It is empirically well documented that self-devaluing attitudes play a significant role in explaining inequalities in political participation, college attendance and completion, and career prospects. The prevalence of such attitudes partly accounts for why women are considerably more reluctant than men to run for office (Fox and Lawless Reference Fox and Lawless2011; Fox and Lawless Reference Fox and Lawless2014, 504–505; Pate and Fox Reference Pate and Fox2018; Pfanzelt and Spies Reference Pfanzelt and Spies2019, 44) or pursue career and salary advancements (Ponthieux and Meurs Reference Ponthieux, Meurs, Atkinson and Bourguignon2015, 1054). It likewise provides an explanation for why students with lower socioeconomic status are less likely to be enrolled in and complete college than their more advantaged peers (James and Amato Reference James and Amato2013). Building on central elements of relational egalitarianism, this article offers an account of why we should be concerned about this particular type of inequality as well as what can be done politically to mitigate it.
According to the relational egalitarian tradition of thought, theorizing about justice should begin by considering the unequal relations experienced in a society and investigating how to overcome them. This focus is reflected in what Iris Marion Young has characterized as the five faces of oppression in her attempt to capture the essence of what egalitarianism should aim to combat: marginalization, status hierarchy, domination, exploitation and cultural imperialism (Anderson Reference Anderson1999, 312; Young Reference Young1990). While they are paradigmatic cases of relational injustice, these phenomena predominantly refer to instances in which a person or group of people fails to relate to others as equals. However, the ideal of relating as equals arguably extends to how one relates to oneself. While I suppose few relational egalitarians would resist this claim, it remains an undertheorized aspect of the literature. I attempt to fill this gap by considering the case of servility as a paradigmatic instance of a failure to relate to oneself as an equal. This is an important endeavor as it advances our understanding of what relational equality entails while highlighting a real-world challenge associated with realizing egalitarian societies.
A central aspect of the argument is that servility is objectionable (that is, that we have a pro tanto reason to avoid servility). While this may be the case for various reasons, I focus narrowly on how the personal badness of servility makes people's lives worse instrumentally as well as non-instrumentally. On this basis, I suggest a way in which servility may be addressed politically. To this end, I put forward a more controversial claim – that certain paternalistic policies may serve as a means of furthering relational equality to the extent that they prompt people to relate to themselves in a more egalitarian manner. I suggest that paternalism may effectively mitigate servile behavior on the part of those who are reluctant to pursue valuable opportunities and, at the same time, contribute to attitudinal change by increasing the salience of egalitarian reasons. I bring these theoretical considerations to bear on a concrete case by scrutinizing policies designed to promote a more equal distribution of speaking time (such as speaking rotation schemes). Relational egalitarians are particularly averse to paternalistic measures due to their allegedly disrespectful nature. Policies of this kind, however, may help combat barriers to equality by targeting servile attitudes as well as behavioral patterns and can therefore be attractive to relational egalitarians and others.Footnote 1 I seek to provide a systematic account of what servility means in the context of fostering egalitarian relations. In addition to contributing to normative and conceptual discussions of relational equality, such an account is useful both for evaluative purposes, as it provides reasons to prefer certain policy tools over others, and for generating hypotheses to empirically study the mechanisms driving behavioral and attitudinal change.
The article proceeds as follows. First, I establish the relevance of relations to self to an account of relational equality. Secondly, I introduce the concept of servility as a core case of relational inequality, arguing that servility in this context is best understood as the failure to acknowledge oneself as a person who is on par with others, in that one assumes an inferior moral standing. I argue that servility, in itself and by causing distributive disadvantages, is objectionable due to its personal badness. Thirdly, I introduce certain paternalistic measures as a way to mitigate servility, behaviorally and attitudinally speaking. I respond to three objections that critics may pose to my argument before considering how implementing rotation schemes in political speaking situations may help counter servility in the case of political voice.
