Answerable to the People?

AmConMag: Byzantine Empire—or Republic?
The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome, Anthony Kaldellis, Harvard University Press, 312 pages
By Brian Patrick Mitchell

The Right to Citizenship

A follow-up to this post.

Why is there not a universal, natural right to citizenship?

1. What is required for one to be able to order the community, or legislate, well? [Civic] prudence and the moral virtues.

2. What about being able to judge other people well, according to their character (rather than the platform that they espouse)? This requires experience, familiarity with virtue, and right opinion regarding moral precepts and the good, at least, if not knowledge.

These are not inborn traits; they must be acquired and they are contingent, not necessary. As a result, there can be no natural right since no one is "naturally" qualified to rule or to have some share in it. Some notion of [natural] individual dominion or sovereignty is inadequate to back up the claim that such a right exists. In accordance with distributive justice, then, the work of the whole should be done by all the members of whole only if they are qualified to do it, not simply because they are members.

One might appeal to Aquinas' discussion of law as a counter-argument in favor of all being naturally entitled to citizenship:

Now to order anything to the common good, belongs either to the whole people, or to someone who is the viceregent of the whole people. And therefore the making of a law belongs either to the whole people or to a public personage who has care of the whole people: since in all other matters the directing of anything to the end concerns him to whom the end belongs.

The act of legislating belongs to the community as a whole in directing itself to its good - "since in all other matters the directing of anything to the end concerns him to whom the end belongs." This could be further explained by an appeal to dominion or sovereignty (though Aquinas does not do so in the Summa Theologiae).

But not all participate in the ordering in the right way - some order, some are ordered. And even those who order may not do so equally, for example the members of the family. While the wife (and to a lesser extent their children) may contribute to the deliberation of the household, the husband is the authority. I do not think Aquinas would dispute this point. There appears to be a significant difference between an individual directing himself and an individual being a part of a group. The differences between the members and the consequences of these on their relationships to one another (~social dynamics) are such that the group is not reducible to the totality of the individuals who comprise it. The act of legislation may be attributable to the community as a whole, but it is not necessary that all members of the community are equally the author of that act - there may be justified degrees of participation. While it may be proper that all members of a community be consulted concerning potential legislation (especially regarding its impact on the community), this does not entail that all should be legislators.

While I am sympathetic to the claim that the best constitution (or the one most amenable to Christian fraternity) is that of a republic, it is an ideal and not one that comes about naturally. The paideia that is required must be in place in order to bring a republic into being and to sustain it. Nowadays, it is not as important question  as the problem of size and scale, a more pressing matter, not only because of the lack of ecological sustainability.

If it is not in accord with distributive justice that those who do not have the requisite virtue have a share in rule, and it is not unjust to prevent them from having it, could a valid consequentialist argument be made that if they were to have a share in rule that a worse state of affairs would result (e.g. there would be more disagreement and conflict, or the quality of the legislation would decrease as more compromises would have to be made to satisfy the demands of opposing factions)?

An additional question that needs to be addressed is whether men and women are equally suited to rule. But perhaps a more important consideration is the relationship of a man to his family as the husband and father and to other men as a member of a group.

Some thoughts of my own on the topic of authority and consent of the governed...

Is withdrawing consent the same as disobedience? Is consent identical to designation, so that withdraw of consent is the removal of authority? Even if one is a good ruler does that by itself give him the right to rule?

In disobeying one may not necessarily be designating one's self as the ruler, though in effect that is what he is doing. Can there be disobedience without recognition that obedience is owed?

One is not guilty of disobedience if a sin is enjoined.  

There is a difference between designating another ruler as opposed to designating one's self, in effect, through disobedience. One should follow the law in the changing of rulers but I can imagine that if there is a grave threat to the common good, this law may be ignored. What if the process for selecting the ruler is itself unjust? For example, hereditary succession seems to violate distributive justice, even if it has a long history and is found in many cultures.

Law is ordered to the common good, but following the law is not always identical with the common good? Obeying the law is a component of the common good, as can be submission to an unjust ruler. But in replacing an unjust ruler with a just ruler, even if one is not following the established custom in doing so, might it not be that one is obeying a "higher" law?
 Is a ruler, once he becomes a ruler, above judgment? Who can judge whether he is acting in accordance with his office or if he has exceeded it? If all powers related to the common good reside in the community as a whole before they are delegated to one or some, can those powers be recovered by the community? Does it matter whether they are virtuous or not?

Has someone resisting an unjust ruler not already made a judgment about the ruler? It may not be binding on the public; is private judgment sufficient to ground a claim of legitimate self-defense? Or must he be acting in some public capacity, even if he is acting as lone individual? (Acting as a lone individual is not the same as acting as a private individual.)

(The origin of government.)

Should it be presumed that one is unqualified to rule until he qualifies himself (military service + property + family)? Or should one be reckoned qualified until it is established that he is vicious? The former qualifications are rather low, since the appearance of virtue, such that it garners the trust and respect of others, is sufficient, and may be compatible with the latter stance.

There is also the pragmatic question of effectiveness -- even if a ruler is virtuous and right, if the people do not agree to his being the ruler, how can he rule except with the use of force? What if he does not have sufficient force?

Consequential Ideas by Harvey mansfield
Exploring the subtle dangers of 'soft despotism' in democracies.

Rahe's work can be said to be an extended critique of the work of Skinner and Pocock, which has never resulted in a debate among the principals because Skinner and Pocock have never deigned to answer him. The issue between him and them is whether and how ideas influence history. Rahe believes that "ideas have consequences," that they have the power to guide and even make events, and therefore that they are not mainly caused by the conditions of their time or context but are, on the contrary, mainly the cause of these conditions.

Robert George, A visit to Italy to discuss civic values

I have just returned from Italy, where I gave the graduation adddress for the Master of Civic Education program at the Ethica Institute in the charming city of Asti. It was a wonderful opportunity to engage some of Italy's most gifted and promising young intellectuals. Ethica is performing a great service to the Italian nation by promoting the rigorous and appreciative study of civic values that must be in place if a regime of republican liberty is to be sustained. Scholars representing a spectrum of political viewpoints are assisting in the project. Students at Ethica have the great advantage of hearing the best arguments that can be made on different sides of questions that are at the center of Italian politics today. It is often lamented by public spirited Italians that civic discourse in their nation has degenerated into the rankest forms of partisanship. They say that political discussions frequently amount to exchanges of insults and other forms of verbal abuse. Ethica is doing something to change that. Its efforts deserve praise and support.

What would believers in consolidationism have to say about civic values and republicanism? Would Robert George or mainstream Italians be willing to repudiate that project? When the scale of a polity is too great, how can political discourse not degenerate as mass man, who has been unshackled from tradition and the bounds of community, is incorporated into it?

Ethica forum di riflesione sui temi dell'etica e della morale
Maurizio Viroli

OUP: Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism by Richard Dagger

(alt)

(Google Books)

The author's faculty page.

A public police force: a fitting republican institution?

ARE COPS CONSTITUTIONAL? by Roger Roots