THREE COMMENTS ON PHILIP PETTIT'´S ON THE PEOPLE'S TERMS

SYMPOSIUM REPUBLICANISM BETWEEN JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY THREE COMMENTS ON PHILIP PETTIT’S! ON THE PEOPLE’S TERMS BY JOSÉ LUIS MARTÍ & HUGO SELEME ! © 2015 – Philosophy and Public Issues (New Series), Vol. 5, No. 2 (2015): 25-42 Luiss University Press E-ISSN 2240-7987 | P-ISSN 1591-0660 ! [THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK]! Republicanism Between Justice and Democracy Three Comments on Philip Pettit’s On the People’s Terms José Luis Martí & Hugo Seleme T hree years ago, Philip Pettit, quite possibly the most distinguished advocate of contemporary republicanism, published On the People’s Terms. A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy (hereinafter OPT).1 In that book, Pettit spells out the grounds of a distinctively republican theory of legitimacy that is eminently democratic. Justice and legitimacy, he argues, are the two normative domains in which political philosophy is divided, and both should be governed by the supreme value of freedom as non-domination. Justice, in short, is the domain that regulates the horizontal relations among citizens or individuals living together on equal terms, whereas legitimacy is the domain that involves the vertical relationship between those citizens and their governing institutions. This does not mean, however, that for Pettit both realms are of equal importance. Political legitimacy, and therefore democracy, should enjoy some kind of priority over social justice. If we consider, then, that most of the previous work by Pettit on republicanism had actually focused on the issue of social justice— his book Republicanism (hereinafter R)2 above all—the publication ! 1 Philip Pettit, On the People’s Terms. A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Unless specified otherwise, intext references are to this book. 2 Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). © 2015 – Philosophy and Public Issues (New Series), Vol. 5, No. 2 (2015): 25-42 Luiss University Press E-ISSN 2240-7987 | P-ISSN 1591-0660 Philosophy and Public Issues – Republicanism Between Justice and Democracy of OPT it is to be celebrated, especially along republican lines. In this sense, the book is not only a step further and a necessary complement to Pettit’s previous work but also provides the bones, so to speak, for all that flesh. OPT, specifically Chapters 3 to 5, constitute the preliminaries of a republican comprehensive democratic theory and include valuable insight on a wide range of elements: from the general legitimacy theory and a sovereignty theory to a constitutional theory, a political representation theory, a certain political ontology, a theory on basic rights and liberties, and a political equality theory, among others. It is safe to say that OPT has already become one of the most important books in democratic theory to be published thus far in the 21st century. It will surely generate profound discussions and controversy in the years to come. In this brief note we will not systematically discuss the virtues of Pettit’s theory of democratic legitimacy, nor will we develop a concrete line of attack. Instead, we will limit ourselves to sketching out three comments on three different aspects of his theory that we would like him to develop further or improve on, the first being the relationship between political legitimacy and social justice, the second his famous “eyeball test”, and the third his dual-aspect model of democracy. I The Relationship between Political Legitimacy and Social Justice Our first comment is basically a quest for clarification and expansion, and it concerns Pettit’s distinction between political legitimacy and social justice, or more concretely, his idea that the former is somehow more important than the latter. Pettit acknowledges that such an idea is not directly addressed in the 26! José Luis Martí & Hugo Seleme – Three Comments book.3 We do not understand why, however, since it strikes us as being of major interest to his theory. Pettit permanently insists on the necessity of developing workable, applicable, realistic— although ideal—theories that can provide us with guidelines for real political life.4 In real life we are constantly cornered into making trade-offs between our values and our ideals, so it becomes crucial to know how to react to a potential conflict between these two realms of political philosophy. With this in mind, we would like to invite him to expand the idea a bit more. For a long time now, Pettit has distinguished between two forms of domination: vertical (or public) and horizontal (or private).5 In OPT, this distinction has become central because the absence of either vertical or horizontal domination is equal to political legitimacy and justice, respectively, the two domains of political philosophy (24-5).6 In addition, Pettit offers a characterization of freedom as non-domination in terms of the absence of control. According to this characterization, an agent is not dominated by other agents when those other agents have no power of interference over his or her decisions or when such power is under his or her command (50).7 In turn, an agent may ! 