Relational Equality and Relations to Self
For several decades, political theorists have been concerned with fundamental distributive issues, including questions pertaining to the currency of justiceFootnote 2 (Cohen Reference Cohen1989; Sen Reference Sen and McMurrin1980) and questions pertaining to the pattern of justiceFootnote 3 (Crisp Reference Crisp2003; Parfit Reference Parfit, Clayton and Williams2002). Yet relational egalitarians have argued that theorizing about justice would benefit from shifting the focus from these rather abstract matters to real-life instances of social oppression (Anderson Reference Anderson1999; Young Reference Young1990). According to them, equality should be conceived in terms of relations among people and not primarily in terms of distributions of goods (Anderson Reference Anderson1999). Hence, they deny that it is of intrinsic importance that goods are distributed among people in a certain way.Footnote 4 For relational egalitarians, distributions of goods matter only insofar as they are intertwined with the ways in which people relate to each other (Anderson Reference Anderson1999; Anderson Reference Anderson2010b; Scheffler Reference Scheffler, Fourie, Schuppert and Wallimann-Helmer2015; Schemmel Reference Schemmel2011a; Schemmel Reference Schemmel2011b). That is, distributions matter only when they embody, cause or are caused by unequal relations among people (Anderson Reference Anderson2010b, 18). Against this backdrop, my principal aim is to show that relational egalitarianism implies that we have reason to mitigate servility and its adverse effects. While I acknowledge that distributive egalitarianism may also have something to say about this, I maintain that relational egalitarianism is better able to capture our fundamental concerns about servility and, in turn, provide guidance on how to respond politically to its real-life manifestations. This view resonates with forceful objections to distributive egalitarianism for generally missing the point of equality (see, for instance, Anderson Reference Anderson1999; Scheffler Reference Scheffler2003).Footnote 5
By relating as equals, I refer here to relating as moral equals. That is, X and Y relate as moral equals only if they believe their rights and interests are, at a fundamental level, equally morally important, and act in accordance with such beliefs (Lippert-Rasmussen Reference Lippert-Rasmussen2018, 81). Many relational egalitarians hold that relational equality requires (at least) both a behavioral and an attitudinal component, that is, for relational equality to be upheld, people must treat and regard one another as equals (Anderson Reference Anderson1999; Fourie Reference Fourie2011; Lippert-Rasmussen Reference Lippert-Rasmussen2018; Miller Reference Miller1997; Scheffler Reference Scheffler2003; Voigt Reference Voigt2018). While it may often be the case that the way people regard one another is manifested in how they treat one another, these two components can diverge (Lippert-Rasmussen Reference Lippert-Rasmussen2018, 71). For instance, it could be the case that racist employees, in order to keep their jobs at a racially diverse workplace, treat everyone equally even though they do not regard everyone as moral equals. Conversely, imagine a workplace with strong racist norms. Anti-racist employees may here feel the need to comply with the prevailing norm set and treat members of different racial groups unequally, even though they in fact believe that all people, regardless of race, are moral equals. Accordingly, in order to relate as equals, it is not sufficient to treat others as equals if one does not also regard them as such, and vice versa.
While these examples focus on how we should relate to others, the ideal of relating as equals arguably similarly applies to how we should relate to ourselves. This is because our underlying reasons for relating interpersonally in a certain way are also pertinent in the context of intrapersonal relations. Hence, for X and Y to believe (and act in accordance with their belief) that their rights and interests are, at a fundamental level, equally morally important requires that they each consider their own rights and interests to be just as important as those of the other. Importantly, relating to oneself as an equal also implies that one relates to others as equals, since how one relates to oneself is mediated by how one relates to others.Footnote 6 Consider Robinson Crusoe-like cases of isolated individuals who do not relate to anyone else in any way. In such cases, it would make little (if any) sense to speak of phenomena such as servility or superiority, as these are inherently relational.Footnote 7
I take servility to be a core case of not relating to oneself as an equal.Footnote 8 Hence, I understand the relationship as a conceptual one in the sense that the presence of servility is sufficient for relational inequality to apply. I suggest that servile persons often fail to both regard and treat themselves as equals – although failing in either dimension constitutes not relating to oneself as an equal. Not considering one's rights and interests to be just as important as those of others implies a failure to regard oneself as an equal. In turn, acting in accordance with such considerations implies that one does not fully treat oneself as an equal in the sense that one, in actions and dispositions, fails to give appropriate weight to one's rights and interests. That is, we fail to treat ourselves as equals if we cast ourselves in a subordinate position in relation to others by, for instance, treating our own interests as inherently less weighty than those of others.Footnote 9 In what follows, I provide a more detailed account of servility before assessing why it should be considered objectionable.
