(The views expressed in this essay are not the beliefs of my own, rather, a more interesting line of argument.)
Within a democratic
state, the demos are the citizens who are affected by the state and,
for the most part, they have the right to participate in political
decisions. Not everyone in the demos does have the right to vote,
however, such as visitors to the country, prisoners and children. The
reason for this is the difficulty defining a principle of inclusion
to truly decide who should be included in the demos. The current
system seems to have it's faults, with parts of the demos being
excluded from political participation rights, considering being
excluded from action affects those who are being excluded. As an
example, excluding children from having the right to vote on the
legal drinking age would seem to be problematic, as this kind of law
directly affects the children due to their exclusion from an action
that has been decided for them. Children, being citizens themselves,
are both directly and indirectly affected by almost every decision
made by a democracy, and as a result should be given full political
participation into the outcome of those decisions. The all-affected
principle disagrees with the exclusion of children in political
participation and holds a very strong argument for it.
The all-affected
principle of inclusion suggests that people should be allowed to vote
based on if they are affected by the issue in question. That is to
say that if the actual person in question is affected by the actual
political decision in question. (Goodin,
2007) The main question raised by the
all-affected principle would be how to know when people are affected
or not. The possible suggestion being that on a decision by decision
basis, the only group of people who are allowed to vote are the ones
directly affected by the particular issue. For children, this
interpretation would allow them only the vote on rare decisions and
not on the majority, as problems with money, jobs and welfare
generally do not concern children directly, and even things like
schooling and health-care would appear to be of more direct interest
to the responsible guardians of the children as opposed to the
children themselves. This seems to be an issue for the idea of people
being directly affected as it raises too many difficulties. The
practical application of deciding whether or not certain people are
affected by a decision seems very difficult, as certain people are
affected more than others and different people might be affected in
different ways. It doesn't seem plausible to organise who, of the
entire demos, gets to vote on issues. Also, it is unclear who would
make the decision of who gets to vote on particular cases, or whether
or not a case directly affects children. The direct approach, as well
as impractical, seems counter-intuitive as if only those directly
affected by politics are allowed to vote, then democracy becomes
restricted as it limits decisions to be decided by select groups.
(Scherz. 2013) It seems to exclude the opinions of everyone who isn't
directly affected by those political decisions, but who may know
someone who is affected and therefore be indirectly involved. For
example if there was a raise in taxes of businesses, it could result
in the redundancy of people who work for a company involved in order
to cut costs. This would be completely out of the person's hands, but
also if that person where to have a child, it would be a lower
household income and possibly more stressful living conditions – so
the child becomes indirectly affected by a decision that seems only
directly affects business owners.
What this shows is
that in order for the all-affected principle to make sense, we would
need to have a clearer way of defining who is affected by a political
decision than those directly involved with the subject. It is
certainly true that many people may be affected by a decision who are
not directly affected by the decision itself, but as a result of the
outcome.
With regards to
voting rights, children are potentially affected by everything that
their responsible guardians are affected by as the raising of the
child is, or can be, affected. (Greenstien. 1970) As a result, if the
all-affected principle involves the inclusion of members of society
who are indirectly affected, then by extension everything that would
affect a parent would also include children. This idea would allow
children political participation in a democracy for a much larger
range of decisions than being directly affected would. Especially
with 'the vote' on a shift in government with a general election, it
could be easily argued from this point that children are affected
enough by the decisions of a democracy to merit participation. Owing
to the idea that outside of decisions that concerns the children
themselves, such as the legal drinking age, it is important that
children could have a say in something that may affect their own
responsible adults, as a lot of worry could go otherwise unheard.
Inside a democracy, it is of importance that voices of its citizens
should not go unheard and therefore children become an important
voice in a majority of issues and so should be given a great role in
voting rights. However, does this go far enough? The idea of
affectedness by extension still would cause issues for children's
complete political participation for two reasons; the problems caused
by this suggest in favour of complete political participation for
children.
The first reason
concerns political decisions that do not affect either children
directly or indirectly through their parents. An example of this
could be the suggestion of a tax on childless households, which would
directly only affect people who do not have children. Also,
government grants given to help successful non-profit organisations,
whereby the parents would have taken a wage either way, so home lives
would remain mostly unchanged. Or, more questionably, parking
regulations, whereby the rules for parking a car in certain areas
change, etc. (assuming children do not have the right to drive.) It
seems that this would affect parents of the children, but the change
would be minor enough to not have a noticeable effect indirectly on
children. With these examples it suggests that the opinions of
children would not matter, because they are neither directly
affected, or affected by extension and therefore possible to reject
their political participation. Even in these examples, however, it
does seem questionable whether the children are affected, while also
leaving the difficult question of who decides the importance and
affectedness of children in such decisions.