3 OPT, pp. 24 and 294. José Luis Martì and Philip Pettit, A Political Philosophy in Public Life. Civic Republicanism in Zapatero’s Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2011) chapter 5; hereinafter PPPL 5 The distinction traces back to the Roman distinction between dominium and imperium (R, p. 36), but it was developed significantly in terms of horizontal versus vertical domination in another recent book, A Political Philosophy in Public Life, pp. 52-66. 6 OPT, pp. 24-25; Philip Pettit, Just Freedom. A Moral Compass for a Complex World (New York: Norton and Co 2014), chap. 4 and 5. 7 This characterization in terms of control was not explicit in his early works, where non-domination was mostly characterized in terms of the absence of an arbitrary power of interference (R: Ch. 2, although the idea of control is occasionally mentioned, e.g. on p. 11). That notion of “arbitrariness”, which 4 27! Philosophy and Public Issues – Republicanism Between Justice and Democracy control another agent when he or she holds power of interference over him or her that is not under his or her control, or when this power is not under the control of any third agent (171). In combining these ideas, we can say that vertical domination (or political illegitimacy) takes place when citizens lack ultimate control over the power of interference of their government, while horizontal domination (or social injustice) happens only when citizens are exposed to the uncontrolled power of interference of other citizens. Consequently, there are two ways in which the horizontal domination of citizen A by citizen B can be prevented: 1) placing B’s power of interference over A under A’s control or 2) placing it under the government’s control (C). In the latter case, political legitimacy may or may not be present, depending on whether the government’s power of interference is itself under the ultimate control of the citizens. In any case, no social injustice will take place. On two very important pages of the book (24-25; 130-131), Pettit connects legitimacy and justice in a very particular way, granting a type of priority or greater importance to the former. He writes that if a state produces vertical domination and is therefore illegitimate, it will necessarily result in certain costs in terms of justice as well. He argues that “where a lack of social justice alone would make us vulnerable only to our fellow citizens, a lack of political legitimacy would make us vulnerable on two fronts […] The reason is easy to see. If we are subject to a government that can dominate us, as in an illegitimate regime, then we are going to lack control over changes in that government’s will towards us and towards those of our kind. But !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! relates to the traditional republican concept arbitrium, was far from clear and produced some criticism. For that reason, Pettit preferred to avoid it in his later works (see OPT: 58; or PPPL: 34-38, containing the first central articulation of the idea of non-domination in terms of control). 28! José Luis Martí & Hugo Seleme – Three Comments this lack of political control means that any social controls we enjoy over changes in the will of our fellow citizens towards us are also likely to be somewhat precarious. While the law may put social controls in place, guarding us against private domination, those safeguards will only be as reliable as the will of the government that establishes and maintains them. Let legitimacy fail (…) and we will be vulnerable both in relation to the state and in relation to our fellow citizens” (24). This is why republicans should “put a certain premium on the value of legitimacy and on the democratic control that it requires” (25). To be sure, Pettit does not believe that there is a conceptual priority or interdependence between political legitimacy and social justice. He clearly explains that “Social justice does not entail political legitimacy, by this account, nor does political legitimacy entail social justice” (130). However, this does not mean that these two ideals are completely independent or uncorrelated on empirical grounds. In effect, “[i]t’s unlikely that people who fared badly in justice terms could do much about constraining the state to satisfy legitimacy. And it is unlikely that the unconstrained state would do much to establish justice amongst its citizenry” (131). In this passage, Pettit seems to rely on the existence of a certain mutual empirical correlation between the two ideas based on probabilities. However, it is precisely because of its “mutual” nature that such a correlation would be insufficient to establish a priority of political legitimacy over justice. Thus, the reason for this greater importance must be found elsewhere. As Pettit says in the relevant passage on page 24, quoted above, the reason for such priority is the lack of robustness on the part of institutional safeguards that are illegitimate, that is, those that escape our control. We are horizontally free only when our fellow citizens lack an uncontrolled power of interference. To