When do governments deserve our allegiance, and when should they be denied it? This course explores the main answers that have been given to this question in the modern West. We start with a survey of the major political theories of the Enlightenment: Utilitarianism, Marxism, and the social contract tradition. In each case, we begin with a look at classical formulations, locating them in historical context, but then shift to the contemporary debates as they relate to politics today. Next, we turn to the rejection of Enlightenment political thinking, again exploring both classical and contemporary formulations. The last part of the course deals with the nature of, and justifications for, democratic politics, and their relations to Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment political thinking. In addition to exploring theoretical differences among the various authors discussed, considerable attention is devoted to the practical implications of their competing arguments. To this end, we discuss a variety of concrete problems, including debates about economic inequality, affirmative action and the distribution of health care, the limits of state power in the regulation of speech and religion, and difficulties raised by the emerging threat of global environmental decay.
Incorporating Independents
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Del curso dictado por Yale University
Moral Foundations of Politics
1262 calificaciones
De la lección
The Social Contract Tradition II
This module looks at classical formulations of the Social Contract Tradition, locating them in historical context, but then shifts to the contemporary debates as they relate to politics today.
Conoce a los instructores
Ian ShapiroSterling Professor of Political Science and Henry R. Luce Director
The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale
Now, when we were discussing this last time, you repeatedly raised
the question well, okay, but what, what about what's, normatively justified?
What is it that people, what, what makes this legitimate?
After all this is a course about what makes states legitimate.
So we've, what we've done here is, is tell a causal story of sort of
stylized facts about how a state would come about if, if it didn't exist, but
you know, you could say that's neither here nor there.
At the end of the day, we want to know if, whether it's a legitimate state.
What makes a state legitimate?
And for Nozick to,
to square that circle, he has to talk about the concept of compensation.
And it's, it's difficult and
confusing partly for reasons that are Nozick's fault.
So I'm going to try and give an exposition of it that
gets behind the confusion, and you'll see what's really at stake.
But intuitively before we dig into it, this is the basic idea.
I said earlier, that while the independents are out
there running around whether outside the borders as Al Qaeda or
inside the borders as with Oklahoma City Bombers,
we all live in some fear of them that reduces our utility, right?
Once they have been neutralized, forced to join if you like,
forced to accept the authority of the state, then our,
our utility goes back up again, because we no longer live in fear of them.
But of course their utility has gone down,
because their rights have been violated, as you pointed out last time.
If Nozick is a libertarian, you force him to join, you're violating their rights.
There's no question about it.
And Nozick doesn't want to deny that.
But then he says, suppose society could compensate them for
violating their rights.
We could pay them compensation.
Such that we would put them back on as high an indifference curve as
they were before.
Their utility goes back up.
And we could still be better off than not having compensated them.
Right?
So, so then we can say in some sense what, what's happened is
we've gone from what Nozick calls a de facto state to a de jure state.
De facto is, is just empirical you know,
what would have happened causally, which we've, we've now walked our way through.
De jure is whether or not it's legitimate and a justified state, a legitimate state.
So this idea of compensation for him is the bridge between the two, okay?
So that's the, the intuitive idea.
And I'm going to, I'm going to explain it in more detail, but
that's the work he wants it to do.
I think it's confusing for three reasons.
One is, you might say, well, why compensation?
And the compensation has to be important for
him, because individual rights are so important for him, individual freedom.
He's a libertarian.
It's the paramount concern, right?
So he's got to think about what could be done to
compensate them since their rights have been violated.
And it's confusing for a second reason.
How are you going to compute the compensation?
How are you going to decide what is it, what is it that's appropriate?
You know, he's going to ask what would put.
What basically would restore people to the status quo ante in terms of their utility.
that's, that's basically his metric, but
that still leaves a lot open about how you actually do it, right?
And then finally what's, what's confusing is you say,
well is the compensation actually going to be paid?
Well, no.
It's not going to be paid.
Can you see why it wouldn't be paid?
>> Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Yeah, I mean, you know, on, on,
on one side you want to sort of make things better for
taking away someone's rights, but you also don't want to get into the practice of
encouraging people to, to rebel against the system, or to be independent.
It's like you're paying somebody.
>> Exactly.
If I gave you the choice of either becoming a member and paying dues, or
not becoming a member and being forced to join and being compensated.
>> I'm [LAUGH] not going to join.
>> You're not, so there's a moral hazard problem.
So it's not actual, it's a hypothetical compensation test.
Okay.
So, you, you might find, be finding yourself a little skeptical of this, and
there're some reasons for skepticism which I'm going to get into in a minute.
But, but there's one more thing we have to get straight before they do that.
Somebody might say, well, okay, I'll suspend my disbelief to this point.
But there's still two possibilities.
One is the one Nozick talks about.
You ask a question, could the members compensate the inter, the independents for
violating their rights by forcing them to join and still be better off?
Yeah, but why couldn't you ask the opposite press question and
say, what about asking the question, couldn't the independents compensate
the members for their fear, and still be better off?
Right?
Why, why?
Why I mean the analytically equivalent.
>> Mm-hm. >> Whatever else you
want to say about them, right?
That if the, if the independents, if I'm the independent and
I could compensate you for your fear of me, and still be
better off not being forced to join, it, how do we choose between the two?
>> Well one's a, one's a little bit difficult.
I mean, if you're, if you're a regional power what authority do
you have to sort of tax somebody that's outside your sphere of influence?
>> So. >> How can you even do that?
>> So you, so, I think that's exactly right.
And that's why I started off with Kant's ought entails can,
because what Nozick is going to say is, the,
that the state could never ever count on being able to trust the,
the independents to accept that status, right?
This, from the point of view of the dominant protective association, or
the state.
Their problem is to convince their members that they really can
deliver security, right?
Remember, we talked about the Chicago gans gangster movies where you think you're
buying protection for your store, and then one day somebody comes in
that you've never seen before and busts up the joint and it turns out that you're.
But that your,
the people you're paying protection money to can't protect you, right?
The state can't live with that possibility.
And so another way of putting this is that the, the natural monopoly
of force argument, puts a constraint on what can happen, right?
It basically means,
there's no way the independents are going to to be tolerated, right?
So we don't, or in [INAUDIBLE], we don't have an obligation to tolerate them.
We can't be obliged to tolerate people if it's impossible, right?
So, so this is why the, the,
the impossibility of the dominant protective association protecting its
members while these people are out there, means they're not going to be tolerated.
So, it's this [INAUDIBLE], so the, the natural monopoly of forced argument
is the constraint that forces things in the direction of the minimal state, yeah?
>> I have just one question.
Do you think that this really taps into the question of secessionist movements in
politics and the question of autonomy, self, self rule and who stays together?
>> Secessionist movements.
>> And who, who breaks up, if you look at political constellation of government.
>> Yeah, well, remember when we talked about the natural monopoly of
force argument, we posed the question, well if, if Nozick is right about that,
why wouldn't there be a world government already?
Right?
And we said, what was the constraint?
It's the technologies if available, technologies of force.
So if a, if a secessionist movement is strong enough, it will break away.
If it has enough coercive force in its mo,
in its con, monopoly control, it will break away.
But you know, if you look, say if you look at the, at the,
at this American Civil War, in 1960, the South loses the election.
They, they therefore decide to secede.
And Lincoln says, what does he say?
He said no.
He says there's no right to secession in the constitution.
You're not leaving, right?
And they have a war about it.
And if the South had won the war, they would have left, right?
So, so,
at the end of the day, it's coercion that triumphs secessionist claims.
You know, you've got now, you know, you've got to have the,
the fire power to actually make it happen, right?
Yeah.
And, and sometimes it will be unclear who has the power, right?
And that's when you'll have a war, and
it, it won't be clear until we see who wins the war.
yeah.
But in that sense, coercive force of,
who can, who is able to exert coercive force over a given territory?
They become the min, the ultra minimal state, and
then when they incorporate any possible threats, they become the minimal state.
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