What Servility is and Why it is Objectionable
To clarify what I mean by servility, consider the following case, which I take to capture the term in a paradigmatic sense.
Reluctant speakers tend to avoid putting forward suggestions and making their opinions heard because they do not believe they have earned the right to engage in discussions on an equal footing. They hesitate to interrupt when others make decisions over their heads with which they disagree, and when asked for their thoughts, they tend to shrink away. Their reluctance results in their not taking the floor even when they have good reason to do so.
Starting from this case, I suggest that servility is best understood according to the following definition of the term: To be servile is to fail to acknowledge oneself as a person who is on par with others in that one assumes an inferior moral standing. Footnote 10
Accordingly, servility is a failure to recognize oneself as an equal moral agent with an equal standing to have one's views and claims taken seriously (Anderson Reference Anderson1999, 312; Mackenzie Reference Mackenzie2008, 525). This attitude is manifested in the absence of recognition respect for oneself, that is, the kind of respect to which every person is entitled (Darwall Reference Darwall1977, 39). Recognition respect should be distinguished from appraisal respect. Having appraisal respect for oneself involves a positive appraisal of one's excellence as a person or as engaged in a specific pursuit (Darwall Reference Darwall1977, 38). Importantly, the problem of servility is not one of non-normative belief, because one's talents or achievements could be modest compared to those of (some) others. Entertaining such beliefs does not make one servile, or imply a failure of recognition (as opposed to appraisal) self-respect. Rather, the problem is holding a particular attitude concerning one's moral standing and rightful place in society, which is unrelated to actual talents or achievements (Hill Reference Hill1973, 90). Given that the capacities of different persons vary, what servile persons fail to acknowledge is something by virtue of which they are equal with every other person, namely their moral standing (Hill Reference Hill1973, 93).
Having defined servility, we may pause to question how prevalent this attitude actually is since, all else equal, the argument has greater practical relevance if it addresses a phenomenon of a certain magnitude. While open source psychometrics data (n = 47,974) suggest that up to 24 per centFootnote 11 of people hold servile attitudes, estimates from population surveys carried out in the United States (n = 503) and Norway (n = 51,217) lie within 9 and 12 per cent (HUNT 1997; Sinclair et al. Reference Sinclair2010). There is thus no firm agreement on how prevalent servility is. However, even if the lowest estimate holds true, it is not a marginal phenomenon.Footnote 12
Turning to the matter of why servility is objectionable, it seems, to begin with, obvious that it is disvaluable.Footnote 13 As servility constitutes a paradigmatic deviation from relational equality, we may say that it is bad in and of itself. In Samuel Scheffler's words, ‘[equality] matters to us because we believe that there is something valuable about human relationships that are, in certain crucial respects at least, unstructured by differences of rank, power or status’ (Scheffler Reference Scheffler2005, 18). In a similar vein, Martin O'Neill holds that ‘the badness of [servility] can best be understood by virtue of the contrasting value of certain kinds of fraternal, egalitarian social relations’ (O'Neill Reference O'Neill2008, 130). The value alluded to here does not necessarily depend on whether relationships absent of servility make people's lives better. Yet it is not obvious that we should endorse the view that egalitarian relationships are morally important in a world in which they are generally bad for people (Tomlin Reference Tomlin and Kaufman2014, 17, see also footnote 54). This suggests that at least part of the reason why we should be concerned about servility is because it makes people's lives worse instrumentally as well as non-instrumentally.Footnote 14
