A Theory of Political Ethics
This article will focus on the fundamental basis of and reasons given for political action. By “political action,” we mean the activities in which one can take part in relation to governmental policy within a democracy. This does not mean simply actual actions (e.g., voting, volunteering, etc.) but also less impactful actions such as political identification and learning. While less impactive upon political policy, such actions are often more impactful upon an individual’s interactions with the political world and, as such, demand some level of focus for a political ethics. We will find that the demands of political ethics, being an extension of normal ethics, are fulfilled via the promotion of virtue bounded within certain restrictions, and that these restrictions thereby require the virtue promoted to both be previously generally accepted as well as existing within the bounds of a previously understood idea of public morality (as opposed to private morality).
In arguing this position, we will first examine which beliefs and requirements are clearly viewed as desirable, particularly in conjunction with one another. We will look at how those views differ from several alternative possible bases for political action, finding several to be both inaccurate about what real political ethics consists of as well as unconvincing and undesirable as moral positions. We will first look specifically at the idea that one contributes by virtue of their duty, that is to say, because not doing so would make them immoral for a variety of reasons. Then, we will look at the idea that people act politically to help create a relationship between themselves and the state – for instance, to feel like a good or righteous citizen. We will then look at a non-moral approach to political action: the idea that people ought to act politically to aid their own interests. Next, we will introduce our own, rather simple, idea – that to act politically is to act morally and to affiliate oneself to the good, applying it to different areas of political action such as voting. Branching out from this perspective, we will then examine how this viewpoint can be applied as a basis of establishing not simply why political action is taken but also what political actions ought to be taken, including what bounds ought to exist upon those political opinions.
Moral political action clearly includes acting in several ways packaged together. (1): One ought to act politically. (2): One ought to have a basis of knowledge upon which one can base their political actions (the idea of being an “informed” voter). (3): One ought to vote according to what they believe would be right and good (the idea of voting based on one’s personal interests is inherently repulsive). (4): One ought to vote in such a way to actually cause what is right and good to occur (there is some moral difference between someone who votes for Hitler in 1933 and someone who votes against him, even if both sincerely believe their vote will do good). (1) is the part which is most contested (many people do not believe it – in the most recent presidential election, only about two-thirds of eligible voters actually voted) and is the part which we will try to prove. The other arguments seem to flow from the first in such a way that needs no further proof – to act politically seems to entail one’s acting to do good, both in intention and in practice, and to do basic research into one’s action. As a result, any coherent concept of political action ought to take (2)-(4) as being implied by (1) and, similarly, to conclude that any theory which states one should behave in ways (2)-(4) for entirely different and unrelated reasons from why one should behave in way (1) is defective.
The first possible basis for political action we will look at takes political action to be a duty. Such a position seems quite simple. Rather than asserting political action is a clear good, this position argues that the lack of political action is a clear negative. It therefore posits that one has a duty to engage in political action (to vote, for instance), as well as following (2)-(4) above. This can be understood as some kind of Kantian moral law, something like “a citizen ought to be an informed voter,” demanding its followers act in ways (1)-(4), divorced from the implications of those actions, simply because there is a particular moral rule demanding so. The basis of that rule could be the belief that being an “informed voter” is some kind of virtue, or it could be based on a purely Kantian morality (the idea that the categorical imperative calls for each person to be an informed voter, for instance).
However, this view does not properly understand political ethics, in particular breaking down with respect to (4), actually achieving a positive result through one’s political action. While there is nothing necessarily wrong with believing this viewpoint can include (1)-(3), there is something wrong with believing it can include (4). The ability to bring about the good is certainly something which is considered preferable in voting. Indeed, a great deal of private learning is considered necessary for voting, learning to vote not just for what one believes to be right but also what in fact is right. For this not to be the case would be a very strange and unintuitive conclusion, and it would fail to explain common cases of collective guilt over political action in favor of a candidate, for instance that in post-Hitler Germany. Those who supported Hitler politically, even if they intended the good, would still be morally impugned for the bad. This would not just include those who thought Hitler was going to do what he in fact did but also those who, perhaps, did not believe Hitler would actually do much of what he promised (people who thought anti-Semitism was simply a rhetorical device, for instance). Indeed, one could say the people who supported Hitler misused their political rights and did moral wrong with it. So, then, if we were to take this duty-based idea of political action to be correct, we would therefore be required to say that people had, as part of their political duty, some duty to support the correct candidates who did the good.
Yet, this implication that one has a duty to support the good would cause a great deal of difficulty for political action. It would first create the question of where exactly the line between the good and the bad lies. Would the good simply mean the comparably good? Or would it mean that which actively improves the situation? Neither of these ideas work to properly explain political action.
