We the people: Is the polity the state?

Stephanie Collins; Holly Lawford-Smith

doi:10.1017/apa.2020.15

We the people: Is the polity the state?

Stephanie Collins
, Holly Lawford-Smith

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

When a liberal-democratic state signs a treaty or wages a war, does its whole polity do those things? In this article, we approach this question via the recent social ontological literature on collective agency. We provide arguments that it does and that it does not. The arguments are presented via three considerations: the polity's control over what the state does; the polity's unity; and the influence of individual polity members. We suggest that the answer to our question differs for different liberal-democratic states and depends on two underlying considerations: (1) the amount of discretion held by the state's officeholders; (2) the extent to which the democratic procedure is deliberative rather than aggregative.

Original language	English
Article number	2000015
Pages (from-to)	78-97
Number of pages	20
Journal	Journal of the American Philosophical Association
Volume	7
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2020.15
Publication status	Published - 2021
Externally published	Yes

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Keywords

agency
collective intentions
group action
group agency
ontology

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10.1017/apa.2020.15

Cite this

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title = "We the people: Is the polity the state?",

abstract = "When a liberal-democratic state signs a treaty or wages a war, does its whole polity do those things? In this article, we approach this question via the recent social ontological literature on collective agency. We provide arguments that it does and that it does not. The arguments are presented via three considerations: the polity's control over what the state does; the polity's unity; and the influence of individual polity members. We suggest that the answer to our question differs for different liberal-democratic states and depends on two underlying considerations: (1) the amount of discretion held by the state's officeholders; (2) the extent to which the democratic procedure is deliberative rather than aggregative.",

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note = "Funding Information: We are grateful to audiences at {\AA}rhus University, Ume{\aa} University, Edinburgh University, the University of Warwick, the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University, the London School of Economics, Monash University, the Society for Applied Philosophy's 2017 conference, the European Network for Social Ontology's 2017 conference, the Open University, the 2017 Mancept Workshops in Political Theory, the 2017 meeting of the New Zealand Association for Philosophy at the University of Otago, and the Dianoia Institute of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University. For comments on written versions, we thank Bob Goodin, Christine Hobden, Daniel Mu{\~n}oz, Ben Sachs, Anselm Spindler, and the research group on the normative and moral foundations of group agency at the University of Vienna. Stephanie Collins worked on this article while she was a visiting research professor at the University of Vienna, for which it received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 740922). Other parts of her work on this article received financial support under the Australian Research Council's Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (project no. DE200101413). Publisher Copyright: Copyright {\textcopyright} American Philosophical Association 2021.",

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We the people: Is the polity the state?

Abstract

UN SDGs

Keywords

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