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For multiple rounds of feedback, I owe special thanks to Alexander Kirshner, Dennis
Thompson, Nicholas Vrousalis, two referees for Philosophy & Public Affairs, and its Edi-
tor, Alan Patten. For written comments or extensive conversations, I am very grateful to
Chuck Beitz, Luc Bovens, Luis de la Calle, Richard Dagger, Tom Donahue, Jon Elster,
Marc Fleurbaey, Johann Frick, In ~ igo Gonzalez-Ricoy, Axel Gosseries, Adam Kern, Indira
Latorre, Juan Antonio Le Clercq, Jeff Lenowitz, Mihn Ly, Steve Macedo, Julia Maskivker,
Ellie Mason, Jose Luis Martı, Jen Morton, Gabriel Negretto, Paulina Ochoa, Serena
Olsaretti, David Pen~ a, Cristian Pe
rez, Philip Pettit, Terry L. Price, Felipe Rey, Christopher
A. Riddle, Julio Rios, Tessy Schlosser, Melissa Schwartzberg, Annie Stilz, Nadia Urbinati,
Daniel Viehoff, and Andrew Williams. I am also grateful to the audiences at seminars at
Columbia University, Haverford College, New York University, Utica College, Universi-
dad Cato lica de Chile, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Princeton University, Richmond Uni-
versity, and Washington University in St. Louis.
1. “Should a Left-Wing President Go to a Private Hospital?” BBC Trending, November
5, 2014, <http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-29903142>.
C 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Philosophy & Public Affairs 45, no. 4
V
322 Philosophy & Public Affairs
use the services I provide.”2 The EFF became the third-largest party in
the National Assembly after its first election, but at that point its lead-
ers refused to take the oath, or live by its principles.
In both cases, a debate followed on the integrity of these politicians.
Their critics leveled the charge of hypocrisy while their followers jug-
gled to justify their actions. Many philosophers would probably have
adopted a similar point of view: one centered on the personal morality
of these leaders, illustrating the “obsession with individual vices” in the
literature on political ethics.3 Theorizing about hypocrisy is relevant.4
But these episodes also raise a deeper philosophical problem that has
seldom received any attention. It concerns not whether these officials
failed to live up to their professed ideals, but whether anything can be
said for the ideals themselves: specifically, for the notion that those
who exercise political power at the highest level acquire a special duty
to be subject to it in certain ways.
Politicians like to proclaim, “we are all in it together.”5 But they often
withdraw from “it” by acquiring in the market, in special public facili-
ties, or even in other political communities, the basic goods that they
typically fail to provide for all citizens. On the view that I defend here,
allowing high public officials to exit the organization in these ways is a
(pro tanto) violation of justice. If the state ought to equally provide a
certain good for everyone, those who exercise political power may only
acquire that good in the way in which they make it available to the
public. In other words, those responsible for the public provision of
goods may not obtain private, public, or foreign substitutes. I shall refer
to this as Equal Subjection.
The discussion is organized as follows. In the next section, I explain
in detail the principle of Equal Subjection. In the next two sections (III
and IV), I offer an argument for the principle based on
2. “Juju Bans Fat-Cat Perks,” The Times, October 14, 2013, <http://www.timeslive.co.
za/thetimes/2013/10/14/Juju-bans-fat-cat-perks>.
3. Dennis F. Thompson, Restoring Responsibility (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), p. 4.
4. For two interesting discussions, see Jon Elster, “Throwing a Veil Over Equality:
Equality and Hypocrisy in the Revolutionary Era,” in The Egalitarian Conscience: Essays in
Honour of G. A. Cohen, ed. Christine Sypnowich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006),
pp. 36–55; and Thompson, Restoring Responsibility, chap. 9.
5. Recent examples include Bernie Sanders in the United States and David Cameron
in the United Kingdom.
323 Equal Subjects
II
Equal Subjection: Former and incumbent rulers may not obtain pri-
vate, public, or foreign substitutes for the basic goods that justice
requires the state to provide—those who have exercised political
power, in other words, ought to become full and equal members of
6. Aristotle, The Politics and the Constitution of Athens, Cambridge Texts in the History
of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Pol. III.13, 1283b40–
1284a1, p. 81.
