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Democratic Reciprocity*

2020; Wiley; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/jopp.12232

1467-9760

Andreas Schedler,

Populism, Right-Wing Movements

Reciprocity, the two-sided social norm of fairness that involves a duty to return favors, as well as the permission to return injuries, is widely recognized as a fundamental norm "not only for primitive but for all societies."1 Similarly, "[r]eciprocity is widely recognized as a core principle of democracy."2 Modern democracy is a system of conflict resolution that rests on reciprocal restraints: norm compliance by all actors is mutual and contingent on compliance by others. The animating spirit of democratic norms is neither sacrifice nor exploitation, but reciprocity. Good democrats are neither suckers nor scoundrels, but fair fighters. Despite the apparent consensus on the fundamental relevance of democratic reciprocity, the normative demands it entails have remained opaque, particularly its normative demands in the face of potential or actual transgressions of democratic norms. Normative theories of democracy tend to conceive democracy as a system of mutual cooperation which is sustained by norms of mutual cooperation ("positive reciprocity"). Empirical theories of democracy tend to conceive democracy as a system of mutual cooperation which is endangered by norms of mutual retaliation ("negative reciprocity"). With the exception of debates on militant democracy and civil disobedience, normative theorists have thought little about the demands of reciprocity in situations of "partial compliance," where adherence to democratic norms is problematic. Empirical scholars, by contrast, have assumed these demands to be absolute. If one actor breaks the rules, they have observed, others follow suit and reciprocate normative breaches in the name of justice and self-protection. They initiate spirals of retaliation that put democratic equilibria at risk. Partial compliance opens the door to democratic breakdown. The cooperative demands of reciprocity are straightforward in ideal situations of universal compliance; they direct all citizens to do their "fair share" and cooperate with everybody else who is doing the same. By contrast, in a world where adherence to democratic norms is problematic, the normative demands of reciprocity likewise become problematic. They enter into tension with the demands of democratic preservation. The notion of "democracy-preserving reciprocity" which I introduce in this article recognizes this normative tension and proposes to resolve it through a balancing act that accepts the normative force of "negative reciprocity," yet subordinates it to the imperatives of democratic preservation. Democratic reciprocity thus understood is not a simple normative principle. To prevent the unraveling of democratic cooperation in vicious circles of mutual punishment, it does not permit symmetrical moves of "tit for tat," direct retaliation in the biblical sense of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." In the service of democracy preservation, it is instead a complex principle that asks for the self-restrained and self-reflexive balancing of "conflicting imperatives."3 It responds to the competitive, as well as to the cooperative, demands of democracy. Accepting the logic of political self-preservation, it permits actors to protect their competitive capacities. Yet, imposing the primacy of regime preservation, it compels them to protect the cooperative foundations of democracy. After outlining the animating logic of democratic reciprocity, I will lay out its self-limiting demands in two contrasting contexts: democratic normality and democratic subversion. Despite a widespread recognition of democracy's reciprocal foundations, political science has invested little effort in elucidating the concrete nature of reciprocal democratic norms and commitments. We know that they are essential to the working of democracy and that their dissolution often precedes and precipitates the demise of democracy. Yet, we have spent little systematic thought on their normative logic in a ("non-ideal") world where compliance with basic democratic norms cannot be taken for granted. What do the norms of reciprocity demand in the face of actual or potential democratic norm violations? What do they license? What are their limits? Gifts and goods pervade our lives. So do evils and injuries. Everywhere, in every society of record, there is a norm of reciprocity about such things. Returns are expected: good for good received, hostility for hostility.4 Reciprocity is a self-limiting norm. It is not an escalating disposition, but an equilibrating one. It aims at balancing social relations, not at stretching charity or heightening hostility. Janus-faced, it encourages cooperation and permits conflict, while limiting both. It demands bounded ("appropriate") responses to kindness, as well as to nastiness. Both the retribution of benefits received