The first case, the idea that one has a duty to support the comparably good, would lead in many cases to the moral requirement to actively do evil. Such an imperative can exist, but only in cases in which one is forced into action. However, political action is not one of those cases. One engages in political action by one’s own choice, and in particular because one believes they ought to. A duty to pursue the comparably good would lead to cases in which engaging in political action would require people to actively bring about evil. In those cases, acting politically would be an inherently evil thing to do, as one would be forced to engage in evil. Whether or not that engagement would be done for some greater good, the actor would still be demanded to do evil. Placing oneself in a situation where one is demanded to do evil is inherently undesirable, no matter the positive consequences of doing that evil. An actor, from a moral point of view, ought to simply prefer to avoid doing evil if they can avoid the circumstances in which evil is demanded of them, in this case acting politically. Since people can avoid the political, such avoidance would be desirable as a way of retaining one’s morality. However, this is clearly not the case. Rather, it is true that people very much do believe deciding between negative moral outcomes is important politically and that stopping a much greater evil from taking power is right, even if it places in power a comparably minor evil. For instance, few would say that if one’s options were between Pol Pot and someone who holds marginally wrong views on tax policy, voting for the person somewhat wrong on tax policy would be a great moral wrong. The only way, though, that this can be the case is if not taking political action is an even greater wrong than voting for marginal evil. However, this conclusion also seems inaccurate. Not engaging politically in general is not considered evil, let alone a greater evil than that which one will have to accept in cases in which both choices cause great negatives. And, times of great evil would not necessarily shift apolitical people’s obligations; for they, being apolitical, would not know whether it was a time of great evil in the political world. As a result, people’s attitude toward the apolitical would have to be extremely negative for this first idea of political obligation to overcome its inability to universally motivate political action, and in particular, to motivate political action for those currently apolitical. We could certainly imagine a society in which people were obligated to act due to a demand to act politically in favor of the comparably good; however, it seems wholly different from our own and from most democratic nations throughout history and will therefore not occupy much more attention.
The second possibility, that people only have a duty to support the positive, is also wrong, although for simpler reasons. In this case, political obligations would dissipate if both options were clearly negative. So, then, the basis for political action in cases in which both choices are bad would be different from the reason for political action if at least one choice is good. Yet, this seems contrary to our intuitive understanding of the vote. As we have said earlier, voting out of a desire to create a comparably good situation is not usually considered clearly wrong. In some cases, such as when one is deciding between an extremely awful option and a merely somewhat bad one (again, for instance, a choice between Pol Pot and someone whose views have slight inaccuracies on a couple of issues), it would indeed be considered a good and righteous action. It is also clearly not significantly different in nature from voting between two actively good options: one weighs interests in the same way and fundamentally views their vote the same way, as a means of aiding society or others. (This is not to say that there are no proper bases for refusing to vote if one considers both candidates to be bad and one candidate to only be comparably good. Empirically, there might very well be good arguments along other grounds to say that, in individual circumstances, voting for a comparably good candidate is in fact bad. This is simply to say that the duty to only support the positive implies that a moral obligation to not vote is not just present but obvious when both options are negative, that is, that the burden of proof would be upon the advocate of voting to prove why someone should vote for an objectively bad (but comparably good) candidate, not upon the advocate against voting for a comparably better (but objectively bad) candidate to prove why their not voting is righteous. However, this implication is clearly false: prior to any discussion of the possible implications of not voting, people clearly view voting for a bad but comparably good candidate similarly to voting for a clearly good candidate. For those who voted for Hitler because they viewed him as a way of avoiding Communist rule and for those who sincerely believed in Fascism, both clearly viewed themselves as having the same general moral reason to vote – the belief that Hitler’s victory would be significantly better for Germany than the alternative.)
We can thus see that this first concept of the basis of political action, the idea of purely deontic obligation, does not fully explain our political obligations. If it states that we have a duty to promote the comparably good, then it makes political action completely uncompelling and instead seems to promote political apathy. But, if it refuses to promote supporting the comparably good, then it goes directly against our concept of political action and goodness and therefore similarly cannot be accepted. Therefore, the idea of obligation as the basis of politics finds itself in a double-bind, completely unable to take either the position that we ought to promote the comparably good or the position that we ought not to promote the comparably good.
The second possible basis for political action we will examine views political action as engaging in or promoting a particular relationship with the state at large. That is to say, the actor and the state are directly intertwined in such a manner that is desirable, and the actor desires to uphold that relationship. For example, the actor may wish to influence the state to continue a particular relationship with the particular citizen (for instance, someone who believes the state’s electoral process is in itself good because of the relationship it creates between the individual citizen and the government and that such a process ought to be upheld by private action against, for instance, a dictator who would end the democratic process). Alternatively, the actor may view the relationship they have with the state as being created by the political actions they take, thereby seeking to continue those political actions to uphold their relationship (for example, someone might view voting as granting them an ability to influence the state and value that ability to influence as being essential to their own ability to reflect on their life and actions). However, both of these ideas are faulty.
