卡吉为更新我们的民主提出了三项雄心勃勃的建议：
1）严格限制民主的私人资助（限制为每年 200 欧元）；
2）创建“民主平等券”（"bons pour l’égalité démocratique”——BED），旨在更新政党和运动的资助。 每个公民在填写纳税申报表时，都可以选择获得“优惠券”的政党或运动，每年可获得7欧元的公共资金；
3）建立社会多样性议会，其中三分之一的席位将保留给“社会代表”，这些代表是从反映人口社会职业多样性的名单中选出的。
Cagé makes three ambitious proposals for renewing our democracy:
1) a drastic limitation of the private funding of democracy (with a limit set at 200 euros a year);
2) the creation of “democratic equality vouchers” (“bons pour l’égalité démocratique” – BED) aimed at renewing the funding of political parties and movements. Every citizen, when they fill out their tax return, would be able to choose the party or movement that will be given their “voucher”, for an annual amount of 7 euros of public money;
3) the establishment of a Social Diversity Assembly, in which a third of seats would be reserved for “social representatives”, elected from lists that reflect the socio-professional diversity of the population.
用欧元投票
简介：朱莉娅·卡格 (Julia Cagé)、民主奖、法亚德 (Fayard)
https://laviedesidees.fr/Voting-with-Euros
作者：Pierre-Yves Néron，2019 年 4 月 29 日，翻译：Kate McNaughton
在法国和其他地方，政党的资助方式往往会加强某些群体的隐形性和社会上最富有的人的政治影响力，特别是通过右翼政党。 朱莉娅·卡吉想知道，是否有更民主的方式来资助民主？
在《民主的代价》一书中，朱莉娅·卡吉分析了包括法国在内的多个国家政党的资助方式。 通过建立有关多个政治运动和政党资助信息的数据库，她为我们提供了当今民主资助方式的国际概览。 她的书引导我们得出两个主要结论，这些结论超越了她观察到的不同国家之间的实质性差异：1）当前对民主的资助往往会延续并强化某些群体代表性的缺乏以及他们在政治上的隐形性。 在她研究的所有民主国家中，社会最富有的成员在民主生活的资助中所占的比重非常高。 2）如果我们要对此采取行动，最关键的战场和对抗根源之一就是税收。 你说话题度如何？
寡头倾向？
如果她的书能帮助我们了解法国政治的现状，部分原因是卡吉邀请我们远离对法国政治的简单庆祝。
“法国式民主”的健康状况被认为可以轻松摆脱困扰美国民主的问题（第 67 页）。
确实，美国政治运动的投入金额令人眼花缭乱：公司可以通过政治行动委员会（PAC）为自己选择的事业提供大量资金，而公共政策对社会中较富裕的成员来说非常有利。 所有这一切甚至促使政治学家吉伦斯和佩奇得出结论：美国是一个事实上的寡头社会。 因此，美国确实有一些自己的实际问题需要应对。 但卡吉研究的所有国家都存在类似的动态，包括法国和加拿大：富人的偏好受到系统性的迎合，而下层阶级的偏好则被边缘化，除了像这些罕见而令人高兴的案例。 两组利益一致。 这就是吉伦斯和佩奇所说的“巧合民主”，即只有当下层阶级的偏好由于各种原因与社会较富裕成员的偏好一致时才会被考虑。
确实，法国的特点是资金上限政策（因此私人向政党或团体的捐款上限为7500欧元），并且禁止法人实体（包括公司）进行此类捐款。 但卡吉表明，这些措施并不能消除金钱与政治之间所有有问题的关系。 最重要的是，她揭示了构成法国政治生活的财政措施的不良影响。 笔者以一个年收入10万欧元的个人为例，他捐赠了7500欧元。 政府将从这个人的税款中扣除这笔金额的66%，即4950欧元，因此这笔捐款实际上让这个人花费了2550欧元。 对于年收入 9700 欧元的公民（未婚者应纳税的最低金额）来说，7500 欧元的捐款实际上需要花费 7500 欧元。 简而言之，资助体系掌握在社会最富有的成员手中，他们的捐款得到公共当局的补贴。