and the retaliation of harms suffered must be qualitatively adequate ("fitting") and quantitatively commensurate ("proportional").5 In democratic politics as well as in social life, norms of reciprocity are "equilibrium preserving dispositions."6 They preserve social equilibria of productive exchange,7 as well as democratic equilibria of fair cooperation.8 Yet, given their two-sided nature, they serve to sustain cooperative as well as conflictive equilibria. As long as others cooperate, reciprocity demands cooperative responses. When others fail to cooperate, it grants permission to do the same and refuse cooperation. Hobbes's state of nature, in which life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," is as much a product of social reciprocity as ancient friendship or modern romantic love. However, while helping to preserve social equilibria, reciprocity, too, carries the potential of altering equilibria as soon as "deviant actors" contravene established patterns of interaction. When people start cooperating in hostile environments, norms of reciprocity may engender cooperative responses in others. When they stop cooperating in cooperative environments, these very same norms may create spirals of retaliation that obliterate all cooperative dispositions. In responding to anomalous acts of cooperation, the power of reciprocity is restorative; it may lead actors back to cooperative equilibria. In responding to unilateral acts of conflict, its power is corrosive or even disruptive; it may destroy cooperative equilibria. In a democracy, representatives must at least informally agree that those who win greater electoral support or influence over policy will not use their temporary superiority to bar the losers from taking office or exerting influence in the future, and that in exchange for this opportunity to keep competing for power and place, momentary losers will respect the winners' right to make binding decisions.9 Common concepts like "mutual security,"10 "mutual guarantees,"11 "mutual respect,"12 "mutual toleration,"13 and "elite convergence"14 express the same idea of democracy as a cooperative system of reciprocal constraint. Moreover, all established definitions of "democratic consolidation" or "democratic equilibria" require reciprocal compliance by all relevant actors. Some demand more (e.g. widespread legitimacy), but none less. None permits political actors to cheat their adversaries or calls for self-sacrifice by their victims. All assume that actors participate in competitive elections, accept electoral outcomes, and refrain from coups and rebellions because their contenders do so as well.15 Strong assumptions of universal, reciprocal norm compliance have also been central to normative democratic theory in the tradition of John Rawls. The "fundamental organizing idea" of his theory of justice as fairness is the idea of "society as a fair system of cooperation over time,"16 which is grounded in the principle of reciprocity: citizens accept its rules and principles "provided that everyone else likewise accepts them."17 Accordingly, his "ideal" theory of institutional justice assumes "strict compliance"18 by all citizens with their "natural duty to uphold justice." "Everyone is presumed to act justly and to do his part in upholding just institutions."19 In his perspective, "reasonable" citizens can be expected to comply "willingly"20 with their "obligation to play by the rules,"21 "given the assurance that others will likewise do so."22 Alongside the reciprocal foundations of democratic stability, empirical scholars of democracy have stressed the reciprocal sources of democratic breakdown. In typical processes of democratic crisis and demise, norms of "positive reciprocity" crumble, while practices of "negative reciprocity" escalate. Someone starts ignoring democratic norms, others follow suit, and before long they are all caught up together in "an unending string of mutual defections."23 Once the bonds of positive reciprocity are broken, democracies risk disintegrating in "an escalating tit-for-tat"24 of retaliatory norm violations. For instance, the processes of democratic breakdown in interwar Europe have been described as processes of reciprocal escalation of violence. Both extremes of the political spectrum grew armed wings, attacked each other, carried out political assassinations, entrenched themselves in perceived security dilemmas.25 Similar dynamics of reciprocal political violence and threat perceptions drove the Latin American wave of democratic breakdown in the wake of the Cuban revolution.26 So, clearly, norms of reciprocity carry the twin potential of either sustaining or destroying democratic equilibria. What are the normative implications of their two-edged empirical nature? In normative terms, the demands of "positive reciprocity" that direct citizens to "endorse and act on" democratic principles, "provided others can be relied on to do the same,"27 are unproblematic. In ideal situations of mutual cooperation, they