The claim that servility is personally bad in a non-instrumental sense can be understood as either being dependent on experiential harm suffered by those who are servile or as being independent of such harms. First, it may be bad for people to feel inferior in an experiential sense as it entails damage to their sense of self-worth (cp. Scanlon Reference Scanlon2003, 212). Such feelings are intimately related to the lack of self-respect that I have associated with an appropriate understanding of servility. Importantly, the moral significance of this damage does not depend on whether one is treated as an inferior or made to feel inferior by others, or whether such feelings are purely intrapersonal; both may compromise the bases of self-respect alluded to here. Secondly, we may think it is bad for people to be servile even if being servile does not frustrate their experienced well-being (Parfit Reference Parfit, Clayton and Williams2002, 86). According to this line of reasoning, the fact that some people are servile leaves them worse off in a relevant sense regardless of whether this is manifested experientially.Footnote 15
The claim that servility is personally bad in an instrumental sense is conditional on empirical facts. While servility does not necessarily affect distributive outcomes, I assume that this is often the case. Recall that relational egalitarians are not occupied with distributions in their own right.Footnote 16 However, distributions that are relevantly caused by inegalitarian relations among people may, for that reason, be assessed as objectionable (Anderson Reference Anderson2010a, 2; Anderson Reference Anderson2010b, 18). By ‘relevantly caused by’, I refer to a causal relationship in which servility causes someone to have less than they are entitled to. In the context of this article, I focus on cases in which servility leaves those holding the attitude worse off than others by inhibiting them from pursuing valuable opportunities that they are equally entitled to.Footnote 17 In the case presented above, servility leaves reluctant speakers worse off than others in distributive terms because it causes them to abstain from pursuing valuable opportunities to put forward political demands due to a belief that this is ‘not for them’. Since this mode of participation is key to obtaining many goods, inequality in this sphere spills over into other spheres. For example, inequality in participation may lead to inequality in opportunities to protect one's interests and secure full membership in the polity as well as to obtain engagement that is meaningful, self-realizing and socially esteemed. Importantly, the role that servility plays in generating distributive outcomes in which those holding the attitude are disadvantaged is not merely relevant within a political context but equally so when scrutinizing choices about higher education, health-related behavior, career paths, etc.
The upshot is that relational egalitarians should be concerned about the personal badness of servility – both instrumental and non-instrumental. Hence, their assessments of distributions should take into account disadvantage caused by attitudinal barriers to obtaining valuable goods. This means that relational egalitarians should consider disadvantages that individuals face as a result of a fear of feeling unwelcome or having nothing to contribute – even when they could in a relevant sense be construed as being mediated by voluntary choice – objectionable (Voigt Reference Voigt2017, 120). Accepting this view implies including in the scope of what warrants correction or compensation attitudes that reflect a distorted view of one's moral standing and rightful place in society as well as the distributive disadvantage they may cause. Establishing that servility warrants mitigation, however, leaves us with the question of how to further this course politically. I explore this question in the next section.
The Equality-Enhancing Potential of Paternalistic Policies
Having considered the concept of servility and why it should give relational egalitarians reasons for concern, I now turn to the question of how, if at all, we can address servility and its adverse consequences. This matters because many of the circumstances that shape individuals' attitudes and subsequent actions are factors that can be influenced politically. Although attitudes themselves might not be susceptible to direct control, policy decisions may affect what kinds of attitudes people come to have (Voigt Reference Voigt2017, 124) and the possibility of acting in accordance with them. While an extensive literature on affirmative action focuses on policy measures that target barriers to equality, it generally relies on the assumption that individuals seek out valuable opportunities themselves.Footnote 18 However, this assumption is, as we have seen, not always warranted.
