Equal Subjects

Philosophy
Public
Affairs
FALL 2017 VOLUME 45 NUMBER 4
CLAUDIO LÓPEZ-GUERRA Equal Subjects
JONATHAN PARRY Defensive Harm, Consent, and

Intervention
PAUL WEITHMAN In Defense of a Political

Liberalism
JAPA PALLIKKATHAYIL Resisting Rawlsian Political

Liberalism
!
CLAUDIO LOPEZ-GUERRA Equal Subjects
To introduce my topic, consider the following episodes in the public

life of two modern democracies.
During an event in Argentina, President Cristina Ferna !ndez de Kirch-
ner made the following statement in the context of praising her
deceased husband (and former president) for allegedly opting for pub-
lic hospitals during his lifetime: “There exists a public health system
when presidents get attended at public hospitals—all else is pure
fiction.” A few years later, Ferna !ndez de Kirchner fell ill and instead of
going to a public hospital, she attended Otamendi, a private hospital in
Buenos Aires regarded as luxurious.1
In South Africa, Julius Malema and other founders of the Economic
Freedom Fighters (EFF) political party promised to take the following
oath if they were elected to office: “I hereby undertake to use the serv-
ices that the public sector provides to the people. What is good for me
is good for the people. . . . I am committed to public service, therefore I
For multiple rounds of feedback, I owe special thanks to Alexander Kirshner, Dennis
Thompson, Nicholas Vrousalis, two referees for Philosophy & Public Affairs, and its Edi-
tor, Alan Patten. For written comments or extensive conversations, I am very grateful to
Chuck Beitz, Luc Bovens, Luis de la Calle, Richard Dagger, Tom Donahue, Jon Elster,
Marc Fleurbaey, Johann Frick, In ~ igo Gonzalez-Ricoy, Axel Gosseries, Adam Kern, Indira
Latorre, Juan Antonio Le Clercq, Jeff Lenowitz, Mihn Ly, Steve Macedo, Julia Maskivker,
Ellie Mason, Jose ! Luis Mart!ı, Jen Morton, Gabriel Negretto, Paulina Ochoa, Serena
Olsaretti, David Pen~ a, Cristian Pe
!rez, Philip Pettit, Terry L. Price, Felipe Rey, Christopher
A. Riddle, Julio Rios, Tessy Schlosser, Melissa Schwartzberg, Annie Stilz, Nadia Urbinati,
Daniel Viehoff, and Andrew Williams. I am also grateful to the audiences at seminars at
Columbia University, Haverford College, New York University, Utica College, Universi-
dad Cato ! lica de Chile, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Princeton University, Richmond Uni-
versity, and Washington University in St. Louis.
1. “Should a Left-Wing President Go to a Private Hospital?” BBC Trending, November
5, 2014, <http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-29903142>.
C 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Philosophy & Public Affairs 45, no. 4
V
322 Philosophy & Public Affairs
use the services I provide.”2 The EFF became the third-largest party in
the National Assembly after its first election, but at that point its lead-
ers refused to take the oath, or live by its principles.
In both cases, a debate followed on the integrity of these politicians.
Their critics leveled the charge of hypocrisy while their followers jug-
gled to justify their actions. Many philosophers would probably have
adopted a similar point of view: one centered on the personal morality
of these leaders, illustrating the “obsession with individual vices” in the
literature on political ethics.3 Theorizing about hypocrisy is relevant.4
But these episodes also raise a deeper philosophical problem that has
seldom received any attention. It concerns not whether these officials
failed to live up to their professed ideals, but whether anything can be
said for the ideals themselves: specifically, for the notion that those
who exercise political power at the highest level acquire a special duty
to be subject to it in certain ways.
Politicians like to proclaim, “we are all in it together.”5 But they often
withdraw from “it” by acquiring in the market, in special public facili-
ties, or even in other political communities, the basic goods that they
typically fail to provide for all citizens. On the view that I defend here,
allowing high public officials to exit the organization in these ways is a
(pro tanto) violation of justice. If the state ought to equally provide a
certain good for everyone, those who exercise political power may only
acquire that good in the way in which they make it available to the
public. In other words, those responsible for the public provision of
goods may not obtain private, public, or foreign substitutes. I shall refer
to this as Equal Subjection.
The discussion is organized as follows. In the next section, I explain
in detail the principle of Equal Subjection. In the next two sections (III
and IV), I offer an argument for the principle based on
2. “Juju Bans Fat-Cat Perks,” The Times, October 14, 2013, <http://www.timeslive.co.
za/thetimes/2013/10/14/Juju-bans-fat-cat-perks>.
3. Dennis F. Thompson, Restoring Responsibility (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), p. 4.
4. For two interesting discussions, see Jon Elster, “Throwing a Veil Over Equality:
Equality and Hypocrisy in the Revolutionary Era,” in The Egalitarian Conscience: Essays in
Honour of G. A. Cohen, ed. Christine Sypnowich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006),
pp. 36–55; and Thompson, Restoring Responsibility, chap. 9.
5. Recent examples include Bernie Sanders in the United States and David Cameron
in the United Kingdom.
323 Equal Subjects
noninstrumental considerations. The argument has two main parts.

First, I provide a defense of the idea that rulers have an inherent duty
of justice to justify their behavior in office (Section III). Next, I contend
that Equal Subjection is necessary for the optimal fulfillment of that
duty, and is therefore (pro tanto) required by justice (Section IV). The
basic idea is that, by becoming equal subjects, officials would give citi-
zens greater reason to believe that their exercise of power has been
proper (a systematic summary of the argument appears at the end of
Section IV). Section V addresses several objections. A brief conclusion
follows.
II
Aristotle defined a citizen as someone who “shares in governing and

being governed.”6 Political philosophers have thought long and hard
about the first of these aspects of citizenship: who exactly, and how,
should share “in governing”—in the process of making political deci-
sions? But the second part of the formula has been almost entirely
neglected: who exactly, and how, should share “in being governed”—in
the process of bearing political decisions? On this matter, there has
been little theorizing beyond the standard notion that no one, espe-
cially those who exercise political power, should be above the law. As
the founders of the United States put it, rulers should “make no law
which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends,
as well as on the great mass of the society.”7 This is hardly controver-
sial. However, it falls short as a conception of justice “in being ruled,”
or so I shall argue. In this article, I defend a more radical view centered
on the following principle:
Equal Subjection: Former and incumbent rulers may not obtain pri-
vate, public, or foreign substitutes for the basic goods that justice
requires the state to provide—those who have exercised political
power, in other words, ought to become full and equal members of
6. Aristotle, The Politics and the Constitution of Athens, Cambridge Texts in the History
of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Pol. III.13, 1283b40–
1284a1, p. 81.
7. James Madison, “Federalist 57,” in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John
Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 283.
the public as users or consumers of the goods that constitute the

state’s raison d’^etre.
I expect some readers to think, at least initially, that this principle is

quite problematic. For starters, it would limit the freedom of public
officials in ways that, if done to citizens, many would regard as unac-
ceptable. In fact, the label appears to be a misnomer, since officials
would have duties that other subjects do not have—Equal Subjection
seems to pay public officials for their service with an inferior citizen-
ship status. Moreover, it seems to be a form of punishment that would
be seriously unjust for those public officials who do take their jobs seri-
ously and do as much as anyone can ask for to make their countries
and the world a better place. Finally, if public officials can and want to
use their own resources to obtain the services in question, thereby
helping public finances, who is to complain? But I expect to convince
the reader that the matter is far from straightforward, and that there is
in fact a good case to be made for Equal Subjection.
To explain the principle in greater detail, consider first the notion of
membership. Equal Subjection requires high public officials to be users
or consumers of the state as an organization, in the influential sense
articulated by Albert O. Hirschman.8 Exit should not be an option for
those who rule; that is, they should not be allowed to obtain elsewhere
the goods that the organization is meant to provide. On any theory of
justice other than anarchism, states should be created to perform two
general types of functions: regulatory (establishing general rules of
conduct) and productive (offering services such as law enforcement).
Equal Subjection requires high public officials to take part in these
state functions not only as providers but also as passive recipients. In
other words, former and incumbent rulers ought to actually be subjects
of the laws and users of the basic services that, on a given conception
of justice, the state has to provide.
Exit from the polity can take different forms, none of which is com-
patible with Equal Subjection. An extreme case is emigration. Emi-
grants no longer live under the laws of the polity, and they cease to
receive almost all of its basic services—a thorough withdrawal from the
8. Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1970).
325 Equal Subjects
organization. Another type of exit is what we might call “segregation.”