卡吉为更新我们的民主提出了三项雄心勃勃的建议：1）严格限制民主的私人资助（限制为每年 200 欧元）； 2）创建“民主平等券”（“bons pour l’égalité démocratique”——BED），旨在更新政党和运动的资助。 每个公民在填写纳税申报表时，都可以选择获得“优惠券”的政党或运动，每年可获得7欧元的公共资金； 3）建立社会多样性议会，其中三分之一的席位将保留给“社会代表”，这些代表是从反映人口社会职业多样性的名单中选出的。
更一般地说，《民主奖》记录了不平等加剧背景下民主国家的功能失调。 因此，卡吉的工作继承了政治学家吉伦斯和佩奇、法律专家理查德·海伦和拉里·莱斯格或经济学家托马斯·皮凯蒂等学者的工作，他们都以自己的方式分析了我们实际上必须称之为寡头倾向的出现。 在自由民主国家。 这些著作的丰富性和广度以至于人们可能会忍不住说它们本身就构成了一个研究领域（“寡头政治研究”？）。
民主生活经费筹措条例
虽然本书是一部实质性的实证著作，但它也为我们提供了规范性论证的基础，旨在证明对民主资助采取更积极的监管是合理的。 事实上，卡吉为我们提供了一些工具来推翻一定数量的反监管论点。 让我们在这里提到其中两个。
一个论点涉及这样一种说法，即花钱资助政党是一种政治话语形式，是一种完全合法的表达自己声音的方式，不应受到法规的限制。 这种观点认为，限制个人资助政治生活的能力与对言论自由的认真承诺是不相容的。 这就是“金钱就是言论”的论点，鉴于金钱在政治中占据的地位以及对有时近乎拜物教的言论自由的承诺，这种论点在美国的政治想象中非常突出。
这个论点被卡吉简单地提到并取消为“自由意志论”，它既有力又令人不安。 它之所以强大，是因为它诉诸了我们对言论自由的某些强烈且基本共同的直觉。 它令人不安，因为它似乎导致了对弱势群体的残酷形式的政治排斥，以及对政治辩论的构成必然贫乏的概念。
我们应该注意到，卡吉接受了这个论证的前提，但拒绝了它的结论。 事实上，在《民主奖》中，金钱被视为政治话语的一种形式——实际上是其最有影响力的形式之一。 卡吉提醒我们，我们的选票是有代价的，政治支出转化为选票、特定偏好的满足以及具体的公共政策，民主的资助是一个至关重要但经常被忽视的问题； 简而言之，金钱与政治之间的联系是密不可分的。 但她拒绝接受“自由主义”的结论。 想要规范公民用钱“说话”的方式是有正当理由的。
为了捍卫这样的论点，我们首先必须摆脱所谓货币内容的中立性。 事实上，“金钱就是言论”的论点抹杀了捐款的政治分量，就好像金钱不支持任何特定的政治内容一样。 然而，正如卡吉所表明的，在她研究的大多数国家中，不仅捐助者之间存在明显的不平等，受益者之间也存在明显的不平等。 右翼政党往往会获得更多资金。 因此，放松管制的体系有利于右翼言论。
另一种经常被忽视但卡吉强调的回应是：如果金钱代表一种政治话语形式，那么如果我们认真对待政治平等，这就是我们应该重新分配的东西。 从这个角度来看，经济再分配政策以政治平等的名义是合理的。
另一个反监管论点涉及声称向政党捐款仅仅是意识形态消费的一种形式。 此类捐赠不仅仅是一种以获取回报为目的的投资，而只是展示个人财富的一种方式。 它们在政治上相当于挥霍性消费。 简而言之，是的，金钱确实是一种政治话语形式，但它最终是相当良性的。 它本身并不能让捐助者确保他们的偏好一定得到考虑。
这是斯蒂芬·安索拉贝希尔（Stephen Ansolabehere）、约翰·M·德·菲格雷多（John M. de Figueiredo）和小詹姆斯·M·斯奈德（James M. Snyder Jr.）在他们颇具影响力的文章《为什么美国政治中的钱这么少？》中提出的论点。 他们声称，如果金钱确实导致了富人政治偏好的事实上的满足，特别是在像美国这样放松管制的政治环境中，那么我们必须承认，政治中的金钱远非过多，而是存在。 事实上还不够。 他们得出的结论是，花在政治上的钱只能服从意识形态消费的逻辑。 社会上的富人按照独特竞争的逻辑进行捐赠，以维护自己的声望，或者按照确认的逻辑，确认自己在精英中的地位。
经过反思，这种论点有一个优点：它从一开始就抛弃了货币内容的明显中立性。 事实上，如果花在政治上的钱是一种炫耀性消费，那么它就不可能是中立的：它的内容必须符合一种非常特殊的话语类型——富人的话语。 货币的中立性因此消失，经济不平等的现实再次出现。 当然，下层阶级甚至无法想象如此炫耀的政治参与形式。