Against this background, I propose that certain paternalistic policies might sometimes serve as apt instruments to influence people's servile attitudes and behavioral patterns. This is because paternalism seeks to directly alter individual dispositions; if successful, it may induce those exposed to an intervention to pursue opportunities they would otherwise have forfeited. By paternalism, I refer to a reason-based understanding of the term, according to which the good of people is accepted as a relevant (but not necessarily decisive) reason to bypass their agency in self-regarding mattersFootnote 19 (Dworkin Reference Dworkin2019; Feinberg Reference Feinberg1989, 4).
Depending on how they are designed, paternalistic policies may affect those who are subjected to them in two fundamentally different ways (Grill Reference Grill2017). We may distinguish between policies that work through agency-mediated effects vs. non-agency-mediated effects. Typical agency-mediated effects result from cost changes that induce an individual to reconsider a purchase or mode of action. By contrast, typical non-agency-mediated effects arise from physical coercion as well as subtle changes in the context of choice, which promote outcomes that are unmediated by any conscious effort on behalf of those who are ‘nudged’. On this basis, we may distinguish between policies that (1) increase or decrease the costs of options in the choice set, (2) remove options from the choice set or (3) change the salience of options in the choice set (Grill Reference Grill2017). As cost increases and decreases work through rational choosing aimed at furthering self-interest, these are unlikely to provide an efficient way to alter servility. Recall that servility in essence implies a failure to acknowledge the equal moral importance of one's interests and act accordingly. For this reason, policies of Types (2) and (3), whose effects are unmediated by rational choosing, are more likely to effectively alter servility. On this basis, I argue that a paternalistic strategy is attractive in at least one sense to the extent that it effectively prompts people to relate to themselves in a more egalitarian manner, behaviorally and attitudinally speaking. I acknowledge that this claim may strike some as quite controversial. I therefore briefly address three potential objections to my argument.
First, some might object that I am asking the wrong question by focusing on attitudinal barriers to equality, that is, barriers that could be said to be mediated by voluntary choice in some sense. It seems likely that a reluctance to pursue valuable opportunities, at least to some extent, is due to structural conditions. For example, the fact that some choose to stay in abusive relationships even though they are, in principle, free to leave probably reflects their embeddedness in a culture of dominance. For that reason, some have argued that we should stop asking why some stay and instead ask why others abuse. This is because focusing on the former type of question, as I do in this article, could be seen as blaming the victim for having internalized what is in fact external oppression (Schneider Reference Schneider1992, 558). In response to this first point, I do not mean to suggest that we should stop looking for potential structural causes of servility, and this is fully consistent with the research agenda set out in this article. Conceptualizing servility as an attitudinal barrier to equality does not imply that servile persons are morally responsible for their situation. However, eliminating external causes is not always sufficient. As Marilyn Friedman asserts, we could imagine that the law had the resources, capacity and will to provide full protection and justice to every abused person who leaves their abuser or co-operates to bring them to justice. This, however, does not provide any guidance about how to respond to those who do not leave their abusers and who do not co-operate to bring them to justice (Friedman Reference Friedman2003, 140).