In the case of the regulatory function of the state, exit here takes the
form of partial or full immunity from the system of rules that binds the
general public. Those who stop living under a certain set of laws largely
withdraw from that polity, even if they continue to share a territory and
a government with others. Likewise, with respect to the state’s responsi-
bility for the provision of certain services, those who enjoy access to
special public facilities or arrangements (on the basis of reasons unre-
lated to the proper and just delivery of those services to everyone) par-
tially exit the polity as an organization that aims to provide certain
goods to its members. Finally, let us refer to a third form of exit as
“personal privatization”: leaving the public system to acquire in the
market the fundamental services that the state is meant to provide.
High public officials may not exit in any of these ways. Equal Subjec-
tion requires them to be, in this sense, full and equal members of the
polity.
I should clarify, however, that Equal Subjection comprises only a pro
tanto duty. In order to carry out their functions properly, some high-
ranking public officials might have to be partially exempted from the
non-exit condition. Some forms of “sovereign immunity,” which pro-
tects public officials from personal liability, may be justified on these
grounds. Or consider the case of officials who experience particular
security threats and should be given personalized protection. But even
in these cases, if my argument for Equal Subjection turns out to be
compelling, the resulting exit, although justified all things considered,
would still be unfortunate.
Whether or not a specific course of action counts as an instance of
exit that violates Equal Subjection depends on two factors: the nature
of the goods that, on our conception of justice, the state has a duty to
provide, and the nature of the public system created to deliver those
goods. Consider, for instance, education. Suppose that the state has to
make elementary education available to everyone as a matter of justice,
and a scheme of public schools is established to that end. In this con-
text, attending any private school would count as an instance of per-
sonal privatization. But suppose that a scheme of school vouchers (or
some form of mixed system) is adopted instead. In this case, exit would
not take place just by attending a private school, but rather by spending
on tuition more than the amount covered by the voucher. Now imagine
a conception of justice that merely requires the state to give very poor
people access to elementary education as a means-tested benefit. Exit
would take place here—barring emigration and segregation—by getting
the same benefit from a charitable organization rather than the state.
Notice that, in a case like this, it would be a mistake to consider a per-
son who fails to meet the specified condition for the service as being
out of the public system. In the example, an official who is not poor,
and hence does not qualify to obtain elementary education from the
state, would not thereby fail the non-exit condition.
All this suggests that the practical implications of Equal Subjection
will vary under different conceptions of justice. If, for instance, right-
libertarians reject that elementary education is one of the basic
goods the state should provide for all, they will also deny that high
public officials have a duty to send their children to public schools.
However, my argument for Equal Subjection in the following sections
is not based on one particular conception of justice. It rests instead
on widely shared normative premises. So when I mention public edu-
cation or healthcare, it is only for illustrative purposes. The analytical
force of the examples is independent of whether or not one’s concep-
tion of justice considers the provision of those goods as a basic func-
tion of the state.
Notice two potential misconceptions about Equal Subjection.
First, it does not establish that high public officials should be com-
pelled, regardless of their choices, to somehow experience the force
of every law, and to use all basic services, regardless of need or
demand. For instance, public officials would not have to regularly
attend a public hospital and receive some random treatment that
they do not need. And Equal Subjection certainly does not call for
politicians to be put in a position of need for services (say, by occa-
sionally exposing them to different viruses and bacteria) so that they
can experience the public system. The other misconception is
related. The obligation to be a full and equal member of the public is
not an obligation to be equally affected, in relation to some refer-
ence group, by any given act of government. To see this, consider
that a user of the public healthcare system who is more prone to ill-
ness will surely be more affected by a defective system than an oth-
erwise similar person who enjoys good health. But this difference
alone would not make the latter person less of a member, in the
327 Equal Subjects
sense articulated here, of the public that utilizes the state’s health-
care system.
Under Equal Subjection, and perhaps only under Equal Subjection,
politicians can truly claim, “we are all in this together.” “This” is just
the state as a shared instrument to procure some important goods and
face common challenges. Public officials simply cannot be part of it if
they exit the organization in the ways discussed above. For present pur-
poses, I shall assume that all other citizens have the right to exit.9 Only
those who exercise political power at the highest level acquire the duty
to remain fully invested in the polity.
Equal Subjection can be realized in various ways. For instance, it
may result from the desire of high public officials to fulfill what they
come to recognize as a robust moral duty. But Equal Subjection can
also be institutionalized: officials can be legally required to fulfill the
non-exit condition. In this case, becoming an equal subject would be a
condition for the occupancy of high public office. I seek to make a (pro
tanto) case for the institutionalization of Equal Subjection along such
lines. To fix ideas and give a sense of what an institutional scheme of
that sort might look like, consider the following:
Piloting Responsibility: As a condition for the occupancy of high

public office, public officials and their dependents, for the duration
of their term and some time after, will be required to reside within
the polity, and if they seek out a basic service, they would be ran-
domly appointed to a public provider, say, a public hospital, a public
school, a public defender, et cetera.
9. One might say that, in a democracy, the rulers are the ruled. So, by my own reason-
ing, everyone should be bound by the non-exit requirement. This may be the case in a
direct democracy in which everyone actually participates. I will leave that as an open
question. But the notion that citizens rule indirectly in representative systems is one of
the biggest myths in modern political thought. As one political philosopher put it: “Our
elected ‘representatives’ don’t represent us in any literal sense—as if we were doing the
ruling ‘through them’. This is nonsense. They rule and we don’t” (Jean Hampton,
“Democracy and the Rule of Law,” in The Rule of Law, ed. Ian Shapiro [New York: New
York University Press, 1994], pp. 13–44, at p. 34). Now, I am inclined to accept that, if there
were a significant referendum on one of the basic goods that the state ought to provide,
the non-exit rule would presumably apply at least to all those who cast a vote. But, again,
I shall leave this kind of complication aside.
The scheme’s label alludes to the kind of relationship that exists

between the pilots of an aircraft and its passengers.10 The random
device would not be necessary if the state performed its functions
equally well (or equally badly) throughout its territory, or if its failures
and shortcomings were randomly distributed. However, since this is
hardly ever the case, randomly appointing rulers to public service pro-
viders would be an effective way to ensure that the rulers and the ruled
can regard each other as equal subjects. Any official could look at any
citizen in the eye and tell him or her, for instance: “My doctor could be
your doctor. We are in this together, as equals.”
It is important to notice that the rights of politicians would not be
violated under a scheme to realize Equal Subjection such as Piloting
Responsibility. If they do not like the requirements for the occupancy
of public office, aspiring rulers can simply do something else for a liv-
ing. Anyone interested in a career as a public official would know what
the requirements are in advance and could freely choose not to seek
office. The piloting system, then, would not rest on an abhorrent
infringement of individual liberty. It would be on a par with reasonable
measures that some polities have adopted, such as prohibiting certain
public officials to later occupy determinate positions in the private sec-
tor, or asking them to put investments in blind trusts, in order to pre-
vent conflicts of interest (I shall return to this in Section V).
Which positions should count as “high public offices” in a system
such as Piloting Responsibility? Would the requirements be in place for
the rest of a ruler’s life, or only for some time after his or her term? Who
should be included in the category of “dependents”? How would the
system be enforced? How should the random mechanism be devised?
This is just a sample of the many difficult questions that would have to
be addressed in making the case for the adoption of Piloting Responsi-
bility in a particular case. I shall not take up these matters here. My
sketch of this system is only intended to provide a concrete idea of
what Equal Subjection might look like in practice.
10. Throughout the history of political thought, thinkers have likened the ruling of
states to the steering of ships. The metaphor is intended to represent an ideal of the polit-
ical relationship between the rulers and the ruled: like the captains and the passengers of
a vessel, the rulers and the ruled have to share the ship of state. As John Rawls interpreted
the idea, the relationship is based on an “identity of interests” between the parts (A The-
ory of Justice [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009], p. 205).
329 Equal Subjects
III
The central thesis of this essay is that Equal Subjection is (pro tanto)
required by justice on the basis of noninstrumental considerations. I
shall defend this in two main steps. The first step, which I develop in
this section, consists of showing that high public officials are inherently
required by justice to fulfill what I shall call the Duty of Public Justifica-
tion. In the second step, to be developed in the following section, I shall
argue that Equal Subjection is necessary for public officials to optimally
fulfill the Duty of Public Justification.
In some circumstances, we have a duty to justify our actions to
others. By this I mean the moral duty to try to show that we have acted
in accordance with our duties. On this conception, to say that P owes Q
a justification with respect to U-ing is to say that P has a moral duty to
demonstrate to Q, as much as possible, that P has fulfilled her duty to
U. The duty of justification is thus a second-order duty: the duty to give
others good reasons to believe that we have fulfilled some first-order
duty. I shall not try to offer here a complete theory of the duty of justifi-
cation. Instead, I only seek to argue that all high public officials have it
by virtue of the position that they hold. Rulers owe it to their subjects,
as a matter of justice, to do as much as possible to demonstrate that
their exercise of power has been proper. I shall argue, in other words,
for the following:
Duty of Public Justification (DPJ): Rulers have a (second-order) duty

