- has not had its interests communicated then Singer’s participation argument
is invalidated.
(b) Most voting systems do not take into account the intensity of a person’s
preferences. A minority may feel very stronglyabout an issue, but they are
outvoted by an apatheticmajority. Civil disobedience can be a means by which
not only are views communicated but the intensityof those views are made
apparent.
(c) Some people find themselves in a permanent minority. This is exacerbated if
electoral politics is based on one dominant social characteristic. For example,
in Northern Ireland voting is largely along religious lines. In the period
1922–73 there existed a devolved parliament in Northern Ireland with the
Protestant Unionists always in the majority and Catholics entirely excluded from
power.
(d) Some people are denied the vote. The largest group is children. Their interests
are affected by legislation over which they have no control. Civilly disobedient
actions undertaken by children are rare but, arguably, groups of adults
representing the interests of children could be justified in engaging in civil
disobedience on their behalf.
(e) It could be argued that animals have interests and that these are clearly affected
by the democratic process. Although it would be absurd to give cats and dogs
the right to vote, there might be a duty of care on human beings, and that duty
must be articulated. Some notable examples of civil disobedience have been
based on concern for animal welfare; in Britain, there has been a long-running
campaign against the use of animals in what are seen by many as unnecessary
experiments.
(f) The decisions made today will affect future generations. The justification given
for some acts of civil disobedience against the building of roads and airports
is that fossil fuel emissions exacerbate global warming, which will have
catastrophic consequences for future generations.
The implication of the above points is that democracy can on occasion break
down, but that it can also be ‘fixed’. The more radical challenge lies in the rejection
of majority decision-making: a person may believe that a law is simply wrong, and
no amount of institutional reform can create a situation in which the majority ‘makes
it right’. For example, defenders of animal experimentation for medical purposes
will maintain that they have given due weight to non-human animals as beings
worthy of moral respect, but that human beings have greater moral claims.
Opponents of such experiments will disagree, and maintain that actions such as
breaking into laboratories and releasing animals are justified on moral grounds. It
is very difficult to find common ground between these two positions.
We live in a pluralistic society in which there is not only conflict between different
individual and group interests, but also between different moral conceptions. The
stability and legitimacy of the political system requires some agreement on moral
principles. There need not be agreement on all moral issues – after all, liberalism
has its roots in the recognition of pluralism – but there must be some agreement.
In the next section we reconsider the arguments of Rawls, who does provide an
account of that shared morality, but also justifies civil disobedience.
Chapter 19 Civil disobedience 429