Secondly, some may object to the paternalistic part of my argument on the grounds that paternalism is sometimes considered to compromise rather than further self-respect. To elaborate, paternalistic reasons are often rejected as unwarranted for interfering in self-regarding matters because they rely on the assumption (whether empirically sound or not) on the part of paternalist agents that their judgment is, in some respect, superior when it comes to advancing the good of those exposed to an intervention (Anderson Reference Anderson1999; Begon Reference Begon2016; Flanigan Reference Flanigan2017; Husak Reference Husak1981; Quong Reference Quong2011; Shiffrin Reference Shiffrin2000; Tsai Reference Tsai2014). Following this line of reasoning, it may appear paradoxical to claim that we can make people relate to themselves in a more egalitarian manner by treating them in a way that allegedly communicates to them that they are in some respect inferior. In reply to this second point, I grant that paternalism does involve expressing a negative judgment that may in one sense compromise an important basis of self-respect. This does not, however, imply that paternalism cannot, at the same time, help enhance the self-respect of those who otherwise fail to acknowledge their equal moral standing.Footnote 20 Moreover, to the extent that servility inhibits people from pursuing what they want, the paternalistic policies in question may be perceived as concerning ‘means’ as opposed to ‘ends’, and for that reason seem easier to justify (see, for instance, Le Grand and New Reference Le Grand and New2015, 27ff). Arguably, inducing others to do something that goes against their conception of the good life is more questionable than inducing them to do something they have difficulty summoning the willpower to do on their own initiative. The condescending aspect of paternalism is thus a pro tanto objectionable feature of it – but not necessarily one that cannot be outweighed on balance.Footnote 21
Thirdly, justifying an action or policy paternalistically presupposes that it is assumed to be beneficial to those exposed to the intervention. Hence, for this mode of justification to apply, servility must be personally bad for those holding the attitude and not merely impersonally bad or wrong. Above, I defended the view that servility is objectionable because it is personally bad. However, there may be cases in which maintaining a servile attitude and acting in accordance with it seems to be in the interest of the servile person because it leads to higher levels of experienced well-being. Imagine someone who has become so used to being servile that they do not know how to behave otherwise. In this case, the critic might argue that mitigating undesirable attitudes and behavioral patterns that individuals nevertheless identify with and consider central to their conception of the good would leave them worse off than before. In reply to this third point, I acknowledge that being servile in some cases does not detract from experienced well-being. However, this does not imply that servility cannot also be bad for those who hold this attitude. Recall that badness may be non-experiential (Parfit Reference Parfit, Clayton and Williams2002, 86). For this reason, there seems to be a case for paternalistic intervention for the purpose of mitigating servility, although the paternalism in question would then refer to an objective list understanding of well-being, which is admittedly more controversial than paternalism seeking to increase experienced well-being.
Having set these three concerns aside, in the next section I explore in more detail the possibility that paternalism may induce people to relate to themselves in a more egalitarian manner by scrutinizing the case of political voice.
Mitigating Servile Attitudes and Behaviors: The Case of Political Voice
In this section, I elaborate on how paternalistic policy interventions may effectively mitigate servility. To that end, I use the case of implementing rotation schemes in speaking situations to counter inequality of political voice, understood as inequalities pertaining to activities undertaken with the intent or effect of influencing government action through expressions of preferences (Schlozman, Verba and Brady Reference Schlozman, Verba and Brady2018, 24). By speaking situations, I refer to caucuses, citizens' juries, citizens' assemblies, participatory budgeting, and similar local deliberative panels and forums. For the current purposes, I am interested in the distribution of what have been termed assertive speech acts, understood as language that advances one's personal agency in a situation, as this is the type of speech act that is relevant to political voiceFootnote 22 (Leaper and Ayres Reference Leaper and Ayres2007, 329f). This is because expressing political voice is a way to inform public officials of one's needs and preferences, and to pressure them to respond to these, which is important for protecting one's interests (Schlozman, Verba and Brady Reference Schlozman, Verba and Brady2012, 96; Schlozman et al. Reference Schlozman, Verba and Brady2018, 2).