7. James Madison, “Federalist 57,” in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John
Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 283.
324 Philosophy & Public Affairs
8. Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1970).
325 Equal Subjects
a conception of justice that merely requires the state to give very poor
people access to elementary education as a means-tested benefit. Exit
would take place here—barring emigration and segregation—by getting
the same benefit from a charitable organization rather than the state.
Notice that, in a case like this, it would be a mistake to consider a per-
son who fails to meet the specified condition for the service as being
out of the public system. In the example, an official who is not poor,
and hence does not qualify to obtain elementary education from the
state, would not thereby fail the non-exit condition.
All this suggests that the practical implications of Equal Subjection
will vary under different conceptions of justice. If, for instance, right-
libertarians reject that elementary education is one of the basic
goods the state should provide for all, they will also deny that high
public officials have a duty to send their children to public schools.
However, my argument for Equal Subjection in the following sections
is not based on one particular conception of justice. It rests instead
on widely shared normative premises. So when I mention public edu-
cation or healthcare, it is only for illustrative purposes. The analytical
force of the examples is independent of whether or not one’s concep-
tion of justice considers the provision of those goods as a basic func-
tion of the state.
Notice two potential misconceptions about Equal Subjection.
First, it does not establish that high public officials should be com-
pelled, regardless of their choices, to somehow experience the force
of every law, and to use all basic services, regardless of need or
demand. For instance, public officials would not have to regularly
attend a public hospital and receive some random treatment that
they do not need. And Equal Subjection certainly does not call for
politicians to be put in a position of need for services (say, by occa-
sionally exposing them to different viruses and bacteria) so that they
can experience the public system. The other misconception is
related. The obligation to be a full and equal member of the public is
not an obligation to be equally affected, in relation to some refer-
ence group, by any given act of government. To see this, consider
that a user of the public healthcare system who is more prone to ill-
ness will surely be more affected by a defective system than an oth-
erwise similar person who enjoys good health. But this difference
alone would not make the latter person less of a member, in the
327 Equal Subjects
sense articulated here, of the public that utilizes the state’s health-
care system.
Under Equal Subjection, and perhaps only under Equal Subjection,
politicians can truly claim, “we are all in this together.” “This” is just
the state as a shared instrument to procure some important goods and
face common challenges. Public officials simply cannot be part of it if
they exit the organization in the ways discussed above. For present pur-
poses, I shall assume that all other citizens have the right to exit.9 Only
those who exercise political power at the highest level acquire the duty
to remain fully invested in the polity.
Equal Subjection can be realized in various ways. For instance, it
may result from the desire of high public officials to fulfill what they
come to recognize as a robust moral duty. But Equal Subjection can
also be institutionalized: officials can be legally required to fulfill the
non-exit condition. In this case, becoming an equal subject would be a
condition for the occupancy of high public office. I seek to make a (pro
tanto) case for the institutionalization of Equal Subjection along such
lines. To fix ideas and give a sense of what an institutional scheme of
that sort might look like, consider the following:
9. One might say that, in a democracy, the rulers are the ruled. So, by my own reason-
ing, everyone should be bound by the non-exit requirement. This may be the case in a
direct democracy in which everyone actually participates. I will leave that as an open
question. But the notion that citizens rule indirectly in representative systems is one of
the biggest myths in modern political thought. As one political philosopher put it: “Our
elected ‘representatives’ don’t represent us in any literal sense—as if we were doing the
ruling ‘through them’. This is nonsense. They rule and we don’t” (Jean Hampton,
“Democracy and the Rule of Law,” in The Rule of Law, ed. Ian Shapiro [New York: New
York University Press, 1994], pp. 13–44, at p. 34). Now, I am inclined to accept that, if there
were a significant referendum on one of the basic goods that the state ought to provide,
the non-exit rule would presumably apply at least to all those who cast a vote. But, again,
I shall leave this kind of complication aside.
