Bad Institutions and What We Can Do About Them

A popular category of research in political philosophy is the finding of flaws with political institutions. For example, in recent work, some political philosophers diagnose existing democracies as unresponsive and insufficiently egalitarian. Other philosophers criticize rising wealth inequalities and how that might give some individuals objectionable levels of power over others. They also criticize the setup of the economy by pointing out that wage labor constitutes exploitation or that conventional hierarchies in firms amount to unjustified dictatorships. The language that philosophers use in these cases indicates that they think these are grave flaws and not merely ancillary problems. Elizabeth Anderson describes hierarchical firms as “communist dictatorships,” Tom Malleson calls them “deeply unjust.” Adam Lovett calls the United States a “failed democracy,” Ingrid Robeyns characterizes the effects of concentrated wealth as “disastrous,” Camila Vergara diagnoses a “dangerous oligarchization of power” and widespread “political decay.”

Our responses to problems in general should fit with the severity of those problems. If my house is on fire, I should do all I can to solve that problem as quickly as possible. If I break a fingernail, I should perhaps do something to fix that problem, but there is conceivably a number of other things I can do first instead. The language that political philosophers use to talk of institutions often sounds more like the house is on fire than a fingernail being broken. As seems to be the case in public discourse more generally, they use the terms I mentioned above, talking of deep injustice and democracy in crisis.

I don’t want to discuss further whether things are actually as bad as some people say, although I certainly sympathize with some of the claims mentioned above. Instead, my main point is that I don’t think the solutions philosophers propose are always in keeping with the severity implicit in their diagnosis. For example, Elizabeth Anderson’s diagnosis of communist dictatorships in the midst of liberal societies comes with recommendations for a workers’ bill of rights that includes some basic protections against abuse and some reforms in the direction of increased worker participation, roughly oriented along the lines of the European status quo. Others champion more ambitious proposals, like Helene Landemore’s or Alex Guerrero’s calls for comprehensive reforms to our democratic system. Yet, they fundamentally remain proposals for legislative reforms.

I don’t doubt that these proposals would help with the problems if they were ever put into action. But there is little reason to think that they will anytime soon. As some of the critics I’ve mentioned so far also explicitly acknowledge, there are serious doubts as to the accountability and responsiveness of elected politicians. But if the problem is legislative unresponsiveness, why should we think that legislative reforms could solve this? If many of our problem diagnoses revolve around the fact that some have disproportionate power in the social and economic realm, occupying key offices, how can we ever hope to use the very institutions that are captured in these ways to change that?

Of course, democracy does have mechanisms for influencing elected politicians. If the lawmakers won’t do it on their own accord, philosophers can spread the word about their diagnoses, just as anyone else with a political grievance can. They can mobilize people, and pressure them from the streets, at the ballot box, and through petitions. That is part of the point of democracy and is surely one way to get one’s proposals into practice. Yet, again, part of the problem diagnosis is that people in established positions of power have been able to isolate themselves from these kinds of pressure. This is precisely what it means for a democracy to be unresponsive or for the power of higher-ups in firms to be unaccountable. Those outside of these positions have little means to influence decision-making. So, we might be skeptical of how effective a strategy this can realistically be. At the extreme, the idea that people should use the regular political process to overcome deep problems with that process can sound as if we were suggesting that citizens pull themselves out of the swamp by their own bootstraps.

The main point I want to raise in this piece is that there might be more that citizens can do. In fact, if things are really as bad as some philosophers are saying—if the house is in fact on fire—then it is very odd to tell citizens that there is nothing else but democratic business as usual. In the face of grave injustices, things become permissible that would otherwise not be. This is a point that some philosophers have made repeatedly regarding racial injustices, for example, in debates on civil disobedience and uncivil resistance. If the state or some other agent perpetrates grave injustices against some people, they are justified in defending themselves.

