Department of Political Science

TY - JOUR

T1 - Differential Voting Weights and Relational Egalitarianism

AU - Bengtson, Andreas

PY - 2020/11

Y1 - 2020/11

N2 - Two prominent relational egalitarians, Elizabeth Anderson and Niko Kolodny, object to giving people in a democratic community differential voting weights on the grounds that doing so would lead to unequal relations between them. Their claim is that deviating from a “one-person, one-vote” scheme is incompatible with realizing relational egalitarian justice. In this article, I argue that they are wrong. I do so by showing that people can relate as moral, epistemic, social, and empirical equals in a scheme with differential voting weights. I end the article by showing that from the perspective of relational egalitarianism, it is sometimes true that differential voting weights are more just than equal voting weights.

AB - Two prominent relational egalitarians, Elizabeth Anderson and Niko Kolodny, object to giving people in a democratic community differential voting weights on the grounds that doing so would lead to unequal relations between them. Their claim is that deviating from a “one-person, one-vote” scheme is incompatible with realizing relational egalitarian justice. In this article, I argue that they are wrong. I do so by showing that people can relate as moral, epistemic, social, and empirical equals in a scheme with differential voting weights. I end the article by showing that from the perspective of relational egalitarianism, it is sometimes true that differential voting weights are more just than equal voting weights.

KW - Elizabeth Anderson

KW - democracy

KW - relational egalitarianism

KW - voting weights

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85082936284&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/0032321719889870

DO - 10.1177/0032321719889870

M3 - Journal article

VL - 68

SP - 1054

EP - 1070

JO - Political Studies

JF - Political Studies

SN - 0032-3217

IS - 4

ER -