328 Philosophy & Public Affairs
10. Throughout the history of political thought, thinkers have likened the ruling of
states to the steering of ships. The metaphor is intended to represent an ideal of the polit-
ical relationship between the rulers and the ruled: like the captains and the passengers of
a vessel, the rulers and the ruled have to share the ship of state. As John Rawls interpreted
the idea, the relationship is based on an “identity of interests” between the parts (A The-
ory of Justice [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009], p. 205).
329 Equal Subjects
III
The central thesis of this essay is that Equal Subjection is (pro tanto)
required by justice on the basis of noninstrumental considerations. I
shall defend this in two main steps. The first step, which I develop in
this section, consists of showing that high public officials are inherently
required by justice to fulfill what I shall call the Duty of Public Justifica-
tion. In the second step, to be developed in the following section, I shall
argue that Equal Subjection is necessary for public officials to optimally
fulfill the Duty of Public Justification.
In some circumstances, we have a duty to justify our actions to
others. By this I mean the moral duty to try to show that we have acted
in accordance with our duties. On this conception, to say that P owes Q
a justification with respect to U-ing is to say that P has a moral duty to
demonstrate to Q, as much as possible, that P has fulfilled her duty to
U. The duty of justification is thus a second-order duty: the duty to give
others good reasons to believe that we have fulfilled some first-order
duty. I shall not try to offer here a complete theory of the duty of justifi-
cation. Instead, I only seek to argue that all high public officials have it
by virtue of the position that they hold. Rulers owe it to their subjects,
as a matter of justice, to do as much as possible to demonstrate that
their exercise of power has been proper. I shall argue, in other words,
for the following:
11. John Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” The University of Chicago Law
Review 64 (1997): 765–807, at p. 786.
330 Philosophy & Public Affairs
12. Ibid.
13. As Brian Barry put it: “laws should be defensible and actually defended by engag-
ing—not perfunctorily but seriously—with the arguments put forward by objectors. . . . I put
it forward as an empirical claim that manifestly unjust legislation is less likely to come about
under these conditions than in their absence” (Justice as Impartiality [Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1995], p. 103). See also Amy Gutmann and Dennis F. Thompson, Why Deliberative
Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 21.
14. Amy Gutmann and Dennis F. Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 97.
15. Thomas Christiano, The Constitution of Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2008), p. 60.
331 Equal Subjects
(i) Public officials have a duty of justice to act for the greatest ben-
efit of the governed—to maximally serve their interests—in all
matters that concern their position as subjects of the political
power of others.
(ii) An important interest of those who are subject to the political
power of others is that of being able to know the extent to
which they have been ruled justly—call it the interest in politi-
cal comprehension.
(iii) Public officials have a duty of justice to serve their subjects’
interest in political comprehension [from (i) and (ii)].
(iv) To serve the interest in political comprehension, it is necessary
that officials do as much as possible to publicly show, through
adequate reasons, that their decisions have been just.
(v) Public officials have a duty of justice to do as much as possible
to give the governed adequate reasons for the way in which
they have exercised political power—the DPJ is a duty of justice
[from (iii) and (iv)].
(i) Public officials have a duty of justice to act for the greatest bene-
fit of the governed—to maximally serve their interests—in all
matters that concern their position as subjects of the political
power of others.
16. As John Locke famously wrote, government is exclusively for “the good of the gov-
erned . . . i.e., the good of every particular member of that society, as far as by common
rules it can be provided for” (First Treatise of Civil Government, chap. IX, sec. 92).
332 Philosophy & Public Affairs
I’m going to do all I can, within the bounds of ethical conduct, to see
that that government responds to this constituent.”18 Legislators have
no legal duty to provide constituent service. The powers of their office
are limited to the legislative process. However, on the strong version of
the PFP, it would be a mistake to regard these acts as supererogatory.
High-ranking public officials who do “all that they morally can” to help
citizens in dealing with the government deserve praise, not for going
beyond their duties to do something good, but precisely for acting in
accordance with their general duty to maximally serve the public.
