Abstract
This chapter explores the connection between compulsory voting in Australia and public reason, i.e. the view that political rules are legitimate only if they are justified by appealing to reasons that all citizens can accept at some level of idealization. While constitutional democracies such as the US assign a significant role to institutions like the Supreme Court in the process of public reasoning, parliamentary supremacy regimes rely instead more extensively on democracy and majorities. In a polity like Australia, which presents many features typical of a parliamentary supremacy regime, compulsory voting can play a key role in guaranteeing public reason, by forcing public officials to take into account a broad variety of perspectives, interests and demands, and therefore refrain from appealing to sectarian non-public reasons when justifying political rules.
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Notes
- 1.
See also later in this chapter the example of the ‘Lemon Test’ in the US, which constitutes a de facto legal enforcement of public reason.
- 2.
The priority assigned to democracy and majorities reflects a broader feature of Australia’s political culture, which is often associated with Benthamite utilitarianism (Collins 1985; Brett 2019). The latter prioritizes the maximization of happiness across society over the protection of individual natural rights (to life, liberty and property) that is central to Lockean liberalism and to the US political culture.
- 3.
Likewise, constitutional democracy regimes may not fully match the Rawlsian ideal. To that extent, compulsory voting may also play a role in such regimes, by providing an additional contribution (e.g. alongside a constitutional court) to the monitoring of public reasoning and the exclusion of non-public reasons from the justification of political rules. Ultimately, indirect public reason should be understood as a systemic process to which different institutions can make a contribution. The type and degree of contribution that each institution makes may vary depending on the type of political regime considered.
- 4.
This point should be qualified. The effectiveness of compulsory voting in guaranteeing that all voices are heard also strongly depends on other factors such as the electoral system. A proportional representation system, for example, may be more conducive than a majoritarian one to an equal consideration of all voices. In a majoritarian system the presence of safe vs. swinging seats may imply that not all voices are given equal consideration, even in the presence of compulsory voting. Furthermore, majoritarian systems normally encourage the formation of ‘big tent’ or ‘catch-all’ parties within which certain interests and voices may be assigned more prominence than others. Proportional representation favours instead the formation of a multi-party system in which different citizens and social groups are more likely to find (or be able to create) parties that closely reflect their interests and demands (see Bonotti 2017, Chapter 7).
- 5.
It is worth noting, once again, that compulsory voting is not a perfect solution. For example, it may not be sufficient to resolve the problem of persistent minority groups to whom no politician or public official bothers to offer justifications. Such groups may need, for example, special representation rights (e.g. Kymlicka 1995) in order to be heard and taken into account in the design and implementation of political rules.
- 6.
For some criticisms of the fairness argument, see Brennan and Hill (2014, p. 192).
- 7.
Sometimes this process may be more indirect, i.e. politicians may be responsive to their constituents’ reasons, which may be non-public and based on their partial interests (rather than being interpretations of shared basic political values). It will be politicians’ task to translate these non-public reasons into public ones, more specifically into specific interpretations of shared basic political values, and to challenge the alternative interpretations provided by their political opponents.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by the grant ‘Civic Virtue in Public Life: Understanding and Countering Incivility in Liberal Democracies’, funded as part of the Self, Virtue and Public Life Project, a three-year research initiative based at the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing at the University of Oklahoma, funded with generous support from the Templeton Religion Trust. I would also like to thank Valeria Ottonelli, Federico Zuolo, and the audience at the POLIETHICS—Seminario genovese di Etica e Politica, 14 February 2020, for helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this chapter.
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Bonotti, M. (2021). Public Reason, Compulsory Voting and Australian Democracy. In: Bonotti, M., Strangio, P. (eds) A Century of Compulsory Voting in Australia. Elections, Voting, Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4025-1_10
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