This line of thinking applies a more general lesson from the ethics of self-defense. When people are faced with threats to important goods, they are permitted to do things that would otherwise be immoral. It is immoral for me to punch someone, but if that person is trying to steal my phone, that changes. The crucial point here is that we don’t have to face threats to important goods lying down. We can permissibly violate similarly important goods in order to defend them. If someone is threatening my life, I may permissibly take theirs. Importantly though, if someone merely tries to steal my candy, I am not allowed to do much in response.

Accordingly, if it is in fact the case that, for example, hierarchical firms constitute dictatorships in our midst, or that wage labor constitutes exploitation, more is permissible in response than just pushing for legislative reforms. If my boss treats me in an objectionable manner, they are violating (some of) my rights. When rights are violated, we may engage in practices that help alleviate that violation and defend ourselves. Taking up an example that Elizabeth Anderson cites, if my boss threatens to fire me if I don’t attend his favored political rally, I may engage in deception in order to evade that. Similarly, if my boss pays me an unconscionably low wage, I can lie about the hours I work or I can steal office supplies when no one’s watching in order to make up for what I am owed. Or, if my boss makes me work under dangerous conditions, I could be justified in sabotaging the machinery in order to mitigate that threat.

Importantly, the same thing holds here that holds for the case of the stranger trying to steal my candy. Resistance has to be proportional to the harm in question. Small complaints can only ever warrant minor forms of resistance. And particularly invasive forms of resistance, for example ones that impose bodily harm on others, can only be justified in response to particularly egregious rights violations. This is not a blank check for resistance.

I have not yet talked much about democracy. Many of the basic ideas of the framework presented are borrowed from the ethics of self-defense. And, justifiably, those theories don’t pay much attention to whether attackers and victims live in democratic states and under the rule of law. The moral issues in question arise only in situations of emergency that make recourse to the institutions of the rule of law ineffective. When I get attacked on the street, the fact that I can sue my attacker afterwards doesn’t help me protect my bodily integrity in that moment, defensive actions can. And although democratic institutions can try to disincentivize crime, there will always remain a chance that someone decides to steal my wallet or punch me in the face.

Many of the problems that I mentioned throughout this piece are not quite like that. They do involve rights violations, but not in individual instances. Rather, we are concerned with rights violations that occur because of the ways in which our institutions are set up. Regulatory structures and economic incentives make the fossil fuel industry an attractive business endeavor that then consistently causes harm to people. These structures can be shaped by democratic politics. In fact, it is precisely the task of politics to give shape to institutions in order to regulate behavior. And many of the problems mentioned above are currently legal, while the kinds of actions discussed in the ethics of self-defense are already prohibited. So we are here not concerned with emergencies, but with business as usual.

Additionally, part of the idea of the rule of law and democracy seems to be that legal procedures should be the first place we turn to, not individual self-defense. One of the great achievements of the emerging states of the late medieval and early modern period was the centralization of power and the ban on private law enforcement, like in the Holy German Empire’s declaration of the “eternal peace of the land” (Ewiger Landsfrieden). Conflicting rights claims have to be settled in court and not through force.

Beyond that, some political philosophers would also argue that there is reasonable disagreement as to whether certain institutional setups do in fact violate rights. And in those cases, it is precisely the function of democratic politics to settle those claims non-violently. In fact, it is the great advantage of democratic politics that it allows us to do so. Again, these institutions enable us to forego violence and settle conflicts reasonably.

Yet, this answer remains somewhat unsatisfying. While the evidence of the harmfulness of climate change continues to mount, the political answer falls far short of what would be required to prevent considerable suffering. Similarly, complaints about exploitation or oligarchic rule have long histories, yet one may doubt how much has really been done about it, politically.

The crucial question that remains, then, is how much one has to endure in democratic politics before resistance becomes justified. I do not have an answer for that question here, much less one that would hold over the entire range of issues that I have discussed. Instead, I want to emphasize that there is a real debate to be had. There is a space for responses to injustice that is bigger than calls for legal reform. If we seriously think that the house is on fire, people are justified in acting like the house is on fire, and our messaging should reflect that.