Can cosmopolitans vote for Scottish independence?

A cosmopolitan nationalist is a contradiction in terms. Yet I want to suggest that in some cases consistent cosmopolitans may be justified in supporting nationalist causes – in particular, voting ‘yes’ in independence referenda like the ones anticipated in Scotland and Catalonia in 2014.

Cosmopolitanism is the moral or political theory that insists that nationality is morally arbitrary – that we have no greater reason to promote or care about the welfare of our compatriots than people of any other country. This is, almost by definition, antagonistic to nationalism, which insists that we woe at least some loyalty to our nation and its inhabitants. Cosmopolitanism means, literally, citizenship of the world. Nationalism seeks to carve out a slice of the world, and put it above others.

So cosmopolitans and nationalists are certainly unlikely comrades, but if circumstances conspire in the right way, I think they can end up on the same side.

The first point to make is that while cosmopolitans embrace global citizenship in a moral sense, few major cosmopolitans have called for its institutional corollary – a world state. Thomas Pogge offers perhaps the most prominent discussion of an ideal cosmopolitan global order, and maintains an important role for nation-states, as part of a ‘multi-layered’ order, with power diffused down to regional institutions and up to global organisations. Moreover, Pogge sees secessionist referenda, as in Scotland or Catalonia, as part of the “cosmopolitan ideal of democracy”:

“The inhabitants of any contiguous territory of reasonable shape, if sufficiently numerous, may decide-through some majoritarian or supermajoritarian procedure-to form themselves into a political unit of a level commensurate with their number”

Even commitment to a world state does not necessarily entail opposition to secession. After all, voters are being asked to choose between Scotland and the UK, or Catalonia and Spain – ‘World State’ is unlikely to appear on any ballots. On the face of it, World Staters are likely to oppose secession as it represents a move further away from a World State – greater fragmentation, rather than unity. But it could be that a more indirect route to global unification seems more likely – for example, if one of the new states is more open to multi-national institutions (as Scotland appears to be more supportive of the EU than the rest of the UK). More likely, neither option will make a World State substantially more likely, in which case the World Stater is in the same position as other cosmopolitans, forced to fall back on other considerations.

So what considerations should guide a cosmopolitan voter? While Pogge suggests that cosmopolitans should accept the decisions of referenda, he does not offer any guidance on how to decide which side to support once a referendum is called. One possibility is that this falls within the legitimate sphere of compatriot preference that some cosmopolitans accept – that this is one area where it is OK to give voice to nationalist sympathies. If this is the case, then the decision is simple - the cosmopolitan is free to vote for whichever country they feel most emotional attachment to.

But suppose we want to deny it is ever legitimate to show compatriot preference, or perhaps that we genuinely have no emotional preference? In that case, there are three relevant considerations that a cosmopolitan needs to account for:

1. Will secession leave the new country (ie Scotland/Catalonia) better off?

2. Will secession leave the rump/original country (ie ‘rUK’/Spain) better off?

3. Will secession be better for those from other countries (eg Spain, Romania, Somalia, Niger)?

This might seem trivial, but it is important to bear all three considerations in mind when reviewing the arguments for independence. For starters, notice that the vast majority of the debate addresses only consideration 1.

The cosmopolitan must therefore be indifferent to any zero-sum nationalist claims. If Catalonia claims it will be richer with independence because it will have to share less of its wealth with Spain, then the cosmopolitan will not see this as positive, since it will make Spain worse off. Moreover, they must be alert to knock-on effects. If an independent Scotland would be a fairer, more equal place than rUK, this good must be balanced against the harm to the rest of Britain of losing Scotland’s moderating influence (and, for example, embracing neo-liberalism more fully). Cosmopolitans are also likely to pay particular attention to domains like foreign and immigration policy which impact people of other nationalities. Thus an independent Scotland’s more pacific stance in international relations and greater openness to immigration is likely to strengthen the cosmopolitan’s appetite for independence (assuming, of course, that this does not significantly affect rUK’s policy).

Thus a cosmopolitan’s reasoning on the independence question is likely to be more complex and more pragmatic than most. other voters. There are more interests to be considered, certain arguments that must be thrown out, other arguments that must be given greater emphasis. But it is entirely possible that independence may be the course that best promotes cosmopolitan values.

Are opinion polls bad for democracy?

Ahead of today’s general election, the German broadcaster ZDF has broken with convention and published an opinion poll in the final few days before the vote. Previously, it had been agreed that surveys would not be released fewer than ten days before polling day for fear of influencing voters. This is a worrying development because it conflicts with three of the most prominent theories about why democracy is valuable: aggregative, epistemic and deliberative theories.

