Matteo Bonotti - Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies (2017, Oxford University Press)

P A R TI S A N S H I P A N D P O L I TI CA L L I B E R A L I S M
IN DIVERSE SOCIETIES
Partisanship and Political
Liberalism in Diverse
Societies
M A T T E O BO N O T T I
1
3
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For my parents
Acknowledgements
I became interested in the place of political parties in political theory during

my PhD at the University of Edinburgh. This book is not my PhD thesis, but
I would like to thank my PhD supervisor, Lynn Dobson, who provided me
with the inspiration and encouragement to focus on this area of research that
was then (and partly still is) unexplored by political theorists. I would also like
to thank my second PhD supervisor, Wilfried Swenden, who always helped me
to put empirical flesh on the theoretical bones of my normative work. I was
also very lucky to have an excellent external examiner, Cécile Laborde, whose
invaluable feedback and support over the years significantly helped me to
shape and improve the argument of this book.
I presented individual chapters of this book at various conferences, work-
shops, and seminars, where I obtained helpful feedback. I would therefore like
to thank audiences at the University of Amsterdam, Cardiff University, the
University of Edinburgh, the European University Institute, the Jagiellonian
University in Kraków, the University of Leeds, the London School of Eco-
nomics and Political Science, University College London, the University of
Manchester, the University of Milan, the University of Pavia, Queen’s Uni-
versity Belfast, the University of Stirling, and the 2016 APSA Annual Meeting
in Philadelphia, as well as the participants in the 2015 ECPR Joint Sessions
workshop on Political Theory and Parties at the University of Warsaw. I am
especially grateful to the following individuals for their feedback: David
Archard, Veit Bader, Sorin Baiasu, Aurélia Bardon, Andrea Baumeister, Cris-
tóbal Bellolio, Paul Billingham, Giulia Bistagnino, Michele Bocchiola, Keith
Breen, Jenny Brown, Emanuela Ceva, Elizabeth Cripps, Ben Crum, Bouke de
Vries, Piet Goemans, Lise Herman, James Hodgson, Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti,
Carla Jemma, Lois Lee, Jocelyn Maclure, Luke March, Nick Martin, Simon
Căbulea May, Cillian McBride, Paddy McQueen, Mihaela Mihai, Josh Milburn,
Russell Muirhead, Patrick Neal, Valeria Ottonelli, Pamela Pansardi, Francesca
Pasquali, Nicola Riva, Stefan Rummens, Dara Salam, Ben Saunders, Fabian
Schuppert, Mathias Thaler, Ronald Tinnevelt, Kevin Vallier, Tom Walker,
Daniel Weinstock, Jonathan White, Fabio Wolkenstein, Lea Ypi, and Federico
Zuolo. I would also like to thank Dominic Byatt and Olivia Wells at Oxford
University Press for their precious advice and support, and I am grateful to two
anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive feedback.
Some of the content of the book has previously appeared in published
articles. I am grateful for permission to reprint material from the following:
• Matteo Bonotti (2012), ‘Partisanship and Political Obligation’, Politics 32 (3),
pp. 153–61, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9256.2012.01440.x, with kind permission
viii Acknowledgements
from SAGE Publications, Ltd. © 2012 The Author. Politics © 2012 Political
Studies Association;
• Matteo Bonotti (2012), ‘Beyond Establishment and Separation: Political
Liberalism, Religion and Democracy’, Res Publica 18 (4), pp. 333–49,
doi:10.1007/s11158-012-9194-2, with kind permission from Springer
Science+Business Media. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012;
• Matteo Bonotti (2014), ‘Partisanship and Public Reason’, Critical Review
of International Social and Political Philosophy 17 (3), pp. 314–31,
doi:10.1080/13698230.2014.886381, with kind permission from Taylor
& Francis Ltd. © 2014 Taylor & Francis;
• Matteo Bonotti (2015), ‘Political Liberalism, Free Speech and Public Rea-
son’, European Journal of Political Theory 14 (2), pp. 180–208, doi:10.1177/
1474885114538257, with kind permission from SAGE Publications,
Ltd. © The Author(s) 2014.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife Laura and my children Giovanni and
Marta for their love and patience throughout the years. Without them, I would
have never found the enthusiasm and inspiration to write this book and to
carry out my academic work amongst so many adversities. This book is
dedicated to my parents, Guido and Tiziana, who were always there for me
when it mattered.
Matteo Bonotti
November 2016
Contents
Introduction 1
1. The Political Obligations of Partisans 6
2. Partisanship and Conflicting Obligations 22
3. Political Liberalism and Democratic Contestation 40
4. Partisanship and the Constraints of Public Reason 62
5. Free Speech and the Duty of Civility 81
6. Political Parties and the Overlapping Consensus 99
7. Partisanship and the Division of Justificatory Labour 124
8. Partisan Speech and Political Legitimacy 152
Conclusion 175
Bibliography 177
Index 193
Introduction
Since its publication in 1993, John Rawls’s Political Liberalism (2005a) has
been central to contemporary debates in normative political theory. Rawls’s
main goal in this book was to explain how citizens endorsing diverse concep-
tions of the good (ethical, religious, and philosophical) could live together
under liberal democratic institutions. For this reason, his theory has strongly
influenced contemporary debates concerning political legitimacy, democratic
theory, toleration, and multiculturalism. Yet, despite the immense body of
literature which has been produced since Rawls’s book was published, very
little has been said or written regarding the place of political parties and
partisanship (by which I mean participation in politics through political
parties) within political liberalism. This is surprising. In spite of the ongoing
decline of party membership across the western world, parties still remain
central players in the democratic game of liberal democratic polities, and still
play an important role in articulating diverse social demands. One would have
therefore expected political theorists who, like Rawls, are concerned with
issues of pluralism and diversity, to take an interest in the role of parties.
Yet Rawls’s references to parties are brief and scattered, and it is not clear from
his work (or from the work of those scholars who have examined his theory in
detail) what role (if any) parties can play within political liberalism.
Some might want to explain political liberalism’s neglect of parties by
highlighting the ideal character of Rawls’s theory, centred on the search for
an ‘ideal consensus’ among citizens who endorse different comprehensive
doctrines. Yet parties have also been almost entirely ignored, at least until
recently, by those political theorists who defend a more agonistic conception
of politics than Rawls’s, and by those who have endorsed deliberative, partici-
patory, and associative forms of democracy. There is an urgent need, there-
fore, for more normative work on parties and partisanship, both within and
beyond Rawls’s political liberalism.
The existing literature on parties and partisanship in normative political
theory is indeed still very limited, including only a handful of books (Portis et al.
2000; Rosenblum 2008; Muirhead 2014; Bonotti and Bader 2014; White and
Ypi 2016), and a growing but still relatively small number of journal articles
2 Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies
(Rosenblum 2000, 2003, 2007, 2014; Muirhead 2006, 2010; Muirhead and
Rosenblum 2006; White and Ypi 2010, 2011, forthcoming; Bonotti 2011a,
2011b, 2012, 2014; Bader 2014; Orr 2014; White 2014, forthcoming; Leydet
2015; Wolkenstein 2016; Invernizzi-Accetti and Wolkenstein 2017). Within
this body of work, little has been said about the place of parties and partisanship
in Rawls’s political liberalism. Even those authors who have focused more
specifically on parties and political liberalism (Muirhead and Rosenblum
2006), or parties and public justification (White and Ypi 2011), have not
offered a detailed account of how parties can contribute to the process of public
reasoning that is central to Rawls’s theory.
For example, Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum, who do examine
parties within the context of Rawls’s political liberalism, and consider them the
‘shapers and articulators of public reason’ (Muirhead and Rosenblum 2006,
p. 104), do not engage systematically with the growing literature on public
reason, and do not address two key problems that are central to that literature.
First, if public reason, as many critics argue, excludes many comprehensive
doctrines from public debate, what space does it leave for political parties,
given that the latter often convey controversial values and conceptions of
the good? Second, what does it mean for a reason to be ‘public’, and how
can the idea of public reason, with its apparent aim for an ideal consensus,
allow scope for a plurality of political parties, that is, the kind of plurality that
characterizes, to a greater or lesser extent, contemporary liberal democracies?
Even Jonathan White and Lea Ypi (2011, 2016), who address extensively the
problem of public justification, fail to provide a comprehensive answer to these
questions. While they seem to endorse the view that what renders reasons
public, and therefore suitable for public justification, is their ‘accessibility’,
they do not explain why this conception of public reason should be preferred
to alternative ones (e.g. the ideas of ‘shareability’ and ‘intelligibility’), and do not
assess whether ‘accessibility’ excludes too many reasons from the public political
realm, thus de facto jeopardizing partisan advocacy and pluralism.
The failure to engage systematically with Rawls’s theory, of course, does not
render the aforementioned works less valuable. Instead, it simply signals the
need for a more diverse body of normative work on parties and partisanship,
and highlights the distinctive scope of my analysis, which aims to move both
beyond the exploratory considerations offered by Muirhead and Rosenblum,
and beyond the comprehensive analysis of partisanship and public justifica-
tion offered by White and Ypi. My aim, in other words, is to refocus the
normative examination of parties and partisanship, by narrowing it down to a
specific aspect of contemporary political theory, that is, Rawls’s political
liberalism, while doing so in a more detailed and analytical way than Muir-
head and Rosenblum do in their article.
Yet this is not the only contribution that I intend to offer. I also intend to
provide, first, a significant addition to the literature on political obligation,
Introduction 3
which has failed to examine partisanship as a source of distinctive political

obligations, as well as the problem of conflicting obligations (e.g. religious vs.
political obligations) which increasingly characterizes multicultural societies.
And, second, I intend to contribute to the literature on free speech, both
by examining the relationship between free speech and public reason, and by
asking, in the last chapter, whether partisans, that is, citizens who participate in
politics through political parties, should be granted greater freedom of speech
than ordinary citizens, especially when there are laws that regulate hate speech.
The central argument of the book is the following. Political liberalism needs
and nourishes political parties, and political parties are therefore not hostile
but vital to it. First, partisanship generates its own distinctive kind of political
obligations, additional to any political obligations people may have qua ordinary
citizens. Second, contrary to what many critics argue, and despite its admittedly
restrictive features, Rawls’s conception of public reason allows significant scope
for partisan advocacy and partisan pluralism, and in fact the very normative
demands of partisanship are in syntony with those of public reason. Third,
parties contribute to the overlapping consensus that for Rawls guarantees stabil-
ity in diverse societies. Fourth, political liberalism nourishes political parties, by
leaving many issues, including religious and socio-economic ones, open to
democratic contestation. In summary, parties contribute both to the legitimacy
and to the stability of political liberalism.
Chapter 1 argues that partisans have distinctive political obligations. It
examines first the view that these are consent-based obligations grounded in
partisans’ voluntary decision to undertake the positional duties of partisan-
ship. This voluntarist account of partisan political obligations, however, pre-
sents some limits and needs to be complemented and reinforced by a fair play
conception of partisan political obligations. According to the latter, the pos-
itional duties of partisanship acquire the status of political obligations, and
become morally binding upon all partisans, because all partisans enjoy special
privileges and benefits which derive from their participation in party politics.
Partisans therefore have a moral duty to restrain their freedom and comply
with their positional duties, which involve obeying the laws of their state, and
the fulfilment of which contributes to producing the benefits they enjoy.
Chapter 2 argues that under certain conditions participation in politics
through political parties can contribute to reducing significantly the tension
between conflicting obligations experienced by many citizens in contemporary
societies, both from a normative and from an empirical point of view. More
specifically, the chapter claims that when party politics is a fair scheme of
cooperation, the participation of these citizens (and citizens in general) in
politics through political parties produces two desirable outcomes for liberal
democracies. First, it relaxes the tension between these citizens’ political and
non-political obligations, by allowing them to have a greater influence upon
political decision-making, and therefore to shape laws and policies in a way
that is more responsive to their interests and values. Second, it provides them
with a motivation to comply with the laws of their political community, thus
enhancing the stability of the polity in which they operate.
Chapter 3 shows how political liberalism nourishes political parties, by
leaving many controversial issues open to democratic contestation. It espe-
cially focuses on religious issues, and argues that neither moderate separation
nor moderate establishment, intended as regimes of religious governance that
fix specific interpretations of principles of social and economic justice, is
compatible with Rawls’s political liberalism. The chapter then introduces an
additional ideal model of religious governance called ‘democratic accommo-
dationism’, which differs both from moderate separation and from moderate
establishment. The chapter further examines the place of social and economic
issues in Rawls’s political liberalism. It shows that political liberalism does
not warrant the constitutionalization of either classical liberal rights or social
rights, and therefore leaves socio-economic issues open to the democratic
contestation of partisan politics.
Chapter 4 illustrates the ‘extrinsic’ approach to public reason, that is, the
view that the Rawlsian ideal of public reason imposes significant constraints
upon parties, and that these constraints are external to parties’ goals. The
chapter shows, first, that the forums where partisans operate are clearly subject
to the constraints of public reason. It then argues that the distinction between
constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice, on the one hand, and
ordinary legislative matters, on the other hand, is irrelevant when we consider
the fact that parties’ manifestoes and programmes include both kinds of issues,
and need to be justified to the public in their comprehensiveness. The chapter
further claims that Rawls’s (2005b) ‘wide’ conception of public reason still
imposes onerous demands upon elected and campaigning partisans, and
concludes by showing that issues of practical implementation cannot be
invoked in order to reject the legal enforcement of the duty of civility, that
is, the duty to comply with the constraints of public reason.
Chapter 5 continues to address the issues surrounding the legal enforce-
ment of the duty of civility. In doing so, it takes a detour from the analysis of
partisanship and critically examines which arguments for free speech may be
consistent with Rawls’s political liberalism, in order to establish whether there
are good moral reasons, within political liberalism, for rejecting the legal
implementation of the duty of civility. Among the various arguments for
freedom of speech, the chapter argues, only those from democracy and
political legitimacy seem to justify Rawls’s opposition to the legal enforcement
of the duty of civility. However, the chapter concludes, since Rawls’s own
conception of political legitimacy is not merely procedural but grounded in
the ideas of public justification and public reason, political liberalism is in
principle consistent with some restrictions on free speech, including those
which would result from the legal enforcement of the duty of civility.
Introduction 5
Chapter 6 rejects the ‘extrinsic’ view of public reason examined in Chapter 4,

and argues that political parties can play an important role in helping citizens to
relate their comprehensive doctrines to political liberal values and institutions.
Once we understand the distinctive normative demands of partisanship, the
chapter claims, we can see that there is no inherent tension between them and the
demands of the Rawlsian overlapping consensus. This is because partisanship
(unlike factionalism) involves a commitment to the common good rather than
the sole advancement of merely partial interests, and this implies a commitment
to public reasoning. The chapter further examines three distinctive empirical
features of parties that particularly enable them to contribute to an overlapping
consensus. These are their linkage function, their advancement of broad multi-
issue political platforms, and their creative agency.
Chapter 7 defends an indirect model of public justification, which relieves
ordinary citizens of the burdens of public reason and imposes them only on
public officials, and especially on elected partisans. Through a twofold process
of horizontal and vertical accountability, the chapter claims, elected partisans
ought to both hold each other accountable with regard to their use of public
reasons, without the need for direct scrutiny by ordinary citizens, and be
responsive to citizens’s non-public reasons, endeavouring to find an internal
connection between those and public reasons. The chapter concludes by
illustrating how the two most popular electoral systems, first-past-the-post
(FPTP) and proportional representation (PR), can be more or less conducive
to this bifurcated process of public justification.
Chapter 8 asks whether partisans should enjoy greater freedom of speech
than ordinary citizens, including freedom to use hate speech when the latter is
(or should be) legally regulated. The chapter shows that partisan speech offers a
threefold contribution to political legitimacy, by acting as a loudspeaker, helping
to set the political agenda, and advancing broad manifestoes and programmes.
This threefold contribution of partisan speech to political legitimacy offers a pro
tanto justification for exempting partisans from hate speech laws. However, the
chapter further argues that a justification-based (as opposed to merely proced-
ural) conception of political legitimacy would often justify hate speech legisla-
tion and, crucially, that the special commitment that partisans ought to display
to public reason, implies that partisan speech should not be granted any special
protection or exemption from hate speech legislation, despite its threefold
contribution to a procedural kind of political legitimacy.
1
The Political Obligations of Partisans
To establish whether citizens have political obligations means to determine

whether they have a moral duty to obey the laws of their political community.
Political obligation is one of the central themes in political theory, yet my aim
in this chapter is less ambitious than the reader might expect. I do not intend
to provide an overview of theories of political obligation,1 nor do I intend to
endorse (or reject) any specific theory (or theories) of political obligation as
applied to citizens in general. The argument that I intend to defend, instead, is
that regardless of whether ordinary citizens of liberal democracies have any
political obligations, partisanship generates specific and sui generis political
obligations.
In order to do so, I will focus on two issues highlighted by Rawls in A Theory
of Justice (Rawls 1999a). The first concerns positional duties, that is, the duties
attached to specific offices and institutional roles. The second relates to Rawls’s
view that those who enjoy special benefits as a result of their position within
society (e.g. public officials) have corresponding special moral duties towards
their polity based on the idea of ‘fair play’, that is, the view that when a person
enjoys benefits produced through a cooperative effort, she should contribute
her fair share to that common enterprise (e.g. by obeying the law). I will show
that both of Rawls’s claims help us to develop a plausible account of partisan
political obligations and, therefore, a distinctive morality of partisanship
according to which partisans have a special moral duty to obey the laws and
institutions of their state.
One important clarification is required here. As it is well known, as well as
defending a fair play argument for political obligation, in A Theory of Justice
Rawls also defends the idea that we have a ‘natural duty . . . to support and to
comply with just institutions that exist and apply to us’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 99).
According to Rawls, while political obligations only arise when we perform
certain acts (e.g. when we consent to something, or accept the benefits of a
cooperative enterprise), the natural duty to obey just institutions applies to all
1
For good overviews, see Simmons (1979), Knowles (2009), and Horton (2010).
The Political Obligations of Partisans 7
citizens in general.2 For this reason, Rawls argues that ‘there are several ways
in which one may be bound to political institutions. For the most part the
natural duty of justice is the more fundamental, since it binds citizens gener-
ally and requires no voluntary acts in order to apply’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 100).
Rawls’s natural duty account of political obligation has been the object of
criticism concerning, for example, the ‘natural’ character of this duty and the
question of what it means for institutions to be ‘just’. Furthermore, Rawls’s
argument has also been challenged on the basis of the ‘particularity require-
ment’, that is, the idea ‘that we are only interested in those moral requirements
which bind an individual to one particular political community, set of political
institutions, etc.’ (Simmons 1979, p. 31; original emphasis). According to John
Simmons, Rawls’s natural duty account fails to explain why, if we have a
natural duty of justice, we ought to obey the laws of our just state, rather than
those of any just state. Responses have been offered to this critique (e.g. see
Waldron 1993; Wellman and Simmons 2005, pp. 30–54), even though they
have not been found entirely persuasive (e.g. see Wellman and Simmons
2005, pp. 121–88).
However, it is not my intention here to enter this debate. Given the
problems raised by Rawls’s natural duty argument, I leave open the question
of whether citizens generally have any political obligations, based either on
Rawls’s natural duty argument or on a different theory of political obligation.
Answering that question would not affect my argument that partisans have
special political obligations qua partisans. On the one hand, if we assume that
citizens generally do not have any political obligations, then partisan political
obligations are the only obligations partisans have. On the other hand, if
citizens generally do have political obligations (i.e. based on the natural duty
argument or on any other account of political obligation), then the special
political obligations of partisans that I defend here are simply additional
political obligations which reinforce partisans’ moral duty to obey the law.
In either case, I will show, the political obligations of partisans are easier to
justify than those of ordinary citizens.
My analysis will proceed as follows. First, I will introduce the concept of
‘positional duties’ and explain how it applies to partisans. More specifically,
I will claim that partisans’ voluntary decision to undertake the positional
duties of partisanship places them under special kinds of political obligations.
However, I will explain, the notion of ‘partisanship’ presents different mean-
ings across different polities, within the same polity and often even within the
same party, and not all forms of partisanship are clearly voluntary in nature.
2
Please note that, while I acknowledge here Rawls’s distinction between ‘obligation’ and
‘duty’, in the rest of the chapter I use the two terms interchangeably, like Horton (2010, p. 12),
and I intend ‘political obligation’ as the ‘moral duty’ to obey the law.
Therefore, I will argue, a voluntarist account of partisan political obligations

presents some limits.
In the second part of the chapter I will therefore pursue a different argu-
ment. I will claim that the positional duties of partisanship acquire the status
of political obligations, and become morally binding upon all partisans,
because all partisans enjoy special privileges and benefits which derive from
their participation in party politics at different levels. These special political
obligations are justified on the basis of the principle of fair play (or fairness),
which Rawls employs to justify the political obligations of those who hold
office or occupy public roles (see also Hart 1955 and Klosko 1992). I will also
argue that these fair play political obligations are proportionate to the benefits
that partisans receive, and that the fair play argument complements and
reinforces the voluntarist account and contributes to justifying partisan pol-
itical obligations more comprehensively.
THE P OSITIONAL DUTIES OF P ARTISANS
The concept of ‘positional’ (sometimes also called ‘institutional’) duties is

often used in the literature on political obligation. Rawls employs the concepts
in A Theory of Justice, where he describes the duties attached to any public
office ‘not as moral duties but as tasks and responsibilities assigned to certain
institutional positions’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 97). Similarly, Simmons defines them
as ‘tasks or performances which are intimately connected with some particular
office, station or role which an individual can fill’ (Simmons 1979, p. 12). Like
Rawls, Simmons highlights that positional duties do not carry any moral
weight in themselves and, therefore, differ from ‘natural duties’, that is,
‘moral requirements which apply to all men irrespective of status or of acts
performed’ (Simmons 1979, p. 13). However, he also points out that depend-
ing on how these positional duties are undertaken, they may acquire moral
force. For example, he argues, a President of the United States (US) who fails
to carry out his positional duties ‘is morally blameworthy because he volun-
tarily entered his position and undertook, in full knowledge of the details of
the situation, to perform the duties of that position’ (Simmons 1979, p. 19). On
the contrary, an ‘army medic [who] was inducted into the service against his
will’ (Simmons 1979, p. 19) will not be blameworthy if he fails to take care of
wounded patients. The voluntary undertaking of positional duties, therefore,
signals the difference between those positional duties that are morally binding
and those that are not.
When it comes to politics, positional duties define the tasks and rules of
conduct involved, for example, in the roles of MP in the United Kingdom
(UK) and congressman in the United States of America (USA), or in those of
policeman and civil servant. Not all positional duties, it should be pointed out,
are legal duties. MPs in the UK, for example, certainly have the legal positional
duty not to take any bribes. Yet they also have, among others, the acknow-
ledged non-legal positional duty to represent all their constituents. This is not
a legal duty, at least in the UK. A British MP, that is, may ignore the claims and
interests of one or more of their constituents without being liable for any legal
consequences. The main and possibly only risk they may incur is defeat at the
next election.
What are then, in liberal democracies, the positional duties of partisans?
First, there are certain ‘legal obligations’ of partisanship, that is, those imposed
by party law. The latter ‘can be derived from the main constitutional texts and
other constitutional law (where such category exists), special party laws, those
laws and regulations that govern elections (electoral laws, campaign regula-
tions), parliamentary organization, political finance, other political activities
(e.g. organizing demonstrations), and/or laws that regulate the activities of
voluntary organizations in a more general sense’ (Müller and Sieberer 2006,
p. 435). The German Law on Political Parties (1967) is perhaps the most
comprehensive example of party law in a western democracy. It provides
detailed regulations on all aspects of party organization and party funding.
Political parties are also mentioned in Article 21 of Germany’s Basic Law (1949).
As Wolfgang Müller and Ulrich Sieberer (2006, p. 438) point out,
however, not all western democracies present the same degree of formal
(e.g. constitutional and legal) recognition and regulation of political parties.
We can therefore place, alongside the legal positional duties of partisan-
ship, those non-legal positional duties of partisanship that do not have legal
or constitutional formal recognition. The latter may often be indistinguish-
able from the former. For example, the idea that parties and partisans
should play by the rules of the game, captured by the commonly invoked
ideas of ‘loyal opposition’ (Rawls 2001, p. 49; see also Waldron 2016) and
‘regulated rivalry’ (Muirhead and Rosenblum 2006, p. 105), is not formal-
ized to the same extent in every polity. Not all polities, that is, have in
place measures analogous to Germany’s Basic Law, which establishes that
‘[p]arties that, by reason of their aims or the behaviour of their adherents,
seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order or to endanger
the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany shall be unconstitutional’
(Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Article 21, cited in Glaessner
2005, p. 188).
However, even within ‘unregulated’ contexts, that is, in the absence of
specific constitutional or legal provisions such as Germany’s Basic Law,
political parties acting within liberal democracies are expected to play by the
rules of the game. Their positional duties, that is, include the duty to promote
partial demands while complying with the basic values, institutions and
procedures for gaining power of the polity in which they operate. It is
normally expected that partisans should not try to obtain power through
violent or undemocratic means and, once in power, should not ban
other parties or impose laws and policies without complying with the
existing decision-making procedures (e.g. parliamentary debate and voting)
(Rosenblum 2008, pp. 414–23). To use Giovanni Sartori’s classic terminology,
as parties are ‘parts-of-a-whole’ (Sartori 1976, p. 25), partisans ought to
eschew both ‘factionalism’ (Sartori 1976, p. 65) and ‘unitarism’ (Sartori
1976, p. 65). The former is the tendency to act like a faction, which is ‘only
a part for itself ’ (Sartori 1976, p. 25) and pursues partial interests unrelated to
the common interest of the political community. The latter, instead, is the
tendency of a party to be ‘englutted by the whole’ (Sartori 1976, p. 65) and
increasingly merge with the state apparatus. In extreme circumstances, uni-
tarism involves ‘denying legitimacy to other parties or even eliminating party
pluralism’ (Bonotti 2011b, pp. 109–10). Partisans, then, ought to balance
partial and holistic tendencies and recognize and respect other parts (i.e.
other parties) within the whole of which they are parts.
But what is the source of the non-legal positional duties of partisans? To
understand this better, it may be useful to refer to some of the literature on the
normative dimensions of partisanship that has developed in political theory in
recent years. Some authors have defended the idea that there is a distinctive
ethics (or ethos) of partisanship, that is, a set of tasks and rules of conduct
which can be ascribed to partisans. For example, Nancy Rosenblum highlights
that partisanship involves a commitment to ‘regulated rivalry’ (Rosenblum
2008, p. 124): partisans’ ‘[acknowledgment of] their partiality, that they do not
and cannot speak for the whole, and that their exercise of power is provisional’
(Rosenblum 2008, p. 124). According to Rosenblum, the partisan ethos
involves inclusiveness and readiness to compromise (Rosenblum 2014), and
can therefore provide a positive contribution to democratic politics. Similarly to
Rosenblum, Russell Muirhead (2006, 2014) has defended an ethics of partisan-
ship and highlighted how ethical partisanship helps to sustain democratic
legitimacy, aggregates diverse interests and opinions, and exhibits a willingness
to compromise and to renounce violent and illegal practices. Rosenblum and
Muirhead’s analyses therefore show how the positional duties of partisans also
include specific rules of conduct. While this partisan ethos is not always
accompanied by corresponding legal constraints, it defines the way in which
partisans are expected to act in liberal democracies.
Yet my aim in the present analysis is to move beyond an appreciation of the
partisan ethos, and to explain and justify what kind of moral duties partisans
have towards their polity and their fellow citizens (including partisans belong-
ing to other parties). Acknowledging that there is an ethos of partisanship is
important for this task. However, this needs to be accompanied by an account
of how that ethos and the legal positional duties of partisans place them under
a moral duty to obey the laws of their polity. This is the problem that I will
address in the next section. For now, however, some additional clarifications
are necessary.
First, even in the absence of laws specifically regulating party politics, many
of the rules of conduct that define the partisan ethos are likely to be reflected
by some other kind of legal provisions. For example, the banning of other
parties may be prohibited by constitutional or non-constitutional laws con-
cerning freedom of association. Similarly, any attempt to obtain power
through terrorist means normally falls under some branch of criminal law,
even in the absence of specific prohibitions addressed to parties. The ‘rules of
the game’ parties should comply with also include this kind of legislation. It
is therefore likely that in most polities the non-legal positional duties of
partisanship, which define the partisan ethos illustrated by Rosenblum and
Muirhead, overlap with certain legal positional duties (not always directly
concerning partisans). Nevertheless, the distinction between the two kinds of
positional duties should be maintained, in order to account for the different
levels of party law codification that can be encountered in different polities.3
Second, the positional duties of partisanship are not collective duties that
apply to parties qua group agents but should be ascribed instead to individ-
ual partisans. This is because being a ‘partisan’ can mean different things
even within the same political party. Indeed Maurice Duverger (1964, p. 61)
highlights the presence of ‘a series of concentric circles of ever-increasing
party solidarity . . . [or] . . . degrees of “participation” ’ including ‘[s]upporters,
adherent, militants, propagandists’. The supporter, for example, ‘declares
his agreement with the doctrines of the party and sometimes lends it
his support but . . . remains outside its organization and the community
it forms . . . [and] . . . is not, properly speaking, a member of the party’
(Duverger 1964, p. 62). Different kinds of partisans are subject to different
kinds of positional duties, depending on their role and the responsibilities
attached to it. Some of these positional duties (e.g. those of a party militant
or a party leader) are more demanding than others (e.g. those of a party
supporter).
Third, partisan positional duties should be distinguished from ‘associative
obligations’ (Dworkin 1986; Horton 2010). The former are non-moral duties
which, as I will explain, only acquire moral force through the ideas of
consent or fair play. The latter, instead, are ‘the special responsibilities social
practice attaches to membership in some biological or social group, like the
3
My distinction partially draws on Simmons’s (1979, p. 16) analogous distinction between
the ‘legal obligations’ and the ‘positional duties of citizenship’, i.e. a broader set of duties that
includes ‘voting in elections, defending the country against invasion, reporting shirkers, and so
on’ (Simmons 1979, p. 16). Only some polities formalize these duties through law (e.g. by
making voting and military service legally compulsory), yet such duties are normally attached
to the role of ‘citizen’, even in the absence of legal obligations to perform these tasks (see also
Horton 2010, p. 14).
responsibilities of family or friends or neighbours’ (Dworkin 1986, p. 196).

The crucial feature of associative obligations, including associative political
obligations, is that their moral import does not stem from voluntary choices
but from membership in a certain group (e.g. one’s family, one’s neighbour-
hood, one’s polity, etc.). While it would be interesting to assess whether
partisans have special associative obligations towards their fellow partisans
(e.g. White and Ypi 2016, ch. 5), the concern of this chapter is to establish
whether partisans have special political obligations, that is, obligations
towards their polity and towards partisans of other parties.
Finally, one might argue that partisan positional duties are not different in
form from those of other office holders. Doctors and soldiers, for example,
have specific duties that arise from their role obligations. This is true. How-
ever, the role obligations of partisans, as defined earlier, also involve the
positional duty (legal or non-legal) to obey the law and, more precisely, to
obey the law in general rather than any specific law or set of laws.
CO NSENT AND PARTISAN P OLITICAL OBLIGATION S
How do the positional duties of partisans, then, acquire moral force? One way
of answering this question is to argue, as Rawls and Simmons do, that
positional duties acquire moral force when individuals voluntarily undertake
them (Rawls 1999a, p. 97). Individuals, that is, acquire an obligation to fulfil
certain positional duties by ‘the giving of express or tacit undertakings’ (Rawls
1999a, p. 97; see also Simmons 1979, p. 19). One example, Rawls claims, is ‘the
political act of running for and (if successful) holding public office in a
constitutional regime. This act gives rise to the obligation to fulfil the duties
of office, and these duties determine the content of the obligation’ (Rawls
1999a, p. 97). This, we have seen, is also Simmons’s argument.
This does not mean, of course, that consent confers moral force to pos-
itional duties under all circumstances. As John Horton highlights, for example,
it is important to take into account ‘broader moral considerations’ (Horton
2010, p. 43), and to acknowledge that ‘[c]onsent cannot normally create an
obligation to do that which is seriously morally wrong’ (Horton 2010, p. 43).
‘Obligatory ties’, Rawls himself claims, ‘presuppose just institutions, or ones
reasonably just in view of the circumstances’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 96). It would be
unpalatable, for example, to ascribe moral weight to ‘[t]he positional duty [of a
leader of the Gestapo] to help exterminate the Jews’ (Simmons 1979, p. 18).
Aware of this issue, here I restrict my analysis to liberal democracies and, for
the sake of argument, I assume both that liberal democracies are reasonably
just and that the positional duties of those occupying public offices and
institutional positions in liberal democratic states do not involve performing

seriously immoral actions.
In line with the view that consent confers moral force to positional duties,
it can therefore be argued that the voluntary decision to enter party politics
is what renders the positional duties of partisanship morally binding and
provides partisans with moral reasons for complying with them. As those
duties, we have seen, include the duty to comply with the law (including but
not limited to legislation specifically concerning parties), then consent pro-
vides a plausible justification for partisan political obligations. To put it in
different words, the ‘internal’ consent to join a party entails an ‘external’ consent
to the laws of the polity and, therefore, a (consent-based) moral duty to obey
those laws.
It should be noted that appealing to consent in order to justify partisan
political obligations does not face the critiques that the consent theory of
political obligation encounters when applied to citizens in general. While it is
true, that is, that few ordinary citizens expressly consent to the state and its
laws, and that the ideas of tacit or hypothetical consent are highly problematic
(e.g. see Simmons 1979), participation in party politics does seem to be an
unquestionably voluntary choice and, therefore, to involve a clear instance of
consent. Yet this presupposes two important conditions. First, parties must be
voluntarily created and maintained, rather than being manufactured and
manipulated by the state. Second, citizens should be allowed to undertake
and relinquish their partisanship. When the state creates parties from the top
down, for example to control civil society or build a controllable opposition
(e.g. see Gel’man 2008; Hale 2006),4 or when citizens are forced (e.g. by the
state) to join one or more parties, then partisanship ceases to be a voluntary
enterprise. This is also the case when the state makes citizens’ ability to use
certain public services or be employed in certain jobs conditional on mem-
bership in a certain party. States that operate in this way also cease to be
‘reasonably just’ and this, we have seen, undermines the moral bindingness of
consent-based political obligations.
This voluntarist account of partisan political obligations, however, raises a
number of significant problems. This is mainly due to the fact that the term
‘partisan’ lacks clarity and often acquires different meanings under different
circumstances. First of all, the idea of ‘partisanship’ varies across national
contexts and should not be reduced to that of ‘party membership’. Certainly in
many polities political parties have formalized membership, involving the
registration of all members on party lists and the payment of membership
4
Gel’man especially highlights how ‘[p]ost-communist Russia exhibited a strong record of
active involvement of top executive officials not only in the building of dominant parties but also
in the building of loyal or fake alternatives to them’ (Gel’man 2008, p. 922).
fees. Yet in the USA, to use one example, ‘political parties do not have formal
memberships, but do have party activists’ (Heidar 2006, p. 301).
Furthermore, even the notion of ‘party membership’ may have different
meanings, often even within the same polity. For example, a distinction exists
between individual membership, ‘when an individual signs up with the party’
(Heidar 2006, p. 302), and collective membership, ‘when an organization that
is not formally of the party [e.g. a trade union] enlists all or some of its
members to the party’ (Heidar 2006, p. 303). The problem with collective
membership is that ‘it involves no true political enrolment and no personal
pledge to the party’ (Duverger 1964, p. 65). In this sense, it removes the
voluntarist traits normally assigned to the idea of party membership and,
consequently, it defies the idea of partisan political obligations grounded in
voluntarily undertaken partisan positional duties. In some way, the citizen
who joins a political party through collective membership is similar to the
conscripted army medic in Simmons’s aforementioned example, and therefore
cannot be said to acquire a moral obligation to fulfil their positional duties,
including the duty to obey the law. Finally, as I explained earlier, partisanship
can mean different things even within the same party, as it may refer to formal
members, supporters, activists, and other categories of partisans, and not all
these forms of partisanship seem to involve a clear voluntary decision to
undertake the positional duties of partisanship.
The variety of meanings of the notion of partisanship across countries,
within countries and often within the same party raises some difficulties for
the voluntarist account of partisan political obligations. Some partisans, we
have seen, are enlisted to a party through collective membership, that is, with
‘no personal pledge to the party’ (Duverger 1964, p. 65). Others may support a
party and declare that they identify with it while deciding not to become actual
party members. It is quite difficult to argue that these kinds of partisans have
voluntarily undertaken the positional duties of partisanship. This leaves us
therefore with an account of partisan political obligations which only applies
to a limited number of partisans, for example those who have formally joined a
party and voluntarily accepted the positional duties attached to their mem-
bership. This, however, does not fully capture the deeper implications of
partisanship. In the next section I will therefore adopt a different perspective
and focus on the benefits that participation in party politics produces for all
kinds of partisans. The enjoyment of those benefits, I will argue, generates
special political obligations for partisans, on the basis of the principle of fair
play (or fairness). While not replacing the consent argument, I will claim, this
principle offers an additional and more comprehensive source of partisan
political obligations which, under certain background conditions, applies to
all partisans regardless of whether, and to what extent, they have voluntarily
decided to engage in party politics.
PARTISANSHIP, FAIR PLAY, AND POLITICAL

OBLIGATION
Alongside the idea that positional duties acquire moral force on the basis of
voluntary consent, Rawls also defends the view that we have a moral obliga-
tion to fulfil those duties when it is fair to do so (Rawls 1999a, p. 97).
According to the fair play theory of political obligation, ‘when a number of
persons engage in a mutually advantageous cooperative venture according to
rules, and thus restrict their liberty in ways necessary to yield advantages for
all, those who have submitted to these restrictions have a right to a similar
acquiescence on the part of those who have benefited from their submission’
(Rawls 1999a, p. 96; see also Hart 1955 and Klosko 1992). In order to show
how this account of political obligation applies to parties and partisans, it is
necessary to examine its core points.
First of all, for a cooperative scheme to generate fair play obligations, the
scheme must be ‘mutually advantageous’, that is, it must produce benefits for
all participants. Do partisans, then, enjoy special benefits qua partisans? It
seems that they do. In liberal democracies, at least, partisans normally enjoy
certain privileges and benefits that are not enjoyed by ordinary citizens or by
members of non-partisan associations. These include ‘electing party officials,
nominating candidates for public office, debating policies, and participating in
decision-making and in social events’ (Heidar 2006, p. 301). They often also
include parties’ receipt of state funding and tax benefits (and the resulting
organizational advantages that parties may enjoy over other associations),
privileged or free access to public media, privileged or free use of public
buildings/public spaces, and free mailing (Nassmacher 2006). Altogether,
these special benefits and privileges provide partisans with a special influence
upon public opinion and decision-making.
However, a second core feature of the fair play theory of political obligation
is that it only applies when individuals are engaged in a ‘cooperative venture’
or ‘joint enterprise’ (Hart 1955). In what sense, than, is partisanship, that is,
participation in party politics, a ‘cooperative venture’? John Horton asks, for
example, whether ‘two teams playing football against each other . . . [o]r . . . two
firms in a competitive market . . . [are] . . . engaged in a system of social cooper-
ation’ (Horton 2010, p. 90). He then highlights that ‘there is a distinction
between participating in a socially constructed practice, which may be said
to involve cooperation only in a rather technical and attenuated form, and
engaging collaboratively in a common endeavour for mutual benefit’
(Horton 2010, p. 91).
At first glance, contest between political parties does not seem too much
different from competition between teams in a football game. Yet party
politics involves much more than competition for its own sake. Despite their
competing claims, for example, parties as we understand them (at least in

liberal democracies) are normally engaged in the joint task of organizing
societal demands into broad and coherent political platforms (Rosenblum
2000, pp. 825–6; see also Bonotti 2011a, p. 21), and in ensuring that the latter
are subject to democratic decision-making (e.g. through elections) and, when
successful, translated into government policies.
Furthermore, parties as we understand them do not merely aim to win a
context for its own sake (like teams in a football game or firms in the market) but
in order to legitimize their ambition to implement their political platform and to
promote the common good. As Rosenblum points out, ‘entry into electoral
politics signals a minimal effort to cast goals in terms that apply beyond
themselves, to argue that what is good for the group is also a public good’
(Rosenblum 2003, p. 41). Similarly, Rawls himself highlights that ‘to gain
enough support to win office . . . [parties] must advance some conception of
the public good’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 195) rather than act like ‘mere interest groups
petitioning the government on their own behalf ’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 195).5
It is, however, a third feature of the fairness theory of political obligation
that can help us to understand more clearly the cooperative character of party
politics as well as the nature of the political obligations that it generates. This
is the view that a cooperative scheme involves rules that allow it to function
and that by obeying those rules participants restrict their liberty and acquire a
right to compliance by all other participants (who enjoy the benefits of the
scheme). The rules and constraints that allow party politics to function are set
by the positional duties of partisanship that I have illustrated earlier. They
include, that is, legal and non-legal duties, both general and specific to parties,
as well as the rules of conduct that characterize the partisan ethos. It is by
complying with such positional duties, and thus restraining their liberty, that
partisans make it possible for the abovementioned benefits of party politics
to be produced and sustained.6 This reciprocal willingness to restrict one’s
liberty, more than any other feature, is therefore what renders party politics a
cooperative venture. Furthermore, and crucially, it is the acceptance of
restrictions (i.e. of the positional duties of partisanship) by partisans of all
parties, rather than the actual production of benefits by the state that is
5
I will return to this point when I discuss the relationship between parties and public reason
in Chapter 6.
6
It should be noted, however, that partisans do not have political obligations only when their
compliance with the rules and constraints of partisanship is necessary for the latter to function,
i.e. for its benefits to exist and remain in place. Indeed it may often be the case that non-
compliance by one or a few partisan free riders does not undermine in practice this joint
enterprise. Yet, as Richard Dagger rightly points out, free riders act unfairly regardless of whether
they undermine or not a joint enterprise, because ‘[b]y according themselves this special
treatment and by exploiting the cooperation of others, they betray a lack of respect for other
persons. They are, in Kantian terms, using others as means to their own ends when they should
be treating them as ends in themselves’ (Dagger 1997, p. 71).
rendered possible by those restrictions, that generates corresponding partisan

political obligations for all partisans. This is because ‘those who have submit-
ted to these restrictions [i.e. other partisans, not the state] have a right to a
similar acquiescence on the part of those who have benefited from their
submission’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 96).
Partisans’ fair play political obligations are therefore due to other partisans
(including partisans of other parties) and not to the state, even though
fulfilling those obligations involves complying with the positional duties of
partisanship which, we have seen, include the duty to restrict one’s liberty, that
is, to respect the laws of the state. As H. L. A. Hart highlights, ‘[t]he rules [of a
joint enterprise—in this case, of participation in party politics] may provide
that officials should have authority to enforce obedience and make further
rules, and this will create a structure of legal rights and duties, but the moral
obligation to obey the rules in such circumstances is due to the co-operating
members of the society [in this case, to other partisans], and they have the
correlative moral right to obedience’ (Hart 1955, p. 185, original emphasis).
This is what renders the obligations of partisans towards other partisans
(including partisans of other parties) special political obligations.7
Finally, it should be noted that the benefits of partisanship are greater for
those partisans (e.g. candidates, militants, formal members, etc.) who enjoy
special advantages due to their position within society (e.g. greater public
visibility, greater influence upon decision-making, etc.). This generates stron-
ger partisan political obligations for them. As Rawls (1999a, pp. 302–3)
highlights, ‘the better-placed members of society are more likely than others
to have political obligations . . . [f]or by and large it is these persons who are
best able to gain political office and to take advantage of the opportunities
offered by the constitutional system’. As well as providing the rationale for
applying the fair play account of political obligation only to partisans (and to
those who ‘hold office’), rather than to citizens in general, Rawls’s claim
therefore also justifies ascribing stronger political obligations to those par-
tisans who enjoy greater benefits than others as a result of their participation
in party politics. For example, a party leader who enjoys high political
visibility and strong influence upon decision-making (e.g. by being close to
elected MPs or being an MP herself) certainly derives greater benefits from
7
This is not to deny that partisans may also have obligations towards their fellow partisans,
i.e. partisans of their own party. These may be fair play obligations that arise from the enjoyment
of specific benefits that partisans receive from their own party, or consent-based obligations that
arise from the fact that by joining a party citizens sign up to any obligations membership entails
(as long as their choice is fully free and voluntary). Such obligations are only due to one’s fellow
partisans and may be fulfilled, for example, by paying one’s membership fees or contributing to
the party’s activities (e.g. the organization of electoral campaigns or party conferences). While
interesting, these are not political obligations and therefore are beyond the scope of this chapter.
For a discussion of partisan associative obligations, see White and Ypi (2016, ch. 5).
her participation in party politics than a party activist. Consequently, she has
stronger (i.e. more intense) fair play partisan political obligations than the
latter (Rawls 1999a, pp. 302–3).
This does not mean, however, that those partisans who enjoy lesser benefits
(e.g. supporters, activists, etc.) have weaker partisan political obligations
overall. Their fair play political obligations may be weaker but, in most
cases, these partisans will also have a moral obligation to comply with the
positional duties of partisanship based on their voluntary decision to engage in
party politics (when that voluntary decision can be ascertained). Consent and
fair play, that is, are mutually reinforcing (rather than mutually exclusive)
sources of partisan political obligations. In fact, Rawls even traces the idea of
consent back to the principle of fair play, by arguing that ‘by making a promise
one invokes a social practice and accepts the benefits that it makes possible’
(Rawls 1999a, p. 304). This, Rawls argues, implies that ‘[h]aving, then, availed
ourselves of the practice for this reason, we are under an obligation to do as we
promised by the principle of fairness’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 305). Yet it is not
necessary, for the purpose of the present analysis, to examine Rawls’s claim.
Regardless of whether consent acquires moral force on the basis of the
principle of fair play or not, it still provides a strong and plausible justification
for partisan political obligations, when the conditions for giving and with-
drawing consent are present. The principle of fairness simply provides an
additional and more comprehensive justification for partisan political obliga-
tions, and reinforces partisans’ duty to obey the law qua partisans.
The fair play theory of political obligation, however, has famously encoun-
tered several critiques. Some authors, for example, have argued that the link
between receipt of benefits and political obligation is unwarranted and that a
moral duty to obey the law only arises if those benefits have been voluntarily
accepted (Nozick 1974; Simmons 1979, p. 129). Others have highlighted, along
similar lines, that many public goods (e.g. public order, national defence, etc.)
are non-excludable (i.e. the state cannot prevent citizens from enjoying them)
and therefore do not allow scope for the acceptance (rather than mere receipt)
of benefits that is required in order for fair play political obligations to arise
(Miller and Sartorius 1979, p. 166). Other authors, however, have contested
this point and argued that the voluntary acceptance of the benefits enjoyed is
not necessary for fair play political obligations to arise (e.g. see Arneson 1982;
Klosko 1992, pp. 39–57; Klosko 2005, pp. 5–7; ). Regardless of the strength of
these responses, which I do not have the space to assess here, those critiques do
not affect the fair play argument when applied to parties and partisanship.
This is because the benefits of partisanship, unlike many of the benefits of
ordinary citizenship and residency (e.g. national defence, public order, etc.),
are essentially excludable goods, that is, they can be rejected by those who
enjoy them. At least in liberal democracies, that is, citizens have the freedom
not to formally join or informally support a party. If that freedom is not
available, it ought to be provided and guaranteed (and this can be done fairly
easily in practical and legal terms).
This is especially important, for example, in the case of collective party
membership, that is, when some citizens (e.g. members of a trade union) are
collectively enlisted to a political party. Should these citizens not have the legal
right to withdraw from party membership, it would be difficult to argue that
the benefits they enjoy as a result of that membership place them under special
partisan political obligations. Similarly, in liberal democracies citizens nor-
mally have the freedom to run for political office as independents, rather than
party candidates. However, sometimes that option is not available,8 and it is
therefore questionable whether all those who have decided to run for office as
party candidates have the freedom to reject the benefits of partisanship, if
partisanship was the only way for them to run for office and try to legally
influence political decision-making. These are potential problems which,
however, can be resolved through legal and institutional measures, that is,
by ‘identifying reasonable and realistic means of rejecting the benefits’
(Horton 2010, p. 94). Once these means are in place (e.g. once individuals
are free to withdraw from collective party membership, or candidates are free
to run as independents),9 if citizens decide to engage in politics qua partisans
they acquire partisan political obligations.
CO NCLUSION
In this chapter I have argued that partisans, that is, citizens who decide to
participate in politics via political parties, have special political obligations,
that is, special moral duties to obey the laws of their state. I have claimed that
such duties can be justified by appealing both to the idea of consent and to the
idea of fair play, but that the latter offers more comprehensive foundations for
an account of partisan political obligations. For this reason, from now on-
wards, and especially in Chapter 2, I will especially focus on the fair play
argument for partisan political obligations. However, in the meantime I would
like to conclude my analysis with some clarifications.
8
This is the case, for example, in Mexico where independent candidates are not allowed to
partake in elections (e.g. see Langston 2007, p. 246).
9
It should be noted here that the option of voting for (or running as) independent candidates
should not only be legally allowed but also rendered effective by the state. In other words, voters
(and candidates running for office) should not face the choice between benefiting from the
influential power of party politics and risking political marginalization by voting for (or running
as) independent candidates. Specific reforms to address these problems may greatly depend on
the distinctive features of (and may therefore vary between) different polities.
First, partisan political obligations apply to all partisans, including both

winners and losers. This also implies that a partisan whose party loses an
election acquires a fair play partisan political obligation to obey the govern-
ment (led by the party she opposes), as long as she had the freedom not to
support or to be associated with any party. Second, legislators who are in the
minority (or opposition) have an obligation (a fair play obligation generated
by participation in the system of party competition) to obey the law and play
by the rules of the political game. This does not imply that they must always
(or ever) cooperate with the government. Opposition can be (and normally
is) carried out while obeying the laws of the state. My argument is that law-
abiding opposition is morally obligatory based on the idea of fair play, as
long as a fair institutional framework is in place (when it is not, fair play
partisan political obligations may be weaker or absent, as I will explain in
Chapter 2).
Third, as a consequence of the previous point, there is no tension between
partisan political obligations and partisans’ obligations towards their fellow
partisans (generated by party membership). The latter obligations may demand
a duty to oppose the government (and the question of whether such opposition
is dictated by the actual defectiveness of government measures is not, I think, a
crucial one for my argument), but this is consistent with a duty to oppose the
government within the rules of the game and to obey the law in general (while
aiming to change some specific laws and policies).
Fourth, there is nothing problematic in the idea that legislators may have an
obligation to do anything but what would be best for their party at the next
election. I am not interested in the obligations that partisans may have towards
their party (including the obligation to strengthen public support for their
party, endeavour to realize its goals, etc.).10 The important point, for my
analysis, is that if partisans do have such obligations (and I think that it is
plausible to argue that they do), or simply act as if they had such obligations,
they should endeavour to fulfil them while obeying the law and respecting the
rules of the political game.
Fifth, it should be noted that while all partisans have fair play political
obligations (when a fair institutional framework is in place), many partisans
also have consent-based political obligations, that is, a moral duty to comply
with the positional duties of partisanship (which include compliance with the
law) based on their voluntary decision to engage in party politics. Even though
I have argued that a consent-based account of partisan political obligations
presents some limits, I have also claimed that it is still a plausible one, and that
the consent and fair play arguments for partisan political obligations should be
seen as mutually reinforcing, rather than mutually exclusive.
10
For an analysis of this aspect, see White and Ypi (2016, ch.5).
Finally, one might ask what it actually means for partisans to have add-
itional or stronger political obligations than other citizens. After all, one either
obeys or does not obey the law, and it is not clear how this dichotomy may be
consistent with the idea that we can have a stronger or lesser duty to obey the
law, that is, that political obligation is a matter of degree. In answer to this
question, it can be argued that having special political obligations means
having a more intense and continuous moral duty to obey the law, that is, a
duty that does not allow downtimes or hesitancy. A commitment to obeying
the law and to playing by the rules of the game, we have seen, is central to the
positional duties of partisanship, and this is especially important when par-
tisans experience conflicting obligations. It is therefore to the latter problem
that my analysis will turn in Chapter 2.
2
Partisanship and Conflicting Obligations
To start a book on political parties and Rawls’s political liberalism with an

analysis of the problem of political obligation is hardly a self-explanatory choice.
Rawls’s contribution to the literature on political obligation is certainly import-
ant, yet it is not usually considered central to his work, especially to his Political
Liberalism (Rawls 2005a). In this chapter I therefore intend to clarify the
rationale for this choice by showing that there is an important connection, within
Rawls’s political liberalism, between the problem of political obligation, on the
one hand, and the problems of political legitimacy and public justification, on the
other hand. Since the latter will be central to my discussion of public reason in
the remainder of the book, it is important to explain why the former also plays a
crucial role in my analysis.
In order to understand the importance of political obligation for political
liberalism we should observe that one of the main problems increasingly
affecting contemporary liberal democracies is the presence of citizens who
may experience conflicting moral obligations. As these societies become more
internally diverse, that is, many citizens find it increasingly difficult to recon-
cile any political obligations they may have with their moral duty to remain
loyal to the norms and values of their non-political comprehensive doctrines
and conceptions of the good. Some citizens, for example, may have strong
obligations towards their culture, involving ‘loyalty to a way of life including
its values, ideals, systems of meaning and significance, and moral and spiritual
sensibilities’ (Parekh 2006, p. 159; see also Parekh 1993). These obligations
may often supersede, for them, their moral duty to comply with the laws of
their polity when conflicts arise.
Especially significant, in the context of contemporary western liberal dem-
ocracies, are the problems raised by the presence of diverse religious groups
whose members may feel that their religious obligations often have moral
priority over any political obligations they may have towards the polity they
live in. Religious obligations may have different sources. Robert Audi, for
example, traces these obligations back to ‘(1) scripture; (2) non-scriptural
religious authority, especially that of the clergy . . . ; (3) tradition . . . ; (4)
religious experience; and (5) natural theology’ (Audi 1997, p. 10). There is
Partisanship and Conflicting Obligations 23
no space, within the scope of this chapter, to analyse each of these sources or to
investigate whether religious obligations may have other sources too. What
must be observed, however, is that many state laws often impose upon
religious citizens certain requirements that clearly conflict with some of their
religious obligations. These may include, for example, laws concerning work
uniforms, inheritance law, freedom of speech, and animal slaughtering.
The potential conflict between political and religious obligations, however,
may be even more systematic. In his analysis of Islamic law, for example,
Andrew March highlights how ‘the shari‘a purpose (maqsad) of “preserving
religion” (hifz al-din)’ (March 2011, p. 38) may involve certain moral duties
such as:
Ensuring access to knowledge of Islam, perpetuating religiosity across generations,
the construction of the religious institutions of a Muslim civil society (mosques,
publishing houses, centers of research, seminaries, lobbying groups), minimizing
social costs for living a Muslim life and for converting into Islam, enlarging the
ranks of Muslim communities, and Islamizing presently non-Muslim states and
societies. (March 2011, pp. 43–4)
As John Horton (2011) highlights, when the conflict between some citizens’
political and non-political obligations only concerns specific laws and pol-
icies, it can possibly be dealt with by exempting those citizens from specific
laws. There is, indeed, a growing body of literature on the legal accommo-
dation of religious and cultural minorities in contemporary legal and polit-
ical theory (e.g. Jones 1994; 2012, Bou-Habib 2006; Quong 2006; Shorten
2010; Ceva 2011; Mahoney 2011; Leiter 2013). Yet when that conflict is more
systematic, for example when some citizens aim to comply with the kind of
comprehensive religious framework illustrated by March, it may be more
difficult for accommodation to be feasible and this can potentially lead to a
deeply divided society.
In this chapter I will therefore argue that under certain conditions
participation in politics through political parties can contribute to signifi-
cantly reducing the tension between conflicting obligations experienced by
many citizens, both from a normative and from an empirical point of view.
More specifically, I will argue that when party politics is a fair scheme of
cooperation, the participation of these citizens (and citizens in general) in
politics through political parties produces two desirable outcomes for
liberal democracies. First, it relaxes the tension between these citizens’
political and non-political obligations, by allowing them to have a greater
influence upon political decision-making, and therefore to shape laws and
policies in a way that is more responsive to their interests and values.
Second, it provides them with a motivation to comply with the laws of their
political community, thus enhancing the stability of the polity in which
they operate.
FAIR PLAY POLITICAL OBLIGATIONS