make this possible, adequate and robust institutional safeguards 29! Philosophy and Public Issues – Republicanism Between Justice and Democracy must be in place. If such safeguards escape our ultimate control, they would become precarious and be as reliable as “the will of the government that establishes and maintains them” (24). If we interpret robustness as a synonym for reliability and an antonym for precariousness, any case of political illegitimacy (the absence of ultimate citizen control and therefore also reliable safeguards), by definition, would amount to a case of social injustice. This would certainly establish a priority of political legitimacy over justice, but such a priority would be far too strong. It would be conceptual, and contradictory to other claims made by Pettit since political illegitimacy would then entail social injustice. On the contrary, if robustness and reliability are two different aspects of the institutional safeguards of freedom, a benevolent despot could establish adequate and robust safeguards preventing social injustice, as Pettit admits, even if they are empirically unstable since they would only be as reliable as the will of said despot. However, in that case unstability and unreliability would simply be empirical properties of illegitimate safeguards that would lead us again to the kind of mutual empirical correlation between legitimacy and justice which, as we saw, appears to be insufficient to ground any superior importance of one over the other. II The Eyeball Test Freedom as non-domination comes in degrees because of the variance in protection provided by institutional safeguards. To determine the minimum level of protection required by an uncontrolled power of interference so that an individual can enjoy freedom or non-domination, Pettit uses what he calls the “eyeball test”. This test consists of determining whether people 30! José Luis Martí & Hugo Seleme – Three Comments can enjoy a level of protection in their options to the extent that it allows them to “look others in the eye without reason for the fear or deference that a power of interference might inspire; they can walk tall and assume the public status, objective and subjective, of being equal in this regard with the best” (84).8 The eyeball test is conceived as a proxy, a part of the “guiding heuristic” of the liber or the freeperson (82ff).9 It constitutes “a good index of whether the guards against private domination are adequate” (124). It therefore plays a central role in Pettit’s theory, putting “the ideal of republican justice within feasible reach (…), not mandating impossible levels of personal assurance or material equality”.10 It should also be practically useful to make concrete judgments about institutional design or policy analysis, as Pettit shows occasionally in the book (85, 98, 105). The eyeball test is neutral to psychological variations across persons. Some citizens are, in effect, more timid than others, and they might have greater difficulty in looking the other in the eye. Of course this does not mean that these individuals are less free than their fellow citizens. Pettit explicitly argues that “[t]he eyeball test does not require that people should be able to look one another in the eye, regardless of their personal lack of nerve. It requires that they have this capacity in the absence of what would count, even by the most demanding standards of their society, as mere timidity or cowardice” (84). The problem is that in order for ! 8 The eyeball test has gained importance during the evolution of Pettit’s work. In most of his previous works, he used the idea of being able to “look others squarely in the eye” basically as a metaphor or a symbolic example, but he had never referred to it as “a test” (see for instance R: viii, 5, 71, 87, 133, 166, 268, and 273). In PPPL he begins to call it the “eyeball test”, although it still plays a peripheral role in that work; in OPT it is finally given a central status. 9 OPT, pp. 82ff; see also Philip Pettit, Just Freedom, pp. xxvi and 98-100 10 Philip Pettit, Just Freedom, pp. 100; see also Just Freedom, pp. xxvi, 98-100, 142, 181, and 216 31! Philosophy and Public Issues – Republicanism Between Justice and Democracy the eyeball test to be neutral to the morally irrelevant factor of variance in personal character traits, Pettit makes this test culturally sensitive, and this might leave his conception of freedom as non-domination open to an objection not unlike the one he directs against the competing notions of freedom as nonfrustration and freedom as non-interference. According to Pettit’s presentation, the Hobbesian notion of freedom as non-frustration establishes that being free simply consists of doing anything one desires without experiencing interference from others. One way of reaching freedom, then, would be to simply remove any and all wishes that cannot be satisfied due to third-party interference, thus avoiding frustration. This, according to Berlin, would be counterintuitive.11 Pettit subscribes to this argument and extends it to show that freedom as non-interference defended by Berlin, that is, being free consists only