None of this, of course, amounts to an argument for the strong ver-
sion of the PFP (nor indeed for the PFP itself). I am only proposing that
it is a plausible conception of a plausible principle. The reasons that
would justify the idea that rulers ought to act for the maximum benefit
of the governed in making policy choices would presumably also sup-
port the idea that they ought to act on their behalf more generally in
the context of running the government: for instance, by being transpar-
ent, trustworthy, forthcoming, and so on, even if none of this were
strictly necessary for the selection of the best laws and policies.19
But I have not yet grounded the DPJ. It has to be further the case that
the interest in political comprehension cannot be fully satisfied unless
officials undertake the justification of their decisions. This is the fourth
premise of the argument.
If the justice of laws and policies were simply self-evident, public offi-
cials would not need to do anything other than make the right policy
choices to serve their subjects’ interest in political comprehension.
Unfortunately, however, in matters of government the fulfillment of
20. Leif Wenar proposes the following maxim to capture the general notion of
accountability: “responsibility must be fulfilled, and responsibility must be seen to be
fulfilled” (“Accountability in International Development Aid,” Ethics & International
Affairs 20 [2006]: 1–23, at p. 5). He does not mention, however, that the original maxim on
justice presupposes the maxim I am articulating here when the responsibility at stake
consists precisely on the advancement of justice.
21. See Christiano, The Constitution of Equality, chap. 2.
336 Philosophy & Public Affairs
This is the idea I sought to defend in this section. I now turn to the sec-
ond general step of the argument, namely, the idea that Equal Subjec-
tion is necessary for rulers to optimally fulfill the DPJ.
22. See, for instance, Rawls’s views on the difference between assessing a single rule,
an institution as a set of rules, and the basic structure as a set of institutions (A Theory of
Justice, sec. 10, p. 50).
337 Equal Subjects
IV
Rulers maximally comply with the DPJ when they make honest
claims on the extent to which they have ruled in accordance with jus-
tice, and when they do all they can to properly substantiate them. I
shall argue that Equal Subjection would contribute, in a significant and
irreplaceable way, to the task of substantiating the claims that rulers
make about their exercise of power. For purposes of this analysis, I shall
assume that officials claim to have chosen just laws and policies. This
is not only the standard case, but also the one in which proper substan-
tiation becomes most pressing. I shall also assume the following. Recall
that Equal Subjection can be realized in various ways, for instance, as a
legal requirement or voluntarily (Section II). For clarity of exposition,
the following discussion supposes a context where Equal Subjection
would be realized in the latter way: out of the initiative of public offi-
cials at the time of trying to justify the way in which they ruled—that is,
as part of their unprompted effort to fulfill the DPJ. I shall return to this
point at the end of this section to contend that the analysis holds for
the case in which Equal Subjection is legally required.
Showing that Equal Subjection is necessary entails showing that
nothing else is sufficient. In this regard, I shall address what I take to be
the strongest and most influential position against my view: namely,
that discursive reason giving, of the sort put forward by theorists of
deliberative democracy and public reason, is sufficient for public justi-
fication. The view that I defend in what follows, to be more precise, is
338 Philosophy & Public Affairs
(a) As evidence that they have aimed to act in ways that serve the
public, rulers could offer to put their own interests on the line by
becoming equal subjects. For, if they became equal subjects, rul-
ers would share in the costs of their failure on a footing of equal-
ity with the governed. In this situation, relative to the one without
Equal Subjection, citizens would have greater reason to believe
that rulers have indeed tried to make decisions that are just. To
be clear, Equal Subjection would not provide any evidence about
the motivation of politicians. They might very well have tried to
make laws and policies that serve the public not for the sake of
doing what is just, but for some other reason. Also, it is important
to notice that this would not be a conclusive reason, since some
rulers might be willing to sacrifice their own interest in a well-
functioning state to promote one of their narrower interests, or
the interests of a third party (domestic or international). But
Equal Subjection would still expand the citizens’ set of reasons to
believe that officials tried to make good laws and policies.
(b) If the preceding is correct, citizens would also have greater rea-
son to believe the claim that officials have actually ruled justly.
The point is a comparative one: all else being equal, we have
greater reason to believe that justice has been served if those
who were responsible for it would significantly partake in the
suffering of injustice. Here, too, citizens would not have a con-
clusive reason to believe the claim that rulers have exercised
power properly, for they might have made critical mistakes in
choosing laws and policies or, to insist, be willing to sacrifice
their interests to benefit a third party. However, Equal Subjec-
tion would somewhat enhance the credibility of the claim, even
in the absence of a discursive reason-giving process. This
amounts to the first of the two propositions above.