According to the aggregative theory, democracy is fundamentally a procedure for reconciling the different interests and preferences of citizens. On any given issue, citizens will come with ready-formed preferences, based on their personalities and circumstances. It does not matter why people want to criminalise cannabis or ban the burqa – the only salient question is whether more people are for or against these proposals. The more popular policies are the ones that should be enacted.

However, aggregative democracy depends on people accurately reporting their preferences. If we cannot rely on voters to vote for the policies they actually want, then the vote will not reveal which proposal is genuinely more popular, the one which satisfies the most preferences. Opinion polls make it more likely that people’s votes will not reflect their true preferences. If my favoured party or policy is far behind in the poll, I may believe it is pointless to vote for them, or even to bother to vote at all. Opinion polls make tactical voting more likely – I may cast a positive vote for a policy or party that I don’t like to stop a worse one succeeding. In other words, opinion polls help to mess up the clean aggregative interpretation of elections.

A second major theory of democracy is the epistemic view. Epistemic theories see democracy as trying to find the ‘correct’ or ‘true’ answers to political questions, such as ‘What is the best set of policies to encourage economic growth?’ Epistemic theories take their inspiration from ideas such as the wisdom of crowds – the notion that the more views are canvassed on an issue, the more likely they are to converge on a correct answer.

This basic principle is formalised in the Condorect Jury Theorem. However, one of the key assumptions of the theorem is that votes must be independent – person 1 voting for A should not make it any more likely that person 2 will vote for A. Imagine if you ask two separate people for directions, and they both advise you to go right. This would ordinarily give you reasonable confidence that this advice is sound. But if you knew the second person was only copying the first, you would be more likely to seek further verification.

Opinion polls may flout the independence criterion valued by epistemic theorists of democracy, because of the momentum they create. If my instinct is to vote Pirate, but everybody else appears to be voting CDU, I am bound to wonder if I have missed something incredible in the CDU platform. Conversely, the lack of support for the Pirates is likely to make me reconsider their competence. The Asch conformity experiments show that people are susceptible to peer pressure even on beliefs they have a great deal of confidence in – these effects are liable to be even more acute in politics.

A third perspective on democracy emphasises deliberation. According to this view, democracy is as much about forming opinions as aggregating them. Thus deliberative democracy emphasises free, open and rational debate, whereby citizens attempt to criticise and refine their own views, as well as understanding those of others, in the hope of achieving consensus. 

Deliberative democrats have reason to fear opinion polls because they distract from the process of debate. They distort media coverage and public attention by encouraging passive spectatorship of a competition, rather than engagement with ideas and policies. This creates a ‘horse race’ model of politics, where tactics, strategies and who’s winning draws more focus than substantive discussion of different platforms. Moreover, deliberative democrats are wary of excessive focus on voting rather than other elements of the political process (such as deliberation), a trend exacerbated by polling.

These arguments may give opinion polls too much credit – it could well be that they have much less influence on voting behaviour than suggested here. However, if opinion polls are in fact this powerful, they may indeed be damaging for democracy.

Improving Germany’s model democracy

Germany has one of the best electoral systems in the world. If I were writing a constitution, I think only New Zealand could serve as a better model. I’ve briefly discussed the advantages of mixed member proportional representation (MMPR) before, but here are some of the main benefits:

1. The question of which person you want to represent your local area and the question of which party you want to govern the country are separated.
2. Each voter has equal influence over the ultimate distribution of seats – unlike systems which give rise to '’swing states’ or ‘marginal constituencies’, where voters have more power
3. There is less incentive for tactical voting, as proportional representation ensures that votes for smaller parties are not ‘wasted’

I think these three features – less ambiguity over what people are voting for, equalising the influence of each voter, and ensuring that voters’ genuine preferences are considered – mean that MMPR is more democratic than other systems.

However, recent events in Germany show that it can still fall short of these lofty democratic principles. In the January 20th Lower Saxony election, it has been suggested that a number of CDU supporters voted for the FDP. Why would they do this? Because the FDP is more likely to cooperate with the CDU than other parties, and it was in danger of falling short of the 5% share of the vote necessary to win any seats in parliament. It has been suggested that the general election later this year might witness a similar phenomenon.

The election was analysed mostly in terms of its implications for the fortunes of the CDU, but more troubling are its implications for democracy as a whole. CDU supporters voting FDP violates principle 3) above, that democracy should aggregate authentic, and not falsely stated preferences. Less obviously, it also violates 2) – that each vote should have equal bearing on ultimate electoral result. The CDU supporters misrepresented their preference because they believed that voting FDP would give them more influence on the distribution of seats. Voting FDP gave them more power because they had the chance not only to be the marginal voter who decided the destination of a single seat, as all other voters did, but additionally gave them the chance of being the marginal voter whose vote carried their party over the threshold, and decided a hatful of extra seats.