of not experiencing interference, suffers from a similar problem: one can become free simply by ingratiating one’s self with whomever has the power of interference so that he or she will behave in a friendly manner and not exercise the power he or she wields by not interfering in one’s course of action. Indeed, few of us would claim that a subject in this situation is free. To be free is to be protected from the interference of a third party, whether they are friendly or we ingratiate ourselves with them, or not. The problem Pettit finds in these two competing views of freedom—freedom as non-frustration and freedom as noninterference—is that they are sensitive to morally irrelevant factors: the actual desires that either the subject or a third party may have. They lead us to morally spurious ways of obtaining ! 11 Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969); Philip Pettit, “The Instability of Freedom as Noninterference: The Case of Isaiah Berlin”, Ethics, 121, 2011, p. 699; OPT, pp. 28-36. 32! José Luis Martí & Hugo Seleme – Three Comments freedom by extinguishing the desire of doing what we are prevented from doing, or by ingratiating ourselves with those who have the power of interference. The “eyeball test” has made Pettit’s conception of freedom as non-domination sensitive to morally irrelevant factors as well: it is sensitive to the actual beliefs and cultural standards that prevail in the society the subject is a part of, or, more precisely, it is sensitive to contingent social standards of shyness and cowardice. Such sensitivity produces, once again, a spurious way of gaining freedom. Imagine two societies, S1 and S2, with similar laws and institutional safeguards, similar socio-economic conditions of development, similar distribution of wealth, similar educative levels, and so forth. They are equal in all that is primarily relevant in terms of social justice and political legitimacy. But these two societies differ in their cultural standards of shyness and cowardice. S1 has much higher levels of shyness in the sense that only very extreme pathological cases of shyness are considered as such. S2, in contrast, shows much lower levels of shyness. Now imagine an individual who is shy enough to meet the lower limits of shyness in S2, that is, she is considered a shy person in that society. She is not however shy enough to meet the shyness levels of S1 and is not considered a shy person in that society. Now imagine that this person, who travels often from S1 to S2, has difficulty looking others squarely in the eye in both countries. While this person would count as shy in S2, she would nevertheless pass the eyeball test there, and would be considered free regardless of her difficulty in looking others in the eye. As soon as she lands in S1, however, the fact that she is unable to look others in the eye as a person not considered to be shy would entail a failure in the test, and it would therefore mean that she is being dominated. Given that the institutional safeguards and the socio-economic conditions in S1 and S2 are the same, no one could say that this individual is free in S2 and dominated in S1 at 33! Philosophy and Public Issues – Republicanism Between Justice and Democracy the same time. She could gain freedom just by moving to S2 from S1, even when all the relevant factors providing non-domination measured by the eyeball test are exactly the same in each society, a solution that represents a rather spurious way of obtaining freedom. III The Dual-Aspect Model of Democracy Pettit’s republican theory of democratic legitimacy establishes that a state is legitimate only if its citizens are able to exert influence on their government’s decisions and actions, and if such influence imposes a welcome direction. For that to be possible, citizens must retain ultimate control over their political institutions and decisions. This control must be individualized, unconditioned, and efficacious.12 According to Pettit, the only institutional design that makes this kind of control possible is, roughly speaking, a responsively representative, deliberative, contestatory democracy operating under a mixed constitution. But how citizens must exercise such influence and impose direction? Pettit responds to this in chapter 5. He begins by presenting and discussing two “familiar” democratic models of popular influence and direction: one is the intentional model, according to which the people should be able to intentionally impose the ! 12 It is individualized if all citizens can gain access to the system of control under equal conditions and the direction in which influence is exercised is equally acceptable to all. It is unconditioned when the influence each citizen is able to exert does not depend on another’s will. Lastly, it is efficacious when it is effective enough to impose a direction upon collective decisions, but when a decision is contrary to the citizen’s wishes, he or she sees it merely as a matter of tough luck, and not as the imposition of someone else’s will (166-179). 