AND UNJUST REGIMES
One of the crucial stipulations of the fair play theory of political obligation
examined in Chapter 1 is that participation in a scheme of cooperation only
generates fair play obligations when the scheme itself is just, or ‘at least as just
as it is reasonable to expect under the circumstances’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 302).1
This implies that under certain circumstances the fair play political obligations
of partisans simply do not arise. These circumstances concern ‘the moral
status of the scheme’s purposes’ (Simmons 1979, p. 110) and ‘the distribution
[of benefits] within the scheme’ (Simmons 1979, p. 110). The former situation
applies when a political system’s ‘purposes are immoral or . . . promote
immoral ends’ (Simmons 1979, p. 110) even if all its citizens receive a fair
share of the benefits produced by the scheme. For example, a state that distributes
its goods fairly to its citizens but constantly engages in aggressive warfare against
other countries and/or treats those countries’ citizens as slaves cannot expect its
own citizens to have a fair play moral obligation to obey its laws.2
It is difficult, however, to imagine a polity in which the pursuit of immoral
ends coexists with the fair distribution of benefits among its citizens. In most
cases, the pursuit of immoral ends is accompanied by (and often consists of)
an excessively unfair distribution of benefits and burdens across society.
It may be difficult to establish precisely when this distribution becomes
excessively unfair and unjust. However, as a minimum, political obligations
grounded in the principle of fairness do not arise for citizens operating under
authoritarian regimes, regimes that discriminate against certain racial, ethnic,
or religious groups and, more generally, regimes displaying ‘flagrant disregard
of . . . fair political procedures and their attendant rights, or . . . a minimal level
of fair distribution of other important burdens and benefits’ (Klosko 1992,
pp. 120–1; see also Rawls 1999a, p. 96). As Simmons points out, ‘[o]nly
political communities which at least appear to be reasonably democratic will
1
It should be noted that this condition also applies to the consent theory of political
obligation. As Rawls himself argues, ‘[a]cquiescence in, or even consent to, clearly unjust
institutions does not give rise to obligations’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 302). However, for simplicity’s
sake in this chapter I mainly focus on this condition in relation to the fair play theory of political
obligation which, I have argued, offers a more comprehensive rationale for justifying partisan
political obligations.
2
Not all accounts of political obligation include this stipulation. For example, Margaret
Gilbert argues that a ‘plural subject theory of political obligation’ (Gilbert 2014, p. 405),
grounded in the idea of ‘joint commitment’, demands that one obeys the laws of their country
even if these are morally bad. ‘People form joint commitments’, Gilbert argues, ‘by expressing to
one another their readiness jointly to commit one another in the relevant way’ (Gilbert 2014,
p. 398). As a result, ‘[p]olitical obligations of joint commitment . . . appear to have the following
strong kind of content-independence: they are grounded in something independent of the
content of the institutions in question, and they hold irrespective of that content. They hold as
long as the joint commitment that grounds them lasts—and no longer’ (Gilbert 2014, p. 406).
be candidates for a “fair play account” to begin with. For only where we can see
the political workings of the society as a voluntary, cooperative venture will the
principle apply’ (Simmons 1979, 137). It is important to stress that the absence
of democratic institutions implies that ‘no citizens have political obligations’
(Simmons 1979, p. 137), that is, not even those who receive significant benefits
from the (unfair) scheme of cooperation.
Furthermore, even in the presence of democratic institutions, the distribu-
tion of benefits across society may be excessively unfair when a majority uses
fully democratic procedures to implement measures that discriminate against
a minority, on the basis of the morally untenable principle that ‘the majority
gets everything and the minority gets nothing’ (Klosko 1992, p. 72). As Rawls
rightly points out, it is an inevitable feature of diverse liberal democracies that
all citizens need to endure at some point laws which they consider unjust.
However, for this situation to be morally and politically justifiable, ‘in the long
run the burdens of injustice should be more or less evenly distributed over
different groups in society, and the hardship of unjust policies should not
weigh too heavily in any particular case. Therefore the duty to comply is
problematic for permanent minorities that suffered from injustice for many
years’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 312). However, I would argue that under these cir-
cumstances, as in the case of clearly undemocratic regimes, all citizens (i.e. not
only members of permanently disadvantaged minorities) are relieved of any
fair play political obligations.
When applied to party politics, these considerations imply that partisans
operating under an excessively unjust (e.g. authoritarian) regime do not have a
fair play moral duty to obey the law, even if they enjoy some of the benefits of
partisanship. In fact, they may have a moral duty to oppose and change the
unjust regime (Simmons 1979, pp. 113–14). For example, partisans associated
with the African National Congress (ANC) operating in apartheid South
Africa until 1960 (the year the ANC was banned) had a moral duty to oppose
and change the unjust political system in which they operated. This relieved
them of any fair play political obligations that they might have had based on
their (limited) enjoyment of the benefits of partisanship. Similarly, partisans
associated with any of the (non-Fascist) political parties operating under the
Fascist regime in Italy (until they were banned in 1926) had a moral duty to
oppose the authoritarian Fascist regime, regardless of whether they were
enjoying any benefits qua partisans. In fact, in these and similar cases all
partisans (including those associated with the privileged party or parties) are
relieved of any fair play political obligations since the latter, we have seen,
simply do not arise in unjust regimes.
In most cases, it is true, autocratic regimes may in fact prevent the forma-
tion and existence of political parties, or at least of parties alternative to the
ruling one. Clear examples of one-party regimes are the Soviet Union, Nazi
Germany, and Fascist Italy. Regimes with no parties include instead ‘partyless
and . . . pre-party states . . . and . . . antiparty states, that is, the regimes that have
suppressed pre-existing parties, take an antiparty stand, or profess an antiparty
doctrine’ (Sartori 1976, p. 40, original emphasis). Scholars have also highlighted
the increasing presence of ‘competitive authoritarian regimes . . . [i.e.] . . . civilian
regimes in which formal democratic institutions exist and are widely viewed as
the primary means of gaining power, but in which incumbents’ abuse of the
state places them at a significant advantage vis-à-vis their opponents’ (Levitsky
and Way 2010, p. 5). These regimes allow the presence of a plurality of parties
but they may often also be excessively unjust, due to their authoritarian stance.
In such cases, even if partisans in these polities do enjoy some of the benefits of
party politics, they are not under any fair play obligations to comply with the
political system and may in fact have a moral duty to counter the existing
regime. Partisan political obligations are therefore binding within the limits of
what can be considered sufficiently just regimes. These include but need not be
limited to liberal democratic regimes.3
PARTISAN P OLITICA L OBLIGATIONS AND U NFAIR

SCHEMES OF COOPERATION
According to the analysis conducted in the previous section, partisan fair play
political obligations do not arise when partisans operate under excessively
unjust regimes, that is, regimes that pursue immoral goals or in which the
benefits and burdens of partisanship are distributed excessively unfairly.
I have already emphasized that it is difficult to establish precisely where the
threshold of excessive injustice lies. Yet I assume here, for the sake of
argument, that while authoritarian regimes clearly pass that threshold, liberal
democratic regimes are sufficiently just, that is, they do not pursue immoral
goals, do not discriminate against racial, religious, or ethnic minorities, and
do not normally reach excessive levels of injustice. This, I would like to
remark once again, does not imply that liberal democracies are the only
sufficiently just regimes.
Yet even in liberal democratic polities the specific benefits of partisanship
are often distributed rather unfairly among partisans (though, by stipulation,
not excessively unfairly). This does not entail that fair play partisan political
3
What I have in mind here is something similar to what Rawls calls ‘decent’ societies (Rawls
1999b), which he distinguishes from ‘liberal’ societies. Rawls’s aim, through that distinction, is to
establish the limits of international toleration. My aim here, instead, is to highlight that fair play
partisan political obligations can only be binding within polities that do not exceed a certain level
of injustice. These polities are not limited to liberal democracies, and may also include some
decent non-liberal societies.
obligations do not arise (e.g. as in the case of unjust regimes) but it places those
partisans who enjoy an unfairly low share of those benefits under weaker
political obligations. As Simmons points out, if a scheme of cooperation is not
so unjust that it supersedes entirely the duty of fair play, ‘one who is allocated a
very small share of the benefits is bound to carry a small share of the burdens’
(Simmons 1979, p. 113). How does this problem, then, apply to partisans
operating within liberal democracies?
First of all, the ability of partisans (members, supporters, activists, etc.) to
influence decision-making through parties may often be limited. This is the
case, for example, when the internal organization of a party is not sufficiently
democratic and the selection of programmes, policies, and candidates is
constantly made by an oligarchic elite of party members, without much
input from other partisans (Singer 1973, p. 119). These problems could be
avoided by requiring political parties to be more internally democratic. Indeed
some scholars have argued that intra-party democracy helps party members’
participation and control over elected party officials (Katz 2006, pp. 35–6).
Some have also emphasized that it provides an important link between the
public political realm and civil society (Heidar 2006, p. 311). The standard
models of intra-party democracy focus on either candidate selection or citizens’
direct participation, although a third deliberative model is becoming increas-
ingly prominent in the literature (Wolkenstein 2016; Invernizzi-Accetti and
Wolkenstein 2017). However, other authors have argued that limited internal
democracy is necessary for parties’ electoral success (Uslaner 2006, p. 383;
Rosenblum 2008, pp. 269–70). Moreover, some authors have pointed
out that limited internal democracy enhances a party’s external unity
(Schattschneider 1942, p. 60; Downs 1957, p. 25).4 In summary, excessive
intra-party democracy may sometimes be controversial for some scholars.
However, very few scholars would contest intra-party democracy tout court.
Alongside democracy within parties, what renders party politics a fair
system of cooperation is also democracy and competition between parties,
and the reasonable opportunity for dissidents to exit a party and form a new
one in order to exercise their political influence. Yet some citizens (or groups
of citizens) may often be unable to influence government policies due to
‘violence, intimidation, or law’ (Dahl 2006, p. 138; see also Singer 1973,
pp. 123–4). This problem is especially evident when considering party politics.
It is certainly true that certain groups of citizens may deliberately decide not to
participate in party politics to influence government decisions. However, in
many circumstances that decision may be prompted by the legal prohibition
or banning of parties that channel specific societal demands. Setting aside
instances of violence or intimidation, which are not consistent with a liberal
4
For a critique of this argument, see Budge (1996, p. 129).
democratic framework, it may be more useful to consider those cases in which

the law prevents the formation of certain political parties.
In Turkey, for example, the 1982 Constitution forbids the formation of
political parties grounded in ethnic, religious, regional, or class identities
(Kubicek 2002, p. 764; see also Rosenblum 2008, p. 418). Driven by a strong
conception of secularism, Turkey’s Kemalist establishment has been especially
keen, throughout most of the country’s republican history, to guarantee the
protection of religious freedom only ‘as long as and insofar as it was not utilized
to promote any social or political ideology having institutional implications’
(Berkes 1964, p. 499). As a consequence, one of the main challenges faced by
the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma
Partisi—AKP) has been that of balancing the call for a political system more
open to societal (e.g. religious) demands and the need to operate within a
strictly secular regime (Yavuz 2003, p. 257, 2009, p. 98; Kuru 2009, p. 179).
Party politics conducted under political institutions which prevent certain
citizens from participating in politics through political parties that reflect
their values and conceptions of the good is clearly an unfair system of
cooperation, even when those citizens are free to support or join other
kinds of parties. One might rightly argue that when these restrictions are
too strong the system is excessively unjust and therefore partisans are under
no fair play political obligations. Indeed, legal or institutional measures that
openly discriminate against specific parties are certainly more common in
authoritarian regimes than in liberal democracies and, for the abovemen-
tioned reasons, many would argue that Turkey cannot yet be considered a
fully liberal democratic polity.
However, even within liberal democratic polities which do not forbid
political parties that channel specific values and identities, some partisans
may be systematically excluded from government or given limited influence
upon decision-making due to socio-economic, legal, or institutional factors.
The UK’s first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system, for example, may dis-
courage many citizens from voting for a certain party or from voting at all (e.g.
in those constituencies where they realize that their vote will not affect the
electoral outcome) and indeed has been identified as one of the causes of voter
apathy among the British electorate (Gladdish 2006, p. 113). The distribution
of the benefits of party politics is certainly fairer under a scheme of cooper-
ation in which all parties and partisans (and, indirectly, all citizens, including
members of minorities) have a fair degree of influence upon decision-making
(proportionate to each party’s support within society).5
Furthermore, and as a consequence of the previous point, the political
institutions of a polity may often not guarantee a sufficient range of alternative
5
For a similar argument, concerning pressure groups rather than parties, see Singer (1973,
pp. 123–4).
electoral choices. In such cases, ‘voters are limited to a choice between two or
three major parties . . . [and therefore] . . . views not represented are unfairly
excluded’ (Singer 1973, p. 117). This problem becomes even more evident
when the available partisan alternatives in electoral contexts do not present
significant differences from an ideological or programmatic point of view.6
Party politics therefore is not a fair system of cooperation when the political
institutions under which it is conducted do not encourage the presence of a
sufficient number of political parties citizens can choose from, and through
which they can have their demands enhanced and channelled into the
political realm.7
INCREASING THE F AIRNESS OF P ARTY POLITICS
What measures, then, should liberal democratic polities implement in order to

reform their political institutions, increase the fairness of party politics, and
thus provide the background conditions based on which fair play partisan
political obligations can be stronger? First, they ought to guarantee the basic
rights and freedoms (e.g. freedom of association, freedom of speech, etc.)
which enable citizens and groups to create, sustain, disband, and abandon
political parties, according to their voluntary choices. Second, they ought to
provide fair decision-making procedures, that is, ‘democratic [procedures],
granting each individual the right to have his or her opinion considered’
(Klosko 1992, p. 65). Third, they ought to provide political parties with public
funding in order to render the exercise of those rights and liberties effective.
Public funding of parties is necessary in order to both safeguard parties from
factional interests (e.g. those of business groups) and, as Rawls argues, to avoid
that ‘the less favoured members of society, having been effectively prevented
by their lack of means from exercising their fair degree of influence, withdraw
into apathy and resentment’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 198). Public funding of parties
should also be accompanied by some form of ‘financial fair play’, preventing
parties from receiving excessive amounts of money from private donors
(e.g. businesses, corporations, etc.), thus placing them on a level playing field.
Fourth, liberal democratic polities ought to provide an institutional frame-
work which does not discourage citizens or groups from forming, joining,
6
Singer mentions, for example, the 1968 Presidential elections in the United States when both
Republicans and Democrats endorsed the continuation of the Vietnam War (Singer 1973,
p. 120).
7
For a comprehensive critique of FPTP, see Christiano (1996, ch. 6). I will return to this topic
in Chapter 7.
supporting, or voting for certain political parties and which provides citizens
with a sufficiently diversified political offer. Appropriate measures should be
adopted in order to ensure that all citizens have a fair and effective oppor-
tunity to participate in party politics and to affect decision-making qua
partisans, thus increasing the fairness of the scheme of cooperation in
which partisans participate and providing the background conditions for
their fair play political obligations. This involves fostering democracy both
within and between parties.
With regard to the former, greater citizen participation and deliberation
within parties should be allowed and encouraged, while respecting parties’
freedom of association (and their interest in being able to win elections,
which often demands political cohesiveness). With regard to the latter,
electoral systems and electoral districts should be designed in a way that
encourages the formation of a multi-party system, which may enable a
greater number of citizens to participate in politics through parties whose
platforms reflect and advance their diverse views and values. This can also
offer a greater number of political alternatives to voters. Indeed proportional
representation (PR), for example, contributes to producing a multi-party
system (Duverger 1964, p. 245), presents voters with a broad range of
electoral alternatives (Gladdish 2006, p. 113), and ‘gives voters a more nearly
equal share in the choice of representatives’ (Singer 1973, p. 131). As Thomas
Christiano points out, ‘[p]roportional representation simply has fewer bar-
riers to entry into the political system than does single-member district
representation’ (Christiano 1996, p. 230). Moreover, some have suggested
‘that proportionality is implied by liberal political equality (the requirement
that all individual voters be treated equally) and popular sovereignty (the
requirement that the voters alone decide the outcome)’ (van der Hout and
McGann 2009, p. 618).
For parties to enjoy a fair share of political influence does not mean that
each of them should be able, at some point, to have full or partial control of
government. This kind of outcome is very unlikely in multi-party systems,
and in FPTP systems it can only by guaranteed (only for two, at most three
parties) by alternation in power. Instead, we should understand political
influence on the basis of Sartori’s view that parties are politically relevant if
they display some degree of ‘coalition potential’ or ‘blackmail potential’
(Sartori 1976, p. 123). The former indicates a party’s ability ‘to determine
over time, and at some point in time, at least one of the possible governmental
majorities’ (Sartori 1976, p. 122). The latter instead characterizes a party
‘whenever its existence, or appearance, affects the tactics of party competition
and particularly when it alters the direction of the competition . . . of the
governing-oriented parties’ (Sartori 1976, p. 123, original emphasis). There-
fore, party politics is a fair system of cooperation to the extent that in a polity
there are no irrelevant parties, and that all parties have some degree of
influence (direct or indirect) upon policy-making, proportionate to their

support within society.8
The reforms necessary to achieve these goals would certainly need to take
into account the specific situation of each polity and therefore there may not
be precise guidelines applicable uniformly across different polities. As Maurice
Duverger points out, ‘[p]ublic opinion, electoral system, and party system . . .
form three interdependent terms which are not unidirectional in the influence
of each upon the other’ (Duverger 1964, p. 381). Electoral systems, that is,
influence party systems and the latter affect the expression of opinion, yet
‘certain changes in the party system are independent of the electoral system,
and their effect upon the representation of opinion is therefore exerted in
isolation’ (Duverger 1964, p. 381). Devising specific reforms aimed at render-
ing the political institutions of a polity fairer may therefore require the
empirical analysis of existing institutional and electoral systems as well as of
the political sociology of specific societies, an investigation that cannot be
carried out within the limits of this chapter, or of this book.
PARTISA NSHIP AND CONFLICTING OBLIGATIONS
How does my account, then, provide an answer to the problem of conflicting

obligations that I illustrated at the beginning of the chapter? What role can
political parties play in this connection? I have argued so far that partisanship
generates special political obligations for those citizens who experience con-
flicting moral duties and participate in politics through parties. One might
therefore observe that creating the conditions for partisan political obligations
to be stronger in fact worsens, rather than eases, the tension between partisans’
political and non-political obligations. After all, if a citizen has, for example,
strong religious views that command actions which conflict with their duty to
obey the law qua ordinary citizen (however we justify that duty), then it does
not seem of much help to tell them that if they become partisans under fair
institutional conditions they are going to acquire even stronger political
obligations. The tension, that is, is hardened rather than being softened.
This objection, however, overlooks a key point. It is true that those who
participate in party politics are placed under stronger political obligations, as
8
In Chapter 8 I will examine PR in relation to public reason and argue that by promoting
multi-partyism PR, more than FPTP, places partisans in the legislature, including members of
governing parties, under a greater pressure to publicly justify their proposed policies, as they
have to respond to the criticisms and requests for public justification raised by a greater variety of
parties which represent different interests and values within society. That is an important way in
which parties, including minority ones, can exercise influence on decision-making even if they
are not in power.
I have argued so far. However, it is equally true that under the aforementioned
fairer institutional and political conditions these citizens, qua partisans, also
have a greater opportunity to shape the laws that they have a moral duty to
obey. That benefit, that is, the fair opportunity (qua partisans) to channel their
demands into the political arena in an effective way and influence decision-
making, rather than the acquisition of special political obligations that results
from the enjoyment of that benefit (and, more generally, of all the benefits of
partisanship), is what can contribute to reducing the conflict between their
political and non-political obligations.
In order to clarify this point, it is useful to refer to the analysis of political
obligation offered by Abner Greene (2012). Many contemporary legal and
political theorists have examined the problems raised by the presence in liberal
democracies of laws which impose undue burdens upon many citizens, espe-
cially members of religious and cultural minorities. Furthermore, many of
these theorists have defended the view that these burdens should be alleviated
by granting members of the affected minorities various forms of legal accom-
modation, especially including legal exemptions from such laws (e.g. Bou-
Habib 2006; Quong 2006; Shorten 2010; Ceva 2011; Mahoney 2011; Leiter
2013). None of these arguments, however, has dealt with this issue from the
perspective of political obligation. This is what renders Greene’s text distinct-
ive and especially useful for my present analysis.
Greene’s central claim is captured by the idea of ‘permeable sovereignty’
(Greene 2012, p. 2), that is, the view that ‘we should see sovereignty as
permeable through to our plural sources of obligation, rather than as absolute
in the state and its laws’ (Greene 2012, pp. 2–3). This implies that ‘we
shouldn’t understand the law as having pride of place over other sources of
norms . . . [and] . . . requires the state, when it can, to accommodate ways of
living different from those dictated by law’ (Greene 2012, p. 3). Greene, in
other words, fully acknowledges the problem of conflicting obligations and
makes it central to his account of political obligation. Yet we have seen,
following Horton, that granting exemptions to cultural and religious minor-
ities can only work up to a certain point. When the conflict of obligations
becomes systematic, that is, a piecemeal approach may no longer be sufficient
to prevent divisions within society. This is where, I believe, parties and
partisanship can provide a crucial contribution.
My contention is that partisan political obligations, which are mainly
(though not solely) grounded in the principle of fair play, and are stronger
under fairer schemes of cooperation, help to fill the political obligation gap
envisaged by Greene. By encouraging political participation through political
parties, and by making the political system more fair towards the voicing of
party-driven societal demands (along the lines that I have illustrated in this
chapter), we can incorporate more citizens (and members of minorities) into
a system of political obligation, as long as they have the opportunity to
voluntarily embrace (or refuse) the benefits of partisanship, which crucially

include the ability to affect political decision-making in an effective way via
political parties.
Greene himself argues that political participation, that is, ‘making one’s
voice heard in the process of electing representatives and making laws’
(Greene 2012, p. 45), can be a factor in the debate on political legitimacy
and obligation, although for him not sufficient to ground political obligation,
since citizens normally cede their sovereignty in a way that ‘rarely takes place
knowingly and voluntarily’ (Greene 2012, p. 46). This is exactly where parties
and partisanship can play a crucial role. Participation in party politics is
normally both deliberate and voluntary, in the senses captured by either the
consent or fair play theories of political obligation. Indeed ‘[m]y sovereignty’,
Greene claims, ‘is my ability to deliberate morally and to knowingly and
voluntarily yield that deliberation, but only if I am doing so directly (consent)
or am benefiting from a joint enterprise in a specific way (fair play)’ (Greene
2012, p. 46). Under fair liberal democratic institutions, partisans can be
assumed to have voluntarily decided to participate in party politics and/or to
have accepted the benefits of partisanship, including the ability to influence
political decision-making in a special (partisan) way. Crucially, this influence
on political decision-making under fair institutional conditions will enable
partisans to ensure that state laws are designed in a way that does not impose
unfair burdens upon them, burdens that might conflict with their non-
political obligations. In this way, partisans will therefore have stronger polit-
ical obligations, but these will be obligations to obey state laws that are in
general more sensitive to their needs, values, and interests. Furthermore, this
will reduce the need for legal exemptions, as laws will have been designed in a
more inclusive way to start with.
In sum, the benefit of being able to exercise a fair amount of influence upon
decision-making, together with the other benefits of partisanship, places
partisans under special partisan political obligations which are less (rather
than more) in tension with their non-political obligations, because the state
laws partisans have a duty to obey will have been designed in a way that is
more responsive to their values and demands. For this reason, the state should
encourage participation in party politics through the aforementioned institu-
tional reforms.
This also raises a further issue. The ability of partisans to influence political
decision-making under fair institutional conditions benefits not only them but
also those ordinary citizens whose views partisans represent. These will often
include citizens whose non-political obligations conflict with their political
obligations (however the latter may be justified), but who have not made the
decision to participate in party politics. These citizens, qua ordinary citizens,
will not acquire partisan political obligations as a result of benefiting from the
influence that some political party has on decision-making (or from any of the
other benefits of partisanship), because they are not participating in the joint
enterprise of party politics, and have not consented to undertaking the pos-
itional duties of partisanship. However, a more inclusive political system, open
to a greater plurality of parties, will be more likely to take their demands into
account, resulting in laws and policies that will be more responsive to their
values and interests. This will reduce for them too the rationale for demanding
exemptions from existing laws, and the tension between their political and
non-political obligations.
If all or most citizens enjoy a fair degree of influence upon political
decision-making, thanks to a more inclusive party system, it is less likely
that they will demand exemptions from state laws. This is because such laws
will have been decided on the basis of a fairer and more inclusive decision-
making process, and therefore will be more likely to reflect the diversity of
views and values present within society and to impose a lesser burden on
citizens with diverse non-political obligations.9 For all of this to happen, it is
important that political parties be responsive to citizens’ interests and
demands. This responsiveness is an aspect I will return to in Chapter 7.
One might at this point observe that greater voice and inclusion will not
always result in the ability of partisans to influence and shape legislation. If a
party, for example, is not a member of a coalition government under a PR
multi-party system, it may have very little ability to affect the way laws are
designed. This is true. However, there is another important sense in which
being able to participate in party politics (i.e. rather than being excluded from
it by a system that privileges two or three parties and condemns the rest to lack
of parliamentary representation) can contribute to reducing the tension
between one’s political and non-political obligations. Let me explain.
We have previously seen that, for Sartori, parties are politically relevant if
they have either ‘coalition potential’ or ‘blackmail potential’ (Sartori 1976,
p. 123). To these, however, I would like to add a third feature, what I would
like to call ‘justificatory pressure potential’. In his analysis of PR, for example,
Thomas Christiano argues that PR enables a greater diversity of voices to be
heard, and ensures that those who endorse these diverse positions ‘have the
opportunity to hear how others respond to their interests or to their concep-
tions of their interests and the common good’ (Christiano 1996, p. 260). This
is what I mean by ‘justificatory pressure potential’. The mere fact of being
present within a legislature, thanks to fair and inclusive political institutions,
gives partisans (and, indirectly, those whose views such partisans represent)
9
Greene makes a similar argument when he claims the following: ‘[t]hat the government has
accommodated religious or other nomic practices doesn’t mean it must, constitutionally, grant
such accommodation; nonetheless, such action is evidential of the possibility of yielding, of
reducing uniformity, and thus helps undercut a compelling interest claim that turns on uni-
formity’ (Greene 2012, p. 129).
the opportunity to demand a public justification for any proposed laws and
policies that takes into account their interests and values. Indeed ‘even if they
were excluded from the direct exercise of influence over the conduct of
government . . . [partisan representatives] . . . would be able to present their
views and demand a public justification when their interests were threatened
by legislation or policy’ (Beitz 1989, p. 136). This is the kind of pressure that all
elected partisans can exercise, even if they have no direct influence on political
decision-making.
As noted by Nancy Rosenblum, ‘[w]ith political organization and especially
partisanship, the “fact of pluralism” is made concrete for democratic purposes’
(Rosenblum 2003, p. 24). To this, however, we should add that making the fact
of pluralism visible is also crucial for justificatory purposes. After all, the fact
of reasonable pluralism is the starting point of Rawls’s political liberalism, and
what demands public reasoning as a way of justifying state rules and making
them legitimate. In the real world, however, it makes a difference whether that
pluralism is visible (and audible) or not. If certain voices are not heard and
certain interests are not included in political debate, public reasoning will not
have the same legitimizing force that it can have when a greater diversity of
perspectives puts pressure on those who have a duty to justify state rules.
Indeed when all perspectives are paid attention to ‘they are . . . seen to matter,
and thus have . . . impact on the political agenda or the outcome of public
deliberation’ (Parkinson 2012, p. 112). In other words, if a greater diversity of
partisans and partisan perspectives have the opportunity to be heard (and
seen) in the political realm (e.g. in legislative assemblies), then legislators will
be under a greater pressure to defend their laws and policies on the basis of
reasons that all those diverse partisans may accept, even when some partisans
will not be able to actually shape or design those measures. As long as those
laws are justified to them, this will render them legitimate and therefore a
worthy object of political obligation.
This does not mean, of course, that public reasoning is contingent on the
specific composition of a parliament but that where diversity is more visible,
and where individual parties and partisans have greater influence and
voice, legislators will be under a stronger pressure to justify their proposed
measures in public reason terms than it would be the case in the presence of
a limited diversity of views and perspectives. The justificatory pressure
potential of parties under a fair political system is therefore another way
in which partisans who endorse different conceptions of the good can have
an influence on political decision-making. This therefore shows that there is
a link between my account of partisan political obligations and Rawls’s idea
of public reason.10
10
I will offer a more comprehensive analysis of Rawls’s conception of public reason in
subsequent chapters.
There is, however, a further way in which political obligation and public
reason are related. Not only does the presence of fair political institutions
encourage public reasoning, as I have just suggested. Public reasoning itself is
part of what it means for political institutions to be fair. As Jonathan Quong
(2013) points out, ‘[e]nsuring that the principles that regulate our shared
political life can be justified to each citizen by reference to this common
point of view—showing these principles can be the subject of public reason—
is how we can know that the terms that regulate our political institutions
are fair, and therefore just. If our political principles were instead justified
by appeal to some reasonably contested moral, philosophical, or religious
doctrine, the terms of our public life would not be fair’. Political principles
and institutions, therefore, are only fair if they can be justified on the basis of
public reasons.
Greene himself makes a similar point, when he observes that political
legitimacy and political obligation are correlated if political legitimacy is
intended in a ‘thick’ sense, that is, as involving the justification of state
coercion, as in Rawls’s ideal of public reason (Greene 2012, p. 5). According
to Greene, when state coercion is justified, that is, legitimate in a thick sense,
citizens have a duty to obey the law. It is therefore the reference to justification
that is especially important for establishing a link between political obligation
and political legitimacy and, therefore, for explaining in what sense the
problem of political obligation is central to my analysis of partisanship and
political liberalism in this book.
In sum, political institutions are fair when they grant partisans (and,
indirectly, citizens) a fair say over decision-making, by allowing a diversity
of perspectives to enter party politics, and when they (and the principles that
underlie them) are publicly justified on the basis of public reasons. Under
these conditions, partisans will have stronger special political obligations than
under less inclusive and not publicly justified political institutions. In fact,
I would like to go one step further and argue that while less inclusive political
institutions imply weaker partisan political obligations for those who enjoy a
less than fair share of political influence, non-publicly-justified political insti-
tutions imply no partisan political obligations at all. In this sense, they have
the same implications as the excessively unjust political institutions that
I examined earlier in the chapter.11
11
It should be noted that none of the foregoing analysis implies that partisans’ influence upon
decision-making will justify the imposition of sectarian laws grounded in their controversial
conceptions of the good. As I will explain extensively in the remainder of the book, partisanship
involves a commitment to public reasoning that rules out sectarian and factional politics.
However, being able to effectively advance one’s values and interests in the political arena,
even when this ultimately requires reformulating one’s proposals in the language of public
reason, offers much more scope for influencing the political agenda than being de facto excluded
from party politics by an unfair institutional system.
There is a final issue that I would like to address. One might object that in
some cases the opportunity to have a greater influence upon decision-making
via political parties may do very little to reduce the tension between one’s
political and non-political obligations. Certain policies and laws, that is, will
inevitably be in tension with some partisans’ (and citizens’) moral views, no
matter how much those partisans and citizens have been included in the
process of political deliberation and public justification that should precede
decision-making. Examples of such policies may include the government’s
decision to engage in a defensive war against another country, or to legalize
abortion. These measures may have resulted from an inclusive process of
political deliberation during which all voices have been heard. Moreover,
they may be justified on the basis of public reasons. For example, Rawls
himself shows that a legal right to abortion can be justified in public reason
terms (Rawls 2005a, p. 243). Yet the nature of these measures is such that,
unlike many other measures, they cannot be designed in a way that sufficiently
accommodates those who object to them (e.g. pacifists and anti-abortion
Catholics). While, for example, laws about dress codes or public holidays
(which are among the most commonly debated issues in the literature on
religious accommodation) can be designed in a way that accommodates a
variety of interests and values, decisions about war or abortion normally do
not allow for that kind of flexibility (e.g. a state either legalizes abortion or it
does not). Many partisans (and citizens) will, therefore, find themselves in a
situation in which they have a political obligation to obey laws and policies
that they consider morally unjust, and which, based on their religious or moral
worldviews, they should strive not to comply with.
This, however, does not undermine my overall argument. It simply shows
that while a more inclusive and fair party politics can reduce the rationale for
conflicting obligations, it cannot eliminate it completely. Furthermore, it is
possible for someone to believe that they have a moral duty to obey the law in
general (a political obligation), while also believing that some specific laws
are morally unjust and ought to be disobeyed. This is, after all, what defines the
idea of civil disobedience, which does not amount to an endorsement of
philosophical anarchism but rather presupposes a pro tanto obligation to
obey the law, manifested by the non-violent character of the actions taken
against specific laws and by the willingness to accept punishment (Brownlee
2013).12 That background political obligation is what fair political institutions
aim to ensure, and what is weaker, or absent, when political institutions are
unjust or unfair.
12
Furthermore, acts of civil disobedience can and ought to be justified on the basis of public
reasons (Rawls 2005b, p. 466, note 57), as Rawls’s famous example of Martin Luther King Jr. also
shows (Rawls 2005a, p. 250).
In any case, when, for practical reasons, specific laws cannot be designed in
a way that is responsive to all partisans’ and citizens’ interests and demands,
and cannot therefore be publicly justified, this will require granting exemp-
tions to those who morally object to them. Therefore in these cases it is the
‘law plus the exemptions’, rather than the law per se, that will have to be
publicly justified. This justification can often be provided by appealing to
public reasons and, more specifically, to what Rawls calls the ‘strains of
commitment’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 153), that is, the view that laws that compel
citizens to act in ways that unduly burden their conscience cannot be publicly
justified.13
PARTISANSHIP, FAIR PLAY, AND MOTIVATION
In this last section I would like to briefly discuss a further point. Not only do
the presence of fair political institutions, and the consequent fair distribution
of political influence via party politics, ensure that all partisans are under equal
special political obligations. Participation in party politics under fair political
institutions can also provide those partisans who experience conflicting obli-
gations (and partisans in general) with a stronger motivation to obey the laws
of their political community, thus contributing to the stability of the latter and
reducing the likelihood of deep social divisions. That motivation, however, can
only be present when the conditions necessary for an account of political
obligation to succeed ‘exist in all or most of the situations in which compliance
to legal rules is required’ (Ahiauzu 2005, p. 537). This is where the presence of
a fair system of cooperation with regard to party politics becomes especially
important. Once it has been ascertained that partisans have equal special
political obligations when fair background conditions (i.e. fair political insti-
tutions) are present, such background conditions must exist ‘in all or most of
the time’ (Ahiauzu 2005, p. 537) for partisans to be motivated to act according
to those obligations.
As liberal democracies become more diverse and increasing numbers of
citizens experience conflicting obligations, it is therefore important that states
provide fair political institutions which can motivate partisans to act according
to their political obligations. Rawls himself, indeed, highlights that ‘when . . .
[citizens] . . . believe that institutions or social practices are just, or fair . . . ,
they are ready and willing to do their part in those arrangements provided
they have reasonable assurance that others will also do their part’ (Rawls
2005a, p. 86). Even though Rawls does not develop this point, there is an
13
For a similar point, see also Quong (2006) and Laborde (2017, ch. 2).
extensive body of empirical literature in social psychology (Tyler 2006, 2011;

Lind et al. 1998; van der Toorn et al. 2011; Jackson et al. 2012), law (Hough
et al. 2010; Bradford et al. 2015), and political science (Doherty and Wolak
2012; Esaisson et al. 2012), which supports his conclusion. More specifically,
that literature shows that people’s perception of state legitimacy is strongly
affected by their judgement concerning the fairness of state laws and institu-
tions. Fairer political institutions, that is, motivate citizens to obey the law and
thus fulfil their political obligations, and this can contribute to the stability of
those very institutions, something which is central to political liberalism.
Political parties formed, joined, or supported by those citizens and groups
that experience conflicting obligations should therefore be welcomed into
democratic politics and given a fair share of the benefits of partisanship.14
CO NCLUSION
In this chapter I have argued that under certain conditions participation in

politics through political parties can contribute to significantly reducing the
tension between conflicting obligations experienced by many citizens. When
party politics is a fair scheme of cooperation, the participation of these citizens
(and citizens in general) in politics through political parties allows them to
have a greater influence upon political decision-making, thus ensuring that
laws and policies are more responsive to their interests and values, and
motivates them to comply with the law, thus contributing to political stability.
I have also shown that the analysis of partisan political obligations is related to
the problem of public justification, which I will discuss in the remainder of the
book. Before I move on to discuss public justification and public reason in
more detail, however, I would like in Chapter 3 to show that political liberal-
ism nurtures party politics, by leaving key issues such as religion and socio-
economic matters open to democratic contestation.
14
I will return to the problem of stability in Chapter 7, where I discuss Rawls’s idea of an
overlapping consensus.
3
Political Liberalism and Democratic

Contestation
There is a widespread assumption, in contemporary political theory, that

Rawls’s political liberalism does not allow much scope for democratic contest-
ation and for real political debate. After all, Rawls himself makes it clear that his
theory is not ‘political’ in the real-world and everyday sense of the term (Rawls
2005a, p. xlv). This may therefore render political liberalism inhospitable to the
kind of democratic contestation of which political parties are the main channels.
In this chapter I intend to challenge this view, and to show that there is in fact
considerable scope for democratic contestation within political liberalism. In
doing so, I will especially focus on religion, since religious matters are central to
political liberalism and still play a prominent role in party politics both in the
USA and in Europe (e.g. Anon. 2015a; Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
2005; Van Der Brug et al. 2009; Minkerberg 2010). I will also briefly discuss
socio-economic issues, which have traditionally been central to party politics
and partisan divides. The idea that political liberalism offers more scope for
partisan contestation than most observers might believe is not entirely new.
Muirhead and Rosenblum (2006, p. 102), for example, briefly discuss this point.
However, in this chapter I intend to offer a much more systematic and detailed
account than theirs. At the same time, I hope to also make a general contribu-
tion to the current debates on regimes of religious governance and to those on
the constitutionalization of principles of social and economic justice.
Institutional regimes of religious governance have only recently become a
subject of investigation in normative political theory (e.g. Bader 2003, 2007;
Brudney 2005; Dworkin 2006b; Căbulea May 2009; Laborde 2013b). As
religion is becoming increasingly central to partisan debate in western liberal
democracies, and religious minorities call for the political articulation of their
demands via both religious and nonreligious parties, it is important to exam-
ine whether and to what extent Rawls’s political liberalism allows democratic
contestation about religious matters, rather than insulating them from demo-
cratic debate via either constitutional establishment or separation. In order to
examine this topic, I will engage with Cécile Laborde’s (2013b, p. 67, original
Political Liberalism and Democratic Contestation 41
emphasis) claim that political liberalism is ‘inconclusive about the public place
of religion’ and ‘indeterminate about the symbolic dimensions of the public
place of religion’. I will show that Rawls’s theory offers much more scope for
democratic contestation on religious matters than Laborde argues.
In the first part of the chapter I will claim that the establishment/separation
debate mainly concerns matters related to the realization of principles of social
and economic justice (e.g. fair equality of opportunity). I will then show that
such principles (and their interpretations) are left open by Rawls to the
democratic contestation of ordinary legislative politics and ought not to be
‘fixed’ through constitutional and legal means. Therefore, neither moderate
separation nor moderate establishment, intended as regimes of religious
governance that fix specific interpretations of principles of social and economic
justice, is compatible with Rawls’s political liberalism. I will then introduce an
additional ideal model of religious governance that I will call ‘democratic
accommodationism’. This ideal type, I will argue, best reflects Rawls’s view
on the public place of religion.
In the second part of the chapter I will argue that the public display of
religious symbols is purely symbolic only when it does not have any implica-
tions for social and economic justice, does not infringe upon citizens’ basic
liberties, and does not convey hateful messages. This leaves us with a range of
purely symbolic instances of religious establishment and separation much
narrower than Laborde’s analysis suggests. I will also argue, however, that
when pure religious symbols can be identified, both their endorsement and
non-endorsement by the state may alienate, respectively, nonreligious and
religious citizens. I will therefore reject Laborde’s view that political liberalism
only warrants symbolic separation, and claim that the symbolic aspects of the
establishment/separation debate ought to be left open to the democratic
contestation of ordinary legislative politics, in which political parties play a
central role. I will conclude with a broader reflection on the place of social and
economic issues in Rawls’s political liberalism. More specifically, by drawing
on John Tomasi (2012) and Cécile Fabre’s (2002) work, I will argue that
political liberalism does not warrant the constitutionalization of either clas-
sical liberal rights or social rights, and leaves socio-economic issues open to
the democratic contestation of partisan politics.
LABORDE ON RELIGION AND POLITICAL

LIBERALISM
In her analysis of the implications of political liberalism for regimes of

church–state relations, Laborde (2013b) distinguishes four ideal models of
religious governance. At the two opposite extremes, she places ‘militant
separation’, characterized by the ‘[i]nadequate protection of religious free-

doms; official support and promotion of scepticism or atheism by the state;
secularist anti-religious state’ (Laborde 2013b, p. 68), and ‘full establishment’,
which involves ‘[i]nadequate protection of religious freedoms; official support
and promotion of religious orthodoxy by the state; theocratic anti-secular
state’ (Laborde 2013b, p. 68). These two ideal types, Laborde argues, are not
consistent with political liberalism as ‘they only offer inadequate protection to
religious freedoms. In such regimes, the state would, for example, forbid
adherence to certain religions, promote the truth of one religion, or make
access to full citizenship dependent on religious belief or unbelief ’ (Laborde
2013b, p. 68).
Between these two extremes, Laborde places ‘modest separation’ and
‘modest establishment’ (Laborde 2013b, p. 68). The former displays
‘[a]dequate protection of religious freedoms; no official support of religion(s)
by the state; no public funding of religious education and no state aid to
religious groups’ (Laborde 2013b, p. 68) whereas the latter consists of the
‘[a]dequate protection of religious freedoms; official support of religion(s) by
the state; public funding of religious education and state aid to religious
groups’ (Laborde 2013b, p. 68). Both modest establishment and modest
separation, Laborde argues, are compatible with Rawls’s political liberalism
and justifiable in public reason terms.
Modest establishment, Laborde claims, can be justified in public reason
terms ‘if adequate protection of freedom of religion is interpreted as requiring
positive assistance by the state, or if equality between believers of different
religions is interpreted as mandating even-handed support of all by the state’
(Laborde 2013b, p. 72).1 Similarly, Laborde argues, modest separation is justi-
fiable in terms of public reason if it is intended as ‘a state of separation which
takes seriously the demands of religious conscience’ (Laborde 2013b, p. 76).2
Laborde therefore concludes that ‘political liberalism is inconclusive about the
public place of religion’ (Laborde 2013b, p. 76) and that ‘[t]he political values of
freedom of conscience, equality between citizens, and so forth, can be appealed
to in support of either arrangement’ (Laborde 2013b, p. 77).
1
This conclusion, it should be noted, may be open to the critique that multi-faith establish-
ment still entails privileging religious views over nonreligious ones, and therefore cannot be
justified to nonreligious citizens in public reason terms. To overcome this problem, Brudney
(2005, p. 828) suggests that the state may support all comprehensive doctrines, both religious and
nonreligious. According to him, ‘if all doctrines are in fact treated (supported) equally, then state
action will not create divisive background conditions’ (Brudney 2005, p. 828).
2
Indeed Rawls himself argues that separation ‘protects religion from the state and the state
from religion; it protects citizens from their churches’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 476), e.g. by allowing
them to abandon or change their religious faith, thus establishing that ‘[h]eresy and apostasy are
not crimes’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 476 n. 74).
I find two aspects of Laborde’s analysis problematic. First, Laborde does not
clearly highlight an important feature that characterizes all regimes of reli-
gious governance. Such regimes, that is, are institutional arrangements that fix
(e.g. through constitutional and legal means) the public place of religion
within a polity in a more permanent way than measures of ordinary legislative
politics do. The degree of this ‘fixity’ may vary from context to context in the
real world, and it is undoubtedly true that even the most undisputed and
‘permanent’ constitutional provisions (e.g. the ‘Eternity Clause’ in Germany’s
Basic Law) could in practice be revoked or amended. However, when provid-
ing an ideal typology of regimes of religious governance from the perspective
of normative political theory, it is necessary to pursue some level of abstrac-
tion and idealization. I therefore take this permanent character to be what
distinguishes in ideal terms regimes of religious governance from mere
ordinary legislative measures which can more easily be reverted (e.g. by
parliamentary majorities). The implications of this aspect will become clearer
later in the chapter.
Second, Laborde does not clarify the relationship between regimes of
religious governance and citizens’ basic liberties and rights, especially liberty
of conscience and free religious exercise. Her analysis does not show that
modest establishment and modest separation are compatible with Rawls’s
political liberalism but only that state intervention in matters of religious
governance is often required in order to protect the basic liberties and rights
of individual citizens. In this sense, any measure aimed at safeguarding
those liberties and rights is not only compatible with, but also required by,
Rawls’s political liberalism. This also implies, however, that such measures
are not at stake in the debate between what Laborde calls modest establish-
ment and modest separation but they are rather preconditions of both. It
is therefore necessary to explain what issues divide the two ideal types of
religious governance. These issues, I will explain, are matters of social and
economic justice.
ESTABLISHMENT, SEPARATION, AND

P O L I T I C A L LI B E R A L I S M
Before presenting an alternative interpretation of the place of religion in