The first possibility, that political action is focused on upholding a particular political relationship with the particular citizen, is a clearly inaccurate concept of political action. Firstly, for one to desire to uphold a particular political relationship via political action is unrealistic. One’s political actions are extremely rarely likely to affect actual political action substantively; few votes in history have been affected by a single voter, and likely just as few have been affected by a single volunteer. It is therefore likely that this analysis would lead to different approaches to political action for different people at different levels of wealth and influence depending upon their power, and even for those without an especially large amount of power to have no ethical basis for political action at all, an extremely unintuitive claim which goes against (1) (the requirement for political action) for most people. This theory would also fail to make political action a real ethical rule, as it is not demanded of all, instead requiring it as a secondary implication of some other, broader ethical claim about action, which would reduce political actions to only having an internal, or subjective, rationale, rather than external reasons for action. Thereby, if this idea of the basis of political action were the true basis, our mission, to find an objective basis for people in general to act politically, would fail. Secondly, this approach necessarily goes against (3)-(4) (the requirement to vote for what one believes is good and the requirement to vote for what will be in fact good) in its focus on bettering one’s own relationship with the state rather than any particular good action. Necessarily, one’s own relationship with the state is only affected by what parts of state action one perceives. Therefore, the state can try to retain its relationship with the individual – although at the expense of actually doing what the individual wants it to do – which would be actively good from that individual’s perspective. However, keeping up appearances while actually doing the opposite of what most people want goes directly against (4) (the requirement to bring about actually good outcomes). Indeed, such a situation is generally frowned upon; it is considered being taken advantage of by a political huckster and clearly not considered what we desire from politics. As such, we can see one’s desire to uphold a particular political system in order to have a particular relationship with the state is clearly not the basis of political action.
The second possibility, that one should act politically because doing so creates a particular personally positive relationship with the state, is just as wrong. This perspective has great difficulty in motivating the basis of political action. As discussed earlier, we cannot assume that the political action can be fully explained via deontic obligations. Instead, political action needs to have some kind of positively desirable basis to compel political action. One possible way in which political action could be reasonably motivated upon these lines would be a communitarian basis, a desire by one person to be part of a greater group and to contribute to its actions, and therefore, a desire to take at least minor political action. However, here, we have a problem. Contribution to some kind of community, and therefore political action along these lines, has to have a positive reason for one to partake in it. Therefore, the community has to either grant the individual something in return, thereby making people desire to grant it something in return (for instance, their membership), or make the individual happy to be a part of it (thereby delivering its members something, happiness or pride, from acting within it). One’s desire to be a member of and to contribute to the political community, though, cannot reasonably be contingent upon either of these explanations.
The first, that the political community actively grants portions of its population positive reinforcement, would lead to some strange implications. For if people act politically depending upon their being helped by the political, then their desire to act would be partially dependent on the extent to which the political had previously helped them. However, the knowledge of this – to what extent the political has helped a particular person – would be contingent upon (2) (having a base of knowledge to apply when enacting political actions) already being established; that is to say, one does not know whether or to what extent a government has aided them without having a prior base of political knowledge. Yet, the ability to achieve this political knowledge would require participation in the community, and we would thus fall into a circle without any clear reason for someone to start having political knowledge. Certainly, gaining political knowledge could be reasonable for other reasons, but that would therefore make (2) separate in its reason than (1) or (3)-(4), which, as we have said earlier, is contrary to our principles of political ethics. All parts of moral political action ((1)-(4)) are usually categorized together as being part of the same kind of general “political action,” taken for generally similar reasons. Were they to be based on entirely separate ethical motivations, one would not view them as being the same “sort” of ethical action – one would view each portion as a different but interrelated area of life. To give an example of this sort of relationship between actions, one might have first a desire to not be wasteful with their wealth and then an obligation, due to their accumulation of savings, to grant it to others. We can clearly see, in spite of being interrelated, these two areas are not inherently the same; the first (the promotion of the value prudence) clearly displays a different value than the latter (the promotion of the value of altruism). However, (2) is considered the same area of action as the rest of political action, and as such, is viewed as one with (1) and (3)-(4), not simply as an action which is interrelated to the other parts of political action. To separate learning about politics as having a different reason from acting on one’s learning about politics is certainly an unintuitive claim. As such, there needs to be some fundamental reason for one’s taking all (1)-(4), some fundamental value one is promoting in all areas of political action, which is applicable to each action within the broader category of political action. Since the idea that political ethics are based on one’s being previously helped by the political community wrongfully denies that (1)-(4) are based on the promotion of the same ethical value and are therefore not in the same category, we can reject this perspective.
The second alternative, the idea that the purpose of political action is to grant individuals the pride of being a member of a political community, is just as weak. This explanation only works if political action is contingent upon gaining pride from being part of a political community. This means that there is no basis for opposing the current political community, for if one is attacking the way in which political action is currently taken, nothing positive comes of such political action. Yet, this is again not the case. If one is, for instance, within Nazi Germany, political action taken not only to disagree with the political system within it but also without it is not just reasonable but probably morally required. Yet, if our present communitarian answer is the basis for political action, then this would be impossible, as for such action to take place, one must necessarily go against the current political community and political regime, not just by disagreeing with it but by trying to actively subvert it (via starting a revolution, for instance), if necessary, on an individual level. This oppositional action certainly seems like political action and is taken for the same reasons as political action. So, then, we must ask what distinguishes this oppositional action from normal political action. Consequently, moral political action under this communitarian explanation either must fundamentally refuse any level of revolutionary activity, even in cases in which it is clearly right, or must argue that the oppositional activity is apolitical or taken for different reasons as normally political activity, which is incredibly counterintuitive. Furthermore, political activity under this analysis is divorced from whether such actions are actually good, because being a member of a political community and taking pride in its existence come before whether taking a particular political action is right. As such, (3) (the requirement to pursue what one believes to be right in political action) loses its value, at least to an extent, and quite bad actions can be desired and even correct as a result. Thus, not only would this rationale require one to not act against the Nazi regime, but it might also very well require one to support it, at least if they view the political as being important in their lives. Certainly, though, the idea that political action compels one to support evil and is directly contrary to moral action is extremely unintuitive and makes the political uncompelling to such an extent that it cannot possibly explain the reason for as popular a form of activity as political action.