34! José Luis Martí & Hugo Seleme – Three Comments direction they actually find most adequate to protect the public interest after careful consideration (243-247); the other is the non-intentional model of the invisible hand, according to which the citizens should be able to impose a direction unintentionally, just by aggregating their personal interests and private preferences (248-251). Pettit rejects both models. The intentional model is problematic because it relies on a high degree of civic virtue on behalf of the citizens and their representatives, who must all be committed to the common good when contributing to the public decisions instead of trying to advance their own private interests. But this required virtue would be, according to Pettit, “unmotivated”, since “[t]here need not be any elements of personal interest or spontaneous commitment to support it” (246). Therefore, we cannot take it for granted either: “such virtue is not an assured commodity and a system that requires it is not guaranteed to be sustainable” (246). The non-intentional model does not presuppose any civic virtue in the citizens or their representatives. It proposes to see the democratic system as a huge mechanism of invisible hand through which a collective equilibrium protecting public interest will emerge from the aggregation of citizens’ private preferences or interests. The public interest is thus equated with satisfaction with the preferences of the greatest number of members of the society. The electoral system would theoretically provide adequate incentives for representatives seeking election to contribute to such a level of satisfaction. However, this model is objectionable: if both citizens and their representatives are simply self-interested actors maximizing their private interests, nothing would prevent them from trying to “form coalitions to impose their particular sectional interests in a way that is unresponsive to minority interests within the society” (250). 35! Philosophy and Public Issues – Republicanism Between Justice and Democracy In contrast with these two familiar models, Pettit has built up a third, hybrid model supposedly combining the attractive elements of the previous two models while removing their perils and deficiencies. It is what he calls the “dual-aspect model of democracy”. This intermediate model subscribes to the view of public interest presupposed by the intentional model, thus requiring some degree of civic virtue, but it does not rely on the purely virtuous intentional actions and decisions of the people. It shares with the non-intentional model the view of democracy as an invisible-hand mechanism (276). Citizens are supposed to participate politically in a complex process of multiple contestations and deliberation, and do so motivated by personal interests—for instance, the interest in not being deprived of their freedom. Such complex processes, supposedly governed by social deliberative norms, will however result in adequate guidelines for policy-making processes. Thus, the system must “ensure that the policies and processes of government conform to popular, equally acceptable norms. But it need not be manifest to members of the group–that is, it need not be a matter of common belief amongst them–that they can achieve that aggregative, cumulative result” (277). It must also do this while economizing on virtue and using a more realistic design than that of the intentional model (247). The dual-aspect model is named after the fact that it relies on the juxtaposition of two different levels of democratic process: on the one hand, a sort of fast democracy that requires “the shorthaul, highly charged process of campaign and election, proposal and counter-proposal, debate division and contestation”, and on the other, a somewhat slower type of democracy functioning by means of a “long-haul process, as silently as gravity, whereby participants are wittingly or unwittingly led to establish only such policies and processes as conform to the norms of argument and association that prevail amongst them” (270). 36! José Luis Martí & Hugo Seleme – Three Comments Pettit’s presentation of the dual-aspect model of democracy in Chapter 5 contains many interesting points that we unfortunately cannot address here, such as his distinction between the constituting and the constituted peoples meant to dissolve one of the classic paradoxes of democratic constitutionalism. However, we must note that OPT provides only the preliminaries of a democratic theory and not a fully articulated account. Pettit leaves out many crucial issues, particularly issues of institutional design. He does not take sides, for instance, with respect to concrete systems of political representation, namely, the Westminster system versus that of Washington. He does not favor any concrete electoral system or any concrete regulation of political parties or campaign donations. Nor does he take sides in questions regarding how rigid a constitution should be or what form of judicial review is best. Furthermore, he does not tell us if the dual-aspect model of democracy would favor the use of wide and efficacious mechanisms of participatory democracy, such as popular initiatives, citizen assemblies, referenda, and so forth, and if so, what conditions such mechanisms would be subject to. The book fails to provide concrete examples of how the dual-aspect model of democracy could be institutionalized.13 Such limitations make it difficult to compare the dual-aspect model with its two main counterparts. However, as part of this comment we would like to outline one general objection to his model in order to provide him with the opportunity to clarify some aspects of it. Pettit advocates a hybrid model of democracy by proposing to combine certain aspects of each model. In doing ! 