但卡吉所展示的恰恰是政治中的金钱不仅仅是意识形态的消费。 相反，它的推出与金钱的重量接管选举游戏齐头并进——即使涉及的金额并不庞大，这也是事实。 对政党的捐赠不是中立的，尤其是超过一定数额的捐赠，而且它们在非常具体的方面有利于某些特定利益。 因为我们可以合理地假设，主要捐助者倾向于支持奉行更为保守政策的政党，特别是从财政角度来看。 他们将坚持允许他们通过将部分账单转移给所有纳税人来表达政治偏好的财政战略。 最后，本次收购体现在
每天都在实施的公共政策，例如劳动力市场灵活性的大幅提高或给予社会最富有成员的大量税收减免，只会改变最富有人群的偏好，而不是最贫穷人群的偏好。 （第 329 页）
因此，金钱不能被视为众多其他实践中的一种，据说这种实践有利于多种不同的观点。 作为一种话语，从非常具体的角度来看，金钱往往有利于那些拥有最多金钱的人。 因此，它（1）既不是中性的，（2）也不是没有效果的。
卡吉建议我们放弃“意识形态消费”理论，转而支持“投资回报”理论。 然后，她提出了与吉伦斯和其他人获得的结果类似的结果：金钱在民主中具有真正的分量——分量太重了。
什么民主理论？ 商议、腐败和政治平等
什么样的民主规范理论能让我们像卡吉一样思考？ 这里值得考虑三种类型的考虑因素。
我们可能首先提到协商民主这个词汇。 对于协商民主人士来说，民主合法性的来源必须来自公共协商，包括在多元和包容的空间内“交换理由”的实践。 民主社会的公民可以通过相互协商赋予他们共同的未来以意义和合法性。 因此，协商民主具有一个关键的认知维度，这意味着它的特点是不断关注民主辩论的质量，关注这些辩论是否有能力让我们更接近“真相”并让我们远离规则。 无知。
卡吉似乎赞成这种做法，特别是因为她之前在媒体方面的工作以及她对民粹主义话语的怀疑。 事实上，我们的民主“危机”（部分）是民主话语的危机，也许更接近协商理想的政治话语才是理想的解决方案。 卡吉显然想要“智慧”的民主机构，并赞扬海伦·兰德莫尔关于协商机构产生“集体智慧”能力的工作。
而且，从深思熟虑的角度来看，我们的政治偏好不应该被视为“固定的”，而必须不断受到质疑、评估和批评。 最重要的是，它们不能简单地通过金钱这样的不良媒介来推广。 它们必须在充满活力的公共空间中接受持续讨论的考验。
因此，我们在这里看到了对民主生活资助的富有成效的审慎批评的轮廓——卡吉本可以发展出这样的轮廓。 但混合议会和 BED 等提案的合理性不能仅仅基于这种审议（特别是认识论）考虑。
那么这里的问题是诊断民主的腐败吗？ 鉴于卡吉参考了劳伦斯·莱西格等人的作品，这是一个可靠的选择。 因为我们确实必须承认，捐赠与政治偏好的满足之间的准自动联系看起来非常像我们通常所说的“交换条件”腐败，即“金钱换取好处”类型的腐败。 但是，像莱西格这样的“制度腐败”理论家，往往不太关注这种类型的“个人”腐败，而是通过金钱的私人影响力盗用民主制度。 这是古人所定义的腐败，指的是不再能够实现其目的的机构的潮解。
这种观念似乎是美国最高法院在奥斯汀诉密歇根商会（1990）裁决中的推理基础，该裁决维持了禁止公司利用其财务资源支持选举候选人的法律（该裁决 二十年后被公民联合裁决推翻）。 正如罗纳德·德沃金（Ronald Dworkin）指出的那样，法院警告我们警惕“腐败的危险”，并不是指作为交换好处的经典腐败形式，而是指“另一种形式的腐败”，即民主制度的腐败。
卡奇绝对可以引起我们对这些不同形式的腐败的关注。 但这还不是全部，因为再次强调腐败并不足以证明她的提议是合理的。
我们应该注意到，在美国的背景下，腐败的语言很快就被调动起来，因为在政治上几乎不可能使用平等的语言。 简而言之，“腐败”激起人们的愤慨并促使人们采取行动，而不平等则“社会主义”。 但这是有问题的，幸运的是，这种情况可能正在改变。 例如，哈森认为，奥斯汀法院提到的“其他形式的腐败”不仅指金钱对国会和选举的腐蚀作用，而且还非常简单地指它对公民之间政治平等的破坏性影响。
因此，我们应该动员平等的语言，并且我们必须希望这样的事情在法国政治格局中仍然是可能的。 正如卡吉在她的书一开始就指出的那样，民主承诺我们平等（第 37 页），但政治生活的资助体系却将这一点置于危险之中。 在这里，我们可能会想起罗尔斯，他将人人平等的政治自由置于其社会正义理论的核心。 对他来说，每当“那些拥有更多私人手段的人被允许利用自己的优势来控制公共辩论的进程”时，这些人人平等的政治自由的价值就会被削弱。 因此，这里的问题并不是谴责下层阶级缺乏对选举、公共辩论或政党生活的参与，这表明平等的政治自由“已经存在”，但没有得到很好的利用。 不，令人不安的是，当这些活动由大部分人口进行时，它们在以经济不平等为特征的政治动态中被贬值，例如 J. Cagé 所研究的那些活动。