339 Equal Subjects
up a glass and drink the water. The act of drinking the same water that
I am providing you to fulfill my duty would go a long way toward show-
ing that the water is indeed drinkable. The fact of being in community
with you, as an equal, gives you a reason to believe me. It may be an
artificial community, rather than one driven by true solidarity, but no
matter: it is a discursive-independent way of supporting my claim that
I have fulfilled my duty toward you. Admittedly, I could have made a
mistake, and the water might not be drinkable. Or I might be willing to
die in order to kill you with poisoned water (perhaps to benefit a third
party). So my drinking the water is no definitive proof that it is safe to
drink. Yet, to insist, that is not what I am claiming. My point is merely a
comparative one: you have more reason to believe that the water is
drinkable if I cast my lot with you than if I do not.
In the same way, Equal Subjection would give citizens an inconclu-
sive yet strong reason to believe public officials when they claim to
have ruled justly. As full and equal users of the state’s goods, officials
stand to lose as much as the citizens if they have not in fact ruled in the
public’s interest. This fact alone provides some support to the claims
that officials make on the extent to which they have fulfilled their
duties. In other words, Equal Subjection contributes to the fulfillment
of the DPJ by partially substantiating what rulers contend.
2. Equal Subjection and Discursive Reason Giving. An alternative way
in which rulers can try to substantiate their claims is through discursive
reason giving, or deliberation. By this I mean the process of arguing for
the quality of specific decisions. This involves giving reasons to show
that a given law or policy is superior, or at least not inferior, in terms of
its content or substance, to all other feasible alternatives at the time.
There are many theories of moral and political reason giving (the pub-
lic reason model, the ideal-speech model, the reciprocity model, the
reasonable rejection model, and so on),23 but they all share the idea
that those who exercise political power should argue in certain ways
for their choices. At minimum, they ought to rely on appropriate evi-
dence, appeal to appropriate public values, and carry out appropriate
reasoning. A well-designed deliberative process—one that allows for
€ rgen Habermas,
23. See, respectively, Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”; Ju
Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998); Gutmann and Thompson,
Democracy and Disagreement; and Barry, Justice as Impartiality.
341 Equal Subjects
24. Jon Elster, Securities Against Misrule (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2013), p. 5.
342 Philosophy & Public Affairs
water from the previous source, officials failed to apply adequate corro-
sion controls. As a result, the pipes were seriously damaged and
released dangerous quantities of lead into the water. Yet, as the prob-
lem unfolded, state officials declared that the water was safe to drink.
In support of this claim, they cited favorable results from a number of
tests and studies. But the officials—we know now—were simply deceiv-
ing the public, trying to cover up their mistakes. They knew that the
water was not actually safe, and therefore decided to purchase water
coolers for state workers in Flint. In an internal message, the state gov-
ernment noted that the purified water for public servants “will be pro-
vided as long as the public water does not meet treatment
requirements.”25 The ship was sinking, officials lied about it, and in the
meantime they escaped in lifeboats unavailable to the public. Children
in Flint, especially those who lived in poor neighborhoods, ended up
poisoned with lead.
If the residents of Flint had known that officials were not willing to
drink the water, they would have had strong reasons not to believe the
state’s discourse. Conversely, the claim that the water was safe to drink
would have been far more credible if officials had lived in Flint and
were known to consume the water. And, sure enough, that is what the
people of Flint eventually demanded. Since the officials had to recog-
nize at some point that the water contained lead, they asked the popu-
lation not to drink it unless it was filtered. However, the citizens were
naturally skeptical and demanded the governor of Michigan to prove
that the filtered water met the appropriate standards by the only means
credible at that point: drinking the water himself. So he pledged to get
a few gallons of Flint water every week to consume and cook for thirty
days. Although this was far from enough at that point, it highlights the
potential value of Equal Subjection for the credibility of discursive
justifications.
