Being under the power of the democratic state: a defence of the Kantian approach

Why is it important to live under a democratic state? Most people would respond that democracy gives the people the power to rule themselves. Democracy is the ‘power of the people’. It means that individuals are free to determine by themselves under which rules they want to live. This response pictures democracy as an ideal of freedom. However, this view has recently been contested by scholars working on democratic theory (Kolodny 2014a, 2014b, 2019, Viehoff 2014). A prominent figure in this critique is Niko Kolodny (2019), who criticises what he calls the ‘Kantian-Republican’ position, according to which the democratic state is justified because it guarantees that individuals are not under the power of others. Kolodny argues that the Kantian-Republican approach leads to the unwanted conclusion that individuals are being dominated by the democratic state. To avoid this, Kolodny proposes an alternative approach based not on the notion of domination, but on the notion of subordination to social hierarchies. In this paper, I defend the Kantian approach against Kolodny. I suggest that Kolodny’s approach cannot fully capture the reasons why the state is necessary in order to protect not only equality but also freedom. Disentangling the Kantian from the republican approach, I argue that the former does not suffer from the problems that Kolodny identifies with regard to domination. More specifically, I argue that for the Kantian approach, the state is not merely a means to prevent one’s subjection to others but also necessary in order to render the absence of such subjection possible. Therefore, while the state might still pose a threat of domination, this does not undermine its moral salience. This provides a stronger justification of the state, not only as a contingent means to prevent subordination, but also as a necessary condition to realise freedom and equality. References: Kolodny, Niko, ‘Rule Over None I: What Justifies Democracy?’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 42, no. 3 (2014a): 195–229. Kolodny, Niko, ‘Rule Over None II: Social Equality and the Justification of Democracy’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 42, no. 4 (2014b): 287–336. Kolodny, Niko, ‘Being under the Power of Others’, in Republicanism and the Future of Democracy, ed. by Elazar, Yiftah and Rousselière, Geneviève, 94–114 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). Viehoff, Daniel, ‘Democratic Equality and Political Authority’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 42 (2014): 337-375.