Freedom and Equality in the Comparison of Political Systems

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Freedom and Equality in the Comparison of Political Systems

ABSTRACT: The notions of freedom and equality in a group are precisely defined in terms of individual exertions of influence or power. Freedom is discussed in the version ‘freedom from’ influence rather than in the version ‘freedom to do’ what one wants. It is shown that at the ideal conceptual level complete freedom implies equality. Given the plausibility of the definitions this shows that political ‘folk rhetorics’ in which freedom and equality often are put in opposition are misled and misleading. Quantitative notions of ‘more freedom’ and ‘more equality’ are introduced and shown to be independent of each other. The bearing of these conceptual exercises on the comparison of political systems is discussed.

During the last 5000 years the competition and contest of large, human communities or political systems, of which modern states are the pressing example, often was decided by a simple, `evolutionary' mechanism: war and force. However, the increasing destructive power of artifacts which are developed with the help of scientific knowledge seems to diminish the importance of this device—at least among communities with a somewhat rational leadership. For the mere use of modern techniques increases the risk of self-destruction even for that party which otherwise would be said to have won the `contest'. In this situation it would be desirable to have other, less violent criteria to check whether some political system is better than another one. If we could compare the quality of political systems in a purely conceptual way the practical competition among systems could be reduced to attempts at enlightening the citizens of the respective other system.

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...y remain unchanged. In particular this shows that freedom and equality—even if both are defined in terms of power—yield different criteria for the ranking of political systems. The fact that both these notions can be defined in terms of power does not imply that the comparison of political systems in these two dimensions can be `reduced' to one, more basic criterion formulated in terms of exertions of power.

References

W.Balzer, 1990: "A Basic Model of Social Institutions," Journal of Mathematical Sociology 16, 1-29.

W.Balzer, 1993: Soziale Institutionen, Berlin: de Gruyter.

W.Balzer, 1994: "Exchange versus Influence: A Case of Idealization," in B.Hamminga (ed.), Idealization VI: Idealization in Economics, Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities Vol 38, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 189-203.

S.Lukes, 1974: Power: A Radical View, London.

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