这就是为什么我们的民主社会的重大缺陷之一仍然是无法保证罗尔斯所说的人人平等的政治自由的公正价值，也无法实施必要的纠正措施。 BED 构成了这些纠正措施之一。 但更重要的是，混合大会项目似乎很有希望。 对于某些人来说，政治自由的贬值可以用我们当前的代表动态来解释，用卡吉的话说，代表权的赤字“与其说是选择的，不如说是忍受的”（第415页）。 因此，正如哲学家安妮·菲利普斯（Anne Philips）所说，仅仅“通过思想”寄托于再现的希望并非徒劳，但已经遇到了一些障碍。 也许现在是时候测试“存在政治”了，这样下层阶级就可以通过参加议会来真正在政治上存在。 正如卡吉本人承认的那样，这可能是一项“激进”措施，但值得对政治平等做出真正的承诺。
审阅：Julia Cagé，Le prix de la démocratie，巴黎，Fayard，2018 年，464 页，23 欧元。
作者：Pierre-Yves Néron，2019 年 4 月 29 日
Voting with Euros
About: Julia Cagé, Le Prix de la démocratie, Fayard
https://laviedesidees.fr/Voting-with-Euros
by Pierre-Yves Néron , 29 April 2019 translated by Kate McNaughton
The ways in which political parties are funded, in France and elsewhere, tend to reinforce the invisibility of certain groups and the political influence of the wealthiest people in society, in particular through right-wing parties. Are there, Julia Cagé wonders, more democratic ways of funding democracy?
In Le prix de la démocratie (The Price of Democracy), Julia Cagé analyses the ways in which political parties are funded in several countries, including France. By drawing up a database of information on the funding of several political movements and parties, she provides us with an international overview of the ways in which democracy is funded today. Her book leads us to draw two major conclusions that go beyond the substantial differences she observes between different countries: 1) the current funding of democracy tends to perpetuate and reinforce the lack of representation of certain groups, as well as their political invisibility. In all the democratic states that she studied, the weight of the wealthiest members of society in the funding of democratic life is extremely high. 2) If we are to act on this, one of the most crucial battlefields and sources of confrontation is taxation. How topical, did you say?