I have now established what I set out to defend in this section:
namely, (vi), the idea that Equal Subjection is necessary for the optimal
fulfillment of the DPJ. Paired with (v)—the idea that the optimal
25. “State Workers in Flint Given Clean Water Months Before Residents Warned of
Danger,” TIME Magazine, January 28, 2016, <time.com/4199126/flint-water-crisis-
officials-clean-water/>.
344 Philosophy & Public Affairs
(i) Public officials have a duty of justice to act for the greatest
benefit of the governed—to maximally serve their interests—in
all matters that concern their position as subjects of the politi-
cal power of others.
(ii) An important interest of those who are subject to the political
power of others is that of being able to know the extent to
which they have been ruled justly—call it the interest in politi-
cal comprehension.
(iii) Public officials have a duty of justice to serve their subjects’
interest in political comprehension [from (i) and (ii)].
(iv) To serve the interest in political comprehension, it is necessary
that officials do as much as possible to publicly show, through
adequate reasons, that their decisions have been just.
(v) Public officials have a duty of justice to do as much as possible
to give the governed adequate reasons for the way in which
they have exercised political power—the Duty of Public Justifi-
cation (DPJ) is a duty of justice [from (iii) and (iv)].
(vi) By becoming equal subjects, officials would give the governed
good, nonsubstitutable (albeit inconclusive) reasons to believe
that they have properly exercised their power—Equal Subjec-
tion, in other words, is necessary for the optimal fulfillment of
the DPJ.
(vii) Becoming equal subjects is necessary for the optimal fulfill-
ment of the DPJ, and is thereby a requirement of justice [from
(v) and (vi)].
of fulfilling the DPJ. Much like a forced apology seems to lack the same
moral status of an unprompted one, requiring officials to become equal
subjects would apparently fail to convey the same degree of public spirit-
edness—and hence would carry less justificatory value—than the infor-
mal emergence of equal subjection.
But this potential worry rests on a misunderstanding. As I have men-
tioned, the value of Equal Subjection does not involve providing evi-
dence of public spiritedness, or any other motivation. Even in the case
in which public officials pledge to become equal subjects without
being required to do so, we cannot know whether they ultimately do so
out of a genuine regard for their subjects or for some other reason.
Instead, my argument rests entirely on the notion of aligning the inter-
ests of the rulers and the ruled. In the case in which officials become
equal subjects without being legally required to do so, their claim to
have ruled justly becomes more credible, because we presume that rul-
ers care deeply about themselves (even if they care about others as
well) and hence they would seek to avoid putting themselves in a posi-
tion in which their interests would be negatively affected. Now, if equal
subjection were legally required, there would be a similar mechanism
in place. Trying to justify their actions in such a context, rulers could
present the following fact as evidence of the appropriateness of their
behavior in office: they had a very strong—though admittedly not deci-
sive—incentive to enact laws and policies that benefit the governed,
because otherwise, in hurting the public, they would be hurting them-
selves. The justificatory value of equal subjection, if anything, might be
even more compelling in this case.
To summarize, in both cases we have greater reason to believe that rul-
ers tried their best to make decisions that correlate with the requirements
of justice: whether (a) rulers knew ex ante that they would be subject to
their decisions on a footing of equality with all other full members of the
public (in the sense discussed in Section II), or (b) unprompted, they com-
mit ex post to become equal subjects—to make themselves, potentially, as
much the victims of injustice as any other full member of the public.
only amounts to a pro tanto defense of the idea that rulers should
throw in their lot, as equals, with those who use the public system. But
the practical realization of Equal Subjection—especially by means of a
legal requirement—could undermine alternative values or conflict with
other aspects of justice. To sort this out, we need to go deeper. First of
all, we need a fuller understanding of how important it is that high
public officials become equal subjects.26 In addition, we need to know
the specific trade-offs that may arise under alternative schemes and in
different circumstances. So determining the precise practical implica-
tions of what I have argued so far is a complex task, and I cannot fully
undertake it in the remainder of this article.