ensure fair relations among actors as well as fair institutions. In "non-ideal" situations of only "partial compliance" with basic democratic rules, by contrast, normative tensions arise between the demands of "negative reciprocity" and democratic stability. Given the corrosive potential of negative reciprocity, democrats cannot embrace it in the same unambiguous manner as positive reciprocity. In the long shadow of John Rawls's "ideal" or "strict compliance" theory of justice, philosophical reflections on "non-ideal" or "partial compliance" theory tend to ask what justice demands from dutiful citizens who do their fair share in cooperative enterprises when others fail to do so. Should they do their part nevertheless, or do more, or rather less?28 Though sophisticated and insightful, these debates have no direct application to problems of democratic non-compliance. Their focus on social cooperation ignores adversarial relations, which are central to liberal democracy. And their focus on the demands of justice ignores possible tensions with the demands of democracy. Liberal democracy presupposes pluralism and conflict. It is "a system of processing conflicts"29 that "generates winners and losers."30 Its core institution, the competitive election of representatives, establishes zero-sum games in which the victory of some implies the defeat of others. The legislative seat or presidential term A wins is lost to B and C. However, while the democratic game is competitive, its institutional foundations are cooperative. Democracy is not civil war, but the domestication of war. In democracy, as in sport, competition is not unbounded, but constrained by rules that define the game and ensure its fairness. Its competitive spirit is embedded in cooperative practices of mutual restraint among participants. As in sport, the rules of the game limit the moves players may make and the resources they may deploy in the quest for victory. Soccer teams, for instance, are not supposed to bring in a second ball or shoot the referee. Democracy, like competitive sports, can only work as a fair system of competition if it is embedded in "a fair system of cooperation."31 Since no external enforcement agency exists, the democratic system of cooperation is "an equilibrium, not a social contract."32 It does, however, share a basic feature with contracts: both contractual relations and democratic institutions are grounded in reciprocity. What happens when some political actors stop playing by democratic rules? How are their adversaries to respond if they start ignoring basic democratic norms, such as the non-violent resolution of conflict, the protection of civil liberties, the acceptance of elections, the respect of legal and constitutional constraints, and the acceptance of "linguistic accountability"33? Such rule violations are not mere acts of omission that hinder the creation of public goods but acts of commission that inflict harm on others and destroy public goods. In Rawls's terminology, they violate not just the "positive natural duty" to aid others, but the "negative natural duty" not to injure others.34 Breaches of basic norms are instances of foul play which are not to be confused with the rough play of combative democratic adversaries who battle each other within the basic rules of democratic competition. When transgressive actors violate the cooperative ground rules of democratic competition, their rule-compliant adversaries "can justifiably feel anger and resentment."35 The norms of negative reciprocity invite them to retaliate and respond in kind. Negative reciprocity protects the fairness of competitive relations. It permits political actors to punish their transgressive adversaries and guard themselves against abuse and exploitation. It allows them to make their cooperative dispositions conditional on the good behavior of others and to protect themselves against unilateral aggression. In the face of foul play, they need not suffer in silence and "cede the political realm to the least scrupulous actors."36 While norms of "positive" reciprocity oblige them to reciprocate the fidelity to democratic norms others show, norms of "negative" reciprocity permit them to retaliate against normative transgressions others commit. The upside of direct retaliation lies in its capacity to restore the scales of justice ("an eye for an eye") and to protect the competitive standing of injured parties (as both sides end up one-eyed). Its downside lies in its potential to destroy the cooperative foundations of democratic competition. When democratic contenders play rough (within rules), rather than dirty (against the rules), direct retaliation often appears to be an appropriate strategy. Playing soft when others go hard, would be self-damaging. Competition is about winning. As long as competitive struggles remain within the bounds of basic norms, there is no need to go easy on competitors or pity the losers. Renouncing aggressive strategies which others deploy would amount