Rawls’s political liberalism, I would like to provide first my own categorization
of ideal regimes of religious governance, including the following ideal types:
radical establishment, radical separation, moderate establishment, and mod-
erate separation. My classification differs from Laborde’s both because of the
intrinsic features of the four categories (that I will illustrate shortly) and, most
importantly, because it is not exhaustive. Between moderate establishment

and moderate separation, I will argue, there is an intermediate ideal type that
I call ‘democratic accommodationism’.3 This ideal regime of religious govern-
ance, I will claim, best reflects Rawls’s view on the public place of religion.
Radical establishment, as an ideal type, is a regime of religious governance
that involves the suppression of citizens’ basic rights and liberties on the basis
of the state’s endorsement of one (or more) religious faith(s). Conversely,
radical separation is a regime of religious governance that involves the sup-
pression of citizens’ basic rights and liberties on the basis of the state’s
endorsement of agnosticism or atheism. Common to both radical establish-
ment and radical separation is therefore the violation of citizens’ basic liberties
and rights, that is, those included by Rawls under the first principle of justice.
My definitions of both radical establishment and radical separation do not
specify that the rights and liberties violated by these regimes, intended as ideal
types, are solely related to religion. This is because real-world instances of
radical establishment and radical separation may approximate to different
extents and in different forms these ideals, thus displaying different degrees of
‘radicalness’. Some of these regimes, that is, may also suppress those individual
liberties and rights that are not exclusively related to free religious exercise but
that Rawls still places under the first principle of justice. These include
‘freedom of thought and liberty of conscience; the political liberties and
freedom of association, as well as the freedoms specified by the liberty and
integrity of the person; and finally, the rights and liberties covered by the rule
of law’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 291).
Rawls also includes among the basic liberties of the person ‘the right to hold
and to have the exclusive use of personal property . . . [aimed at guaranteeing] . . .
a sufficient material basis for a sense of personal independence and self-
respect’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 298). Real-world radical establishment regimes, for
example, may not only criminalize heresy and apostasy (a restriction on
religious freedoms). They may also ban the personal consumption of pork
and impose the confiscation and slaughter of all pigs within the territory of the
state, or they may prohibit the use of contraception, on religious grounds.
These measures would infringe upon the individual freedoms (e.g. right to
personal property, liberty of conscience, etc.) of many citizens (i.e. those who
enjoy rearing pigs for personal use and eating pork, those who want to use
contraception, etc.) without necessarily violating their religious freedom as no
religious doctrine prescribes pork consumption or the use of contraception.
Similarly, radical separation regimes may not only impose the full prohib-
ition of religious practice in the name of state atheism. They may also
3
This should not be confused with what Veit Bader calls ‘liberal-democratic accommoda-
tionism’ (Bader 2007, p. 140), which concerns the relationship between individual and associ-
ational liberties.
undermine the nonreligious liberties of religious citizens, for example by

preventing those who wear certain items of religious dress from holding public
office (e.g. as a member of the legislature), entering public educational insti-
tutions or accessing medical care in public hospitals. Such regimes may even
guarantee a significant level of religious freedom for religious citizens (i.e. by
allowing them to freely practise their faith in the private realm, however
broadly the latter is intended) while at the same time preventing them from
enjoying such basic rights as the right to hold public office and the right to
bodily integrity, both listed by Rawls under the first principle of justice.
These examples suggest that including in the definitions of radical estab-
lishment and radical separation, as ideal types, only the infringement of rights
and liberties related to religion would mean overlooking these and other
similar ways in which real-world instances of these ideal regimes may violate
Rawls’s first principle of justice. This does not mean that, in order to be
classified as ‘radical’, a regime of establishment or separation must necessarily
involve the infringement of rights and liberties not related to religion. It only
means that the ideal categories have to be defined in a way that includes all
possible violations of rights and liberties, and that those regimes which only
violate rights and liberties related to religion (but not others) are perhaps just
less radical than those that also violate rights and liberties unrelated to it.
Alongside the violation of religious freedoms highlighted by Laborde, it is
therefore necessary to consider those rights and liberties which, while not
being related to religion, may still be violated by real-world instances of ‘militant
separation’ and ‘full establishment’.
The degree of protection of individual rights and liberties is therefore the
criterion on the basis of which radical establishment and radical separation
ought to be distinguished from their moderate counterparts. Both moderate
establishment and moderate separation, that is, guarantee the individual rights
and liberties (both religious and nonreligious) of all citizens.4 Some real-world
establishment regimes (e.g. the UK, Finland, etc.), for example, show their
moderation by allowing rather than criminalizing heresy and apostasy and
therefore protecting individual rights and liberties. Likewise in Malaysia Islam
is the official state religion but pork consumption is allowed for non-Muslims
and the latter also enjoy a significant degree of religious freedom. This, once
again, can be taken as a sign of moderation.5
Conversely, some moderate separation regimes (e.g. France and the United
States) implement measures which Laborde portrays (see Laborde 2013b,
p. 72) as expressions of moderate religious establishment, for example public
funding of chaplaincies in state prisons, army barracks, etc. Like the right to
4
Once again, it is necessary to highlight that real-world regimes protect these rights and
liberties to different extents, thus displaying different degrees of approximation to these ideal types.
5
For an overview of religious freedom in Malaysia, see Saeed and Saeed (2004, pp. 123–66).
heresy and apostasy allowed by many moderate establishment regimes, how-

ever, these measures simply aim to protect citizens’ basic rights and liberties.
More specifically, they safeguard the liberty of conscience and free religious
exercise of those citizens (e.g. prisoners, military personnel, etc.) who are not
able to attend ordinary religious services.6
Indeed in Katcoff v. Marsh, the 1986 case that sanctioned the constitution-
ality of the state funding of Army chaplains in the USA, the Supreme Court
argued that by withdrawing such funding the state ‘would deny soldiers the
right to exercise their religion freely, particularly given the mobile and
deployable nature of the nation’s armed forces’ (Rosen 2006–2007, p. 1140).
Quite significantly, the Court also argued that the funding could be withdrawn
‘in large urban centers . . . [where] military service did not inhibit the ability of
personnel and their families to worship [i.e. by attending normal religious
buildings and services]’ (Rosen 2006–2007, p. 1142). This confirms that this
measure was only aimed at protecting the liberty of conscience and the right to
free religious exercise of individual believers.
My analysis in this section has therefore shown that both moderate estab-
lishment and moderate separation share a common feature, that is, the
protection of citizens’ basic rights and liberties. This shared feature, and all
those measures aimed at guaranteeing it, is justifiable in public reason terms
and consistent with—indeed required by—Rawls’s political liberalism (i.e. by
the first principle of justice). In order to assess whether the two regimes are in
fact compatible with Rawls’s political liberalism, however, it is necessary to
examine those features that they do not share and that actually divide them.
This is what I aim to do in the next section.
P O L I T I C A L L I B E R A L I S M , RE L I G I O N , A N D
SOCIAL AND E CONOMIC JUSTICE
What is it, then, that distinguishes moderate establishment from moderate

separation? The two regimes, I argue, are divided over issues of social and
economic justice and can therefore be defined in the following ways. Moderate
establishment is an institutional arrangement which, while safeguarding citi-
zens’ basic rights and liberties (i.e. those specified by Rawls’s first principle of
justice), involves the public funding of religious groups, religious faiths, and
6
In this sense, such measures are similar to the use of postal voting in order to guarantee the
exercise of the right to vote for those citizens (e.g. physically disabled citizens, military personnel
on a mission abroad, etc.) who cannot attend the polling station in person.
religious education for reasons other than the protection of those rights
and liberties, as a way of realizing principles of social and economic justice,
and fixes this requirement through constitutional or legal measures. Con-
versely, moderate separation is an institutional arrangement which, while
safeguarding citizens’ basic rights and liberties, prohibits the public funding
of religious groups, religious faiths, and religious education for reasons differ-
ent than the protection of those rights and liberties, as a way of realizing
principles of social and economic justice, and fixes this requirement through
constitutional or legal measures.
Compared to Laborde’s definitions of ‘modest establishment’ and ‘modest
separation’, my definitions of moderate establishment and moderate separ-
ation make a clearer distinction between measures aimed at the protection
of citizens’ basic rights and liberties (i.e. Rawls’s first principle of justice) and
measures aimed at the realization of principles of social and economic justice
(i.e. Rawls’s second principle of justice). The emphasis on issues of social and
economic justice is crucial for the present analysis as such issues occupy a
distinctive position in Rawls’s political liberalism. Indeed Rawls argues that
‘the principles covering social and economic inequalities’ (Rawls 2005a,
p. 229) should not be included among the constitutional essentials. This is
because ‘it is much easier to gain agreement about what the basic rights and
liberties should be, not in every detail of course, but about the main outline’
(Rawls 2005a, p. 86). Moreover, even when citizens agree on such principles,
they normally disagree on how best to realize them (Rawls 2005a, pp. 229–30)
since ‘[t]hese matters are nearly always open to wide differences of reasonable
opinion; they rest on complicated inferences and intuitive judgments that
require us to assess complex social and economic information about topics
poorly understood’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 229). This warrants their exclusion from
the constitutional essentials and justifies leaving them open to the democratic
contestation of ordinary majoritarian politics, where ‘legislative bodies must
regularly consider’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 230) social and economic matters.
This analysis signals the presence of a fifth ideal regime of religious gov-
ernance (placed somewhere between moderate establishment and moderate
separation, or perhaps somewhere beyond them) that best reflects Rawls’s
view on the public place of religion. I call this ideal regime ‘democratic
accommodationism’. This ideal regime guarantees the protection of citizens’
basic rights and liberties and allows in principle both public funding
of religious groups and lack thereof, not in order to protect those basic
rights and liberties but in order to realize principles of social and economic
justice. Furthermore, democratic accommodationism does not fix these
measures through constitutional or legal measures but leaves them open to
the democratic contestation of ordinary legislative politics, where democratic
majorities can regularly decide whether to maintain or revoke them, and
where political parties and partisans play a crucial role.
One may argue that disagreement regarding the realization of principles of

social and economic justice is a contingent and temporary empirical feature of
liberal democratic societies that may at some point disappear, thus warranting
the inclusion of these principles among the constitutional essentials. Yet the
causes of this disagreement are related to what Rawls calls the ‘burdens of
judgment’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 54), which he considers the roots of the reasonable
pluralism of comprehensive doctrines within liberal democratic societies.
These burdens include the difficulty of weighing up empirical evidence, the
vagueness of all our concepts, and the influence of our personal experience
upon the way we judge our moral and political principles (Rawls 2005a,
pp. 54–8). Rawls is very clear in emphasizing that, due to the burdens of
judgement, ‘the diversity of reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral
doctrines found in democratic societies is a permanent feature of the public
culture and not a mere historical condition soon to pass away’ (Rawls 2005a,
pp. 216–17). Disagreement among citizens regarding how principles of social
and economic justice are best realized should therefore similarly be considered
a permanent aspect of liberal democratic societies. This reinforces the view
that such principles should not be included among (and fixed through) consti-
tutional provisions.
An example of disagreement over the realization of one of the principles of
social and economic justice, fair equality of opportunity, can be found in
Rawls’s account of a society in which agreement on the fundamental principle
of fair equality of opportunity is accompanied by deep disagreement regarding
its application to the issue of education (Rawls 2005a, p. 248). Some citizens,
that is, believe that the principle is best realized by allowing public secular
education only, whereas other citizens think that its realization requires state
support for church schools too (Rawls 2005a, p. 248). This disagreement is
certainly present in most western polities. Indeed even those societies that have
not experienced significant religious conflicts in the past are now facing rapid
social changes and increasing religious diversity, mainly due to immigration.
Within these contexts, choosing either moderate separation or moderate estab-
lishment would mean ‘fixing’ one specific (and partial) interpretation of the
principle of fair equality of opportunity in education. This is clearly inconsistent
with Rawls’s political liberalism.
It may be useful to look at some examples:
All pupils of school age have the right to moral or religious education at the
community’s expense. (Constitution of the Kingdom of Belgium, Art. 24, Par. 3)
Private primary schools that satisfy the conditions laid down by Act of Parlia-
ment shall be financed from public funds according to the same standards as
public-authority schools. (Constitution of the Kingdom of the Netherlands,
Art. 23, Par. 7)
Entities and private persons have the right to establish schools and institutions
of education, at no cost to the State. (Constitution of the Italian Republic,
Art. 33)
I assume, for the sake of argument, that these constitutional provisions can be
shown to be consistent with the first principle of justice and justifiable in
public reason terms, and that therefore they are instances of moderate estab-
lishment and separation. Nevertheless, such measures ‘fix’ the meaning of the
principle of fair equality of opportunity in education (a matter of social and
economic justice) in a way that is not warranted by Rawls’s political liberalism.
Indeed they remove that principle from the realm of ordinary legislative
politics and render certain interpretations of it unconstitutional. This mark-
edly conflicts with Rawls’s claim that principles of social and economic justice
(and specific understandings of how best to realize them) should not be
included among the constitutional essentials.
Certainly it must be acknowledged that not all constitutions contain state-
ments as clear as the aforementioned ones regarding the public financing of
religious education or other matters of social and economic justice. Moreover,
different countries may fix the interpretation of principles of social and
economic justice (applied to both religious and nonreligious matters) to
different degrees and through different institutional and legal (e.g. non-
constitutional) tools.7 For example, France’s 1905 Law of Separation between
Church and State, which prohibits the financing of religious groups, is not part
of the French constitution but has rendered the principle of church–state
separation ‘a quasi-constitutional principle’ (Laborde 2008, p. 33). Similarly,
scholars often refer to the UK’s regime of weak ‘constitutional establishment’,
even though the UK does not have a written constitution. In other words, what
matters most, in relation to Rawls’s account, is not how (i.e. through which
institutional and legal means) principles are fixed but whether they are
fixed and, therefore, whether they limit the freedom of legislative bodies to
(re)interpret them, by rendering certain (re)interpretations unconstitutional.
Existing regimes of church–state relations only approximate the ideal
regimes of moderate establishment and moderate separation that I discuss
here. A similar analysis can also be applied to other instances of social and
economic justice, for example state funding (or prohibition thereof) of those
faith-based organizations that deal with drug addicts, children, the elderly,
people with disabilities, etc. As in the case of education, deep internal dis-
agreement characterizes liberal democracies regarding whether principles of
social and economic justice warrant state support for these organizations.
7
Rawls’s focus on ‘constitutional’ essentials, in this sense, is perhaps influenced by his US
background.
Such disagreement concerns, for example, the benefits and disadvantages of

privatizing certain public services, the accountability of private agencies8 and,
more generally, it involves all those ‘complicated inferences and intuitive
judgments that require us to assess complex social and economic information
about topics poorly understood’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 229). Even when the funding
of such faith-based groups (or prohibition thereof) is shown to be consistent
with the first principle of justice and justifiable in public reason terms, therefore,
such measures ought to remain within the realm of ordinary legislative politics
rather than being fixed through constitutional or other legal means.
It should be emphasized that the democratic contestation on religious
matters involving social and economic issues that characterizes the democratic
accommodationist model should still be conducted within the constraints
imposed by the constitutional essentials. These, for Rawls, include ‘fundamen-
tal principles that specify the general structure of government and the political
process’, and ‘equal basic rights and liberties of citizenship’ (Rawls 2005a,
p. 227). These principles, Rawls claims, can be settled more easily than issues
of social and economic justice within liberal democracies. Indeed ‘[l]iberty of
conscience and freedom of association, and the political rights of freedom of
speech, voting, and running for office’, Rawls argues, ‘are characterized in
more or less the same manner in all free regimes’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 228). In fact,
according to Rawls, it is extremely important and urgent that these matters are
settled within a polity, in order to prevent social and political unrest (Rawls
2005a, p. 228).
This shows that there is still much scope for the imposition of constitutional
constraints upon democratic decision-making in Rawls’s political liberalism. It
also shows that many existing constitutional provisions in western liberal
democracies are consistent with his theory. The safeguarding of freedom
of speech contained in the First Amendment to the US Constitution, for
example, is both consistent with and indeed required by Rawls’s political
liberalism as it withdraws freedom of speech from democratic contestation.
Indeed freedom of speech is one of those basic rights and liberties that for Rawls
ought to be granted constitutional protection.9 It should however be stressed
here, as I have already done earlier, that granting constitutional recognition to
certain principles and rules removes them completely from democratic con-
testation only in ideal terms. Even the most undisputed and ‘permanent’
constitutional provisions, that is, can in practice be revoked or amended.
The analysis conducted in this section has therefore shown that, rather than
being ‘inconclusive about the public place of religion’ (Laborde 2013b, p. 67,
8
For a discussion of these issues, see Minow (2003).
9
This does not mean, however, that freedom of speech should be absolute, as Rawls himself
seems to suggest. I will discuss the issue of freedom of speech and of its limits, within the context
of political liberalism, in Chapters 5 and 8.
emphasis in original), Rawls’s political liberalism rules out both moderate

establishment and moderate separation, intended as regimes of religious
governance that fix specific interpretations of principles of social and economic
justice, and warrants what I have called ‘democratic accommodationism’. My
analysis also clarifies why regimes of moderate establishment in western
Europe have often been criticized for creating ‘rigidities and hierarchies that
lock in privileges for older . . . religions, while putting up arbitrary barriers to
other religions, particularly those practiced by immigrant groups’ (Kymlicka
2009, p. 547).10 Certainly those privileges could be extended to new religious
groups (Modood and Kastoryano 2006, p. 189) and, theoretically, also to
nonreligious groups (see Brudney 2005, p. 828). Yet existing forms of moder-
ate establishment may just be less appropriate for dealing with newly estab-
lished religious groups (e.g. Muslims) than with long-established ones (e.g.
Catholics and Protestants) that have coexisted for centuries and often share
the same culture, history, language, and ethnicity (Kymlicka 2009, pp. 550–1).
The ‘rigidity’ of moderate establishment is the institutional expression of a
‘fixed’ conception of principles of social and economic justice which is not
consistent with Rawls’s political liberalism. Issues concerning the public place
of religion that are related to the realization of social and economic justice
(rather than to the protection of citizens’ basic rights and liberties) should be
discussed and decided through the channels of ordinary legislative politics and
within the limits imposed by those basic rights and liberties that, for Rawls,
solely deserve the status (and the ‘fixity’) of constitutional essentials.
Furthermore, Rawls even claims that when matters of social and economic
justice cannot be resolved solely on the basis of a political conception of
justice, ‘it is often more reasonable to go beyond the political conception
and the values its principles express, and to invoke non-political values that
such a view does not include’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 230), providing that ‘there is a
firm agreement on the constitutional essentials and established political pro-
cedures are regarded as fair’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 230). The relaxation of the
constraints of public reason in relation to decisions concerning matters of
social and economic justice therefore allows even more scope for an inclusive
democratic debate on matters of religious governance in Rawls’s theory.
Rawls’s ‘flexible’ conception of the principles of social and economic justice
is not an isolated aspect of his theory but reflects instead his broader view that
political liberalism ‘does not try to fix public reason once and for all in the
form of one favoured political conception of justice’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 451).
Furthermore, Rawls claims that changes in the political conception of justice
and in the form of public reason adopted within a society are crucial in order
10
For the rigidity of constitutional weak and plural establishment, see also Bader (2003,
pp. 75, 78).
to avoid that ‘the claims of groups or interests arising from social change
might be repressed and fail to gain their appropriate political voice’ (Rawls
2005b, p. 452). Public deliberation is central to this process and ‘[r]easoning is
not closed once and for all in public reason any more than it is closed in any
form of reasoning’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 480).11 This is especially important when
dealing with principles of social and economic justice, given the constant
disagreement among citizens on how best to realize them. Once a legitimate
measure (e.g. to support religious schools with public funds) has been imple-
mented, it is important that those citizens who oppose it have the opportunity
to provide arguments against it and to revoke it. This would not be possible if
that decision was permanently withdrawn from democratic debate.
POLITICAL LIBERALISM AND RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS
A separate set of issues analysed by Laborde includes instances of symbolic

establishment, for example ‘[n]on-mandatory schools prayers . . . in state
schools . . . , [r]eligious symbols such as crucifixes . . . exhibited in public
spaces . . . [and] . . . an oath or Pledge of Allegiance affirming religious belief ’
(Laborde 2013b, p. 80). According to Laborde, ‘[t]hese policies are not coer-
cive; they involve too trivial amounts of taxation to raise significant issues
about the fairness of public fund allocation; and they are compatible with
the full exercise of religious rights by all citizens’ (Laborde 2013b, p. 81). For
these reasons, she concludes, ‘public reason is . . . indeterminate—silent—
about . . . [the] . . . non-justice dimensions [of the public place of religion] . . .
because these dimensions do not fall under its purview’ (Laborde 2013b, p. 81).
Moving beyond this ‘orthodox’ understanding of political liberalism,
Laborde defends a republican interpretation of Rawls’s theory in which ‘the
scope of public reason is construed broadly. It goes beyond the distribution of
traditional primary goods such as income and education, to cover civic status,
recognition and citizenship’ (Laborde 2013b, p. 83). This reading, Laborde
argues, is backed by Rawls’s own endorsement of ‘instrumental republicanism’
(Laborde 2013b, p. 85) and by his view of citizens’ self-respect as ‘the most
important primary good’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 386). Laborde therefore concludes
that political liberalism is not compatible with the state’s endorsement of
religious symbols because this ‘sends a message that some are not full mem-
bers of the political community, that they cannot enter the public square on
equal terms with others, and this will make it difficult for them fully to identify
with their political institutions’ (Laborde 2013b, p. 84). This conclusion,
Laborde argues, is justifiable in public reason terms because it relies on
11
I will return to the problems concerning the change of public reason in Chapter 7.
‘a conception of citizenship which postulates that all citizens should be able

not to feel alienated by their political institutions in light of their deepest
beliefs, and that institutions should, consequently, be framed with that aim in
mind’ (Laborde 2013b, p. 84).
I would like to highlight some problems that I think characterize Laborde’s
argument. First, some allegedly symbolic instances of religious establishment
may in fact require a significant amount of public funds (e.g. particularly
expensive and/or frequent state-funded religious ceremonies, the pervasive
installation of expensive religious symbols or monuments, etc.). Establishing
the precise costs of these practices and symbols is an empirical issue that
cannot be addressed here. The main point is that when significant amounts of
taxpayers’ money are involved such measures become matters of social and
economic justice and as such they ought to remain open to democratic
contestation as I argued in the previous section.
Second, and more significantly, some supposedly symbolic measures may in
fact undermine citizens’ basic rights and liberties, especially liberty of con-
science and free religious exercise. For example, it is not always true that
‘pledges and oaths have an ecumenical, deistic nature, and religious references
only provide added ceremonial solemnity to important official acts’ (Laborde
2013b, p. 81). The reference to God in the Pledge of Allegiance of the United
States, for instance, has been criticized because ‘it asks for a personal statement
of belief in God, and it links that request to a profession of loyalty to the
nation’ (Laycock 2004, p. 227). This clearly infringes upon (some) citizens’
liberty of conscience and free religious exercise—two of the basic rights and
liberties of citizenship.
Similarly, the Bavarian Crucifix Order issued by the Bavarian Constitutional
Court in June 1991, which allowed crucifixes to be displayed in the classrooms
of state schools, was overturned in 1995 by the German Federal Constitutional
Court. As the Order compelled children to be constantly exposed to a religious
symbol in a public space that they were legally obliged to attend, some have
argued that this undermined their ‘right to a self-determined development of
religious or philosophical conviction’ (Caygill and Scott 1996, p. 509). These
examples suggest that the range of purely ‘symbolic’ measures is perhaps
narrower than Laborde suggests. Alongside those allegedly symbolic measures
that involve a substantial use of public funds, several instances of symbolic
establishment infringe upon citizens’ basic rights and liberties, and are there-
fore inconsistent with Rawls’s political liberalism.
Third, certain symbols can be instances of hate speech (e.g. Nazi swastikas,
burning crosses, etc.) directed at certain citizens, especially members of
religious and ethnic minorities. As Waldron (2012) highlights, Rawls’s theory
would exclude these kinds of symbols from the public sphere. Even though
Rawls apparently endorses unconditional freedom of speech in his discussion
of seditious libel (Rawls 2005a, pp. 342–3) (an issue to which I will return
in Chapter 5), he also emphasizes that in a well-ordered society ‘everyone

accepts, and knows that everyone else accepts, the very same principles of
justice’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 35). This provides each citizen with ‘an assurance . . .
that they can count on being treated justly’ (Waldron 2012, p. 85) rather than
being ‘discriminated against or humiliated or terrorized’ (Waldron 2012, p. 84).
This assurance is for Waldron a public good that benefits all citizens, and which
hateful symbols undermine.
There seem to be good grounds in Rawls’s account, therefore, for preventing
the government’s endorsement (and even endorsement by private citizens
in the public realm) of hateful symbols. It may be objected here that the
democratic contestation on religious matters that characterizes democratic
accommodationism may risk undermining the sense of ‘assurance’ highlighted
by Waldron. Yet I have explained that democratic accommodationism only
leaves issues of social and economic justice open to democratic debate, whereas
it guarantees the protection of citizens’ basic rights and liberties and withdraws
them from democratic contestation. In this sense, it does not undermine that
assurance, which can be considered part of (or a precondition for the secure
enjoyment of) that set of basic rights and liberties (e.g. see Bonotti 2017).
Similarly, while hateful symbols seriously undermine that assurance and,
based on Waldron’s Rawlsian argument, should be prohibited (e.g. through
constitutional restrictions on hate speech), those religious (or nonreligious)
symbols that are not hateful do not undermine that assurance and can (and, as
I will argue shortly, should) be left open to democratic contestation.
Fourth, it is true that Rawls grants much importance to the idea of citizens’
self-respect and considers the latter ‘the most important primary good’ (Rawls
1999a, p. 386). However, Rawls highlights that ‘our self-respect normally
depends upon the respect of others’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 155, my italics) and that
‘political society is good for citizens . . . [because] . . . it secures for them the good
of justice and the social bases of their mutual self-respect’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 203,
my italics). Furthermore, many citizens grant little importance to the state as a
source of self-respect and give more value to their family, religious community,
profession, etc. (Brudney 2005, pp. 823–4). This implies that any decision to
remove religious symbols from the public realm because they infringe upon
some (but not all) citizens’ self-respect and alienate them from the state must
rely on what Brudney (2005, p. 820) calls the ‘the strong-connection-to-the-
polity thesis’, that is, a comprehensive conception of the good, and therefore
cannot be justified in public reason terms. The scope of Rawls’s conception of
political justice, according to this interpretation, cannot be expanded so as to
include issues of civic status and recognition alongside the equal basic rights and
liberties of citizenship and the principles of social and economic justice.
Furthermore it is certainly true, as Laborde highlights, that Rawls himself
considers political liberalism compatible with an instrumental interpretation of
republicanism, that is, the idea that ‘[t]he safety of democratic liberties requires
the active participation of citizens who possess the political virtues needed to
maintain a constitutional regime’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 205). However, ‘instrumental
republicanism’ differs from ‘classical republicanism’, for example the Aristotel-
ian idea of self-realization through political participation. Unlike the latter, it
only considers citizens’ active political participation and civic virtue as instru-
mental to the preservation of their individual (negative) liberties and does
not endorse the idea that ‘the maintenance of liberty requires that individuals
view citizenship . . . as a good in itself, which is shared with others, and which is
integral to their identities and self-understandings’ (Patten 1996, p. 37; see also
Skinner 2011). Given the nature of instrumental republicanism, it is not sur-
prising that it has been considered almost undistinguishable from liberalism
(Patten 1996, p. 36). This suggests that the instrumental active political partici-
pation ‘by a vigorous and informed citizen body’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 205) invoked
by Rawls in order to protect democratic liberties does not entail that citizens
ought to be able to fully identify with their political institutions.
A distinction should indeed be made ‘between concrete and psychic par-
ticipation in political society’ (Brudney 2005, p. 825). Whereas the former
involves activities such as voting, deliberating about government policies, etc.
(all activities consistent with instrumental republicanism), the latter ‘involves
the sense that these are one’s own institutions within which one finds an
important locus of belonging and self-respect’ (Brudney 2005, p. 825). As
Brudney rightly points out, ‘[t]he two forms of participation . . . are conceptu-
ally and can be practically distinct. One could vote and try to influence policy
and yet not feel political institutions as one’s own, as a site of acceptance and
self-respect’ (Brudney 2005, p. 825).
Finally, even if one endorses Laborde’s republican reading of Rawls’s
political liberalism, this still does not justify a regime of symbolic separation.
If identification with (and non-alienation from) one’s political institutions
matters, because it guarantees that citizens enjoy the primary good of self-
respect, then this also justifies in principle symbolic establishment. The latter
may certainly alienate nonreligious citizens (and believers of those faiths that
are not granted symbolic recognition) from the state. Even a multi-faith
symbolic establishment, in this sense, would not treat all citizens equally
(Nussbaum 2008, p. 225) as it would alienate nonreligious citizens. However,
symbolic separation alienates religious citizens who may feel unable to identify
with a polity that does not grant symbolic recognition to their faith(s).
For example, during the drafting of the Constitutional Treaty of the European
Union (EU), a debate arose regarding whether the Treaty should incorporate
a section acknowledging the Christian roots of Europe. Some argued that ‘a
lack of recognition would alienate those with religious affiliations, impeding
their feeling of connection to Europe’ (Olsen 2004, pp. 85–6). Similarly,
many religious citizens in the USA ‘feel alienated and excluded from public
life’ (Gedicks 1995, p. 27) because, even though religious symbolism still
pervades many aspects of public life in the USA (e.g. currency, Pledge of
Allegiance, etc.), other instances of symbolic establishment (e.g. ‘Ten Com-
mandments’ plaques and displays in US courthouses) have been challenged by
the US Supreme Court (Finkelman 2004–2005).
It is important to highlight here that alienation is not related to the place of
religious symbols in the private realm. A state that prevents its citizens (both
religious and nonreligious) from displaying or not displaying religious sym-
bols in the private realm does not simply alienate them but more crucially
infringes upon their religious freedom, thus violating the first principle of
justice. Even in relation to the public display of religious symbols, I explained,
there may be an infringement of basic liberties such as liberty of conscience
and free religious exercise (e.g. the Bavarian Crucifix Order). This simply
means, however, that these are not purely symbolic issues. Pure instances of
symbolic religious establishment (or separation) by definition do not infringe
upon citizens’ basic rights and liberties, and therefore cannot be rejected by
appealing to those rights and liberties.
It may then be questioned whether the alienation experienced by religious
citizens due to the exclusion of religious symbols from the public realm is
reasonable, when their freedom to display them in private is guaranteed. My
answer to that question is that I cannot see any qualitative difference between
the alienation of religious and nonreligious citizens. If the public display of
religious symbols (or lack thereof) does not have any implications for
social and economic justice, does not infringe upon citizens’ basic rights and
liberties, and does not convey hateful messages, and if we accept Laborde’s
republican reading of political liberalism, then we should consider both
instances of alienation reasonable. Indeed Laborde herself does acknowledge
that her argument presupposes the idea of ‘a crucial asymmetry’ (Laborde
2013b, p. 86, n. 63) between symbolic establishment and symbolic separation
but she sets the issue aside in her article.12
Two solutions, I believe, can be proposed here. One would be for the state to
grant equal symbolic recognition not only to all religious faiths but, more
broadly, to all comprehensive doctrines (both religious and nonreligious),13 as
long as the endorsed symbols do not involve significant amounts of public
12
However, it should be noted that in her more recent work Laborde (2017) does examine the
issues concerning the symmetry/asymmetry between symbolic establishment and non-
establishment, and between religious and nonreligious ideas and identities. Laborde now argues
that symbolic religious establishment is only problematic in those contexts where religion is an
especially divisive identity, and that religious identity is not unique in this sense, since other
sources of identity (e.g. culture, nation, etc.) can also be politically divisive and therefore warrant
ruling out expressive symbolism. Moreover, while still endorsing a republican theory of citizen-
ship, Laborde now argues that expressive symbolism (both religious and nonreligious) is also
problematic based on a more standard conception of liberal legitimacy (Laborde 2017, ch. 4).
13
For a similar argument, also concerning the non-symbolic aspects of religious and non-
religious doctrines, see Brudney (2005, p. 828).
funds, do not infringe upon citizens’ basic rights and liberties, and are not
hateful. However, apart from the merely practical difficulty of implementing
it, such a regime would most likely fail to guarantee all citizens’ identification
with (and non-alienation from) their political institutions. How could a state
symbolically recognize both religion and nonreligion (including atheism) at
the same time, and ensure that all citizens feel non-alienated from and able to
identify with it? A Pledge of Allegiance affirming both God’s existence and
God’s non-existence, for example, would satisfy neither religious believers nor
atheists, and I doubt that it would make either group feel less alienated from
the state.
There is, however, another way in which, if we grant the validity of
Laborde’s republican reading of political liberalism, a state could guarantee
all citizens’ sense of self-respect and identification with their polity, that is, by
leaving issues of symbolic establishment and separation open to the demo-
cratic contestation of ordinary legislative politics that characterizes democratic
accommodationism. Religious symbols (or lack thereof) ought not to be
permanently attached to state institutions.14 Instead, it ought to be left to
citizens and their representatives to regularly discuss matters of symbolic
establishment and separation, on the basis of evolving social, cultural, and
political circumstances. This would reflect Rawls’s aforementioned view that
changes in the political conception of justice and in the form of public reason
adopted within a society are crucial in order to avoid that ‘the claims of groups
or interests arising from social change might be repressed and fail to gain their
appropriate political voice’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 452). As there is no way, I have
explained, to guarantee at the same time everyone’s self-respect and non-
alienation, citizens ought to be enabled to feel that their status within society
and before the state is not permanently set. They ought to be allowed, that is,
to defend and put forward their views regarding issues of symbolic establish-
ment and separation, and feel that the latter have not been decided once
and for all (e.g. through constitutional provisions), and are constantly open
to debate.
SOCIAL AND E CONOMIC ISSUES, POLITICAL

LIBERALISM, AND DEMOCRATIC CONTESTATION
The purpose of this chapter so far has been to show that Rawls’s political
liberalism leaves significant scope for democratic contestation about religious
14
As I explained earlier, ‘permanently’ should be intended as referring to an ideal ‘fixity’ that
real-world institutions and polities can only approximate.
matters. This is the kind of contestation that nurtures party politics in

contemporary liberal democracies. While focusing on religion, though,
I have argued that the establishment/separation debate also concerns those
matters that involve the realization of principles of social and economic
justice. Rawls’s own acknowledgement that the latter are the constant object
of disagreement is what justifies leaving religious matters related to social and
economic justice open to democratic contestation rather than entrenching
them through constitutional provisions.
Social and economic issues, however, are important per se, that is, besides
their connection with issues of religious establishment or separation. Indeed
the question of whether principles of social and economic justice ought to be
constitutionalized or not is one that has interested a number of political
theorists in recent years. Therefore, in the final part of this chapter, I would
like to briefly discuss two influential analyses of this problem. The first is the
one offered by John Tomasi (2012), who elevates property rights to the same
level of other basic rights and liberties which, according to Rawls, ought to be
entrenched in (and protected by) a constitution. According to Tomasi, prop-
erty rights contribute to freedom, political agency, and democratic legitimacy,
and therefore deserve a special status alongside (but not above) other basic
rights and liberties within liberal democracies, a status recognized for example
by the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution.
Tomasi’s main goal is to reconcile the classical liberalism of authors such as
Friedrich Hayek and the egalitarianism of liberals such as John Rawls. It is not
my aim here to critically assess Tomasi’s argument in detail, a task that lies
well beyond the scope of this chapter and of this book. What I would like to
stress, instead, is that Tomasi’s argument fails to respect reasonable disagree-
ment by relying on a comprehensive conception of the good which, if used to
justify the constitutional entrenchment of classical liberal rights, violates the
liberal principle of legitimacy that is central to Rawls’s political liberalism.
According to this principle, political power is legitimate and justified ‘only
when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which
all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light
of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason’ (Rawls
2005a, p. 137).
To understand why this is the case, it is important to observe that, on the one
hand, Tomasi points out that his ‘free market fairness’ remains neutral among
different conceptions of the good. ‘Free market fairness’, he argues, ‘interprets
the distributive requirements of social justice in ways that honor . . .citizens,
whatever life script each chooses to compose’ (Tomasi 2012, p. 269). On the
other hand, however, his theory presupposes a conception of ‘self-authorship’
which, as James Murphy (2014) observes, is essentially comprehensive ‘since
many religious individuals would reject the notion that human beings are
essentially self-made’ (Murphy 2014, p. 352). This conception emphasizes
the key values of the ‘American dream’, and especially the view that ‘[t]his land
of opportunity exposes people to risks of failure and by that very fact offers
them a chance for accomplishments genuinely their own’ (Tomasi 2012, p. xiii).
This view, Murphy points out, is controversial because it ‘greatly disadvantages
those who do not offer their goods or services in a market or who do not seek
to improve their material well-being. Whether a soldier, monk, public-school
teacher, scholar, stay-at-home parent, or healthy retiree, these people might well
claim to be authors of their own lives even if they are economically dependent
on others’ (Murphy 2014, pp. 353–4).
A similar argument is also put forward by Alan Patten (2014), who argues
that according to Tomasi economic activities are highly meaningful for many
people and that ‘[a] sufficient reason for recognizing a liberty as basic is that
it protects activities and projects that people regard as highly meaningful’
(Patten 2014, p. 367). This view is problematic, Patten argues, because ‘[i]n a
pluralist society, different people will regard a great many different ends and
activities as meaningful or important for their identity and self-definition’
(Patten 2014, p. 368). He therefore claims that making economic liberties
basic, for example by granting them constitutional protection, would prevent
the state from providing many citizens with those non-liberty conditions
(e.g. financial help) that may be necessary for the realization of their goals
and preferences. This implies that ‘[j]udged from the standpoint of self-
authorship, treating the economic liberties as basic is not neutral’ (Patten
2014, p. 369).
One might go one step further than Murphy and Patten and argue that even
a more general conception of self-authorship, which is not focused on eco-
nomic agency (e.g. Kant’s or Mill’s conceptions of autonomy), is still insuffi-
ciently neutral. Indeed Rawls himself often includes Kant’s and Mill’s liberal
theories among those comprehensive doctrines that cannot provide legitimate
public grounds for legislation. However, even without making that step, it is
quite clear that Tomasi’s conception of self-authorship cannot justify elevating
economic liberties to the status of primary goods which deserve constitutional
protection.
This does not imply, however, that the opposite route is more promising in
relation to political liberalism. Such a route is the one pursued by Cécile Fabre
(2000), who defends the view that social rights (e.g. to health, housing,
education, minimum income, etc.) should be constitutionalized, and therefore
withdrawn from the realm of democratic politics and ordinary legislative
decision-making. Fabre’s analysis is useful because it deals directly with
Rawls’s view that principles of social and economic justice are not constitu-
tional essentials. Fabre focuses on four reasons why Rawls defends this view,
but what interests me here are the third and fourth reasons, which I have
already discussed earlier in the chapter. The former is the view that even when
citizens agree with regard to principles of social and economic justice, they
cannot easily agree regarding how these are best realized. According to Fabre,
this argument is weak as ‘it is not obvious that the criterion of easiness, as he
[i.e. Rawls] states it, usefully distinguishes what should be constitutionalized
from what should not’ (Fabre 2000, p. 86). After all, many rights and liberties
are constitutionalized within liberal democracies but people may still disagree
regarding how they are best realized. A clear example concerns the realization
of freedom of speech which, while being protected by the First Amendment to
the US Constitution, continues to be an object of controversy among US
citizens and, most significantly, among members of the US Supreme Court.
Less persuasive, however, is Fabre’s criticism of Rawls’s fourth argument
against the constitutionalization of social rights. This is Rawls’s aforemen-
tioned view that ‘it is much easier to gain agreement about what the basic
rights and liberties should be, not in every detail of course, but about the main
outline’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 86). Fabre’s first critique is that ‘[since her] concern
is not with designing the best constitution given that people disagree about
the way their society should be run, this criterion is of no use to . . . [her] . . .
argument’ (Fabre 2000, p. 86). But this is the very goal of Rawls’s political
liberalism, which is concerned not only with justice but also and especially
with political legitimacy under conditions of reasonable disagreement. Fabre’s
statement therefore explains, but does not justify, her neglect of reasonable
disagreement regarding social rights. Fabre’s second critique is that ‘one might
grant Rawls his claim that people agree more easily about basic rights and
freedoms than about the redress of social and economic inequalities, but that
disagreements about the latter are not deep enough to preclude constitution-
alizing the principles that govern them’ (Fabre 2000, p. 86). But this simply
does not seem to reflect reality. Citizens in liberal democracies deeply disagree
regarding issues of social and economic justice, as testified by the longstanding
party divisions along the right–left political spectrum that still characterize
these polities. This disagreement, we might add, is grounded in the burdens of
judgement and it is here to stay. To ignore it, or to minimize its significance,
would be highly problematic.
CONCLUSION
The analysis of institutional regimes of religious governance is a relatively

novel subject in normative political theory, despite the longstanding debates
concerning the place of religious arguments in public deliberation. In this
chapter, I have argued that Rawls’s political liberalism transcends the standard
distinction between moderate establishment and moderate separation and
warrants what I have called ‘democratic accommodationism’, an ideal insti-
tutional arrangement that leaves the public place of religion open to the
democratic contestation of ordinary legislative politics. This is an important

conclusion in connection with the analysis of parties and partisanship. As
religion is central to party politics and political debate in western liberal
democracies (e.g. Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life 2005; Van Der Brug
et al. 2009; Minkerberg 2010), and religious minorities increasingly call for the
political articulation of their demands via both religious and nonreligious
parties, it is important to show that Rawls’s political liberalism leaves most
religious matters open to the democratic contestation of which parties are key
actors, rather than insulating them from democratic debate via either consti-
tutional establishment or separation.
In the final part of the chapter, I have focused more closely on issues of
social and economic justice, showing how neither the constitutionalization of
economic liberties nor that of social rights is respectful of reasonable disagree-
ment and consistent with Rawls’s political liberalism. This reinforces the view
that political liberalism nurtures parties and partisanship, by leaving social and
economic issues open to democratic contestation. Decisions concerning these
issues, of course, will still have to be justified by appealing to public reasons,
as I will explain in the following chapters. However, only if we reject their
constitutionalization they can remain open to the democratic contestation
that is central to party politics.
4
Partisanship and the Constraints

of Public Reason
In Chapter 3 I argued that Rawls’s political liberalism nurtures party politics

by allowing significant scope for democratic contestation on a variety of policy
matters, including those concerning religious and socio-economic issues. Yet
the time has now come for addressing a significant problem in the relationship
between political parties and political liberalism. This is the view that Rawls’s
political liberalism may actually suffocate partisanship and party politics
through the constraints of public reason. I have already briefly mentioned
public reason in Chapters 2 and 3 but it is now necessary to offer a more
detailed account of it.
According to Rawls, public reason is ‘the reason of equal citizens who, as a
collective body, exercise final and coercive power over one another in enacting
laws and in amending their constitution’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 214). Citizens,
Rawls argues, have a ‘duty of civility’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 217) to appeal only to
political values (rather than to their comprehensive conceptions of the good)
when making decisions about ‘“constitutional essentials” and questions of
basic justice’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 214), for example fundamental issues concern-
ing ‘who has the right to vote, or what religions are to be tolerated, or who is to
be assured fair equality of opportunity, or to hold property’ (Rawls 2005a).
The Rawlsian constraints of public reason have often been criticized for
being overly demanding towards citizens, and especially towards those who
hold religious comprehensive doctrines (e.g. Greenawalt 1995; Eberle 2002;
Weithman 2002; Stout 2004; Smith 2010). Indeed for many (perhaps most)
religious citizens, refraining from appealing to religious reasons is often not a
viable option since they have a moral duty, grounded in their faith, to advocate
state laws and policies on the basis of their religious beliefs and in order to
maintain their integrity. As Nicholas Wolterstorff famously highlights, for
example, ‘it belongs to the religious convictions of a good many religious
people in our society that they ought to base their decisions concerning
fundamental issues of justice on their religious convictions’ (Wolterstorff
1997, p. 105, original emphasis). Moreover, in many cases nonreligious reasons
Partisanship and the Constraints of Public Reason 63
to support or reject certain state rules may simply not be available, and religious
citizens may therefore not be able to endorse or reject a policy on grounds
different from those which derive from their religious comprehensive doctrines
(Lafont 2007, p. 244). Furthermore, preventing religious doctrines from enter-
ing the public political debate may often deprive liberal democracy of important
sources of commitment to democratic citizenship and social justice (Weithman
2002). McGraw’s (2010) critique of public reason, which I will discuss in
Chapter 6, is an instance of the latter kind of criticism.
I think that these criticisms should be taken seriously, and that it is very
important to assess to what extent the Rawlsian constraints of public reason
hinder partisan advocacy. In order to do so, in this chapter I will focus on a
specific attempt that has been made to underplay the view that the constraints
of public reason are unduly restrictive. I am referring to Patrick Neal’s (2008)
view that ‘the idea of public reason is largely innocuous in terms of the
practical demands it imposes upon citizens. When one adds together the
considerable list of qualifications and specifications that attend Rawls’s articu-
lation of the idea, there is simply not much of a burden left to bear’ (Neal 2008,
p. 131). In response to Neal, I will claim that when applied to partisans, the
constraints of public reason lose none or little of their hindering force.
My analysis in this chapter, it should be noted, will not aim to reject the
Rawlsian ideal of public reason. Instead, it will aim to illustrate the implica-
tions of what I call the ‘extrinsic’ approach to public reason with regard to
parties and partisanship. This is the view that the Rawlsian ideal of public
reason, and the kind of public deliberation it demands, should be seen as a
‘container’ within which political parties operate, and which imposes upon
them constraints that are external to their goals and to their way of advancing
political proposals. This view, as I will argue in Chapter 6, is wrong, as there is in
fact a correspondence between the demands of Rawls’s ideal of public reason
and those of partisanship, when the latter is intended as a normative ideal.
My analysis will proceed as follows. First, I will show that the sites where
partisans operate are clearly subject to the constraints of public reason. Second,
I will argue that even though Rawls only applies the constraints of public reason
to debates regarding constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice, but
not to those concerning ordinary legislative matters (a distinction which,
however, is not always very clear in his work), that distinction becomes irrele-
vant when we consider that parties’ manifestoes and programmes include both
kinds of issues and need to be justified to the public in their comprehensiveness.
Third, I will argue that while Rawls’s (2005b) ‘wide’ conception of public reason
represents a significant relaxation of his earlier views, it still imposes onerous
demands upon partisans. Partisans, and especially elected partisans and par-
tisans running for office, have strong practical reasons for justifying their law
and policy proposals to the public through public reasons as soon as possible,
and therefore cannot benefit from Rawls’s ‘wide’ conception of public reason as
much as non-partisan citizens can. I will conclude the chapter by showing that
issues of practical implementation cannot be invoked in order to reject the legal
enforcement of the duty of civility.
A ‘ PORTABLE P UBLIC REALM’ ? P ARTIES, P UBLIC

R E AS O N , AN D T H E S I T E ( S ) O F D E L I B E R A T I O N
The first aspect that I intend to consider concerns the site(s) of deliberation to
which, according to Rawls, the constraints of public reason apply. This is
essential in order to establish whether partisans operate within any of the
domains subject to those constraints. Should the activities of partisans fall
outside any of those domains, and should partisans therefore be allowed to
appeal to their comprehensive doctrines, then considering the other aspects of
public reason would be worthless. What does Rawls say, then, regarding the
domain(s) to which public reason applies?
First, he argues that the constraints of public reason ‘do not apply to our
personal deliberations and reflections about political questions, or to the
reasoning about them by members of associations such as churches and
universities, all of which is a vital part of the background culture. Plainly,
religious, philosophical, and moral considerations of many kinds may here
properly play a role’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 215). Second, he claims that ‘the ideal of
public reason does hold for citizens when they engage in political advocacy in
the public forum, and thus for members of political parties and for candidates
in their campaigns and for other groups who support them’ (Rawls 2005a,
p. 215; emphasis added).
Rawls also reinforces this claim by arguing that ‘public reason not only
governs the public discourse of elections insofar as the issues involve . . .
fundamental questions, but also how citizens are to cast their vote on these
questions’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 215). This specification aims to guarantee consist-
ency between campaigning and voting, and to prevent that ‘citizens talk before
one another one way and vote another’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 215). Rawls also
highlights that, among public officials, public reason applies ‘to legislators
when they speak on the floor of parliament, and to the executive in its public
acts and pronouncements’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 216).
In ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’ (Rawls 2005b), Rawls somehow
refines his account, without making any substantial changes to it. He remarks
there that public reason applies to political deliberation in the ‘public political
forum . . . [which includes] . . . the discourse of judges . . . ; the discourse of
government officials . . . ; and finally, the discourse of candidates for public
office and their campaign managers, especially in their public oratory, party
platforms, and political statements’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 443). Rawls also highlights,
once again, that ‘ideally citizens are to think of themselves as if they were
legislators’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 444; original emphasis), and thus comply with the
constraints of public reason. One might argue that these are ‘strong counter-
factual claims’ (Bader 2008, p. 119). Yet Rawls’s aim is not to illustrate how
citizens de facto deliberate but how they ought to deliberate on fundamental
matters (I will consider this specification in the next section), in order for laws
and policies concerning such matters to be legitimate.
Rawls’s analysis is especially important for two main reasons. First, it
confirms that, in his view, partisans (including party members) are definitely
subject to the constraints of public reason, at least when fundamental matters
are at stake. This certainly restrains partisan advocacy, especially when we
consider that the ‘spill-over [of non-public reasons from civil society to the
public political realm] not only happens regularly . . . but is also seen as lawful’
(Bader 2008, p. 122) in liberal democracies. Second, Rawls’s analysis suggests
that public reason (e.g. during electoral campaigns) applies to all partisans,
that is, not only to elected partisans and party candidates but also to ‘other
groups who support them’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 215). The latter may include, for
example, ‘[s]upporters, adherent, militants, propagandists’ (Duverger 1964,
p. 61).1 Partisanship, indeed, stretches ‘beyond the face-to-face contacts of
membership to a broader network of political activists seeking to advance
largely the same goals, even in the absence of formal attachments’ (White and
Ypi 2011, p. 382). Public reason, for Rawls, applies to all partisans regardless of
their status and their formal relationship to their party.
Rawls’s analysis, however, may cause some confusion. Neal points out, for
example, that it is unclear whether legislators are under the constraints of
public reason ‘[i]f they are not actively campaigning’ (Neal 2008, p. 150). He
therefore wonders whether we should ‘assume that elected officials are always
campaigning and so always under the authority of public reason’ (Neal 2008,
p. 150). This would not be an unreasonable conclusion, especially if we extend
it to the more general category of partisans. When elected party officials or
party candidates (as well as other partisans, e.g. members, activists, supporters,
etc.) discuss, present, or defend coercive laws and policies concerning funda-
mental matters qua partisans (i.e. rather than as members of families,
churches, private associations, etc.), they are always bound by the constraints
of public reason. This is because, qua partisans, they are not engaged in
‘personal deliberations and reflections’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 215) about those
laws and policies but discuss them instead as the laws and policies they (or
their party) have implemented or intend to implement through the coercive
machinery of the state. As Nancy Rosenblum highlights, ‘[p]arties alone
among associations are “strong publics”, meaning their activity culminates
1
Hereafter I will include all these categories wherever I speak of ‘partisans’ except in cases
where I explicitly refer to one or more specific categories.
in binding decisions and electoral success may translate into legislation’

(Rosenblum 2008, p. 260).
Here a clarification is required. What matters, when assessing whether an
individual is defending certain laws and policies qua partisan, rather than as a
non-partisan citizen, is not the causal effect that her arguments may have upon
her interlocutors but the intentions that underlie her presentation of those
views. For example, a person may be an active member of a political party and
endorse certain laws and policy proposals qua partisan. However, one day she
may find herself informally discussing those issues with friends or relatives or
fellow members of a church or of a music or sport association, and defend
those proposals before them. If she engages in that discussion qua partisan,
with the intention of convincing her friends, relatives, etc. to endorse those
proposals because they are advanced by her party (i.e. the party of which she is
a member, supporter, sympathizer, or for which she is running as a candidate
for office) and she wants them to vote for it, then she will need to comply with
the constraints of public reason, even if her interlocutors will eventually not be
persuaded by her arguments.
If, conversely, she engages in that discussion qua friend, relative, etc., with
no intention to persuade her audience to endorse those proposals and to vote
for her party, then she will not be subject to the constraints of public reason,
even if her friends or relatives will in fact vote for her party as a result of their
discussion. These, however, are borderline situations in which it may be
difficult to determine what someone’s real intentions are. Most of the time,
it is much easier to ascertain whether an individual is acting qua partisan by
looking at the setting where she presents her views and/or the audience she
addresses.
What is distinctive about partisans, therefore, is that the public forum of
deliberation in which they operate is somehow more fluid and less clearly
demarcated than other public forums. The Supreme Court judges in the USA,
for example, operate within a clearly defined forum. Moreover, while judges
can in principle easily ‘avoid the public, political fray’ (Neal 2008, p. 149), even
though this is certainly not what judges always do,2 this practice of avoidance
is more difficult for partisans. Partisans operate between civil society and the
public political realm. It is therefore essential for them to present and defend
their views in different contexts and before different audiences, many of which
are located in what Rawls calls the ‘background culture’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 215)
and include ordinary citizens, professional associations, religious groups, etc.
Crucially, when they do this qua partisans, they never cease to be bound by the
constraints of public reason. To borrow an image used by Jeremy Waldron
2
The influence of politics and ideology upon law and judicial activity has often been
highlighted, for example, by the adherents of the Critical Legal Studies movement (e.g. see
Unger 1986).
(2012, p. 76), partisans carry around ‘a portable public realm’ wherever and
whenever they speak qua partisans.3
This conclusion, however, is open to three potential lines of attack, each of
them based on a specific aspect of Rawls’s characterization of public reason.
First, one might highlight that for Rawls public reason only applies to consti-
tutional essentials and matters of basic justice. Therefore, this may still leave
broad scope for partisans’ appeal to comprehensive doctrines as many laws
and policies partisans support do not concern fundamental matters. Second,
Rawls significantly relaxed the constraints of public reason in his later work,
moving from an ‘exclusive’ to an ‘inclusive’ and then ‘wide’ conception of
public reason which may be much less burdensome for partisans as well as for
other political actors operating in the public political realm. Third, Rawls clearly
states at various points that the constraints of public reason are moral, not legal.
Therefore, this argument goes, it is wrong to think that they impose any
significant restrictions upon partisans’ (or any citizens’) deliberation, apart
from moral disapproval. I will address these challenges in turn, showing that
they do not significantly reduce the burdens that the constraints of public reason
impose upon partisans.
FUNDAMENTAL VS. NON -FUNDAMENTAL MATTERS
Rawls, we have already seen, argues that public reason does not apply to all
political matters but solely ‘to those involving what we may call “constitu-
tional essentials” and questions of basic justice’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 214). Many
other political issues, Rawls points out, do not concern such fundamental
questions. These may include, for example, ‘much tax legislation and many
laws regulating property; statutes protecting the environment and control-
ling pollution; establishing national parks and preserving wilderness areas
and animal and plant species; and laying aside funds for museums and the
arts’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 214).
It may be argued that Rawls is simply mistaken in excluding such issues
from the realm of constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice, and
that many issues he considers non-fundamental are in fact fundamental (e.g.
see Klosko 2009, p. 38, note 41). Furthermore, some critics might point out
that the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental matters
is essentially disputed in real political life (Bader 2008, p. 119), or that
‘[a]rgument about constitutional essentials bears on the disposition of other
issues’ (Greenawalt 1995, p. 118). Others might accept the distinction but
3
Waldron argues that ‘the burqa . . . might be compared to a sort of portable private realm
carted around in public, like an Edwardian bathing machine’ (Waldron 2012, p. 76).
argue that there are no good reasons why we should apply the constraints of
public reason only to constitutional essentials and issues of basic justice
(Quong 2004). The latter argument finds some support in Rawls’s following
statement:
[W]hy not say that all questions in regard to which citizens exercise their final
and coercive political power over one another are subject to public reason? Why
would it ever be admissible to go outside its range of political values? To answer:
my aim is to consider first the strongest case where the political questions concern
the most fundamental matters. If we should not honor the limits of public reason
here, it would seem we need not honor them anywhere. Should they hold here, we
can then proceed to other cases. (Rawls 2005a, p. 215)
However, it is important to acknowledge that elsewhere Rawls argues that it
would be both impractical and undesirable to apply the constraints of public
reason to non-fundamental matters (Rawls 2001, p. 91 n. 13), thus leaving his
view on this point rather unclear (Quong 2011, p. 274). What are the impli-
cations of this ambiguity for partisans’ public reasoning?
On the one hand, if we argue that the constraints of public reason should
apply to all coercive legislation,4 then clearly partisans ought to justify all their
policy proposals by appealing to public reasons. On the other hand, if we
accept the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental matters,
and the view that the constraints of public reason only ought to apply to the
former, but not to the latter, it can still be argued that such constraints are still
too burdensome for partisans. This is because parties and partisans do not
normally offer proposals on single issues but present instead broad political
platforms involving both fundamental and non-fundamental matters regard-
ing many policy issues. Party platforms and manifestoes reduce the informa-
tion costs that voters have to bear when choosing whom to vote for. They
provide heuristic tools which anticipate predictable patterns of policy-making
and offer ‘packages’ of policies and measures which partisans intend to
implement if they achieve control of the government (see Downs 1957,
pp. 85–6; Budge 2006, pp. 422–3; Hershey 2006, p. 76; Vassallo and Wilcox
2006, p. 414).
Herbert Kitschelt (2006), for example, illustrates how movement parties
have to generalize their programmes if they want to become competitive and
credible in the arena of party politics and electoral competition. He especially
highlights how ‘the German Greens embarked on a programmatic generaliza-
tion almost from their inception and developed complex party manifestoes
by the mid-1980s’ (Kitschelt 2006, p. 285). In this way, their original core
4
I set aside the question of whether the constraints of public reason should also apply to non-
coercive legislation. For an analysis of this aspect, see Bird (2014).
environmental issues became less central to their manifesto but they gradually
acquired the heuristic tools necessary for dealing with a variety of political
issues and therefore becoming competitive in the arena of party politics.5
Parties, therefore, differ from ‘[i]nterest and advocacy groups [which] are
typically “single-issue” pressure groups’ (Rosenblum 2008, p. 260). They are
‘wide-ranging agenda-setting’ (Rosenblum 2000, p. 825) associations which
‘determine the range of matters for discussion and decision’ (Rosenblum
2008, p. 307) and ensure that ‘different aspects of the political world are
linked together across subject and time rather than each taken piecemeal’
(White and Ypi 2010, p. 811). Most if not all parties, for example, have
proposals regarding how wealth and basic goods should be redistributed
across society (e.g. through income tax and social welfare payments). Many
parties also have proposals regarding the granting of voting rights to immi-
grants or the funding of church schools. All these issues relate to constitu-
tional essentials and matters of basic justice, and deliberation about them
should be conducted, according to Rawls, by appealing to public reasons.
Alongside policy proposals concerning fundamental matters, however, par-
ties normally also put forward proposals regarding non-fundamental issues,
for example public support for the arts or environmental protection. The key
point is that even if we accept Rawls’s distinction between fundamental and
non-fundamental matters, and the view that only the former should be
subject to the constraints of public reason, we still need to acknowledge
that parties present their policy proposals concerning both fundamental and
non-fundamental matters as part of broad manifestoes and programmes
rather than piecemeal. This has two main implications.
First, the various proposals become deeply entangled and interdependent.
A party’s proposal to fund church schools, for example, may require diverting
public funds from the arts or from environmental protection (or vice versa).
Given financial and policy constraints, parties must therefore accept difficult
trade-offs between different policy areas when they design their political
platforms (e.g. see Weinstock 2015b). Second, and more importantly, this
renders the requirement to appeal to public reason more pressing for par-
tisans. Voters can normally choose only among comprehensive policy pack-
ages, which involve the aforementioned policy trade-offs, rather than select
specific policies from this or that party, and this requires partisans to justify
their programmes in their comprehensiveness. It is true that elected partisan
legislators speaking in the parliament or in cabinet meetings can (and often
do) present and justify their party’s policy proposals one by one, and therefore
can in principle switch between public and non-public reasons depending
on whether they are discussing fundamental or non-fundamental matters.
5
For similar points, see also Schattschneider (1942, p. 31 and pp. 193–7).
However, this approach is less feasible when partisans need to justify their
party’s programme in its comprehensiveness, for example during electoral
campaigns. This conclusion, it should be noted (in line with my earlier
clarification), applies not only to party candidates and not only during elect-
oral campaigns but whenever partisans present and justify their party’s policy
platform qua partisans before audiences within civil society or in the public
political realm.
PARTISANSHIP AND ‘ WIDE ’ PU BL I C RE AS ON
The second issue that I intend to address concerns one of the most significant
changes in Rawls’s account of public reason in his later work. In Political
Liberalism, it is well known, Rawls rejects an ‘exclusive’ conception of public
reason, establishing that ‘reasons given explicitly in terms of comprehensive
doctrines are never to be introduced into public reason’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 247),
and endorses an ‘inclusive’ view instead. The latter only applies to societies
which are not well-ordered, that is, in which citizens do not share a political
conception of justice and in which ‘there is a profound division about consti-
tutional essentials’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 249). The inclusive view allows citizens ‘to
present what they regard as the basis of political values rooted in their
comprehensive doctrine, provided they do this in ways that strengthen the
ideal of public reason itself ’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 247). For example, Rawls argues,
‘the abolitionists who argued against the antebellum South that its institution
of slavery was contrary to God’s law’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 249) did appeal to
religious reasons but did so in a way that ‘supported the clear conclusions of
public reason’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 250).
In ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’, Rawls (2005b, p. 462) introduces a
‘wide’ conception of public reason. This establishes that ‘reasonable compre-
hensive doctrines, religious or nonreligious, may be introduced in public
political discussion at any time, provided that in due course proper political
reasons—and not reasons given solely by comprehensive doctrines—are pre-
sented that are sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines
introduced are said to support’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 462). The wide view, it
should be noted, applies for Rawls not only to non-well-ordered societies
but also to well-ordered ones, that is, those in which there is agreement
among citizens regarding political values and constitutional essentials. This
is a crucial point in Rawls’s analysis. Indeed one might rightly point out that
since the ‘inclusive’ view of public reason only applies to non-well-ordered
societies, ‘the exclusion of “non-public reasons” in well-ordered constitution-
al democracies tends to immunise their present state from radical or even
moderate criticism also prospectively’ (Bader 2008, p. 118). However, this is
just the problem that Rawls aims to address through the idea of a ‘wide’ public
reason. Rawls’s ‘wide’ conception of public reason, in other words, renders
well-ordered constitutional democracies much less immune to criticism than
his previous ‘exclusive’ and ‘inclusive’ conceptions did.6
Yet the wide view of public reason may also be quite restrictive for partisans.
To understand why, we should note that Rawls does not specify what ‘in due
course’ means precisely. He asks, for example, whether this condition should
be fulfilled ‘[o]n the same day or some later day’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 462) but he
does not provide an answer to that question. He also highlights that ‘there are no
restrictions or requirements on how religious or secular doctrines are them-
selves to be expressed; these doctrines need not, for example, be by some
standards logically correct, or open to rational appraisal, or evidentially sup-
portable. Whether they are or not is a matter to be decided by those presenting
them, and how they want what they say to be taken’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 463).
Moreover, Rawls makes it clear that ‘the proviso is to be appropriately satisfied
in good faith’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 462), that is, not for mere strategic reasons. Yet
the ‘good faith’ condition should not be understood as a requirement to provide
public reasons as soon as possible (e.g. see Bader 2008, p. 127) but rather as a
moral obligation to make a sincere attempt to find those reasons, regardless of
how long it may actually take.
Why is wide public reason, then, still quite burdensome for partisans? As
well as highlighting the ‘good faith’ requirement, which applies equally to all
citizens, Rawls also argues that those who invoke comprehensive doctrines
‘will normally have practical reasons for wanting to make their views accept-
able to a broader audience’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 463; emphasis added). Making
one’s views ‘acceptable to a broader audience’ involves both appealing to
public reasons, that is, reasons that are broadly shared, and presenting one’s
views in a way that is ‘by some standards logically correct, or open to rational
appraisal, or evidentially supportable’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 463). Rawls’s emphasis
on ‘practical’ reasons certainly reveals his awareness of the distance between
ideal and real politics. It also implies, however, that partisans are especially
restrained by public reason. Elsewhere, he also acknowledges that ‘to gain
enough support to win office . . . [parties] must advance some conception of
the public good’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 195) rather than act like ‘mere interest
groups petitioning the government on their own behalf ’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 195).
While all citizens, for Rawls, are under the same moral duty to respect the
constraints of public reason (with all the qualifications examined so far), most
of them can benefit from the ‘wide’ conception of public reason, which allows
them to postpone the articulation of public reasons alongside reasons ground-
ed in comprehensive doctrines. This option, however, may often not be
6
I will return to this point when I discuss the changing character of public reason in
Chapter 7.
available to partisans as the latter are constantly subject to a strong justifica-