The flipside of the extra influence wielded by voters whose party is close to the parliamentary threshold is the disenfranchisement of those whose favoured party fails to meet the threshold – their votes effectively count for less than the rest of the electorate, raising the spectre of the ‘wasted vote’, another phenomenon MMPR is supposed to avoid.

These problems are minor niggles compared to the inequity of voting systems like the US or the UK, but the undignified scenes in Lower Saxony let the German system down. If Germany is to live up to the high democratic standards it has set itself, it would do well to lower the threshold for entry to parliament (at 5% it is amongst the highest in the world), or better yet, abolish it entirely.

Should votes be for sale?

Ahead of Tuesday’s U.S. Presidential election, Stephen Levitt, citing the work of Glen Weyl, has made a provocative suggestion for improving the electoral process – people should be permitted to vote multiple times, paying increasingly higher fees for each additional vote. I’m attracted to this idea because it addresses one of the major drawbacks of ‘one man, one vote’, that every vote counts the same, regardless of how strong the preference expressed is. It is problematic (to me, at least – others may have different intuitions) that a vote cast by a fervent anti-Republican, who fears that a Romney victory would be as calamitous as a zombie apocalypse should be cancelled out by the vote of someone who thinks the candidates are much the same, but that Romney just has the edge. To be clear, the objection is not that the former voter is better informed or qualified to vote, just that they feel stronger about the issues – the opinionated but ignorant would still be likely to buy plenty of votes.
 
A trivial example should make my intuition clear. Suppose a group of people are trying to decide what topping to get on their pizza. Four people have a weak desire to get prawn, while two have a weak desire not to get prawn. Meanwhile, one person is strongly against prawn because it will cause them to have a severe allergic reaction, and require them to go to hospital. If the decision is put to a simple majority vote, the group will opt for prawn, 4-3. Yet it seems wrong to me that the preferences of those who gain so little from having the prawn should be counted equally with the person who is allergic. For a more clearly political example, perhaps the views of those enjoying a modest tax cut should not be counted equally alongside the person who loses vital services to pay for the cuts.

The obvious objection to the vote buying proposal, which Levitt discusses, is that it gives disproportionate political power to the rich. His response is unconvincing – he points out that such a transparent system would be better than the status quo, where the rich exert greater influence through campaign finance. But that is just an argument to reform campaign finance, not to create an alternative way to perpetuate the inequity.

Moreover, the objection is deeper than Levitt appreciates - insofar as the vote buying scheme gives greater power to the rich, it fails in its attempt to reflect the strength of voters’ views, because it fails to account for the law of diminishing marginal utility. The logic behind the vote buying scheme, as I understand it, is that it forces people to put their money where their mouth is. In buying $50 worth of votes for the Republicans, I am showing that a Republican government is worth $50 to me. The trouble is that that $50 is a much more powerful statement when it comes from a poorer person, involving a more significant sacrifice on their part. If $50 pledged to the Republicans means giving up a meal at a nice restaurant, and person A dines at nice restaurants regularly, while for B it is an annual treat, then it is clear that B wants the Republicans to win more.

The obvious way to reflect this would be to make voting fees progressive i.e. proportionate to income. So the richer you are, the more you have to pay to vote.

Even with this amendment, there are two types of concern I have about the scheme. On one hand, I am sceptical as to whether this measure would be successful in achieving its own stated goal - to successfully reflect public opinion. On the other hand, I wonder whether this goal is the only desirable one to have.

The first reason for scepticism about vote buying accurately capturing people’s real views is that it depends on people being able to provide an accurate and meaningful valuation of how much an electoral outcome is worth to them. Yet as behavioural economists such as Dan Ariely have shown, this is something most people struggle to do without a set of reference prices for context (do you have a clear idea, right now, how much you would be willing to pay for a certain number of votes in the next election?) This is further complicated by the fact that people wouldn’t be buying a Romney or Obama victory, but just the mere possibility of being decisive one way or the other.

Even if people could accurately gauge how much their vote is worth, the market for votes might still be distorted. Just because a person is willing to  pay $100 to vote for Obama, this might not fully be a reflection of their endorsement of the president. People might pay a voting fee for all sorts of reasons, just as people vote for all sorts of reasons just now – out of a sense of civic obligation, to express gratitude for the historical sacrifices of their forebears, out of a sense of power. Each of these motivations means that the amount they pay for their vote will fail to track their enthusiasm for the candidates.

