Abstract
What is wrong with participating in a democratic decision-making process, and then doing something other than the outcome of the decision? It is often thought that collective decision-making entails being prima facie bound to the outcome of that decision, although little analysis has been done on why that is the case. Conventional perspectives are inadequate to explain its wrongness. I offer a new and more robust analysis on the nature of voting: voting when you will accept the outcome only if the decision goes your way is an act of bad faith: you are not taking part in a ‘process that decides what we will do’. This analysis sheds light on understanding the intrinsic nature of voting and what we are doing when we make decisions collectively.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
This is in contrast to terms such as an ‘utmost good faith’ clause in insurance law, which requires the agent to fully and candidly disclose all relevant information for the purposes of taking out a policy. Voting in bad faith suggests that the agent is not disclosing all relevant information when it comes to deciding how to vote. It should also be distinguished from the Sartrean idea of acting in bad faith.
The primary discussant in the contemporary literature on electoral ethics is Jason Brennan, but he does not cover the point I am making here. Other theorists have considered questions relating the importance of democracy, but make no discussion on what exactly an analysis of collective decision-making process may be binding (Brennan 2012; Christiano 2004; Christiano 2009).
There is an analogy here between voting in bad faith and bargaining in bad faith (in labour relations law): the latter is sham bargaining, going through the motions of bargaining, but without any intent of reaching a negotiated settlement. It is a form of abuse of process. So too is voting in bad faith a sham: going through the motions of voting, but without any intent of reaching a social decision that you will consider binding upon you [Olson Rug Company v. National Labor Relations Board, 304 F.2d 710 (7th Cir. 1962)].
The account is intended to apply to different types of collective decision-making processes.
How we ought to act can be subject to other considerations. Contrast the ‘friends at dinner’ case with a case where, on the last day of a conference, I am with a group of strangers. We are deciding where to go for dinner, as per the above example. If we decide to get Indian food, but you decide to go and have Italian food after we vote on it, then it seems rather odd of you to do that, but it would also be less bad than in the case of the friends. Why? In the case of friendship, our decision concerns a pre-existing plural subject—when we decide where we should go for dinner, there is some ‘we’, governed by the practice of friendship, that obligates us to be bound to the outcome. The group of strangers are less bound, because the conference-going ‘we’ is less firmly fixed. Political members fall somewhere between friends and strangers, and there is an existing practice of democratic politics, so we need not worry about the alleged disanalogy (Helm 2008).
It might argued that voting is different from the dinner and the company case in that political membership is not voluntary in the same way that friendship and business partnerships are. Clearly, all individuals within a jurisdiction may have an obligation to obey the law, but my interest is in whether those who participate in the democratic decision-making process may have an additional obligation on that basis.
There are clearly other forms of unfairness: Unfairness in a sporting match involves not adhering to the rules agreed upon by the participants. Unfairness in selection processes occurs where a selector displays a bias for one individual over the others by considering irrelevant or extraneous information. What is important in these cases is that the person who is acting unfairly does so by behaving contrary to an agreed standard of practice, at the expense of those who do act according to the rules.
Even if the Hartian account is circular, it might not be viciously so. We might see voting as a Lewisian convention: we have a practice of following the rules of our decision-making process, and the decision-making process involves adhering to the outcome of the election, even if it is not what we individually have decided. We do not all have to agree on the convention; as long as enough of us recognise it as such and follow it, then that is sufficient to be bound to the practice. Once the convention is constitutive of the ‘voting game’, then to take part in the game means that you are necessarily engaging in the conventional practice and bound by the conventional understandings of that game (Lewis 2002; Searle 1964).
If the misrepresentation causes you to believe a wrong set of facts, and act on them in a particular way, then you can seek remedy. If the misrepresentation had no effect on you, then no wrong was done at law.
On a Kantian view, misrepresentation is wrong because it is not universalizable. Misrepresentation can only be successful if people generally tell the truth. Universalising a principle of misrepresentation would lead to serious failures in social and collective trust, and therefore cannot be a maxim that should be held by everyone. It would render all attempts to communicate with others incoherent (Kant 1996).
Wrong is also done even if I intended to keep my promise to you, but you know that I hate cats and therefore hire a professional pet sitter instead, and I subsequently renege on my promise. However, that is outside the scope of this discussion.
It is irrelevant what the other voters know of the dictator’s intentions and actions. Even if the dictator did not announce his intentions and had planned to wait and see what the outcome was before deciding whether to overturn the decision, we would say that he is still doing something wrong by not following the collective decision. Given our conventional practices, a natural and reasonable inference from his silence would be that he would be bound. There, we might say that he is misrepresenting his intentions by omission.
This is similar to Raz’s ‘pre-emption thesis’, where an authority’s reasons for actions replace, rather than operate alongside, reasons that the agent’s have before entering into legal arbitration (Raz 1985). By extension, the reasons arrived at by collective authority replace an individual agent’s reasons for action.
