Dr María Pía Méndez Máteluna - Political Philosophy

Considering
Democracy’s
Value
Democracy: Instrumental vs. Non-
Instrumental Value – Elizabeth
Anderson
Dr María Pía Méndez Máteluna - Political Philosophy

Assessing the value of democracy

• Elizabeth Anderson begins by asking: What is democracy? Which leads her to immediately consider
whether it has instrumental or non-instrumental value.
• Those who support the idea of democracy as only having instrumental value rests on an argument that
states democracy consists of certain governing practices that aim to satisfy individual preferences.
• Thus, accountability mechanisms in democracies are in place to make sure that it indeed satisfies those
preferences, and voting is portrayed as a device to choose public officials by aggregating the individual
preferences into a collective decision (Anderson, 2009: 213).
Dr María Pía Méndez Máteluna - Political Philosophy

Democracy: both instrumental and non-instrumental

• Anderson claims democratic participation has non-instrumental value, but it is conditional on its
instrumental value, because if it did not deliver good results, it would be worthless.
• To support her argument, she qualifies democracy as something people enjoy (so they would not
replace it for a dictatorship even if it provided the same results) and as being morally right (expressing
the equal standing of every citizen) therefore as being a “matter of justice” (Anderson, 2009: 213-214).
• But more importantly, its non-instrumental value comes from its connection to people, results are
valuable because they come from individuals and that grants democracy its non-instrumental relevance.
Dr María Pía Méndez Máteluna - Political Philosophy

Characterising democracy

• ‘On the view of democracy I propose, voting and deliberation represent alternating moments in a
continuous process of provisional decision-making, the aim of which is simultaneously to learn about
what works and to decide upon criteria of what counts as working from the perspective of citizens
acting and thinking collectively’(Anderson, 2009: 217).
• Anderson intends to stress the idea that such characterisation of democracy would not be possible if it
was only understood as a “set of governing institutions”(ibid).
Dr María Pía Méndez Máteluna - Political Philosophy

The goods that democracy brings

• The goods (which Anderson does not want to qualify as intrinsic or instrumental) that a democratic way
of life would bring according to Anderson:
• 1. It embodies relations of equality and mutual respect, which is our right to enjoy.
• 2. It prevents some of the evils that come from undemocratic ways of life: It protects individuals
from abuse, subordination, neglect, and pariah status, as well as it helps secure people against
corruption of character of people who are in privileged positions in society.
• 3. It allows for the goods of autonomy and sympathy
• 4. It represents a mode of collective learning (Anderson, 2009: 219).
Dr María Pía Méndez Máteluna - Political Philosophy

About autonomy

• In democracies people recognize themselves as part of a public, which means that they become a
collective agent that determines its own affairs, and this collective decision-making constitutes a
collective exercise of autonomy (Anderson, 2009: 221).
• “In characterizing democracy as a mode of collective autonomy, I reject the idea that we can
comprehensively identify, independent of democratic processes, the proper goals that democracy
should seek (…) Rather, democracy is a mode of collective governance whereby citizens work out
together what goals they shall share. This is specifically to reject the idea that democracy is a generic
preference satisfaction mechanism (Anderson 2002)” (ibid).
Dr María Pía Méndez Máteluna - Political Philosophy

About autonomy

• According to Anderson, even though the lists of goods she presents may seem instrumentalist, it is not
because they are good only “for the sake of people, who are the original sources of value” (Anderson,
2009: 223).
• According to Anderson, the value lies in people because “they are self-originating sources of claims,
and have equal authority to make claims” (ibid), which would amount to the consequent value of
democracy in the sense that it is capable of expressing such value.
Dr María Pía Méndez Máteluna - Political Philosophy

Against the mere instrumental justification

“To insist on the importance of evaluating practical principles in light of their consequences is not to
revert to “merely” instrumentalist justification. Recall: consequences are not good in themselves; their
value depends on the value of people, for the sake of which we seek them (…) Which goals are
legitimately pursued by the state is itself determined within democratic processes, and justified in part
because those processes embody a form of collective autonomy” (Anderson, 2009: 224)
Dr María Pía Méndez Máteluna - Political Philosophy

Bibliography
• Anderson, E; (2009) “Democracy: Instrumental vs. Non-Instrumental Value”, in Contemporary Debates
in Political Philosophy, Eds. Christiano, T; Christman, J, Blackwell Publishing Ltd.