tory pressure, which places them under stricter constraints than ordinary
citizens. Indeed Rawls argues that ‘[w]hen firm and widespread, the dispos-
ition of citizens to view themselves as ideal legislators, and to repudiate
government officials and candidates for public office who violate public
reason, is one of the political and social roots of democracy, and is vital to
its enduring strength and vigor’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 445).7 The term ‘repudiate’
suggests strong moral disapproval and social stigma towards blameworthy
partisan(s), and these are more pressing for partisans than for other citizens,
since partisans always have a pragmatic incentive to appeal to the public good
in order to broaden their appeal among the electorate.8 Moreover, while
judges and civil servants, for example, often deliberate behind closed doors
and are therefore more insulated from the justificatory demands of citizens,
partisans need to constantly participate in public debates in civil society and
are therefore exposed to citizens’ critiques and moral appraisal. Finally,
partisans, especially during campaign or parliamentary speeches, have a very
limited time to put their arguments forward, and it is within that limited time
that they need to present broadly appealing reasons in support of their proposed
policies. Most ordinary citizens, or even Supreme Court judges, are not under
the same time pressure.
All these factors place partisans under a special pressure to supplement
reasons grounded in comprehensive doctrines with public reasons as soon as
possible, in order to justify their political programmes to a broad audience and
gain (or maintain) support. This is an unavoidable practical consequence that
the duty of civility has for partisans. It prevents them from fully enjoying the
flexibility in fulfilling the ideal of public reason that Rawls intends to grant all
citizens by introducing the wide conception.
However, this may only be true of elected and campaigning partisans, as
opposed to mere members, supporters, and sympathizers. Indeed, in Chapter 7
I will return to this point and argue that a division of justificatory labour within
political parties may allow some partisans to benefit from the ‘wide’ view of
public reason while leaving to elected partisans the duty to comply with the
constraints of public reason, a duty which, I have explained, they also have a
pragmatic incentive to fulfil. Among the various qualifications introduced by
7
While Rawls claims that it is citizens who should repudiate those public officials who violate
public reason, in Chapter 7 I will defend an indirect view of public justification in which that task
is assigned to other public officials (including other partisans), and which relieves ordinary
citizens of the duty of civility. However, the main point in my present analysis is that those
partisans who violate public reason will be repudiated (regardless of who is doing the repudi-
ating), and that this, for the pragmatic reasons I subsequently illustrate, places them under a
special pressure to comply with the duty of civility as soon as they can.
8
In Chapter 6 I will argue that this is not only a pragmatic requirement but also a moral duty
that partisans have qua partisans.
Rawls in his account of public reason, therefore, the ‘wide’ view of public reason
is the only one that seems to offer some scope for a more inclusive kind of public
deliberation involving at least some partisans.
THE DUTY OF CIVILITY: MORAL OR LEGAL?
In the remainder of this chapter, I would like to consider the last qualification
of public reason examined by Neal, which has been surprisingly overlooked in
the literature on Rawls’s political liberalism and his conception of public
reason. This is Rawls’s repeated emphasis on the fact that the constraints of
public reason are only moral and should not be enforced by law. The duty of
civility, Rawls argues, is ‘a moral, not a legal, duty’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 217). More
specifically, he claims, ‘it is not a legal duty, for in that case it would be
incompatible with freedom of speech’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 445). Rawls’s claim
has been endorsed and reinforced by other authors. In response to those who
accuse public reason of unduly restricting freedom of speech (e.g. Carter 1993;
Benhabib 1994; Sandel 1994), for example, Stephen Macedo argues that
‘[a]dvocates of public reasonableness do not advocate restrictions on political
speech. . . . No one is suggesting that the contours of liberal public reason
should be used to define the limits of constitutional rights to free speech.
Public reason helps define a moral ideal, not a legal requirement’ (Macedo
1997, p. 21).
This response, however, begs the question. Macedo, like Rawls, simply fails
to provide a proper argument for the claim that the protection of free speech
always ought to override any attempt to legally enforce the duty of civility.
Neither has any other author (Rawlsian or non-Rawlsian) endeavoured to
analyse this problem. Neal, for example, argues that ‘Rawls’s commitment to a
robust notion of free speech simply means that he is acknowledging that that
freedom will sometimes be abused but that it is not desirable to seek to legally
prevent that abuse. Presumably, the good of free speech outweighs whatever
benefits would be gained from (trying to) legally enforce the duty of civility’
(Neal 2008, p. 146). Yet an argument in defence of this view needs to be made,
and it cannot be simply assumed. In other words, it needs to be assessed
whether and why freedom of speech is essential to political liberalism, or
whether it might sometimes be legitimate, on the basis of the constraints of
public reason, to impose restrictions on it.
In the remainder of this chapter, I therefore intend to assess whether
Rawls’s claim may simply be due to the practical difficulties raised by any
attempt to enforce the duty of civility by law. In response to this claim, I will
argue both that the implementation of legislation does not entail the adoption
of maximally intrusive and complex measures, and that the various provisos
gradually introduced by Rawls in his conception of public reason would

render the implementation of the duty of civility less impractical than one
might expect. If impracticality is not an issue, I will claim, Rawls’s unwilling-
ness to legally enforce the duty of civility must be driven by deeper normative
reasons grounded in a conception of free speech. I will examine those reasons
in Chapter 5.
ENFORCING THE DUTY OF CIVILITY THROUGH

LAW: AN IMPRACTICAL TASK?
It is worth assessing whether Rawls’s rejection of a legally enforced duty of

civility may be chiefly driven by practical concerns. One might first think that
any attempt by a state to implement a hypothetical ‘Public Reason Act’ would
inevitably lead to an excessive level of state censorship and interference with
the lives of its citizens. Police control of public debate, for example, would
become more intense; CCTV cameras (especially those equipped with audio
surveillance microphones) would become even more widespread than they are
now; newspapers, television channels, and internet users would see their freedom
of expression seriously curtailed.
Yet this picture is excessively bleak. The approval of a law or policy does not
entail that it should be implemented through maximally intrusive measures.
For example, even though in liberal democratic polities there are laws against
spousal abuse or child abuse, governments have not installed cameras in
everyone’s homes in order to constantly control people’s behaviour. This is
not only because most people would in fact oppose this kind of measure but
also and especially because governments (and people more generally) normal-
ly weigh the detection of crime (and the security and protection of individual
interests resulting from it) against other values which are also important to
people generally (e.g. privacy).
Furthermore, the picture becomes even less bleak once one begins to
consider the qualifications that Rawls, as we have seen, gradually added to
his conception of public reason throughout his later work. For example, the
fact that the duty of civility does not apply to the ‘background culture’ rules
out entirely what is perhaps one of the most feared dangers of state censorship,
that is, its interference with the private lives of citizens as members of families
and various kinds of groups and associations within civil society. Clearly, state
surveillance at this level (e.g. in the form of wiretapping of private houses,
police presence at church meetings, censorship of the newsletters produced by
sport or music clubs, etc.) would be ruled out by Rawls’s account of the duty of
civility, even if the latter was implemented by law.
However, we have already seen that for Rawls the constraints of public reason
do apply to politically engaged citizens, including elected partisans, party
candidates, and party members. Rawls’s claims therefore provide some clear
indications of where the state should intervene in order to enforce the con-
straints of public reason, should the latter be made legally binding. His emphasis
on elected partisans who are members of the legislature or the executive, for
example, gives us some clear guidelines regarding where the state should
concentrate its action. Moreover, it would not be difficult, in principle, to
enforce the duty of civility within parliament or cabinet meetings, or during
the deliberations of constitutional courts. For example, as Patrick Neal notes,
the ‘“Lemon test” for determining whether legislation violates the Establish-
ment clause of the First Amendment’ (Neal 2008, p. 146) represents somehow a
way of legally enforcing the duty of civility. The Lemon test demands that
legislation about religion must have a ‘legitimate secular purpose’ (Fowler and
Hertzke 1987; cited in Neal 2008, p. 146). Even more clearly, Jürgen Habermas
suggests that ‘[i]n parliament, for example, the standing rules of procedure of
the house must empower the house leader to have religious statements or
justifications expunged from the minutes’ (Habermas 2006, p. 10). It is some-
how surprising that no other author, apart from Habermas, has put forward
similar practical suggestions on how to legally enforce conversational con-
straints analogous to the Rawlsian duty of civility in an institutional context.9
What these two examples suggest, however, is that the practical implementation
of the duty of civility may often be less difficult than expected, especially when it
comes to elected partisans in different branches of government.
Similar considerations can be made regarding electoral campaigns and
party manifestoes, another area highlighted by Rawls. It would not be exces-
sively difficult to monitor campaign speeches, both in public spaces and on
television, in order to check whether candidates and other party affiliates make
references to comprehensive doctrines in support of their policy proposals.
Those who do could be fined and/or prevented from speaking again in public
for a specified length of time. It would be even easier to monitor party
manifestoes and programmes and require parties to expunge from them any
references to comprehensive doctrines. For example, the present Constitution
of Portugal establishes that ‘[w]ithout prejudice to the philosophy or ideology
that underlies their manifestoes, political parties shall not employ names that
contain expressions which are directly related to any religion or church, or
emblems that can be confused with national or religious symbols’ (Constitu-
tion of the Portuguese Republic, Seventh Revision, Article 51, 2005). Even
though this constitutional provision only has a symbolic significance, as it
expressly does not concern parties’ ideology and philosophy, it could
9
I set aside, here, a discussion of the differences between Habermas’s and Rawls’s conceptions
of public reason. I will return to this specific problem in Chapter 7.
potentially be extended to the latter. Parties, that is, could be required by law
not to employ arguments grounded in religious (and nonreligious) compre-
hensive doctrines in order to support programmatic measures in their man-
ifestoes. This therefore provides us with an idea of what a constitutional or
legal application of the duty of civility to party manifestoes and programmes
would look like.
More problematic and especially intrusive, however, would be the imple-
mentation of Rawls’s view that public reason should also regulate ‘how citizens
are to cast their vote on . . . [fundamental] questions’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 215).
Yet Rawls’s demand is not as restrictive as it seems. On the one hand, if
citizens are involved in campaigning or other forms of ‘political advocacy in
the public forum’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 215), they are clearly subject to the
constraints of public reason as they no longer differ from, say, party candidates
or party affiliates. On the other hand, if citizens are not engaged in public
deliberation, those constraints only require them to vote on fundamental
matters based on public reasons. This means that within their conscience
they ought to find public reasons (alongside reasons based on comprehensive
doctrines) justifying their choice to vote for a certain policy, candidate, or party.
However, when citizens’ deliberation regarding how to vote is only conducted
within their conscience, this cannot have any implications for freedom of speech
as our thoughts are beyond governmental reach. As Frederick Schauer points
out, ‘[w]e can think silently. It is not necessary to speak or write in order to
think, and when we think silently, our thoughts are beyond the reach of
government sanction . . . [A] silent thought qua thought is immune from pun-
ishment, and to that extent is discretely different from outward expression or
communication’ (Schauer 1982, p. 53). When deciding how to enforce the duty
of civility in connection with citizens’ voting decisions, therefore, issues of
practical implementation become irrelevant.10
Practical issues, however, might arise from Rawls’s view that the constraints
of public reason, as we have seen earlier, only apply to constitutional essentials
and matters of basic justice but not to ordinary legislative issues. However,
once we have drawn a line between constitutional and non-constitutional
matters (regardless of whether we actually endorse Rawls’s own distinction),
then it may become easier to identify references to constitutional essentials
in, say, constitutional court deliberations, parliamentary debates, campaign
speeches or party manifestoes, and implement the relevant free speech restric-
tions based on the duty of civility. However, we saw earlier that constitutional
and non-constitutional issues are less easily distinguishable in party
10
This does not mean, however, that citizens should not be encouraged to present in public
the reasons that underlie their voting decisions. Public deliberation might also help to unveil the
sincerity of such reasons, as I will explain shortly.
manifestoes, programmes, and campaign speeches. This implies that legal

censorship may often have to be applied more thoroughly in these instances.
A further aspect, however, deserves greater attention. In ‘The Idea of Public
Reason Revisited’ (Rawls 2005b), we have seen, Rawls introduces a ‘wide’
conception of public reason. How would the ‘in due course’ proviso that
characterizes this conception affect the legal enforcement of the duty of
civility? MPs and judges, for example, could be asked to provide within a set
period of time (e.g. one week, one month, etc.) public reasons to be added to
the relevant parliamentary minutes or the text of legislation or constitutional
court rulings. This would be a much less restrictive measure than Habermas’s
abovementioned suggestion that appeals to religious arguments should simply
be removed from parliamentary minutes, as it would allow legislators to
amend those minutes, by adding public reasons within a set period of time.
Also, candidates during election campaigns who have breached the duty of
civility, for example, could be required to make a public statement by a certain
deadline (which should be sufficiently earlier than the day of the election),
providing public reasons (in addition to the non-public reasons they have
previously invoked) in support of their advocated measure(s). Similarly, party
manifestoes and programmes could be subject to the checks of a ‘Public
Reason Committee’ before becoming public. Parties, for example, could be
asked by the Committee to remove by a certain deadline any references to
comprehensive doctrines. In any case, and as previously highlighted, partisans
may be under a special pressure to provide public reasons as soon as possible,
and this may be earlier than the legally required deadline (whatever the latter
might be).
Failure to comply with the duty of civility ‘in due course’ would still result,
of course, in some form of punishment. For example, guilty MPs or candidates
(or their party) could be fined or compelled to remove the ‘illegal’ references to
comprehensive doctrines (and the measures they are supposed to support)
from the relevant official documents (e.g. draft legislation, party manifesto,
etc.). In extreme cases, for example, when a party candidate makes continuous
references to a religious doctrine in his/her speeches and fails more than once
to provide public reasons ‘in due course’, he/she could be required to withdraw
his/her candidature. Similarly, a party that systematically grounds its mani-
festo in a religious or other comprehensive doctrine and fails to make the
necessary changes to it could be banned from the upcoming election and, if
recidivist, from future elections too.
It should also be noted that for Rawls ‘the proviso is to be appropriately
satisfied in good faith’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 462). People’s commitment to public
reason, and their compliance with the duty of civility, should therefore be
sincere (Rawls 2005a, p. 226). While some have contested the need for sincerity
in public reason deliberation (Reidy 2000; Kang 2003, 2004), here I assume, for
the sake of argument, that ‘sincerity is an important condition of public
deliberation, and that deliberation is necessary to evaluate, criticise and improve

the quality of public justifications’ (Schwartzman 2011, pp. 377–8). Political
legitimacy, in other words, requires sincere commitment to public reason.
The sincerity requirement may raise serious practical concerns. It is a
matter of fact that citizens (especially public officials and politicians) often
defend their policy positions on the basis of public reasons that they do not
sincerely believe to be sufficient for public justification. This is often due to
political expediency, for example, to the aim of gaining popular support or
building coalitions with political rivals (Schwartzman 2011, p. 377). As well as
contravening Rawls’s sincerity requirement, and thus undermining public
justification and political legitimacy, this also shows that it may be very
difficult, perhaps impossible, to legally enforce and monitor people’s compli-
ance with the duty of civility. In the end, there is no way to check whether
people are truly motivated by the public reasons that they expediently invoke
in public deliberation.
Yet believing sincerely that certain public reasons are sufficient to justify
public policies does not imply that one should be motivated by them
(Schwartzman 2011, p. 390). In other words, and as is well captured by Rawls’s
idea of an overlapping consensus, ‘[o]ne can be moved by a religious claim and
believe that political action should follow from it only if it can be substantiated
by sufficient public reason’ (Schwartzman 2011, p. 389, original emphasis),
that is, without actually being motivated by the latter. The main scope of the
wide view of public reason is indeed to enable citizens to work out by
themselves how their comprehensive doctrines are related to political values.
It does not matter, therefore, if we cannot monitor people’s motivations
because motivations are actually irrelevant to the sincerity of public reason.
Nevertheless, we are still left with the problem of establishing whether
citizens who are often mainly motivated by non-public (e.g. religious, philo-
sophical and ethical) reasons sincerely believe that the public reasons they
invoke in public deliberation are sufficient for public justification. How can the
state, for example, establish whether partisans who appeal to public reasons
(whatever these might be) in order to reject abortion or the legal recognition of
homosexual relationships sincerely believe that those reasons (e.g. rather than
the religious reasons that deeply motivate them) are sufficient for public
justification? It seems that we are facing here an insurmountable practical
obstacle to the legal enforcement of the duty of civility.
However, as Eric MacGilvray (2004) shows, there is no reason to think that
sincerity may not be the object of public scrutiny. More specifically, MacGilv-
ray argues, we can ‘show either that the empirical premises upon which a given
appeal rests are false or that those who are making the appeal are not
consistent in accepting its broader implications’ (McGilvray 2004, p. 198).
In the former case, for example, we can claim that appealing to the welfare of
children as a public reason for rejecting the legal recognition of homosexual
relationships may not be legitimate if we could show ‘that children of homo-

sexual couples were on average just as “well adjusted” as the children of
heterosexual couples’ (McGilvray 2004, p. 197). Empirical evidence, that is,
can gradually limit the range of public reasons available to insincere people
and thus unmask their insincerity. In the latter case, for example, people who
reject affirmative action because ‘there should be no “special privileges” for
any group’ (McGilvray 2004, p. 197), that is, a potentially public reason, may
reveal their insincere commitment to that reason if they then justify the unfair
outcomes of the lack of affirmative action by appealing either to intrinsic
ability differences between ethnic groups (a racist and therefore unreasonable
claim) or to differences in training and education (which cannot be justified
through public reasons) (McGilvray 2004, p. 197).
Rawls’s wide view of public reason allows plenty of scope for the kind of
public deliberation that can contribute to scrutinizing and unveiling insincere
beliefs in this way. Within this framework, there would be plenty of scope for
public institutions aimed at performing this important function. As MacGilv-
ray suggests, for example, we could devise a ‘federal model of public reason’
(McGilvray 2004, p. 199, original emphasis) in which local deliberative bodies
could ‘help to ensure that the claims made in the name of public reason are
constrained within certain bounds: that people cannot get away with making
unfounded claims about the dangers of same-sex marriage, or hypocritical
claims about the injustice of affirmative action, for example’ (McGilvray 2004,
pp. 200–1). This kind of deliberation is already possible, of course, in national
fora such as parliaments or cabinet meetings, where the insincere beliefs of
politicians and public officials are often unmasked during deliberations. Yet a
more decentralized system would allow a much more pervasive scrutiny of
citizens’ (as well as public officials’) appeals to public reasons, and would be in
line with the widespread endorsement of forms of micro-deliberation among
deliberative democrats.11
CO NCLUSION
In this chapter I have shown that the various qualifications introduced by

Rawls in his conception of public reason are not sufficient to show that this
conception is not overly burdensome for parties and partisans. Furthermore,
in the final part of the chapter I argued that issues of practical implementation,
including those concerning measures aimed at legally restricting the speech of
partisans, are not insurmountable when discussing whether the duty of civility
11
See, for example, Chappell (2012, pp. 39–40).
should be legally enforced. It is therefore still necessary to assess why Rawls

resists endorsing the legal implementation of the duty of civility. If practical
constraints are not the issue, then Rawls’s unwillingness to legally enforce the
duty of civility might be driven by deeper normative reasons, that is, a strong
commitment to freedom of speech, as emphasized by Neal (2008, p. 146).
Unfortunately, though, Rawls never provides a systematic theory of free
speech in his works. Even though he includes freedom of speech among the
basic liberties that ought to be protected and entrenched in the constitution
of a ‘well-ordered’ society (Rawls 2005a, p. 159, pp. 227–8), his references to
freedom of speech are scattered both in A Theory of Justice and in Political
Liberalism, and his most detailed discussion of free speech concerns the issue
of seditious libel (Rawls 2005a, pp. 340–8). In Chapter 5, I will therefore take a
detour from my analysis of partisanship, and critically assess what arguments
Rawls (or Rawlsians) could invoke in order to justify free speech and reject the
legal enforcement of the duty of civility.
Before doing so, however, I would like to clarify an important point. While
the analysis conducted in this chapter has shown that the constraints of public
reason are still burdensome for partisans (as opposed to ordinary citizens),
even once we consider the various stipulations introduced by Rawls in his
conception of public reason, it has not shown that those constraints are not
as burdensome also for other public officials (e.g. judges, civil servants, etc.). In
other words, while I have shown that partisans definitely occupy a different
space within political liberalism than ordinary citizens and members of civil
society associations, I have not offered yet any reasons why they should be
distinguished from other public officials. This further distinction will emerge
in Chapter 6, where I will illustrate the normative ideal of partisanship and,
most importantly, in Chapter 7, where I will defend a bifurcated account of
public justification of which only parties and partisans, thanks to their unique
position within the public realm, can be the channels.
5
Free Speech and the Duty of Civility
In this chapter I will take a detour from the analysis of parties and partisanship
and critically assess which arguments for free speech may be consistent with
Rawls’s political liberalism, in order to establish whether there are good
reasons, within political liberalism, for rejecting the legal implementation of
the duty of civility. Neither in A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1999a) nor in Political
Liberalism (Rawls 2005a) does Rawls offer a systematic philosophical defence
of free speech. He simply includes freedom of speech among the ‘equal basic
rights and liberties of citizenship’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 227) and briefly discusses
free political speech in connection with the issue of seditious libel (Rawls
2005a, pp. 340ff). Providing a Rawlsian theory of free speech is therefore
interesting and useful in its own right but my main goal will be to show
how such a theory may contribute to explaining Rawls’s rejection of a legally
enforced duty of civility.
I will first focus on those arguments that justify freedom of speech based on
the ideas of truth and autonomy/self-fulfilment. Both arguments, I will argue,
rely on comprehensive doctrines and therefore cannot provide a freestanding
political justification for free speech. Freedom of speech, I will claim, can be
justified instead in political terms on the basis of Rawls’s political conception
of the person and of its two moral powers. However, I will argue, Rawls’s wide
view of public reason already allows scope for the kind of free speech necessary
for the exercise of the two moral powers and therefore cannot explain Rawls’s
opposition to the legal enforcement of the duty of civility. Such opposition,
I will claim, can only be explained on the basis of a defence of free speech
grounded in the ideas of democracy and political legitimacy, which is consist-
ent with Rawls’s own account of free speech.
For Rawls, therefore, both freedom of speech and public reason contribute
to political legitimacy. This creates a tension within political liberalism.
However, while public reason and the duty of civility are clearly central to
political liberalism, it is not clear whether and why this should also be the
case for unconstrained freedom of speech. I will therefore conclude that, in
spite of what Rawls argues in defence of unconstrained freedom of speech,
political liberalism is in principle consistent with some restrictions on free
speech, including those which would result from the legal enforcement of
the duty of civility.
POLITICAL LIBERALISM, F REE S PEECH, AND

THE ARGUMENT F ROM TRUTH
The first theory of free speech that I wish to examine is the argument from
truth, according to which freedom of speech allows the free exchange of
opinions which is crucial for searching and discovering the truth. The most
famous version of this argument is the one presented by John Stuart Mill in his
essay On Liberty (Mill [1859] 2006). Mill’s arguments are well known and will
not be discussed at length here. In summary, Mill argues that we should not
silence an opinion because it may be true and silencing it may preserve error.
This, Mill claims, would amount to a presumption of infallibility and would
constitute a serious obstacle to intellectual development and to the pursuit of
truth. Alternatively, if the received opinion (even if obviously true) is not
confronted or challenged by other opinions, its meaning may be lost and it
may become a dead dogma. Furthermore, the opinion one wants to silence
may be partly true and only freedom of speech could allow the true part to
emerge. Finally, Mill also claims that an unchallenged opinion is not able to
promote action (Mill 2006, pp. 22–63).
I set aside, for the purpose of the present analysis, a discussion of the
intrinsic merits and flaws of Mill’s arguments, which have already been
extensively analysed in the literature.1 What I would like to point out, instead,
is that Mill’s defence of freedom of speech is consequentialist in a twofold
sense. First, free speech is functional to the search and discovery of truth.
Second, and most importantly, searching and discovering the truth through
the free exchange of opinions is for Mill not valuable in itself but because it
contributes ‘to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other
well-being depends)’ (Mill 2006, p. 60, n. 53). ‘The truth of an opinion’, Mill
argues, ‘is part of its utility’ (Mill 2006, p. 29), and for Mill utility should be ‘the
ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest
sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being’
(Mill 2006, p. 17). It is clear from these remarks that Mill’s account of freedom
of speech is not unrelated to his overall defence of liberty broadly intended
(Mill 2006, p. 59) but is instead deeply rooted in it.
This has important implications in relation to Rawls’s political liberalism.
If the argument from truth relies on a comprehensive doctrine such as Mill’s
1
See, for example, Ten (1980), O’Rourke (2001), and Scanlon (1972).
Free Speech and the Duty of Civility 83
liberalism, it could not be invoked by Rawls to justify freedom of speech as a

constitutional essential. Indeed Rawls himself often remarks that his political
liberalism significantly differs from Mill’s comprehensive liberalism and does
not endorse, for example, Mill’s comprehensive conception of individuality
and autonomy (Rawls 2005a, pp. 78, 98, 199–200, 375, 400). Truth-seeking
cannot therefore be invoked to provide a public justification for freedom of
speech as a constitutional essential in polities characterized by the fact of
reasonable pluralism. Doing so would violate the ‘liberal principle of legit-
imacy’, which establishes that political power is legitimate and justified ‘only
when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which
all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the
light of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason’
(Rawls 2005a, p. 137). Furthermore, Rawls himself seems to deny that a
freestanding political conception of truth is possible. According to him,
‘political constructivism specifies an idea of the reasonable . . . [but] . . . does
not . . . use (or deny) the concept of truth; nor does it question that concept,
nor could it say that the concept of truth and its idea of the reasonable are the
same. Rather, within itself the political conception does without the concept
of truth’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 94).
This conclusion may not be sufficient, however, for dismissing the argu-
ment from truth as a justification for free speech in Rawls’s political liberalism.
If we untie the search and discovery of truth from Mill’s emphasis on
individual well-being and progress (i.e. ‘utility in the largest sense’), we may
be left with a freestanding political justification for freedom of speech. As
Frederick Schauer highlights, ‘the advantages of truth are almost universally
accepted’ (Schauer 1982, p. 17). They are, to put it in Rawls’s terms, ‘presently
accepted general beliefs and forms of reasoning found in common sense’
(Rawls 2005a, p. 224) or ‘plain truths now widely accepted, or available, to
citizens generally’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 225). They can therefore be included
among those political values which solely, in Rawls’s view of public reason,
can provide a public justification for the constitutional essentials, including
freedom of speech. It is true, of course, that many people base their lives on
‘false beliefs, say, that sacrificing animals to the Water Gods will prevent
hurricanes, or that Creation Science is as adequate a theory as Darwinism,
or that the Holocaust never occurred’ (Fitzpatrick 2010, p. 71). One might also
argue that for these people life can only be valuable if the beliefs they hold
remain unchallenged. Yet it is plausible to argue that for these people such
beliefs are true, even if for (most of) us they are not. This suggests that there is
a reasonable overlapping consensus concerning the importance of holding
true beliefs, and that very few people (if any) would expressly desire to hold
false beliefs.
Joshua Cohen (2009), in this connection, provides a persuasive account of
how a conception of truth may indeed be political and therefore consistent
with (rather than inimical to) the idea of public reason. According to Cohen ‘a
political conception of truth . . . [involves] . . . a set of claims about truth—for
example, that truth is distinct from warrant, and that it is important—that is
suited for the purposes of political reflection and argument in a pluralistic
democracy, characterised by doctrinal disagreements’ (Cohen 2009, p. 3).
Public reasoning, Cohen argues, does not require (and indeed demands
renouncing) ‘concepts of salvation, or self-realisation, soul, personal auton-
omy, purity, courage or honor’ (Cohen 2009, p. 70) but does require a ‘concept
of truth’ (Cohen 2009, p. 15, original emphasis), in the same way in which it
requires ‘the concept of an object, cause, thought, reason or inference or
evidence’ (Cohen 2009, p. 15). ‘Truth’, Cohen claims, ‘is so closely connected
with intuitive notions of thinking, asserting, believing, judging and reasoning
that it is difficult to understand what leaving it behind amounts to’.2
Two specific aspects of Cohen’s account of the political conception of truth
are especially relevant to my present analysis. First, Cohen argues, ‘[b]elieving
(asserting, judging) is believing (asserting, judging) true, where this slogan is
understood to mean that truth is the norm governing beliefs, assertions and
judgments’ (Cohen 2009, p. 27). Second, he claims, ‘[t]rue beliefs present
things as they are (they “say of what is that it is and of what is not that it is
not”), and in that uncontroversial sense correspond to how things are,
although it [i.e. the political conception of truth] will not add (or deny) that
such beliefs present things as they really are in themselves, determinately and
mind-independently’ (Cohen 2009, p. 27).
These two points suggest that even those people who hold beliefs that are
widely considered false can subscribe to this political conception of truth. Two
important considerations follow from Cohen’s analysis. First, and as the
passages just quoted show, in order to be the object of a reasonable overlap-
ping consensus a political conception of truth must necessarily be ‘thin’. It
must be, to use Cohen’s words, a ‘concept of truth, not a theory of truth’ (Cohen
2009, p. 15), as the latter would raise ‘philosophical controversy’ (Cohen 2009,
p. 15), the very thing political liberalism aims to eschew.3 Second, and as
2
Similarly, Charles Larmore makes a distinction between ‘truth as a goal’ and ‘truth as a
standard’. The latter, he argues, implies that ‘[i]n believing something, we commit ourselves to
thinking and acting in accord with the presumed truth of what we believe, but not to the pursuit
of any particular sort of goal’ (Larmore 2008, p. 238). To do otherwise, Larmore claims, would
simply mean to act incoherently.
3
For this reason, Cohen also states very clearly that a political conception of truth cannot be
identified with a deflationary theory of truth, even though the latter may seem to present
similarly minimalist features. More specifically, Cohen argues, ‘[a] political conception cannot
endorse an antimetaphysical, conceptually deflationary theory. That endorsement is not needed
for public reasoning and would put the political conception needlessly at odds with religious or
philosophical views that comprise more ambitious conceptions of truth. Endorsing an antime-
taphysical deflationism would make the political conception of truth unacceptably sectarian.
Instead, a political conception aims to be nonmetaphysical, rather than antimetaphysical’
a consequence, this reasonable overlapping consensus on a thin concept of

truth can be (and normally is) accompanied by a reasonable disagreement
regarding what the necessary conditions for holding true beliefs actually are. In
other words, we can agree on a concept of truth (such as Cohen’s) while
disagreeing on theories of truth, including (most importantly for the present
analysis) theories that consider freedom of speech a necessary condition for
holding true beliefs.
One might still point out that those who hold certain beliefs (e.g. that the
Holocaust never happened), despite clear and opposing evidence, can hardly
be considered reasonable. Maintaining such beliefs in the face of contrary
empirical and historical evidence seems irrational and it may be difficult to
understand how irrational people could be reasonable in the Rawlsian sense of
the term. Indeed, even though Rawls makes a clear distinction between the
‘rational’ and the ‘reasonable’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 51), Gerald Gaus points out
that ‘the reasonable is much more closely bound to the rational than Rawls
and other political liberals would have us believe . . . [and] . . . the rational is far
more basic to political justification than political liberals suppose’ (Gaus 1995,
p. 235). There seem to be good grounds, therefore, for arguing that political
liberalism demands standards for belief or ‘epistemic rationality’ (Gaus 1995,
p. 238) on the basis of which certain irrational beliefs could be considered
unreasonable. Yet, as Gaus himself argues, ‘we need not commit ourselves to a
notion of truth in order to explicate epistemic rationality’ (Gaus 1995, p. 238).
While epistemic rationality may require thicker standards of belief than those
entailed by Cohen’s political concept of truth, it still leaves scope for reason-
able disagreement regarding theories of truth, including theories that consider
free speech a necessary condition for holding true beliefs (and, indeed, Gaus
himself does not make any references to free speech in his argument).
The upshot of this analysis is therefore that while political accounts of truth
and of epistemic rationality (such as those defended by Cohen and Gaus) may
be consistent with political liberalism and public reason, they are irrelevant to
a normative defence of free speech. For such a defence to be grounded in the
idea of truth, a theory of truth (i.e. rather than a mere concept of truth, or mere
standards of epistemic rationality) is required, but we have seen that any such
theory would be the object of reasonable disagreement. Cohen’s and Gaus’s
arguments justify at most some of the rules of inquiry that should guide the
use of free speech in public reasoning, but do not explain how free speech can
be justified on Rawlsian grounds in the first instance, and what the connection
between free speech and public reason is in Rawls’s theory. We therefore need
to look elsewhere for a justification for freedom of speech as a constitutional
essential in political liberalism.
(Cohen 2009, p. 4). This suggests that people can reasonably endorse or reject a deflationary
theory of truth while still subscribing to a political conception of truth.
POLITICAL LIBERALISM, F REE S PEECH, AUTONOMY,

AND S EL F-FULFILMENT
The second argument I wish to examine grounds the protection of free speech
in the ideas of individual autonomy and self-fulfilment.4 The claim, in this
case, is that ‘[r]estrictions on what we are allowed to say and write, or (on
some formulations of the theory) to hear and read, inhibit our personality and
its growth. A right to express beliefs and political attitudes instantiates or
reflects what it is to be human’ (Barendt 2005, p. 13). The arguments from
autonomy and self-fulfilment, at least in some of their versions, rely on an
Aristotelian conception of human nature and on the view that ‘[t]he right to
freedom of expression is justified first of all as the right of an individual purely
in his capacity as an individual. It derives from the widely accepted premise of
western thought that the proper end of man is the realisation of his character
and potentialities as a human being’ (Emerson 1962–1963, p. 879). Such
potentialities include the ability to express one’s views, which is ‘an integral
part of the development of ideas, of mental exploration and of the affirmation
of self ’ (Emerson 1962–1963, p. 879).
It is clear that, as in the case of Millian liberalism, a view in which human
beings should constantly seek progress and intellectual growth through the free
expression of beliefs and opinions is inevitably a comprehensive (and therefore
controversial) view. It is not shared by those who ‘are likely to be satisfied with
other freedoms, or prefer the security or intellectual anaesthesia that accom-
panies rigid controls on expression’ (Schauer 1982, p. 49), and therefore cannot
be invoked as a freestanding public reason to justify constitutional essentials
such as freedom of speech.
In a more refined version of the argument, which is focused on the autonomy
of hearers rather than the autonomy of speakers, Thomas M. Scanlon claims
that ‘the powers of a state are limited to those that citizens could recognise while
still regarding themselves as equal, autonomous, rational agents’ (Scanlon
1972, p. 215). For Scanlon, ‘[a]n autonomous person cannot accept without
independent consideration the judgment of others as to what he should believe
or what he should do’ (Scanlon 1972, p. 216). Freedom of speech is therefore
essential to guaranteeing that individual autonomous choices are fully in-
formed and well thought-through. This implies that speech should not be
restricted based on the fact that some acts of expression produce certain
kinds of harms, for example ‘(a) harm to certain individuals which consist in
their coming to have false beliefs as a result of those acts of expression and (b)
harmful consequences of acts performed as a result of those acts of expression,
4
The two arguments are often discussed separately but I will discuss them together here for
the sake of space.
where . . . the act of expression led the agents to believe (or increased their
tendency to believe) these acts to be worth performing’ (Scanlon 1972,
p. 213). Like other versions of the autonomy theory of free speech, Scanlon’s
argument relies on a comprehensive conception of individual autonomy which
cannot be invoked in order to justify the protection of freedom of speech within
Rawls’s political liberalism. Indeed, Scanlon himself identifies his theory with
the ‘Millian principle’ (Scanlon 1972, p. 213) as it relies on a Millian (and,
therefore, comprehensive) conception of individual autonomy.
There is, however, a slightly different formulation of Scanlon’s theory of
freedom of speech that might provide a more suitable rationale for a Rawlsian
account of free speech. In his essay on Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (Scanlon
1973), Scanlon argues that freedom of speech is justified by the fact that the
parties in the Original Position would not grant governments ‘the authority to
decide matters of moral, religious or philosophic doctrine (or of scientific
truth) and . . . to restrict certain activities on the grounds that they promulgate
false or corrupting doctrines’ (Scanlon 1973, p. 1042). Scanlon calls this ‘the
Principle of Limited Authority’ (Scanlon 1973, p. 1042). Similarly, in a more
recent essay (which, however, does not directly discuss Rawls’s work), Scanlon
argues that ‘freedom of expression . . . seeks to protect . . . our interest in decid-
ing for ourselves how to conduct our private lives’ (Scanlon 2011, p. 545).
Scanlon’s claim bears a clear link with Rawls’s political liberalism. More
specifically, Rawls ascribes ‘two moral powers’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 19) to persons,
that is, ‘a capacity for a sense of justice and for a conception of the good’
(Rawls 2005a, p. 19). The latter ‘is the capacity to form, to revise and rationally
to pursue a conception of one’s rational advantage or good’ (Rawls 2005a,
p. 19; see also pp. 30 and 104). Freedom of expression is clearly necessary for
citizens to be able to cultivate this capacity. While the state, in political
liberalism, should not embrace any conception of the good, it should provide
citizens with basic rights and liberties (including freedom of speech) in order
to allow them to pursue their conceptions of the good (e.g. religious, philo-
sophical, ethical, etc.) in their private lives. Not doing so would encroach upon
their liberty of conscience which, for Rawls, ‘is among the social conditions
necessary for the development and exercise of this power’ (Rawls 2005a,
p. 313). If this line of argument justifies the protection of free speech in
Rawls’s political liberalism, it may also provide the key for understanding
why Rawls opposes the legal enforcement of the duty of civility.
Yet this conclusion may be too hurried. For Rawls, we have seen, the
constraints of public reason only apply to the ‘public political forum’ (Rawls
2005a, p. 215; see also Rawls 2005b, p. 443) and not to the ‘background
culture’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 215). Moreover, in ‘The Idea of Public Reason
Revisited’ (Rawls 2005b) Rawls introduces the ‘non-public political culture
[which] mediates between the public political culture and the background
culture. This comprises media . . . of all kinds: newspapers, reviews and
magazines, television and radio, and much else’ (Rawls 2005b, pp. 443–4,
n. 13). The constraints of public reason do not apply to this realm either. It
seems, therefore, that a legal enforcement of the duty of civility in the public
political realm would not significantly prevent citizens from cultivating their
capacity for a conception of the good. The free flow of information that
citizens (and even public officials) could access in the background culture
and the non-public political culture would be sufficient for them ‘to form, to
revise and rationally to pursue a conception of one’s rational advantage or
good’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 19). While providing a plausible justification for a
Rawlsian defence of free speech, therefore, this argument still fails to explain
why Rawls so strongly opposes the legal enforcement of the duty of civility.
However, a better argument may be found if we turn to the other moral
power Rawls ascribes to individuals, that is, the capacity to develop and
exercise their sense of justice. This moral power, Rawls argues, is ‘the capacity
to understand, to apply and to act from the public conception of justice which
characterises the fair terms of social co-operation’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 19). Culti-
vating this capacity requires people to work out for themselves whether some
argument is properly public or political. This involves not only personal reflec-
tion but also deliberation with others and, most importantly, deliberation con-
ducted in the public political realm, rather than solely in the background culture
and the non-public political realm. The legal implementation of the duty of
civility would seriously undermine this process. Censoring freedom of speech in
the public political realm (the only realm, it should be remembered, where that
duty applies) would prevent individuals from employing their judgement in
order to assess what arguments are properly public and political, and therefore
would hinder the development and exercise of their capacity for a sense of justice.
This is hardly problematic, however, for Rawls’s theory. Indeed the ‘wide’
conception of public reason just aims to guarantee this kind of deliberation.
By allowing individuals to appeal to comprehensive doctrines, it enables them
to participate in this deliberation without having to strictly abide by the duty
of civility. Even if the latter was enforced by law, therefore, this deliberation
would still be exempted from censorship.5 This especially reflects Rawls’s
endorsement of a ‘flexible’ conception of public reason and his view that the
latter should not be fixed ‘once and for all in the form of one favoured political
conception of justice’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 451). This is crucial, Rawls argues, if we
want to avoid a situation where ‘the claims of groups or interests arising from
social change might be repressed and fail to gain their appropriate political
voice’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 452). Take, for example, environmentalist concepts
5
We have seen in Chapter 4, however, that for pragmatic reasons the scope for unconstrained
deliberation under the ‘wide’ view of public reason is much more limited for partisans than it is
for other citizens. Yet here I am trying to formulate a theory of free speech that applies to Rawls’s
political liberalism in general.
such as ‘sustainability’ and ‘carbon footprint’ (White and Ypi 2011, p. 390).
Fifty or sixty years ago, such concepts would probably have been considered
non-political and expressions of a comprehensive doctrine. However, thanks
to decades of deliberation, people in western liberal democracies have increas-
ingly acknowledged that these concepts are political, that is, that they are
public reasons. They have become ‘presently accepted general beliefs’ (Rawls
2005a, p. 225) and ‘plain truths now widely accepted, or available, to citizens
generally’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 225).6
However, a further problem may arise at this point. Rawls’s flexible con-
ception of public reason, we have seen, implies that there is scope for some
arguments previously (or currently) considered non-public and non-political
(e.g. the abovementioned environmental ideas) to be increasingly acknow-
ledged as public and political after a (sometimes lengthy) process of deliber-
ation. Moreover, the opposite is also true: some reasons that were previously
considered public may gradually become more controversial. The idea, men-
tioned in Chapter 4, that the legal recognition of homosexual relationships can
reasonably be rejected in order to protect the welfare of children belongs to
this category, and so do many other allegedly public reasons whose empirical
foundations have gradually been shown to be unsound. This, one might argue,
implies that violations of the duty of civility will often be a matter of degree,
and will often be contested. Consequently, this will create an ‘in principle’
barrier to the legal enforcement of the duty of civility.
Yet this need not be the case. The fact that public reason is flexible and
changes over time, and that violations of the duty of civility will often be
contested, does not imply that we cannot establish with a good degree of
confidence that some (indeed, many) arguments and concepts (e.g. salvation,
reincarnation, Kantian or Millian conceptions of personal autonomy, etc.) are
definitely non-public and controversial in contemporary liberal democratic
societies, given the fact of reasonable pluralism (MacGilvray 2004, p. 195), and
that they will remain so for the foreseeable future. While these arguments and
concepts can, of course, be invoked during the unconstrained public deliber-
ation that wide public reasons allows, they should still be relinquished when,
in due course, public reasons should be invoked instead in order to support
legislation concerning fundamental matters. The fact that the content of
public reason changes over time, therefore, only implies that some of the
items in the ‘list’ of non-public reasons that should not be invoked in public
deliberation will also constantly change, due to new additions and subtrac-
tions. It does not imply, however, that the bulk of that list will not remain
stable and uncontested over time.7
6
I will return to the issues concerning the change of public reason in Chapter 7.
7
One might contest the inclusion of such diverse doctrines as the Millian conception of
individual autonomy and the Biblical idea of salvation under the same generic category
Rawls’s account of public reason therefore already allows the kind of

deliberation that enables individuals to develop and exercise their two moral
powers. On the one hand, it allows unconstrained debate in the background
culture and the non-public political sphere, thanks to which people can
cultivate their capacity for a conception of the good. On the other hand,
through the wide and flexible conception of public reason, it allows the kind
of deliberation that helps citizens to exercise and develop their capacity for a
sense of justice. The legal enforcement of the duty of civility would not involve
any kind of censorship at these levels and would therefore not hinder indi-
viduals’ exercise of their moral powers. Yet, as we have seen, it would indeed
entail censorship when, in due course, citizens would be expected by law to
relinquish arguments grounded in comprehensive doctrines that are deemed
non-political and non-public at that point in their society. It still needs to be
explained, therefore, why Rawls opposes the legal enforcement of the duty of
civility at that stage.
A potential response, still based on Rawls’s political conception of the
person and, especially, of the first moral power (the capacity for a sense of
justice) could be the following. The exercise and development of that capacity
requires that citizens comply with the duty of civility sincerely and ‘in good
faith’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 226). We have already seen that sincerity is indeed
important in public reasoning. This implies that the legal enforcement of the
duty of civility might seriously undermine the sincere fulfilment of that duty.
If citizens were under a strong pressure to comply with the duty of civility in
due course when advocating legislation about fundamental matters in the
public political realm, due to fear of legal sanctions, they might often be
inclined to misrepresent or lie about their true beliefs, in order to avoid
those sanctions (Schwartzman 2011, p. 397).
For example, if an MP had one week to provide public reasons to support a
policy she proposed in the parliament in order to avoid a fine or suspension,
she would probably be more concerned about finding any suitable public
‘comprehensive doctrine’. While the former (like other comprehensive philosophical doctrines)
seems to be open to rational scrutiny by reasonable people, the latter, one might argue, could
only be accepted (and assessed) based on very controversial and, for some people, obscure
accounts of scriptural authority and faith. While this is a serious concern, it perhaps overstates
the extent to which religious comprehensive doctrines are more controversial than nonreligious
ones. Furthermore, while some nonreligious doctrines (such as Millian liberalism) may perhaps
be considered overall less controversial and obscure than many religious doctrines, this does not
render them any more suitable for justifying legislation concerning fundamental matters. The
fact of reasonable pluralism, that is, implies that both the Millian idea of personal autonomy and
the Biblical idea of salvation are controversial comprehensive doctrines, even if to different
degrees, and that any appeal to them should be relinquished when, in due course, only public
reasons should be invoked. These brief observations do not eliminate, of course, the need for a
more refined account of ‘comprehensiveness’, providing a clearer explanation of the different
ways in which doctrines can be comprehensive. However, such an account cannot be accom-
modated within the limits of this chapter.
reasons to justify that policy (regardless of whether she sincerely believed

them) than about developing a sincere commitment to them. The fear of
incurring legal penalties, as well as the pressure of a specific deadline, might
therefore impose upon her a strong pressure to comply with the duty of civility
for merely pragmatic (rather than moral) reasons. This might, as a conse-
quence, prevent her and those in a similar situation from developing their
capacity for a sense of justice, that is, the ability to work out for themselves
whether certain arguments and claims are suitably public and to articulate
their demands about fundamental legislation in terms of public reason.
Yet this conclusion may be challenged. The conversational constraints
resulting from the legal enforcement of the duty of civility might in fact
support people’s sincere commitment to public reason. For example, ‘[i]f a
racist argues for a piece of legislation but is forced to defend his claim in terms
of public reason, he may over time come to believe the arguments he offers in
public’ (Schwartzman 2011, p. 397). As Jon Elster points out, ‘this civilising
force of hypocrisy is a desirable effect of publicity’ (Elster 1998, p. 111). This,
one might add, could also be a welcome effect of the public deliberative fora
which, as we have already seen in Chapter 4, could be devised in order to
expose insincere appeals to public reasons. Moreover, even if censorship did
not always reinforce people’s sincere commitment to public reason, it is
plausible to argue that it would at least not preclude that commitment, in
the same way in which the existence of laws against murder and theft does not
prevent people from sincerely condemning and refusing to commit murder
and theft on moral grounds. It still remains to be shown, therefore, why Rawls
rejects the legal enforcement of the duty of civility. This is what the next
section will aim to accomplish.
FREE SPEECH, PUBLIC REASON, AND P OLITICAL

