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C H A P T E R 1 0 Not in My Name MACRODEMOCRATIC DESIGN The democratic polity cannot act in my name by fiat. To earn this moral power, its procedures must be structured in certain ways. I argued that the state has license to act in my name only if I bear partial responsibility for its actions. The reverse of this analysis also holds. It would be a mistake to assume that the citizen can “un-name” herself by mere declaration. Democratic life would be simple if I could assert that an elected official is not my representative, my president, my prime minister. We are familiar with this refrain. But it is not enough for me to deny that my state acts on my behalf. My approach to democratic complicity makes it possible to incur blame that a speech act alone cannot cancel. It provides justification for the intuitive thought of an imagined protester, “pronouncing aloud the words ‘I abhor the leaders of my country and dissociate myself from them’—will certainly not be enough.”1 What matters is not our words themselves, but how we relate to individuals subject to the imposed terms of our state. This depends on our causal connection to a democratic system—both how and how much we contribute to political injustice. Suppose a citizen offers this plea: “Beyond the voting booth, what more can I do—what democratic levers can I pull—to avoid standing in impaired relations with my cocitizens?” For an answer, let us shift to the default perspective of democratic theory. As institutional designers, we can look to reforms suggested by the account of citizenship and its moral liabilities defended here. What mechanisms of democracy—writ large and small—can assist the individual citizen’s aim to stand in justifiable relations with fellow citizens when one’s state is operating unjustly?2 We should be careful not to expect too much from this search. A citizen living in a seriously unjust state may find herself with responsibilities that are highly disruptive. No single institutional reform will restructure our relation to other individuals unjustly treated by our state’s policies. I propose that we canvass for two kinds of complicity-avoidance mechanisms . The first helps ordinary citizens limit their moral exposure—to distance themselves from state actions. Our felt need to avoid contributing and sustaining ongoing injustices receives its rationale from the MacrodemocraticDesign • 253 accessorial view of citizenship. These reforms are an attempt to work out macrodemocratic implications from this microdemocratic theory. They call for venues for changing the way we relate to other citizens. But it is not enough for us to attempt to break our personal connection to a discrete unjust policy. That we are, in an indirect way, coauthors of the law gives us positive moral reason to offset our liabilities for democratically sponsored injustice. This creates the need for a second set of mechanisms, which provide citizens with opportunities to offset injustices that are performed in their name. We have independent moral reason to participate in ending a policy—even one that we have extricated ourselves from. To this end, we can institutionalize certain forms of protest that are typically performed by citizens in a freelance manner. In the face of disagreement about justice , Michael Walzer has urged that we search “institutional channels for their expression, adjudicative mechanisms, and alternative distributions .”3 I will argue that citizens deserve access to diversified forms of official protest, where they can officially record their moral opposition to a particular policy or executive action. This chapter is a microcosm of the book’s larger argument. We start with the most direct forms of official action available to democratic citizens—voting for initiatives and representatives, signing petitions, and participating in deliberative forums. The argument then proceeds in step form to the less direct forms of governance. What reforms are suggested by the principles I have defended for how we relate to the legislative, executive, and judiciary branches? To answer this question, I sketch a palette of smaller-scale reforms that empower citizens to satisfy their obligations to reform injustice in their state. If successful, we will have identified a range of institutional reforms that are responsive to the accounts of citizenship and democratic complicity animating this larger essay. From Micro- to Macrodemocratic Theory The simplest institutional answer to the problem of complicity is unsatisfying . It holds that citizens should make their imposed terms of interaction morally acceptable. There is nothing...

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