The federal structure of a republic of reasons

Political Theory

Volumn 33, Issue 5, 2005, Pages 629-653

  King, Loren A ^a  

^a WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

Federalism; Legitimacy; Public reason; Rawls; Representation

Indexed keywords

EID: 26444488582     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591705276383     Document Type: Review

References (69)

1. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1999), 474.
2. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Ibid., 172.
3. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Ibid., 474.
4. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Ibid., 206.
5. See, for instance, Wayne J. Norman, "Towards a Philosophy of Federalism," in Group Rights, ed. Judith Baker (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 79-100;
6. and Samuel V. LaSelva, The Moral Foundations of Canadian Federalism: Paradoxes, Achievements, and Tragedies of Statehood (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996).
7. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 214.
8. John Rawls, "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," in The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 129-80, esp. 144-45.
9. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 223-27;
10. and Rawls, "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," 143-44.
11. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 54-58.
12. Rawls, Political Liberalism. Ibid., 61.
13. For a related argument - that the nonmajoritarian features of the U.S. Constitution are a vital part of American democracy - see Christopher L. Eisgruber, Constitutional Self-government (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001).
14. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 477; see also 200-3, 205-6.
15. Rawls, Political Liberalism, lecture II, esp. 77-88.
16. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 415.
17. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Ibid., 433.
18. Rawls, "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," 170-71.
19. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson make much the same point: when reasonable disagreement prevails, widespread commitment to a principle of reciprocity allows parties to find terms of accommodation - however provisional and unstable - that are at least consistent with mutual respect among reasonable persons. Reciprocity requires, inter alia, that we grant sincere consideration to the beliefs, values, and arguments of others, and that we seek not only to minimize the dependence of our positions on controversial claims of fact, but also to pursue an "economy of moral disagreement" whereby we "avoid unnecessary conflict in characterizing the moral grounds or drawing out the policy implications" of our positions, the aim being "to search for significant points of convergence between one's own understandings and those of citizens whose positions, taken in their more comprehensive forms, one must reject." See Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 55-85.
20. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 206.
21. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 253.
22. Rawls, "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," 137.
23. In considering the demands of justice with respect to political participation, for instance, Rawls briefly discusses single-member electoral districts and gerrymandering (A Theory of Justice, 196), and endorses public financing of parties and electoral campaigns (pp. 198-99).
24. A Theory of Justice, Ibid., 171-76. That the institutional considerations I have in mind might reasonably be settled later rather than earlier in the four-stage sequence was made especially clear to me by Samuel Freeman.
25. A Theory of Justice, Ibid., 119.
26. A Theory of Justice, Ibid., 175.
27. John Tomasi, Liberalism beyond Justice: Citizens, Society, and the Boundaries of Political Theory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 100-6 and 114-24.
28. Will Kymlicka, "Territorial Boundaries: A Liberal-Egalitarian Perspective," in Boundaries and Justice: Diverse Ethical Perspectives, ed. David Miller and Sohail H. Hashmi (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 249-75.
29. Will Kymlicka, Boundaries and Justice: Diverse Ethical Perspectives, Ibid., 266-67.
30. Thomas Schwartz, "The Paradox of Representation," Journal of Politics 57 (1995): 309-23.
31. On this distinction see Thomas Hueglin, "Federalism at the Crossroads: Old Meanings, New Significance," Canadian Journal of Political Science 36 (2003): 275-94;
32. and Thomas Hueglin, Early Modern Concepts for a Late Modern World: Althusius on Community and Federalism (Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1999), ch. 12, esp. 210-17. Another suggestive historical contrast would be between the federalism of Madison and Hamilton, on one hand, and Cartier's vision of Canadian confederation, on the other;
33. on this, see LaSelva, Moral Foundations of Canadian Federalism, ch. 2.
34. Federalist 10; from the Avalon Project, Yale University, The Federalist Papers, no. 10, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/federal/fed10.htm (accessed 18 February 2005).