Seeing the many failures to explain how all four parts of political action can be explained by a single rationale, one might desire to get rid of some of those parts. Seeing as (1) (the duty to act politically) is what is being discussed and (2) (the requirement to gain political knowledge prior to political action) is necessary for (1) to have any clear purposive effect, getting rid of (3) and (4) (the requirement to pursue what actions one considers good and to bring about actually good actions respectively) seems like the obvious implication of this argument. To do so, one would have to argue that the basis for political action has nothing to do with whether we want to morally better the world. Rather, political action can be taken for non-moral reasons. As this would require some kind of other, nonmoral benefit from taking political action, and seeing as there is no clear emotional or pleasurable benefit to, for instance, voting, without some kind of moral reason to do so, one would have to believe that in such a case, the basis for political action would be to bring about one’s own benefit. That is to say, it is to make people gain materially (or somehow elsewise) through the actions of the state, influenced by political action.
However, this argument makes little sense in practice. There are, in larger countries, hundreds of thousands of people voting even on local elections. It would simply be inconceivable that each single person gains out of voting for a candidate. As noted earlier, elections are rarely affected by a single individual’s vote. Clearly, the amount of effort required to learn about issues and to actually vote is much greater than the amount one would gain from voting, factoring in the extremely low probability of that vote having an effect on one’s life.
Nevertheless, the explanation of material benefit as the basis of voting does not automatically fall solely on this analysis. For, a proponent might reply, one may not simply vote based on a desire to gain materially but on their desire to feel like they are doing something to benefit themselves. As such, voting would be a little like the lottery, something that will obviously hurt the person engaging in it from a monetary perspective but in which they still partake for the remote chance that the extreme improbability will come true, either for the retention of hope or for some other similar reason. However, this explanation, too, is extremely unlikely. Those elections which have more of a tangible effect on an individual person – that is, local elections – rarely receive anywhere near as many votes as elections occurring on a national stage. If people really did vote based on these factors, participation in the election for an individual House seat, which has rarely affected anything, should be much lower than for the mayor of a city, which has often affected many things from what jobs are available to what traffic is like. Yet, the turnout rate in the most recent mayoral elections in the five largest cities in the U.S. (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix) have ranged from about 20 percent to about 35 percent of registered voters, compared to the 2018 House election (which we will be using as an example rather than the 2020 House election, as the 2020 House election occurred at the same time as a presidential election), where turnout was a little over 50 percent. Clearly, people vote far more to affect a single House representative (someone who has little ultimate importance to political policy), rather than the much more (personally) important position of mayor.
Furthermore, the basis for people voting does not look anything like the desire to gain wealth. As we previously discussed in paragraph 2 of “The Politics of Minority Identity: The Tension Between Group Identity and Social Acceptance,” the wealthy often vote for policies such as higher taxes, and both the poor and wealthy often vote more based on geography (which probably does not affect whether a policy will affect you in an economically positive or negative way) rather than class (which probably does). This goes completely contrary to the idea that people vote based on what is economically good for them, unless people in general are incapable of knowing whether a policy is good for them. Further, people, when asked, rarely say their personal economic situation is why they voted how they did. For instance, in an SVT exit poll of Swedish voters in 2018, only 32.7 percent of voters when asked described their personal situation as “very important” to how they voted, a smaller percentage than those who said the Swedish economy, employment, environment law and order, immigration, healthcare, equality between men and women, education, elderly care, social welfare, or pensions – that is to say, it was not very important. Again, this does not necessarily disprove the idea that people vote based upon their personal financial interests. However, if we cannot prove whether people vote based on their personal finances based on responses to polls or based on voting patterns, then we cannot prove it positively at all. Moreover, both responses seem to point in the direction of this explanation being untrue. As a result, even if we cannot definitively rule out personal finances as the basis of voting, we have very little evidence that it is in fact the basis of voting, while we have good evidence that makes it improbable and no particularly good reason why individuals (most of whom do not take part in activities such as the lottery) should want to engage in political action based along the lines of personal finances. As such, we will conclude that this position is probably untrue, either descriptively or prescriptively.
Rather than these alternative explanations, we will instead put forth the idea that political action is functionally the same as other moral action. That is to say, one’s taking of a political action is predicated upon that action’s being morally “good,” based either on the desire of the actor to be morally “good” or the desire of the actor to do “good” rather than “bad” actions. As such, the actor desires to take a given political action for the same reason as they might take an apolitical action, because they believe (with a certain level of clarity) that their action significantly shifts the extent to which they themselves or the world in general (or both) is “good” as opposed to “bad.” The taking of this action is not necessary to the actor, just as other forms of “good” action such as charity are not always necessary to all actors, but it is positive for all actors to take political action if that action is clearly good (or at least, clearly an improvement upon the circumstances when such action were not taken).