to self-sacrificial "unilateral disarmament."37 Retaliation may also be a legitimate response to normative breaches below the level of fundamental democratic norms. For instance, when an opposition party sheds informal norms of cross-party cooperation in favor of an uncompromising policy of legislative obstruction, their adversaries may be forgiven if they "mimic the same kind of ruthless obstructionism"38 once their roles switch. In the face of violations of basic democratic norms, however, simple retaliation tends to threaten the institutional foundations of democracy. It does so in direct fashion: just as returning evil with evil does not create goodness but duplicates evil, answering democratic norm violations with further violations doubles the damage to democracy rather than repairing it. Retaliation also tends to inflict indirect damage on democracy by feeding spirals of punitive normative breaches. If one party starts, say, buying votes, libeling critics, or controlling courts, and others respond in kind, there is no natural stopping point to the escalation of mutual aggressions. In democracy, as well as in other social spheres, simple retaliation risks dissolving cooperative equilibria in "an unending echo of alternating defections."39 In standard game-theoretic accounts of democratic equilibria, mutual threats of maximum retaliation (yet not retaliatory acts themselves) serve as stabilizing devices. If someone were to break the rules, their adversaries will go to war. Democratic peace rests upon the threat of armed conflict. It is an equilibrium of mutual dissuasion in which partial compliance does not exist. In these equilibrium models of mutually assured destruction, reciprocal threats of retaliation ensure strict and universal democratic compliance for as long as they work. Once they fail, however, actual retaliation, be it in the form of rebellion or military coups, ensures swift democratic breakdown.40 Now, if negative reciprocity in its simple form of direct retaliation serves valued goals (punitive justice and competitive self-protection) while threatening others (the protection of democracy), we need to weigh these "conflicting imperatives"41 and set priorities. In actual democratic politics, victims of foul play may wish to give free rein to their desire for retaliatory self-defense, even at the risk of subverting the democratic system. Against their single-minded quest for just retaliation, the idea of "democracy-preserving reciprocity" limits the demands of negative reciprocity in the name democratic protection. Democracy-preserving reciprocity does not and cannot dissolve the tensions between punitive justice and competitive self-defense, on the one hand, and cooperative regime defense, on the other. Rather, grounded in a consequentialist Weberian "ethics of responsibility," it strives to balance these goals in a way that gives priority to the preservation of democracy. It rests on the "principle of democratic responsibility," which obliges actors to maintain "a sense of the damage likely to result from [their] defensive action."42 Blending normative sensibility with strategic intelligence, it obliges them to heed the norms of reciprocity in ways that safeguard the entire system of reciprocity. Yet, if the easy route of direct retaliatory acts is closed off to them, how else can responsible democrats confront democratic norm violations? Given the destructive potential of symmetric retaliation against fundamental normative breaches, democratic actors sometimes consider its opposite: passive endurance. Refusing to hit back, to betray their commitments, to break the rules, they endure antidemocratic attacks in silence. They maintain the high ground of democratic morality. Instead of repelling aggression with aggression, they turn the other cheek. Rather than "going dirty" on rogue competitors, they adopt the heroic posture of "noble partisanship"43 and keep playing by rules their adversaries have chosen to abandon. Again, silent suffering may be a plausible response to transgressions below the level of fundamental democratic norms. For instance, when a head of government (no need to name names) abandons all rules of decency in his treatment of political adversaries, insulting and ridiculing them like a resentful teenager, the victims of his rhetorical abuse may well choose to remain silent rather than feeding the news cycle with their response. In the face of basic democratic norm violations, however, the quiet heroism of unilateral "forbearance"44 tends to be "counterproductive."45 While its spirit of self-sacrifice is laudable, it tends to achieve little more than self-sacrifice. By renouncing punitive justice, passive endurance avoids the mutual destruction of democracy in spirals of retaliation, yet opens the door to its unilateral destruction by freewheeling norm breakers. Rather than permissive endurance, democratic norm violations demand punishment. To re-establish cooperation, democrats must be prepared to enforce