LEGITIMACY
Another major theory of free speech, alongside the argument from truth and the
argument from autonomy and self-fulfilment, is the argument from democracy.
The theory, the most famous version of which was formulated by Alexander
Meiklejohn (1961), states that freedom of speech is conducive to citizens’
understanding of political matters, and that this is essential for their participation
in democratic politics and for their self-government. According to Meiklejohn,
‘[t]he First Amendment does not protect a “freedom to speak”. It protects the
freedom of those activities of thought and communication by which we
“govern”. It is concerned, not with a private right, but with a public power, a
governmental responsibility’ (Meiklejohn 1961, p. 255). ‘Self-government’,
Meiklejohn argues, ‘can exist only insofar as the voters acquire the intelligence,
integrity, sensitivity and generous devotion to the general welfare that, in
theory, casting a ballot is assumed to express’ (Meiklejohn 1961, p. 255).
Freedom of speech is crucial for this process to be effective.
There are several reasons why the argument from democracy is especially
suitable for justifying the protection of free speech within the boundaries of
political liberalism. First, this argument has a narrower scope than those from
truth and autonomy/self-fulfilment. This is because it ‘requires for its deploy-
ment the a priori acceptance of democratic principles as proper guidelines for
the organisation and governance of the state’ (Schauer 1982, p. 35). In this
sense, it is in line with Rawls’s political liberalism, which expressly relies on
‘certain fundamental ideas seen as implicit in the public political culture of a
democratic society’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 13), and does not aim to apply to
nondemocratic polities. Second, unlike the argument from truth and most
versions of the argument from autonomy and self-fulfilment, the argument
from democracy does not rely on a comprehensive conception of the good.
Third, the argument from democracy displays a special focus on political
matters and mainly concerns ‘speech relating to public affairs, and even
more . . . criticism of governmental officials and policies’ (Schauer 1982,
p. 35). This is in line with Rawls’s own (brief) account of free speech, which
mainly concerns ‘free political speech’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 340) rather than ‘free
speech’ broadly intended.
What does Rawls have to say, then, regarding free political speech? His
central argument is that ‘to allow the crime of seditious libel would under-
mine the wider possibilities of self-government and the several liberties
required for its protection’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 343). In a democratic polity,
he claims, ‘there is no such thing as the crime of seditious libel; there are no
prior restraints on freedom of the press, except for special cases; and the
advocacy of revolutionary and subversive doctrines is fully protected’ (Rawls
2005a, p. 342). Rawls also recognizes and endorses the fact that ‘[w]ithin our
[i.e. the United States’] tradition there has been a consensus that the discus-
sion of general political, religious and philosophical doctrines can never be
censored’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 343).
Rawls also claims that ‘subversive advocacy is always part of a more
comprehensive political view’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 346) and that ‘[a]s Kalven
observes, revolutionaries don’t simply shout: “Revolt! Revolt!” They give
reasons. To repress subversive advocacy is to suppress the discussion of
these reasons, and to do this is to restrict the free and informed public use
of our reason in judging the justice of the basic structure and its social policies.
And thus the basic liberty of freedom of thought is violated’ (Rawls 2005a,
p. 346). Even more clearly, Rawls argues that ‘a wise political leadership [in a
moderately well-governed democratic society] takes this advocacy [i.e. sub-
versive advocacy] as a warning that fundamental changes may be necessary;
and what changes are required is known in part from the more comprehensive
political view used to explain and justify the advocacy of resistance and
revolution’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 348).
Rawls argues that the only kind of political speech that should remain
unprotected is ‘subversive advocacy when it is both directed to inciting immi-
nent and unlawful use of force and likely to achieve this result’ (Rawls 2005a,
p. 348). Rawls’s analysis shows that he is clearly committed to a justification of
free speech grounded in the idea of democratic self-government. Moreover, as
we have seen, Rawls explicitly states that appeals to comprehensive doctrines
in order to advocate changes in the constitutional essentials should be pro-
tected by freedom of speech in a democratic polity. This suggests that the legal
enforcement of the duty of civility would strongly conflict with the democratic
rationale for free political speech and therefore seriously undermine citizens’
self-government. Public reason, we have seen, does apply to the public political
forum and it is in the latter that subversive advocacy and seditious libel are
often voiced, by appealing to comprehensive doctrines and in order to invoke
changes in the constitutional essentials and the basic structure of a polity.
The argument from democracy therefore provides a further rationale for
freedom of speech in Rawls’s theory, in addition to the argument from the two
moral powers illustrated in the previous section. Yet, unlike that argument, it
also explains why Rawls opposes the legal enforcement of the duty of civility.
To understand this more clearly, we should observe that the legal freedom of
political speech and the moral duty of civility are in fact two sides of the same
coin. Freedom of speech, indeed, contributes not only to citizens’ democratic
participation and self-government but also, most importantly, to the legitim-
acy of political decision-making and of the legal measures that result from it
(Dworkin 2009). This implies that the purpose of both the right to free speech
and the duty of civility is the same, that is, to ensure the legitimacy of coercive
legislation. In order to guarantee this legitimacy, for Rawls we ought to have
the right (legal right) to appeal to our non-public reasons in political deliber-
ation but we ought to refrain (moral duty) from using that right when (‘in due
course’) we support certain laws (at least those concerning constitutional
essentials and matters of basic justice). In other words, we should have ‘a
right to do wrong’ (Waldron 1981). Legally enforcing the duty of civility would
paradoxically undermine its purpose, which is to grant legitimacy to legisla-
tion concerning constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice.
Yet this conclusion may be open to two serious challenges. First, one might
point out that even in the absence of legal constraints, free speech might be
hindered by social censorship and this might in fact undermine democratic
legitimacy. John Stuart Mill, for example, famously highlights how ‘[s]ociety . . .
practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political
oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it
leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of
life, and enslaving the soul itself ’ (Mill 2006, p. 11). According to Mill ‘social
stigma . . . is really effective, and so effective is it, that the profession of opin-
ions which are under the ban of society is much less common in England [i.e.
during the Victorian era], than is, in many other countries, the avowal of those
which incur risk of judicial punishment’ (Mill 2006, pp. 38–9). Social pressure
and stigma can significantly restrain citizens’ freedom of speech, even when
they are not accompanied by legal penalties. The pervasive compliance with
the duty of civility that Rawls advocates as a normative ideal for a liberal
democratic polity might lead to a widespread moral censorship against those
who are in breach of that duty. Rawls himself, as we saw in Chapter 4, argues
that ‘[w]hen firm and widespread, the disposition of citizens to view them-
selves as ideal legislators, and to repudiate government officials and candidates
for public office who violate public reason, is one of the political and social
roots of democracy, and is vital to its enduring strength and vigor’ (Rawls
2005b, p. 445).
This suggests that for Rawls, in a similar way, citizens ought to develop a
pervasive disposition to morally condemn all those fellow citizens (i.e. not only
government officials and candidates) who contravene the duty of civility. This
might therefore produce a social climate in which those citizens who wish to
contravene the moral duty of civility would formally maintain their freedom of
speech while in fact gradually becoming subject to the moral disapproval and
social control of the ‘duty-of-civility-abiding’ majority. As Candace Cummins
Gauthier points out, instances of social control ‘are essential ways in which
communities may affect personal change in their members toward behaviour
that is more in concert with communal values and ends’ (Cummins Gauthier
2000, p. 344). Due to the strong constraints that social censorship may impose
upon freedom of speech, Rawls’s endeavour to endorse both the latter and the
moral duty of civility therefore appears problematic.
On the one hand, the widespread compliance with the duty of civility that
Rawls invokes may lead to a pervasive social censorship which, even in the
absence of any legal constraints, may hinder freedom of speech and, conse-
quently, the democratic legitimacy of political decision-making concerning
constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice. On the other hand,
renouncing the duty of civility would undermine the crucial role the latter
plays in guaranteeing the legitimacy of coercive political legislation concerning
those fundamental matters in political liberalism. Yet this conclusion may be
too gloomy. It is far from clear that the widespread compliance with the duty
of civility, and readiness to condemn those who infringe it, would result in a
kind of social censorship as oppressive as legal censorship. The wide and
flexible view of public reason, we have seen, would allow a significant degree
of freedom of speech even in the presence of a legally enforced duty of
civility. The duty of civility, we should remember, only applies ‘in due
course’, that is, after a deliberative process during which citizens have had
the opportunity to articulate their comprehensive doctrines in the public

political realm. For the same reason, therefore, the social enforcement of the
duty of civility (i.e. even in the absence of legal constraints) would not affect
that deliberation. Rawls, that is, does not expect citizens to morally condemn
those who invoke reasons based on comprehensive doctrines during that
deliberative process.
Furthermore, the indeterminacy of Rawls’s ‘proviso’ implies that the
social expectation of compliance with the duty of civility would only (or,
at least, especially) be pressing for government officials and candidates for
public office, including partisans, as we have already seen in Chapter 4. This
is due to a number of reasons. First, these individuals are more likely than
ordinary citizens to be exposed to public scrutiny and, even in the absence
of legal rules, they may be expected by most people to comply with the duty
of civility. Second, as already mentioned in Chapter 4, government officials
and candidates for public office might have more pressing practical reasons
(i.e. than ordinary citizens) for complying with certain social expectations
(including expectations regarding the form and content of their speech),
especially if they seek (re-)election. Finally, it is difficult to understand what
kind of expectations people might have about each other qua ordinary
citizens, regarding compliance with the duty of civility, especially if they
are not engaged in formal deliberation within specific institutional bodies
(e.g. parliament, constitutional court, etc.) or are not directly involved in
political campaigns. The only real requirement, for most of them, would be
to justify through public reasons how they vote on fundamental issues.
However, as long as voting is secret, it is not clear how social censorship
could impose a burden upon them. It is therefore doubtful that the perva-
sive compliance with the duty of civility would result in any significant kind
of social censorship.
In any case, social censorship would not have significant implications for
political legitimacy. The latter concerns the relationship between citizens and
the state, not among citizens themselves. According to Ronald Dworkin, for
example, ‘it is illegitimate for governments to impose a collective or official
decision on dissenting individuals, using the coercive powers of the state,
unless that decision has been taken in a manner that respects each individual’s
status as a free and equal member of the community’ (Dworkin 2009, p. vii).
That respect, Dworkin argues, involves the right ‘to raise a voice in protest or
argument or objection before the decision is taken’ (Dworkin 2009, p. vii). It is
the state that, in this account, has a duty to allow everyone to express their
views (including, for Dworkin, racist and sexist views) in order to justify the
legitimacy of its laws and demand citizens’ political obligation. The fact that
society, or part of it, may exercise some form of social censorship towards
some citizens may be unfortunate (from this perspective) but is irrelevant to
the issue of political legitimacy.
In fact social condemnation of other people’s speech, especially of the

speech of those who are government officials or occupy other important
institutional roles, is in itself an important aspect of freedom of speech.
Take, for example, the way racist or fascist political speech often encounters
social disapproval in liberal democracies, even in the absence of legislation
that forbids it. This kind of condemnation constitutes an essential aspect of
freedom of speech. One could, of course, invoke the legal censorship of
certain kinds of hate speech (e.g. fascist, racist, sexist, etc.), and even accept
some loss of democratic legitimacy, in order to protect important values such
as public order or the dignity of certain citizens (e.g. members of ethnic and
religious minorities) (e.g. Barendt 2005, pp. 173–5 and Waldron 2012,
pp. 173–97). However, it would be incoherent for someone to defend the
freedom of expression of fascists or racists and then be concerned about the
hostile reaction this may cause within society. This reaction, and the effects
it may have on racists and fascists, is in fact what defenders of an uncon-
strained freedom of speech normally want to encourage.
Applied to Rawls’s theory, this analysis implies that we should not be too
worried about the social enforcement of the duty of civility. It is far from clear
that, in spite of Rawls’s recommendations, social censorship of those who
breach the duty of civility would be pervasive. Even if it was, it would not
undermine political legitimacy, which only concerns the relationship between
individuals and the state. Furthermore, it would just be part of what freedom
of speech inherently involves for those who (like Rawls) refuse to impose any
constraints upon it, that is, the clash of ideas and the reciprocal contestation
among citizens within the democratic political realm. As Stephen Macedo
rightly points out, ‘[i]f some people . . . feel “silenced” or “marginalized” by the
fact that some of us believe that it is wrong to seek to shape basic liberties
on the basis of religious or metaphysical claims, I can only say “grow up!”’
(Macedo 1997, p. 21).
The second challenge to Rawls’s defence of both (legal) unconstrained
freedom of speech and (moral) duty of civility is, however, more serious.
One might point out that if political liberals prioritize freedom of speech
over the legal enforcement of the duty of civility (as Rawls’s own analysis
suggests), that will inevitably lead to a loss of political legitimacy. It is a widely
endorsed view, for example, that if public officials adopt a law based on false
pretences, that will tend to delegitimize that law in the eyes of the public, even
though few people think that those public officials should be punished through
legal (as opposed to electoral) means.
Similarly, if public officials appeal to non-public reasons to justify a
policy (because freedom of speech allows them to do so), that will reduce
the legitimacy of that policy. This is a serious concern. It seems that, in
the end, Rawls’s defence of unconstrained free speech is self-defeating.
Given the importance that public reason and the duty of civility play in
political liberalism, Rawls’s commitment to unconstrained freedom of

speech risks undermining the very goal that political liberalism aims to
guarantee, that is, political legitimacy. The question, therefore, is whether,
even though Rawls does endorse unconstrained freedom of speech, he
actually needs to do so. While public reason and its constraints are clearly
central to political liberalism, it is unclear whether and why unconstrained
free speech also is.
We have seen that, in fact, political liberalism already allows significant
scope for freedom of speech, especially on the basis of the wide view of public
reason, and that this is sufficient for citizens to develop and cultivate their
two moral powers. It is not clear why this freedom should be extended
further in order to legally allow citizens to violate the duty of civility when,
in due course, they have the moral duty to relinquish non-public reasons and
only appeal to public ones. We have also seen that there are no insurmount-
able practical problems when it comes to legally enforcing the duty of civility,
and that even a sincere commitment to that duty would not be undermined
by its legal enforcement. It is therefore unclear why Rawls needs to endorse
unconstrained freedom of speech, given his commitment to public reason.
It can therefore be concluded that Rawls and Rawlsians could remain faithful
to political liberalism without having to commit to unconstrained freedom
of speech.
Indeed, as Jeremy Waldron (2012) has highlighted, some aspects of Rawls’s
political liberalism can actually be invoked in order to justify restrictions on
speech (more specifically, on hate speech). Waldron points out that the
protection of ‘the assurance of a general commitment to the fundamentals
of justice and dignity that [for Rawls] a well-ordered society is supposed to
furnish to its citizens’ (Waldron 2012, p. 69) would justify restricting ‘public
and semi-permanent manifestations of racial and ethnic hatred as visible
aspects of the civic environment’ (Waldron 2012, p. 69). Yet Waldron also
acknowledges that his conclusion, while grounded in Rawls’s ideas, would
probably be rejected by Rawls himself, and that Rawls would in all likelihood
endorse ‘First Amendment orthodoxy’ (Waldron 2012, p. 71), that is, uncon-
strained freedom of speech.
Rather than landing a fatal blow to Rawls’s political liberalism, however,
Waldron’s claim, like the rest of the analysis conducted in the present chapter,
just shows that political liberalism simply does not require commitment to
unconstrained freedom of speech. There are other values and goals, such as the
‘assurance’ highlighted by Waldron, and the political legitimacy that public
reason and the duty of civility aim to ensure, which can be given priority over
unconstrained free speech consistently with political liberalism, and in spite of
what Rawls actually says about free political speech. It is sometimes possible,
perhaps even necessary, to be more Rawlsian than Rawls if one is fully
committed to political liberalism.
CONCLUSION
Rawls and Rawlsians often respond to those who claim that the duty of civility
is unduly restrictive and exclusionary by stressing that that duty is only moral,
not legal. Neither Rawls nor Rawlsians, however, provide substantial argu-
ments to justify why this is the case, apart from the uninformative (and
somewhat tautological) claim that a legally enforced duty of civility would
undermine freedom of speech. In this chapter, I have shown that Rawls’s
political liberalism does indeed contain arguments for rejecting the legal
enforcement of the duty of civility, even if Rawls seldom explicitly discusses
them. Furthermore, I have claimed, these arguments rely on a Rawlsian
account of free speech and especially on the idea that free speech contributes
to political legitimacy, the very goal that the duty of civility also aims to
achieve. Yet I have concluded that while Rawls does endorse unconstrained
freedom of speech, the latter is not essential to political liberalism or, at least,
not as essential to it as public reason and the duty of civility are. Rawls and
Rawlsians could therefore renounce unconstrained freedom of speech while
remaining committed to political liberalism. This would, of course, prevent
them from stressing the purely moral nature of the duty of civility when
challenged by those who consider that duty unduly restrictive. Yet, if they
are truly committed to the duty of civility, Rawls and political liberals should
be ready to defend it on the basis of its rationale, rather than by unconvin-
cingly stating that the duty is moral and not legal.
What are, then, the implications of this conclusion for the analysis of
partisanship and political liberalism? Chapter 4 showed that most of the
provisos introduced by Rawls in his conception of public reason cannot help
reduce the burden that the duty of civility imposes upon partisans (i.e. as
opposed to ordinary citizens). However, one of those provisos, i.e. Rawls’s
view that the duty of civility is moral but not legal, seemed to be more
problematic than the others, and deserving of further analysis. That analysis
has shown, first, that the duty of civility could often be easily implemented,
especially in the public political realm where parties and partisans operate, as
some of the examples provided in Chapter 4 illustrated. Second, it has shown
that Rawls’s refusal to legally enforce the duty of civility cannot be persuasively
defended on normative grounds. This implies that neither partisans nor
ordinary citizens can benefit from the reduced burden that a merely moral
duty of civility would allegedly grant them. This, together with the arguments
offered in Chapter 4 with regard to the other provisos introduced by Rawls in
his conception of public reason, shows that the duty of civility maintains all its
strength when applied to partisans.
6
Political Parties and the Overlapping

Consensus
In Chapter 4 I illustrated what I called the ‘extrinsic view’ of public reason, that
is, the idea that the Rawlsian constraints of public reason are somehow
exogenous to parties and partisanship. I especially highlighted how, even if
we consider the various stipulations that Rawls provided throughout his later
work, the constraints of public reason still appear very burdensome for
partisans. I continued that analysis in Chapter 5, showing how Rawls’s refusal
to endorse the legal enforcement of the duty of civility, which would apply to
both partisans and ordinary citizens, cannot be offered a plausible normative
defence.
In this chapter I will argue that the way of looking at the relationship between
partisanship and public reason provided by the extrinsic view is misleading,
and that there is in fact an internal connection between the normative demands
of public reason and those of partisanship. In order to explain why this is the
case, I will focus on Rawls’s (2005a) idea of an ‘overlapping consensus’, the view
that citizens who endorse diverse comprehensive doctrines (e.g. Catholicism,
Islam, Kantian or Millian liberalism, etc.) can reach an overlapping consensus
on a political conception of justice and endorse political liberal values and
institutions from within their own perspectives (Rawls 2005a, pp. 133–72).
The overlapping consensus, Rawls argues, guarantees stability within liberal
democratic societies.
According to Rawls, it is up to each individual citizen to work out how their
comprehensive doctrine relates to the political conception of justice (Rawls
2005a, p. 140). Yet he only offers scattered examples of how this might work in
practice. These include, for example, a ‘religious doctrine and account of free
faith . . . [a] liberal moral doctrine such as those of Kant or Mill . . . [and] . . . a
pluralist view’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 145). Rawls claims that these examples ‘suffice
to illustrate some of the possible relations between comprehensive views and a
political conception . . . [and that] . . . except for certain kinds of fundamental-
ism, all the main historical religions admit of such an account and thus may be
seen as reasonable comprehensive doctrines’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 170).
In ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’ (2005b), Rawls offers two more
precise indications of how specific religious doctrines might be part of an
overlapping consensus. The first concerns ‘the [Vatican II] Council’s Declar-
ation on Religious Freedom—Dignitatis Humanae—[in which] the Catholic
Church committed itself to the principle of religious freedom as found in a
constitutional democratic regime. It declared the ethical doctrine of religious
freedom resting on the dignity of the human person’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 477n).
In the second example, Rawls claims that Islam can be part of an overlapping
consensus if we embrace Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im’s (1990) view that ‘the
traditional understanding of Shari’a has been based on the teachings of the
later Medina period of Muhammad, whereas the teachings of the earlier
Mecca period of Muhammad are the eternal and fundamental message of
Islam’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 461n). These earlier teachings endorse ‘equality of men
and women, and complete freedom of choice in matters of faith and religion’
(Rawls 2005b, p. 461n), therefore rendering Islam compatible with political
liberalism.
Matters, of course, are not as simple as Rawls’s short discussion suggests.
Andrew March (2009), for example, has devoted an entire book to assessing
whether and to what extent Islam can be part of an overlapping consensus.
Similarly, Joshua Cohen (2004) has shown how specific doctrinal aspects of
Catholicism, Islam, and Confucianism can provide normative grounds for a
global overlapping consensus on basic human rights and liberties. More work
is certainly necessary in this area.
My aim in this chapter, however, is slightly different. Rather than focusing
on how citizens in general might work out for themselves how their compre-
hensive doctrines relate to a political liberal conception of justice, I will argue
that political parties can play an important role in helping citizens to relate
their comprehensive doctrines to political liberal values and institutions.
Religious and other comprehensive doctrines indeed inform the political
platforms of many political parties in contemporary liberal democracies.
Since parties constantly operate between civil society and the state, and
given that they must appeal both to their members and supporters, on the
one hand, and to the broader public, on the other hand, they are in a unique
position to show how comprehensive doctrines and values relate to widely
shared political principles. Furthermore, and most importantly, parties and
partisans have a duty to present and justify their claims on the basis of reasons
that all citizens could accept. It is this twofold empirical and normative
character of parties, I will argue, that renders them important for the Rawlsian
overlapping consensus.
My analysis will proceed as follows. In the first section, I will engage with
Bryan McGraw’s (2010) discussion of religious parties in nineteenth-century
Europe, which offers the only systematic analysis of the relationship between
Political Parties and the Overlapping Consensus 101
parties and the Rawlsian overlapping consensus.1 According to McGraw,

Rawls’s overlapping consensus is too demanding towards religious parties
since it presupposes an idea of public reason that overly restrains the use of
religious arguments in the political realm. This, he argues, prevents such
parties from providing the kind of positive contribution to democratic con-
solidation that religious parties offered in nineteenth-century Europe. For this
reason, McGraw claims that we should be content with aiming for a thinner
constitutional consensus rather than the thicker overlapping consensus
demanded by Rawls. In response to McGraw, I will argue that once we
understand the distinctive normative demands of partisanship, we can see
that there is no inherent tension between them and the demands of the
Rawlsian overlapping consensus. This is because partisanship (unlike faction-
alism) involves a commitment to the common good rather than the sole
advancement of merely partial interests. As I will show in the second section,
this understanding of partisanship has deep historical roots. In the final
section of the chapter, I will show how three distinctive key features of parties
particularly enable them to contribute to an overlapping consensus. These
are their linkage function, their advancement of broad multi-issue political
platforms, and their creative agency.
Before I proceed with my analysis, one clarification is important. As the title
of the chapter suggests, my analysis is not concerned solely with religious
political parties. This is because it would be difficult to provide a satisfactory
definition of religious parties (e.g. see McGraw 2014, p. 309n) and, most
importantly, because Rawls’s political liberalism is concerned not only with
religious doctrines but with comprehensive doctrines more in general. While
starting from a critique of McGraw’s analysis, therefore, I hope to offer an
argument about the contribution that parties in general, whether religious or
not, can make to the Rawlsian overlapping consensus.
MCGRAW, RELIGIOUS PARTIES, AND THE I DEA

O F AN OVERLAPPING CONSENSUS
In his book Faith in Politics (2010), McGraw shows how the religious parties
that emerged in many western European countries in the second half of the
nineteenth century (e.g. the Catholic Party in Belgium, the Anti-Revolutionary
1
The only other available analysis, though a brief one, is the one offered by Muirhead and
Rosenblum (2006), who argue that ‘[a]s agents of a publicly recognized overlapping consen-
sus . . . [parties] . . . connect particular interests with general principles’ (Muirhead and
Rosenblum 2006, p. 104).
Party in the Netherlands, the Center Party in Germany, and the Christian
Social Party in Austria) contributed to the democratic consolidation of those
polities. These parties, he claims, appeared as a reaction to the anti-clerical
policies of Europe’s liberal states in areas such as education and marriage
(McGraw 2014, p. 298; see also Daalder 1966 and Kalyvas 1998).
Central to McGraw’s analysis is the view that ‘it is the deeply religious
nature of . . . [these parties that made] them so politically helpful, as their
powerful networks of affiliated associations helped tie members into their
nascent democracies while giving their political leaders the flexibility to
negotiate with their political opponents’ (McGraw 2010, p. 144, original
emphasis). This conclusion relies on the twofold empirical assumption that
religious faiths (at least in contexts similar to the ones McGraw examines) are
deeply rooted in civil society, and that as a consequence religious parties can
‘invest believers in the broader political system while at the same time mod-
erating their political demands’ (McGraw 2010, p. 28), thus contributing
to democratic consolidation. Religious parties in Belgium, the Netherlands,
Germany, and elsewhere therefore ‘tied . . . [religious citizens] . . . to the larger
political order and helped make them, often quite surprisingly, democratic
citizens within democratizing and democratic states’ (McGraw 2010, p. 159).
For this reason, McGraw claims, when political theorists examine religious
political mobilization they should consider not only the negative and divisive
experience of the European religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries but also the more positive example of Europe’s religious political
parties in the second half of the nineteenth century.
According to McGraw, however, the kind of consensus these parties con-
tributed to was not an overlapping one. To support his conclusion, McGraw
examines the steps which, according to Rawls, lead to an overlapping consen-
sus. First, diverse societies agree on common political principles as a mere
modus vivendi. This implies that ‘social unity is only apparent, as its stability is
contingent on circumstances remaining such as not to upset the fortunate
convergence of interests’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 147). From this modus vivendi,
societies then move on to a constitutional consensus in which liberal prin-
ciples ‘are accepted simply as principles and not as grounded in certain ideas
of society and person of a political conception, much less in a shared public
conception’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 158). From this constitutional consensus, Rawls
claims, citizens will gradually move on to an overlapping consensus since ‘the
comprehensive doctrines of most people are not fully comprehensive, and this
allows scope for the development of an independent allegiance to the political
conception that helps to bring about a consensus’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 168).
McGraw’s key claim is that religious political parties cannot participate in an
overlapping consensus, as described by Rawls (McGraw 2010, pp. 164–6).
According to him, the overlapping consensus is too demanding since it requires
citizens to comply with the constraints of public reason (McGraw 2010, p. 165),
and to give priority to public over religious (and other non-public) reasons when
deliberating in the public political sphere. This, McGraw argues, would prevent
the very contribution that religious parties, such as those operating in late
nineteenth-century Europe, can provide to liberal democracy. According to
McGraw, we should be content with achieving a mere constitutional consensus
since ‘there are many citizens who seem to violate the norms of public reason
while maintaining a real and principled commitment to a constitutional dem-
ocracy’ (McGraw 2010, p. 164). Therefore ‘a real social and moral loss’ (McGraw
2010, p. 166), McGraw claims, would result from imposing deliberative con-
straints on religious partisans, with the aim of achieving an overlapping rather
than constitutional consensus, given the contribution that these citizens can
provide (and have provided in the past—as documented by the history of
Europe’s nineteenth-century religious parties) to liberal democracy. In other
words, the political mobilization of religious citizens via religious parties,
which would be seriously hindered (according to McGraw) by the Rawlsian
constraints of public reason, can actually be very beneficial to democracy.
McGraw’s argument is worth taking very seriously. As he highlights, liberal
political theorists too often point at the European religious wars to denounce
the potentially pernicious consequences of religion’s political mobilization,
overlooking those situations in which religion has played (and may still play) a
positive role in reinforcing liberal democratic norms and institutions. What
I would like to take issue with, however, is the way McGraw relates his
discussion of the relationship between religious parties and the overlapping
consensus to Rawls’s idea of public reason. What is missing, throughout his
analysis, is an examination of partisanship as a distinctive normative category.
If examined from McGraw’s perspective, the contribution of religious parties
to liberal democracy does seem to be hindered by the constraints of public
reason and by Rawls’s demand for an overlapping (rather than merely con-
stitutional) consensus, in a way that reflects the ‘external’ view of public reason
examined in Chapter 4. Yet McGraw overlooks the fact that partisanship,
intended as a distinctive normative category, already involves something like
a commitment to the Rawlsian idea of public reason. The contribution that
religious parties (and parties in general) can provide to liberal democracy
should therefore be examined through the lens of their distinctively partisan,
rather than religious, nature. What does this nature, then, amount to? This is
what I intend to illustrate in the next section.
PARTISANSHIP AS A NORMATIVE IDEAL
For a long time in the past, parties were considered analogous to factions, that
is, carriers of ‘divisions around ideas or personal interests which threatened
peaceful government’ (Scarrow 2006, p. 17). Among the main exponents of this
anti-partisan trend, Henry Saint-John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was especially
clear when he argued that ‘governing by party . . . must always end in the
government of a faction . . . Party is a political evil, and faction is the worst of
all parties’ (Bolingbroke [1733] 1997, p. 257). Even though Bolingbroke some-
times seems to allow some space for what he calls a ‘Country Party’, that is, a
party ‘formed on principles of common interest’ (Bolingbroke 1997, p. 37), he
ultimately advocates the abolition of parties and, for this reason, continues to be
seen as ‘the classic anti-party writer’ (Hofstadter 1970, p. 18).
A strong anti-partisan spirit can also be found in the work of Thomas
Hobbes, who considers partial associations as ‘lesser commonwealths in the
bowel of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man’ (Hobbes [1651]
2008, p. 221), and ‘unjust . . . [or] . . . dangerous to the public’ (Hobbes 2008,
p. 157). Likewise, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argues that ‘if the general will is to be
properly ascertained . . . there should be no partial society within the state’
(Rousseau [1762] 1999, p. 67). Similarly, while pointing out that ‘to abolish all
distinctions of party may not be practicable, perhaps not desirable in a free
government’ (Hume [1752] 1826b, p. 538), David Hume also claims that it
would be wise to abolish all those partisan divisions ‘entertaining opposite
views with regard to the essentials of government’ (Hume 1826b, p. 538).
Hume also distinguishes parties grounded in religious principles, which he
considers ‘the most cruel factions that ever arose from interest and ambitions’
(Hume 1826a, p. 59), from those arising from political principles, which
represent a lesser threat to the unity of a state (Hume 1826a, p. 65).
It is only in Edmund Burke’s work, however, that we can find for the first
time a positive account of parties and partisanship, and one that will remain
influential afterwards. Burke defines party as ‘a body of men united for
promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particu-
lar principle in which they are all agreed’ (Burke [1770] 1998, p. 271, emphasis
added). Central to this conception, therefore, is the view that not all partial
associations are the same, and that parties, unlike factions, are partial associ-
ation that promote the interest of the whole political community rather than
factional and partial interests. Burke’s view, it is fair to say, was not entirely
new. Indeed the idea that there could be partial associations that contribute to
the common good, rather than being detrimental to it, can also be found in the
writings of earlier authors. In the fourteenth century, for example, the Italian
jurist Bartolo da Sassoferrato had claimed that ‘partialitates’ or ‘affectiones’ are
legitimate if oriented towards the ‘bonum publicum’ (Bartolo da Sassoferrato
1983, p. 137), that is, the public good. Most importantly, Burke’s vision was in
part the result of an important change through which the idea of the public
good intended as a natural organic unity, which had characterized the medi-
eval conception of the body politic, was gradually replaced by the idea of the
state as an artificial body whose unity had to be pursued rather than preserved.
It was within this new context that parties could be seen for the first time as
parts that could contribute to creating an artificial common good, rather than
parts that would disrupt a pre-existing natural order (Palano 2013, pp. 121–2;
see also Ball 1989, pp. 164–7).
Burke’s positive account of parties resonates in the views of other thinkers
such as Robert von Mohl ([1872] 2002) and Johann Kaspar Bluntschli ([1869]
2002), both of whom emphasize the distinction between (public-spirited)
parties and (sectarian) factions, and in Hans Kelsen’s view that parties con-
tribute to the formation of the general will or common good (2013). This
Burkean line of thought is well summarized by Giovanni Sartori’s claim that
while being a channel of particularistic values and interests, ‘[a] party is part-
of-a-whole’ (Sartori 1976, p. 25, original emphasis). Unlike ‘a faction [which] is
only a part for itself ’ (Sartori 1976, p. 25), a party ‘must take a non-partial
approach to the whole’ (Sartori 1976, p. 26, original emphasis).
This brief excursus2 into the history of the idea of party helps us to understand
partisanship as a distinctive normative category. As Jonathan White and Lea Ypi
highlight, central to the Burkean tradition was the view that ‘[p]rincipled com-
mitments were considered essential to this form of political subjecthood: it
was in these that the party’s claim to normative value was grounded’ (White
and Ypi 2016, p. 20). We should therefore resist, as White and Ypi stress,
the ‘empiricization of the idea of party’ (White and Ypi 2016, p. 8), that is, the
tendency (encouraged by most contemporary political scientists) to conceive
parties solely as real-world organizations that contest elections, with no reference
made to any normative ideal establishing how they ought to behave. That
normative ideal, grounded in the aforementioned conceptual and historical
origins of the term, is well captured by White and Ypi, for whom ‘[a] normatively
defensible concept of partisanship must . . . privilege a certain kind of ideas-based
grouping grounded in principled commitment. It must include at the core of the
idea of party the pursuit of political visions irreducible to the self-centred aims of
sectoral groups or to personal interests’ (White and Ypi 2016, p. 13).
Presenting partial values and demands in a way that takes into account
general ends and the common good, therefore, is the distinctive normative
attribute of partisanship. This, however, is just the kind of commitment that
underlies Rawls’s political liberalism and his idea of public reason. More
specifically, public reasoning demands that when we justify state rules we
should only appeal to those reasons that citizens, as free and equal persons,
could accept given their common interests, that is, the ‘higher-order interests
associated with their moral powers’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 74).3 As Samuel Freeman
2
For more comprehensive analyses, see Ball (1989), Sartori (1976), Scarrow (2006), Rosenblum
(2008), Palano (2013), and White and Ypi (2016).
3
These moral powers, we have seen in the previous chapter, are, first, ‘[a] sense of justice
[that] is the capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from the public conception of justice
points out, ‘[t]hese fundamental interests of democratic citizens provide the

ultimate basis for public reasoning about fundamental justice and the com-
mon good’ (Freeman 2004, p. 2030).
One obvious objection might be raised at this point. The promotion of
the common interest or common good that, as we have seen, characterizes the
normative ideal of partisanship, may not necessarily involve a commitment
to a political conception of the common good, such as the one that is central to
Rawls’s idea of public reason. Some parties, for example, may advance a
comprehensive conception of the good and genuinely believe that such a
conception (e.g. religious, philosophical, etc.) reflects the interests of all
citizens. A member of a religious party, for example, may sincerely believe
that it would be in the interest of all citizens to embrace her religion and accept
whichever norms and values the latter involves. Clearly, though, this attitude
does not conform to the ideal of public reason. Therefore, there seems to be a
discrepancy between the commitment to the common good that defines
partisanship and the one that characterizes the ideal of public reason.
However, this objection overlooks an important point. The conception of
the common good that characterizes a specific society is deeply rooted in what
Rawls calls the ‘public political culture’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 13) of that society.
In liberal democracies this includes certain broadly shared values and prin-
ciples such as freedom and equality. I will return to this point in the next
section. Let me focus, first, on another important aspect of the public political
culture of liberal democracies, that is, the ideas of a ‘fair system of cooperation
over time’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 14) and ‘the idea of citizens . . . as free and equal
persons’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 14). This point is crucial since the idea of a fair
system of cooperation, as Allen Buchanan (2010, p. 79) points out, can also be
found in what Rawls (1999b, pp. 71ff) calls ‘decent hierarchical societies’,
where the government protects the basic human rights of its citizens and
ensures that their essential interests are heard through a ‘decent consultation
hierarchy’ (Rawls 1999b, p. 71).
It is not unreasonable to claim that in such non-liberal societies, due to the
specific character of their political culture, the commitment to the common
good that characterizes partisanship as a normative ideal may be consistent
with the advancement by political parties of political platforms which would
be considered unreasonable in liberal democracies. Indeed Rawls himself
claims that in these societies ‘a conception of justice . . . can be understood as
in some way advancing the common good . . . so that when it is followed,
society takes into account the good of all its members and of society as a
whole’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 109). Rawls calls this the ‘common good conception of
which characterizes the fair terms of social cooperation’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 19) and, second, ‘[t]he
capacity for a conception of the good [that] is the capacity to form, to revise, and rationally to
pursue a conception of one’s rational advantage or good’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 19).
justice’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 109; Rawls 1999b, pp. 66ff). However, as Buchanan
points out, in these societies ‘[t]he idea of a common good conception of
justice is . . . understood as providing the minimal content for the idea of fair
cooperation—that is, fair cooperation as such, not fair cooperation among
persons as free and equal’ (Buchanan 2010, p. 79).4 This differs from ‘the
particular way reasonableness gets specified within the distinctive political
culture of a liberal society’ (Buchanan 2010, p. 79), that is, one to which the
idea of citizens as free and equal persons is central. In liberal democratic
societies, therefore, a sincere commitment to the common good cannot
amount to the promotion of a comprehensive conception of the good as the
basis for state legislation, as this would fail to respect many citizens as free and
equal persons. Given the fact of reasonable pluralism that characterizes such
societies, that is, we do not treat citizens as free and equal persons (i.e. we do
not respect their interests qua members of a liberal democratic society) if we
impose upon them rules based on reasons that we cannot expect them to
accept. Both the ideal of public reason and the ideal of partisanship, therefore,
seem to converge on this point.
Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum have indeed pointed out (without
developing the idea much further) that ‘[p]arties . . . are “bilingual”. As shapers
and articulators of public reason, parties speak to all citizens as citizens, not as
socially situated in this or that social class or income group or as having a
particular comprehensive doctrine. They refine and generalize particularist
appeals by casting them in terms appropriate to public reason. As agents of a
publicly recognized overlapping consensus, they connect particular interests
with general principles’ (Muirhead and Rosenblum 2006, p. 104). Similarly,
White and Ypi (2011, p. 385) attribute to partisanship ‘a generalizing tendency
to justification . . . [which] . . . involves an attempt to move beyond a particularist
viewpoint with the aim of demonstrating how a certain claim has public appeal’.
Rawls himself highlights that ‘to gain enough support to win office . . .
[parties] . . . must advance some conception of the public good’ (Rawls 1999a,
p. 195) rather than act like ‘mere interest groups petitioning the government
on their own behalf ’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 195). This closely resembles his view
that the move from a constitutional to an overlapping consensus is possible
since ‘once a constitutional consensus is in place, political groups must enter
the public forum of political discussion and appeal to other groups who do not
share their comprehensive doctrine. This makes it rational for them to move
4
Gerald Gaus also observes that even the common good view of justice which, according to
Rawls, characterizes decent hierarchical societies, may be flawed. More precisely, Gaus claims,
while it is theoretically possible to imagine a society in which the subordination of certain
individuals (e.g. women) to others (e.g. men) is considered by all citizens (including those who
are in a subordinated role) as contributing to the common good, we should not forget that ‘[a]
tremendous amount of pressure and indoctrination . . . [may have] . . . gone into perpetuating
such a system’ (Gaus 2011, p. 432).
out of the narrower circle of their own views and to develop political concep-
tions in terms of which they can explain and justify their preferred policies to a
wider public so as to put together a majority. As they do this, they are led to
formulate political conceptions of justice’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 165). However,
while Rawls’s statements seem to only stress the pragmatic reasons why parties
and partisans should try to broaden the appeal of their political demands, my
point is that there are also inherent normative reasons, both in political
liberalism and in the normative ideal of partisanship, in favour of a commitment
to public reason and to an overlapping consensus.
This conclusion therefore helps us to unveil the main flaw in McGraw’s
analysis. It is wrong to see religious partisans (and partisans in general) as
citizens who, within a political liberal framework, have to comply with extrin-
sic constraints of public reason, and whose political mobilization is therefore
hindered under political liberalism, as the view analysed in Chapter 4 also
suggested. Instead, partisanship itself, as a normative conception, embodies
an intrinsic commitment to public reason. It is this commitment that renders
the politicization of religious values and demands via political parties distinct-
ive and, when complied with, beneficial to a liberal democratic overlapping
consensus.
This aspect, however, is overlooked by McGraw who, we have seen, focuses
instead on the fortuitous experience of Europe’s nineteenth-century religious
parties. Indeed he claims that democratic consolidation is ‘better explained
as the product of somewhat contingent circumstances in which political
institutions, economic conditions, cultural values, and self-interest play off
one another’ (McGraw 2010, p. 148). The ‘contingent’ experience of Europe’s
nineteenth-century religious parties, however, cannot provide solid grounds
for invoking the political mobilization of religion from the perspective of
normative political theory and, more specifically, of political liberalism. It
cannot account, that is, for all those cases in which religion is divisive and
disruptive of liberal democracy, rather than beneficial to it. It is true, as
McGraw claims, that ‘[t]he religious conflict thesis is just simply not true as
a general proposition’ (McGraw 2010, p. 160). However, neither is the oppos-
ite claim that religion is always conducive to stability and democratic consoli-
dation. This is not, of course, McGraw’s claim since he acknowledges, we have
seen, that his historical example is contingent. However, it is difficult to see
how a less then general empirical proposition (whether it concerns the positive
or negative effects of religious political mobilization) can provide us with useful
grounds for normative conclusions.
This undue reliance on empirical foundations also underlies McGraw’s
misguided claim that ‘[t]he only way in which . . . [a citizen’s] . . . refusal to
abide by public reason evinces disrespect for others is if such a refusal puts
the political system as a whole at risk’ (McGraw 2010, p. 143). As an under-
standing of public reason, this is simply wrong. Religious warfare is sometimes
invoked, by Rawls and others, to justify the kind of deliberative restraint

demanded by public reason (e.g. see Audi 2000, p. 103). However, this
argument is different from the argument from respect, which considers public
reason (and its constraints upon deliberation) necessary for justifying coercive
policies in a way that respects other citizens as free and equal persons
(Larmore 1987; Rawls 2005a). It is irrelevant, in this argument, whether
appealing to religious reasons in public deliberation, and legislating accord-
ingly, will in fact lead to religious conflict.
Furthermore, even when McGraw acknowledges the distinctive partisan (as
opposed to religious) nature of Europe’s religious parties, he only highlights
how ‘parties as parties draw their followers into the broader political system
and by virtue of their partisan nature implicitly commit those followers to
respecting the basis of democratic politics’ (McGraw 2010, p. 215, original
emphasis). Elsewhere, following Nancy Rosenblum (2003), he points out that
‘religious parties . . . inculcate in their members a particular kind of political
identity, a way of relating religious faith to political action that can be, though
certainly need not be, good for democracy’ (McGraw 2010, p. 209, emphasis
added). Once again, McGraw seems to confuse empirical and normative
dimensions. Parties (religious and nonreligious) may sometimes be good
for democracy but, as he also acknowledges, sometimes they may not. The
‘democratic acculturation’ (Rosenblum 2003, p. 41) that parties often (but not
always) contribute to is not the (only) reason why we should welcome them
into liberal democracies. What matters most, instead, is that parties, qua
parties, ought to present their claims as publicly acceptable reasons that reflect
a commitment to the common good. It is the coincidence between the
normative demands of political liberalism and those of partisanship that
renders the latter vital to the former.
In summary, when we consider political parties as channels of religious and
other comprehensive doctrines and values into the political realm, the key
point is not to ask whether we should be content with (and settle for)
something less demanding than the Rawlsian idea of an overlapping consen-
sus. Instead, we should acknowledge that when citizens decide to promote
their religious or other comprehensive doctrines qua partisans, that is, via
political parties, they are already committing to public reason and to an
overlapping consensus. By choosing to engage in party politics, therefore,
they could not settle for a mere constitutional consensus. The fact that many
(perhaps most) partisans do not actually fulfil this commitment to public
reasoning does not undermine the claim that they ought to. Arguing otherwise
would amount to endorsing the aforementioned ‘empiricized’ conception of
political parties that has for a long time prevented political theorists from
appreciating partisanship as a normative ideal.
At this point, however, one might object that the religious parties exam-
ined by McGraw were operating within countries that were not fully liberal
and democratic but rather in transition towards liberal democracy. Or, to use
one of Rawls’s expressions, those countries were not ‘well-ordered’ (Rawls
2005a, p. 35) societies, that is, they lacked a shared and publicly recognized
political conception of justice, and they displayed ‘a profound division about
constitutional essentials’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 249). Therefore, one might argue,
the normative view of partisanship that is central to my analysis only applies to
established (i.e. ‘well-ordered’) liberal democracies, but not to those polities
which are in transition towards liberal democracy, and in which a constitutional
consensus might be preferable to an overlapping one.
I acknowledge that my normative account of partisanship only applies to
well-ordered liberal societies, that is, to societies with a shared liberal political
culture. After all, I explained, it is this public political culture that helps us to
establish a link between the promotion of the common good that is central to
partisanship and the commitment to public reasoning. In this sense, therefore,
I remain silent with regard to whether the normative demands of partisanship
that I have defended here also apply to non-well-ordered, or openly illiberal,
societies. In fact, I do not think that they do. However, and for this very reason,
I still believe that McGraw’s critique of Rawls’s political liberalism is flawed.
Let me explain.
On the one hand, one could argue that if McGraw is endorsing the need
for a thinner (and, therefore, more inclusive) kind of consensus only in
societies that are not (yet) fully well-ordered, then his view does not differ
substantially from Rawls’s. Indeed we have already seen in Chapter 4 that
when discussing non-well-ordered societies Rawls introduces an ‘inclusive’
view of public reason, which allows citizens ‘to present what they regard as
the basis of political values rooted in their comprehensive doctrine, provided
they do this in ways that strengthen the ideal of public reason itself ’ (Rawls
2005a, p. 247). The examples Rawls uses concern the abolitionists and the
exponents of the civil rights movement in the USA, who often appealed to
religious reasons but did so in a way that ‘supported the clear conclusions of
public reason’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 250). The same could be argued about the
kind of societies examined by McGraw (McGraw 2010, p. 162). In this sense
one could claim, consistently with Rawls’s view, that religious parties that do
not comply with the constraints of public reason should find space within
non-well-ordered societies, and/or within societies that are in transition
towards a well-ordered status. This is a conclusion that I find entirely
unproblematic. On the other hand, if (as I think it is the case) McGraw’s
claim is that religious reasons should generally be allowed in public deliber-
ation, even in fully fledged (i.e. ‘well-ordered’) liberal societies (e.g. McGraw
2010, pp. 165–7), then his argument clearly conflicts both with Rawls’s
political liberalism and with the normative demands of partisanship in such
societies, and my critique stands. In summary, therefore, McGraw’s argument
is either unoriginal or neglectful of the normative demands of partisanship in

liberal societies.
WHY DOES P OLITICAL LIBERALISM NEED MORE

THAN ONE POLITICAL PARTY?
I have argued so far that there is a correspondence between the normative

demands of political liberalism and those of partisanship, as both of them
require that policies and laws be defended on the basis of public reasons,
rather than by appealing to sectarian and factional values that only reflect the
interests and conceptions of the good of a specific group of citizens. Yet at this
point one might ask why, if this is the case, we would need more than one
political party. After all, one party could more easily and efficiently than two
or more parties perform the task of gathering all the diverse demands and
policy proposal advanced across society, and of finding public reasons that can
justify them to all citizens.
A first answer to this question may be found by pointing out that, contrary
to what some critics have objected (e.g. Bohman 1997; Dryzek 2000), Rawls’s
idea of public reason is not monological and inhospitable to pluralism. James
Bohman’s view that ‘a single norm of reasonableness is not presupposed in
deliberation; thus, agents can come to agreement with one another for differ-
ent publicly accessible reasons’ (Bohman 1997, p. 83), for example, does not
conflict with Rawls’s own version of political liberalism (Quong 2011, p. 262).
Indeed, Rawls stresses that ‘public reason does not ask us to accept the very
same principles of justice, but rather to conduct our fundamental discussions
in terms of what we regard as a political conception’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 241).
Elsewhere, he argues that the content of public reason is ‘given by a family of
reasonable political conceptions of justice’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 442, emphasis
added). Therefore, while citizens must only appeal to public reasons, ‘[they]
may still endorse the same decision (or different decisions) for different
reasons’ (Quong 2011, p. 263). This is, for example, the view espoused by
Muirhead and Rosenblum, for whom ‘[r]ival conceptions of political justice
and rival interpretation of principles of justice are consistent with public
reason. These rival conceptions can serve as the basis for political organization
and legitimate partisan differences’ (Muirhead and Rosenblum 2006, p. 101;
see also Muirhead 2014, p. 84).
There is also another way in which party pluralism can be justified within
political liberalism, that is, by considering the question (which has been
central to recent debates on public reason) of whether public justification
demands the reasons invoked in support of legislation be ‘shared’, ‘accessible’,
or ‘intelligible’ (Vallier 2014). So far, I have only argued that in liberal

democratic societies characterized by the fact of reasonable pluralism, a
commitment to the common good implies a commitment to treating citizens
as free and equal persons, and therefore to not imposing upon them rules
based on reasons that we cannot expect them to accept. Yet this leaves it
unspecified whether such reasons should be shared, accessible, or intelligible.
Shared reasons are reasons that all members of the public share at the
appropriate level of idealization.5 According to the idea of shareability, ‘A’s
reason RA is shared with the public if and only if members of the public regard
RA as epistemically justified for each member of the public, including A’
(Vallier 2014, p. 110). In other words, shareability demands that a reason be
employed for public justification only if ‘each citizen will affirm the reason as
her own at the right level of idealisation’ (Vallier 2014, p. 109, original
emphasis), against the background of their ‘subjective motivational set’ (Vallier
2011, p. 387; see also Vallier 2014, pp. 109–10), that is, of all their loyalties,
desires, and beliefs. The key point about the criterion of shareability, therefore,
is that it combines ‘shared evaluative standards with shared reasons’ (Vallier
2014, p. 109). Those reasons, therefore, are exactly the same in all respects for
all the members of the idealized public.
Clearly, shareability is a very restrictive criterion for public justification, and
indeed it has not been endorsed by many defenders of public reason.6 As
Vallier rightly points out, shareability fails to respect both integrity and
reasonable pluralism, as it prevents citizens (e.g. religious believers) from
appealing to reasons that are not widely shared, and justifies imposing or
rejecting laws that citizens may have non-shared reasons for challenging or
supporting (Vallier 2014, p. 122). Furthermore, since very few reasons are
shared in diverse liberal democratic societies, a commitment to shareability
would render most state rules unjustified and illegitimate (Vallier 2011,
p. 387). Finally, with regard to political parties, embracing shareability as a
criterion for public justification would support the aforementioned objection
that only one party is required in order to fulfil the justificatory demands of
partisanship. After all, if justificatory reasons need to be shared, why would
two or more competitive and uncoordinated parties be more efficient at
providing such reasons than one cohesive body of partisans?
It is therefore necessary to examine a second, more plausible and more
widely endorsed, conception of justificatory reasons, that is, the criterion of
5
I set aside, here, a full discussion of the problem of idealization, which is complex and
cannot be accommodated within the limits of this chapter or of this book. For the sake of the
present analysis, and without offering a defence of it, I embrace a moderate (as opposed to
radical) model of idealization (Gaus 2011, pp. 276–7; Vallier 2014, pp. 145–80), which assigns to
citizens suitable (but still imperfect) levels of reasoning and information.
6
Exceptions include Nagel (1986), Korsgaard (1996), Bohman and Richardson (2010), and
Schwartzman (2011).
‘accessibility’. According to the accessibility conception of public reason, a

reason RA can offer a suitable public justification if it is accessible to all citizens
at the right level of idealization, that is, if they ‘regard RA as epistemically
justified for A according to common evaluative standards’ (Vallier 2014,
p. 108). Two key conditions are necessary for the accessibility conception of
public justification to apply: first, ‘[e]valuative standards are “common” when
they enjoy intersubjective recognition’ (Vallier 2014, p. 108) and, second, the
person asserting the relevant reason must commit ‘no gross epistemic error’
(Vallier 2014, p. 106) in their use of those common standards.7 Rawls himself
seems to endorse the criterion of accessibility when he claims that public
justification should be grounded in ‘guidelines of inquiry: principles of reason-
ing and rules of evidence in the light of which citizens are to decide whether
substantive principles properly apply and to identify laws and policies that
best satisfy them’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 224).
The idea of accessibility seems to be more promising than shareability when
it comes to clarifying the justificatory demands of partisanship. This is the idea
that White and Ypi (2011, 2016) also seem to endorse, although they do not
elaborate much on this point. The questions I would like to answer here are
therefore the following: what are the implications of accessibility for political
parties, and how can this criterion (unlike shareability) justify the need for
more than one party?
To answer these questions take, for example, economic policies. Different
political parties may advance different views on how the economy should be
run, wealth redistributed, etc. We have already seen in Chapter 3 that political
liberalism allows significant scope for democratic contestation on these issues.
In advancing their proposed economic policies all or most parties will appeal
to certain comprehensive doctrines and controversial conceptions of the good
(e.g. Marxist, Catholic, libertarian, Islamic, etc.). This is not problematic per se
and in fact, as I will argue in Chapter 7, it is necessary in order for parties to
contribute to the process of full justification that Rawls considers necessary
under political liberalism. Furthermore, appealing to comprehensive doc-
trines, as we have seen, is allowed by Rawls’s ‘wide’ view of public reason.
Given their commitment to the common good and to public reason, however,
parties and partisans also need to be able to defend their proposed economic
policies on the basis of public reasons and, more specifically for the present
7
Similarly to Vallier, Christopher Eberle (2002) also claims that reasons are publicly access-
ible when individuals can evaluate them by using ‘cognitive capacities they share with other
normal human beings’ (Eberle 2002, p. 257). Eberle also discusses six other ‘epistemic concep-
tions of public justification’ (Eberle 2002, p. 252): intelligibility, replicability, fallibilism and
inerrancy, external criticism, independent confirmability, and proof of reliability (Eberle 2002,
pp. 255–93). Vallier mistakenly claims that all the categories of epistemic justification illustrated
by Eberle are variations of accessibility. However, this is incorrect. For an analysis of this
problem, see Badano and Bonotti (unpublished manuscript).
analysis, accessible reasons. This may involve, for example, appealing to

widely endorsed economic data and methods of analysis in order to show
how certain policies are likely to reduce unemployment, or increase per
capita GDP.
This, however, will still allow disagreement among economists (and par-
ties), since accessible reasons, unlike shared ones, can be controversial (e.g.
Vallier 2014, p. 114). Indeed even in science ‘the scientific method is a
common evaluative standard among scientists, yet it might only justify a
scientific conclusion for a sub-group of scientists given how they apply the
standard to their data set’ (Vallier 2014, p. 108). Scientists, that is, may often
disagree on their specific conclusions while continuing to agree on the
methods they adopt in order to reach those diverse conclusions. Outside the
natural sciences, for example among economists and social scientists, this
kind of disagreement is even more likely to occur, even though there can
still be agreement on widely shared methods and standards of evaluation. In
contrast, arguments grounded in religious beliefs are inaccessible as they
cannot be evaluated on the basis of shared standards. Those standards, that
is, are subjective or only shared by those who endorse the relevant system of
beliefs (Badano and Bonotti, unpublished manuscript).
Furthermore, what one is to make of economic data obtained through
widely shared methods and standards of evaluation will depend to a great
extent on one’s comprehensive doctrine and values. For example, a libertarian
may be less concerned about rising unemployment than a Marxist, even when
their views rely on the same economic data, and even when there is no
disagreement among economists about the validity of those data (or, at least,
of the methods employed to produce those data). Similarly, most people may
find certain scientific arguments (e.g. that pollution contributes to climate
change) accessible, and even scientifically uncontroversial, and yet deeply
disagree on what course of action should be taken on the basis of them,
because they endorse different ethical theories or comprehensive doctrines
(some of which, for example, may place importance on the well-being of
future generations, which is central to debates on climate change, on the
basis of religious arguments). These people’s motivational sets could not
accommodate those reasons as shared reasons but they could accept them as
accessible reasons. These examples therefore show that by allowing space for
controversy the idea of accessibility nurtures, rather than hinders, partisan
contestation. It is because different rules and policies can be publicly justified
on the basis of the different accessible reasons that there is space for
many political parties under political liberalism, if we embrace the idea of
accessibility.
We should not entirely dismiss, however, the ideal of shareability in the
present discussion. I previously mentioned that the public political culture of
liberal democracies includes broadly shared political values such as freedom
and equality. Furthermore, in the aforementioned passage that signals his