An easy and obvious objection to this perspective that people act based on purely moral reasons would be that “good” political actions have very little effect in comparison to other charitable actions. Indeed, the amount of time necessary to research how one should vote and then to vote could probably be used to much greater effect volunteering at a children’s hospital, for instance. However, this objection only helps to further support our explanation for the basis of political action. Rather than trying to lead to consequences, political action in our explanation merely has to grant the political actor the feeling of being “good.” As such, it does not necessarily matter if the actions actively change the events of reality, merely that they think they are on the right side of an issue. One can, along communitarian lines, take partial credit for an action taken by a group of people, even if one’s taking part in it is a very minor portion of the actual action. (Take, for example, a group of people cleaning up a beach for charity. Even though each person cleans only a small amount of trash, certainly nowhere near the amount to make a sizeable difference on the cleanliness of that beach, if all together, a group manages to clean the entire beach, one individual volunteer can reasonably feel as if they have done good and contributed to the broader action.)
This ability to participate within a particular group causing a good action is the basis of the desire for political action. For the political actor, affiliating themselves to different groups attempting to political actors who altogether create policy can be quite valuable in granting the actor an ability to take some level of credit for political action. Along these lines, different levels of political action can be seen as attempts to different extents to affiliate oneself with the broader group and to feel as if one is a part of political actions greater than their own personal actions. Indeed, in some cases, if the political action is great enough, if the ability to affiliate oneself to the group is successful enough, and if the work required to affiliate oneself is small enough, political affiliation can in fact be a greater boon to one’s “goodness” at a lower price than alternative, individual “good” action. As a consequence, we can see that political action can be extremely valuable under our framework.
A further positive characteristic of this framework is its explanatory power in relation to our prior four points describing what political action entails. First of all, the framework easily includes all of (1)-(4) via the same bases. The basis for (1) (the duty to take political action) and (3) (the duty to intend one’s political action to do good) has already been explained by the desire to affiliate oneself to the “good.” (2) (the requirement to obtain political knowledge prior to political action) can be explained for two reasons. First, we wish to find out what positions are affiliated with what groups, so we can not only affiliate ourselves with what we believe to be the good but also to affiliate with actually “good” actions, thereby gaining the “goodness” not just of intending good but also actually doing “good.” Second, the pursuit of this knowledge will allow us not to be tricked by views that are not in fact as “good” as we may believe when we take political action, thus making it less likely for us to feel as if we have done “bad” than is likely to occur if we knew very little before taking political action and causing a policy we might later see as having done evil. (A third, cynical reason for (2) (the pursuit of political knowledge prior to political action) under our framework can also be that people tend to solidify their views as they become more knowledgeable, entirely divorced from whether they are correct in those views (as discussed in Herne, Karisa, et al., “The Influence of Political Knowledge on Opinion Polarization in Citizen Deliberation.” Political Research Exchange, ol. 1, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1-23, https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736x.2019.1702887). Thus, political knowledge might be valuable for the actor simply because it assures their views remain the same and they continue to be able to view themselves as being on the “good” side, regardless of whether they change their views to correspond more accurately to the correct ones). And (4) (the need to pursue actually good results) can be explained as one not wanting to find out one has in fact been on the “bad” rather than the “good” side when one’s actions in fact have led to “bad” rather than “good” outcomes. So, then, we can select our political actions so that they actually lead to the “good” rather than the “bad,” since we want to continue believing ourselves to be on the “good” rather than on the “bad” side.
This perspective regarding the basis of political action is also valuable due to its ability to explain many parts of real political morality that other arguments cannot. In particular, the idea of political morality as entailing not just voting based on outright support but also preference is something which this view can explain, unlike the other views at which we have previously looked. For, if a voter is deciding between two options, they need not believe one choice is outright good to support it, but instead they must merely believe they are doing a “good” thing by supporting that option and that such an option winning is preferable to the alternatives. As a result, they can reasonably support a candidate who may be bad when the alternative is significantly worse, for in such a situation it would still be good for the comparably good candidate to win, even if they are not outright good. Secondly, our explanation allows for a wide range of political actions, and even no political position at all, depending on the circumstance. Since actions are taken because their effects (at least if they are taken by the general population) are good, actions taken outside of the political mainstream (such as protests or, in extreme cases, revolts) can be perfectly reasonable. This reasonableness is dependent on whether they can actually deliver the results they promise. This relationship between the reasonableness of non-mainstream political action and their real political effects correlates heavily with how such actions are actually thought of in general. To respond to the question of whether protestation is right by saying it is intrinsically right or wrong would be unusual; to respond to the question by looking at whether such protestation can actually affect policy to make it right or wrong is far more similar to how most observers actually look at this decision. Apathy as well is allowed, and its reasonability is dependent upon the clarity of differences between the candidates, as it is in reality. Whether one ought to take political action is decided by whether one can reasonably say they affiliate themselves with an option, such that they believe that option will in fact do good.