to do as much as possible to publicly show, through adequate rea-
sons, that they have fulfilled their (first-order) duty to exercise politi-
cal power properly—to enact just laws and policies.
This, in general, resembles the way in which many theorists cur-

rently understand the notion of public reason. “Public reasoning,” as
Rawls put it, “aims for public justification.”11 It is the process of
appealing to appropriate values and principles, as well as
“ascertainable evidence and facts open to public view, in order to reach
conclusions about what we think are the most reasonable political
11. John Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” The University of Chicago Law
Review 64 (1997): 765–807, at p. 786.
institutions and policies.”12 Surprisingly, however, theorists of public

reason have left largely unexamined the question of whether a person
ever has a duty to actually put forward a justification in the public
realm. They have focused instead on elucidating the nature of (in)ade-
quate justifications, that is, of the reasons that ought (not) to be
invoked by citizens and officials whenever they happen to offer a justi-
fication. This might not be a problem at all for these theorists, given
their aims. But my case for Equal Subjection does depend on officials’
having a (pro tanto) duty to actually justify their actions to the greatest
possible extent. So I will offer an argument to that effect in this section.
The DPJ may well be a duty of justice on the basis of instrumental
reasons. An instrumental argument, for my purposes, is one that aims
to show that rulers should publicly defend their actions because doing
so would make the enactment (or persistence) of just laws and policies
more likely.13 Perhaps it is just easier to discipline rulers at the polls
once they have spelled out the rationale behind their actions. Perhaps
the expectation of public scrutiny motivates officials not to abuse their
power in certain ways.14 Or perhaps criticism allows even properly
motivated and competent decision makers to avoid biases and mis-
takes.15 In any case, even if there were a solid instrumental argument
along these lines, it would only give us a partial picture of the overall
case for the DPJ. Suppose that exactly the same or slightly better bene-
fits could be obtained by other means. In this context, if all that could
be said for public justification were instrumental in the previous sense,
it would not be a requirement of justice. But I shall argue that, even in
the absence of instrumental benefits, rulers owe their subjects ade-
quate reasons in support of what they have done in office.
The argument is as follows:
12. Ibid.
13. As Brian Barry put it: “laws should be defensible and actually defended by engag-
ing—not perfunctorily but seriously—with the arguments put forward by objectors. . . . I put
it forward as an empirical claim that manifestly unjust legislation is less likely to come about
under these conditions than in their absence” (Justice as Impartiality [Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1995], p. 103). See also Amy Gutmann and Dennis F. Thompson, Why Deliberative
Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 21.
14. Amy Gutmann and Dennis F. Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 97.
15. Thomas Christiano, The Constitution of Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2008), p. 60.
331 Equal Subjects
(i) Public officials have a duty of justice to act for the greatest ben-
efit of the governed—to maximally serve their interests—in all
matters that concern their position as subjects of the political
power of others.
(ii) An important interest of those who are subject to the political
power of others is that of being able to know the extent to
which they have been ruled justly—call it the interest in politi-
cal comprehension.
(iii) Public officials have a duty of justice to serve their subjects’
interest in political comprehension [from (i) and (ii)].
(iv) To serve the interest in political comprehension, it is necessary
that officials do as much as possible to publicly show, through
adequate reasons, that their decisions have been just.
(v) Public officials have a duty of justice to do as much as possible
to give the governed adequate reasons for the way in which
they have exercised political power—the DPJ is a duty of justice
[from (iii) and (iv)].
In the remainder of this section, I shall discuss each of these prem-

ises to clarify their content and establish their plausibility. It is not my
goal, however, to provide an exhaustive defense. Hopefully what I shall
say will suffice to dispel in a preliminary way the worries that are most
likely to arise. Let us turn to the first premise (to aid the reader, I shall
restate each premise in full prior to its discussion).
(i) Public officials have a duty of justice to act for the greatest bene-
fit of the governed—to maximally serve their interests—in all
matters that concern their position as subjects of the political
power of others.
I take it for granted that a public office is a position of service, in the

sense that those who occupy it ought to act for the greatest benefit of
their subjects.16 Ruling is not about having negative duties not to harm
the ruled in the pursuit of our own interests through the exercise of
16. As John Locke famously wrote, government is exclusively for “the good of the gov-
erned . . . i.e., the good of every particular member of that society, as far as by common
rules it can be provided for” (First Treatise of Civil Government, chap. IX, sec. 92).
power. It is about serving the interests of the governed to the greatest

possible extent. Doing anything else is a misuse of power—an injustice.
Let us refer to this as the Political Fiduciary Principle (PFP).
On a weak version of the PFP, public officials are merely required to
adopt the laws and policies that are most conducive to providing their
subjects with the goods that (on a given conception of justice) the state
is meant to provide. Rulers would fully serve their subjects by making
the right policy decisions. According to this version of the PFP, officials
only have to promote what we might call the policy interests of their
subjects. By contrast, on a stronger version of the PFP, officials have a
duty to serve the governed in a more comprehensive way. Those who
are subject to the power of others have, by virtue of their very position,
important interests in being ruled by persons who relate to them—who
attend to them—in certain ways other than by just making the right
policy decisions. The strong version of the PFP requires public officials
to also promote these service interests, as we might call them.
Consider the importance of trust. When public officials act in ways
that give rise to a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, “they do not
merely appear to do wrong, they do wrong,” even when the act in ques-
tion was not in fact inherently wrong.17 As Thompson explains, this is
because such behavior undermines the trustworthiness of officials.
And it is rather plausible to think that the reason why officials ought to
take steps to demonstrate their trustworthiness is that it is part of their
fundamental duty to comprehensively act for the maximum benefit of
their subjects in all matters related to the exercise of political power.
We would not say that a lawyer has acted for the maximum benefit of
her client in a legal process if she, in spite of making all the right legal
moves, fails to establish trust with the client, to explain to him impor-
tant aspects of the trial, to address his doubts and concerns, and so on.
The same would be true of public officials who fail to attend to their
subjects in such a comprehensive way.
In the United States, to further illustrate the point, legislators devote
considerable effort to provide “constituent service.” Senator Dennis
DeConcini described the practice in the following terms: “if I think
there is a cause where the government has mistreated a constituent,
17. Dennis F. Thompson, Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corrup-

tion (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution Press, 1995), p. 126.
333 Equal Subjects
I’m going to do all I can, within the bounds of ethical conduct, to see
that that government responds to this constituent.”18 Legislators have
no legal duty to provide constituent service. The powers of their office
are limited to the legislative process. However, on the strong version of
the PFP, it would be a mistake to regard these acts as supererogatory.
High-ranking public officials who do “all that they morally can” to help
citizens in dealing with the government deserve praise, not for going
beyond their duties to do something good, but precisely for acting in
accordance with their general duty to maximally serve the public.
None of this, of course, amounts to an argument for the strong ver-
sion of the PFP (nor indeed for the PFP itself). I am only proposing that
it is a plausible conception of a plausible principle. The reasons that
would justify the idea that rulers ought to act for the maximum benefit
of the governed in making policy choices would presumably also sup-
port the idea that they ought to act on their behalf more generally in
the context of running the government: for instance, by being transpar-
ent, trustworthy, forthcoming, and so on, even if none of this were
strictly necessary for the selection of the best laws and policies.19

which they have been ruled justly—call it the interest in political
comprehension.
We care that others fulfill their duties toward us because we care to be

treated in the ways that those duties prescribe. But that is not all we
care about. We also care about knowing, as far as possible, whether
others have treated us as they should. And often we need the duty
bearers to undertake certain actions so that we become fully able to
know whether they have behaved properly. Part of the reason why we
care about knowing is clearly instrumental: to stop and prevent the
18. Cited in Thompson, Ethics in Congress, p. 77.

