From: marky@engin.umich.edu (Mark Anthony Young)
Newsgroups: can.politics,talk.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Taxation as Theft
Date: 26 Jan 1993 07:28:55 GMT
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: maize.engin.umich.edu

continuing a discussion Charles and I were having a week or so ago

Rather than get back into the whole debate, I thought I'd try to start over
again and see if I could clear up some of the things you've misunderstood (due
entirely to my lack of skill as a debater, I'm sure).

I'm trying to give a definition of "public legitimacy".  I assume that each
person is competent to decide for themself whether they feel that their
government is legitimate or not.  This, however, only constitutes "private
legitmacy".  People can legitimately disagree, and simply pooling the
decisions of individuals and weighing the result is not enough -- the results
must be combined in some other way.  I'm trying to get at how those individual
decisions should be combined.  My goal is a definition that any person in the
country could use to determine their own "private legitimacy" decisions, to
decide whether the correct course of action is to try to change the government
or to try to change the society.

I start with these properties that I think any "reasonable" definition of
"legitimate government" should include:

  1) If every person in a country believes that the government of that
     country is legitimate, then it is.

  2) If the majority of people in a country think that that country's
     government is _not_ legitimate, then it's not legitimate.

I call these the "democracy" clauses, since they recognise that the basis for
the legitimacy of the government is the support of the people.  The government
is the "official arm of society", and so should represent its society.

I call the next clause the minority protection clause:

  3) A government may be illegitimate even though a majority of its people
     think that it is legitimate.

This property does not in any way contradict the other two:  they do not
say what happens between 100% support and 50% support except to say that
somewhere in there there is a transition from legitimate to illegitimate.
This clause just says that that transition may occur before the 50% mark is
reached. 

Finally, I include the following property to deal with "normal" dissent: 

  4) Legitimacy is not an all-or-none property -- a government may be
     "partially legitimate".

Some notes:
  -- "legitimacy" and "moral rectitude" are not linked directly; the
     only link is through each person's individual moral sense.  Thus
     a government can be both legitimate and morally reprehensible (in
     theory, anyway).
  -- it is not necessary that everyone be using the same definition of
     legitimacy, or even that their definitions be "reasonable" as I
     have defined it here; individuals are free to decide their
     personal feelings on any basis or none.
  -- your definition of legitimacy fails on all four counts; by your
     rules the will of the people is irrelevent to whether a government
     is legitimate or not.  Even tho' you've expanded on the philosophical
     basis for that definition, I still find it "unreasonable".  Even so,
     it is your definition, and so any government that has you as a
     citizen has to take that definition into account.

The properties I've given leave a grey area between "legitimate" and
"illegitimate" in which governments are "partially legitimate".  This has
proved a problem area in our earlier discussion, presumably because you
believe that legitimacy is an all-or-none property.  While I believe that
there is such a thing as partial legitimacy, I will concede that it's not a
very useful answer to someone who finds themself in a moral dilemma that turns
on whether the government's action is legitimate.

It is in this grey area where the notion of "weak consensus" comes into play.
Every government comes with a conflict resolution scheme built in (even if
it's a simple as "what the king says goes").  This resolution strategy is part
of the government, and so is a valid basis for people to decide the legitimacy
of the government on.  Since no society is created out of nothingness, the
question of how this resolution strategy came into existance is moot.  It's
there, and the people have to deal with it.

A person may disagree morally with the particular action a government is
taking, and yet concede that the way that decision was reached was morally
correct.  In that case that person is in "weak consensus" with the decision.
A reasonable person would not then lose faith in the legitimacy of the
government, but rather in the moral fibre of the society it represents.

This attitude toward legitimacy tends to "manufacture" legitimacy.  However, a
lack of reasonableness in its citizens would not protect the government from
their decisions.  If the people do not support the government, the government
becomes illegitimate, whether the lack of support is based on reasonable moral
principles, or the colour of the Queen's hat.

If a person is being constantly defeated in the conflict resolution process,
or if some particular decision is just too outrageous for that person to
accept, (or if they dislike the Queen's hat) they will lose faith in the
legitimacy of the government.  The first person to lose faith moves a
government from completely legitimate to only partially legitimate.  It does
not necessarily move the government all the way to illegitimate, however.

Now we've moved beyond the scope of "any reasonable" theory of legitimacy.
Different "reasonable" theories will set different conditions for when a
government crosses that line from "partially legitimate" to "illegitimate".
The only certain thing is that once you pass the 50% mark you're over the
line.  

There is one principle that I'm almost certain would have to be part of any
reasonable theory, tho' -- the secession principle:

  5) if there is a community in the country that has or could form its
     own legitimate government, and the citizens of this (perhaps
     hypothetical) government feel that the current government is
     illegitimate, then the current government is illegitimate _insofar
     as it includes that community_.

This is a principle that may be hard to apply in practice.  The Czeck and
Slovak situation is one example where it did work; the Croatian situation is
one where it didn't.  In the latter case, the affected community had its own
sub-community that felt that the secession itself was illegitimate.  These are
the sort of hard problems that lead me to say that, in some situations, there
may be no legitimate government possible.  I do not view this as a problem
with my definitions so much as a problem with people -- they are impossible to
live with (or without).  

-----

In light of that, I'll see if I can't answer some of your specific questions.

>why are you so confident consensus would work? people don't get along!

I didn't say it would work.  In fact, I've said more than once that there are
many times when no legitimate government is possible -- in other words, no
consensus is possible.

My main point is (1):  if there is consensus, there is legitimacy.

My secondary point is "weak consensus":  if people agree with the method used
to come to a decision, then the fact that they disagree with the decision is
not a reasonable basis to deny the legitimacy of the government.  People may
still do it, but they're being perverse (as is their wont).

>and when you tried to explain the "conflict-resolution mechanism"
>last time, you ended up with a recursive definition which required
>the use of the conflict-resolution mechanism to set itself up.

We have to get back to consensus at some point.  If the existing mechanism
does not suit the people, they have to come up with a new one.  The usual way
for this is for a bunch of like-minded men to get together and toss the old
order out -- installing the new order for the next bunch to throw out.

If you want to do things in a more civilized way, you've got to go back to
first principles.  You've got to get everyone to agree to abide by the results
of a constitutional convention -- which means that you've got to have a
convention to set up the convention.  South Africa is in just this sort of a
position.  The ANC does not accept the legitimacy of the current White
government, and is trying to negotiate a new order.  The PAC thinks that
negotiating with the old system just legitimizes it, so they're sticking to
the tried and true methods.  

The new mechanism does not so much set itself up as evolve from the little
bits of consensus along the way.  The basis for the recursion is when a bunch
of us sit down and say "We'll let John negotiate for us."  It's not much, but
it's the basis for all government, legitimate or not.

...mark young

Newsgroups: can.politics