Democracy and Poverty: Do Voters Have Equal Stakes?

Abstract

I present an objection to the idea of democracy as an intrinsically fair procedure. I show that this idea rests on the assumption that citizens have equal stakes in their polity’s collective decisions. I then argue that, in real-world societies, this assumption does not hold. First, I claim that participants’ stakes in a collective decision are proportional to the level of risk the decision imposes on them. I then show that, in real-world societies, the polity’s decisions impose much higher risks on the worst off compared to their wealthier fellows. Hence, the former have higher stakes in their polity’s decisions, compared to the latter. My argument thus shows that, in the deeply unequal societies we inhabit, democracy is not an intrinsically fair procedure. I then discuss my argument’s implications for a theory of procedural fairness.