Ronald Dworkin and Partnership Democracy

Introduction 

Democracy has an interesting history. Born in Ancient Greece, for many centuries it was castigated as little better than mob rule. How things change. In the 20th century democracy’s prestige grew to unparalleled levels; so much so that very different political systems from the United States to North Korea claimed to best embody it. Despite this there is very little consensus on what democracy actually means, and who in fact respects it. In the United States liberals accuse Trump and the Republican party of working to undermine democracy, and gloomily diagnose burgeoning forms of right-wing authoritarianism inspired by tin-pot regimes like Victor Orban’s Hungary. Firing back plenty of American conservatives accuse the Democrats of being the party of elites who ignore the interests of ordinary people; their endorsement of a billionaire presidential candidate notwithstanding. 

Dworkin on Partnership Democracy 

“According to the…partnership view of democracy however, democracy means that the people govern themselves each as a full partner in a collective political enterprise so that a majority’s decisions are democratic only when certain further conditions are met that protect the status and interests of each citizen as a full partner in that enterprise. On the partnership view, a community that steadily ignores the interests of some minority or other group is just for that reason not democratic even though it elects its officials by impeccably majoritarian means.”

Ronald Dworkin, Is Democracy Possible Here?

In his classic book Is Democracy Possible Here? the great American legal theorist Ronald Dworkin offered deep reflections on these issues. Writing in the midst of the War on Terror, Dworkin noted the deep divisions that were emerging in American society. Many were convinced that the country needed to prioritize security over basic rights, and the most militant toyed with transparently Islamophobic and racist rhetoric about the dangers posed by Muslims.  Partisans on all sides appealed to democratic principles to justify their outlooks, with many claiming a democracy had a right and even a duty to defend itself against enemies. If that meant compromising the civil liberties of the few for the sake of the many, then so be it. 

Dworkin was adamant that these kinds of polemics misunderstood what democracy was fundamentally about. Democracy can of course be conceived as a procedural system for deciding on a political elite, or a utility gauge for determining the preferences of a majority. On these views the merits of democracy are best gauged by its positive consequences; for instance producing an effective or representative political elite, or even just giving the people what they want. But Dworkin took a more rarefied view of democracy. He regarded the conception of democracy embodied in the American constitution to reflect the country’s abiding commitments to equality and liberty for all. Contrary to other commentators on American democracy like De Tocqueville, Dworkin saw no major tension between a commitment to equality and liberty. Our principled convictions about the equal moral worth of all individuals was integrally connected to our convictions about the special responsibility each free individual has for making sure her life goes well. 

Taking seriously these principles, Dworkin insisted that democracy should be regarded less a procedure or utility gauge and more as a partnership between equal citizens. Democracy expresses our commitment to equality and liberty by making each person a contributor to the ongoing project that is a liberal democratic state. Seen this way Dworkin was contemptuous of the those who felt that it was democratically legitimate to deny certain individuals, or even entire groups, basic liberal and political rights on the basis that this is what a majority of people wanted. Or even, following John C. Calhoun’s antebellum defense of “concurrent” rather than “numerical” majorities, if it was not what an overall majority of Americans overall wanted but just what a local or state majority felt was appropriate. 

Equal Value to Political Liberties

These of course are not purely abstract questions. As Alexander Keyssar reminds us in his great The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy In the United States American democracy has often been deeply flawed. Indeed, from Dworkin’s perspective it has often failed to live up to the partnership ideal of democracy embodied in basic constitutional principles. Nowhere was this more evident than when it came to voting rights. The United States is distinct among developed states in not guaranteeing the right to vote in its Constitution. One consequence of this has been that millions have been denied voting rights on the basis of race, felony disenfranchisement, and a host of other laws that have been developed to de jure reduce the voting pool. These have been accompanied by a colorful mosaic of other policies designed to make it harder to vote, even if on has a legal right to do so.

 For Dworkin there was something deeply unprincipled about a democracy denying one’s fellow citizens political rights guaranteed to more elite groups. Nothing could more comprise the ideal of democracy as a partnership between free and equal persons. This of course didn’t mean he was committed to the unreachable ideal that each individual would exercise exactly the same political power as everyone else. But so watering down the value citizens got from their political liberties, to the point where many were legally or effectively disenfranchised demonstrated a lack of moral seriousness and integrity; a willingness to grant to one’s self privileges and power while denying them to others.

These Dworkinean points are worth considering when we ponder the recent suite of legal cases brought against Donald Trump, where he is accused of wanting to distort the outcomes of the 2020 election by “finding” ballots for himself and discarding other. On this view Trump does not regard his fellow citizens as partners in a shared project. Rather the kind of aristocratic populism he endorses is predicated on the idea that some are more worthy of political liberties than others: namely those who are willing to affirm the status and power of conservative elites and reject. There is of course a longstanding history behind this view in the United States. Figures like Calhoun endorsed the idea that some were more fit to exercise political power than others. William Buckley famously declared that the South should prevail in its struggle against Civil Rights, and in his debate with James Baldwin noted that he wasn’t especially racist because he didn’t much like the idea of poor whites voting either. Trump carries on this dark legacy, both so quintessentially American and so opposed to its deepest principles, and will no doubt double down on these tendencies if re-elected.

As we enter an election year it is worth pondering what kind of country people want to live with. We can endorse Trump’s chauvinistic and insular view of aristocratic populism, which denies to many the rights that millions marched to win. Or we can recommit to the idea of democracy as a partnership of equals meant to affirm the dignity and freedom of all. I know which view sounds more inspiring to me.