It is empirically well documented that political voice is highly unequal. Schlozman et al. (Reference Schlozman, Verba and Brady2012, 2) note that ‘citizens are not equally likely to undertake actions to let public officials know what they want or need, political activists are not representative of the citizenry at large, and a particularly acute form of participatory distortion results from the fact that those who are disadvantaged by low levels of income and education are less likely to participate in politics’. While inequality of political voice is surely not merely a matter of servility, empirical research suggests that it is a common cause. Quantitative studies have found that servility mediates the relationship between low socioeconomic status and low levels of political participation (Cohen, Vigoda and Samorly, Reference Cohen, Vigoda and Samorly2001, 751; Schlozman, Verba and Brady, Reference Schlozman, Verba and Brady1995).Footnote 23 This relationship is further supported by in-depth qualitative studies. For instance, Harrits (Reference Harrits2011) shows that assumed inferiority is central to understanding why members of relatively disadvantaged groups are typically reluctant to make their claims heard in political contexts.Footnote 24 Hence, when it comes to understanding inequality in political participation generally and political voice specifically, the prevalence of servility should be considered an important explanatory factor.Footnote 25 One way to address the issue and enhance equal political voice is to implement rotation schemes in political speaking situations which ensure that speaking time is distributed equally.Footnote 26 This kind of scheme has, for example, been implemented by the Danish political party Alternativet, with a view to securing an equal distribution of speaking time among persons of different genders during party group meetings.Footnote 27 A policy intervention of this sort could be relevant in various contexts outside politics, including academia and higher education, and it may provide a means of addressing inequalities between a range of socially salient groups. To support this claim, I consider how implementing a rotation scheme in a given inegalitarian speaking situation may help mitigate servile attitudes and behaviors on the part of those who are reluctant to take the floor.Footnote 28
Considering the behavioral dimension, implementing a rotation scheme at a caucus, for instance, would induce reluctant speakers to engage as equals in the speaking situation and hence increase relational equality in at least one sense. In its simplest form, a rotation scheme would require everyone to take turns delivering a speech act or have representatives of different groups do so. In that case, the policy would remove the option to not speak, which would fulfill the goal of an egalitarian speaking distribution. Alternatively, a rotation scheme may be designed in such a way that the option to not speak would not be removed but only made less obvious. One way to do this is to make speaking the default option while allowing potential speakers to opt out of speaking. This would be a less restrictive alternative which amounts to changing the salience of options in the choice set. The attitudinal dimension is more complex. This is because interference cannot block attitudes in the same way it can block behavior, as attitudes and behavior are not subject to the same principles of control.Footnote 29 Hence, the behavioral effects of removing the option of not speaking cannot be directly transferred to attitudinal change in a meaningful sense. Nevertheless, prior theoretical (Cohen Reference Cohen2009; Knight and Johnson Reference Knight, Johnson, Rehg and Bohman1998; Parvin Reference Parvin2018, 41f; Rawls Reference Rawls1971; Rawls Reference Rawls1993; Rawls Reference Rawls2001; Warren Reference Warren2001) and empirical (Finkel Reference Finkel1987; Stenner-Day and Fischle Reference Stenner-Day and Fischle1992; Valentino, Gregorowicz and Groenendyk, Reference Valentino, Gregorowicz and Groenendyk2009) studies suggest that changes in political behavior may cause changes in political attitudes. In particular, it is commonly assumed that political participation positively affects self-regarding attitudes.Footnote 30 Following this tradition of thought, I suggest that implementing rotation schemes in political speaking situations may support the transformation of servile attitudes on the part of reluctant speakers in at least two ways. Exploring how such a policy plays out in concrete political contexts is a subject for future empirical research.
First, over time, rotation schemes would affect attitudes, that is, the way people regard one another and, of particular relevance to the present purposes, the way servile people regard themselves. This is because transforming the context of interaction affects how we understand ourselves and each other in that context. As Cohen (Reference Cohen1997, 26) explains, ‘[e]xpectations determine behavior, behavior determines expectations, which determine behavior, and so on’. Hence, prompting reluctant speakers to speak more often not only makes them perform another role. It also makes them conceive of themselves as performing another role, which transforms their attitudes toward themselves in a more egalitarian direction.