cooperative norms through disciplinary action. In Robert Axelrod's terminology, they must show themselves to be "provocable."46 If they turn a blind eye to democratic transgressions, they invite transgressors to repeat and deepen them. However, if they wish to avoid both the interactive and the unilateral demolition of democracy, their strategies of enforcement must steer between the Scylla of mechanical retaliation and the Charybdis of passive endurance. They can do so by mobilizing the variegated toolset of democratic accountability. The first and basic principle of democracy-preserving reciprocity in the face of attacks against democracy is simple: fight them with democratic means. Seek democratic solutions to democratic problems. Call transgressors to account. Demand answers and seek punishments within democratic institutions. Counterattack by mobilizing any of the political resources democracy offers: speak out, articulate criticism and demand correction, get together with like-minded people, listen and talk to the other side, set up a petition, take to the streets, stage a sit-in, activate the media, tweet with prudence, join a party, campaign for your candidate, run in elections, initiate recall or impeachment procedures, stay informed, watch the legislative process, write your deputy, take your case to the courts, and so forth. As long as at least some democratic safeguards are intact, these tools of accountability provide the primary channels of negative democratic reciprocity. Democratic accountability serves many purposes. It helps to expose, punish, redress, and discourage normative breaches. And in doing so, it reinforces rather than debilitates the cooperative foundations of democratic conflict. Its manifold pathways of "negative reciprocity" offer mixtures of punitive justice and competitive self-defense that respect and protect democratic ground rules. The quest for accountability may be regarded as a minimal democratic response to breaches of democratic duties. Democrats should not ask for less. But can they ask for more? Do the principles of democracy-preserving reciprocity impose further restraints, or ease certain restraints, on political actors? I think they do both. In conditions of democratic normality, the imperative of preventing the emergence of retaliatory spirals imposes a set of positive duties on democratic actors. In contexts of democratic subversion, by contrast, the asymmetric balancing of justice, self-protection, and democratic defense opens the door to exceptional breaches of basic rules. It gives democratic actors license to resort to measured normative transgressions in the name of democratic resistance. Even though political actors and political observers invoke them frequently, we have little comparative empirical knowledge about how democratic norms of reciprocity play out in ordinary politics, and even less about how actors create and preserve those norms that sustain democracy as "a fair system of cooperation over time."47 As the literature on "the evolution of cooperation"48 suggests, elementary, mechanical rules of reciprocity are unlikely to uphold cooperative equilibria. Universal positive reciprocity, the disposition by all actors to cooperate with cooperative others, is sufficient to maintain universal compliance in an "ideal" world of perfectly benign robots whose intentions are transparent and whose actions flawless. Yet, in an imperfect world of humans with conflicting interests and ideals, who may commit errors and abuse and whose intentions are often opaque and whose actions contentious, the simple maxim of returning good with good is insufficient to keep the corrosive spirit of reciprocal retaliation under the lid. Even in a world of "strict compliance," the mere possibility of "partial compliance" obliges democrats to take certain "auxiliary precautions." They need to recognize and reward democratic norm compliance (positive reciprocity) and they need to detect and punish the transgression of basic democratic norms (democratic accountability). Yet, to pre-empt the emergence of self-feeding dynamics of reciprocal retaliation, they need, in addition, to adopt a small set of self-reflexive and self-restraining principles of reciprocity. Niceness. In his seminal study of the dynamics of conflict and cooperation in iterated mixed-motive games among self-interested actors (Prisoner's Dilemmas), Robert Axelrod identified one robust rule that consistently generated the highest collective payoffs on average, regardless of the strategic rules pursued by other players: "tit for tat." Even though its name has come to stand for reciprocity in general, Axelrod's "tit for tat" is, in fact, a highly specific rule of tempered reciprocity. One of its central features is "niceness": it is "never the first to defect."49 It renounces the demands of reciprocity in its cooperative opening move. Afterwards, following the norms of positive reciprocity, it avoids "unnecessary conflict by cooperating as long as the other