Decent Peoples, Political Legitimacy, and Informed Consent

Abstract

In The Law of Peoples, John Rawls attempts to work out principles of justice for the foreign policy of a reasonably just liberal people. One of his primary goals is to establish the minimum requirements necessary for a people to be an equal member (or a 'members in good standing') within a Society of Peoples (SoP). While Rawls believes that all well-ordered liberal peoples meet these requirements, he also believes that there are non-liberal peoples that are capable of doing so as well. He thus imagines the possibility of a non-liberal, well-ordered people. He calls such peoples Decent Hierarchical Societies (DHS). For Rawls, then, a fully just SoP need not constituted exclusively by liberal peoples. In this paper I argue against the inclusion of DHSs within the SoP on social epistemic grounds. More specifically, I argue that because DHSs do not secure for their members certain liberal rights--namely, the freedom of speech (and, consequently, freedom of the press)--such members will not have available to them the necessary means to give their legitimate (or free) support. This will result in DHSs violating a necessary condition of 'well-orderedness,' namely, that members freely support the basic institutions of their society, or what I call the political legitimacy condition. As such, DHSs should not be regarded as members in good standing within the SoP.