Civil disobedience and democracy
Democracy and obedience
Civil disobedience plays a special role in democracy, because it not only indicates
the moral limits of majority rule, but also forces us to reflect on the justifications
formajority rule. For that reason it is important to consider the relationship between
civil disobedience and democracy. While many people living in a liberal democracy
consider violating the laws of a non-democratic regime to be not only permissible
but praiseworthy, they consider it wrong to break democratically agreed laws.
Sometimes the objection to civil disobedience in a democracy is revised when people
reflect on particular cases, but there remains a core conviction that democracy is
special. Peter Singer provides a philosophical defence of this view in his book
Democracy and Disobedience(1973). Singer uses a very artificial example to
illustrate his argument; however, its artificiality helps to bring out the main lines
of the argument.
Oxford University is a collegiate university, with most living and teaching centred
around the individual colleges. Singer asks us to imagine that each college is
equivalent to a state, and the colleges taken together represent the world system of
states. The undergraduates in a college form what Singer calls the Association.
Students cannot opt out of membership of the Association. A student could transfer
to another college at the university, but she would be obliged to join itsAssociation.
Of course, they could leave the university, but we are to imagine that the whole
world is Oxford University, so that short of death there is no possibility of leaving.
The Association of each college has been in existence for as long as anybody can
remember – if there was ever a point at which it was set up, the records have been
lost. The Association charges a subscription from each student, and we can take
this to be equivalent to taxation. At this point we come to alternative ways of making
decisions on how much to charge and what the money is spent on:- The Leader Some time ago one student who is now the Leader decided that
decision-making was inefficient, and the decisions arrived at were stupid. He
would now make the decisions, albeit guided by the interests of the other students.
If anyone objected they would have to fight it out with the Leader’s friends, who
were the best fighters in the Association. - Democracy Decisions are taken by a majority vote of all members of the
Association. At the meetings all members are free to speak, subject to some
essential procedural requirements, such as an agreed time limit on speeches.
Meetings are conducted fairly, and the votes are calculated correctly. (There is
a third model – the ‘Senior Member’ – but its introduction would unnecessarily
complicate the present discussion.)
We assume that under each model decisions have been made without too much
dissension – of course, some students will have found themselves on the losing side,
but they have accepted whatever decisions have been made. However, an issue arises
that causes serious dissension. The Association uses some of the subscription money
to buy newspapers that are for general use in the common room, and must not be
426 Part 4 Contemporary ideas