthropic practices deemed desirable or valuable in a democratic society. Such desirability can itself be democratically established through specific policies. For instance, the very existence of philanthropy is contingent on its democratic authorization. However, the normative reasons guiding our encouragement or discouragement of philanthropy in a democracy do not alter the analytical characterization of the practice itself. Philanthropic authority is exercised unilaterally, originating from first and third-personal reasons for actions, and its currency is external to the collectively binding decision-making process it initiates.

Furthermore, discerning the differentiation between philanthropic authority and other forms of private practice might seem challenging. For instance, consider a scenario where a friend and I opt to establish a for-profit corporation instead of choosing philanthropy to construct a new theater. The authority exercised as a corporation could mirror that of philanthropy: unilateral decision-making (our choice to build the theater and determine the show), rooted in our personal reasons for action, and with an external impact on citizens through the currency (money). It appears that philanthropic and for-profit activities share similarities, but their substantive difference lies in their directed objectives: public purposes, as oppose to for-profit ones. However, delineating between for-profit and nonprofit actions was beyond the scope of this paper.

Lastly, I wish to emphasize a central implication stemming from my characterization of philanthropy. Asserting that philanthropy and democracy represent two distinct forms of authority does not inherently favor or oppose philanthropic actions in public spheres. My aim in characterizing philanthropy is to highlight the nature of making collectively binding decisions using this practice and its implications for democracy. Consequently, my intention is not to argue for or against the various normative values of philanthropy, as presented by the political theorists referenced in this paper. Depending on preferred democratic ideals, some might find the unilateral nature of philanthropy advantageous. Supporters of this view often commend the efficacy of philanthropy over public actions. Others might believe that philanthropy, by utilizing external resources, offers a wide range of possibilities potentially unavailable to the state. This aligns with Rob Reich's defense of the discovery argument for philanthropic foundations. However, other scholars may contend that the first and third-personal nature of philanthropy risks subjecting citizens to the goodwill of their benefactors.

I have argued that there is a constitutive difference between philanthropy and democracy. Understood as two tools for the making of collectively binding decisions, they instantiate two forms of authority differentiated by their constitutive rules. First, where democracy's exercise of authority is mutual, and its citizens are co-subject and coauthor of laws, philanthropic authority is unilateral in the sense of being imposable on others. Second, the source of democratic authority is second-personal, anchoring citizens’ reasons for action in the interpersonal relationship they all share. In contrast, philanthropy is first- and third-personal, so that philanthropists’ reasons for action are internal to themselves while instantiating an external source of normativity in relation to those who will be subject to it. Finally, where democracy's currency of authority is created within the decision-making process, philanthropy takes its authority from resources that are external to the process and unequally distributed.

This paper shed light on how philanthropy and democracy differ as forms of authority even if they aim at the same public purposes. My analytical characterization of philanthropy showed what features of the practice should be taken into consideration in normative discussions of the kind of decision-making tools to deploy for making collectively binding decisions. The encompassing focus of this work also allowed us to gain a clear account of what different forms of philanthropy share, from the smallest donation to the largest donations.