Oligarchic Tendencies?
If her book can help us understand the current situation in French politics, this is partly because Cagé invites us to distance ourselves from a simple celebration of the
good health of a ‘French-style democracy’ viewed as comfortably removed from the problems that plague American democracy (p. 67).
It is indeed true that the amounts invested into political campaigns in the United States are dizzying: companies can massively fund the causes of their choice through Political Action Committees (PACs) and public policies are massively advantageous to the wealthier members of society. All of this has even prompted the political scientists Gilens and Page to conclude that the United States were a de facto oligarchic society. It is thus certainly true that the United States have some real problems of their own to contend with. But a similar dynamic is at work in all the countries that Cagé studied, including France and Canada: the preferences of the rich are systematically pandered to, whereas those of the lower classes are side-lined, except in such rare and happy cases as these two sets of interests coincide. This is what Gilens and Page call “democracy by coincidence”, in which the preferences of the lower classes are only taken into account if they happen, for various reasons, to coincide with those of the wealthier members of society.
It is true that France is characterised by its policy of capping funding (donations from private individuals to parties or groups are thus capped at 7500 euros), and by the fact that it forbids legal entities (including companies) from making such donations. But Cagé shows that such measures do not eliminate all problematic relationships between money and politics. Above all, she reveals the perverse effects of the fiscal measures that structure French political life. The author takes as an example an individual with a (taxable) annual income of 100,000 euros, who makes a 7500 euro donation. The government will deduct 66% of this amount from this person’s tax, which comes to 4950 euros, so that the donation will in reality have cost this person 2550 euros. For a citizen who earns 9700 euros a year (the minimum amount above which an unmarried person is liable to pay tax), a 7500 euro donation really does cost 7500 euros. In short, the funding system plays into the hands of the richest members of society, whose contributions are subsidised by the public authorities.
Cagé makes three ambitious proposals for renewing our democracy: 1) a drastic limitation of the private funding of democracy (with a limit set at 200 euros a year); 2) the creation of “democratic equality vouchers” (“bons pour l’égalité démocratique” – BED) aimed at renewing the funding of political parties and movements. Every citizen, when they fill out their tax return, would be able to choose the party or movement that will be given their “voucher”, for an annual amount of 7 euros of public money; 3) the establishment of a Social Diversity Assembly, in which a third of seats would be reserved for “social representatives”, elected from lists that reflect the socio-professional diversity of the population.
More generally, Le prix de la démocratie documents the dysfunctions of democracies in the context of increasing inequalities. Cagé’s work thus follows on from that of academics such as the political scientists Gilens and Page, the legal experts Richard Halen and Larry Lessig or the economist Thomas Piketty, who have all in their own way analysed the emergence of what we must indeed call oligarchic tendencies in liberal democracies. The wealth and breadth of these works are such that one might be tempted to say they constitute a field of study in its own right (“oligarchy studies”?).
For a Regulation of the Funding of Democratic Life
While this book is a substantial piece of empirical work, it also provides us with the basis for a normative argument aimed at justifying more aggressive regulation of the funding of democracy. Indeed, Cagé provides us with some tools for invalidating a certain number of anti-regulation arguments. Let us mention two of these here.
One argument involves the claim that spending money to fund political parties is a form of political discourse, a perfectly legitimate way of making one’s voice heard that should not be restrained by regulations. In this view, limiting an individual’s capacity to fund political life is incompatible with a serious commitment to freedom of expression. This is the “money is speech” argument, which is very prominent in the American political imagination, given the place occupied by money in politics and a commitment to freedom of expression that sometimes borders on fetishism.
This argument, which is briefly mentioned and disqualified by Cagé as “libertarian”, is both powerful and troubling. It is powerful because it appeals to certain strong and largely shared intuitions that we have about freedom of expression. And it is troubling because it seems to lead to a brutal form of political exclusion for disadvantaged groups, as well as to a necessarily impoverished concept of what constitutes political debate.