In the examples
given, while not affecting parents of children to the extent their
home lives would be noticeably different, do seem that they would
affect society in general which does concern children. In the last
example there is a small chance that where someone has to park may
change their entire daily schedule, perhaps even make people change
the way they travel to work. This would affect home lives as people
may have to wake up earlier and become more stressed, etc. or it may
change the way children get to school themselves; children here could
potentially affected. In the non-profit organisation example, it
could promote the idea of someone creating a new non-profit
organisation or even a bigger boost to the people helped by an
organisation which could affect children or people who have or could
potentially have children. Finally, in the example specifically
regarding people who do not have children would promote the idea of
having children and would, as a result, have a potential effect on
the population and therefore society, and also affect future children
as more could potentially exist because of it. While neither of these
affect children in the present, it does concern society as a whole –
that children are a part of – and could affect children in the
future. The problem being that it seems so difficult to exclude
children from particular examples as the extent of their 'potential'
affectedness seems limitless. So, as oppose to specifically trying to
filter out when children cannot be included, it is far more plausible
to suggest that every citizen within the state could be affected by a
societal change. This is what concerns the second issue to the idea
of the affected by extension principle.
The second reason
the extension principle gives way to a more encompassing idea for all
citizens (including children) having complete participation and
voting rights on political decisions, and therefore included in all
considerations, is the idea that changes will affect the future. The
idea here being that even if children are not considered to be
affected enough by a decision to merit the right to have any
participation in it – one day it will affect them because they are
future citizens. It seems that if you are to consider only the
present, then children who will be affected in years down the line by
a decision that they had no choice in are being wronged by their own
democracy. Considering that all decisions affect all of society in
little or large ways, and every citizen is affected or potentially
affected by society in general, then this must also apply to children
as future citizens who will have to accept the rules as and when they
are old enough to have 'full citizenship'. This suggests that simply
deciding on a decision by decision basis, or the impracticality of
deciding to what extent children are affected by decisions, causes
too many issues for all affected by extension to even make sense.
It stands to
reason, then, that all citizens who are affected or will be affected
by a decision either directly, indirectly or potentially, should be
able to participate in political decisions as they are all an
important part of the demos. Children, as affected by home lives,
particular decisions and as future citizens should be allowed full
political participation rights in all decisions without fail for this
reason that they are owed it by a society that affects them
(Zermatten. 2009) and it would be very impractical to have to be
particular about specific cases, which simply would not work in
practice. With this idea of children's voting rights in mind there
still seems to be some arguments that stand in the way of the
practicality of allowing them to vote. One such problem is the idea
of political persuasion and coercion.
The current
situation within the contemporary government and people voting is
that people often need a reason to vote in the first place and have
someone to be voting for. As a result, being affected by decisions
does seem to be a good reason to vote – you should be motivated by
what you desire. The political leaders, as a result, attempt to
coerce people into voting by making clear their beneficial policies
they intend to follow. With children, it seems intuitive that many
would have very little interest in the politics themselves, so their
reasons to vote may be different to an adult's reason to vote. This
is the first issue brought about by having children vote – they are
a demographic of voters that political parties will want to vote for
them, so they may be unreasonably persuaded. (Scherz. 2013; Miller
2009) It would be likely that parties may put political media on
children's television, for example, with an attempt at being
'likeable', so that children vote for who they like, over what it
means to vote for them, etc. This, however, does not seem to be a
large issue for politics – as this appears to be what is already
happening. Most current political media is aimed at adults with the
intent of both giving information, but also to look presentable,
smart, fun, likeable, etc. and attempting to coerce people's votes
for them. The idea that this would also be done for children
separately does not deviate from that and works the same for any
group of society, from the elderly to the middle classes.
Another worry
people may have with the idea of children having the vote using the
all affected principle is because it assumes rights to people who are
potentially affected, and when in practice, potentially affected
seems unreasonable as almost anyone in the world could be
'potentially affected' by a decision. This, however, is a weak line
of argument as a demos of people possibly affected need not be
globally inclusive. It is well within the possibility to keep the
demos as citizens within the state, which also would rule out other
issues of allowing voting rights to temporary visitors to the state,
or those who are not able to be properly part of society, such as
life time prisoners or people with certain mental disabilities.
It seems, then,
that the current system, with the exclusion of children from their
ability to vote does hold back their rights as a potential / future
citizen. It seems far more reasonable by liberty to have people able
to vote according an all-affected principle of inclusion; a principle
that allows everyone within the demos to vote as they are potentially
affected by every outcome, and this includes children who simply are
affected by all outcomes. Children would simply be persuaded to vote
in just the same way as adults are and the fact that their lives can
can and likely will change when elections or political votes happen,
they should be allowed every right to participate in just the same
was adults are. As a result, children should be fully allowed to vote
and the result of this may be they many simply do not vote, or are
persuaded how to vote by their responsible guardians, whom the issues
more directly affect, but this should not be a problem to society
overall, as long as children are simply given the liberty to vote.
References:
- Antoinette Scherz. (2013). The Legitimacy of the Demos: Who Should Be Included in the Demos and on What Grounds? Living Reviews in Democracy, 4(n.k)
- Robert E. Goodin. (2007). Enfranchising All Affected Interests, and Its Alternatives. Philosophy&Public Affairs 35(1)
- Jean Zermatten. (2009). The Best Interests of the Child: Literal Analysis, Function and Implementation. http://lis.tees.ac.uk/referencing/sssl_apa.pdf
- Miller, David. (2009). “Democracy’s Domain.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 37 (3)
- Edward S. Greenberg. (Ed.) (1970) Political Socialization. New York. Atherton Press.
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