commitment to the idea of accessibility, Rawls refers to ‘guidelines of inquiry:
principles of reasoning and rules of evidence in the light of which citizens are
to decide whether substantive principles properly apply and to identify laws
and policies that best satisfy them’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 224, emphasis added).
Those substantive principles include, for example, ‘the values of equal political
and civil liberty . . . and . . . values of the common good as well as the various
necessary conditions for all these values’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 224).
This shows that, alongside accessibility, Rawls also endorses a weak form of
shareability. For him, that is, accessible reasons should be used in order to
explain how proposed laws and policies are related to (e.g. help to realize, or at
least are not detrimental to the realization of) broadly shared liberal political
values. Without those values, therefore, accessibility would be blind, that is, it
would somehow lack direction. This is a crucial point, since accessibility might
in principle allow into public deliberation accessible reasons in support of
illiberal policies (e.g. Laborde 2017, ch. 4). It is therefore important to stress
that accessibility is a necessary but not sufficient condition for public justifi-
cation (Vallier 2011, p. 372; see also Vallier 2014, p. 50). Accessible reasons,
that is, can enter the ‘justificatory pool’ (Vallier 2011, p. 372), and be discussed
by citizens during the process of public reasoning. However, in liberal societies
they can only contribute to public justification (and thus exit that ‘pool’) if
they respect the limits imposed by shared political liberal values. If they
contravene those values, they cease to be valid sources of public justification.
Introducing weak shareability alongside accessibility in the analysis of
parties and public reason helps us to explain in more detail how political
parties ought to advance the common good in liberal societies, in addition to
their duty to provide accessible reasons in support of their proposed policies.
On the one hand, parties and partisans ought to refrain from advancing
illiberal arguments which, even if accessible, contravene those basic liberal
political values that are widely shared in liberal democracies (e.g. equality,
freedom, etc.). On the other hand, they ought to take those political values
and interpret and rank them in more specific ways (e.g. see Herman unpub-
lished).8 In this manner, parties can render those indeterminate values
relevant to real political issues. Indeed it is by appealing to these refined
political values that parties can coordinate and give coherence to their policy
packages (White and Ypi 2010, p. 811; Bonotti 2011a, p. 21).
8
We should bear in mind, however, that not all rankings may be permissible under political
liberalism. Indeed Rawls himself argues that ‘not any balance of political values is reasonable’
(Rawls 2005a, p. 227). For example, a conception that ranks civil liberty so high that equality of
opportunity is seriously undermined, or vice versa, will not provide a reasonable balance of
political values.
This element of shareability, however, is quite weak and should not be seen
as a threat to party pluralism. The broadly shared values and principles
invoked by Rawls are very general, and allow for a great variety of specifica-
tions and rankings. In this sense, shareability and accessibility should be seen
as complementary rather than conflicting when it comes to partisanship and
public justification in Rawls’s political liberalism. Partisans ought to advance
general shared political values, which are expression of the common good in
liberal democracies, and interpret them, specify them, and suggest how they
should be realized, on the basis of accessible reasons. In doing so, they would
treat other citizens as free and equal persons (another key aspect of the
common good in liberal democracies). Furthermore, this process of public
justification would still allow scope for a great diversity of publicly justified
political proposals and, therefore, partisan platforms.
But what should we make, then, of the third main criterion for public
justification, that is, intelligibility? This establishes that ‘A’s reason RA is intel-
ligible for members of the public if and only if members of the public regard RA
as epistemically justified for A according to A’s evaluative standards’ (Vallier
2014, p. 106). Intelligibility is normally associated with the convergence view of
public reason, according to which public justification only requires that a public
policy or law is justified to each citizen on the basis of reasons that each of
them accepts, rather than on the basis of shared or accessible public reasons
(e.g. Stout 2004; Gaus and Vallier 2009; Gaus 2011). This view of public reason
has received many criticisms. For example, it has been argued that it relies on
controversial philosophical foundations (Quong 2011, pp. 263–73) and that it
fails to offer citizens ‘[t]he mutual moral assurance of the practice of public
reason [that] should matter especially to the political community’s most
vulnerable members’ (Macedo 2010, p. 2).9
These are powerful criticisms, although defenders of the convergence view
have offered some responses to them (e.g. Vallier 2014). However, I do not
intend to examine this debate here as this would take us away from the focus
of the present analysis. What I would like to argue, instead, is that the
convergence account of public reason is simply not compatible with the
justificatory demands of partisanship, which go beyond mere convergence
and demand truly public, rather than merely converging, reasons. Indeed, as
White and Ypi (2011) point out, the distinction between parties and factions
implies that parties, unlike factions, ought to justify their claims and policy
proposals to the whole political community rather than to a mere part of it,
9
Quong also argues that ‘[a]rguments and reasons may be intelligible without being justifi-
able, and thus merely seeing someone else’s position as intelligible does not entail that one must
see that other person’s position as justifiable’ (Quong 2011, p. 270 n. 42). For a similar critique of
Christopher Eberle’s (2002) idea of intelligibility, see Badano and Bonotti (unpublished
manuscript).
whether the latter is a social class, an interest group or a local constituency. In

this sense, ‘[a] political grouping that, for example, seeks to promote only
agrarian interests, although it may call itself a “farmers’ party”, is more
properly seen as a faction—unless it integrates these interests into a wider
normative vision addressed to the good of the political community at large’
(White and Ypi 2011, p. 384).
Promoting the good of the whole political community, I have argued,
involves advancing policy proposals grounded in reasons that are accessible,
and which explain how the proposed measures will contribute (and/or not be
detrimental) to the realization of broadly shared political values. This, we have
seen, still allows scope for a great variety of parties. However, it does impose
constraints on those parties that are unable to reformulate their political
platforms, grounded in inaccessible religious or other comprehensive doc-
trines, in the vocabulary of accessible public reasons. The convergence view,
instead, would render partisanship unnecessary and would be perfectly com-
patible with a political system dominated by factions, each of which supports
and opposes legislation by appealing to their private reasons, that is, to their
partial and sectarian comprehensive doctrines and evaluative standards, with-
out the need to take the common good into account.
However, I do not want to entirely dismiss the convergence account of
public justification. This is because that view is not extraneous to Rawls’s
political liberalism. Indeed Rawls makes a distinction between ‘pro tanto
justification’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 386, original emphasis), which depends only
on a freestanding political conception of justice and on public reasons, and
‘full justification’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 386), which requires that the freestanding
political conception of justice be ‘embedded in various ways—or mapped, or
inserted as a module—into the different doctrines citizens affirm’ (Rawls
2005a, p. 387). State laws, for Rawls, are fully justified (and a liberal society
is more stable) when they can rely both on freestanding public reasons and
on reasons grounded in the comprehensive doctrines that different citizens
endorse. Indeed Vallier himself points out that ‘full justification is a conver-
gence conception’ (Vallier 2014, p. 131). On the basis of this point, in Chapter 7
I will defend the view that partisans ought to engage both in a horizontal
process of public reasoning (involving all partisans) and in a vertical process of
non-public reasoning (involving partisans and their constituents).
SOME EXAMPLES
The fact that McGraw does not consider the distinctive normative character of
partisanship can be grasped from one of his many examples. In illustrating the
case of the Centre Party in late nineteenth-century Germany, he highlights
that ‘[r]ather than thinking that political Catholicism meant simply what
Rome said it meant, they [i.e. the party leaders] began to develop for them-
selves as Catholics what a democratic political Catholicism might look like’
(McGraw 2010, p. 156, original emphasis). In order to do so, ‘they had to strike
a balance between the interests of Germans who happened to be Catholic
and advancing the interests of the Catholic Church proper . . . [and thus] . . .
they developed their own political identity that was both democratic and
religious’ (McGraw 2010, p. 156). Elsewhere, McGraw highlights how ‘[thanks
to] their electoral successes . . . [Europe’s religious parties] . . . were in a position
to reshape political systems to make them more amenable to their constituents’
(McGraw 2014, p. 300, emphasis added). However, advancing the interests of
a partial group of religious citizens (e.g. Catholics), even if these are different
and somehow broader than the interests of a religious organization to which
these citizens are related (e.g. the Catholic Church), does not render such
interests more partisan and less factional, that is, more conforming with the
normative justificatory demands of partisanship. Neither are these interests
rendered more partisan by the fact that the parties that convey them act within
the boundaries of democracy (McGraw 2010, pp. 159–60).
We can also find similar examples in the Muslim world. For instance, while
Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—AKP)
has often declared its commitment to democracy, it is ‘deeply involved in
Islamic social ethics and cultural norms, and stresses the religious values and
interests of its pious electorate’ (Yavuz 2009, p. 8). In other words, it is involved
in what M. Hakan Yavuz calls ‘Islamic politics’, that is, ‘the competition and
contest to define the meaning of life, identity and community via Islamic values.
Islamic arguments are public statements or speech acts that are grounded in a
religious tradition’ (Yavuz 2009, p. 8).
My aim, I would like to stress, is not to assess whether McGraw and Yavuz’s
claims are true. I only want to point out that to the extent that they are correct,
and that Catholic or Muslim partisans in their examples are not committed to
presenting their demands in the vocabulary of public reason and as aimed at
the common good, but only as aimed at a partial religious constituency, this
signals a lack of compliance with the normative demands of partisanship.
Partisanship, we have seen, involves a commitment to public standards of
justification, analogous to the Rawlsian ideas of public reason and of an
overlapping consensus, rather than a mere commitment to respecting consti-
tutional democracy.
There is, however, a different reading of the history and role of Europe’s
religious parties that offers more promising foundations for considering such
parties the agents of an overlapping, rather than merely constitutional, consen-
sus. As Stathis N. Kalyvas (1996), following Giorgio Vecchio (1987), points out,
Europe’s religious parties gradually moved from being ‘Catholic parties’ to being
parties ‘of Christian inspiration’, that is, Christian Democratic parties. While
‘Catholic parties were directly tied to the hierarchy, to the confessional idea, to
the defense of immediate ineluctable Catholic “interests” . . . parties “of Christian
inspiration” are necessarily aconfessional because they express a “national”
interest and promote their own opinion on every important political issue’
(Kalyvas 1996, p. 245n, emphasis added). This, rather than the mere distancing
from the Catholic Church (which is not inconsistent, we have seen, with
continuing to promote factional interests), is what signals Europe’s religious
parties’ partisanship and, therefore, their commitment to something analogous
to the ideas of public reason and of an overlapping consensus. Through a process
of ‘symbolic appropriation’ (Kalyvas 1996, p. 244), Christian Democratic parties
gradually ‘reinterpreted Catholicism as an increasingly general and abstract
moral concept’ (Kalyvas 1996, p. 244), replacing the doctrinal narrowness of
the former with the broad appeal of the latter, and thus distinguishing their
religious political identity from the religious identity of the Church.
This gradually resulted in the development of a genuine interclassism,
thanks to which ‘[c]onfessional parties represented a multitude of often
conflicting social interests and related ideological viewpoints. Because religion
was their primary appeal, confessional parties became heterogeneous inter-
class parties’ (Kalyvas 1996, p. 235). This rendered ‘Christian Democracy . . . a
catch-all party avant la lettre’ (Kalyvas 1996, p. 237). It was therefore not
religion per se, but rather the generalized religious message put forward by
these parties, that allowed them to present themselves as promoters of the
common good. Catholic and Christian values, that is, became ‘average cultural
values shared by society as a whole: a sort of secularized and minimal
Christianity readily accepted by the masses for traditional reasons’ (Pombeni
2000, p. 299). It should be stressed that, in increasingly secularized and
ethically diverse societies, this kind of shift from a ‘thicker’ to a ‘thinner’
Christian message may be important but not sufficient to present partisan
demands in truly public terms. However, it certainly signals an effort to move
in the right direction, that is, towards a commitment to accessibility and weak
shareability in public justification.
Another interesting example is offered by the Partito Popolare Italiano
(PPI) operating in Italy between 1919 and 1926 which, even more clearly
than the post-Second World War Democrazia Cristiana (DC), rejected any
religious labels and presented itself as an aconfessional party. According to
Luigi Sturzo, the party’s founder, the PPI’s goal was not to advance the
interests of the Italian Catholics but to offer a broader political and social
platform (Scoppola 1966, p. 309). Furthermore, and crucially for the present
analysis, the party’s members accepted and enthusiastically embraced the idea
of ‘party’, therefore moving away from the views of earlier Catholics such as
Vincenzo Gioberti, who considered parties a ‘reliquia dell’antica barbarie’
(Gioberti 1851, p. 212), a ‘relic of ancient barbarism’, or Antonio Rosmini,
for whom parties were ‘il verme che rode la società’ (Rosmini 1997, p. 231), ‘the
worm that gnaws at society’. In contrast with these views, the PPI’s members
accepted the ideas of party and party politics as involving the promotion of the
common good under conditions of freedom and toleration (Scoppola 1966,
pp. 338–41). And the promotion of the common good, as I have repeatedly
argued in this chapter, involves advancing political platforms which, while
grounded in comprehensive doctrines, can also be defended on the basis
of reasons that are accessible to all citizens and which contribute to realizing
(or not hindering) broadly shared political values.
PARTIES AND THE OVERLAPPING

CONSENSUS I N P RACTICE
I have argued so far that it is wrong to consider the Rawlsian overlapping

consensus too restrictive on political parties’ ability to convey religious
demands into the political realm because it imposes external public reason
constraints upon partisans. Those constraints, instead, can be seen as internal
to partisanship, once the latter is understood as a distinctive normative
category. This also implies that the positive contribution that political parties
can make to liberal democracy and to the overlapping consensus should not be
reduced to the contingent example of nineteenth century’s European religious
parties (or of any other specific party). Instead, it should be attributed to the
distinctively partisan way in which parties ought to reinterpret and present
particular demands and interests, that is, by appealing to public reasons. In so
far as parties and partisans fulfil these normative demands, parties are carriers
of an overlapping consensus and, they are desirable for the stability of liberal
democracies within the confines of Rawls’s political liberalism. It is also
important to assess, however, which empirical features of parties can help
them to fulfil the normative justificatory demands of partisanship.
First of all, parties represent a ‘key linkage between candidates and elected
officials on one side and the unorganized (at least into parties) mass public on
the other’ (Katz 1990, p. 143; see also Dalton et al. 2011). Parties are neither
mere associations nor state institutions. Instead, they are located halfway
between state and civil society and provide a unique, hybrid, and semi-
institutional connection between the two domains (Bonotti 2011a). Thanks
to their unique position, therefore, they can help religious citizens ‘to settle
how . . . the values of the political domain are related to other values in their
comprehensive doctrine’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 140).
Second, and as we have already seen in Chapter 4, unlike single-issue groups
parties are ‘wide-ranging agenda-setting’ (Rosenblum 2000, p. 825) organiza-
tions. They relate particularistic values and interests to the broad range of
policy areas and long-term political issues that the government of a modern
nation-state normally involves. Parties are not mere vehicles for promoting
single, contingent, and temporary issues (Hershey 2006, pp. 85–6). Instead,
they guarantee that ‘different aspects of the political world are linked together
across subject and time rather than each taken piecemeal’ (White and Ypi 2010,
p. 3). Therefore, in the same way in which Green parties in western Europe have
often undergone a process of ‘programmatic generalization’ (Kitschelt 2006,
p. 285), parties that are initially solely (or mainly) focused on religious issues
(e.g. state support for confessional schools) must broaden their range of policy
proposals in order to become credible in the marketplace of party politics.
This point, it should be noted, differs from the one I have previously made
regarding the justificatory demands of partisanship. A party, that is, might
undergo a process of programmatic generalization while continuing to defend
its various policies (e.g. in the areas of social welfare, foreign policy, etc.) on
the basis of partial and factional interests. Nevertheless, it might plausibly be
argued that the pressure to move beyond certain core policy issues forces
parties to engage with interests which differ from, and sometimes conflict
with, those of their core constituency. For example, realizing that state support
for religious schools may require diverting public funds from the arts or from
environmental protection might force parties and partisans to rethink their
more religiously grounded proposals in view of the common interest, and to
make an effort to appeal to public reasons when justifying them to the broader
public, thus contributing to an overlapping consensus. This is what their
partisanship demands. The wide-ranging character of party platforms, that
is, renders party politics a useful training ground for citizens to think in terms
of the common good and, therefore, to contribute to an overlapping consen-
sus. Parties, in this sense, can act ‘as “discursive architects”, providing a variety
of normative resources upon which to draw in deliberating upon competing
policy options with a view to the collective political good’ (White and Ypi
2010, p. 819; see also Bobbio 1987).
Finally, parties do not simply mirror pre-existing societal interests and de-
mands. Instead, they actively create political divisions and choose how to reframe
societal demands in relation to a broader political agenda and in opposition to
their political adversaries (Holt 1978, p.183; see also Rosenblum 2008, p. 62). In
this sense, they are ‘opportunistic responses to political possibilities’ (Rosenblum
2008, p. 103). Social cleavages have to be actively politicized by political parties in
order to become politically relevant. Parties, therefore, possess a creative agency
which helps them to transform pre-political values into distinctively political
ones. With regard to Christian Democracy, for example, against the ‘literature
[that] posits the organization of politics on the basis of confession as something
natural and inevitable’ (Kalyvas 1996, p. 9; see also Maier 1969), others have
more plausibly argued that ‘[t]he transition from a Catholic social identity to a
Catholic political identity has to be accounted for’ (Kalyvas 1996, p. 10, original
emphasis; see also Laitin 1986).
The creative character of parties offers a crucial contribution to the over-

lapping consensus. Indeed, while for Rawls each citizen should work out for
themselves the link between their comprehensive doctrine and the political
conception of justice, Rawls also suggests that citizens should engage with each
other’s comprehensive doctrines in order to show their internal connection
with a political conception of justice. More specifically, he claims, ‘we reason
from what we believe, or conjecture, may be other people’s basic doctrines,
religious or philosophical, and seek to show them that, despite what they
might think, they can still endorse a reasonable political conception of justice’
(Rawls 2005b, p. 462). This view, however, has been criticized since by asking
citizens to reinterpret their comprehensive (e.g. religious) doctrines consist-
ently with political liberal values ‘the ethos of political liberalism could easily
penetrate religious and philosophical doctrines, pressure them to understand
and articulate themselves in standard and liberal idioms, and all but eliminate
nonliberal forms of thought’ (Parekh, 2006, p. 88). Showing religious people
how their faith contains the grounds for endorsing a political conception of
justice seems to involve an unwarranted interference with their religious life,
and with the internal life of those churches and religious associations that
animate what Rawls calls the ‘background culture’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 14).
Political parties can contribute to avoiding this problem. As voluntary
organizations which, unlike churches or other associations, have ‘one foot in
both the background culture and the public forum’ (Muirhead and Rosenblum
2006, p. 104), and must present their claims in generalizable terms, parties
provide the ideal locus in which comprehensive doctrines can be related to a
political conception of justice and to public reason. They can then offer citizens
different options regarding how that connection can be made. Crucially,
exploring the connection at the level of party politics can be consistent with
avoiding an unwarranted interference with churches and religious associations
in the ‘background culture’, thus allowing reasonable comprehensive doctrines
to continue to flourish in the latter. This is what happened, for example, in the
case of the Italian PPI which was conceived by Sturzo as independent from
the Catholic Church. For this very reason, the PPI could exercise its authority
over its members qua partisans while allowing the Catholic Church to continue
to exercise its authority over them qua Catholics (Baget-Bozzo 1974, pp. 32–3;
see also Traniello 1987, p. 182).
CONCLUSION
In this chapter I have argued that Rawls’s ideas of public reason and of an
overlapping consensus should not be considered extrinsic to partisanship, but
that they are instead at the very core of the normative ideal of partisanship.
I have also shown how some of the key empirical features of political parties
make them especially suited to realizing an overlapping consensus. In sum-
mary, the distinctive normative demands of partisanship and the unique
position that parties occupy in contemporary liberal democracies imply that
in connecting particular demands and general interest parties perform a task
that is not only vital to the Rawlsian overlapping consensus but also inherent
to both their normative and empirical nature. In Chapter 7, I will argue that
Rawls’s conception of public reason can be revised in a way that is more
inclusive towards the use of non-public reasons by ordinary citizens, while
leaving to partisans (and especially elected partisans) the task of finding public
reasons to support whichever policies ordinary citizens advocate.
7
Partisanship and the Division

of Justificatory Labour
The analysis conducted in Chapter 6 showed that there is an inherent corres-

pondence between the normative demands of partisanship and those of public
reason. This, we saw, implies that political liberalism does not impose extrinsic
public reason constraints on partisans, since partisanship already intrinsically
involves a commitment to the common good and this, in liberal democratic
societies, entails a commitment to public reasoning. We also saw that some of
the key empirical features of parties render them especially suitable to realizing
the overlapping consensus invoked by Rawls. In this chapter I intend to build
on those conclusions and defend an account of public reason that moves
beyond the limits of Rawls’s political liberalism, and in which parties and
partisanship play a central role. More specifically, I intend to show that Rawls’s
conception of public reason can be revised in a way that would be more inclusive
towards the use of non-public reasons by ordinary citizens, while leaving to
elected partisans the task of finding public reasons to support whichever policies
ordinary citizens advocate.
In order to defend my claim, I will first engage with the view, endorsed by
Jürgen Habermas (2006), that the duty to appeal to public reasons should only
apply to public officials (e.g. MPs, ministers, judges, civil servants) but not to
ordinary citizens. Habermas’s view reflects what Kevin Vallier (2014) calls the
‘indirect method [of exclusion]’ (Vallier 2014, p. 51), which ‘allows citizens to
forgo explicit attempts in political deliberation and action to bar excluded
reasons from playing a justificatory role . . . [and] . . . focuses instead on regu-
lating the behavior of politicians and the structure of political institutions to
ensure that excluded reasons do not generate publicly unjustified law’ (Vallier
2014, p. 51). The main rationale for the indirect approach is that ‘legislative
representatives of the public . . . have an identifiable impact on outcomes, not
ordinary citizens’ (Vallier 2014, p. 186), that is, their influence on legislation is
much stronger than that of ordinary citizens.1
1
A similar view is also endorsed by Laborde (2013b).
Partisanship and the Division of Justificatory Labour 125
I will then consider the criticism, raised against Habermas, that the
accountability of public officials (and especially of political representatives)
requires ordinary citizens to engage in the same public reasoning as their
representatives (Greenawalt 1995; Boettcher 2009). I will argue that this
criticism is wrong, and that the accountability of public officials can be
ensured through a division of justificatory labour. On the one hand, public
officials ought to hold each other accountable with regard to their use of public
reasons (as defined in Chapter 6), without the need for direct scrutiny by
ordinary citizens, in order to guarantee the ‘pro tanto justification’ (Rawls
2005a, p. 386, original emphasis) of laws and policies. On the other hand,
public officials ought to be responsive to citizens’ non-public (including
religious) reasons, and endeavour to find an internal connection between
those and public reasons, in order to secure the ‘full justification’ (Rawls
2005a, p. 386) of legislation. This would allow ordinary citizens to appeal to
non-public reasons without abandoning the justificatory ideal of public rea-
son. Throughout the chapter, I will also explain why this twofold process of
accountability especially applies to elected partisans. I will conclude by illus-
trating how different electoral systems may be more or less conducive to the
bifurcated process of public justification that I defend. Before I proceed with
my analysis, however, some clarificatory remarks are required.
First, it is well-known that in his analysis Habermas refers to ‘secular’,
rather than ‘public’, reasons. In this chapter, however, I set aside this distinc-
tion and simply assume, for the sake of argument, that Habermas’s proposed
distinction between the duties of public officials and those of ordinary citizens
(with regard to public justification) can equally be applied to Rawls’s account
of public (i.e. rather than secular) reason. I therefore use the terms ‘secular’
and ‘public’ interchangeably, while being aware that this distinction is prob-
lematic (Rawls 2005b, p. 452). Second, I also set aside all the other differences
between Habermas and Rawls’s accounts of public reason. The only aspect of
Habermas’s account I am interested in is the idea of indirect public justifica-
tion resulting from an institutional threshold separating ordinary citizens
from public officials. Third, while my discussion is focused on the place of
religious arguments in public deliberation, it also aims to apply more broadly
to comprehensive doctrines in general, and to the role they should (or should
not) play in support of state legislation. As in Chapter 6, therefore, my analysis
starts from a critical engagement with a religion-based discussion of Rawls’s
idea of public reason while aiming to offer conclusions that apply to compre-
hensive doctrines (and to partisanship) in general.
Finally, while Habermas argues that the constraints of public reason apply
to all public officials—to ‘parliaments, courts, ministries and administrations’
(Habermas 2006, p. 9)—my focus is solely on political representatives, and
especially on elected partisans. This is because the lens through which
I examine the indirect view of public justification in this chapter is the idea
of accountability as applied to political representatives, which has been the

main object of contention between supporters and detractors of the indirect
model of public justification. Furthermore, the indirect conception of public
justification clearly applies to partisans since ‘[p]arties alone among associ-
ations are “strong publics”, meaning their activity culminates in binding
decisions and electoral success may translate into legislation’ (Rosenblum
2008, p.260). It is important to stress that the indirect view of public justification
applies to partisans in general, since participation in party politics at any level
(e.g. as an elected representative or a candidate, but also as a member or
supporter of a party) presupposes that one is committed to the eventual
implementation of the party’s proposed policies through coercive legislative
measures. However, since, as I have already stressed, my focus is on political
accountability, and since elected partisans have a stronger impact on decision-
making than other partisans, I will especially focus on such partisans. More-
over, I will also defend a pragmatic division of justificatory labour within political
parties (alongside the one between elected partisans and ordinary citizens),
assigning to elected partisans the duty to comply with the constraints of
public reason, and granting other partisans the task of engaging in non-public
reasoning with their constituents.
ACCOUNTABILITY AND P UBLIC REASON
Rawls, we have already seen in Chapters 4 and 5, does not relieve ordinary
citizens of the constraints of public reason and, even in his later work, argues
that ‘ideally citizens are to think of themselves as if they were legislators’ (Rawls
2005b, p. 444, original emphasis) when they deliberate in the public political
realm (at least when they deliberate on constitutional essentials and matters of
basic justice). For this reason, the Rawlsian constraints of public reason have
often been criticized for being overly demanding towards religious citizens
(e.g. Greenawalt 1995; Eberle 2002; Weithman 2002; Stout 2004; Smith 2010).
This is especially the case for the shareability version of public reason, but it
also applies to the accessibility version, despite some unpersuasive attempts to
argue otherwise (Eberle 2002; Vallier 2011, 2014).2
Vallier has recently offered a useful analysis of the various objections raised
against the Rawlsian constraints of public reason, which he categorizes as the
‘integrity’, ‘fairness’, and ‘divisiveness’ objections (Vallier 2014). I do not
intend to examine these objections in detail. Neither do I want to consider
the various responses that have been offered to these criticisms by advocates of
2
For a critique of these arguments, see Badano and Bonotti (unpublished manuscript).
public reason (for a summary, see Quong 2013) or the claim, critically assessed
in Chapter 4, that the various provisos introduced by Rawls throughout his
later work suggest that the constraints imposed by public reason on ordinary
citizens are perhaps much less stringent than many critics argue (Neal 2008).
Instead, I would like to take those criticisms on board and, rather than
discounting their significance or trying to rebuff them, I would like to show
that they can be accommodated within political liberalism without renouncing
the ideal of public reason, and by relying on the contribution of parties, and
especially of elected partisans.
In doing so, I would like to embrace Habermas’s proposal that in order to
respond to the criticisms raised by inclusivist accounts of public deliber-
ation, the constraints of public reason should be relaxed in two ways. On the
one hand, Habermas claims, ‘[their] strict demand can only be laid at the
door of politicians, who within state institutions are subject to the obligation
to remain neutral in the face of competing world views; in order words, it
can only be made of anyone who holds a public office or is a candidate for
such’ (Habermas 2006, pp. 8–9). On the other hand, he argues, ordinary
citizens can invoke religious reasons as long as they acknowledge ‘that only
secular reasons count beyond the institutional threshold that divides the
informal sphere from parliaments, courts, ministries and administrations’
(Habermas 2006, p. 9).
I accept, without defending it, Habermas’s argument. My aim is to engage
with a serious criticism that has been advanced against it by James Boettcher
(2009). According to Boettcher, Habermas fails to offer a sound alternative
to Rawls’s ideal of public reason since he overlooks the importance that the
idea of accountability, as applied to political representatives, should play in a
liberal democracy. Boettcher draws on Hanna Pitkin’s (1967) classic account
of representation, in which accountability implies that ‘a representative is
someone who is to be held to account, who will have to answer to another
for what he does’ (Pitkin 1967, p. 55) and, furthermore, someone who ‘must
. . . be responsive to the needs and claims of his constituents’ (Pitkin 1967,
p. 57). Pitkin’s definition (which, like Boettcher, I uncritically accept for the
sake of argument) therefore implies that accountability has a twofold dimen-
sion: to be accountable, a representative must (a) answer to citizens (and give
reasons) for how he/she acts and (b) be responsive to citizens’ demands.
Habermas’s idea of an institutional threshold, Boettcher claims, prevents
the realization of both dimensions of accountability in relation to the mode of
reasoning of representatives. The first dimension (answerability), Boettcher
claims, implies that representatives ought to answer to citizens with regard to
their use public reasons (or lack thereof), and citizens ought to be able to assess
the way their representatives engage (or fail to engage) in public reasoning.
Rawls’s account of public reason, Boettcher claims, guarantees this dimension
of accountability, since it requires that ordinary citizens appeal to public
reasons when they express their views (and their vote) on fundamental issues
in the public political realm, or when they elect and appraise their represen-
tatives (Rawls 2005b, pp. 444–5). Habermas, however, relieves ordinary citi-
zens of this burden. This, for Boettcher, is the key problem since, he asks, ‘how
are citizens to evaluate their representatives’ modes of reasoning . . . unless they
engage in the kind of reflection suggested by Rawls?’ (Boettcher 2009, p. 226,
original emphasis).
The second dimension of accountability (responsiveness), Boettcher claims,
is also undermined by Habermas’s distinction between formal and informal
public spheres, which prevents political representatives from being responsive
to those constituents’ demands that are grounded in comprehensive doctrines.
A similar position is also defended by Kent Greenawalt, for whom ‘[i]f it were
completely proper for citizens to form views in any way they pleased and to
vote accordingly, but legislators were not supposed to rely on citizen views
based on nonaccessible and comprehensive grounds, citizens would appropri-
ately vote out of office (and for that reason) legislators who rightly declined to
pay attention to citizens’ views developed from nonaccessible and compre-
hensive grounds’ (Greenawalt 1995, p. 151; see also Schwartzman forthcoming).
Both of Boettcher’s conclusions, I will show in the next two sections, are
misguided.
PUBLIC REASON AND HORIZONTAL

ACCOUNTA BILITY
Guaranteeing the answerability of political representatives with regard to

public reasoning does not imply that citizens themselves should assess their
public reasoning (or lack thereof). Instead, representatives should hold each
other accountable with regard to their use of public reasons. My claim draws
on the idea of ‘horizontal accountability’ (O’Donnell 1994), which has been
discussed by some political and democratic theorists. Robert Goodin (2003),
for example, discusses horizontal accountability in connection with Third
Sector organizations. He claims that ‘[this] mechanism of accountability
operates through praising or shaming and shunning, among a network of
coequals sharing a common culture of similar norms and values, goals and
principles. That inevitably gives rise to punishments on one side, to praise and
rewards and encouragements on the other. . . . Generally, participants genu-
inely internalize values shared by others within their network, and critiques
of their behaviour based on those shared values’ (Goodin 2003, p. 366).
Similarly, Jane Mansbridge (2009) highlights the importance of horizontal
accountability and refers specifically to party politics, where ‘networks of
horizontal accountability, along with recruitment systems and larger social
norms, help produce honesty and competence outside any system of electoral
sanctions’ (Mansbridge 2009, p. 385).
My central contention is that the idea of horizontal accountability among
political representatives with regard to public reasoning relieves ordinary
citizens (including religious ones) of the duty of civility. Furthermore, endors-
ing horizontal accountability also means acknowledging that ordinary citizens
in contemporary liberal democracies may often not have the time or the
technical expertise to engage in the ongoing process of public reasoning that
should underlie all state decisions (Greenawalt 1995, p. 162; Manin 1997, p. 3;
Mansbridge 2009, p. 387), and which would be necessary for them to be able to
hold their political representatives accountable with regard to their public
reasoning.
To understand how horizontal accountability in public reasoning might
work, an example may be useful. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair
once mentioned his following experience: ‘I recall giving an address to the
country at a time of crisis. I wanted to end my words with “God bless the
British people”. This caused complete consternation. Emergency meetings
were convened. The system was aghast. Finally, as I sat trying to defend my
words, a senior civil servant said, with utter disdain: “Really, Prime Minister,
this is not America you know”’ (Blair quoted in McGraw 2010, p. 280 n. 50).
Blair’s experience shows that appealing to religious or other comprehensive
doctrines in public deliberation can be the object of serious moral (and social)
disapproval from other public officials due to certain ‘expectations governing
public discourse’ (McGraw 2010, p. 280 n. 50). While in this example the
disapproval was voiced by a senior civil servant, it is not difficult to imagine
how this kind of peer pressure might often be expressed by political oppon-
ents. In any case, the monitoring function that is necessary for horizontal
accountability should not be restricted only to political representatives but
could be assigned to public officials in general. As Thomas Christiano points
out, ‘[w]hen there are a number of different kinds of experts in different areas
who have some understanding of what the others are doing, they can check on
each other to make sure that they are in fact pursuing the interests and points
of view that they are supposed to be pursuing’ (Christiano 1996, p. 268).3
3
It should be noted that the idea of ‘horizontal accountability’ with regard to public reasoning
that I propose here differs significantly (despite the similar terminology) from the principle of
‘mutual accountability’ advocated by Cristina Lafont (2009). According to Lafont, ‘citizens who
participate in political advocacy in the informal public sphere can appeal to any reasons they
sincerely believe in, which support the coercive policies they favor, provided that they are
prepared to address any objections based on reasons generally acceptable to democratic citizens
that other participants may advance against such policies’ (Lafont 2009, p. 132). While offering
an apparently more inclusive account of public deliberation than Rawls’s and Habermas’s,
Lafont’s argument ultimately encounters the same problems. More specifically, ‘[o]nce a political
agenda based on religious beliefs is challenged, the religious citizen has no other solution than to
At this point, one might observe that imposing the constraints of public
reason only on political representatives (or on public officials in general) may
simply reproduce the same issues faced by Rawls’s ideal of public reason as
applied to ordinary citizens, just at a different level. Furthermore, even if
Habermas’s argument allows ordinary citizens to appeal to non-public reasons
in their deliberations, nothing guarantees that political representatives will be
able to provide public reasons in support of their proposed policies. When that
happens, they may have to renounce supporting the policies they (and their
constituents) advocate (Lafont 2007, p. 245). Habermas’s indirect model of
public justification, in this sense, relieves citizens of the constraints of public
reason, including cognitive burdens and burdens on their integrity, only to
impose them upon political representatives instead.
Two responses can be offered to this objection. First, a citizen who volun-
tarily decides to become a political representative (or a public official in
general) should know that public positions involve certain duties and obliga-
tions that might sometimes conflict with their duties and obligations (or mere
preferences) qua ordinary citizens. As Vallier points out, ‘our intuitions about
integrity change somewhat when people take positions of power’ (Vallier
2014, p. 129). In the case of political representatives, for example, it is generally
acknowledged that they ‘are routinely expected to comply with much more
complex normative standards than their constituents, such as legislative
procedures’ (Vallier 2014, p. 193), and that this sometimes involves voting
in ways that do not (fully) reflect the preferences of their constituents. If
citizens, aware of these potential clashes, still decide to undertake these
roles, it seems implausible to argue that in having to comply with the associ-
ated duties their integrity is been unjustly undermined, or that they are being
treated unfairly.
Interestingly, Vallier’s endorsement of the indirect model of public justifi-
cation also reinforces my critique of the convergence account of public reason
that he defends, and that I have already discussed in Chapter 6. More specif-
ically, Vallier defends both an indirect account of public reason, in which
ordinary citizens are relieved of any public reason restraints, and a conver-
gence account of public reason, in which public justification only requires that
reasons are ‘intelligible’ to citizens, rather than ‘accessible’ or ‘shared’ (Vallier
2014, pp. 103–44). However, as he himself points out (Vallier 2014, pp. 128–9),
one might argue that the indirect approach per se is sufficient to safeguard
the integrity of ordinary religious citizens, even if one endorses a consensus
(i.e. shareability or accessibility) rather than a convergence (i.e. intelligibility)
view of public reason.
resort to a Rawls-like understanding of public reasons’ (Frega 2012, p. 283), a conclusion that
Lafont herself explicitly accepts elsewhere (Lafont 2007, p. 240).
Vallier’s response to this objection is that ‘the convergence view avoids the
integrity objection even on a direct approach’ (Vallier 2014, p. 129), but this is
not a good response. If one endorses an indirect approach, then the question
of whether a consensus or convergence view of public reason should be
adopted becomes redundant. As we have seen, the integrity of ordinary
religious citizens is not undermined under the indirect approach. Moreover,
we should remember that something valuable and important is lost when we
move from a consensus to a convergence view of public reason (Macedo
2010). That move, Vallier argues, is necessary in order to safeguard ‘respect
for integrity and reasonable pluralism’ (Vallier 2014, p. 139), but that is only
true under the direct approach, that he rejects. The indirect and convergence
approaches to public reason are therefore different ways of responding to the
objections raised by religious critics. While they can certainly be combined
together, they do not necessarily need to be. The indirect approach per se is
sufficient to respond to those criticisms.
Vallier might respond that the convergence approach is still required as part
of the indirect approach because it offers distinct advantages, especially when
applied to legislators. Indeed he claims that ‘Convergent Restraint for Legis-
lators . . . is a principle of proposal restraint, not reason restraint’ (Vallier 2014,
p. 193), that is, it is not a restraint on ‘the reasons that one can offer and act
upon in public life . . . [but only on the] . . . coercive laws or policies [that]
citizens and officials can support’ (Vallier 2014, p. 185). It is not clear,
however, why Vallier only imposes a convergent and proposal restraint on
legislators, since he also claims that ‘no religion . . . requires their adherents to
run for or hold political office’ (Vallier 2014, 193).4 This claim, combined with
the aforementioned view that engaging in politics is a voluntary choice, seems
once again to render the convergence account, and the emphasis on proposal
(rather than reason) restraint, redundant. In summary, if no religious (or other
comprehensive) doctrine obliges citizens to engage in politics, and if political
roles, with their associated special duties and commitments, can voluntarily be
undertaken and relinquished by citizens, a consensus and reason version of
restraint seems to be as permissive as a convergence and proposal one.5
The second response to the objection that the Habermasian approach relieves
citizens of the constraints of public reason and of the associated burdens to
their integrity, but reintroduces them at the level where political representatives
operate, is grounded in the view that we should draw a distinction between
different kinds of political representatives. Not only, that is, should we draw a
4
This claim may be less obvious than Vallier suggests, but I would like to set the issue aside
here. I would also like to set aside Vallier’s claim, also potentially debatable, that ‘one can be a
good citizen without engaging in political life’ (Vallier 2014, p. 230; see also Brennan 2011).
5
I set aside, here, a discussion of the role of judges who, according to Vallier, should be
subject to both consensus and reason restraint.
distinction between political representatives and other public officials. We

should also draw distinctions between different kinds of political representa-
tives.6 More specifically, we should also acknowledge the distinctiveness of
partisans as political representatives (e.g. as opposed to independents), and of
partisanship as a normative ideal.
All partisans, I explained in Chapter 6, have a duty, internal to the very
normative ideal of partisanship, to offer public reasons (alongside reasons
grounded in comprehensive doctrines) in support of the legislation they
advocate. It is the very normative ideal of partisanship that requires partisans
to justify political decisions on the basis of public reasons. This implies that
while religious citizens (or citizens who endorse nonreligious comprehensive
doctrines), qua ordinary citizens, members of non-partisan movements, or
independent candidates and office holders, could rightly consider the con-
straints of public reason unduly restrictive, qua religious partisans (or qua
partisans who endorse nonreligious comprehensive doctrines), that is qua
religious citizens who have decided to engage in party politics, they must
abide by those constraints as part of their very partisanship. Elected partisans
therefore have an additional reason, compared to other elected political
representatives under the indirect model of public justification, for complying
with the constraints of public reason, and for not complaining that those
constraints impose an undue burden upon their integrity and conscience, or
are unduly exclusionary towards their demands.
This can also help us to refine the present analysis. It might be the case that
religious (or nonreligious) citizens do sometimes have a duty to participate in
political life. It might also be the case that sometimes ‘one can[not] be a good
citizen without engaging in political life’ (Vallier 2014, p. 230; see also Brennan
2011). However, it is certainly the case that even if these statements are true,
citizens who would like to (because they believe they ought to) engage in
politics do not have a duty to do so via political parties. In other words, the
distinctiveness of partisanship as a form of political participation enhances its
voluntary character and therefore reduces even further, for those who embrace
it, the rationale for claiming that the constraints of public reason are unduly
burdensome.
The process of horizontal accountability should aim to guarantee that
partisans comply with those constraints and it should apply both within
and, most importantly, across party divides. It should be left to elected
partisans of other parties, and to public officials in general, to decide whether
the allegedly public reasons invoked by a partisan in support of (or against)
some proposed legislation are truly public or merely reflect their comprehen-
sive conception of the good. Parties and partisans, therefore, can play a
6
This is as important as distinguishing between different kinds of religious arguments and
different policy areas when discussing public reason (March 2013).
distinctive and vital role within the Habermasian institutional sphere, and
contribute to the realization of the first dimension of accountability.
PUBLIC REASON A ND VERTIC AL ACCOUNTABILITY
The second dimension of accountability, that is, the responsiveness of political

representatives to their constituents’ comprehensive doctrines, might appear
to be at odds with the normative ideal of public reason. This, however, need
not be the case. In ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’ (Rawls 2005b), as we
have already seen in Chapters 4 and 5, Rawls introduces a ‘wide’ conception of
public reason. This establishes that ‘reasonable comprehensive doctrines,
religious or nonreligious, may be introduced in public political discussion at
any time, provided that in due course proper political reasons—and not
reasons given solely by comprehensive doctrines—are presented that are
sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines introduced are
said to support’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 462).
Through this wide view, Rawls creates a space for deliberation in which
citizens and political representatives can exchange non-public reasons. This is
the site within which representatives, and especially partisans, can and ought
to be receptive to their constituents’ demands, and to the non-public reasons
that the latter invoke in their (in my argument, unconstrained) deliberation.
These may be religious reasons or reasons grounded in other comprehensive
doctrines. Political representatives also ought to explain to their constituents
how the laws and policies they endorse are grounded in the latter’s compre-
hensive doctrines, including but not limited to religious ones. This is an
instance of ‘vertical accountability’ (Schedler 1999).
The wide view of public reason also plays another important role, as already
mentioned in Chapter 5. Rawls, we have seen, does not reject the idea that
public reasons are eventually required in order to justify legislation. However,
the wide view creates a space within which ‘new variations [of permissible
public reason] may be proposed from time to time and older ones may cease to
be represented. It is important that this be so; otherwise the claims of groups
or interests arising from social change might be repressed and fail to gain their
appropriate political voice’ (Rawls 2005b, p. 452).7 As well as ensuring vertical
accountability, therefore, the exchange of non-public reasons between political
7
I am aware that, as I argued in Chapter 4, the ‘wide’ view of public reason still imposes
significant burdens on partisans, especially on elected and campaigning partisans, once we
acknowledge the practical constraints they are subject to. Later in this chapter I will therefore
defend the idea of a division of justificatory labour within parties, which assigns to elected
partisans the duty to comply with the constraints of public reason, while leaving other partisans
free to engage in non-public reasoning with their constituents.
representatives and ordinary citizens within the boundaries of wide public

reason also ensures that potentially new conceptions of public reason are
granted a hearing, and that they are given the chance to become part of the
public reason vocabulary that political representatives ultimately ought to
employ when justifying legislation (while holding each other accountable). It
is important to stress that a change of public reason is more relevant to the
weak shareability dimension of Rawls’s conception of public reason (as illus-
trated in Chapter 6) than to the accessibility dimension. As it emphasizes the
content, rather than the form, of public justification, it can be intended as
referring to the thin general principles and values shared within liberal
democratic societies, and/or to specific interpretations of those principles
and values.
Apart from a few exceptions (Waldron 1993; Solum 1996; Flanders 2012),
the changing character of public reason is a relatively overlooked aspect of
Rawls’s theory. Vallier (2014), one of the few authors sensitive to this aspect,
illustrates, for example, how western societies, following the economic and
social changes that resulted from the process of industrialization, gradually
ceased to see children as contributing to (rather than undermining) material
well-being, and how this produced ‘a broad consensus in favor of birth
control’ (Vallier 2014, p. 175). One could reformulate this change by present-
ing it as a new interpretation of civil freedom (a thin and widely shared liberal
political principle) as applied to the sexual realm, grounded in accessible
reasons concerning economic and material well-being.
Political parties can provide a unique contribution to the change of public
reason advocated by Rawls, as they are the only organizations that operate
both in the public political realm and in civil society. Furthermore, parties do
not simply communicate citizens’ opinions. They also and especially ‘provide
for something that no poll or machine can supply: They transmit demands
backed by pressure. The party throws its own weight into the demands it feels
compelled to respond to’ (Sartori 1976, p. 28; original emphasis). Parties and
partisans can therefore ‘help shape the premises of political justification and
the persuasiveness of specific appeals’ (White and Ypi 2011, p. 390). One
example, which we saw in Chapter 5, is that of ‘the recent success of partisans
in the Green movement in planting concepts such as “sustainability” in the
public consciousness or metaphors such as the “carbon footprint”’ (White and
Ypi 2011, p. 390). Like the aforementioned idea of birth control, the idea of
sustainability can also be considered a new and widely endorsed interpretation
of one of the basic political values mentioned by Rawls, in this case the ‘values
of the common good’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 224). Moreover, also in this case the new
public reason is supported by accessible reasons—scientific reasons concerning
biological systems. By articulating and enhancing societal demands which,
without their support, may remain unheard, political parties can therefore
provide a crucial contribution to the change of permissible public reasons that

Rawls himself advocates as a response to social change.
To understand this point, it may be worth looking in more detail at what a
change of public reason actually involves. According to Chad Flanders (2012),
the only way to respond to the objection that public reason is conservative,
and that by preventing citizens from appealing to non-public reasons it may
contribute to maintaining an unjust status quo (Waldron 1993), is by acknow-
ledging that public reason is historical, that is, it changes with time. This,
according to Flanders, has two main implications. On the one hand, changes
in the content of public reason may happen from the top down, i.e. when ‘[w]e
use our comprehensive doctrine in public as a way of nudging (or forging) the
public political culture to change’ (Flanders 2012, p. 200), and to somehow
absorb our comprehensive doctrine. For example, Flanders argues, this is what
happened when the American founding fathers imposed a Lockean conception
of natural rights upon the public political culture of the United States through the
nascent republic’s basic documents. With time, the key values of that initially
comprehensive doctrine ‘became watered down, and acceptable as purely polit-
ical values’ (Flanders 2012, p. 201). For Flanders, though, this kind of change
still involves a violation of the duty of civility, because those new political values
were still controversial (i.e. non-public) when they were first introduced.
On the other hand, however, Flanders argues that the content of public
reason can also change from the bottom up, that is, through changes in the
background culture. This happens when ‘[c]ertain comprehensive doctrines
may . . . try to show how the public political culture can support something
like what is affirmed in their comprehensive doctrines . . . We would show, by
a process of “reverse” reasoning by conjecture, that, e.g., the equal status of
women could be supported by beliefs that are widely accepted and by ideals
that are widely shared’ (Flanders 2012, p. 201). Central to this bottom-up
process of public reason change, Flanders argues, is the role of social move-
ments which, according to him, can ‘change our understanding (and even
the meaning) of the US Constitution, which is part of America’s public
political culture’ (Flanders 2012, p. 203), for example by showing that sexual
harassment or the refusal to provide pregnant women with disability pay
constitute violations of already accepted and widely shared civil rights,
rather than matters that are irrelevant to public political life.
Based on Flanders’s analysis, I would like to argue that political parties,
thanks to their unique position within the public sphere, can perform both the
top-down and the bottom-up functions illustrated by Flanders. On the one
hand, parties can introduce new public reasons from the top down, as White
and Ypi’s (2011) aforementioned example concerning Green parties showed.
This, however, implies that by doing so parties may often violate the con-
straints of public reason. Therefore, it is important to stress that, on the other
hand, parties also contribute to driving the change of public reason from the
bottom up—for example, in the case of Green parties, by showing how such
ideals as sustainability and environmental protection can be derived from
already widely endorsed political values, including shared conceptions of civil
and human rights. Parties’ contribution to the change of public reason can
therefore be stronger than that of any other social movements, thanks to the
twofold way in which it operates.
A further point should be noted. While other organizations, such as interest
groups and NGOs, often display, like parties, the ability to articulate and
enhance social demands, only parties also endeavour to coordinate and
integrate such demands into wide-ranging policy platforms. This has two
main implications. First, parties are especially able to provide a comprehensive
account of how new varieties of public reasons (e.g. the idea of ‘sustainability’)
apply to public discourses concerning a broad range of policy issues (e.g.
environmental policy, economic policy, foreign policy, etc.). Second, parties
can contribute to the change of public reason in a more systematic and diverse
way than other organizations. Unlike an environmental NGO, for example, a
Green party may contribute to introducing among broadly accepted public
reasons not only the idea of ‘sustainability’ (a ‘core’ Green value) but also, for
example, the ideas of ‘foreign aid’ and ‘subsidiarity’. The process of ‘program-
matic generalization’ (Kitschelt 2006, p. 285) that parties must normally
undergo enables them to have a more comprehensive influence on the change
of permissible public reasons.
Parties’ contribution to the change of public reason, however, would be
seriously undermined if partisans were unable to hear the demands of their
constituents, and to voice them during parliamentary debates or in campaign
speeches. It is therefore important that citizens’ deliberation remains uncon-
strained, and that deliberation by political representatives in the formal public
sphere benefits from the ‘wide’ view of public reason. Only by combining
Rawls’s and Habermas’s views, therefore, can we have a truly inclusive account
of public reason which is also sensitive to the demands of political account-
ability. The different ways in which the Rawlsian and Habermasian accounts
of public reason aim to render the public political realm more inclusive
towards religious and other comprehensive doctrines (i.e. ‘wide’ public reason,
on the one hand, and indirect approach, on the other hand), therefore, should
not be seen as competing (e.g. Schwartzman forthcoming) but rather as
complementary approaches.
Combining the two perspectives, however, also means moving beyond
them. On the one hand, as we have seen, we should abandon Rawls’s require-
ment that citizens ought to engage in public reasoning in order to hold their
representatives accountable. On the other hand, we should also abandon the
Habermasian idea of a ‘threshold’ dividing institutional and non-institutional
spheres. Parties, we have seen, occupy a unique intermediate position between
the two spheres, and act more as a bridge (or a channel) than as a threshold.
Their ‘linkage’ function, already illustrated in Chapter 6 and widely document-
ed in the empirical literature, enables them to be the unique agents of the
twofold process of accountability that I have defended here. A party-centred
account of public reasoning, therefore, offers a ‘third way’ between the uncon-
strained deliberation invoked by inclusivist critics of public reason, on the one
hand, and the rigid threshold account defended by Habermas, on the other
hand. At the same time, it also moves beyond the demanding Rawlsian require-
ment that ordinary citizens ought to comply with the duty of civility as much as
political officials.
This leads me to a further consideration. I have been implicitly assuming,
so far, a conception of political parties as essentially committed to liberal
democratic norms. This conception underlay, for example, my analysis of
partisan political obligations in Chapters 1 and 2, and is implicit in my account
of partisanship and public reason in Chapter 6 and the present chapter. This
conception of parties certainly corresponds to the reality of most political
parties in the western world. Most of these parties, that is, are committed to
liberal democratic norms and advance their diverse views while respecting the
liberal democratic rules of the game. In this sense they resemble, albeit imper-
fectly, what Rawls calls ‘reasonable’ persons, that is, persons who are willing to
abide by mutually acceptable terms of cooperation (i.e. in liberal societies, liberal
democratic norms, as well as the constraints of public reason) and to ‘recognize
the burdens of judgment’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 54).
However, even in liberal societies8 we often witness the presence of parties
that are not fully committed to liberal democratic norms. These parties are
often defined as ‘anti-system’ (Capoccia 2002) or ‘semi-loyal’ (or even ‘dis-
loyal’) (Linz 1978) parties. An anti-system party normally ‘does not share the
values of the political order within which it operates’ (Sartori 1976, p. 133),
and quite often it displays an apparent commitment to democratic norms and
institutions which is ‘in contrast with . . . [its] . . . “esoteric” discourse and real
behaviour’ (Ignazi 2003, p. 32, original emphasis). It may be easy to simply
mark anti-system parties as ‘unreasonable’ and exclude them from political
liberalism, or at most try to ‘[contain] them—like war and disease—so that
they do not overturn political justice’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 64n), to use Rawls’s
own expression concerning unreasonable doctrines. This is not an inappro-
priate suggestion. After all, we have seen, the normative ideal of partisanship
involves a commitment to reasonableness, in the form of a commitment to
advancing proposals that can be justified on the basis of mutually acceptable
public reasons.9 Parties that fail to do this therefore lie outside political
8
As I have already explained in Chapter 6, I remain silent with regard to the place of
partisanship in non-liberal societies.
9
On parties and reasonableness, see also Bonotti (2011b).
liberalism and, more importantly, outside the very realm of partisanship,

intended as a normative ideal. In this sense, they are factions rather than
parties. Excluding these parties from my analysis, therefore, is not inappro-
priate. There is still a lot that can be said about the role that parties should play
within political liberalism, as I hope my analysis has shown so far.
Nevertheless it is important to note that some anti-system parties may play
a vital role within political liberalism. Indeed when we think of anti-system
parties we should not think solely about totalitarian (e.g. fascist and commun-
ist) parties in twentieth-century Europe, or about more recent examples of far-
right populist parties, such as the British National Party (BNP) in the United
Kingdom (UK) or the Front National (FN) in France. Instead, we should also
think, for example, of the many Green parties that emerged in western Europe
in the 1970s and 1980s, and which were considered, at least initially, anti-
system parties (Bürklin 1987; Doherty 2002). Those parties, one could argue,
did challenge the political establishment of the systems in which they oper-
ated. However, their challenge was not aimed at destroying that system but
rather at radically transforming it. And one example of that transformation,
we have seen, can be found in the contribution that such parties made to the
change of public reason and, therefore, to the very terms of public justification.
The view that anti-systemness per se does not constitute a threat to political
liberalism is also supported by the aforementioned examples of the abolitionist
and civil rights movements cited by Rawls in order to illustrate his inclusive
conception of public reason. Indeed as John Dryzek and others point out, the
civil rights movement in the USA was part of ‘an anti-system “counter-
culture”’ (Dryzek et al. 2003, p. 59), which also included environmental
groups. The transformative potential of partisanship therefore is another
important feature that renders it valuable for political liberalism.10
OBJECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS
A number of clarifications should be made at this point, in order to forestall