Specifically, there is an interpersonal duty owed to the other participants in the decision-making process, who are taking part in good faith.
We can disambiguate voting proper from other actions that look like voting. For instance, straw polls look as though people are voting, but they do not (by definition) ‘decide’ anything. As such, the appearance that people are voting in them is merely illusory. Certainly the issue of voting in bad faith cannot arise in those cases, anyway: if the vote decides nothing, then it cannot be the case that one is doing anything wrong by voting in the election without intending to be bound by its outcome (since nobody is).
It could also be suggested there are other ways of solving Wollheim’s paradox (Barry 1973; Estlund 1989; Goldstick 1973; Honderich 1974; Paris and Reynolds 1978; Weiss 1973). Likewise, there may be other ways of solving the “schmoting” paradox other than the way I have described, but all of the possible solutions to the schmoting paradox would still necessarily consider schmotes not to be votes, and as such my point can still be made.
‘We’ in this context refers to the group of voters. It could also be argued that instead of us (as individuals) being the objects of the vote, the appropriate object of the vote is the state. However, the state can ultimately be conceived of as the aggregate of voters, and state decisions are still action-guiding on voters (Feinberg 1968; McCloskey 1963; Pasternak 2011).
I have used straightforward cases, but how we understand ‘the outcome’ will vary in more complicated situations. For example, voting in a presidential election does not mean that we are bound to obey all subsequent policies from the administration; all it entails is that we recognize that someone is the president. This means that voters still have the right to protest those policies without contradicting themselves.
A Kantian account also applies here. On this analysis of voting, the universalisation of the principle of voting in bad faith would constitute a self-contradiction undermining the core of that as a collective decision-making process. It would be extremely difficult (if not impossible), then, to make sense of the voting scenario as ordinarily understood.
Thanks to Garrett Cullity for this point.
That suggests another connection between voting in bad faith and unfairness. The only motivation you have for agreeing to vote, knowing you are voting in bad faith, is that you suppose there will be at least some people who are not and who (if the election goes your way) will not resist that outcome in a way they would have done if you had not laundered the decision through an election. And that is unfair on those who do consider themselves bound when others would not have, had the outcome been otherwise.
Importantly, it is unclear whether unreasonableness is a ground for rejecting a democratically-made decision. Some theorists claim that unreasonable demands, even if they are made democratically, do not need to be adhered to by the decision-makers, or the objects of the decision. Jonathan Quong, for example, argues that an unreasonable person should not have his rights to the political community completely removed, but that he ‘can be prevented from exercising those rights when his aims are explicitly unreasonable—indeed they cease to be rights when he attempts to exercise them in this way’ (Quong 2004, p. 332). However, it is not clear what the rights turn into when they are being exercised in this way, nor how an unreasonable person can be prevented from the exercise of the right.
Of course, for any philosophical position there is an opposite position, and likewise there are theorists that do not think that democracy is—or ought to be—authoritiative. However, this is not a problem for my argument. Huemer, for example, argues against authority as justificatory of coercion (Huemer 2013). He would say that I am not obligated to do what we have collectively decided, because the group lacks the appropriate authority to coerce me to do so. However, I think Huemer’s conception of authority as coercive is problematic, in that his analysis does not seem to take seriously the idea of authority (as traditionally understood by Hobbes and Locke) as coercive. My view is simply taking as a starting point the position that democracy has some authority, although of course I acknowledge cases where that authority could be overridden.
We could also make a similar argument for subjects of the persistent minority, although the persistent minority is distinct from the current case, because the majority need not oppress the minority for it to be a persistent minority. Notably, the persistent minority case requires the systemic and ongoing defeat of a particular group in a decision-making process. Furthermore, the demands of the majority need not be unreasonable, unjust or morally wrong.
An interesting question at this point might be whether it makes any difference to the wrongness of voting in bad faith if the person failing to comply does so in secret. Publicity is not a necessary or sufficient condition for civil disobedience—the Underground Railroad, for instance, would have been less successful had it been publicised. However, it is clear that in other cases of civil disobedience (such as the Occupy movement), publicity certainly helps draw attention to a cause. I do not think that whether the act is public makes a difference to the permissibility of voting in bad faith. So long as the reason for disobeying the decision when it is collectively made is that it is outweighed by more stringent moral reasons, then it is sufficient to overturn the obligation to obey the outcome of the vote.
Certain states, such as Australia and Belgium, have compulsory voting in that it is compulsory for citizens to show up at the polls and have their names marked off, but they are not required to complete the ballot paper. (It may therefore be more accurate to characterise this as compulsory poll attendance.) Such cases complicate the account I present here, but they help illustrate what electoral obligations citizens have. If the obligation not to vote when you do not intend to be bound by the outcome outweighs your obligation to abide by voting laws, this might lead to voters in bad faith being removed from the electoral roll. However, a full discussion of this is outside the scope of my investigation.