This explains why different people take different levels of political action. For those who cannot tell the difference between political options or believe there not to be a difference, taking political action is pointless. On the other hand, for those who can see a massive difference between political options in favor of a single particular one, political action is clearly valuable. This works with our general idea of how apathy or political action can be considered reasonable. If someone says they do not vote because they think all the candidates are the same, this makes sense to us. If they say they are especially interested in volunteering or supporting a particular option because they think that option is massively superior to its alternatives, that would also make sense to us. Only with this theory do either of those ideas make sense. Otherwise, if one has an absolute duty or a personal interest, whether that be communitarian or material, to take political action, that duty would not change depending on the quality of options or whether one can distinguish between them. As such, the explanatory power of our viewpoint alone makes it more reasonable than its alternatives.
However, perhaps the most valuable aspect of our viewpoint is how compelling it is. The alternatives we have examined thus far view political action as a requirement, something one is required to do because of a duty, or some kind of lottery ticket to hope one can get what they want, or just as something which makes one feel good so as to be a part of the broader community. All these different explanations are not just wrong but also extremely uncompelling; the first two make one wish one did not have to vote, and even the third makes the only positive part of political action voting, making all other parts of political action such as researching one’s opinions simply a means to the greater end of a particular political action. However, our concept of political action makes every portion of political action, from the point at which people gain their particular views to their following through of those views with political action. It thereby grants them not just a reason to desire the taking of a particular political action but also a reason to prepare for political action (i.e., not just (1) but also (2)). This, in fact, is much more similar to actual political action, wherein people often feel a desire and not just a duty to learn about politics prior to taking such actions. By allowing them to have a clear reason for learning about current events (desiring vindication for their beliefs), we therefore arrive at a clearer idea of how people actually interact with politics.
Even more importantly, our explanatory theory of political action is intrinsically a desirable one to take. Believing every part of political action is desirable in itself is a much more desirable position than if we say, for instance, that political action is an absolute duty. Further, the benefits of believing our political actions are good only exist if we recognize them (we have no reason to think of ourselves as doing good via political action if we do not also believe our political actions are valuable because they are part of broader, society-wide political actions), unlike the benefits from our other sources of political action (for instance, if political action is good because it makes us feel like part of a community, we will feel like part of that community whether we recognize this particular argument about what makes political action compelling or not). Furthermore, our belief that political action is taken for equivalent reasons to moral action allows us to also gain benefits from other possible positions about political action – if it is in fact true that we have a duty to engage in political action, then, as political action in our theory is approximately similar to political action under the idea of duty (both demand we act politically for the same reasons (to promote the good) with the same political knowledge), we would likely not face significant negative repercussions if we found out if we were wrong. Our position, therefore, is the only position which allows us to yield the positive benefits of holding our political morality. Further, all other possible benefits of political morality which we have discussed are also obtained by holding our position. As such, taking this position on political morality is not just reasonable but also desirable.
So, then, we have a clear idea that good political action is equivalent to good moral action. Of course, this has clear implications for political action. First, it supposes that there is no clear separation between the just and the moral, that is to say, if we believe an action to be right and moral for a person to do, then it would be perfectly just for a state to do. We therefore arrive at the clear idea that changing the state to better emulate moral action would be the main end of political action. Of course, this brings up the question of what goodness consists of, a question we have previously considered in “The Question of Liberalism.” In that article, we rejected moral liberalism, the view that morality is the delivering of what each individual considers good to them, and instead found goodness to consist of those actions which promote what we find to be the good in our own lives across others’ as well. This then implies that the state ought to do the same as well. Of course, what this influencing actually consists of would very much differ between the individual and the state, as the individual does not have the same power as the state. That being said, there is no purpose or intention of the state per se, as the state is not an entity but merely a group of people attempting to influence state actions. As a result, people are obligated to take actions on a political level to attempt to enact whatever programs or actions of the state would promote the good throughout whatever the state has sovereignty over. Therefore, while substantively that action might look different from the actions the individual takes to promote the good, as the powers of the state are different from the powers of individuals and therefore different strategies ought to be utilized to promote the good, the ends of that action, to merely influence others to promote the good, would not be at all different from the ends of one’s non-political actions.