However, I shall argue that we should not only be interested in Equal
Subjection at the level of theory, but also as an ideal that can be
approximated in practice. To that end, I shall first insist that Equal Sub-
jection can be implemented in a variety of ways, some of which would
avoid some of the most serious objections against the implementation
of the radical scheme—Piloting Responsibility—that I sketched in Sec-
tion II. Then I shall argue that those objections are nevertheless not
strong enough to rule out from the outset even a radical scheme of
Equal Subjection as a practical requirement of political morality.
Consider first a minimalist model for establishing Equal Subjection
as a formal condition for the occupancy of high public offices. Rulers
would be subject to the following two requirements: (i) residency in the
political unit that they govern during and after their term in office, and
(ii) denial of state-sponsored privileges and immunities. As for the resi-
dency requirement, it is not simply about dwelling in the polity. It is
also a prohibition to obtain certain goods and services abroad. For
instance, high public officials would not be allowed to invest in off-
shore markets or keep their money in tax havens. On the contrary, they
should probably be required to put it all in a local blind trust.27 Another
example is healthcare: public officials would lack minimal skin in the
game if they were allowed to get treatment in hospitals in a foreign
country. The practice of health tourism by high public officials has
actually been a major issue in many African countries. As one
26. Needless to say, the argument from public justification is not intended to exhaust
the reasons for Equal Subjection.
27. Elster, Securities Against Misrule, p. 7.
347 Equal Subjects
28. “Zambian President Seeks Medical Treatment in South Africa,” The Wall Street
Journal, March 10, 2015, <https://www.wsj.com/articles/zambian-president-seeks-
medical-treatment-in-south-africa-1426009135>.
348 Philosophy & Public Affairs
A. Second-Class Citizenship
In a scheme of Equal Subjection, high public officials would have spe-
cial decision-bearing obligations. This—it has been suggested to me
more than once—is objectionable because it creates a form of second-
class citizenship. Of course, the charge cannot be the absurd one that,
as officeholders, those who rule would have duties that others would
not. For that is exactly what holding a public office entails: temporarily
possessing exclusive political powers and responsibilities. The charge,
then, has to be that it is wrong to burden public officials with responsi-
bilities that infringe on their rights as citizens—duties that violate their
liberty to make choices in the conduct of their private lives.
The rights of public officials should certainly be respected. But
which rights do public officials have? The same system of rules for
acquiring rights and duties should be in place for everyone, and this
system should not arbitrarily disadvantage anyone. Yet equal citizen-
ship thus understood does not mean that we should all enjoy exactly
the same bundle of rights and duties at any given point in time. The
349 Equal Subjects
set of equal rights that, if messed with, would place people in a position
of second-class citizenship.
If the previous remarks are correct, perhaps we should conclude the
opposite of what the objection of second-class citizenship states: with-
out Equal Subjection, politicians are unjustifiably exempted from their
duties, which violates the requirements of any plausible understanding
of equal citizenship.
B. Loss of Competence
Under a radical form of Equal Subjection such as Piloting Responsibil-
ity, those who hope to steer the ship of state would have to make great
personal sacrifices. While politicians would still be able to accumulate
wealth and spend it on luxuries, they would not be able to purchase
services such as legal representation, education for their children, and
healthcare. This would surely deter many people from seeking political
office. The problem, according to this objection, is that the individuals
who would be deterred are precisely those who we need to be in power:
persons with the capacities, training, and experience for good policy
making. For these tend to be well-educated individuals who would be
able to obtain high-paying jobs in the private sector, and they would
presumably be reluctant to accept the burdens of office under Piloting
Responsibility.
Let us assume for the sake of argument that, indeed, fewer compe-
tent people—on that understanding of competency—would pursue
office. This effect, however, could well still be offset by the increased
harmony between the interests of public officials and those subject to
their decisions. In his classic account of the advantages of democracy,
Tocqueville observed: “It is no doubt important for the welfare of a
nation that the men who govern it should be men of virtue and talent;
but what is perhaps even more important is that these government offi-
cials should not have interests contrary to those of the masses they
govern, for in that case, their virtues might become almost useless, and
their talents disastrous.”30 I am not contending that we can be confi-
dent that, under Piloting Responsibility, the convergence between the
30. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: The Library of America,
2004), p. 266.