35. See especially Hueglin's analysis ("Federalism at the Crossroads," 280, 284) of Hamilton's characterization in Federalist 9, The Federalist Papers;
36. and more generally, see Hueglin, "Federalism at the Crossroads," 283-88.
37. Hueglin, "Federalism at the Crossroads," 276.
38. A similar suspicion is explored for the case of multinational federalism by LaSelva, Moral Foundations of Canadian Federalism.
39. On the latter point, see Richard Sennett, The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970),
40. which examines "white flight" to carefully ordered suburban neighborhoods in the postwar United States; on retreat and disengagement in contemporary U.S. metropolitan settings, consider the findings of J. Eric Oliver, Democracy in Suburbia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001).
41. On spatial features of difference and exclusion more generally, see David Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion (London: Routledge, 1995).
42. I stress "might": such strategies might instead reflect unreasonable claims grounded merely in narrow self-interest and odious stereotypes - for instance, a shared desire among affluent white residents to preserve high neighborhood property values against perceived threats from racial mixing.
43. Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, 80.
44. Hueglin, Early Modern Concepts for a Late Modern World, 217.
45. See Steven Hill, Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner-Take-All Politics (New York: Routledge, 2003), ch. 5;
46. more generally, see the debate over Robert Richie and Steven Hill's endorsement of proportional representation in the United States, "The Case for Proportional Representation," in the New Democracy Forum of the Boston Review 23, no. 1 (February/March 1998), http://bostonreview.net/ndf. html#Reflecting (accessed 5 May 2005).
47. The theoretical and empirical literatures on voting systems, and specifically on the merits and failings of various proportional representation schemes, are vast. An interesting contribution that provides a succinct historical overview and interesting normative reflections is Burt L. Monroe, "Fully Proportional Representation," American Political Science Review 89, no. 4 (1995): 925-40.
48. Robert E. Goodin, "Democratic Deliberation Within," Philosophy and Public Affairs 29 (2000): 81-109.
49. Typically of an "asymmetric" sort in which some groups have different, and often more, powers and responsibilities than others, such as a territorially concentrated national and linguistic community demanding extensive control over education and immigration policies in their territory.
50. Thus the burgeoning normative literatures on both federalism and secession: see Harry Beran, "A Liberal Theory of Secession," Political Studies 32 (1984): 21-31;
51. Allen Buchanan, Secession: the Morality of Political Divorce (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991);
52. David Gauthier, "Breaking Up: An Essay on Secession," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 24 (1994): 357-72;
53. Norman, "Towards a Philosophy of Federalism";
54. Christopher H. Wellman, "A Defence of Secession and Political Self-determination," Philosophy and Public Affairs 24 (1995): 142-71;
55. LaSelva, Moral Foundations of Canadian Federalism;
56. Will Kymlicka, "Is Federalism a Viable Alternative to Secession?" in Theories of Secession, ed. Percy B. Lehning (London: Routledge, 1998): 111-50;
57. Alan Patten, "Democratic Secession from a Multinational State," Ethics 112 (2002): 558-86;
58. and Dimitrios Karmis and Wayne J. Norman, eds., Theories of Federalism (New York: Palgrave, 2004).
59. Charles R. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, with new afterword (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999).
60. For a good review, see Simon Caney, "International Distributive Justice," Political Studies 49 (2001): 974-97.
61. Simon Caney, "International Distributive Justice," Political Studies 49 (2001): 974-97. Ibid.
62. Michael Walzer, "Liberalism and the Art of Separation," Political Theory 12 (1984): 315-30.
63. This point is made clearly by Robert S. Taylor, "Rawls's Defense of the Priority of Liberty: A Kantian Reconstruction," Philosophy and Public Affairs 41 (2003): 246-71.
64. Some representative works are William H. Riker, Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964);
65. Barry R. Weingast, "The Economic Role of Political Institutions: Market-Preserving Federalism and Economic Development," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 11 (1995): 1-31;
66. Daniel Treisman, "Political Decentralization and Economic Reform: A Game-Theoretic Analysis," American Journal of Political Science 43 (1999): 488-517;
67. Jonathan Rodden, "The Dilemma of Fiscal Federalism: Grants and Fiscal Performance around the World," American Journal of Political Science (2002): 670-87;
68. and Jenna Bednar, "Judicial Predictability and Federal Stability: Strategic Consequences of Institutional Imperfection," Journal of Theoretical Politics 16 (2004): 423-46.
69. Gerald A. Cohen, "Facts and Principles," Philosophy and Public Affairs 31 (2003): 211-45.