13 The exception is the story Pettit tells, following the works of Oliver MacDonagh, about early nineteenth-century England (OPT, pp. 270-274). This historical example is however of little help in understanding the kind of democratic reform that Pettit might be willing to support in today’s democracy. 37! Philosophy and Public Issues – Republicanism Between Justice and Democracy so, he attempts to extract the best of two possible worlds while avoiding their respective shortcomings. However, like in other endeavors of this kind, Pettit’s third way might easily fall under crossfire from both trenches. Does the dual-aspect model really overcome the difficulties he identifies in the other two models? Does it succeed in adequately differentiating itself from the others? We have our doubts, as we explain below. We will then end this piece by providing an alternative interpretation that may address our questions. Pettit’s main objection to the non-intentional model of democracy is the possible danger of an abuse of power by those in government or by tyrannical majorities inclined to rule for their own benefit. Is the dual-aspect model immune to this peril? How can it be secured against political representative abuse of power, especially if no requirement is made to display any type of civic virtue or commitment to the common good? The short answer is that the people, on one hand, must be able to contest the decisions and policies adopted by their representatives through some sort of short-haul, fast democratic process, and on the other hand they must retain ultimate control to impose influence and direction through a long-haul process. Would this not mean, then, that the people themselves would be strictly required to display civic virtue? Let us provide a concrete example. Imagine a large majority of the population in a country defends same-sex marriage, a position that is in conflict with the existing law of that country. Imagine now that the main political institutions of that country support the existing law and reject the idea of recognizing same-sex marriage. This may happen when such institutions are countermajoritarian—in the Supreme Court, for example—and differ ideologically from the majority of the population, or because majoritarian electoral institutions are strongly lobbied by more 38! José Luis Martí & Hugo Seleme – Three Comments conservative minorities. At some point, the majority in favor of same-sex marriage may not only be discontent with the existing law, but also outraged by how little influence they have on the government despite representing the majority opinion. Pettit’s republican democratic theory, in our view, should give these people ultimate control of the situation, thus granting them the capacity to impose explicitly and intentionally the direction of their political institutions. The best way to do this may not be granting the power to overturn Supreme Court decisions, but rather allowing them to amend the constitution as long as an adequate process is in place to do so. In any case, a sustained majority must ultimately be able to impose their views on such laws. Any other system would not be democratic or legitimate. Of course, one problem is that the reverse situation may occur. How can we be sure that a sustained majority, having ultimate control and therefore being able to impose their direction on the state, will not use such power to impose the unjust idea of prohibiting same-sex marriage, or even worse, the idea that certain racial minorities should be “tolerated” as “equal” as long as they are segregated? Pettit’s short answer to this is that we should rely on the effectiveness of an invisible-hand mechanism made up of a complex, deliberative, and contestatory process of popular decision-making. But could this really take place without any requirement for civic virtue? Pettit himself raises this question. In effect, he admits that his model requires a certain degree of civic virtue. It contains “an optimistic vision of how things can transpire” and “it will only materialize under quite demanding conditions” (279). The people must remain active, highly-committed, and vigilant with respect to what their representatives do and be prepared to participate in such contestatory processes. Citizens must show some commitment to the rules of acceptability that the deliberative 39! Philosophy and Public Issues – Republicanism Between Justice and Democracy regulation of public business requires, they must be willing to seek out equally acceptable norms that are oriented to living together on equal terms, and they must show a “commitment to