player [does so as well]."50 Forgiveness. While "tit for tat" obeys the imperatives of negative reciprocity, choosing swift retaliation "in the face of an uncalled-for defection by the other,"51 it is a "forgiving" rule that retaliates only once. Rather than withdrawing cooperation for a prolonged period or ending it once and for all after one hostile incident, "tit for tat" reestablishes its cooperative attitude after a single retaliatory response. Rather than cultivating historical resentments and calling for perpetual punishment, it chooses to have a short conflict memory allowing for punctual punishment.52 Democrats may, and often must, punish normative transgressions. Yet their punishments should not be eternal nor irreversible, but admit the possibility of correction. If wrongdoers come to regret their missteps and return to the path of cooperation, democrats should be prepared to readmit them to the democratic process. By doing so, they do not forget the past or renounce punishment. But they do accept a fresh start. Forgiveness involves neither amnesia nor impunity but closure. Generosity. In reciprocal relations, "people often differ about how much is owed … even over small amounts."53 If they tend to overestimate their own contributions to common goods, they are likely to feel cheated in exchanges of exact favors, thinking they receive less than they deserve. If they tend to overestimate their own suffering in mutual conflicts, they are likely to feel injured in exchanges of equivalent hostilities, regretting that they did not hit back harder than they did. If actors, by contrast, accept giving a bit more than they receive, and punishing a bit less, they may be able to protect the spirit of cooperation from its corrosion by self-serving miscalculations. "A disposition to ignore small differences in favor of the other person reduces unproductive conflict and unfounded ill-feeling."54 Generosity breeds reciprocal cooperation. Petty book-keeping erodes it. Responsibility. In classic cycles of revenge, each side sees itself as an agent of justice, an innocent victim who redresses the wrongs it suffers from the other, malevolent side. It is always the other who started the cycle. It is always the other who commits acts of injustice. Any punishment of injuries faces the "danger of reprisals from people who feel themselves injured."55 To prevent the logic of negative reciprocity from creating unending cycles of self-righteous retaliation, actors who do wrong need to accept responsibility. Democratic actors are responsible actors. If, despite their cooperative dispositions, they, or their agents, or their allies happen to break some basic democratic norm, or are accused of having done so, they must accept accountability. They must accept the possibility that they may have committed a normative breach that needs to be punished and redressed. Responsible actors accept punitive justice. If they violate established norms and are punished, they accept their punishment as such, instead of viewing it as an original source of grievance that calls out for further retaliation.56 Responsible actors also accept restorative justice. If they have inflicted harm on others, they recognize their guilt, apologize, and seek restitution, as far as possible. Restitutive efforts "help to restore the confidence required for free and reciprocal exchanges."57 These elements of "enlightened reciprocity" are no more than general principles of good will and good faith that help to preserve cooperative equilibria. They appear to be plausible, commonsensical guides to action that help to protect cooperative democratic equilibria against turbulences that may arise in the course of democratic competition. They do not oblige actors to "turn the other cheek" when their adversaries play dirty. They do oblige them, though, to subordinate the imperatives of just retribution and competitive self-defense to "the demands of maintaining democratic institutions."58 The principles of "enlightened" reciprocity are meant to protect democratic equilibria against troubling normative conflicts that may arise from the ordinary democratic process. They are meant to preserve good faith among actors as they deal with occasional, accidental, or suspected transgressions of democratic norms. Yet, what does democratic reciprocity demand, or license, when political adversaries leave, or appear to leave, the democratic consensus and engage in systematic breaches of democratic norms? What are "fitting and proportional" responses to antidemocratic campaigns that do not abolish democracy, but inflict severe, albeit partial, damage on the democratic process? Contemporary debates on "the global crisis of democracy" have focused precisely on such incremental processes of democratic "erosion," "backsliding," or "subversion."59 What do the norms of democratic reciprocity demand and permit in such situations of stepwise democratic rule violations? How can the victims of authoritarian aggression contain the resul