potential objections. First, it should be noted that the idea of horizontal
accountability does not narrow the constituency of public reason, that is, the
number of those to whom state rules ought to be justified, by reducing it to
only political officials. This would indeed conflict with the very rationale for
public reason, as defended by Rawls and others, that is, one for which state
rules ought to be justified to all (or at least to all reasonable) citizens. My
argument only concerns how the accountability of political representatives
10
For an analysis of the transformative potential of partisanship, and especially of revolu-
tionary partisanship, see White and Ypi (2016, ch. 8).
to citizens should be guaranteed within a public reason account of public

justification, not the more fundamental question of whether that justification
ought to be offered to all reasonable citizens who are affected by political
decisions. Representatives, acting on behalf of their constituents, ought to
assess whether the public reasons offered by other representatives, also acting
on behalf of their constituents, are truly public and could be accepted by all
reasonable citizens. In other words, when citizens elect their representatives
they can do so on the basis of reasons grounded in their comprehensive
doctrines, as long as they acknowledge ‘that only secular reasons [in my analysis,
public reasons] count beyond the institutional threshold’ (Habermas 2006, p. 9)
and, crucially, that their elected representatives ought to assess and be assessed
by the elected representatives of other constituents (and by public officials more
generally) with regard to their use of public reasons. Should their representatives
fail to offer reasons that their fellow legislators (and other public officials)
consider public, citizens ought to accept that the legislation proposed by their
representatives, and grounded in their comprehensive doctrines, cannot legit-
imately be implemented. Furthermore, when the representatives that citizens
elect are partisans (e.g. rather than independents), citizens ought to understand
that their very partisanship, in addition to their being political representatives,
demands compliance with public reason.
Second, my argument does not imply that the two dimensions of account-
ability should be seen as somehow inconsistent and pulling in different
directions, in a way that may undermine the very process of public justifica-
tion. This kind of objection overlooks the already mentioned distinction
between ‘pro tanto justification’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 386, original emphasis),
which depends only on a freestanding political conception of justice and
on public reasons, and ‘full justification’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 386), which
requires that the freestanding political conception of justice be ‘embedded
in various ways—or mapped, or inserted as a module—into the different
doctrines citizens affirm’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 387). State rules, for Rawls, are
fully justified (and, as a consequence, a liberal society is more stable) only
when they can rely both on freestanding public reasons and on reasons
grounded in the comprehensive doctrines that different citizens endorse.
While horizontal accountability ensures that the former condition is met,
vertical accountability aims to guarantee the latter. The two are therefore
complementary rather than conflicting. Indeed Vallier himself, we have
already seen, points out that ‘full justification is a convergence conception’
(Vallier 2014, p. 131). This seems to reduce the rationale for choosing a
convergence conception instead of a consensus conception. The two, after
all, are combined in Rawls’s theory.
Third, my proposed solution does not demand that we choose between
‘delegate’ and ‘trustee’ models of representation. ‘Delegates’ are those repre-
sentatives who act on the basis of their constituents’ preferences, whereas
‘trustees’ are those representatives who act on the basis of their own under-
standing of what is best for the whole political community (Pitkin 1967).11
The two types of representation are often seen as mutually exclusive. However,
this need not be the case. When it comes to public justification, representatives
ought to fulfil both a delegate function, by being responsive to their constitu-
ents’ comprehensive doctrines and explaining to them how their policy
proposals are grounded in those doctrines, and a trustee function, by offering
each other (and critically assessing) justifications for their policy proposals
which, according to their judgement, are based on public reasons, and take
into account the good of the whole political community.
Furthermore, the two functions do not merely coexist but are complemen-
tary. Through the very act of advancing their proposals on the basis of public
reasons, indeed, representatives advance the ‘objective interests’ (Pitkin 1967)
of their constituents. Recall that in Chapter 6 I argued that in liberal demo-
cratic societies we do not respect citizens’ ‘higher-order interests associated
with their moral powers’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 74) if we fail to treat them as free
and equal persons, that is, if we impose upon them rules based on reasons that
we cannot expect them to accept. Representatives therefore should both be
responsive to reasonable citizens’ comprehensive doctrines, which reflect the
latter’s expressed (and often partial) interests (this is their delegate function),
and defend their policy proposals on the basis of public reasons which reflect
the objective or higher-order interests of reasonable citizens (this is their
trustee function). Both functions are necessary but this does not imply that
the citizens themselves should assess the performance of representatives with
regard to the trustee function. Instead representatives, I have argued, ought to
monitor each other through horizontal accountability, and other public offi-
cials can also contribute to this monitoring.12
Fourth, one might point out that elected partisans are not the sole public
officials whose role inherently involves a commitment to the common good
and to public reasoning. This commitment is also shared, for example, by
11
The classic account and definition of ‘trustee’ can be found in Edmund Burke’s (1774)
‘Speech to the Electors of Bristol’, whereas the idea of ‘delegate’ representation emerged from the
writings of some of the anti-Federalists who opposed the 1788 US Constitution (Rehfeld 2009,
pp. 217–18).
12
Andrew Rehfeld (2009) argues that it is reductive to use the trustee/delegate distinction in
order to refer to a more complex threefold distinction concerning the ‘aims’, ‘source of judge-
ment’, and ‘responsiveness to sanctions’ of representative lawmakers. Once we analyse repre-
sentation through these three categories, Rehfeld argues, we realize that there are eight ideal
types of representation. Of these eight ideal types, I believe that partisan representatives ought to
embrace two: ‘C. Madisonian lawmakers—Those who seek the good of the whole by relying on
their own judgment and who are more responsive to sanction’ and ‘H. Pared-Down Delegates—
Those who seek the good of a part (often of their constituents) by relying on the judgment of
others and who are more responsive to sanctions’ (Rehfeld 2009, p. 223, Table 2, original
emphasis). For a similar point, see also Christiano (1996, p. 214).
judges (e.g. Rawls 2005a, p. 80; Rawls 2005b, p. 443). This is true, and it can be
argued that horizontal accountability also operates, for example, among judges
in the US Supreme Court. However, unlike partisans, judges are not expected
to also contribute to the second stage of justification, in which citizens are
shown how legislation justifiable in public reason terms is also grounded in
their comprehensive doctrines. Only partisans, among all political actors, are
expected to perform this twofold justificatory task, and to do so as part of their
distinctive political actorship.
Fifth, I argued that those religious citizens who would like to (because they
believe they ought to) engage in politics do not have a duty to do so via
political parties, and that therefore public reason does not undermine their
integrity under the indirect approach. Yet one might object that party politics
is de facto the only or most effective way of participating in political life in
liberal democracies. This may therefore still impose undue burdens on reli-
gious citizens. In order to answer this objection, I would like to focus on a
related issue. My analysis in this chapter has been moving back and forward
between the idea of partisans in general (e.g. including party members,
activists, supporters, etc.) and the idea of ‘elected’ partisans (e.g. MPs).
While all partisans, as I argued in Chapter 6, have an intrinsic duty to comply
with the constraints of public reason, in the present chapter I have been
focusing on those partisans who have a more direct influence on political
decision-making and who, for this reason, also have an extrinsic duty (based
on the indirect view of public justification) to present their political demands
in public reason terms. My analysis has therefore suggested that elected
partisans ought to be accountable both to each other and to their constitu-
ents, and ought to engage in a twofold justificatory process involving public
reasoning, on the one hand, and non-public reasoning, on the other hand.
However, while non-elected partisans still have an intrinsic duty (qua
partisans) to comply with public reason, they only have an indirect influence
on political decision-making and are therefore under lesser extrinsic public
reason constraints than elected partisans. This suggests that the twofold
justificatory process that is necessary to guarantee the accountability of
elected partisans, and which contributes to a full (rather than pro tanto)
public justification, could be divided between different kinds of partisans.
Let me explain.
Elected partisans are more likely than non-elected partisans to engage in
public reasoning as they spend most of their time within the public political
realm. Non-elected partisans, instead, engage more often in deliberation with
ordinary citizens, for example during party branch meetings. While all par-
tisans, I would like to stress again, have an intrinsic duty to comply with public
reason, the twofold justificatory process defended in this chapter may best be
accomplished through a division of labour within parties. Elected partisans, in
this sense, could focus on public reasoning and horizontal accountability.
Non-elected partisans, instead, could focus on ensuring that their elected

fellow partisans are responsive to citizens’ non-public reasons. In doing so,
they could act as mediators, by engaging in a dialogue with constituents that
involves the constant use of non-public reasons, and reporting those reasons
to their fellow elected partisans.
This is, admittedly, an idealized picture. Most partisans, whether they are
elected or non-elected, will at some point have (and, ideally, ought) to engage
in both public and non-public reasoning. However, my proposed division of
justificatory labour within parties may somehow make it easier for both
elected and non-elected partisans to contribute to the process of full justifica-
tion that I have defended in this chapter. It can also reduce as much as possible
the burdens imposed by public reason upon those (religious and nonreligious)
citizens who decide to engage in party politics, by limiting such burdens only
to elected partisans and allowing the majority of partisans to focus on the non-
public reasoning involved in the communication with constituents. Further-
more, in doing so it also takes into account the fact, already discussed in
Chapter 4, that the ‘wide’ view of public reason still imposes significant
burdens on partisans, and especially on elected and campaigning partisans,
once we acknowledge the practical constraints they are subject to. A division
of justificatory labour within parties, therefore, acknowledges the fact that
elected partisans are in any case under a stronger pressure (i.e. than other
partisans) to comply with the constraints of public reason. Therefore imposing
the duty of civility upon them (and, perhaps, also upon campaigning
partisans) but not upon other partisans does not particularly worsen their
situation.
Finally, one might observe that horizontal accountability among peers
could lead to ‘conspiracies against the public or cozy cabals covering one
another’s incompetence as easily as [to] . . . collaborations in pursuit of true
public goods’ (Goodin 2003, p. 387). Political officials, for example, might
agree to let each other’s references to religious or other comprehensive
doctrines slip through the public reason ‘net’, and continue to appeal to
those doctrines when defending legislation. In other cases, they might simply
lack the motivation to comply with the duty of civility, especially when the
institutional framework in which they operate is not conducive to the kind
of public reasoning they ought to engage in. This, of course, does not affect
my normative conclusions. However, since one of the key aims of this book
is to show how the normative demands of partisanship and political liber-
alism can have a resonance in the real-world practice of party politics, it is
important to assess under which conditions partisans may be more likely
to fulfil the duty of civility. It is therefore to the institutional framework in
which parties operate and, more specifically, to the implications of electoral
design for public reasoning, that my analysis turns in the last section of
this chapter.
PUBLIC REASON, ACCOUNTABILITY,

A ND E LECTORAL DESIGN
I have argued so far that parties and partisans can play a vital role in carrying
out the process of public justification that is central to political liberalism.
More specifically, partisans ought to contribute both to the public and to the
non-public reasoning that are necessary to provide state laws with full justi-
fication, while also remaining accountable to each other and to citizens with
regard to their mode of reasoning. However, parties do not operate in a
vacuum. Their ability to fulfil the normative demands placed upon them by
public reason presupposes an institutional framework conducive to the kind of
justificatory process they ought to engage in. In the final section of this chapter
I will therefore sketch the broad guidelines for this framework. More speci-
fically, I will focus on the two electoral systems most commonly adopted in
western liberal democracies, first-past-the-post (FPTP) and proportional rep-
resentation (PR), and critically assess whether either of them is more condu-
cive to the twofold process of justification and accountability that we ought to
expect from partisans. It is not my intention to assess which of these two
electoral systems is the best all things considered, but only to establish which of
them is preferable with regard to the idea of accountability in public justifica-
tion that I have defended here.13
It is useful to start this analysis from the acknowledgement that elections
(and electoral systems) have a twofold goal: to decide ‘who is to represent each
individual constituency in Parliament; and what the overall composition of
Parliament by political party is to be’ (Dummett 1997, p. 2). The former goal is
relevant to responsiveness in non-public reasoning as it aims to produce
representatives who reflect as closely as possible the demands and compre-
hensive conceptions of the good of their voters. The latter, instead, is relevant
to the issue of answerability in public reasoning, since it aims to produce a
legislature which reflects as closely as possible the diversity of conceptions of
the good within the electorate, thus creating a greater incentive for represen-
tatives to comply with the constraints of public reason by having to answer to
their (significantly diverse) political opponents with regard to their public
reasoning.
The initial impression might be that FPTP is good for both purposes. First,
as pointed out by Charles Beitz (1989), parties under FPTP have an incentive
to appeal to the median voter and this contributes to moderating their
programmes and rendering them more inclined towards compromise. One
might take Beitz’s conclusion further and also argue that FPTP, with its
13
Electoral systems have not received much attention from political and democratic theorists.
For some exceptions, see Beitz (1989), Christiano (1996), and Weinstock (2015a). See also the
essays in Diamond and Plattner (eds.) (2006).
tendency to produce big tent (or catch-all) parties and to encourage broad
(rather than single-issue) party platforms, is conducive not only to comprom-
ise and to a mere modus vivendi, but also to a more profound commitment
to the common good and to public reasoning. Second, FPTP allows voters
to choose their preferred candidate, that is, the one that most closely reflects
their comprehensive conception of the good. Both conclusions, however, are
misguided.
In response to the view that FPTP normally produces big tent parties, and
that this may encourage partisans under this system to appeal to the common
good of a diverse constituency, it can be argued that FPTP also produces
electoral results that do not accurately reflect the distribution of viewpoints
within society, and that therefore discourage public reasoning after the elec-
tions. For example, perspectives which constitute ‘a very large majority in a
few districts and very large minorities in the rest’ (Christiano 1996, p. 225) will
be disadvantaged even if they are endorsed by a majority of the population.
Furthermore, FPTP tends to benefit locally concentrated minorities over
geographically dispersed ones (Christiano 1996, p. 226). Think, for example,
of the 2015 UK General Election, when the Scottish National Party obtained
fifty-six MPs with 4.7 per cent of the popular vote whereas the UK Independ-
ence Party obtained only one MP despite having attained 12.6 per cent of the
popular vote. Furthermore, many interests and demands may not find space
within the platforms of the few existing parties, and are unlikely to result in the
formation of additional parties, which FPTP discourages.
While these features of FPTP are problematic with regard to the fair
distribution of political influence among different sectors of society (an issue
that I discussed in Chapter 2), they are also likely to produce a legislature
which is not very conducive to public reasoning. Indeed, while FPTP may well
lead to more stable governments, as it is often argued, it also produces divisive
governments, since the party that obtains the majority of seats in the parlia-
ment can legislate without being under significant pressure to justify its
proposed legislation in terms of public reason, and to be accountable to its
political adversaries in this respect. This is because little (if any) punishment—
for example withdrawal of another party’s support for a coalition government—
is likely to result from failure to comply with the duty of civility, and the party’s
voters will be quite happy to see their desired policies implemented and to offer
again their support to the party at the next election. In other words, the absence
or very limited presence of many viewpoints within the legislature, and the
disproportionate power of the winning party, is likely to discourage the kind of
other-regarding attitude that underlies public reasoning.
In response to the view that FPTP allows voters to choose their preferred
candidate, it should be pointed out, first of all, that the aforementioned
tendency of FPTP to exclude many viewpoints from the legislature not only
undermines answerability, as we have seen, but also reduces the overall
responsiveness of the political system, as many citizens will remain unrepre-

sented. Furthermore, the need to appeal to a broader number of citizens often
leads parties under FPTP to defend ‘vague or ambiguous . . . views’ (Christiano
1996, p. 259), thus undermining the vertical accountability which is crucial for
full public justification and which, as we have seen, requires clear references to
constituents’ comprehensive doctrines. Finally, while in principle FPTP allows
voters to select their preferred candidates, this is not always the case in practice.
More precisely, FPTP often induces electors to vote for their second-best
candidate, if they think that their favourite candidate (i.e. the one that most
closely reflects their interests and comprehensive conception of the good) is
unlikely to win (Dummett 1997, p. 11). This will often result in the election of
many representatives who are less responsive to their voters’ interests than
would have been the case under a different system. Indeed ‘[a] system that
severely limits the number of parties capable of competing electorally, and
provides a strong incentive for the few that can to shift their policies toward
the centre, robs many electors of the chance to vote for candidates who truly
represent their views’ (Dummett 1997, p. 160). In summary, FPTP fares badly
on both dimensions of accountability.
Traditionally, PR is more likely than FPTP to give rise to single-issue parties
and to encourage the promotion, by parties, of sectional interests and specific
comprehensive conceptions of the good that different citizens and groups
endorse. Furthermore, PR encourages the formation of multi-party systems
(Duverger 1964, p. 245), presents voters with a broad range of electoral alter-
natives (Gladdish 2006, p. 113), and ‘gives voters a more nearly equal share in
the choice of representatives’ (Singer 1973, p. 131).14 Unlike in FPTP, ‘[i]n
proportional representation, the incentives for concealing one’s views are less
pressing, and parties have reasons to give more articulate and definite views on
basic aims and policies’ (Christiano 1996, p. 259). These features of PR are
certainly positive with regard to one of the dimensions of accountability in
public justification, that is, responsiveness to citizens’ comprehensive doctrines
(e.g. Dummett 1997, p. 26). Under a PR multi-party system, that is, citizens are
more likely to find a party whose platform (and the comprehensive doctrine(s)
that underlie(s) it) corresponds more closely to their own comprehensive
doctrine(s). After all, if the interests and demands of some citizens are not
welcome within one of the existing parties, those citizens can create a new party
with the realistic hope (at least in the absence of a very high electoral threshold)
of achieving some degree of representation within the legislature.
14
Moreover, it has been argued ‘that proportionality is implied by liberal political equality
(the requirement that all individual voters be treated equally) and popular sovereignty (the
requirement that the voters alone decide the outcome)’ (van der Hout and McGann 2009,
p. 618).
However, PR may not be as conducive to answerability in public reasoning

as it is to responsiveness to citizens’ demands. Encouraging the formation of
single-issue parties, one might argue, discourages the commitment to the
common good that the development of a multi-issue agenda is more likely
to motivate. This tendency, however, is not inevitable. After all, some of the
most successful big tent parties in western Europe developed under pure PR
systems (e.g. the DC in Italy), or systems with a strong PR component (e.g. the
CDU in Germany). Furthermore, the problem could be mitigated by imposing
a higher electoral threshold (but not so high as to discourage the emergence of
new parties). Moreover, PR almost always involves post-electoral coalition
formation (since no party is likely to acquire a majority of seats) and, at that
stage, parties are encouraged to broaden their perspective in order to agree on
a common platform. We have seen that FPTP fails to encourage public
reasoning after elections, since it tends to exclude from the legislature many
minority (and some majority) views. By promoting the formation of many
parties, instead, PR enables a greater diversity of voices to be heard, and
ensures that those who endorse these positions ‘have the opportunity to
hear how others respond to their interests or to their conceptions of their
interests and the common good’ (Christiano 1996, p. 260).
The justificatory demands and challenges raised by these numerous and
diverse voices and perspectives, rather than their diversity per se, are therefore
what can contribute to public reasoning and to horizontal accountability. This
seems to be the rationale that underlies the adoption of PR, for example, in
consociational democracies. Indeed while many scholars have argued that PR
encourages factionalism and ‘polarized pluralism’ (e.g. Sartori 1966, 1976),
others have pointed out instead that the presence of many parties as a result of
PR can contribute to reconciling ethnic and societal differences through
coalition formation (Lijphart 2006, p. 81), and that this involves the need for
representatives to move beyond the promotion of factional interests and to
engage in a process of public reasoning and mutual justification (Drake and
McCulloch 2011).
It is interesting, in this connection, to note that in his critique of PR Charles
Beitz overlooks this specific aspect of it. Having argued that PR only grants
citizens greater prospects of electoral success, but that this is not necessary for
political equality, Beitz also claims that electoral success under PR does not
necessarily translate into political success. While this may be true (i.e. some
minority parties under PR may never enter coalition governments, or may
play a very limited role in such coalitions), Beitz’s claim overlooks the im-
portant role that a diverse legislature can play in relation to public reasoning.
As I also stressed in Chapter 2, the presence of many parties within a legisla-
ture places partisan legislators (and especially those associated with majority
or ruling parties) under a stronger pressure to listen (and respond) to a
diversity of viewpoints during deliberation.
This is not, of course, an attempt to ground the duty of civility in the

empirical contingency of existing legislatures. Regardless of how many parties
are represented in a parliament, that is, elected partisans always have the duty
to comply with the constraints of public reason. However, the greater the
justificatory pressure exercised by diverse voices and perspectives, the more
likely it is that partisan legislators will offer each other public reasons that take
into account the diversity of conceptions of the good in society at large
(because they will have revised and refined those reasons in view of a greater
diversity of views and perspectives). After all even Rousseau, who strongly
criticized partial associations due to their negative effects on the general
will, argued that ‘[i]f there are partial associations, their number should be
increased and inequalities between them prevented’ (Rousseau [1762] 1999,
p. 67) in order for the general will to emerge. Since the absence of political
parties is inconceivable in contemporary liberal democracies, and attempting
to realize it would be perceived by most citizens as a highly undemocratic
enterprise, the proliferation of political parties remains the best way of ensur-
ing that a commitment to the common good and to public reasoning pervades
public deliberation.
Indeed Beitz himself acknowledges this point, by claiming that ‘even if they
[i.e. representatives of various groups] were excluded from the direct exercise
of influence over the conduct of government, they would be able to present
their views and demand a public justification when their interests were
threatened by legislation or policy’ (Beitz 1989, p. 136). However, he argues
that FPTP could equally guarantee this ‘at an earlier stage—for example, in the
selection of party candidates and in the formation of party platforms—where
there may be substantial competitive incentives to take account of minority
interests’ (Beitz 1989, p. 138). This, however, may not always be the case. As
we have already seen, many interests and viewpoints may be excluded from
the platforms of the main parties under FPTP, and they are unlikely to result
in the formation of new parties. This implies, then, that the unrepresented
interests are excluded from the process of deliberation in the legislature, at
least until the next election. If one is committed to public justification and
public reasoning, therefore, PR is a preferable option.
One might then ask whether PR, and the presence of coalition governments,
would undermine parties’ responsiveness. Not necessarily. In fact ‘[t]here is no
evidence that coalition cabinets in multiparty systems are less responsive than
one-party majority cabinets’ (Lijphart 1994, p. 144). Coalition governments
encourage ‘[c]ontinuity and responsiveness’ (Dummett 1997, p. 26) and, most
importantly, are ‘able to make gradual adjustments in response to alterations
in public opinion, perhaps by means of shifts in the ruling coalition’
(Dummett 1997, p. 26). For example, a Green party, under pressure from its
constituents who are increasingly concerned about environmental issues, may
threaten to withdraw its support (which may be crucial) from a centre-left
coalition if at least some of its proposed environmental policies are not

implemented. This ensures that citizens’ views, and the comprehensive doc-
trines that underlie them, are constantly taken into account, while also ensur-
ing that changes in society are reflected in new varieties of public reason
resulting from debate among different parties at the institutional level. It is
true, of course, that under coalition governments not all the constituents’
demands will translate into legislation. This, however, should not be seen as
a lack of responsiveness but rather as the inevitable outcome of partisanship in
diverse societies. After all, citizens ought to acknowledge that some of their
demands might not translate into legislation, if their political representatives
fail to find reasons that are deemed public by their political opponents.
Some objections might be raised at this point. First, some might argue that
PR removes public reasoning from civil society at the pre-electoral level, and
entrusts it almost entirely to elected partisans. I do not see this as being a
problem. In fact, this is the very argument that I have defended in this chapter.
Second, it is often argued that PR is not conducive to stable and effective
governments (Christiano 2006). However, I have already explained that my
aim here is not to assess electoral systems all things considered but to judge
them in relation to public justification and accountability. Third, one might
observe that the kind of negotiation preceding the formation of coalition
governments may reflect the search for a modus vivendi and for a trade-off
between parties, rather than a genuine commitment to the common good
and to public reasoning. This is possible, but the same problem may also
affect the formation of policy platforms within individual parties under
FPTP, which may result from a trade-off between the interests and demands
of different party currents (and, indirectly, of different sectors of society). In
any case, I have argued, the need to form a coalition is more likely to
encourage public reasoning than the ability to form a one-party government
which characterizes FPTP.
Finally, one might point out that PR is not sufficient to guarantee that the
interests of all citizens and groups are taken into account during the process of
public reasoning that precedes and follows coalition formation. After all,
coalition governments need not include all the parties present in the legisla-
ture, and those partisans who are left out may simply fail to exercise sufficient
justificatory pressure on governing partisans. This objection does not under-
mine my normative argument, that is, the view that elected representatives,
and especially partisans, ought to ultimately appeal to public reasons when
proposing legislation, and hold each other accountable in this respect.
However, it does suggest that even under PR elected representatives may
not be sufficiently motivated to fulfil the duty of civility, and that additional
institutional measures may be useful to address this problem. These may
include, for example, group representation (Young 1990) and consultation
rights for minorities.
ELECTORAL S YS TEMS AND DELIBERATION: A C RI TIQUE

OF WEINSTOCK ’S DEFENCE OF FPTP
In order to understand more clearly the advantages of my approach, it may be

useful to refer to one of the very few discussions of electoral systems offered by
political theorists in recent years, that is, the one provided by Daniel
Weinstock (2015a). Weinstock rejects the consensus-oriented kind of public
reasoning that is central to Rawls’s political liberalism, and which, in his view,
prevents citizens from appealing to their comprehensive conceptions of the
good in public deliberation. This constraint on deliberation, Weinstock
claims, is unwarranted because, unlike mere interests (which, he argues, are
somehow fixed and based on people’s socio-economic status—a controversial
claim which, however, I do not have the space to address here), people’s
conceptions of the good can change as a result of deliberation. Furthermore,
he claims, conceptions of the good ‘confer a structure of intelligibility on . . .
[people’s] . . . political commitments’ (Weinstock 2015a, p. 294).
I find Weinstock’s arguments problematic for two reasons. First, as I have
repeatedly highlighted in this and Chapters 4, 5 and 6, Rawls’s ‘wide’ view of
public reason allows significant space for the kind of inclusive deliberation
endorsed by Weinstock. This space becomes even broader within the indirect
model of public justification that I have defended in this chapter. Second,
conceptions of the good certainly ‘confer a structure of intelligibility on . . .
[people’s] . . . political commitments’ (Weinstock 2015a, p. 294), yet, as my
critique of Vallier’s account of intelligible reasons in Chapter 6 showed, this is
insufficient to provide any suitable public justifications for legislation, and it
is not consistent with the distinctive justificatory demands of partisanship.
This does not mean, however, that the kind of intelligibility offered by
comprehensive conceptions of the good should be dismissed. As I have argued
earlier in this chapter, ‘full’ justification is a central aspect of Rawls’s theory,
and one that contributes to realizing the division of justificatory labour that
I have defended. It is therefore wrong to claim that ‘[t]he canon of public
reason allows for consensus, but that consensus is necessarily thin and lacking
in articulacy, because unhinged from the structures of intelligibility that
comprehensive conceptions represent’ (Weinstock 2015a, p. 294). It is true
that ‘deliberation gains in articulacy and depth when carried out on the basis
of such conceptions, even if it makes consensus more difficult to arrive at’
(Weinstock 2015a, p. 295) but this view is not inconsistent with the ideas of
full justification and vertical accountability, and with the division of justifica-
tory labour that I have defended.
What I find most problematic in Weinstock’s analysis, however, are the
conclusions that he reaches with regard to electoral systems on the basis of
these assumptions. First of all, there seems to be an inconsistency between his
critique of public reason and his endorsement of FPTP which, he argues,
encourages the formation of big tent parties, the integration of a variety of

policy issues into coherent political platforms, and the intra-party political
deliberation that is necessary to realize that integration (Weinstock 2015a,
p. 300). It is not clear, however, how this process is substantially different from
the kind of public reasoning that, I have argued, elected partisans (qua political
representatives) should engage in. After all, Weinstock claims that the creation
of ‘deliberative platforms’ involves ‘the attempt at articulating a small set of
abstract political principles’ (Weinstock 2015a, p. 300), and the need to ‘arrive
at a common set of positions’ (Weinstock 2015a, p. 301). It involves, in other
words, the need to overcome sectional interests and values and to achieve
some kind of consensus. However inclusive this process might be towards the
use of reasons grounded in comprehensive conceptions of the good during
public deliberation, the final result must be a consensus of some kind. Wein-
stock’s analysis therefore betrays a greater commitment to consensus-oriented
deliberation than the premises of his analysis suggest.
These issues aside, Weinstock’s analysis also fails to show that PR cannot
contribute to encouraging the same kind of deliberation that, according to
him, FPTP stimulates. He does acknowledge that, as I have argued in this
chapter, PR almost always involves post-election coalition formation, and
that at that stage deliberation is necessary in order for parties to form a
coalition and achieve a consensus on a shared political platform. The only
reason he provides for still preferring FPTP to PR is that the latter encour-
ages ‘targeting’ (Weinstock 2015a, p. 301), that is, appealing to the particular
interests and conceptions of the good of specific groups of citizens. Yet it is
not clear why this constitutes a problem. First, parties will have to overcome
targeting once they start to engage in coalition formation. Second, targeting
is not inherently problematic. In fact, it is one of the two key functions that
political parties should perform, alongside engaging in public reasoning, in
order to guarantee that legislation is fully (and not merely pro tanto) justified,
as I have argued throughout this chapter.
Weinstock is therefore wrong in suggesting that FPTP has a greater delib-
erative potential than PR. In fact he himself acknowledges that FPTP may
result in significantly less deliberation in the parliament, especially when the
formation of party platforms is accompanied by a strict party discipline that
prevents elected partisans from deliberating based on their independent
judgement and in view of changing social and political circumstances
(Weinstock 2015a, p. 305). This does not mean, however, that there is a
pure symmetry between FPTP and PR, and that while there are no clear
arguments in favour of the former, there are also no decisive arguments in
support of the latter, when it comes to deliberation and public reasoning.
Indeed, on the one hand, PR promotes both the representation of diverse
interests and conceptions of the good (thanks to the proliferation of political
parties, except when the electoral threshold is very high) and the pursuit of
public reasoning which will be encouraged by that very diversity, both during
and after the process of post-election coalition-formation. On the other hand,

FPTP does encourage some degree of consensus-building (within big tent
parties) but this is unlikely to take into account a significantly broad range
of particular interests and conceptions of the good, as many of these may
simply not find space within the few main parties, and thus may be filtered out
of the political system from the beginning, and for good, as it is unlikely that
there will be any opportunities to recover them after the elections. The absence
of these voices and perspectives from the legislature, as well as being prob-
lematic per se, will reduce the motivation for legislators to engage in public
reasoning, as it will place them under weaker justificatory pressure. For these
reasons, PR ought ultimately to be preferred to FPTP.
My analysis in this and the previous section has not aimed to offer a
comprehensive account of the normative dimensions of electoral design, but
only to show some of the ways in which the two electoral systems most
commonly used in western liberal democracies, FPTP and PR, may contribute
to, or hinder, the accountability of partisan representatives with regard to their
mode of reasoning. There are other electoral systems, such as Alternative Vote
(AV) and Single Transferable Vote (STV), which I do not have the space to
examine here. Furthermore, some countries (e.g. Germany) adopt dual-vote
systems which combine the main features (and, therefore, the advantages) of
both FPTP and PR (Dummett 1997). Examining these systems lies beyond the
scope of this chapter (and of this book). I hope to have shown, however, that
more thought needs to be put into these issues, if one is concerned not only
with stating what the normative demands of partisanship are with regard to
public reasoning, but also with evaluating under which conditions partisans
may be more motivated to fulfil them.
CO NCLUSION
In this chapter I have argued that Rawls’s conception of public reason can be
revised in a way that would be more inclusive towards the use of non-public
reasons by ordinary citizens, while leaving to elected partisans the task of finding
public reasons to support whichever policies ordinary citizens advocate. The
indirect view of public justification, I have claimed, does not undermine the
accountability of elected partisans (and of political representatives in general).
First, political representatives ought to hold each other accountable with regard
to their use of public reasons, without the need for direct scrutiny by ordinary
citizens. Second, political representatives ought to be responsive to citizens’
non-public (including religious) reasons, and endeavour to find an internal
connection between those and public reasons. This would allow ordinary
citizens to appeal to non-public reasons without abandoning the justificatory
ideal of public reason.
8
Partisan Speech and Political Legitimacy
In Chapter 7, I defended a conception of public reason that moves away from

Rawls’s by assigning to political representatives, and especially partisans, the
duty to provide a public justification for state laws, and by relieving ordinary
citizens of the duty of civility. Through a division of justificatory labour,
I argued, partisans can guarantee both horizontal and vertical accountability
in public reasoning. This final chapter offers a change of scenery by dealing
with a topic that is becoming increasingly prominent in contemporary polit-
ical theory as well as in the political life of liberal democracies, especially
following the 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK and the election of Donald
Trump as the US President in the same year: hate speech. But let me start with
an earlier example that is perhaps more suitable to my present analysis.
In April 2005, the leader of the British National Party (BNP) Nick Griffin
and party activist Mark Collett were charged with incitement of racial hatred,
following the screening of the BBC documentary The Secret Agent on 15 July
2004. In the documentary, ‘an undercover reporter filmed several BNP mem-
bers confessing to criminal acts or making . . . racially inflammatory remarks’
(Copsey and Macklin 2011b, p. 83). During the trial, the jury was also
presented with excerpts from a speech given by Griffin in Keighley on 19
January 2004. In that speech, Griffin labelled Islam as a ‘wicked, vicious faith’
and accused Muslims of having transformed Britain into a ‘multi-racial hell
hole’ (Anon. 2006). The charges were raised on the basis of the Public Order
Act 1986, which covers incitement to racial hatred (and, since the Racial and
Religious Hatred Act 2006, also incitement to religious hatred) in the United
Kingdom (UK). Both Griffin and Collett, however, were eventually cleared of
the charges in 2006 (Copsey and Macklin 2011b, p. 83; Anon. 2006).
In 2009, the BNP was again at the centre of a public row. Following his
election as an MEP in June that year, Griffin was invited by the BBC to appear
on the programme Question Time on 22 October. The BBC’s decision was
strongly criticized by a significant portion of public opinion, including all the
major trade unions and the then Welsh secretary Peter Hain MP (Copsey and
Macklin 2011b, p. 87). The debate that preceded and followed the screening of
the programme saw two main camps facing each other. On the one hand,
Partisan Speech and Political Legitimacy 153
those who defended a ‘no platform’ approach highlighted the importance of

denying visibility and credibility to the leader of a political party that clearly
defended racist and intolerant policies. On the other hand, however, there were
those who pointed out that refusing a public platform to the BNP leader, however
offensive or hateful his views might have appeared to most, would constitute
an unwarranted instance of censorship and prevent the public from being able
to listen to, critically assess and publicly reject (or ridicule, if necessary) those
views. In the end, the latter camp seemed to be right. Griffin’s appearance was not
a success. He failed to provide a convincing performance, thanks also to the
pressing critiques raised against him by the audience and the other panellists.
The BNP therefore did not benefit from Griffin’s appearance and, according
to some, it lost support as a result of it (Copsey and Macklin 2011b).
It is not my intention, in this chapter, to examine the details of these
controversies or to draw a portrait of the BNP, its leadership, and member-
ship.1 The reason why I find the BNP case interesting, instead, is that it signals
an issue which has somehow remained concealed beneath the more general
debate on hate speech and freedom of expression in contemporary legal and
political theory. I am referring to the relationship between partisanship and
free speech. More specifically, the question that I intend to explore in this
chapter is whether the freedom of speech of partisans warrants greater pro-
tection than that of ordinary citizens, and whether, therefore, when the
permissibility of hate speech legislation is critically assessed, distinctions
should be made between laws that target the speech of partisans (e.g. in
party manifestoes and programmes, or in the campaign speeches of party
candidates) and those that target the speech of citizens in general. Is there
something special, in other words, about the speech of partisans, that makes it
more difficult to justify restrictions on it?
I should stress that in this chapter I mainly focus on elected partisans and
partisans running for office, and on the speech that they use when they are
speaking officially in their capacity as party representatives in order to defend
policies that their party has implemented or aims to implement, regardless of
the specific site where they are speaking (e.g. the parliament, a television
debate, a campaign speech in a public square, a meeting with representatives
of trade unions or churches, etc.).
It is not inappropriate to focus on the issue of partisan speech, and on the
differences between the speech of partisans and the speech of ordinary citi-
zens. We have already seen, in Chapters 3, 4 and 5, that there are clear links
between free speech and key aspects of Rawls’s political liberalism. However,
there are also more specific reasons why the issue of free speech is relevant to the
analysis of parties and partisanship. In many liberal democracies, the speech of
1
For good overviews, see Copsey and Macklin (2011a) and Goodwin (2011).
partisans is granted a special status, for example through state provision of free
or privileged access to public media for partisans (Nassmacher 2006) or in the
form of ‘parliamentary privilege’ (which normally includes absolute freedom of
speech during parliamentary proceedings) enjoyed by elected partisans in the
UK, the USA, and other liberal democracies. The Speech or Debate Clause of the
US Constitution, for example, states that members of Congress ‘shall in all
Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from
Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and
in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either
House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place’ (United States Consti-
tution, Article 1, Section 6).
It is true, of course, that these kinds of privileges sometimes also apply to
non-partisans. However, given that political parties dominate political life in
all liberal democracies, it is not unreasonable to consider these measures as
mainly advantageous to parties and partisans (e.g. Johns 2001). Furthermore,
it is also true that parliamentary privilege does not cover all the speech of
parliamentarians but only their speech within a protected sphere, that is, the
conduct of parliament. It therefore does not imply that partisan speech is
protected from all state interference. Moreover, it is also true that the afore-
mentioned privileges do not normally apply to partisans running for office but
only to elected partisans. However, my analysis is a normative one. What
I want to assess, that is, is not whether elected partisans and partisans running
for office already enjoy special and distinctive free speech protections (e.g. they
may not enjoy any special protections or, if they do, those protections may be
indistinguishable from those enjoyed by some non-partisans) but whether
they should enjoy them. It is therefore worthwhile examining the underlying
reasons that might justify granting partisans special free speech privileges
(including but not limited to parliamentary privilege) and, therefore, exempt-
ing partisans from hate speech legislation (when the latter exists or could
legitimately be implemented).
Arguments for and against hate speech legislation are numerous and it is
not my intention in this chapter to survey this literature.2 Instead, I intend to
adopt a more narrow focus and engage with a recent debate between the late
Ronald Dworkin (2009) and Jeremy Waldron (2012) concerning freedom of
expression, hate speech, and political legitimacy. The reason for my choice is
that the idea of political legitimacy, which is central to both Waldron’s and
Dworkin’s analyses, captures what I think is distinctive of partisan speech in
liberal democracies. Furthermore, it is this focus on political legitimacy that
will allow me to connect the analysis of partisan speech with the overarching
theme of this book: partisanship and political liberalism.
2
For excellent overviews, see Barendt (2005), Brown (2015), Hare and Weinstein (2009), and
Herz and Molnar (2012).
My analysis will proceed as follows. In the first part of the chapter I will
outline Dworkin’s and Waldron’s positions, especially focusing on the two
central assumptions they share, that is: (a) that free speech contributes to
political legitimacy and (b) that political legitimacy is a matter of degree. I will
then explain that if political legitimacy is a matter of degree, this means both
that restrictions on free speech imply a negative loss of legitimacy and that
partisan speech provides a greater positive contribution to political legitimacy
than other kinds of speech. This contribution, I will claim, is threefold. First,
partisan speech acts as a loudspeaker, therefore enhancing the voices of
individuals and groups that otherwise would not have much influence on
the democratic deliberation that is necessary for political legitimacy. Second,
by setting the political agenda and selecting a limited number of issues for
democratic deliberation, partisan speech renders such deliberation manage-
able and also helps individuals to form the wills and opinions that their speech
aims to express. Third, as parties produce manifestoes and advance pro-
grammes that touch upon a wide array of policy issues, their speech (both
written and spoken) contributes to the legitimacy of a similarly wide range of
laws and policies. It does so on the basis of a core set of views which is applied
to that wide range of issues and, if silenced, could lead to a significant loss of
political legitimacy. Furthermore, thanks to their coordinating role, parties
offer sub-ratios for legislation, that is, they provide coherent justifications for
policy packages based on specific interpretations of basic political values (e.g.
freedom, equality, etc.), as already discussed in Chapter 7. This, alongside the
agenda-setting function of parties, renders the process of democratic deliber-
ation more manageable, helps individuals to form their wills and opinions,
and therefore contributes to the political legitimacy which unconstrained
democratic deliberation aims to produce. The threefold contribution of par-
tisan speech to political legitimacy, I will claim, should be seriously taken into
account when weighing the pros and cons of hate speech laws, and it offers a
pro tanto justification for exempting partisan speech from such laws.
In the second part of the chapter, I will examine and reject three objections
to the claim that partisan speech deserves exemption from hate speech laws,
due to its special contribution to political legitimacy. These are, first, the view
that silencing hate speech does not mean silencing all speech, and that
therefore there is no tension between hate speech, partisan speech and political
legitimacy; second, that access to the megaphone of parties implies that the
potential harm of hate speech is amplified and this provides stronger reasons
for restricting such speech rather than granting it greater immunity; and,
third, that both the loudspeaker and the agenda-setting functions of parties
(and, indirectly, their coordinating function) depend, in part, on how parties
are funded and regulated.
I will finally consider the objection that political legitimacy should not be
intended in purely procedural terms but should be grounded in the ideals of
public justification and public reasonableness. Public reasonableness demands

that we take into account the harm of hate speech in the very process through
which state laws are justified and granted political legitimacy (Brown 2015).
I will therefore conclude that the special commitment that partisans ought to
display to public reasonableness, given their distinctive location within the
public political forum, their special access to coercive state institutions, and
the very normative demands of partisanship, implies that partisan speech
should not be granted any special protection or exemption from hate speech
legislation, despite its threefold contribution to a procedural kind of political
legitimacy.
DWORKIN AND WALDRON: HATE SPEECH, POLITICAL

LEGITIMACY, AND CIVIC DIGNITY
While being generally grounded in the democracy argument for free speech,
Dworkin’s account of free speech moves beyond it and emphasizes the
importance of free speech not only for democratic self-government but also
for the contribution to political legitimacy provided by citizens’ unconstrained
freedom to participate with their speech in public deliberation. To better
illustrate the difference between the two perspectives, it may be useful to
briefly compare them.
According to the argument from democracy, discussed in Chapter 5, free-
dom of speech contributes to citizens’ understanding of political affairs and
this is crucial to their ability to participate in democratic self-government
(Meiklejohn 1961). For Dworkin, however, free speech contributes not only
to democratic self-government but also and especially to political legitimacy.
According to him, ‘it is illegitimate for governments to impose a collective or
official decision on dissenting individuals, using the coercive powers of the
state, unless that decision has been taken in a manner that respects each
individual’s status as a free and equal member of the community’ (Dworkin
2009, p. vii). This respect, according to Dworkin, requires that ‘everyone has
had a fair opportunity to express his or her attitudes or opinions or fears or
tastes or presuppositions or prejudices or ideals, not just in the hope of
influencing others . . . but also just to confirm his or her standing as a respon-
sible agent in, rather than a passive victim of, collective action. The majority
has no right to impose its will on someone who is forbidden to raise a voice in
protest or argument or objection before the decision is taken’ (Dworkin 2009,
p. vii). Also central to Dworkin’s argument is the view that in order for laws
against discrimination to be legitimate, ‘we must not try to intervene further
upstream, by forbidding any expression of the attitudes or prejudices that we
think nourish such unfairness or inequality, because if we intervene too soon
in the process through which collective opinion is formed, we spoil the only
democratic justification we have for insisting that everyone obey these laws,
even those who hate and resent them’ (Dworkin 2009, p. viii). For these
reasons, according to Dworkin, we should never silence hate speech.
What, then, is Waldron’s response to Dworkin? As already briefly discussed
in Chapter 5, Waldron defends the view that hate speech can legitimately be
restricted in order to guarantee an important public good, that is, that ‘each
person, each member of each group, should be able to go about his or her
business, with the assurance that there will be no need to face hostility,
violence, discrimination, or exclusion by others’ (Waldron 2012, p. 4). This
assurance guarantees civic dignity for all citizens, and especially ‘for the
members of vulnerable minorities, minorities who in the recent past have
been hated or despised by others within the society, [and for whom] the
assurance offers a confirmation of their membership: they, too, are members
of society in good standing’ (Waldron 2012, p. 5).
Furthermore, Waldron points out, ‘[t]he legitimacy of any given law, for
any person, is itself a matter of degree’ (Waldron 2012, p. 188). This implies
that ‘the “deficit in legitimacy” might be larger or smaller. If the deficit is slight,
then it may not generate a compelling case against hate speech laws when the
stakes on the other side (the harms that such laws might avert) are very high’
(Waldron 2012, p. 188). Those harms, we have seen, include for Waldron
depriving people of their civic dignity and of the assurance that they can safely
feel that they are full members of their society. Waldron’s conclusion, there-
fore, is that since any loss of political legitimacy comes in degrees, ‘if we had a
law that was specifically tailored to prohibit only expression at the viciously
vituperative end of this spectrum, it might be an open question whether it
would have anything more than a minimal effect on the legitimacy of the
downstream law’ (Waldron 2012, p. 191, emphasis added). Even in the
presence of such laws, that is, people could still express their opinions as
long as in doing so they did not use ‘viciously vituperative’ hate speech.3 In
summary, Waldron does not reject Dworkin’s view that censoring hate speech
does undermine political legitimacy. However, he highlights that the loss of
legitimacy can be more or less significant (depending on whether all hate
speech is regulated or only its most extreme forms) and that it should be
weighed against the loss of assurance and civic dignity that the absence of hate
speech legislation may result in.
While Waldron distinguishes between less and more intense forms of hate
speech, however, it is important to stress that neither Dworkin nor Waldron
draws any significant distinctions between different categories of hate speech.
Yet it should be noted that the hate speech legislation currently implemented
3
I will return to the issues surrounding the rather limited scope of the hate speech legislation
invoked by Waldron in the final section of this chapter.
in European countries and beyond is varied. Indeed hate speech has been
regulated by attributing to it such diverse harms as group defamation, negative
stereotyping or stigmatization of vulnerable minorities, incitement to hatred,
threat to public order, and the violation of its victims’ dignity or of their
human rights (e.g. rights against discrimination and/or harassment) (Brown
2015). This reflects the variety of moral arguments in favour of hate speech
laws advanced in the existing literature, which include the claims that hate
speech offends its victims, violates their dignity or autonomy, damages their
health, hampers their personal development, or undermines cultural diversity
or democracy (Brown 2015). It might be the case that different categories of
hate speech provide different levels of contribution to political legitimacy.
However, for simplicity’s sake, and also to align my analysis to Dworkin’s and
Waldron’s, I will treat hate speech as a unified category, aware of the limits of
this approach.
Both Dworkin’s and Waldron’s accounts have merits. On the one hand,
I am sympathetic to Dworkin’s idea that freedom of speech can be justified
on the basis of its contribution to political legitimacy, even though there
are also other arguments against hate speech legislation (see Brown 2015).
On the other hand, I find Waldron’s argument persuasive too. His appeal to
assurance and civic dignity provides a plausible justification for hate speech
laws even though, again, it is not the only available argument in support of
such laws (see Brown 2015). In other words, I agree with Waldron that we
should sometimes restrict hate speech, all things considered. For the sake of
argument, therefore, I take both Dworkin’s and Waldron’s arguments to be
generally sound. What I would like to focus on, however, is Waldron’s claim
that political legitimacy is a matter of degree, a claim that Dworkin himself
endorses elsewhere (Dworkin 2006a, p. 97), and that we should weigh any loss
of political legitimacy against the loss of assurance and civic dignity for many
individuals and groups that unconstrained hate speech may result in.4 This,
I believe, is the most interesting aspect of the debate between Waldron and
Dworkin, at least in relation to the analysis of partisan speech.
Waldron’s claim is interesting as it implicitly raises an important point. If
political legitimacy is a matter of degree, this implies not only that different
restrictions on free speech involve different degrees of negative loss of legit-
imacy, but also that some kinds of speech can make a more positive contribu-
tion to legitimacy than others. This mainly depends on the quality of the
speech at stake, that is, on how someone speaks and the broader implications
of their speech. This has an important implication. Some forms of hate speech
may offer a special positive contribution to political legitimacy, because of the
specific role and function that they play within the broader framework of
4
The need to balance competing claims would also apply if we had to weigh the loss of
political legitimacy against other arguments in favour of hate speech legislation.
public deliberation. The positive contribution of certain kinds of speech to

political legitimacy should therefore be taken into account when carrying out
the balancing exercise (Brown 2015) that should precede any decision whether
to implement hate speech laws or not.
Focusing on political parties can be especially important for this purpose
because, as I will show, partisan speech can make an important positive
contribution to political legitimacy. The bar, therefore, may have to be set
much higher when it comes to deciding whether or not to silence the hate
speech of partisans as opposed to the hate speech of ordinary citizens or
members of other associations. It is important to stress that what matters is
not who is doing the talking but what kind (i.e. what quality) of talking is
at stake.
Furthermore, it should be noted that it is not only the mere intensity of
certain speech, and its ability to be heard in public deliberation, that should be
taken into account when assessing its contribution to political legitimacy. If
that was the case, we could not clearly distinguish the speech of partisans from
that of, say, members of interest groups, trade unions, chambers of commerce,
etc., which also normally has a strong influence on public deliberation.
Instead, we need to explain what is qualitatively distinctive about partisan
speech, and in what ways it may provide a unique contribution to political
legitimacy. Doing so will then help us to assess whether the specialness of
partisan speech may warrant special state protection in the form of exemp-
tions from hate speech legislation, when the latter is or could legitimately be
implemented.
PARTIES AS LOUDSPEAKERS
Why are parties important in connection with the idea that freedom of speech
contributes to political legitimacy? What is distinctive about partisan speech,
and therefore may justify granting special protection to it? First, political
parties do not simply convey citizens’ views. They also and especially ‘provide
for something that no poll or machine can supply: They transmit demands
backed by pressure. The party throws its own weight into the demands it feels
compelled to respond to’ (Sartori 1976, p. 28; original emphasis). In this way,
parties ensure that the voices of individuals and groups have a real influence
on democratic deliberation (see Rosenblum 2008, p. 308). As Veit Bader
points out, ‘[i]n public deliberation and, more so in politics in a narrow
sense, individual voice is noise. Voices have to (be) organize(d) and must be
mobilized’ (Bader 2014, p. 360, original emphasis) in order to have some
influence on public deliberation and political decision-making (see also
Rosenblum 2014; Muirhead 2006; Muirhead and Rosenblum 2006).
In order to contribute to political legitimacy, free speech requires not only

the mere absence of legal censorship but also an effective ability to make one’s
voice heard. Partisan speech offers a crucial contribution to this. Thanks to
their organizational strength and, sometimes, their privileged access to public
media, parties not only enhance the voices of their own members, activists,
and supporters but also act as loudspeakers, generally, for all those ordinary
citizens whose views about a variety of policy issues are reflected in their
manifestoes, programmes, and campaign speeches (regardless of whether
those ordinary citizens have actually voted for them, or voted at all).
The ability of partisans’ speech to act as a loudspeaker also has another
implication. Partisans do not speak merely for themselves but also for their
party. When they speak qua partisans, they express the views of their party as a
whole and also of those non-partisan individuals whose views are articulated
and enhanced by the party. This implies that silencing partisans means
silencing the party as a whole, including its voters and supporters (and those
whose views the party channels) and this, once again, implies a greater loss of
legitimacy than if only ordinary citizens were silenced. When Waldron sug-
gests, therefore, that perhaps restrictions on hate speech would only under-
mine political legitimacy with respect to the silenced person or people
(Waldron 2012, p. 187), it is worth responding not only that restrictions on
hate speech (and speech in general) ‘have a potential effect on everyone’s
[viciously and vituperatively expressed] speech’ (Waldron 2012, p. 188) but
also that when it comes to partisan speech, the voices that are being silenced
are potentially many (e.g. see Anon. 2016).
A potential objection to this argument is that partisan speech may not
merely amplify pre-existing views but also contribute to the very existence and
distribution of certain views. This is not implausible and scholars often
highlight the creative (i.e. as opposed to merely passive) nature of parties,
which do not simply reflect societal cleavages but contribute to creating lines
of political division (Rosenblum 2008). However, this does not undermine the
present argument. In spite of their creative agency, parties never ‘invent’
political views from scratch. Such views must somehow be grounded in values,
interests, demands, or even prejudices already present within society, though
perhaps in confused form. Furthermore, to the extent that parties gain fol-
lowing among citizens, regardless of whether the views they channel are
mainly pre-existing or mainly created, restricting their speech undermines
their contribution to political legitimacy.
A second objection is that assuming a close connection between the speech
of individual partisans and the speech (and views) of the party as a whole
overlooks the modernization process which has affected partisan campaigning
in recent decades, and which has resulted in an increasing focus on a small
number of individual personalities rather than on the party as a whole, due
both to partisan dealignment (Dalton et al. 2000) and to the influence of the
media (Swanson and Mancini 1996). Furthermore, parties are often internally
divided, as shown for example by the recent row within the British Labour
Party over Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition to UK air strikes in Syria (Anon.
2015b) and, more significantly, by the internal divisions in both the Conser-
vative and Labour parties following the UK’s EU membership referendum in
June 2016. This seems to reinforce the view that in contemporary politics most
voters are no longer identifying with a party as such but, increasingly, with
individuals within parties. This may imply that the speech of individual
partisans expresses at best the views of a section of the party, but certainly
not those of the party as a whole.
Two responses can be provided to this objection. First, the empirical
evidence concerning the personalization of politics and of electoral campaign-
ing is in fact more mixed than some might suggest (Kriesi 2012), especially
when a comparative analysis is carried out (Karvonen 2010). Second, even
when a personalization trend is empirically ascertained, this does not imply
that individual personalities act entirely independently from all their fellow
partisans. They speak, at least, on behalf of some (perhaps most) of them.
Furthermore, the quality of their message, even if the latter does not represent
the views of all their fellow partisans, is still distinctive and presents two key
features: an agenda-setting function and a coordinating function, as I will
explain in the next sections. However, I do acknowledge that in some cases
there might be a clear disconnection between partisans and the party they
allegedly represent. This is especially the case in countries such as the USA,
where literally anyone could run for office under one of the major or minor
party labels. I should therefore qualify my analysis, here and in the following
sections, and confine it to partisanship in those polities (especially parliamen-
tary democracies) where there is still a clear connection between individual
partisans and their political parties.5
A third objection is that while the loudspeaker nature of political parties
may contribute to political legitimacy by amplifying the voices of those
citizens whose views a party represents, this also implies that where those
voices are instances of hate speech, the harm that the latter (following Wal-
dron) inflicts upon its victims is also amplified. Those citizens whose assur-
ance and civic dignity are undermined by the hate speech directed at them will
feel even more insecure when that hate speech is also amplified through the
loudspeaker of party politics. Furthermore, and as a consequence, the victims
of that amplified hate speech will be excluded or at least marginalized from the
5
Furthermore, in the US case this qualification may be especially appropriate in view of the
relative absence of hate speech legislation. This, of course, does not undermine my argument.
I have already made it clear that I am in favour of some hate speech legislation. This implies that
I disagree with the current US approach to hate speech. The central focus of my analysis is
therefore the following: given that there ought to be hate speech laws, should partisans be
constrained by such laws as much as ordinary citizens and, if so, why?
process of public deliberation that is necessary for political legitimacy, since

