Democratizing civil disobedience

Abstract

The goal of this article is to show that mainstream liberal accounts of civil disobedience fail to fully capture the latter’s specific characteristics as a genuinely political and democratic practice of contestation that is not reducible to an ethical or legal understanding either in terms of individual conscience or of fidelity to the rule of law. In developing this account in more detail, I first define civil disobedience with an aim of spelling out why the standard liberal model, while providing a useful starting point, ultimately leads to an overly constrained, domesticated and sanitized understanding of this complex political practice. Second, I place the political practice of civil disobedience between two opposing poles: symbolic politics and real confrontation. I argue that the irreducible tension between these poles precisely accounts for its politicizing and democratizing potential. Finally, I briefly examine the role of civil disobedience in representative democracies, addressing a series of recent challenges made in response to this radically democratic understanding of disobedience.

Civil Disobedience

“…Thus, some theorists put forth broader definitions of civil disobedience to capture the manifold political realities of principled law breaking (Welchman, ; Brownlee, ; Milligan, ) . For instance, Robin Celikates (: 4–5) defines civil disobedience as:

an intentionally unlawful and principled collective act of protest (in contrast to both legal protest and “ordinary” criminal offenses or “unmotivated” rioting), with which citizens—in the broad sense that goes beyond those recognized as citizens by a particular state—pursue the political aim of changing specific laws, policies, or institutions (in contrast to conscientious objection, which is protected in some states as a fundamental right and does not seek such change) in ways that can be seen as civil (as opposed to military).

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“…3 A number of philosophers hold that some limited forms of violence can be justified in civil disobedience (Morreall, 1976;Honderich, 1976;Welchman, 2001;Moraro, 2007;Brownlee, 2012: 21-22;Milligan, 2013: chap. 2;Celikates, 2014).…”

“…Friends of civil disobedience have deployed different (mutually compatible) strategies to answer this objection from democracy. One consists in challenging the supposedly democratic character of decision-making procedures in societies like ours, which routinely obstruct meaningful participation (e.g., Markovits, 2005;Brownlee, 2012;Celikates, 2014;Delmas, 2015a). Another is to argue that even where citizens have a duty to obey the law, they also have a moral right to engage in suitably constrained civil disobedience (Lefkowitz 2007;Brownlee, 2012;Smith, 2013).…”

“…Finally, democratic theorists respond to the charge that civil disobedients f lout the democratic process by painting civil disobedience as an essentially democratic practice, an exercise in popular participation that is justified from within democracy. Thus, some scholars emphasize the potential of civil disobedience to support the broader political process, by correcting the defects of democratic institutions (Cohen & Arato, 1994;Markovits, 2005), and others argue that civil disobedience offers a "dynamizing counterweight to the rigidifying tendencies of state institutions" (Celikates, 2014). From the latter, radical democratic perspective, civil disobedience is a form of democratic empowerment.…”

“…Philosophers have recently begun to think beyond the streets-, state-, and citizen-centered model of civil disobedience to international and transnational protests (Goodin, 2005;Blunt 2011;Allen, 2011;Caney, 2015) (some like Cabrera (2010: 132) even propose to view illegal border crossing as "something akin to global civil disobedience within a nascent global civil rights movement"); digital disobedience (Sauter, 2014;Celikates, 2015); and other forms of contentious political activities such as squatting and migrant activism (Medearis, 2015;Aitchison, 2015). Others propose to move beyond civil disobedience to resistance and revolution (e.g., Douzinas, 2014).…”