Naima Chahboun (Stockholm University), "The moral benefits of coercion: A defense of ideal statism"

Forthcoming in Politics, Philosophy & Economics

By Naima Chahboun

Would a society populated by morally perfect agents – some would call them “angels” – need the governing institutions of the state? Ideal anarchists deny that it would. According to them, the state can only be justified as a response to noncompliance with moral demands. Against this, ideal statists argue that state institutions will be necessary to solve practical problems even among morally perfect agents. I argue that both sides in this debate got it wrong. On the view I propose, state institutions are justified not because they offer solutions to practical problems (I agree with ideal anarchist that morally perfect agents could achieve this without a state) but because of the moral benefits their presence bring with them.

Of course, a society populated by angels has never existed, nor will it ever exist. Why, then, should we care about the governance of such a society? First, because we are curious beings. We want to know about things, like the existence of distant galaxies, even when this has no practical application to our life. Second, because it matters for how we perceive of existing states if the state is a response to nonideal circumstances or part of the ideally just society. If it turns out that even the ideal society would be governed by state institutions, this allows for a fuller reconciliation with existing states (though not with existing governments).  

The disagreement between ideal anarchists and ideal statists concerns the need for coercion. When I talk about the state in this context, I thus have in mind coercive state institutions. While ideal statists and ideal anarchists agree that coercion is in itself morally wrong, ideal statists claim that state coercion prevents an even greater wrong. Absent a state, they argue, justice and stability will not be realized even if agents agree on which the principles of justice are and are fully committed to this aim. The reason for this is that principles of justice often underdetermine action. Crucially, informational deficits and cognitive limitations will cause secondary disagreements about how best to realize justice in the prevailing circumstances. According to ideal statists, only coercive institutions can provide the mechanisms for coordination and dispute settlement necessary to overcome such disagreements.

I think that ideal anarchists can convincingly rebut these arguments. Coordination, though necessary, can clearly be achieved without threat of coercion. And even if secondary disagreements inevitably arise, morally perfect agents should respond to such disagreements through compromise. Compromise, I argue, is a moral requirement since cognitive bias not only distorts our judgments, but typically distorts them in ways that favor ourselves.

Does this mean that ideal anarchism wins? Not necessarily. Though state institutions are not necessary to achieve justice or stability, I argue that they come with moral benefits that the anarchic ideal society lacks. First, state institutions relieve agents of “demands on the will”, that is, the burden of actively giving something up that it would be beneficial for us to keep. By attaching costs to noncompliance, state institutions align moral agency with rational self-interest, limiting the demands on the will justice places on us.

Second, state institutions counter structural subordination that follows from differences in natural endowments. Some such differences – e.g. in charm, cunning, or physical strength – will affect agents’ capacity for free-riding or otherwise shirking their moral obligations. Of course, morally perfect agents will not act on this capacity. Still, whether the less endowed (in this specific sense) will get what is rightfully theirs or not will depend on the good will of the more endowed. To be dependent on someone’s good will is, with a neorepublican term, to be dominated by this person. Only when such dependency is overcome by state institutions is our society free from structural domination.

One may doubt that these gains outweigh the moral wrongs of coercion, or the moral opportunity costs of building and maintaining state institutions. Whether they do is admittedly an open question. Yet, one should remember that among morally perfect agents no coercion will actually be needed. We should therefore expect the enforcement mechanisms of the ideal society to be more like a dormant add-on to existing institutions than the enormous legal apparatus of today. Further, since I assume that agents will be morally perfect I can, without being accused of employing double standards, assume that the state will be perfect as well, setting aside any risk of corruption or power abuse.

But why must enforcement be carried out by the state? Could not informal mechanisms such as withholding social benefits from noncompliers – excluding them from the neighborhood party or forbidding your kids to play with noncompliers’ kids – counter structural subordination and relieve agents of demands on the will just as well? I agree that informal mechanisms could provide the necessary checks, but argue that they come at a higher moral cost than state coercion. If ideal anarchism relies, even in principle, on mechanisms of social ostracism, the ideal state is – from a moral viewpoint – still better than the anarchic ideal society.