they will feel insecure in the enjoyment of their freedom of speech, that is, they
will be afraid to speak up. It therefore seems self-defeating, or at least insuf-
ficient, to invoke the loudspeaker function of partisan speech in order to
justify granting the latter special protection on the basis of a Dworkinian
account of political legitimacy. It is therefore necessary to examine two further
features of partisan speech in order to assess whether they might offer a better
rationale for granting partisan speech special protection.
PARTIES AS AGENDA-SETTING BODIES
A second contribution that parties make to political legitimacy lies in their

ability to set the political agenda, that is to ‘determine the range of matters for
discussion and decision’ (Rosenblum 2008, p. 307). Why is this important?
First of all, the kind of democratic deliberation that freedom of speech aims
to guarantee ‘cannot proceed on the basis of an arrant pluralism, without
distillation’ (Rosenblum 2008, p. 307). It is simply impossible, in other words,
for citizens to deliberate about everything (Manin 1989, p. 357). While
newspapers, television, and the Internet provide us with a vast amount of
(mostly unfiltered) information, parties help us to select. This, however, not
only renders collective deliberation more manageable. It also, and especially,
enables individuals to form the opinions and views that will then contribute to
collective deliberation. As Bernard Manin points out, ‘[t]he people, as such,
before the intervention of any mediating process, do not have a determined
will, but rather offer a multiplicity of incomplete preferences, which are often
incoherent’ (Manin 1989, p. 357). Therefore, ‘[i]t is only when more-well-
defined issues are proposed for its deliberation that the influence of the people
on the government of their society can be real and effective’ (Manin 1989,
p. 357). As individuals, we often have many interests and opinions on a wide
range of topics. These opinions are often sketchy and confused. By singling out
certain issues and placing them at the centre of public debate (e.g. through
their manifestoes, programmes, and campaign speeches) parties and partisans
tell us what we should focus on, on which topics we should reflect and acquire
more information in order to develop more clear and precise opinions.
Whether these topics include immigration, terrorism, or economic policies,
parties provide us with clear indications about what our ‘opinions, prejudices,
tastes, and attitudes’ (Dworkin 2009, p. viii) should be about.
But this—the link between government legislation and the wills of all the
individual members of a political community as free and equal (via collective
deliberation)—is exactly what defines the idea of political legitimacy. As
Manin points out, ‘[p]olitical power and the rules it promulgates can have
no other legitimate basis than the will of these equal individuals. This power
and these rules bear on all members of society and constrain them all. The
rules can, therefore, be legitimate only as long as they arise from the will of all
and represent the will of all’ (Manin 1989, p. 340). This is also the case when,
for practical reasons, unanimity is replaced by majority decision-making
(Manin 1989, p. 342). Similarly, for Dworkin each individual should have
the right to express both a vote and a voice ‘in deciding what the majority’s will
is’ (Dworkin 2009, p. vii). But individuals cannot express a voice if they do not
have clear opinions and wills, and cannot acquire such opinions and wills,
with regard to political matters, unless they have been helped to select the
issues they should focus on. The speech of partisans therefore contributes to
political legitimacy by helping individuals to form the wills and opinions that
their speech aims to express.
PARTIES AS COORDINATING BODIES
At this point one might observe that political parties are not the only organ-
izations able to convey and enhance societal demands, or to set the political
agenda. Certainly many non-partisan civil society associations can also do
this, and it is therefore important not to endorse an elitist position which
overlooks the function that, as many authors have argued, civil society can
play within the process of public deliberation and will-formation (e.g.
Habermas 1989; Fraser 1990; Warner 1992; Cohen and Arato 1992; Arato
2000; Hirst 1994; Dryzek 2012). Yet what these alternative organizations
normally lack is a third distinctive feature of parties, that is, the ability to
coordinate and integrate social demands into comprehensive political plat-
forms. Parties and partisans, we have already seen in Chapters 4 and 6, do not
normally put forward proposals on single issues but propose instead policy
‘packages’ (see Downs 1957, pp. 85-6; Budge 2006, pp. 422–3; Hershey 2006,
p. 76; Vassallo and Wilcox 2006, p. 414).
It is true, of course, that there are also single-issue parties, and that civil
society organizations can often move quickly between different issues to
mobilize their membership bases, especially online. However, single-issue
parties are not the norm, and they are rarely successful. Furthermore, while
many civil society organizations are indeed able to move between different
issues, they are rarely able to provide a sustained and coordinated multi-issue
political programme akin to those offered by political parties (White and Ypi
2016, p. 26). In summary, therefore, it is the combination of parties’ agenda-
setting and coordinating functions which renders them different from any
other associations, and partisan speech distinctive. This also implies that
parties and civil society associations should not be seen as mutually exclusive
but rather as complementary. Parties, that is, do not replace civil society
associations but rather provide a link between the latter and the state. As
Veit Bader (2014) argues, this link can and should be improved, for example
by rendering party membership more flexible and linked to membership in
civil society associations, increasing intra-party democracy, enhancing the
cooperation between parties and social movements, and through the latter
creating new fora for public deliberation.
The ability to coordinate social demands and present them in the form of
comprehensive political programmes is, therefore, the third and most distinct-
ive contribution that political parties, through their speech, make to demo-
cratic deliberation and, therefore, to political legitimacy. The coordinating
function of parties is crucial not only for mere practical reasons—for example
because it reinforces their chance to win electoral contests, where electoral
space is limited and relatively few parties must compete on a wide range of
issues to win the support of a large electorate. It is also important for purely
normative reasons. More precisely, as parties produce manifestoes and ad-
vance programmes that touch upon a wide array of policy issues, their speech
(both written and spoken) contributes to the legitimacy of a similarly wide range
of intertwined laws and policies. Furthermore, it often does so on the basis of a
core set of views and values which is applied to that wide range of issues and the
silencing of which could lead to a significant loss of political legitimacy.
Take, for example, Nick Griffin’s abovementioned views that Islam is a
‘wicked, vicious faith’ and that Muslims are transforming Britain into a ‘multi-
racial hell hole’ (Anon. 2006). These views may be relevant not only to public
deliberation concerning discrimination and/or violence against Muslims but
also to public debate concerning, say, housing, public healthcare, and educa-
tion in general. These are major policy issues which are central to the BNP’s
(and to any political party’s) manifesto and political platform (see British
National Party 2010). Someone who thinks that Islam is a ‘wicked, vicious
faith’ might argue, hypothetically, that for this reason Muslims should not be
allowed to access public healthcare or public education, or should not be
allowed to claim jobseeker’s allowance or housing benefits.
It is true, of course, that these potentially invoked measures are exactly what
anti-discrimination laws aim to prevent, and these are the laws whose legit-
imacy particularly concerns Dworkin and Waldron. Yet the deliberation I am
referring to concerns not only those specific laws but also legislation relating to
public healthcare, education, and housing in general. In other words, it might
be argued (following Dworkin) that silencing partisans who invoke those
discriminatory measures by employing hate speech would undermine the
legitimacy not only of anti-discrimination laws but also of all legislation
concerning public healthcare, education, or housing, regardless of whether it
is specifically concerned with protecting or reinforcing anti-discrimination
measures. As hateful partisan speech, one might argue, can contribute to the
ongoing process of deliberation on a wide array of issues that precedes

decision-making in parliaments, city councils, and other public institu-
tions, the legitimacy of more or less all legislation is affected if that speech
is silenced.
There is, however, a further reason why the coordinating function of parties
is relevant to political legitimacy. To understand what this is, it is necessary to
return for a moment to Waldron’s response to Dworkin. When assessing
different possible interpretations of Dworkin’s argument, Waldron claims
that the loss of legitimacy which, according to Dworkin, would result from
restrictions on free speech, could be interpreted as applying only to certain
laws, for example anti-discrimination laws but not laws against violence or
murder (Waldron 2012, pp. 186–7). As Waldron himself argues, this solution
would still leave some laws (e.g. anti-discrimination laws) illegitimate in the
presence of hate speech legislation and, most importantly, it would run against
Dworkin’s more general approach to the problem of political legitimacy, that
is, his emphasis on a society’s moral and cultural environment (characterized
by unconstrained free speech) as an important source of political legitimacy
in general.
The second point that emerges from Waldron’s critique of Dworkin is that a
piecemeal account of political legitimacy—one focused on the legitimacy of
particular laws, rather than on the law in general—not only runs counter to
Dworkin’s more holistic account of the relationship between free speech and
political legitimacy, it also runs counter to what most accounts of political
legitimacy aim to provide—a justification of state laws in general. As the
emphasis is on their being state laws, the focus should be on what it is,
about their being state laws, that makes them legitimate. This must therefore
be a feature that can be attributed to all state laws qua state laws. Being the
result of an accepted democratic procedure which, in the case of Dworkin’s
account, should also be accompanied by an inclusive and unconstrained
process of democratic deliberation is one way (but, again, not the only way)
in which that general legitimacy can be ensured.
How does this discussion relate, then, to the coordinating function of
parties? Robert Goodin’s (2008) picture of an imaginary ‘No-Party Democ-
racy’ can help us to answer this question. A ‘No-Party Democracy,’ Goodin
argues, would be characterized by personalistic and clientelist politics, and
dominated by patronage and identity groups. More importantly, it would lack
the ‘ratio’ (i.e. the rationale) that alone can render a people a self-legislating
community (Goodin 2008, pp. 212–14). According to Goodin, ‘to be demo-
cratic, a community must rule itself through law—rules that citizens can
understand and internalize—rather than arbitrary edicts that cannot be an-
ticipated or comprehended’ (Goodin 2008, p. 212). Without the coordinating
function of parties, Goodin claims, the rationale that helps a community to
‘understand and internalize’ those rules would be absent, and therefore the
idea itself of self-legislation (i.e. giving the law to itself) would simply be
meaningless. Without parties ‘each act of the legislature would be a one-off
—the product of a coalition assembled around a particular piece of legislation
that carries over to no other. Representatives would have to be persuaded, one-
by-one, on each new piece of legislation, one-by-one’ (Goodin 2008, p. 207).
The presence of ‘competing parties offering alternative policy packages and
ratios for them’ (Goodin 2008, p. 223, original emphasis), Goodin claims,
prevents this. While Goodin is mainly concerned with the issue of self-
legislation, he also mentions in passing that ‘[o]n other analyses, the law’s
ratio might be thought to provide a rationale to legitimize the law substan-
tively’ (Goodin 2008, p. 213) but he sets this issue aside. Yet his brief remark
about political legitimacy signals the relevance of the coordinating function of
parties to my analysis.
This becomes clearer when we consider some problematic aspects of Good-
in’s argument, aspects that he himself acknowledges. Even in the presence of
parties (the current situation in all liberal democracies), he argues, it is
normally difficult to have a unifying rationale for the law, due either to
coalition governments (more common in PR systems) or to party alternation
in power (more common in FPTP systems). In the former case, legislation is
often ‘the product of a horse-trade or log-roll, with no coherent ratio’ (Goodin
2008, p. 220). In the latter, ‘the laws enacted by one party, for one set of
purposes, will be amended from time to time by another party, for a rather
different set of purposes’ (Goodin 2008, p. 221), and this will prevent legisla-
tion from having ‘a single, coherent ratio of its own’ (Goodin 2008, p. 221).
Goodin therefore recognizes that deliberative democracy, rather than political
parties, could be considered one possible alternative source of the ratio of
legislation. That ratio, that is, could result from ‘a democratic public reasoning
together’ (Goodin 2008, p. 222). This is a plausible conclusion. Given party
politics’ inability to provide a coherent rationale for the law, democratic
deliberation seems to provide a more plausible rationale for it. Furthermore,
if we take the ratio to be the source of the law’s legitimacy, rather than just of
rule-following, then this conclusion does not differ significantly from Dwor-
kin’s argument that democratic deliberation, aided by unconstrained free
speech, is a source of political legitimacy.
The interesting point is that, for Goodin, parties can still play a crucial role
within the framework of a ratio-generating democratic deliberation. Thanks to
their coordinating role, ‘what parties do relatively effortlessly discursive engage-
ment across any very large community accomplishes only laboriously, and even
then only very partially’ (Goodin 2008, p. 222). Most importantly, Goodin
claims that ‘insofar as that discursive engagement is intended by those involved
to coordinate with others as to what law should be enacted with what ratio . . .
[t]hose intentionally coordinating their acts with others in this way are, in effect,
forming parties’ (Goodin 2008, p. 222 n. 47, original emphasis).
Goodin’s analysis, however, is slightly elusive. What is, exactly, the con-
tribution that parties can make to the process of democratic deliberation that
provides the law with its ratio? Goodin mentions the selective role of parties,
also by referring to Manin’s (1989) aforementioned analysis, but this seems
to involve a shift in focus. The selective agenda-setting function of parties,
which I examined earlier, differs from parties’ ability to provide coordinated
policy packages. What is then, again, the importance of the third (and most
distinctive) function of parties (and partisan speech) for democratic delib-
eration, given the acknowledged inability of parties to provide a coherent
rationale for the law?
The response can be found by considering a different kind of selection that
parties perform, alongside the selection of issues that should be the subject of
democratic deliberation. While the latter is a bottom-up selection, parties also
perform a top-down selection. More specifically, and as I stressed in Chapter 6,
parties take basic political values (e.g. equality, freedom, etc.) and interpret them
in more specific ways. In this manner, they give these indeterminate values
substance and render them relevant to real political issues. It is by appealing to
these refined political values that parties coordinate and give coherence to their
policy packages (White and Ypi 2010, p. 811; Bonotti 2011a, p. 21).
Some examples may be useful:
We believe that the ability to create and sustain social and political structures in
which individual freedom, equality before the law, private property and popular
participation in decision-making are features, is an expression of blood. (British
National Party 2010, p. 22)
The new Equality Act will be enforced, promoting fairness across our society. The
public duty to promote equality of opportunity is being extended. (Labour
Party 2010, p. 2:4)
To protect our freedoms from state encroachment and encourage greater social
responsibility, we will replace the Human Rights Act with a UK Bill of Rights.
(Conservative Party 2010, p. 79)
These brief excerpts from the BNP’s, Labour’s, and Conservative’s 2010 man-
ifestoes show how basic political values such as freedom and equality can be
interpreted in very different ways and therefore provide very different sources of
ideational unity for the policy packages that different parties propose.
This is important for ‘the [deliberative] process through which collective
opinion is formed’ (Dworkin 2009, p. viii). For the latter to be feasible, it is
necessary not only that the range of issues up for discussion is reduced, but also
that the basic political values which, at least in liberal democracies, provide the
background for deliberation (whether they are entrenched in constitutional
or ordinary law or not), are given a more precise meaning which can be applied
to concrete political issues. Partisan speech, including party manifestoes and
campaign speeches, provides a unique contribution to this process. It is easier
for members of a political community to deliberate on the basis of three (or five,
or even ten) different interpretations of basic political values and their relevance
to policy packages, than on the basis of millions of different interpretations, as
provided by individual citizens or by a myriad of non-partisan associations and
interest groups.
Parties and partisan speech, therefore, do not provide the law’s ratio, due to
the inevitability of coalitions and/or party alternation in power. Democratic
deliberation can provide that ratio. What parties can offer, however, are sub-
ratios, that is, coherent justifications for policy packages based on specific
interpretations of basic political values. These sub-ratios help individuals to
engage in a more manageable process of democratic deliberation, in which
they are presented both with a reasonable selection of issues and with a
reasonable selection of possible interpretations of basic political values. Like
the former selection, the latter also helps individuals to form the wills and
opinions that their speech aims to express. This is, then, the main contribution
that the coordinating function of parties and partisan speech provides to the
deliberative process of collective opinion-formation and, therefore, to political
legitimacy. And this is also, therefore, another important reason why silencing
the speech of partisans, which contributes to this goal, may be more problem-
atic than silencing the speech of citizens in general.
FROM PROCEDURAL TO JUSTIFICATION-BASED

POLITICAL LEGITIMACY
By moving within the boundaries of the debate between Waldron and

Dworkin, my analysis so far has shown that partisan speech can make a
distinctive contribution to political legitimacy, and that this provides a pro
tanto rationale for exempting it, fully or in part, from hate speech legislation
that ought to apply to citizens in general. In other words, I have not claimed
that partisan speech ought to receive special protection, all things considered,
but that the balancing exercise that we need to engage in when deciding
whether to restrict hate speech or not should take into account the positive
effects on political legitimacy that partisan speech (including partisan hate
speech) may have due to its qualitatively distinctive features. However, there
are also a number of objections which, within the scope of this balancing
exercise, counter the view that partisan speech should be granted special
protection or exemption from hate speech legislation. These objections need
to be examined and critically assessed.
First, one might point out that silencing hate speech does not mean
silencing all speech, and that therefore my overall analysis of the relationship
between hate speech, partisan speech, and political legitimacy is misguided. As
Waldron himself highlights, ‘[h]ate speech laws provide only for the suppres-
sion of certain forms of intervention. The persons whose interventions are
silenced in this way may say anything else, contribute anything else they like to
the political process’ (Waldron 2012, p. 187). For Waldron, as we have seen,
hate speech legislation should only apply to ‘viciously vituperative’ (Waldron
2012, p. 191) hate speech.
In response to this objection it can be argued, first, that the form and
content of speech cannot be separated as easily as Waldron suggests. Cass
Sunstein, for example, highlights that stating in public ‘[m]y country is doing
wrong’ (Sunstein 1993, p. 182) is not the same as publicly burning your
country’s flag. Replacing the latter with the former, he argues, implies that
‘the message will be so muted as to be fundamentally transformed. The
availability of purely verbal alternative forms of expression is therefore inad-
equate to justify failing to protect expressive conduct’ (Sustein 1993, p. 182).
The same line of reasoning could be applied to the distinction between
(viciously vituperative) hate speech and non-(viciously vituperative)hate
speech as different ways of conveying the same message.
One might still point out, though, that it is unclear why political legitimacy
requires opinions to be voiced in a form which is ‘viciously vituperative’, for
example by calling members of certain minority groups ‘rats or cockroaches’
(Waldron 2012, p. 189). It is unclear, that is, why political legitimacy is
undermined if these claims are silenced. This objection, however, is mislead-
ing. As Dworkin (2012, p. 343) himself points out in his own response to
Waldron’s critique, it is likely that partisans, due to their public visibility and
need for broad support, will often refrain from using the more extreme
versions of hate speech, such as those that equate certain human beings with
pests. Partisans are more likely to use expressions such as ‘“Moslems are all
terrorists who should be shunned” . . . [or] . . . “[t]hey should all be sent back
where they came from”’ (Dworkin 2012, p. 343). While offensive and hateful,
these kinds of statements are somehow less ‘viciously vituperative’ than those
which equate certain human beings with pests, and (unlike the latter) they do
contain explicit or implicit claims that could somehow contribute to public
deliberation and political legitimacy.
Waldron seems to exclude these instances of (relatively milder) hate speech
from the scope of hate speech legislation. However, as Dworkin himself points
out, this risks rendering his argument mostly irrelevant to real-world politics,
where such ‘milder’ forms of hate speech, rather than those that equate certain
human beings with pests, are more frequent and are normally the main target
of hate speech legislation. I agree with Dworkin’s claim, and I believe that
Waldron’s account, contrary to his own statements, offers a profound and
strong rationale for also restricting hate speech that is not ‘viciously vitupera-
tive’, and which is more common in real partisan politics. This has a twofold
implication.
On the one hand, the most viciously vituperative forms of partisan hate
speech can and should be restricted, despite the connection between form and
content of speech, because they provide little if any contribution to political
legitimacy (not unlike ‘fighting words’ which induce an immediate, impulsive,
and often violent reaction from the hearer (Brink 2008)). On the other hand,
while milder instances of hate speech can in principle be restricted, based on
Waldron’s argument, they also provide a greater contribution to political
legitimacy, based on Dworkin’s argument and on my analysis, and therefore
there is still a need to weigh the pros and cons (through a balancing exercise)
of imposing restrictions on them. The first objection, therefore, does not offer
a decisive argument against the view that partisan hate speech can make a
special contribution to political legitimacy, and that this should be taken into
account when deciding whether to restrict it or not.
A second objection is the following. Access to the megaphone of parties
implies that the potential harm of hate speech is also amplified. This provides
stronger reasons for restricting such speech, rather than for granting it greater
immunity from restrictions. I have already mentioned this argument earlier in
this chapter, in order to show that the first alleged contribution of partisan
speech to political legitimacy—its loudspeaker function—may in fact under-
mine political legitimacy. Those citizens whose assurance and civic dignity are
undermined by hate speech directed at them, I argued, will feel even more
insecure in their ability to speak up, and therefore to contribute to the process
of deliberation that underlies political legitimacy, when that hate speech is also
amplified through the loudspeaker of party politics. The argument I am
considering here, however, is broader. Regardless of any negative effects that
amplified hate speech may have on political legitimacy, it is likely to inflict
more harm (i.e. than non-amplified hate speech) upon its victims, by under-
mining more strongly their assurance and civic dignity.
However, it should be noted that greater public resonance also means
greater public scrutiny (as the example of the BNP earlier in this chapter
shows). It is true, then, that unconstrained hate speech by ordinary citizens
may contribute to undermining the assurance and civic dignity of its victims.
However, when elected partisans and partisans running for office employ hate
speech, they are subject to the close scrutiny of other elected officials or
candidates, of the media, and of the general public, in a way that does not
normally apply when such speech is used by ordinary citizens in their daily
interactions and in the many and less publicly scrutinizable spheres of civil
society. For example, many factors may have contributed to the electoral
decline of the BNP over the past five years but it seems plausible to argue
that Nick Griffin’s appearance on ‘Question Time’ played a significant role in
this connection. The event placed Griffin and the party at the centre of public
scrutiny (Anon. 2009). The fact that the party did not manage to exploit
seemingly favourable circumstances (Walker 2015) in recent years suggests
that public scrutiny can play an important role in reducing the popularity and
the harmful effects of partisan hate speech.
To use one of Waldron’s examples, it may be true that hate speech sends the
following message to its victims:
Don’t be fooled into thinking you are welcome here. The society around you may
seem hospitable and non-discriminatory, but the truth is that you are not wanted,
and you and your families will be shunned, excluded, beaten, and driven out,
whenever we can get away with it. We may have to keep a low profile right now.
But don’t get too comfortable. Remember what has happened to you and your
kind in the past. Be afraid. (Waldron 2012, p. 2)
Hate speech, Waldron argues, also sends the following message to those who
may be sympathetic to it:
We know some of you agree that these people are not wanted here. We know that
some of you feel that they are dirty (or dangerous or criminal or terrorist). Know
now that you are not alone. (Waldron 2012, p. 2)
Waldron is certainly right in claiming that these kinds of messages contribute

to undermining the assurance and civic dignity of the victims of hate speech.
However, the high level of public scrutiny to which hate speech is normally
subject when it is employed by elected partisans and party candidates implies
that the following message also reaches the victims of hate speech:
Know that you are not alone. Even though these elected partisans and partisans
running for office express their hateful views in the public realm, we, i.e. the
majority of people in this country, will never fail to challenge and ridicule them
whenever we get the chance, either in the parliament, or in the media, or during
electoral campaigns. Most importantly, we will never allow state policies to be
shaped by those views. Don’t be afraid.
This conclusion warrants an important proviso. The example of the BNP

suggests that this is what normally happens in well-established liberal dem-
ocracies. However, the same might not happen in different empirical contexts.
Suppose, for example, that the majority is relatively indifferent to the issue, or
that the hateful minority in question is actually quite large and growing. In
either of these scenarios, it might be more difficult to dismiss the view that
airing hate speech through the loudspeaker of party politics could be especially
harmful, and that there would not be sufficient public scrutiny to counter or
reduce such harm. I should therefore stress that my analysis of the positive
contribution of partisan speech to political legitimacy only applies to a specific
context, that is, the one offered by what Eric Heinze calls ‘longstanding, stable,
and prosperous democracies’ (Heinze 2009, p. 278; see also Heinze 2016).
A third objection is that both the loudspeaker and the agenda-setting
functions of parties (and, indirectly, their coordinating function) depend, in
part, on how parties are funded and regulated. For example, one might argue
that political parties in the USA only act as ‘loudspeakers’ for relatively
wealthy citizens (thus failing to be fully representative of the general elector-
ate) and that they sometimes select political issues manipulatively, in service of
the wealthy elites who fund them (thus effectively removing from consider-
ation certain issues that the wider public would like to see discussed). In
response to these legitimate concerns, it can be argued that political parties
ought to be provided with public funding in order for their loudspeaker and
agenda-setting functions to contribute to political legitimacy in a way that is
fair for all citizens and groups. Public funding of parties is necessary in order
to prevent parties from being controlled by affluent groups and in order to
avoid that ‘the less favoured members of society, having been effectively
prevented by their lack of means from exercising their fair degree of influence,
withdraw into apathy and resentment’ (Rawls 1999a, p. 198). For the same
reasons, public funding of parties should also be supplemented by some form
of ‘financial fair play,’ preventing parties from receiving excessive amounts of
money from private donors (e.g. businesses, corporations, etc.).6
There is, however, a fourth and more fundamental challenge to the view
that partisan speech should be granted greater protection (i.e. than the speech
of ordinary citizens) due to its special contribution to political legitimacy. To
understand what this is, we should refer to Alexander Brown’s (2015) recent
claim that the assurance and civic dignity invoked by Waldron in his defence
of hate speech laws and the idea of political legitimacy defended by Dworkin
should not be seen as conflicting but rather as interdependent. In this sense,
‘insofar as political legitimacy is a matter of interpersonal justification and
consensus among equal citizens, sometimes this requires authorities to limit
free expression for reasons of assuring civic dignity even though in many other
cases it requires authorities to protect free expression for the sake of the
collective authorization of downstream laws’ (Brown 2015, p. 208). The likely
victims of hate speech (e.g. members of ethnic minorities), according to
Brown, could not reasonably accept a defence of unconstrained free speech
that allegedly prioritizes collective self-government over their assurance and
civic dignity. This argument would not meet the standards of public reason-
ableness that characterize a more complex and not merely procedural under-
standing of political legitimacy.
Dworkin’s claim that a state decision is legitimate only if it ‘has been taken
in a manner that respects each individual’s status as a free and equal member
of the community’ (Dworkin 2009, p. vii, emphasis added), therefore, should
be reinterpreted in the light of this justification-based account of political
legitimacy. This view reflects Rawls’s idea of public reason and his ‘liberal
6
I defended the public funding of parties and the idea of ‘financial fair play’ in Chapter 2, in
relation to the fair play argument for partisan political obligations.
principle of legitimacy’ (Rawls 2005a, p. 217), which are central to my analysis

in this book. Brown’s commitment to the ideal of public reason is closely
related to his endorsement of a theory of ‘overall warrant as principled
compromise’ (Brown 2015, p. 277) according to which conflicts arising
between principles in defence or against hate speech legislation should be
resolved by appealing to the ideals of ‘reciprocity,’ ‘equality’, and ‘mutual
respect’ (Brown 2015, pp. 299–305).
The importance of Brown’s argument for my present analysis can be fully
understood by remembering that the duty to commit to the standards and
constraints of public reason especially applies to partisans, as I have argued in
Chapters 6 and 7. This has an important implication. Partisans, when they
speak qua partisans, ought to constantly be involved in the process of public
reasoning when defending or rejecting hate speech legislation. This does not
mean that partisans always ought to endorse hate speech legislation. After all,
as we have seen, Brown himself points out that in some cases justification-
based political legitimacy ‘requires authorities to protect free expression for
the sake of the collective authorization of downstream laws’ (Brown 2015,
p. 208), and that therefore there may be scope for arguments against hate
speech laws (or any other laws regulating free speech) within the framework of
public reason. However, it does mean that political liberalism, whose concep-
tion of political legitimacy places public justification at its core, cannot allow
granting partisan speech special protection or exemption from hate speech
legislation. Both partisanship and public reason demand that we provide
citizens with public reasons in support of legislation, and this will often
(though not always) require endorsing hate speech legislation that regulates
the speech of all citizens, including partisans.
There is, however, a difference between the reasons why ordinary citizens
ought to be subject to hate speech legislation and the reasons why such
legislation should apply to partisans. Ordinary citizens, I have assumed in
this chapter, ought to be subject to hate speech legislation, not due to the
constraints of public reason (which, I argued in Chapter 7, ought not to apply
to them) but due to the harm that hate speech causes. Partisans, however, are
subject to the constraints of public reason, given their location within the
public political forum, their special influence upon coercive decision-making,
and the distinctive normative demands of partisanship, as I have argued
throughout this book. Therefore, while the harm that their hate speech causes
may often be offset by the special contribution that partisan speech makes to
political legitimacy as intended by Dworkin, the justification-based (and
therefore more demanding) view of political legitimacy central to Rawls’s
political liberalism redresses the balance and demands that partisans be
subject to the same hate speech laws that also apply to citizens in general.
Partisans should therefore be subject to the same penalties incurred by
citizens in general when they use hate speech. Furthermore, in exceptional
circumstances this might also justify banning those political parties that make
a systematic and sustained use of hate speech, as Nancy Rosenblum, for
example, suggests (Rosenblum 2008, p. 435).7
CONCLUSION
In this final chapter I have critically assessed whether the speech of partisans in
liberal democracies should be granted special protection and be exempted
from hate speech legislation, when the latter is in place or could be permissibly
implemented. I have shown that the threefold contribution of partisan speech
to procedural political legitimacy, grounded in parties’ loudspeaker, agenda-
setting, and coordinating roles, offers a pro tanto rationale for this special
protection. I have also examined and rejected a number of serious objections
to this claim. However, I have concluded that under a justification-based
account of political legitimacy, the special commitment that partisans ought
to display to public reasoning, given their distinctive location within the public
political forum, their special access to coercive state institutions, and the
normative demands of partisanship, implies that partisan speech should not
be granted any special protection or exemption from hate speech legislation.
7
Stefan Sottiaux and Stefan Rummens (2012) argue that based on a ‘concentric model of
democracy’ (Sottiaux and Rummens 2012, p. 107), parties lie closer to the heart of political
decision-making than other associations or ordinary citizens, and that this offers a strong
rationale for imposing restrictions on their speech. Sottiaux and Rummens are not concerned,
in their analysis, with political legitimacy, public justification, and public reasonableness. Fur-
thermore, they do not examine the distinctive normative demands of partisanship. However,
their argument, like mine, captures the intuition that the special link between political parties
and coercive state institutions is an important factor to be considered during the balancing
exercise that should underlie legal decisions about hate speech regulation.
Conclusion
It is often argued that political parties are in crisis (Ignazi 1996; Dalton and
Wattenberg 2002; Daalder 2002; Whiteley 2010; Delwit 2011; Mair 2013,
2014). How that crisis could be reverted is a question which is becoming
increasingly central to scholarly debate (e.g. Bader 2014; Invernizzi-Accetti
and Wolkenstein 2017), and deservedly so. But that question, and the answers
offered to it, cannot be dissociated from a deep reflection on the normative
dimensions of partisanship, and especially on the duties that partisanship,
intended as a normative ideal, imposes upon real-world partisans. After all,
without an understanding of what partisans ought to do, and of how they
may benefit liberal democracy if they comply with their distinctive duties, it
may be difficult to explain why the present crisis of political parties should
be reverted.
In this book I have offered an account of the normative dimensions of
partisanship from the perspective of one of the most influential contemporary
political theories, i.e. John Rawls’s political liberalism. The central argument of
the book, to reassert it again, is that political liberalism needs and nourishes
political parties, as parties contribute both to its legitimacy and its stability.
Through my analysis I hope to have at least partially rescued Rawls’s theory
from the widespread accusation that it is inhospitable to real-world politics,
and especially to party politics. That rescue attempt, as I acknowledged at the
beginning, is not entirely new (see Muirhead and Rosenblum 2006). However,
it deserved a much more comprehensive and sustained analysis, which I hope
this book has offered.
Many more questions, though, remain open. Indeed my analysis has moved
within the boundaries of political liberalism, critically examining the role of
parties and partisans in expressing and shaping the reasonable disagreement
that is central to it. But what about parties and partisans that endorse unrea-
sonable doctrines? Apart from acknowledging that in some cases allegedly
unreasonable anti-system parties may in fact play a positive role within political
liberalism, by contributing to the change of public reason, I have not assessed
whether and how political liberalism can or should ‘contain’ those unreasonable
parties that are truly inimical to its central tenets. And what about the
international dimension? Can political parties contribute to the legitimacy and

stability of political liberalism beyond the nation-state, for example within
supranational political systems such as the European Union (EU)? These
questions remain unanswered, and constitute a worthy subject for a future
research agenda. What I hope has received a satisfactory and comprehensive
answer, however, is the twofold question of whether Rawls’s political liberalism
is relevant to the normative analysis of parties and partisanship, and, conversely,
whether parties and partisanship can make any contribution to political liber-
alism. We should no longer doubt, I hope, what the answer to those questions is.
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Index
abortion 37 civil society organizations

accountability 5, 143–8 coordination of 163–4
Habermas and 125–6 duty of civility and 74
horizontal 128–32, 133, 138–42, 146 and electoral systems 148
‘mutual accountability’ 129n3 and intra-party democracy 27
and public reason 126–38 and public scrutiny 170
vertical 133–8, 139, 145, 149 and religion 102
African National Congress (ANC) 25 and state 66, 72, 100, 134
Ahiauzu, Nkiruka 38 classical republicanism 55
alternative electoral choices 28, 29 ‘coalition potential’ 30, 34
An-Na’im, Abdullahi Ahmed 100 coalitions 78, 146–51, 166, 168
answerability in public reasoning 127, 128, Cohen, Joshua 83, 84, 85, 85n3, 100
143, 144, 146 collective party membership 14, 19
anti-system parties 137–8 Collett, Mark 152
associative obligations 11, 12 common good 5, 16, 104, 105–7, 113,
Audi, Robert 22 134, 140
authoritarian regimes 24, 25, 26, 28 conflicting obligations 22–39
fairness and motivation 38, 39
Bader, Veit 44n3, 65, 70, 159, 164 fairness and unjust regimes 24–6
Barendt, Eric M. 86 increasing fairness 29–31
Bartolo da Sassoferrato 104 unfair schemes of cooperation 26–8, 29
basic justice 4, 62, 63, 67–9, 93, 94, 126 conscience
Beitz, Charles 35, 143, 146, 147 constitutional essentials and freedom of 50
Belgium 48 free speech and freedom of 87
‘blackmail potential’ 30, 34 and public justification 38
Blair, Tony 129 and public reason 76
Bluntschli, Johann Kaspar 105 religion and freedom of 42, 43, 46, 53
Boettcher, James 127–8 consent and political obligations 11, 12–14,
Bohman, James 111 17n7, 18, 20, 24n1, 33–4
Bolingbroke, Viscount 104 constitutional consensus 101, 102–3,
Bonotti, Matteo 10 107, 110
Brown, Alexander 172–3 constitutional essentials
Brudney, Daniel 42n1, 54, 55 and freedom of speech 83, 86, 93–4
Buchanan, Allen 106, 107 and liberal democracies 110
Burke, Edmund 104, 105 and principles of social and economic
justice 47–51
Capoccia, Giovanni 137 and public reason 4, 62, 63, 67–70, 126
Catholicism 100, 118, 119, 121, 122 cooperation, fair schemes of 15, 16–17, 30, 32,
Caygill, Howard and Scott, Alan 53 38, 106–7, 137
censorship 90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96 Copsey, Nigel and Macklin, Graham 152
Christian Democratic parties, Europe 118, Corbyn, Jeremy 161
119, 121 creative agency 101, 121, 122, 160
Christiano, Thomas 30, 34, 129, 144, Cummins Gauthier, Candace 94
145, 146
citizen participation, encouragement of 30 Dagger, Richard 16n6
civil disobedience 37 Dahl, Robert A. 27
civil rights and liberties delegate model of representation 139, 140
and fairness 29 democracy
freedom of speech and 81, 87 and competition 27
and religious governance 44–7, 50, 51, and free speech 91, 92–3
53–4, 56, 57, 60 and religion 102–3
194 Index
‘democratic accommodationism’ 4, 41, 44, 47, and political legitimacy 91, 92–7, 152–74
51, 60, 61 protection of 60
‘democratic acculturation’ 109 and public reason 73–80
democratic contestation 40–61 social pressure and stigma 94
establishment and separation 43, 44–6 freedom of thought 92
Laborde on religion 41, 42–3 Freeman, Samuel 105, 106
religion and justice 46, 47–51, 52 Frega, R. 130n3
religious symbols 52–7
social and economic issues 57, 58–60 Gaus, Gerald 85, 107n4
Dryzek, John 138 Gedicks, Frederick M. 55
Dummett, Michael 143, 145, 147 Gel’man, Vladimir 13n4
duty of civility Germany
citizens’ 62, 72n7, 129, 137 Basic Law (1949) 9
free speech and 81–98 Bavarian Crucifix Order 53
legal enforcement of 4, 73–80 Centre Party 117, 118
as moral duty 73 Green Party 68, 69
partisans’ 72, 142 Law on Political Parties 1967 9
representatives’ 148 Nazism 25
Duverger, Maurice 11, 14, 31, 65 Gilbert, Margaret 24n2
Dworkin, Ronald 11, 12, 95, 154, 156–8, Gioberti, Vincenzo 119
162–7, 169, 170, 172, 173 Goodin, Robert 128, 142
on ‘No-Party Democracy’ 165–6, 167
Eberle, Christopher 113n7, 116n9 on ‘ratio’ 165, 166, 167, 168
economic policy 113–14 Greenawalt, Kent 67, 128
education 42, 47, 48–9, 79 Greene, Abner 32–3, 34n9, 36
electoral campaigns 64–5, 75–7, 160, 161, Griffin, Nick 152–3, 164, 170
167, 171
electoral design 143–51 Habermas, Jürgen 75, 124, 125, 127–8, 130,
Elster, Jon 91 136, 139
Emerson, Thomas I. 86 Hain, Peter 152
environmentalism 68, 69, 88, 89, 136, Hart, H. L. A. 15, 17
147, 148 hate speech 5, 152–61, 164, 165, 168–73
‘epistemic rationality’ 85 Hayek, Friedrich 58
EU (European Union) Heidar, Knut 14, 15
Constitutional Treaty 55 Heinze, Eric 171
UK referendum on membership 152, 161 Hobbes, Thomas 104
homosexual relationships, legal recognition
Fabre, Cécile 41, 59, 60 of 89
factionalism 10, 101, 146 Horton, John 12, 15, 19, 23
fairness Hume, David 104
and motivation 38, 39
of party politics 29–32 Ignazi, Piero 137
and political obligation 6, 8, 14, 15–19, independent candidates 19, 132, 139
24–6 individual party membership 14
and public reason 36–7 institutional threshold (Habermas)
first-past-the-post electoral system see FPTP 127, 128
Fitzpatrick, John R. 83 instrumental republicanism 52, 55
Flanders, Chad 135 intelligibility 116, 130, 149
Fowler, Robert B. and Hertzke, Allen 75 intra-party deliberation 30, 150
FPTP (first-past-the-post) electoral system 5, intra-party democracy 27, 164
28, 143–51, 166 Islam 23, 45, 100, 118, 152, 164
France, Law of Separation 1905 49 Italy
‘free market fairness’ 58 Democrazia Cristiana (DC) 119
freedom of association 30 education 49
freedom of speech Fascist regime 25
and duty of civility 81–98 Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI) 119,
and partisanship 3, 5 120, 122
Index 195
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 118, 119, 121 political pluralism 111–19, 120
Katcoff v. Marsh 46 in practice 120–2
Katz, Richard S. 120 and public reason 5
Kelsen, Hans 105 and stability 99, 120
Kitschelt, Herbert 68, 121, 136 and truth 84, 85
Klosko, George 24, 25, 29
Kymlicka, Will 51 Parekh, Bhikhu 22, 122
Parkinson, John 35
Laborde, Cécile 40, 41–3, 45, 49, 50, 52, 53, 56 partisans
Lafont, Cristina 129n3 elected and non-elected 141, 142
Larmore, Charles 84n2 partisanship
Laycock, Douglas 53 benefits and duties 6, 8–14, 15, 17–18,
legal duties and political offices 9–10 32, 33
‘Lemon test’ 75 ethics of 10, 11
Levitsky, Steven and Way, Lucan A. 26 formalized 13, 14
liberal democracies meanings of 13–14
burden of laws and exemptions 32 as normative ideal 103, 104–10, 111,
increasing fairness in 29–31 132, 138
institutional framework 29, 30 and political legitimacy 152–74
party commitment to 137–8 rules and constraints of 16, 17
and unfair schemes of cooperation 26–8, 29 Patten, Alan 55, 59
Lijphart, Arend 147 ‘permeable sovereignty’ 32–3
Linz, Juan J. 137 personalization of politics 161
Pitkin, Hanna 127, 140
Macedo, Stephen 73, 96, 116 political justice 54, 111, 122, 137
MacGilvray, Eric 78, 79 first principle of 44–7, 49, 50, 56
Malaysia 45 political legitimacy
Manin, Bernard 162, 163, 167 and free speech 81, 91, 92–8
Mansbridge, Jane 128, 129 Greene and 33, 36
March, Andrew 23, 100 and partisan speech 5, 152–74
McGraw, Bryan 63, 100, 101–3, 108–10, 117, and public reason 78
118, 129 Rawls on 1, 4, 60
Meiklejohn, Alexander 91, 92 political liberalism
Mill, John Stuart 93, 94 and democratic contestation
liberalism 86, 87 40–61
On Liberty 82–3 and freedom of speech 82–91
Muirhead, Russell 10 and partisanship 1–3, 4
Muirhead, Russell and Rosenblum, Nancy 2, religion and social and economic
9, 40, 101n1, 107, 111, 122 justice 46, 47–51, 52
Müller, Wolfgang and Sieberer, Ulrich 9 political mobilization 102–3, 108
multi-party system 30, 34, 111–17, 145 political obligations
Murphy, James 58, 59 consent and moral force 12–14, 20
‘mutual accountability’ 129n3 fairness 14, 15–19, 20
and motivation 38, 39
Nazism 25 natural duty account 6, 7
Neal, Patrick 63, 65, 66, 73, 75, 80 opposition parties 20
Netherlands 48 and partisanship 6–21
‘No-Party Democracy’ 165–6, 167 and political liberalism 22
and public reason 36–8
O’Donnell, Guillermo 128 and unfair schemes of cooperation 26–8, 29
Olsen, Tore V. 55 voluntary 7, 8
ordinary citizens, influence of 33, 34 political parties
overlapping consensus 99–123 agenda-setting function 155, 163, 171, 172
McGraw and 101, 102–3 as coordinating bodies 163–8
partisanship as normative ideal divisions within 60, 104, 160, 161
and 103–11 loudspeaker function 162, 170, 171, 172
196 Index
political parties (cont.) sites of deliberation 64–7
manifestoes 63, 68–9, 75–7, 155, 160, and social and economic justice 51
164, 167 and truth 84–5
‘programmatic generalization’ 68, 121, 136 ‘wide’ conception 4, 63, 67, 70–2, 73, 77,
public funding of 29, 172 88–9, 113, 133–42, 149
political pluralism 35, 111–17 and vertical accountability 133–8
political representatives 131, 132, 133, 139–40
Pombeni, Paolo 119 Question Time (television programme) 152,
popular sovereignty 30, 145n14 153, 170
Portugal 75 Quong, Jonathan 36, 111, 116n9
PR (proportional representation) 5, 30, 34,
143, 145–8, 150, 166 ‘ratio’ 165, 166, 167, 168
property rights 58 Rawls, John
public deliberation on accessibility 113
and accessibility 115 on civil disobedience 37n12
and civil society 163–4 on conceptions of justice 108
and common good 149, 150 on duty of civility 88, 90–1
and free speech 156, 159, 162 establishment/separation debate 42n2
and party pluralism 35 on fairness 15, 38
and public reason 63, 73, 76, 78–9, 89, 110, on freedom of speech 53, 81, 87, 92–8
127, 129, 147 ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’ 64,
and social and economic justice 52 65, 70, 77, 87, 88, 100
public justification on liberal democracies 106, 110
and accessibility 115, 119 on moral powers 90, 105
convergence account 117 on parties 120
and division of justificatory labour 124–51 on political conception of justice 122
and electoral systems 31, 125, 143–8, 149 political liberalism 4, 40–1, 47, 48–55,
and free speech 173 57–60, 82, 83, 87–8, 97, 115n8, 116–17,
indirect model 5, 72n7, 125–6, 130–2, 141 172–3
and intelligibility 116 Political Liberalism 1–2, 22, 70
‘justificatory pressure potential’ 34, 35 on political reason 3
and party pluralism 111, 112–13 on political obligations 9, 12, 16–18, 24–5,
and public reason 2, 34, 78, 83, 117, 138 26n3
types 139–40 on public funding of parties 29, 172
public reason 91, 92–7, 143–8 on public good 107
accessibility 2, 113, 114, 115, 119 on public justification 139
and accountability 126–8 on public reason 4, 35–8, 62–81, 85, 90,
commitment to 5, 140, 141 106, 110–11, 125–8, 133–42
and common good 106 on religious governance 44, 45, 46
constraints of 62–80, 102, 103 on shareability 115
convergence account 116, 130, 131 A Theory of Justice 6–7, 8, 87
and duty of civility 73–80 see also overlapping consensus
and electoral design 143–51 reasonable pluralism 35, 48, 83, 89, 90n7, 107,
establishment/separation debate 42 112, 131
‘extrinsic view’ 4, 63, 99, 108 ‘regulated rivalry’ 9, 10
and freedom of speech 81 Rehfeld, Andrew 140n12
fundamental/non-fundamental religion
matters 67–9, 70, 76 engagement outside parties 141
and horizontal accountability 128–32, 133 moderate establishment 45, 46
‘inclusive’ view 70 obligations 22–3, 27
and intention 66 and overlapping consensus 100–1
McGraw on 108, 109 and political liberalism 41, 42–3
and ordinary citizens 124 public funding for 49, 50, 52, 53
parties’ contribution to 136–7 and public reason 62–3
and political obligation 35, 36–8 religious freedom 41–3, 45
and religious symbolism 52, 53 religious governance
and sincerity 77, 78–9 civil liberties and rights 40–1, 43, 44, 45–8
Index 197
‘democratic accommodationism’ 41, 44, Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve
47, 50, 51, 54 Kalkinma Partisi – AKP) 28, 118
establishment/separation debate 43,
44–51, 52 UK
as fixed 43 British National Party 152–3, 167,
ideal models of 41, 44–6, 47 170, 171
‘Lemon test’ 75 Conservative Party 161, 167
and moderation 45 EU membership referendum 2016
religious symbolism 41, 52–7 152, 161
republicanism 52, 54, 55–7 first-past-the-post electoral system 28
responsiveness 34, 128, 133, 143, 145–8 General Election 2015 144
Rosen, Richard D. 46 Labour Party 161, 167
Rosenblum, Nancy 10, 16, 35, 65, 66, 69, 109, lack of written constitution 49
120, 121, 126, 162, 174 MPs’ duties 9
Rosmini, Antonio 119, 120 Public Order Act 1986 152
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 104, 147 Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 152
Russia 13n4 Scottish National Party 144
UK Independence Party 144
Sartori, Giovanni 10, 25, 26, 30, 34, 105, 134, ‘unitarism’ 10
137, 146, 159 USA
Scanlon, Thomas M. 86, 87 civil rights movement 110, 138
Schauer, Frederick 76, 83, 86, 92 Constitution 154
Schwartzman, Micah 77, 78, 91 disconnection 161
The Secret Agent (television election of President Trump 152
documentary) 152 Fifth Amendment 58
secularism 28, 42 First Amendment 50, 60, 75, 91
seditious libel 53, 80, 81, 92, 93 ‘First Amendment orthodoxy’ 97
‘self-authorship’ 58, 59 Pledge of Allegiance 53
self-realization, Aristotelian 55 political culture 135
self-respect 52, 54–5, 57 Presidential elections 1968 29n6
sexual freedom 134 and religious symbolism 55, 56
shareability 112–16, 119, 126, 134 slavery 70
Shari’a 100 Supreme Court 46, 56, 60, 66, 141
Simmons, John 7, 8, 11n3, 12, 24, 25, 27 voluntarism 14
Singer, Peter 30, 145
single-issue parties 145, 146, 163 Vallier, Kevin 112–17, 124, 126, 130–1, 132,
slavery 70 134, 139
social movements 110, 135, 136, 138, 164 van der Hout, Eliora and McGann,
socio-economic justice 28, 40–1, 46, 47–53, Anthony J. 30, 145n14
58–61, 134, 149 Vatican II Council’s Declaration on Religious
Sottiaux, Stefan and Rummens, Stefan 174n7 Freedom Dignitatis Humanae 100
South Africa 25 Vecchio, Giorgio 118
Soviet Union 25 Vietnam War 29n6
state coercion, justification of 36 voluntarism 12, 13–14
state surveillance 74, 75 von Mohl, Robert 105
Sturzo, Luigi 119, 122 voter apathy 28, 29
subversive advocacy 92, 93
Sunstein, Cass 169 Waldron, Jeremy 53, 54, 66, 67, 93, 97, 154,
sustainability 134, 136 157–8, 160, 165, 169–72
Weinstock, Daniel 149–51
Tomasi, John 41, 58, 59 White, Jonathan and Ypi, Lea 2, 65, 105, 107,
Trump, Donald 152 113, 116, 117, 121, 134, 135
trustee model of representation 139, 140 withdrawal from party membership 19
truth and free speech 82–5 Wolterstorff, Nicholas 62
Turkey
Constitution 28 Yavuz, M. Hakan 118

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P A R TI S A N S H I P A N D P O L I TI CA L L I B E R A L I S M

I became interested in the place of political parties in political theory during

which has failed to examine partisanship as a source of distinctive political

Chapter 6 rejects the ‘extrinsic’ view of public reason examined in Chapter 4,

The Political Obligations of Partisans

To establish whether citizens have political obligations means to determine

Therefore, I will argue, a voluntarist account of partisan political obligations

THE P OSITIONAL DUTIES OF P ARTISANS

The concept of ‘positional’ (sometimes also called ‘institutional’) duties is

responsibilities of family or friends or neighbours’ (Dworkin 1986, p. 196).

CO NSENT AND PARTISAN P OLITICAL OBLIGATION S

institutional positions in liberal democratic states do not involve performing

PARTISANSHIP, FAIR PLAY, AND POLITICAL

competing claims, for example, parties as we understand them (at least in

rendered possible by those restrictions, that generates corresponding partisan

First, partisan political obligations apply to all partisans, including both

Partisanship and Conﬂicting Obligations

To start a book on political parties and Rawls’s political liberalism with an

FAIR PLAY POLITICAL OBLIGATIONS

PARTISAN P OLITICA L OBLIGATIONS AND U NFAIR

democratic framework, it may be more useful to consider those cases in which

INCREASING THE F AIRNESS OF P ARTY POLITICS

What measures, then, should liberal democratic polities implement in order to

inﬂuence (direct or indirect) upon policy-making, proportionate to their

PARTISA NSHIP AND CONFLICTING OBLIGATIONS

How does my account, then, provide an answer to the problem of conﬂicting

voluntarily embrace (or refuse) the beneﬁts of partisanship, which crucially

PARTISANSHIP, FAIR PLAY, AND MOTIVATION

extensive body of empirical literature in social psychology (Tyler 2006, 2011;

In this chapter I have argued that under certain conditions participation in

Political Liberalism and Democratic

There is a widespread assumption, in contemporary political theory, that

LABORDE ON RELIGION AND POLITICAL

In her analysis of the implications of political liberalism for regimes of

separation’, characterized by the ‘[i]nadequate protection of religious free-

ESTABLISHMENT, SEPARATION, AND

Before presenting an alternative interpretation of the place of religion in

importantly, because it is not exhaustive. Between moderate establishment

undermine the nonreligious liberties of religious citizens, for example by

heresy and apostasy allowed by many moderate establishment regimes, how-

What is it, then, that distinguishes moderate establishment from moderate

One may argue that disagreement regarding the realization of principles of

Such disagreement concerns, for example, the beneﬁts and disadvantages of

emphasis in original), Rawls’s political liberalism rules out both moderate

POLITICAL LIBERALISM AND RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS

A separate set of issues analysed by Laborde includes instances of symbolic

‘a conception of citizenship which postulates that all citizens should be able

in Chapter 5), he also emphasizes that in a well-ordered society ‘everyone

SOCIAL AND E CONOMIC ISSUES, POLITICAL

matters. This is the kind of contestation that nurtures party politics in

The analysis of institutional regimes of religious governance is a relatively

democratic contestation of ordinary legislative politics. This is an important

Partisanship and the Constraints

In Chapter 3 I argued that Rawls’s political liberalism nurtures party politics

A ‘ PORTABLE P UBLIC REALM’ ? P ARTIES, P UBLIC

in binding decisions and electoral success may translate into legislation’

FUNDAMENTAL VS. NON -FUNDAMENTAL MATTERS

PARTISANSHIP AND ‘ WIDE ’ PU BL I C RE AS ON

available to partisans as the latter are constantly subject to a strong justiﬁca-

THE DUTY OF CIVILITY: MORAL OR LEGAL?

gradually introduced by Rawls in his conception of public reason would

ENFORCING THE DUTY OF CIVILITY THROUGH

It is worth assessing whether Rawls’s rejection of a legally enforced duty of