A more fundamental objection to the vote buying scheme is that it fails to understand hat voting is really about. It could be argued that it is not just about taking a snapshot of public opinion, but that it has some other function, which is subverted by vote buying. For example, political theorists have long argued that democracy has an educative value – by giving citizens the responsibility of a say in how the country is run, they are encouraged to live up to that faith by engaging with politics, developing and trusting their own judgement. If engagement with politics becomes a prerequisite of voting, then those who are not inclined to involve themselves in politics will simply shrug off this responsibility, and opt not to develop these faculties.

Whatever you think about the vote buying proposal, it offers an illuminating challenge to the way democracy proceeds just now – does it really expose an important problem with the status quo? And if so, what is wrong with its proposed solution? In answering these questions, we get a clearer idea of the strengths and weaknesses of democracy, and why (if at all) we value it.

When is campaign finance undemocratic?

That the recent cash for access scandal that has hit Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative party has put campaign finance back on the agenda is certainly a good thing. Yet I worry about the current focus of the debate. Most people seem to be under the impression that the major problem with the current system is that single individuals or organisations contribute too much, and therefore wield too much influence. However, I think it is at least as worrying that there are such great disparities between the resources of the different parties. In the 2010 British general election, the Conservatives spent twice as much money Labour, and enjoyed over three times the budget of the Liberal Democrats. Unsurprisingly, there is a strong correlation between how much a party spends and its electoral performance. It has been estimated that an extra £2.25 of electoral spending corresponds to an additional vote. If this is correct, then the £8 million more that the Conservatives spent than Labour were worth over 3 million votes to them. Since the Conservatives received just over 2 million more votes than Labour at the election, this implies that their vote share could even have been less than Labour’s had there been a level financial playing field.

These calculations are a bit sketchy, but the point I am trying to make should be clear enough: there is significant inequality of wealth between parties, and this almost certainly influences electoral results. This seems fundamentally undemocratic. The idea of ‘one person, one vote’ is often taken to be essential to democracy. Yet for a donation of as little as £2.25, a person can effectively double their political influence – voting once themselves, and basically buying a second vote.

Obviously this ‘multiple voting’ is more heinous in the case of larger donations where more votes are ‘bought’. But the argument applies in the same way to the ordinary trade union members whose support Labour keep stressing. The implication of the argument is that all privately funding of political parties is undemocratic.

Yet funding electoral campaigns is clearly not the same as straightforwardly buying votes. The voters who are influenced by it still get to freely choose who to vote for. Campaign spending may be a way of deploying one’s resources so as to alter people’s voting intentions. But the same could be said of rational persuasion, and it is very hard to argue that that is undemocratic. We do not think that it is undemocratic ever to try to influence others, that democracy requires us to leave voters to make up their minds alone. On the contrary, better informing fellow citizens of their options is seen as a democratic virtue.

So how, if at all, is spending money different from other forms of political campaigning? I think the intuition which explains the unease that people like me have with the role of money in politics is expressed by Jurgen Habermas’ claim that democracy requires the “force of the better argument” to prevail. This is doubtless idealistic, since elections are influenced by any number of factors which have nothing to do with the arguments: personalities, tribal loyalties etc. But it is a regulative ideal: the more that elections are decided by arguments, the more democratic the political system is; the more that other influences intrude, the less democratic it becomes. If campaign spending becomes a more significant determinant of electoral success, this moves us away from democracy.

A certain level of campaign spending brings us closer to the ideal of elections decided by arguments. If parties could not spend, they would be unable to publicise their message, and the electorate would be relatively uninformed. However, this beneficial effect is counterbalanced by the malign effect of uneven electoral spending: if some parties have far more money than others, then they are likely to do better regardless of the success of their arguments. This implies that it might be better to have a relatively ignorant electorate, as long as they are equally ignorant about all parties.

This would seem to be a case for the public funding of parties, since this would ensure that voters are (a) better informed, but also (b) not much more informed about some parties than others. However, it would also seem to have other radical implications. If parties are to triumph only by the force of their better arguments, then this means that they cannot base their success on more enthusiastic grassroots volunteers. It seems like the use of volunteers by political parties for canvassing and leafleting is subject to the same trade-off as their spending of money: more is better, but only if it is evenly spread. Yet the implication of this thought is that there should be limits on the use of volunteers. This seems like an even more puzzling paradox than campaign spending. On the one hand, it seems undemocratic to prevent people volunteering their time and efforts to promote a political cause. Yet on the other hand, it seems undemocratic for the party with the most loyal volunteers to win on that basis alone. Have I gone wrong somewhere?