19. It could be the case that serving the public comprehensively comes at a cost in
terms of the quality of laws and policies. Indeed, there might be relevant trade-offs at the
time of promoting the policy and the service interests of citizens. The strong version of
the PFP only establishes a pro tanto duty to serve them both. Arguably, constituent ser-
vice, for instance, should not be provided at such level that would prevent officials from
fully complying with their legislative duties (Thompson, Ethics in Congress, p. 85).
wrongful behavior and to seek reparations. However, as I shall now

explain, the interest in knowing the extent to which others have fulfilled
their duties toward us is also noninstrumental.
The point I want to make here is not that public officials should serve
their subjects’ interest in comprehension in general, but only with respect
to the behavior of public officials (in their official capacity). One would
need a special theory of justice to establish that it should be part of the
state’s business to promote their subject’s interest in knowing whether all
other persons are fulfilling their moral obligations toward them, just as
we would need a special theory to defend, say, the view that the state
should promote our interest in having valuable intimate relationships
with others. But that is not what I want to suggest. Instead, my claim is
that our interest in comprehending the extent to which laws and policies
are just is one of the interests that public officials have to advance for
them to act for the maximum benefit of the governed in all political mat-
ters, as the strong version of the PFP demands. Failing to help citizens
realize the true extent to which their decisions—the laws and policies
under which the citizens have to live—have advanced justice would be to
fail to serve them comprehensively (much like failing to establish trust).
The interest in political comprehension is not an extraneous interest, but
a fundamentally political one that subjects have by virtue of their posi-
tion in a relationship in which others exercise power over them. On the
strong version of the PFP, rulers would have to serve the interest in politi-
cal comprehension.
Let me now briefly explain why serving the interest in political com-
prehension is not only instrumentally valuable (in the sense explained
above of enacting better laws and policies) but also intrinsically so. It is
important for us to be able to come to terms with our moral reality,
with the true shape of our moral lives, not only as agents but also as
patients. And this naturally includes the moral reality of our political
lives. The idea is not that it is necessarily a good thing to know how just
or unjust is the world in which we live. I do not discard the possibility
that, on some conceptions of the good, or given certain individual pref-
erences, ignorance might be bliss. But it is surely in our interest to have
the choice—to be able to decide whether or not to know how well our
moral lives as citizens go.
To clarify this further, consider the old saying that justice must not
only be done but also be seen to be done. This principle implies that,
335 Equal Subjects
to paraphrase one commentator, responsibility for the achievement of

justice must be fulfilled, and be seen to be fulfilled.20 On one view, the
importance of seeing justice—or the responsibility for justice—to be
done rests on our further interest in achieving peace of mind or “being
at home in the world.”21 However, what if justice is not done, or not
fully done, as is often the case? If there is no or little justice to be seen,
our interest in being at home in the world would not be served simply
by obtaining an adequate understanding of the extent to which our rul-
ers have ruled justly. The view I am proposing on the inherent value of
advancing our interest in political comprehension is different. The idea
is simply that it is important to be able to see the extent to which jus-
tice is fulfilled, even if the result is disheartening: that is, even if this
results in the opposite of being at home in that world.
From (i) and (ii) we obtain:

interest in political comprehension.
But I have not yet grounded the DPJ. It has to be further the case that
the interest in political comprehension cannot be fully satisfied unless
officials undertake the justification of their decisions. This is the fourth
premise of the argument.

If the justice of laws and policies were simply self-evident, public offi-
cials would not need to do anything other than make the right policy
choices to serve their subjects’ interest in political comprehension.
Unfortunately, however, in matters of government the fulfillment of
20. Leif Wenar proposes the following maxim to capture the general notion of
accountability: “responsibility must be fulfilled, and responsibility must be seen to be
fulfilled” (“Accountability in International Development Aid,” Ethics & International
Affairs 20 [2006]: 1–23, at p. 5). He does not mention, however, that the original maxim on
justice presupposes the maxim I am articulating here when the responsibility at stake
consists precisely on the advancement of justice.
21. See Christiano, The Constitution of Equality, chap. 2.
duties is rarely self-evident. If I place in your hands a book that I had

an obligation to return to you, and you are aware of my action, the ful-
fillment of my duty is simply obvious to you. At that point, any further
action on my part to try to show you that I have fulfilled that duty
would be redundant. In this case, the mere fulfillment of my duty suffi-
ces for you to know that I have not wronged you. But morality is rarely
that neat, and political morality in particular hardly ever works like
that.
To advance the interest of citizens in political comprehension, rulers
have to do more than simply make the right decisions. They have to
take further actions to give us good reasons to believe that they have
fulfilled their duty to enact just laws and policies. Citizens generally
cannot simply figure it out on their own, given that some asymmetries
of information are inevitable, and that the extent to which a given law
or policy is required by justice should be assessed not by its merits in
isolation but as part of a comprehensive program, which cannot be
fully understood unless those who rule explain it and justify it to us.22
Sometimes we know that certain laws and policies cannot be justified.
But there is no obvious script for government officials to follow that
contains all the policies and the right sequencing that a conception of
justice calls for in a certain context. Because of this, even if it were the
case that rulers are making all the right decisions to advance justice,
they would not thereby serve the interest of citizens in political com-
prehension. They have to provide reasons to show, if that is their claim,
that they have exercised power properly.
Now, from (iii) and (iv) it follows that:

to give the governed adequate reasons for the way in which they
have exercised political power—the DPJ is a duty of justice.
This is the idea I sought to defend in this section. I now turn to the sec-
ond general step of the argument, namely, the idea that Equal Subjec-
tion is necessary for rulers to optimally fulfill the DPJ.
22. See, for instance, Rawls’s views on the difference between assessing a single rule,
an institution as a set of rules, and the basic structure as a set of institutions (A Theory of
Justice, sec. 10, p. 50).
337 Equal Subjects
IV
To optimally justify their exercise of power, high public officials ought

to become equal members of the public in the sense explained in Sec-
tion II, or so I shall argue in this section. If this turns out to be correct,
Equal Subjection would be required by justice.
In what follows, to put it differently, I shall defend the last premise of
my general argument:
(vi) By becoming equal subjects, officials would give the governed

good, nonsubstitutable (albeit inconclusive) reasons to believe
that they have properly exercised their power—Equal Subjec-
tion, in other words, is necessary for the optimal fulfillment of
the DPJ.
Rulers maximally comply with the DPJ when they make honest
claims on the extent to which they have ruled in accordance with jus-
tice, and when they do all they can to properly substantiate them. I
shall argue that Equal Subjection would contribute, in a significant and
irreplaceable way, to the task of substantiating the claims that rulers
make about their exercise of power. For purposes of this analysis, I shall
assume that officials claim to have chosen just laws and policies. This
is not only the standard case, but also the one in which proper substan-
tiation becomes most pressing. I shall also assume the following. Recall
that Equal Subjection can be realized in various ways, for instance, as a
legal requirement or voluntarily (Section II). For clarity of exposition,
the following discussion supposes a context where Equal Subjection
would be realized in the latter way: out of the initiative of public offi-
cials at the time of trying to justify the way in which they ruled—that is,
as part of their unprompted effort to fulfill the DPJ. I shall return to this
point at the end of this section to contend that the analysis holds for
the case in which Equal Subjection is legally required.
Showing that Equal Subjection is necessary entails showing that
nothing else is sufficient. In this regard, I shall address what I take to be
the strongest and most influential position against my view: namely,
that discursive reason giving, of the sort put forward by theorists of
deliberative democracy and public reason, is sufficient for public justi-
fication. The view that I defend in what follows, to be more precise, is
that Equal Subjection would contribute to substantiate the claims of

public officials in two ways: (1) directly, by providing nondiscursive rea-
sons in support of their claims, and (2) indirectly, by making more
credible the discursive justifications—which cannot by themselves suf-
fice to fulfill the DPJ, or so I shall argue—that officials provide.
Before explaining these propositions in more detail, let me outline
the reasoning that underlies them both:
(a) As evidence that they have aimed to act in ways that serve the
public, rulers could offer to put their own interests on the line by
becoming equal subjects. For, if they became equal subjects, rul-
ers would share in the costs of their failure on a footing of equal-
ity with the governed. In this situation, relative to the one without
Equal Subjection, citizens would have greater reason to believe
that rulers have indeed tried to make decisions that are just. To
be clear, Equal Subjection would not provide any evidence about
the motivation of politicians. They might very well have tried to
make laws and policies that serve the public not for the sake of
doing what is just, but for some other reason. Also, it is important
to notice that this would not be a conclusive reason, since some
rulers might be willing to sacrifice their own interest in a well-
functioning state to promote one of their narrower interests, or
the interests of a third party (domestic or international). But
Equal Subjection would still expand the citizens’ set of reasons to
believe that officials tried to make good laws and policies.
(b) If the preceding is correct, citizens would also have greater rea-
son to believe the claim that officials have actually ruled justly.
The point is a comparative one: all else being equal, we have
greater reason to believe that justice has been served if those
who were responsible for it would significantly partake in the
suffering of injustice. Here, too, citizens would not have a con-
clusive reason to believe the claim that rulers have exercised
power properly, for they might have made critical mistakes in
choosing laws and policies or, to insist, be willing to sacrifice
their interests to benefit a third party. However, Equal Subjec-
tion would somewhat enhance the credibility of the claim, even
in the absence of a discursive reason-giving process. This
amounts to the first of the two propositions above.
339 Equal Subjects
(c) Just as Equal Subjection gives citizens greater reason to believe

