Sameer Bajaj

Critics often argue that there cannot be a moral duty to vote because whatever reason there is to vote can be satisfied in other ways. This chapter develops a novel theory of the duty to vote—which the authors call the egalitarian theory—that responds to this challenge. The egalitarian theory grounds the duty to vote in the unfolding demands of treating others as equals in the pursuit of justice. Whatever private actions individuals perform to help some subset of individuals in need, they have a duty to recognize the equal importance of all individuals in need. And the only way for most individuals to do so is by voting in elections. This is because elections present a unique opportunity to advance justice in a holistic way that takes account of the full range and scope of human need, and in a way that treats each person’s need as equally important. Furthermore, voting uniquely pursues justice in a way that is not unilateral and treats people as equals in the process. In the course of developing the egalitarian theory, the authors defend the idea that voting is not a merely symbolic act, but can partially contribute to the moral improvement of institutions.

Democratic theorists have developed a rich literature exploring why winning democratic elections gives representatives the moral right to occupy public office. However, they have largely ignored the question of whether receiving greater or lesser voter support ever makes a moral difference to how representatives ought to govern. In this essay, I defend the existence of mandate reasons for representatives to govern in specific ways that are derived solely from voter support. I argue that the relationship between votes and mandate reasons is characterised by the dependence thesis, which says that votes strengthen representatives’ mandate reasons to govern in specific ways when and only when voters express supportive attitudes for governing in those ways. Because not every vote for a representative expresses the relevant kind of support for their proposals, not every vote strengthens their mandate reasons. This has important implications for the ethics of representation.

How is the validity of our consent, and others’ moral permission to act on our consent affected by coercion? Everyone agrees that in cases of two-party coercion—when X coerces Y to do something with or for X—the consent of the coerced is invalid, and the coercer is not permitted to act upon the consent they receive. But coercers and the recipients of consent are not always identical. Sometimes a victim, Y, agrees to do something to, with, or for Z because they are being coerced by X. Recently, several philosophers have argued that consent under third-party coercion can be fully valid. We argue that this view has troubling implications. We develop a novel view of consent in third-party coercion cases, which we call the partial validity account. The core idea is that, under severe coercion, Y’s consent is at most partially valid—it reduces the strength of, but does not completely dissolve, Z’s consent-sensitive duties. We argue that the partial validity account gets the right results in important cases and explains the moral factors at play better than alternative accounts.

The theory of deliberative democracy is a field of democratic theory that studies the contribution of public discussion, argumentation, and reasoning to the normative justification of democratic decision‐making. In this essay, we first explore two competing visions of the moral ideal of deliberative democracy: the rational consensus conception and the wide conception. This establishes a normative framework for analyzing several important applied issues that arise in thinking about deliberative democracy in the real world: the role of cognitive diversity in deliberative decision‐making, the problem of rational ignorance, inequality in public deliberation, and the problem of group polarization.

In this essay we criticise Rainer Forst's attempt to draw a connection between power and justification, and thus ground his normative theory of a right to justification. Forst draws this connection primarily conceptually, though we will also consider whether a normative connection may be drawn within his framework. Forst's key insight is that if we understand power as operating by furnishing those subjected to it with reasons, then we create a space for the normative contestation of any exercise of power. He calls this the noumenal understanding of power. Against the conceptual connection between power and justification, we argue that (i) on most plausible accounts of political freedom, some freedom-restrictions commonly attributed to the successful exercise of power would perplexingly count as failures of power on Forst's view, and that (ii) on the most plausible account of reason-recognition, namely an appropriateness of response account, a justification relation is only a sufficient but not necessary condition for recognition. Against the normative connection, we argue that (iii) Forst can establish the existence of a right to justification only if he reconsiders the transcendental aspirations of his theory.

At the core of public reason liberalism is the idea that the exercise of political power is legitimate only if based on laws or political rules that are justifiable to all reasonable citizens. Call this the Public Justification Principle. Public reason liberals face the persistent objection that the Public Justification Principle is self-defeating. The idea that a society’s political rules must be justifiable to all reasonable citizens is intensely controversial among seemingly reasonable citizens of every liberal society. So, the objection goes, the Public Justification Principle is not justifiable to all reasonable citizens, and thus fails its own test of legitimacy. And this, critics conclude, undermines the public reason liberal project. This article argues that answering the self-defeat objection to public reason liberalism requires fundamentally rethinking prevailing accounts of the Public Justification Principle’s role. My aim is to develop an account of the Public Justification Principle that vindicates its coherence and moral appeal in the face of reasonable disagreement.