Secondly, implementing a rotation scheme may change servile people's attitudes toward themselves by helping them to better appreciate relevant reasons. According to Jason Hanna (Reference Hanna2015, 627), ‘a particular means of influence [may encourage its targets] to appreciate and act on the basis of good reasons’. For the purposes of our argument, we should consider here the part of the claim that relates to appreciation. Appreciating a reason is not reducible to knowing a fact: ‘An agent fully appreciates a reason only when she assigns it the appropriate weight in her deliberations’ (Hanna Reference Hanna2015, 627f). Considering the case of rotation schemes in political speaking situations, I suggest that implementing such initiatives increases the salience of relevant reasons to actively engage in deliberation. In that sense, the policy does not merely induce reluctant speakers to speak more; it also encourages them to reflect upon the reasons underlying this policy goal. Hence, changing the default to a more equal distribution of speaking time makes the reasons in favor of this option more salient; at the same time, it encourages reflection as departures from this option require identifying good reasons to do so. From this reflective process, I believe most would reach the conclusion that there are no good reasons for not pursuing equal political voice. Engaging the rational capacities of those targeted by this policy thus prompts them to reconsider their reasons for holding back, thereby laying the groundwork for attitudinal change.Footnote 31 Returning to Grill's distinction between the three different policy types, I suggest that implementing a rotation scheme in a political speaking situation changes the salience of the options of speaking and not speaking, respectively. In turn, this encourages reluctant speakers to appreciate the relevant reasons to speak. Importantly, whether the policy will effectively foster attitudinal change as expected arguably depends on details pertaining to the implementation and context, including whether reluctant speakers are taken seriously and whether their views are subjected to scathing criticism when presented. In order to avoid countereffects, rotation schemes may be supplemented by further initiatives that secure a safe speaking environment.
Since behavioral change is arguably considerably easier to achieve than attitudinal change, I suggest that the effects of implementing rotation schemes in political speaking situations are likely to occur diachronically, meaning that behavioral change will precede attitudinal change. Since relational equality involves people treating and regarding themselves as equals, it is important to design policy interventions that effectively target both dimensions. Based on the above discussion, I suggest that this requires changing the salience of options in the choice set (perhaps in addition to removing some options). Nevertheless, policies that promote one or the other component of relational equality may still be justifiable.
Returning to the problem presented initially, recall that one reason why relational egalitarians should be concerned about servility is that it is personally bad in and of itself, and because it causes distributive disadvantage to those holding the attitude. As I have argued in this section, implementing rotation schemes in political speaking situations may help mitigate servility on the part of reluctant speakers, behaviorally and attitudinally speaking. More generally, I suggest that certain paternalistic policies may help combat servility in various contexts. As relational egalitarians are adamant that we should avoid paternalism due to its allegedly disrespectful nature, these are significant claims that support a possible reconciliation between relational equality and certain paternalistic measures. Such a reconciliation, in turn, has considerable practical implications in terms of making attractive a wider range of policies to politicians who are sympathetic to the spirit of relational equality, including attempts to equalize political participation and voice.
Conclusion
In this article, I have scrutinized servility from the perspective of relational egalitarianism, arguing that it constitutes an important (and thus far undertheorized) deviation from this ideal. I have suggested that servility, as well as distributive inequalities which are caused by servility, should be deemed objectionable due to their personal badness. On this basis, I have suggested that certain paternalistic measures may help mitigate servile attitudes and behavioral patterns. Considering the case of inequality of political voice, I have illustrated how implementing paternalistic rotation schemes in speaking situations may effectively alter servile behavior and, over time, foster attitudinal change by increasing the salience of egalitarian reasons. Hence, if my argument is correct, paternalism may induce persons suffering from servility to both treat and regard themselves in a more egalitarian manner than they would in the absence of such an intervention. This is an important finding that challenges the widespread aversion many relational theorists feel towards paternalism and which, in turn, suggests a rethinking of this commitment. It also has considerable practical implications in terms of identifying – and potentially remedying – inequalities that pose a fundamental challenge to realizing egalitarian societies.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Danish Philosophical Association and at a Political Theory workshop at the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University. I thank the participants at these events as well as Andreas Bengtson, Lauritz Aastrup Munch, Rune Slothuus and Hanna Mortensdatter Vandeskog for invaluable discussions and feedback. I am especially grateful to Editor Paul Bou-Habib, two anonymous reviewers for the British Journal of Political Science, Søren Flinch Midtgaard and Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen for detailed written comments that have greatly improved the article.