the claim that rulers have ruled justly, it also gives them greater
reason to believe any discursive justifications that officials put
forward in support of that claim. Equal Subjection removes a
reason for citizens to believe that officials have failed to serve
the interests of the public: namely, that they will not share, as
members of the public, in the costs of a malfunctioning govern-
ment. This in turn removes a reason for citizens to believe that
the discursive justifications that officials give are deceitful
efforts to cover up breaches of duties. If it is less likely that offi-
cials have abused their trust—per the reasoning in the previous
two points—it is less likely that they would give insincere dis-
cursive justifications. The act of becoming equal subjects some-
what validates the reasons they give in support of specific laws
and policies. This amounts to the second of the stated
propositions.
Briefly put: by becoming equal subjects, rulers would give citizens

reasons to believe the claim—as well as the discursive reasons they
offer for that claim—that they have ruled justly, because rulers very
much care not to suffer themselves the hardships imposed by the
improper exercise of power, which is what would happen if they
became equal subjects. To insist, this would tell us nothing about the
ultimate motives of rulers, and it would not constitute a conclusive
proof of the proper exercise of power. But it would nevertheless con-
tribute to the fulfillment of the DPJ in a way that cannot be substituted
by other means. Let me now elaborate.
1. Equal Subjection and Nondiscursive Reason Giving. Even in the
absence of political deliberation, the very fact that rulers would cast
their lot with the ruled (for whatever ultimate reason or motivation) as
equal subjects gives us a reason to believe that officials have properly
exercised their power—as they typically claim to do.
To appreciate this, consider the following example. Suppose that I
have acquired a duty to provide you with a pitcher of drinkable water.
At some point, I place a pitcher full of water in front of you and claim
that I have fulfilled my duty. Yet you ask me to substantiate that claim,
for it is not obvious that the water is safe to drink. And I am willing to
comply. Without uttering a word or providing any other evidence, I fill
up a glass and drink the water. The act of drinking the same water that
I am providing you to fulfill my duty would go a long way toward show-
ing that the water is indeed drinkable. The fact of being in community
with you, as an equal, gives you a reason to believe me. It may be an
artificial community, rather than one driven by true solidarity, but no
matter: it is a discursive-independent way of supporting my claim that
I have fulfilled my duty toward you. Admittedly, I could have made a
mistake, and the water might not be drinkable. Or I might be willing to
die in order to kill you with poisoned water (perhaps to benefit a third
party). So my drinking the water is no definitive proof that it is safe to
drink. Yet, to insist, that is not what I am claiming. My point is merely a
comparative one: you have more reason to believe that the water is
drinkable if I cast my lot with you than if I do not.
In the same way, Equal Subjection would give citizens an inconclu-
sive yet strong reason to believe public officials when they claim to
have ruled justly. As full and equal users of the state’s goods, officials
stand to lose as much as the citizens if they have not in fact ruled in the
public’s interest. This fact alone provides some support to the claims
that officials make on the extent to which they have fulfilled their
duties. In other words, Equal Subjection contributes to the fulfillment
of the DPJ by partially substantiating what rulers contend.
2. Equal Subjection and Discursive Reason Giving. An alternative way
in which rulers can try to substantiate their claims is through discursive
reason giving, or deliberation. By this I mean the process of arguing for
the quality of specific decisions. This involves giving reasons to show
that a given law or policy is superior, or at least not inferior, in terms of
its content or substance, to all other feasible alternatives at the time.
There are many theories of moral and political reason giving (the pub-
lic reason model, the ideal-speech model, the reciprocity model, the
reasonable rejection model, and so on),23 but they all share the idea
that those who exercise political power should argue in certain ways
for their choices. At minimum, they ought to rely on appropriate evi-
dence, appeal to appropriate public values, and carry out appropriate
reasoning. A well-designed deliberative process—one that allows for
€ rgen Habermas,
23. See, respectively, Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”; Ju
Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998); Gutmann and Thompson,
Democracy and Disagreement; and Barry, Justice as Impartiality.
341 Equal Subjects
optimal contestation and public scrutiny—clearly seems to be neces-

sary for the fulfillment of the DPJ. But, as I shall argue in what follows,
it is not sufficient.
As I have mentioned, we need rulers to give reasons for their actions
because ruling justly is in no way self-evident (Section III). If citizens
could know it when they see it—to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart—
they would not need officials to do anything by way of public justifica-
tion. But in the same way in which ruling justly is not self-evident, the
adequacy of discursive justifications is typically not self-evident either.
How can we know whether the arguments that public officials put for-
ward are adequate? How can we know that rulers are not trying to con-
ceal their rent-seeking or incompetent behavior and exaggerate their
accomplishments?
Unfortunately, public officials have ample opportunities to misrep-
resent their performance in office. First, consider our deep uncertainty
about the long-term effects of adopting alternative policies in a given
context. Our knowledge of the social world is so primitive that, as an
influential scholar has put it, it is easy for decision makers to “shop
around for a causal or statistical model” that suits their justificatory
needs.24 The social sciences provide limited tools to detect opportunis-
tic or self-serving uses of evidence. Suppose that officials, in the face of
visibly deteriorating conditions, claim that a different program of gov-
ernment would have produced even worse results overall, or that we
have to be patient, since the route of optimal progress requires tempo-
rary sacrifices. These claims, like many others, may well be true. But
there is too much uncertainty. To be sure, it is desirable that politicians
put forward logically sound explanations based on cutting-edge schol-
arship. However, given the fragility of such scholarship, we cannot rule
out that officials are opportunistically “shopping around” for evidence
to vindicate their actions, rather than grounding their actions on the
best available evidence.
In addition to this, the existence of asymmetries of information that
should not, or cannot, be bridged casts a shadow on the credibility of
many public justifications. If the evidence that allegedly supports the
government’s claims is (justifiably) kept from the public—as in the case
24. Jon Elster, Securities Against Misrule (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2013), p. 5.
of material related to national security—it becomes difficult to contest

those claims. Moreover, significant asymmetries of information may
arise from the position of public officials as parties in complex strategic
interactions. For instance, officials can plausibly claim to have
obtained at the negotiating table a more accurate understanding of the
bargaining power, preferences, and beliefs of other agents. Since this
cannot be independently verified, officials can take advantage of the
situation for justificatory purposes. Finally, relevant information about
the performance of public officials—such as the effort they put into the
job—can only be partially observed by citizens.
For these reasons, the adequacy of any given discursive justification,
and hence the extent to which it substantiates claims about the proper
exercise of power, is difficult to ascertain. If there were nothing else
that rulers could do, it would be pointless to complain about these
unfortunate facts. But my point is precisely that realizing Equal Subjec-
tion would help reduce the uncertainty of discursive justifications.
Besides talking in the ways that political philosophers prescribe, offi-
cials can also put their money where their mouth is. Why would this
enhance the credibility of discursive justifications? To put it succinctly:
because it would remove one powerful reason for politicians to deceive
the public through argument, namely, to self-servingly cover up
breaches of duties. The more politicians abuse their trust, the more
they stand to gain by deceiving the public about it. By becoming equal
subjects, politicians share in the costs of misrule, thus credibly (though
inconclusively) signaling that they have not abused their trust. And if
this were the case, they would have fewer reasons to provide an insin-
cere discursive justification. Equal Subjection would not remove all the
uncertainty. Politicians, for instance, would still want to deceive the
public about the mistakes they make (if they become aware of them),
or their efforts to benefit third parties. But it would be an improvement
compared to the case without Equal Subjection, all else being equal.
To illustrate, consider the case of water contamination in the city of
Flint, Michigan. A number of egregious mistakes by public officials
ruined the city’s water supply system. After inadequately switching the
city to a new water source, it became plain that something was wrong.
The water was colored and had a foul smell. Many residents became ill
and developed rashes. Some experienced hair loss. In treating the
bacteria-infested water, which was already more corrosive than the
343 Equal Subjects
water from the previous source, officials failed to apply adequate corro-
sion controls. As a result, the pipes were seriously damaged and
released dangerous quantities of lead into the water. Yet, as the prob-
lem unfolded, state officials declared that the water was safe to drink.
In support of this claim, they cited favorable results from a number of
tests and studies. But the officials—we know now—were simply deceiv-
ing the public, trying to cover up their mistakes. They knew that the
water was not actually safe, and therefore decided to purchase water
coolers for state workers in Flint. In an internal message, the state gov-
ernment noted that the purified water for public servants “will be pro-
vided as long as the public water does not meet treatment
requirements.”25 The ship was sinking, officials lied about it, and in the
meantime they escaped in lifeboats unavailable to the public. Children
in Flint, especially those who lived in poor neighborhoods, ended up
poisoned with lead.
If the residents of Flint had known that officials were not willing to
drink the water, they would have had strong reasons not to believe the
state’s discourse. Conversely, the claim that the water was safe to drink
would have been far more credible if officials had lived in Flint and
were known to consume the water. And, sure enough, that is what the
people of Flint eventually demanded. Since the officials had to recog-
nize at some point that the water contained lead, they asked the popu-
lation not to drink it unless it was filtered. However, the citizens were
naturally skeptical and demanded the governor of Michigan to prove
that the filtered water met the appropriate standards by the only means
credible at that point: drinking the water himself. So he pledged to get
a few gallons of Flint water every week to consume and cook for thirty
days. Although this was far from enough at that point, it highlights the
potential value of Equal Subjection for the credibility of discursive
justifications.
I have now established what I set out to defend in this section:
namely, (vi), the idea that Equal Subjection is necessary for the optimal
fulfillment of the DPJ. Paired with (v)—the idea that the optimal
25. “State Workers in Flint Given Clean Water Months Before Residents Warned of
Danger,” TIME Magazine, January 28, 2016, <time.com/4199126/flint-water-crisis-
officials-clean-water/>.
fulfillment of the DPJ is a duty of justice—it follows that justice requires

