Democratic Representation as Duty Delegation

Abstract

In the summer of 2021, when discussing vaccine distribution and how to weigh international need against domestic interests, one of my colleagues eloquently articulated a common view about the obligations of our political representatives. I quote him with permission. As he wrote, [T]he job of the US government is to use US resources and US tax revenues to help US citizens (and to a large extent US residents) first. Helping foreigners is nice— to the extent it doesn’t interfere with our own ability to help our own. Indeed, my view is that it would be deeply unethical for our public servants (who are not the public servants of foreign countries) to do otherwise. This is of course our normal ethical judgment as to policy decisions.

I think this common position is mistaken, but it is entirely understandable if one holds a familiar view of political representation as the implementation, in collective settings, of our rights of self-determination conceived in terms of the pursuit of our interests. On this view, we the people enable our political representatives to pursue our interests by largely transferring our rights of self-determination to them. Their remit is then limited by the circumference of our interests. As a consequence of this view’s popularity, our political discussions of foreign aid are morally contorted by discussions of whether saving foreign nationals’ lives would ultimately benefit US citizens, making the wrong considerations primary and often exclusive.

Keywords: Jurisprudence, Law & Humanities