We should note that Cagé accepts the premises of this argument while rejecting its conclusion. Indeed, in Le prix de la démocratie, money is treated very seriously as a form of political discourse—one of its most influential forms in fact. Cagé reminds us that our vote has a price, that political spending translates into votes, into the satisfaction of given preferences as well as into concrete public policies, that the funding of democracy is a crucial but oft-neglected issue; in short, that the connections between money and politics are inextricable. But she rejects the “libertarian” conclusion. There are legitimate reasons for wanting to regulate the way in which citizens “talk” with their money.
In order to defend such a thesis, we must first get rid of the so-called neutrality of content of money. Indeed, the argument that money is speech erases the political weight of donations, as if money did not favour any particular political content. However, as Cagé shows, in most of the countries she has studied, there is not only a flagrant inequality between donors, but also between beneficiaries. Right-wing parties tend to receive more funding. A deregulated system thus favours right-wing speech.
Another response, which is often neglected, but which Cagé underlines, is the following: if money represents a form of political discourse, then this is what we should be redistributing if we take political equality seriously. From this perspective, a policy of economic redistribution is thus justified in the name of political equality.
Another anti-regulation argument involves claiming that donations to political parties are merely a form of ideological consumption. More than an investment with a view to making a return, such donations are simply one way among others of displaying one’s wealth. They are the political equivalent of ostentatious consumption. In short, yes, money is indeed a form of political discourse, but it is one that is ultimately rather benign. It does not as such allow donors to ensure that their preferences are necessarily taken into account.
This is the argument that is put forward by Stephen Ansolabehere, John M. de Figueiredo and James M. Snyder Jr. in their influential article “Why so Much Little Money in U.S Politics?”. They claim that if money did lead de facto to the satisfaction of the political preferences of the wealthy, in particular in a deregulated political environment like that of the United States, then we must admit that far from there being too much money in politics, there is in fact not enough. They then conclude that the money that is spent on politics can only obey the logic of ideological consumption. The wealthier in society give, following the logic of distinctive competition, to assert their prestige, or alternatively following the logic of confirmation, to confirm their position within the élite.
Upon reflection, this line of argument has an advantage: it discards from the start the apparent neutrality of content of money. Indeed, if the money spent on politics is a form of ostentatious consumption, then it cannot be neutral: its content must correspond to that of a very specific type of discourse—that of the wealthy. The neutrality of money thus evaporates, and the reality of economic inequality reappears. For, of course, the lower classes cannot even imagine such ostentatious forms of participation in politics.
But what Cagé shows is precisely that money in politics is not just ideological consumption. On the contrary, its introduction goes hand in hand with the takeover of the electoral game by the weight of money—something which is true even when the amounts involved are not gargantuan. Donations to parties are not neutral, especially above a certain amount, and they favour, in very concrete terms, certain specific interests. For we can legitimately suppose that major donors tend to favour parties that will pursue more conservative policies, in particular from a fiscal perspective. And they will uphold the fiscal strategy that allows them to express their political preferences by transferring part of the bill to all taxpayers. Finally, this takeover is reflected in the
public policies which are implemented every day and which, like the extreme increase in flexibility of the labour market or the numerous tax breaks awarded to the wealthiest members of society, only translate the preferences of the wealthiest people, against the preferences of the poorest. (p. 329)
Thus, money cannot be viewed as one discursive practice among many others, which supposedly favours a plethora of diverse perspectives. As discourse, money tends to favour, in very concrete terms, those who have the most of it. It is thus (1) neither neutral (2) nor without effect.
Cagé suggests we abandon the theory of “ideological consumption” in favour of a theory of “return on investment”. She then puts forward similar results to those obtained by Gilens and others: money has a real weight in democracy—far too much weight.
What Democratic Theory? Deliberation, Corruption and Political Equality
What normative theory of democracy would allow us to think along the same lines as Cagé? Three types of considerations are worth taking into account here.
We might first mention the vocabulary of deliberative democracy. For deliberative democrats, the sources of democratic legitimacy must be drawn from public deliberation, including a practice of “exchanges of reasons” within multiple and inclusive spaces. The citizens of a democratic community can give meaning and legitimacy to their common future by deliberating among themselves. Deliberative democracy thus has a key epistemic dimension, meaning that it is characterised by a constant concern for the quality of our democratic debates, for the capacity of these to get us closer to the “truth” and to move us ever further away from the rule of ignorance.