Equal Subjection. We can now state the argument in full.
(i) Public officials have a duty of justice to act for the greatest
benefit of the governed—to maximally serve their interests—in
all matters that concern their position as subjects of the politi-
cal power of others.
which they have been ruled justly—call it the interest in politi-
cal comprehension.
interest in political comprehension [from (i) and (ii)].
to give the governed adequate reasons for the way in which
they have exercised political power—the Duty of Public Justifi-
cation (DPJ) is a duty of justice [from (iii) and (iv)].
(vi) By becoming equal subjects, officials would give the governed
good, nonsubstitutable (albeit inconclusive) reasons to believe
that they have properly exercised their power—Equal Subjec-
tion, in other words, is necessary for the optimal fulfillment of
the DPJ.
(vii) Becoming equal subjects is necessary for the optimal fulfill-
ment of the DPJ, and is thereby a requirement of justice [from
(v) and (vi)].
To conclude this section, I return to a pending issue. As noted above, I

assumed for clarity of exposition a context in which rulers are not legally
required to become equal subjects but instead pledge to do so while
attempting to justify the decisions they have made. Would the justifica-
tory effect be any different if Equal Subjection were established as a legal
requirement? The worry I want to address is that the argument I have
offered might only establish that rulers have a duty of justice to voluntar-
ily become equal subjects, but it might not justify realizing Equal Subjec-
tion by institutional design, since this might thwart its value for purposes
345 Equal Subjects
of fulfilling the DPJ. Much like a forced apology seems to lack the same
moral status of an unprompted one, requiring officials to become equal
subjects would apparently fail to convey the same degree of public spirit-
edness—and hence would carry less justificatory value—than the infor-
mal emergence of equal subjection.
But this potential worry rests on a misunderstanding. As I have men-
tioned, the value of Equal Subjection does not involve providing evi-
dence of public spiritedness, or any other motivation. Even in the case
in which public officials pledge to become equal subjects without
being required to do so, we cannot know whether they ultimately do so
out of a genuine regard for their subjects or for some other reason.
Instead, my argument rests entirely on the notion of aligning the inter-
ests of the rulers and the ruled. In the case in which officials become
equal subjects without being legally required to do so, their claim to
have ruled justly becomes more credible, because we presume that rul-
ers care deeply about themselves (even if they care about others as
well) and hence they would seek to avoid putting themselves in a posi-
tion in which their interests would be negatively affected. Now, if equal
subjection were legally required, there would be a similar mechanism
in place. Trying to justify their actions in such a context, rulers could
present the following fact as evidence of the appropriateness of their
behavior in office: they had a very strong—though admittedly not deci-
sive—incentive to enact laws and policies that benefit the governed,
because otherwise, in hurting the public, they would be hurting them-
selves. The justificatory value of equal subjection, if anything, might be
even more compelling in this case.
To summarize, in both cases we have greater reason to believe that rul-
ers tried their best to make decisions that correlate with the requirements
of justice: whether (a) rulers knew ex ante that they would be subject to
their decisions on a footing of equality with all other full members of the
public (in the sense discussed in Section II), or (b) unprompted, they com-
mit ex post to become equal subjects—to make themselves, potentially, as
much the victims of injustice as any other full member of the public.
How should Equal Subjection be realized, if at all, once we take into

account every relevant consideration? The argument I have offered
only amounts to a pro tanto defense of the idea that rulers should
throw in their lot, as equals, with those who use the public system. But
the practical realization of Equal Subjection—especially by means of a
legal requirement—could undermine alternative values or conflict with
other aspects of justice. To sort this out, we need to go deeper. First of
all, we need a fuller understanding of how important it is that high
public officials become equal subjects.26 In addition, we need to know
the specific trade-offs that may arise under alternative schemes and in
different circumstances. So determining the precise practical implica-
tions of what I have argued so far is a complex task, and I cannot fully
undertake it in the remainder of this article.
However, I shall argue that we should not only be interested in Equal
Subjection at the level of theory, but also as an ideal that can be
approximated in practice. To that end, I shall first insist that Equal Sub-
jection can be implemented in a variety of ways, some of which would
avoid some of the most serious objections against the implementation
of the radical scheme—Piloting Responsibility—that I sketched in Sec-
tion II. Then I shall argue that those objections are nevertheless not
strong enough to rule out from the outset even a radical scheme of
Equal Subjection as a practical requirement of political morality.
Consider first a minimalist model for establishing Equal Subjection
as a formal condition for the occupancy of high public offices. Rulers
would be subject to the following two requirements: (i) residency in the
political unit that they govern during and after their term in office, and
(ii) denial of state-sponsored privileges and immunities. As for the resi-
dency requirement, it is not simply about dwelling in the polity. It is
also a prohibition to obtain certain goods and services abroad. For
instance, high public officials would not be allowed to invest in off-
shore markets or keep their money in tax havens. On the contrary, they
should probably be required to put it all in a local blind trust.27 Another
example is healthcare: public officials would lack minimal skin in the
game if they were allowed to get treatment in hospitals in a foreign
country. The practice of health tourism by high public officials has
actually been a major issue in many African countries. As one
26. Needless to say, the argument from public justification is not intended to exhaust
the reasons for Equal Subjection.
27. Elster, Securities Against Misrule, p. 7.
347 Equal Subjects
newspaper reported, there is a “growing list of African leaders seeking

medical treatment outside their countries because of inadequate
healthcare facilities at home.”28 The minimalist model of Equal Subjec-
tion would forbid this kind of practice.
With respect to the second requirement, the idea is to prevent public
office from becoming the very means that allows politicians to escape
the challenges that most of their fellow citizens have to endure. What is
most outrageous about health tourism by African leaders is that it is
actually paid by the state, that is, with public funds that should be used
instead to build good hospitals in their extremely poor countries. To
further illustrate a state-sponsored privilege, consider the car lanes in
Moscow that were reserved for high-ranking Soviet officials—also
known as ZiL or Chaika lanes after the luxurious vehicles that popu-
lated them. Equal Subjection is incompatible with benefits of this sort,
unless they are exceptionally justified.
Although clearly less contentious than the radical model of Piloting
Responsibility, the previous minimalist scheme would still raise some
questions. Above all, since the residency requirement would not apply
to everyone in the polity, but only to public officials, it could be
objected that it creates an illegitimate form of second-class citizenship.
I shall address this worry in a moment. Meanwhile, let me just highlight
that, on this scheme, public officials would not be required to use pub-
lic services, and their dependents would not be subject to the scheme.
Thus, some basic worries about the radical model of Piloting Responsi-
bility would not arise here.
The problem with minimalism, however, is that its benefits may
actually be minimal. The model sketched above would reduce some
inequalities in decision bearing, but it would not make a significant dif-
ference for purposes of public justification, or anything else for that
matter. Perhaps a more ambitious scheme could be justified—a moder-
ate one in which, in addition to the requirements of the minimalist
model, public officials (but still not their dependents) would have to
use some public services, at least for some time. For instance, they
could be prevented from hiring private protection and living in gated
28. “Zambian President Seeks Medical Treatment in South Africa,” The Wall Street
Journal, March 10, 2015, <https://www.wsj.com/articles/zambian-president-seeks-
medical-treatment-in-south-africa-1426009135>.
communities, or they could even be required to reside for some time in

