Abstract
This essay explores and criticizes Matteo Bonotti’s argument that parties and partisans in a publicly justified polity should appeal primarily, if not exclusively, to accessible justificatory reasons to fulfill their political duties. I argue that political parties should only support coercive policies if they rationally believe that the coercive law or policy in question can be publicly justified to those subject to the law or policy in terms of their own private—specifically intelligible—reasons. I then explore four practical differences between our two approaches. In contrast to Bonotti’s accessible reasons approach, the intelligibility approach (1) facilitates the provision of assurance between citizens and political officials, (2) requires that parties and partisans support fewer coercive policies, (3) allows more exemptions from generally applicable laws, and (4) facilitates logrolling and alliance formation.
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Notes
Throughout this paper, I will use the terms ‘convergence view’ and ‘intelligible reasons standard’ interchangeably, as convergence views typically adopt an intelligibility requirement on justificatory reasons, or something near enough.
Eberle calls these principles ‘doctrines’ of restraint, which he contrasts with principles for pursuing public justification.
In conversation, Bonotti notes that there is some motivation for him to adopt proposal restraint, given that the rationale for restraint is based on the proximity of partisans and parties to political power.
Also see White and Ypi 2011, p. 384.
Communist parties and libertarian parties may be parties if they reformulate their sectarian conceptions of the good and justice in publicly accessible terms. They sometimes do this, but not always, and that leaves their status as parties indeterminate. Bonotti could reply that ‘party-hood’ is a threshold concept, where a group counts as a party when it engages in a certain amount of reformulation of their sectarian values. Bonotti does not address this possibility, but it is open to him.
One might consider Rawls’s duty of civility as implying the impermissibility of logrolling, since logrolling typically involves legislators acting in their own interest rather than appealing to public reasons.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Matteo Bonotti for discussion of our two papers.
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Vallier, K. Pluralistic Partisanship. Res Publica 25, 487–496 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-019-09436-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-019-09436-1