To use a somewhat close correlate, think of the actions which one takes in relation to their future self. We will be particularly following our previous analysis of the way in which one’s actions influence their future actions outlined in “A Defense of Ethical Stability.” That article talks about how one influences their future self to avoid finding themselves taking positions in the future which one might currently disdain. One’s position in relation to their future self is similar to the relation of the state to the individual. The individual is unable to specifically and directly influence or physically change the actions of one’s future self because one’s future self is inherently separated at a temporal and therefore unbridgeable level from the current self (and thus unreachable for obvious reasons). This is similar to the state, which is unable to directly control its citizenry for multiple reasons, some of which are obvious and practical (such as the state’s historically rather weak ability to completely replace the beliefs of its inhabitants, the failure of which can be seen in the religiosity of former Iron Curtain nations, nations which for decades attempted and failed to repress those religions) and some which we will outline later in this article (e.g., the existence of political rights, and the separation of public and private life which we ought not bridge). Due to these problems of enforcement, which specific actions are viewed as necessary are different for the influencing of others than they are for the influencing of oneself. Rather than active shifts, what is instead desired is the increased stability (which we use here to mean on an individual level rather than a societal level, that is to say, when we describe an ideology as “stable,” we mean it is not likely that the person who holds it will significantly change their moral views based on hearing alternatives or on their future experiences, not that such an ideology, for instance, impedes changes in social relations or which political group is in power) of certain compromised versions of our ideologies which might be more effective in their influence as well as more stable when confronted with threats to their legitimacy from other ideologies or beliefs. It also calls for a greater focus on the conditions under which negative actions, whether those of others or those of future selves, are created, the ideologies which cause them, and the influencing of those others to not engage in such ideologies. This involves not simply stopgaps or prohibitions of everything outside of what is good (with respect to paragraphs 12 and 14 of “A Defense of Ethical Stability,” respectively) but also and especially (if not exclusively) the imparting upon people of stable ideologies which will cause them to successfully evade those ideologies which might lead them to bad actions in the first place. What this therefore means is that such an ideology, if one wishes to impart it upon society, needs to be established over a long period of time as a stable ideology, thereby prohibiting one from spreading moral views which, even if seemingly good or even individually good, have not been previously established as stable. (An example of an ideology not previously found to be stable would be the Jacobin view of the individual in the French Revolution, filled with novel and purely theoretical ideas; whether or not such an ideology was right about morality (and it probably wasn’t), it deserved to be rejected even prior to the question of its theoretical ideological goodness.) How this is applied depends on a great deal, including which ideologies one believes to be stable and what one believes “imparting” to entail, issues which, of course, depend on the circumstances of a particular political action. Therefore, we will not speculate on them further here.
We will, however, include a quick aside to explain the views of our morality on granting others the means to bring about their desires. While this is something to which we have rejected as comprising the exclusive basis of morality in “The Question of Liberalism,” there is nothing necessarily wrong with other people arriving at their desired ends, if, of course, those ends are compatible with our idea of what they should be. Therefore, at least among the moral, it is necessarily good to provide for others’ arriving at their ends in whatever way best helps those others gain the means to accomplish their ends. This does not necessarily mean none of the ends of those who do not share our morals ought to be reached or that political action should not help them arrive at those ends; many ends are similar among different societies, even among all people, ends such as the desire for food. As such, we morally ought to help others arrive at those ends which are compatible with our own morality. Those ends that are outside of that shared morality, however, need not be aided.
Of course, one thing which this viewpoint seems at first to not focus on sufficiently is rights. The absence of such an important part of our general understanding of political action, the understanding that there is some separation between public action which may be regulated and private action which may not be regulated, seems to be an unusual failing of our argument here. This failing makes our argument unintuitive, at least, and possibly causes our position to fail as a descriptive way of understanding political action. Perhaps one could pin the problem on our rejection of moral liberalism, an unusual political position which is nevertheless a good moral position, thereby allowing the unintuitive view that there is no separation between private and public action to seem less extreme, as a problem with how others, not ourselves, view the political. Yet, even still, the concept of the political entirely without interest in the individual as a separate body from the public is so outside of the norm, even the norm of those who do reject moral liberalism (communitarians, for instance), that it seems to imply some problem with our political theory. So, then, it seems necessary (although perhaps isn’t truly necessary) that we identify a concept of right within our political theory, something which acts as a countervailing interest to our desire to change others’ actions in areas normally protected from legal pressure.
The answer to this question can be found in the same article which we have previously cited on other matters – “A Defense of Ethical Stability.” In this article, we find that, even if believing certain ideologies and acting in certain ways seem more moral than others, if the latter alternatives are more stable than the former, then the latter might also be more moral, since in the future, when we are not the same people and might have more experiences, we will retain similar moral views. This analysis seems directly comparable to the political. All leaders throughout history, whether democracy or dictatorship, have left power at some point or another, whether due to constitutional provisions such as elections or term limits, age, a desire to retire, or death, and all nations, even those formed in the most pristine image of their leaders’ morality, have been transferred to leaders without those same morals. As such, those leaders, different from their predecessors, then impose their own morality upon society. The extent to which the private is separate from the public influences to what extent the new morals of the new leaders will affect the private lives of the members of that society. If the private is weaker, then it is directly undesirable, as the actions of those newly in power can and will directly go against the morals of their predecessors, in favor of their own. This can cause a loss greater in magnitude than any positive which might yield from the enforcement of one’s own morality. We can therefore reasonably incorporate a concept of rights an avoidance of the creation of any restrictions, good or bad, on certain “private” areas if in those areas bad restrictions would constitute a sufficiently negative impact. Thus, we arrive at obviously unarguable rights, such as that to life, which few would be willing to argue against out of fear that, otherwise, the possible misuse of government action in relation to them would cause much greater harm than any benefit to be derived from the correct usage of that government action.