neighborhoods of comparatively high criminality. In addition, they
could be required to get medical attention in public hospitals or rely on
a public defender if indicted. Such a scheme would raise an additional
set of worries about reduced incentives for running for office and per-
verse incentives for privatization. However, these are not fatal prob-
lems, as I argue below.
At this point, we have to ask: why stop at moderation? What would
be objectionable about a radical scheme to implement Equal Subjec-
tion? Perhaps some imaginable radical models would be clearly unac-
ceptable. But here I want to discuss the preliminary plausibility of the
system of Piloting Responsibility. Under this system, to recall, high
public officials and their dependents would be required, during their
term and some time afterward, to use certain public services without
being able to choose the specific provider, as they would be randomly
assigned to one. The inclusion of dependents makes Piloting Responsi-
bility far more controversial than the previous models. Let me now
address the accumulated worries raised by the minimalist, the moder-
ate, and the radical schemes for realizing Equal Subjection.
A. Second-Class Citizenship
In a scheme of Equal Subjection, high public officials would have spe-
cial decision-bearing obligations. This—it has been suggested to me
more than once—is objectionable because it creates a form of second-
class citizenship. Of course, the charge cannot be the absurd one that,
as officeholders, those who rule would have duties that others would
not. For that is exactly what holding a public office entails: temporarily
possessing exclusive political powers and responsibilities. The charge,
then, has to be that it is wrong to burden public officials with responsi-
bilities that infringe on their rights as citizens—duties that violate their
liberty to make choices in the conduct of their private lives.
The rights of public officials should certainly be respected. But
which rights do public officials have? The same system of rules for
acquiring rights and duties should be in place for everyone, and this
system should not arbitrarily disadvantage anyone. Yet equal citizen-
ship thus understood does not mean that we should all enjoy exactly
the same bundle of rights and duties at any given point in time. The
349 Equal Subjects
actual enjoyment of many rights and duties is conditional, and our

condition is at least partly determined by our own actions. By parenting
a child, I acquire duties that I lacked before. And acquiring a duty to
perform an action entails losing the right not to perform it. If what I
have argued in the previous sections is correct, then the idea that pub-
lic officials have a right to escape the working of the state on certain
matters—given, by assumption, that other citizens do have that lib-
erty—is false. They forfeit that right when they accept a position of
such tremendous power over their fellow citizens. This is the whole
point of my argument from justice and public justification. By pursuing
and occupying public office, rulers acquire special decision-bearing
obligations, much like parents acquire child-rearing obligations. Thus,
under a system of Piloting Responsibility, the legal duties of public offi-
cials would rest on the moral duties that they acquire by virtue of occu-
pying a position of authority. Their treatment is in no way arbitrary. So
the notion that Piloting Responsibility would create a form of second-
class citizenship is misconceived.
Now, perhaps the worry is not about the content of decision-bearing
duties, but their duration. In other words, the problem might be that,
once officeholders stop being decision makers and become plain citi-
zens, it would be wrong to continue to subject them to decision-
bearing duties. However, there simply is no rational basis to think that
all the duties linked to a position disappear when a person ceases to
hold that position. Consider how duties of confidentiality continue to
bind some professionals after they retire or change careers. A lawyer,
for example, is indefinitely prohibited by his duty of confidentiality to
improperly disclose a client’s information. Former public officials have
duties as well, some of which are formally recognized in many coun-
tries. For instance, an article of the United States Code is entitled
“Restrictions on former officers, employees, and elected officials of the
executive and legislative branches,” and imposes a number of long-
term duties to thwart corruption and conflicts of interest.29 Decision-
bearing requirements would be no different from a temporal perspec-
tive. In the end, whether or not any such duties are acceptable has to
be determined by argument, not by reference to some preestablished
29. Sec. 207, title 18.

set of equal rights that, if messed with, would place people in a position
of second-class citizenship.
If the previous remarks are correct, perhaps we should conclude the
opposite of what the objection of second-class citizenship states: with-
out Equal Subjection, politicians are unjustifiably exempted from their
duties, which violates the requirements of any plausible understanding
of equal citizenship.
B. Loss of Competence
Under a radical form of Equal Subjection such as Piloting Responsibil-
ity, those who hope to steer the ship of state would have to make great
personal sacrifices. While politicians would still be able to accumulate
wealth and spend it on luxuries, they would not be able to purchase
services such as legal representation, education for their children, and
healthcare. This would surely deter many people from seeking political
office. The problem, according to this objection, is that the individuals
who would be deterred are precisely those who we need to be in power:
persons with the capacities, training, and experience for good policy
making. For these tend to be well-educated individuals who would be
able to obtain high-paying jobs in the private sector, and they would
presumably be reluctant to accept the burdens of office under Piloting
Responsibility.
Let us assume for the sake of argument that, indeed, fewer compe-
tent people—on that understanding of competency—would pursue
office. This effect, however, could well still be offset by the increased
harmony between the interests of public officials and those subject to
their decisions. In his classic account of the advantages of democracy,
Tocqueville observed: “It is no doubt important for the welfare of a
nation that the men who govern it should be men of virtue and talent;
but what is perhaps even more important is that these government offi-
cials should not have interests contrary to those of the masses they
govern, for in that case, their virtues might become almost useless, and
their talents disastrous.”30 I am not contending that we can be confi-
dent that, under Piloting Responsibility, the convergence between the
30. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: The Library of America,
2004), p. 266.
351 Equal Subjects
common good and the interest of officials would effectively counteract

the negative deterrence effect. My claim is simply that this prospect is
plausible enough to conclude that the case for Piloting Responsibility
is not currently defeated by the deterrence objection. At this point, we
can only guess what the overall effect would be.
C. Perverse Incentives
Under a scheme of Piloting Responsibility, incumbents might be
tempted to escape their decision-bearing duties by privatizing all the
relevant public services. For instance, to avoid sending their children to
public schools, they might try to dismantle the public education sys-
tem. This might actually be a good thing on some conceptions of jus-
tice. However, on other conceptions, this worry might be strong
enough to reject a system of Equal Subjection.
Fortunately, there are simple solutions to this problem. One is to
identify, on the basis of one’s conception of justice, the services that the
state ought to provide, making it impermissible for politicians to privat-
ize them. Alternatively, we could further stipulate that, in a scheme of
Piloting Responsibility, rulers would be randomly appointed to any of
the private options that citizens are left with when no public provision
exists. This would include the possibility of receiving no service if none
of the private options are affordable to some citizens. For instance, if
there were no public schools, politicians would be randomly assigned a
maximum spending limit to purchase education in the market. Mea-
sures such as these would effectively thwart perverse incentives to
unjustifiably privatize services.
D. Mistreatment of Dependents
Since the dependents of officeholders, in particular their children, have
done nothing to incur decision-bearing duties, many will object that it
would be utterly unfair to require them to use public services. Spouses
can at least choose not to marry a politician or divorce someone who is
intent on becoming one. But children can make no such choices.
Therefore, it seems wrong to force them to attend public schools, pub-
lic hospitals, and so on. A scheme of Piloting Responsibility would
merely treat them as a means to ensure that their parents comply with
their professional duties.
First of all, it is fundamental to clarify that the dependents of high
public officials would not actually be the bearers of any duties whatso-
ever. The restrictions would apply solely to those who occupy a high
public office. The idea is that political leaders would not be allowed to
choose a private school in deciding where to send their dependent chil-
dren—as long as this is their decision to make. But this does not mean
that the children themselves would be under an obligation to go to
public schools. If high public officials stopped having custody rights
and maintenance obligations toward their (underage) offspring, then
those boys and girls would not be required to attend a public school. A
scheme of Piloting Responsibility would constrain the decisions of
officeholders, not the range of options available to their dependents
themselves. Although the children of high public officials might end up
going to public schools all the same, this point effectively dismantles
one version of the worry under scrutiny; namely, that a system of Pilot-
ing Responsibility would unwarrantedly impose decision-bearing
duties on persons who lack decision-making powers.
It seems that the best way to articulate the objection is this: public
office should not be structured in a way that prevents officeholders
who are parents from fulfilling their moral duties toward their children.
This could indeed happen in a system of Piloting Responsibility if the
children of officeholders were randomly appointed to schools or hospi-
tals in very bad shape. If public officials cannot fulfill their duties
toward their children, responsible parents would stay away from high
public office. Consequently, those who opt for high public office would
be either childless or irresponsible parents. In any case, the enhanced
motivation to improve schools would be diminished, which would
make this type of decision-bearing requirement pointless. But most
importantly, it would surely be objectionable to have a rule that could
lead some parents to neglect the rights of their children.
To address this worry, we have to specify first the duties of parents
toward their children on matters such as schooling and healthcare. This is
a very complex matter, but for present purposes it suffices to say that chil-
dren do not have a right to receive the best possible education and health-
care that their parents could obtain given the opportunities available to
them. Instead, I suggest that they simply have a duty to avoid, if they can,
353 Equal Subjects
exposing their children to conditions that fail to meet a certain standard