Cagé seems to be in favour of such an approach, in particular as a result of her previous work on the media and her scepticism towards populist discourse. Indeed, our democratic “crisis” is (partly) a crisis of democratic discourse, and perhaps a political discourse that is closer to deliberative ideals is the ideal solution. Cagé clearly wants “intelligent” democratic institutions, and praises the work of Hélène Landemore on the capacity of deliberative institutions to produce “collective wisdom”.
And, from a deliberative perspective, our political preferences should not be seen as “fixed”, but rather must be constantly interrogated, evaluated, criticised. And above all, they must not simply be promoted via such a poor medium as money. They must be subjected to the test of a constant discussion within the context of a vibrant public space.
We thus see here the outline of a fruitful deliberative criticism of the funding of democratic life—one that Cagé could have developed. But the justification of proposals such as the Mixed Assembly and the BEDs could not be based only on such deliberative (and in particular epistemic) considerations.
Is the issue here then to diagnose a corruption of democracy? This is a credible option, given Cagé’s referral to the works of Lawrence Lessig and others. For we must indeed admit that the quasi-automatic connection between donations and the satisfaction of political preferences looks very much like what we generally describe as quid pro quo corruption, meaning corruption of the “money-for-favours” type. But the theoreticians, like Lessig, of “institutional corruption”, tend to attract our attention less to this type of “individual” corruption as to the misappropriation of democratic institutions through the private influence of money. This is a corruption as defined by the Ancients, in the sense of a deliquescence of institutions that are no longer able to realise their telos.
Such a conception seems to underlie the reasoning of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990) ruling, which upheld a law forbidding companies from using their financial resources to support a candidate in elections (this ruling was overturned twenty years later by the Citizens United ruling). As Ronald Dworkin noted, by warning us against the “dangers of corruption”, the Court was not referring to the classic form of corruption as an exchange of favours, but rather to “another form of corruption”, that of democratic institutions.
Cagé can absolutely draw our attention to these different forms of corruption. But that is not all, since, once more, focussing on corruption is not enough to justify her proposals.
We should note that, in the American context, the language of corruption is quickly mobilised because it seems almost impossible politically to use that of equality. In short, “corruption” arouses indignation and motivates people to take action, while inequality is “socialist”. But this is problematic and, luckily, may be changing. According to Hasen for example, the “other form of corruption” referred to by the Court in Austin does not refer only to the corrosive effects of money on congress and the elections, but also very simply to its destructive effects on political equality between citizens.
We should therefore be mobilising the language of equality, and we must hope that such a thing is still possible in the French political landscape. As Cagé notes from the start of her book, democracy promises us equality (p. 37), but this is put at risk by the system for funding political life. Here, we might call to mind Rawls, who placed political liberties that were equal for all at the heart of his theory of social justice. And for him, it is the value of these political liberties that are equal for all that is diminished whenever “those who have greater private means are permitted to use their advantages to control the course of public debate”. Thus, the issue here is not to deplore the lack of participation of the lower classes in elections, in public debates or in the life of political parties, which would suggest that equal political liberties are “already there” but are poorly used. No, what is troubling is the fact that these activities, when they are conducted by large segments of the population, are devalued within political dynamics that are characterised by economic inequality, such as those studied by J. Cagé.
This is why one of the great failings of our democratic societies continues to be their inability to guarantee what Rawls calls the just value of political liberties that are equal for all, and to implement the necessary corrective measures. The BEDs constitute one of these corrective measures. But even more than these, the project for a mixed Assembly seems promising. For the devaluing of political liberties for some individuals is explained by our current representative dynamics, in which the deficit in representation is “less chosen than endured” (p. 415), to use Cagé’s words. Thus, as the philosopher Anne Philips has argued, the hopes placed in representation solely “through ideas”, without being vain, have already met with several obstacles. Perhaps it is time to test a “politics of presence”, so that the lower classes can really exist politically, by being present in the Assembly. This may be a “radical” measure, as Cagé herself admits, but it would be worthy of a genuine commitment to political equality.
Reviewed: Julia Cagé, Le prix de la démocratie, Paris, Fayard, 2018, 464 p., 23 €.
by Pierre-Yves Néron, 29 April 2019
