The NHSEB case-writing team deserves kudos for all the cases, but I especially enjoyed case #7. It enriched and challenged my understanding, and left me undecided on the issue even 24 hours after first reading it. Let’s see if I can make some sense of my conflicting intuitions.
Case 7 asks us to consider the ethics of outside influence in domestic political decisions, and offers three examples:
- Foreign activists influencing the 2018 referendum on Ireland’s constitutional abortion ban
- Civil rights activists (often from areas of the country outside of the South) advocating for desegregation and racial equality during the 1960s
- Russian-funded political ads which influenced the 2016 American presidential election
On the one hand, maybe the result is what’s most important. If we think that overturning Ireland’s abortion ban was morally best, the progress of the Civil Rights movement was morally best, and the outcome of the 2016 election was morally best, then we might welcome outside influence.
On the other hand, maybe we want each country’s citizens to make their own political decisions. Part of the allure of democracy is that it allows people to self-govern through the collective consideration and endorsement of laws. But to the extent that the legislative and voting process is manipulated by outsiders, the result doesn’t reflect the untainted views of the citizenry.
With the Civil Rights movement, one could argue (and the case alludes to the fact) that while Freedom Riders often weren’t from segregationist states, they were citizens of the United States, and since civil rights was a federal issue, their influence wasn’t external after all, or at least not as external as Americans influencing Ireland’s abortion policies, or Russians influencing America’s presidency.
The civil rights scenario is actually the only one with an uncontroversial outcome, for it’s clear that humans deserve equal treatment independent of their race. Abortion, on the other hand, is hotly contested, and so too is whether Clinton or Trump were better suited to be America’s president. Therefore, it might be best to set aside the abortion and presidency cases and focus on the Civil Rights activists, or to (possibly even better) consider a hypothetical scenario where the morality is less controversial.
Imagine European protestors opposing Hitler. On the one hand, we respect Germans’ interest in autonomous self-government. But on the other hand, it’s clear that Nazi death camps are unethical – in fact so unethical as to override our usual deference to countries’ citizens to self-govern. In this clear case, it would seem that the outcome is more important than the process, and therefore we’d endorse outside interference.
It’s questionable whether we’d say the same for less extreme cases – might want to defer to a peoples’ internal judgment when equally intelligent people reasonably disagree, as they continue to do over both abortion and Trump v. Clinton. However, you might argue that the stakes for abortion in Ireland and/or the presidency in the U.S. were similarly grave to those of death camps in Germany. One pits women’s interest in being able to end unwanted pregnancies against the value of a potential person. The other concerns the influence of a nation’s chief executive on everything from healthcare to Supreme Court Justice nominees to control of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Those are some pretty high stakes! Arguably high enough to allow outside interference, only though only of the right sort.
That is, whatever your current view on abortion and Trump v. Clinton, imagine like-minded foreigners working to move American politics in that direction. When the outside support is on your side, it doesn’t seem as objectionable, does it? Or are your own intuitions driving you to defer instead to the integrity of the democratic process? I remain conflicted… But then when I consider outside protestors opposing Hitler, return to the tentative view that when the stakes are high enough, outside intervention is OK.
Teams, you have the luxury of a group of intelligent teammates and coaches – hoping these initial thoughts will spur good discussion. Should you figure this out, please share in a comment below – I need the help 🙂 Cheers, Matt