This is based on Austin’s performative utterances (1975).
One possible suggestion is to submit everyone who enters the polling booth to an FMRI to determine the voter’s intention when casting their ballot. However, this does not seem feasible, given the costs currently involved. However, feasibility aside, this would be able to make a distinction between voters in bad faith and bona fide voters.
References
Abbott moves for vote on carbon tax. 2011. Sydney morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/abbott-moves-for-vote-on-carbon-tax-20110620-1gajn.html.
Austin, John L. 1975. How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Barry, Brian. 1973. Wollheim’s paradox: Comment. Political Theory 1: 317–322.
Brennan, Jason. 2009. Polluting the polls: When citizens should not vote. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87: 535.
Brennan, Jason. 2012. The ethics of voting. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Brennan, Geoffrey, and Loren Lomasky. 1997. Democracy and decision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Broad, Charlie D. 1916. On the function of false hypotheses in ethics. International Journal of Ethics 26: 377–397.
Christiano, Thomas. 2004. The authority of democracy. Journal of Political Philosophy 12: 266–290.
Christiano, Thomas. 2009. Must democracy be reasonable? Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39: 1–34.
Cohen, Joshua. 1999. Reflections on Habermas on democracy. Ratio Juris 12: 385–416.
Cullity, Garrett. 1995. Moral free riding. Philosophy & Public Affairs 24: 3–34.
Davidson, Donald. 1963. Actions, reasons, and causes. The Journal of Philosophy 60: 685–700.
Dworkin, Ronald. 1986. Law’s empire. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Estlund, David M. 1989. The persistent puzzle of the minority democrat. American Philosophical Quarterly 26: 143–151.
Feinberg, Joel. 1968. Collective responsibility. The Journal of Philosophy 65: 674–688.
Gillard says Abbott carbon plebiscite is a stunt. 2011. Business spectator. http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2011/6/20/policy-politics/gillard-says-abbott-carbon-plebiscite-stunt.
Goldstick, Daniel. 1973. An alleged paradox in the theory of democracy. Philosophy & Public Affairs 2: 181–189.
Griffin, Christopher G. 2003. Democracy as a non-instrumentally just procedure. Journal of Political Philosophy 11: 111–121.
Hart, Herbert L.A. 1955. Are there any natural rights? The Philosophical Review 64: 175–191.
Helm, Bennett W. 2008. Plural agents. Noûs 42: 17–49.
Honderich, Ted. 1974. A difficulty with democracy. Philosophy & Public Affairs 3: 221–226.
Honneth, Axel. 1996. The struggle for recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Huemer, Michael. 2013. The problem of political authority: An examination of the right to coerce and the duty to obey. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kant, Immanuel. 1996. The metaphysics of morals. trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1998. Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Klosko, George. 1987. The principle of fairness and political obligation. Ethics 97: 353–362.
Lewis, David K. 2002. Convention: A philosophical study. Bodmin: Wiley-Blackwell.
McCloskey, Henry J. 1963. The state as an organism, as a person, and as an end in itself. The Philosophical Review 72: 306–326.
Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, state, and utopia. New York: Basic Books.
Øverland, Gerhard, and Christian Barry. 2011. Do democratic societies have a right to do wrong? Journal of Social Philosophy 42: 111–131.
Paris, David C., and James F. Reynolds. 1978. Paradox, rationality, and politics: Wollheim’s democracy. The Journal of Politics 40: 956–983.
Pasternak, Avia. 2011. The collective responsibility of democratic publics. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41: 99–123.
Quong, Jonathan. 2004. The rights of unreasonable citizens. Journal of Political Philosophy 12: 314–335.
Raz, Joseph. 1985. Authority, law and morality. The Monist 68: 295–324.
Scanlon, Thomas. 1998. What we owe to each other. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Scheffler, Samuel. 1997. Relationships and responsibilities. Philosophy & Public Affairs 26: 189–209.
Searle, John R. 1964. How to derive “ought” from “is”. The Philosophical Review 73: 43–58.
Weiss, Donald D. 1973. Wollheim’s paradox: Survey and solution. Political Theory 1: 154–170.
Wollheim, Richard. 2001. A paradox in the theory of democracy. In Democracy: A reader, ed. Ricardo Blaug, and John Schwazmantel, 179–181. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Acknowledgments
I thank Bob Goodin and Christian Barry for their comments, as well as the journal’s editors and reviewers for their suggestions. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2011 Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference and at a 2013 Political Philosophy seminar at Virginia Tech.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lau, J.C. Voting in Bad Faith. Res Publica 20, 281–294 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-014-9246-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-014-9246-x