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4. The ethical model: the relation between private and communal preferences We have seen that in the ethical model voters may not rest content with ranking the offered alternatives according to their own interests only; they have to take into account the interests of the community as well. However, we have not examined yet the way they should relate the two orderings in making their decisions. The preference-aggregating model suggests the following solution. Voters do not simply order their private and communal preferences separately , but order the two rankings with regard to one another as well. This makes it possible for them to decide in each case which is the better; the alternatives they prefer for themselves or the ones they judge to be the best for the community. If they attribute more value to the realization of their communal preferences, it is reasonable for them to vote for the sacrifice of their private preferences. If they rank the realization of their private preferences higher, it is reasonable for them to vote so that politics sacrifice their communal preferences. The ethical model rejects this solution. It cannot do otherwise, since it is among its original hypotheses that voters bear moral responsibility for promoting , by way of casting their votes, the common good; what the common good is, in turn, is independent of their preferences. These two claims together entail a negative consequence to the effect that the solution offered by the preference-aggregating model is wrong. But what positive consequence follows from it? One may be naturally tempted to think that the ethical model requires of the voters to give strict priority to the common good over their personal interests. That is, it seems to demand that they consider their personal interests only if the alternatives on offer are equally good or bad with respect to the common good. However, such a consequence does not follow from the ethical model. It would follow from it only if the model were combined with a substantive morality that requires the individual always to choose what is 18 ⁄ The Common Good and Civic Virtue best impersonally, never allowing her to give special weight to her personal projects and commitments. This position is called ethical rigorism. Exponents of the ethical model of democratic politics need not, however, be at the same time ethical rigorists as well. When one tries to evaluate the ethical model, it is reasonable to consider it in its most acceptable form. Therefore, in what follows I will take it that while some moral requirements exclude weighing them against the personal losses one might incur when adhering to them (e.g. no amount of material loss could possibly justify killing an innocent person), certain other requirements may allow for such weighing (there is such economic harm that no one may be obliged to undertake to help the needy13). On the other hand, I will take it that the evaluation of possible reasons for exemption is not a question external to morality; it is moral considerations themselves that specify the range of personal losses one may invoke when defending one’s less-than-moral conduct. Assume that two individuals’ situations are is identical in every respect. Still, one of them dutifully validates her ticket whenever she gets on the bus, while the other does so only if a conductor approaches her. No doubt, the moral prohibition against exploiting others is more important to the former than to the latter. Now let us assume that the prohibition is so important for the former that she would never ride free, while it is so less important to the latter that only the risk of getting caught would stop her from free riding. We would not say that if such is the case, one of them does it well to validate her ticket all the time, while the other does it well to do so only if necessary . This would amount to denying all normative significance to moral requirements. To justify the free rider’s conduct, we must find reasons for her deviation from the norm that are judged respectable and sufficient by morality itself. If we accept that voting is a moral decision, and that voters are responsible for their votes—and the ethical model does exactly this—then the above observation will hold for the voters’ conduct as well. Assume that the central issue of an election is whether higher education should remain free or become charged by...

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