However, this argument is unclear and incorrect, at least in how we have argued it. Certainly, we can imagine situations in which government action conflicts with certain fundamental rights in ways that do not imply other violations of those fundamental rights. If, for instance, the death penalty is restored in a nation and murderers are killed, that would not make it reasonable for ethnic minorities to fear they are now in danger of being murdered by the state. Clearly, the violations of certain rights for one group does not in this case imply that the violation of rights for another group in the future has become more likely. One could argue that this is because the vast majority of people have little empathy for murderers, so the killing of members of generally despised groups does not somehow imply danger for other, non-despised groups. However, this does not explain why other groups despised by the vast majority, such as, for instance, robbers, should not fear being murdered. Yet, those groups feeling as if the restoration of the death penalty implies that their rights are now in significant danger of being threatened by the vast majority would be unreasonable. The explanation for this difference can be cleared up by our argument in “A Defense of Ethical Stability.” Rather than viewing the particular policies of a society as being the stable ideology the changing of which leads to instability, we can instead see the stable ideology as being a group of ideas of what may be regulated by society and how it may be regulated. That is to say, a particular society’s understanding of what policies can be enforced without risking the basic framework of the political system (i.e., without risking the normalization of on the one side dictatorial and on the other anarchic actions by future leaders) would be that society’s stable ideology.
If we affirm this idea that a stable ideology is defined by what policies one can follow without putting the general framework of society into jeopardy either by normalizing excessively dictatorial or anarchic actions, what governmental actions may be taken is decided by what areas of life have previously been considered fundamentally private and not to be infringed upon. In a normal case, we are in a state of stability, where people generally accept what areas are private and public and do not seek significant changes in which areas are which, even if they might prefer slight changes. However, if an idea of a right is significantly infringed upon by the public, then we enter a state of political instability (similar to the personal uncertainty in which one is placed when changing their personal views to an unstable view), in which all parts of the society see no general consensus about what the right ought to consist of and therefore, each group in society seeks to change that right to achieve what they believe to be the correct and good group of actions. This state of instability can span across multiple particular political issues; for instance, if views about what the right to land consists of changes, that need not only encompass the right to land but also the right to other properties, even if they were not originally infringed upon. (However, this state of instability also need not have consequences upon all areas of life; for instance, if the question of the right to worship is infringed upon, that need not have effects upon whether the right to purchase addictive substances exists.) The political instability created by this situation only disappears when the political debate eventually arrives at some kind of generally stable position, usually one with precedent. Such a shift need not occur only in one direction, either. A decline in state power in one area often causes further decline of state power in similar areas, areas in which a similar concept of “right” can be claimed. This is why social change, whether authoritarian or libertarian, tends to occur in waves, with the opening up or restriction of certain rights implying the opening up or restriction of others in similar areas, and social change taken with the intentions of making minor changes in those areas often leads to much greater changes in the long run. (For the effects of opening up, see many cases in the Arab Spring such as Tunisia, in which moderate liberalization led to massive revolts over what exactly liberalism consists of, and for the reverse, see the examples given in “Reconciling Capitalism and Democracy,” in particular the general trend toward the growth of the “public” areas of life throughout the past century.)
This is not to say there are no cases when entering a state of instability is right. If one lives in an extreme society, either extremely authoritarian or extremely libertarian, it might very well be the case that any shift in a particular direction is good, even if it promotes or supports moralities one might not personally support. And, if one is certain their group has absolute control over the nation and that alternative groups will not have victory in the period of instability, then it might also be reasonable to support a state of instability. In addition, if one particular issue is significantly more important than other issues, then it might also be reasonable to support instability if it allows one to reach a better consequence in that particular area. This means that in some cases, not only can instability be acceptable, it can be correct to intentionally cause it, even if the area in which a particular restriction or liberalization results is not an area in which we actually support such a liberalization or restriction. However, this argument does tell us to generally avoid significant shifts, either towards the creation of new or the violation of old concepts of rights, to assure that possible negative consequences of the instability which would be caused by that shift are not greater than the positive consequences of making such a shift. And, even more importantly, it tells us to always have a clear concept of an eventually stable end goal which we would, if we can, successfully arrive at in the end, so as to avoid others finding their own, inferior stable concept. As a result, this viewpoint tells us to never exceed what have previously been considered the bounds for the private and public sphere, requiring us to limit ourselves to concepts of the separation of private and public which have already existed in previous societies and proven themselves to be stable concepts before.
So, then, we have a clear idea of what makes up political action. We take such actions as moral actions so as to make us feel like good people. This occurs by allowing us to identify with certain groups supporting actions which we view as moral, rather than others which we view as immoral. This then allows us to identify and take partial credit for great good or for trying to stop great evil, something which is quite desirable. In practice, political action consists of two things: attempting to spread certain moral traditions analogous to our own morals beyond ourselves, and helping others gain the means to arrive at what we consider to be good ends, so as to bring about the good for others as well as oneself. However, this view of moral political action is bounded within the idea of rights, decided by certain traditions of what right consists of, among which we can choose. Such a view emphasizes and focuses on assuring that our political actions have precedent and are based upon traditions of what politics consists of and does, as well as supporting the spread of moral traditions, and not simply whatever moral views happen to seem the most right to us at a given moment in time.