351 Equal Subjects
C. Perverse Incentives
Under a scheme of Piloting Responsibility, incumbents might be
tempted to escape their decision-bearing duties by privatizing all the
relevant public services. For instance, to avoid sending their children to
public schools, they might try to dismantle the public education sys-
tem. This might actually be a good thing on some conceptions of jus-
tice. However, on other conceptions, this worry might be strong
enough to reject a system of Equal Subjection.
Fortunately, there are simple solutions to this problem. One is to
identify, on the basis of one’s conception of justice, the services that the
state ought to provide, making it impermissible for politicians to privat-
ize them. Alternatively, we could further stipulate that, in a scheme of
Piloting Responsibility, rulers would be randomly appointed to any of
the private options that citizens are left with when no public provision
exists. This would include the possibility of receiving no service if none
of the private options are affordable to some citizens. For instance, if
there were no public schools, politicians would be randomly assigned a
maximum spending limit to purchase education in the market. Mea-
sures such as these would effectively thwart perverse incentives to
unjustifiably privatize services.
D. Mistreatment of Dependents
Since the dependents of officeholders, in particular their children, have
done nothing to incur decision-bearing duties, many will object that it
would be utterly unfair to require them to use public services. Spouses
can at least choose not to marry a politician or divorce someone who is
intent on becoming one. But children can make no such choices.
Therefore, it seems wrong to force them to attend public schools, pub-
lic hospitals, and so on. A scheme of Piloting Responsibility would
352 Philosophy & Public Affairs
merely treat them as a means to ensure that their parents comply with
their professional duties.
First of all, it is fundamental to clarify that the dependents of high
public officials would not actually be the bearers of any duties whatso-
ever. The restrictions would apply solely to those who occupy a high
public office. The idea is that political leaders would not be allowed to
choose a private school in deciding where to send their dependent chil-
dren—as long as this is their decision to make. But this does not mean
that the children themselves would be under an obligation to go to
public schools. If high public officials stopped having custody rights
and maintenance obligations toward their (underage) offspring, then
those boys and girls would not be required to attend a public school. A
scheme of Piloting Responsibility would constrain the decisions of
officeholders, not the range of options available to their dependents
themselves. Although the children of high public officials might end up
going to public schools all the same, this point effectively dismantles
one version of the worry under scrutiny; namely, that a system of Pilot-
ing Responsibility would unwarrantedly impose decision-bearing
duties on persons who lack decision-making powers.
It seems that the best way to articulate the objection is this: public
office should not be structured in a way that prevents officeholders
who are parents from fulfilling their moral duties toward their children.
This could indeed happen in a system of Piloting Responsibility if the
children of officeholders were randomly appointed to schools or hospi-
tals in very bad shape. If public officials cannot fulfill their duties
toward their children, responsible parents would stay away from high
public office. Consequently, those who opt for high public office would
be either childless or irresponsible parents. In any case, the enhanced
motivation to improve schools would be diminished, which would
make this type of decision-bearing requirement pointless. But most
importantly, it would surely be objectionable to have a rule that could
lead some parents to neglect the rights of their children.
To address this worry, we have to specify first the duties of parents
toward their children on matters such as schooling and healthcare. This is
a very complex matter, but for present purposes it suffices to say that chil-
dren do not have a right to receive the best possible education and health-
care that their parents could obtain given the opportunities available to
them. Instead, I suggest that they simply have a duty to avoid, if they can,
353 Equal Subjects
VI
In this article, I have argued that those who exercise political power at
the highest level have a duty of justice to give reasons for their choices
of laws and policies. I have also argued that the fulfillment of this duty
requires them (at least pro tanto) to become full and equal members of
the public as users of the basic goods that justice requires the state to
provide. One promising way to realize such a conception of political
equality is to require rulers and their dependents to actually reside in
the polity and to be randomly appointed to certain public services. I
have not offered here an all-things-considered case for this scheme—
Piloting Responsibility. However, I have addressed some of the most
serious concerns that such a system is likely to raise, and it seems that
the idea is not dead in its tracks. This is a first step in thinking seriously
about decision bearing (in contrast to decision making) as an impor-
tant but neglected dimension of political morality.