(which there is no need to specify here). To appreciate this, imagine two
wealthy doctors in New York City who marry and have two small children.
One day the doctors conclude that their lifestyle is deeply immoral, and
they decide to donate almost all of their goods to the poor and move per-
manently to some African country to work for Doctors Without Borders
on a low wage. It is clear, it seems to me, that no one should prevent them
from doing so on the grounds that, despite the dramatic deterioration of
their standards of living, this would violate the rights of their children, as
long as they have access to minimally adequate care.
If the previous point is correct, it would only be objectionable to con-
strain the choices of high public officials regarding their dependents in a
context where some schools or hospitals are below the adequacy threshold.
But then we have to highlight that it cannot be acceptable that any chil-
dren, not just the offspring of high public officials, attend such facilities. Let
us provisionally assume that schools and hospitals below the adequacy
threshold do more harm than good (which is not implausible: suffering
medical malpractice can be more dangerous than receiving no attention).
In that case, public officials would have a duty to shut those facilities down
until they are improved. As a result, there would only remain schools and
hospitals that meet the standard of minimal adequacy, and the objection
that we are examining would fail: randomly appointing the dependents of
high officeholders to public schools and hospitals would not prevent these
officials from fulfilling their duties toward their dependents. Let us now
suppose that it is actually better to have a school or a hospital below the
threshold than having none. In this case, the objection ultimately fails all
the same. Admittedly, there would be a case to exempt the children of high
public officials from attending schools that should nevertheless remain
open. However, assuming that the state has the resources to make sure
that all schools and hospitals meet the adequacy limit, the exemption
would only be temporary. In the meantime, the dependents of high public
officials would still have to be randomly appointed to the schools and hos-
pitals that are above the minimal threshold.
E. Mistreatment of Just Rulers

Laws and policies are collectively enacted and implemented by numer-
ous agents with varying degrees of influence and responsibility. An
honest, foresighted, and capable official might be unable, despite her

best efforts, to halt the adoption of unjust or bad policies. Why, it could
be objected, should she be burdened with decision-bearing duties?
That seems to be like convicting the innocent—the same reason why
many would object to a system of Equal Subjection that applies to the
dependents of rulers.
First of all, it is important to insist on what I have just argued;
namely, that the radical model of Equal Subjection, properly conceived,
would not impose any decision-bearing duties on dependents as such.
Instead, it would constrain the choices of officials as legal guardians.
Burdening dependents with decision-bearing duties would indeed be
unjust since they have done nothing to acquire them. But then why
isn’t it also unjust, on the same basis, to burden officials who unfail-
ingly support the right laws and policies?
The reason is that Equal Subjection would not be established ex post
as a device for sanctioning bad performances, but as an ex ante
requirement for the holding of public office that is known and freely
accepted by all those who take the huge responsibility of making the
world a better place. Those who run for office know that policymaking
is a difficult thing, that the responsibility is shared with many others,
and that there is a good chance of failure, despite the quality of their
own contribution. If they nevertheless freely run for office and exercise
power over others, they cannot claim to be the victims of an injustice
in a strict moral sense. If I give a historic performance, but the other
gymnasts on the Olympic team do poorly, I cannot claim that it is mor-
ally wrong not to give me a gold medal. You can feel sorry for me, and
even say that the whole thing is unfair in some way, but it would be a
mistake to claim that I have been morally mistreated by those who
organized the event. I knew the rules and I was in no way forced to
participate.
Notice also that the objection supposes that it is possible to know
clearly which laws and policies are (un)just. That might be true occa-
sionally. But, as I have discussed in previous sections, the idea of Equal
Subjection is based, at least in part, on the fact that there is no ideal set
of self-evidently just decisions for a given context that would allow us
to impose appropriate sanctions on rulers who fail to stick to the script.
Even if all this were conceded, one might still object that it is unfair,
or at least unsupported by the arguments I have offered, to require
355 Equal Subjects
high public officials who have no responsibility for the provision of a

service to become users of that service. Why, for instance, should the
Secretary of Education have to use the public health system? This is a
sensible concern, even though it only arises for people with positions
in the executive branch, since legislators (and judges, if they would be
included in a system of Equal Subjection) decide on all sorts of sub-
stantive matters. My response is that even the Secretary of Education—
to continue with the example—bears important responsibility for the
adequate provision of other goods and services. She would be part of
the team in charge of running the government as a whole, and in that
quality she should monitor and hold accountable, at least to some
extent, other cabinet members. Also, she should refrain from seeking
greater resources for her agency unless they are strictly necessary given
the relative importance of the various goals pursued by the govern-
ment. So failing to do your job well in the provision of a good has impli-
cations for the provision of other goods. Government officials should
cooperate and coordinate as members of a team in a context where the
responsibility for the outcomes is collectively shared.
VI
In this article, I have argued that those who exercise political power at
the highest level have a duty of justice to give reasons for their choices
of laws and policies. I have also argued that the fulfillment of this duty
requires them (at least pro tanto) to become full and equal members of
the public as users of the basic goods that justice requires the state to
provide. One promising way to realize such a conception of political
equality is to require rulers and their dependents to actually reside in
the polity and to be randomly appointed to certain public services. I
have not offered here an all-things-considered case for this scheme—
Piloting Responsibility. However, I have addressed some of the most
serious concerns that such a system is likely to raise, and it seems that
the idea is not dead in its tracks. This is a first step in thinking seriously
about decision bearing (in contrast to decision making) as an impor-
tant but neglected dimension of political morality.

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Philosophy

CLAUDIO LÓPEZ-GUERRA Equal Subjects

JONATHAN PARRY Defensive Harm, Consent, and

PAUL WEITHMAN In Defense of a Political

JAPA PALLIKKATHAYIL Resisting Rawlsian Political

To introduce my topic, consider the following episodes in the public

noninstrumental considerations. The argument has two main parts.

Aristotle defined a citizen as someone who “shares in governing and

the public as users or consumers of the goods that constitute the

I expect some readers to think, at least initially, that this principle is

organization. Another type of exit is what we might call “segregation.”

Piloting Responsibility: As a condition for the occupancy of high

The scheme’s label alludes to the kind of relationship that exists

Duty of Public Justification (DPJ): Rulers have a (second-order) duty

This, in general, resembles the way in which many theorists cur-

institutions and policies.”12 Surprisingly, however, theorists of public

In the remainder of this section, I shall discuss each of these prem-

I take it for granted that a public office is a position of service, in the

power. It is about serving the interests of the governed to the greatest

17. Dennis F. Thompson, Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corrup-

(ii) An important interest of those who are subject to the political

We care that others fulfill their duties toward us because we care to be

18. Cited in Thompson, Ethics in Congress, p. 77.

wrongful behavior and to seek reparations. However, as I shall now

to paraphrase one commentator, responsibility for the achievement of

(iii) Public officials have a duty of justice to serve their subjects’

(iv) To serve the interest in political comprehension, it is necessary

duties is rarely self-evident. If I place in your hands a book that I had

(v) Public officials have a duty of justice to do as much as possible

To optimally justify their exercise of power, high public officials ought

(vi) By becoming equal subjects, officials would give the governed

that Equal Subjection would contribute to substantiate the claims of

(c) Just as Equal Subjection gives citizens greater reason to believe

Briefly put: by becoming equal subjects, rulers would give citizens

optimal contestation and public scrutiny—clearly seems to be neces-

of material related to national security—it becomes difficult to contest

fulfillment of the DPJ is a duty of justice—it follows that justice requires

To conclude this section, I return to a pending issue. As noted above, I

How should Equal Subjection be realized, if at all, once we take into

newspaper reported, there is a “growing list of African leaders seeking

communities, or they could even be required to reside for some time in

actual enjoyment of many rights and duties is conditional, and our

29. Sec. 207, title 18.

common good and the interest of officials would effectively counteract

exposing their children to conditions that fail to meet a certain standard

E. Mistreatment of Just Rulers

honest, foresighted, and capable official might be unable, despite her

high public officials who have no responsibility for the provision of a

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