seeking solidarity in collective decision-making”. They must also display some virtues of civility and be “willing to think from the point of view of the group as a whole” (259). Finally, they should be committed to norms of equality of influence, mutual respect, liberty, and independence, among others. (262-3). As a republican theory, it is indeed not surprising that Pettit’s model relies on significant degrees of civic virtue, both on behalf of the representatives and the people. As we saw, however, such a model attempts to economize in virtue (247). In Pettit’s view, this might constitute its main advantage or improvement over the intentional model. While the latter requires unrealistic doses of civic virtue, with a generalized commitment to the common good and an active disposition to participate politically, without which the model would fail, the dual-aspect model would be much less demanding. The difference, apparently, would be in the degree of civic virtue. But is this difference so great? We wonder if the reason Pettit finds a significant contrast between these two models derives from his particular interpretation of the intentional model, which he seems to conceive as the imposition of virtue on all agents involved in an all-or-nothing process. In other words, he appears to assume that unless all agents display all required virtues entirely, the system as a whole would fail. Should we interpret the model in such a restrictive way? Why not see it, instead, as a regulative ideal, making it compatible with Pettit’s own model? Imagine once again two societies, S3 and S4, with exactly the same constitutional and institutional systems, the same laws, and the same socio-economic conditions. Imagine both societies display the minimum level of civic virtue both in their citizens 40! José Luis Martí & Hugo Seleme – Three Comments and their representatives as required in the dual-aspect model. Both societies would therefore rank as sufficiently democratic and politically legitimate, according to Pettit’s view. However, let S3 now improve its levels of civic virtue by adopting a special education program. In theory, both representatives and citizens should become more committed to the common good and less selfish and strategic, adopting social norms of equal respect, solidarity, freedom, and so forth. S3 citizens would also become more interested in politics and more personally involved in vigilance and contestation. Both societies would remain identical in terms of their respective institutions and economic conditions, but S3 would be much more virtuous than S4, and therefore much less inclined to support openly unjust policies such as segregation. Could we then say that S3 is more legitimate than S4? S4 may be sufficiently legitimate, but we might also recognize that S3 is even more so. Pettit’s dual-aspect model, in our opinion, should recognize this. This is in fact what follows from his characterization of political legitimacy as an ideal. Ideal (or perfect) legitimacy may be impossible to attain in real life. Fortunately, we are able to determine a threshold for a sufficient level of legitimacy that can distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate states. This threshold may be identified through a “tough-luck” test. The idea of a minimum threshold is nonetheless compatible with recognizing differences among states that are situated above it. The mere fact that one state is situated above the threshold does not mean, however, that they have nothing to improve on.14 ! 14 Sweden and Spain may well be both sufficiently democratic, but Sweden is quite possibly a greater democracy than Spain. All things being equal, the difference may be found in the levels of civic virtue. Even if Spain continues to be above the minimum threshold, it may still need to improve in order to 41! Philosophy and Public Issues – Republicanism Between Justice and Democracy In conclusion, if we interpret the intentional model as a regulative ideal, it does not differ much from the dual-aspect model of democracy. Indeed, these two theories could be seen as complementary, with the latter establishing the threshold required to recognize sufficient political legitimacy, and the former identifying the ideal to which we should nevertheless ascribe. We cannot help asking, would this make Pettit’s theory more robust yet equally realistic?15 Pompeu Fabra University & National University of Córdoba !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! match Sweden, and what is more, Sweden might legitimately try to improve itself in this aspect even more. 15 José Luis Martí is Associate Professor of Law at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona (Spain). Hugo Seleme is Professor of Law at the National University of Córdoba (Argentina). We want to thank Sabina Vöss for revising and editing the English of this note. 42! If you need to cite this article, please use the following format: Martí, José Luis, & Selme, Hugo, “Three Comments on Philip Pettit’s On the People’s Terms,” Philosophy and Public Issues (New Series), Vol. 5, No. 2 (2015), 25-42, edited by S. Maffettone, G. Pellegrino and M. Bocchiola