THE ROLE OF MORALITY IN POLITICS

What character traits ought we to look for in our elected representatives? The question may seem odd at a time when our expectations of our representatives have never been lower. The idea that politicians should be “respectable” and that they, if not we, should aspire to some higher ideal, seems to belong to a bygone age. Political idealism is to be sneered at, and politics, it seems, no longer has any place for outmoded concepts such as truth, honesty or integrity. 

Politicians with integrity?

British politicians themselves, when asked by the Hansard Society (Sylvester, 2010), highlighted integrity as the most important characteristic that a politician can possess. 

Strangely, there is not a lot of research about what characteristics voters look for in their representatives. We do know that generally the public has a low opinion of professional politicians. One indicator is that trust in politicians is at an all-time low. To qualify that slightly it was never that high to begin with. In the latest Ipsos-MORI Veracity Index (2016) just 15% of respondents said that they trusted politicians. More people trust estate agents and journalists than politicians. Admittedly, not by much but that’s not the point.  

Being seen as generally untrustworthy is as clear an indication as we are likely to get that we so not see politicians as the embodiment of integrity. Whilst this is probably a very harsh judgement on many hard working public servants it does represent a political reality. Politicians are viewed as “self- serving and as failing in their role as representatives of their constituencies”(Gidengil & Bastedo, 2014).  The general impression is of a group of people who are in it for themselves and who therefore lack what we might call ‘moral gravitas’.

What politicians think and what motivates what they do is important. There is little clear evidence that honest politicians fare better than less honest ones at the ballot box, indeed the opposite may even be true. Even if we don’t trust them there is a clear desire we should be able to regard politicians as what the theologian Denis O’Callaghan (1967) described as moral leaders. 

If politicians do not act in ways which raise the moral capacity of society, then the vacuum will be filled by those with less secular views. The level and tone of political debate can be a reasonable indicator of the way in which a society views its members. It can also set the tone for the way in which we treat each other, but particularly sets the tone for the way we treat those regarded as outsiders.

The philosopher Richard D. Ryder has argued: 

“Governments seem prone to be motivated by mere whim and sentiment. Many of their policies appear to be undisciplined either by science or philosophy”. 

The implication is that politics is conducted for short-term electoral gain, with only a passing consideration of fact or principle. Even where facts are presented their use is often utilitarian used as much to disguise as to illuminate the truth. 

The idea that a “fact” is indisputable is itself under considerable strain. Facts are treated as if they are mere interpretations and which interpretation we accept is a personal choice. In such a scenario politicians do not make decisions based on applying their firmly held moral beliefs, but rather weigh up the pros and cons of what is in their narrow self-interest. If truth is a casualty in this war of words then so are any underlying moral principles. Ryder’s argument that politics needs to have a moral basis was well made then and appears to need remaking today.

None of this is new, of course, but without moral conviction it is difficult to see what the political class are doing beyond mirroring what they perceive as public opinion. It is important here not to become misty eyed about a time gone past when all political debate was conducted as if part of a rather refined debating society. Or, to a time when fact was more in evidence than hyperbole. Facts and hyperbole, truth and statistics have forever been uneasy bedfellows in political debate. 

Since the advent of political polling in 1938, opinion polls have had a greater and greater influence over political debate. This has exacerbated a trend whereby politicians rather than trying to shape public opinion through argument, simply try to reflect public opinion, even when this may contradict their own views or the known facts. Politicians are increasingly reluctant to express an opinion until it has been filtered through focus groups and opinion polls. Better to have no opinion at all, than one with which the public do not agree.

Public opinion is often public prejudice

The problem of relying on public opinion to inform political decision making is that too often it allows prejudice to win out over compassion, it allows a mob mentality which has only been exacerbated by social media. 

And it increases what we might call the tyranny of the majority, a phrase used by deToqueville (2010/1840). He argued that democracy, specifically American democracy, with its checks and balances guarded against such a tyranny, but he of course had never encountered Twitter or Facebook (or for that matter the Daily Mail).

We want politicians to make the right decisions, we need them to do the right thing, so somewhere in all this decision making we need something to fall back on. For politics to retain its legitimacy it has to be based on more than rhetoric, hyperbole and self-interest. In my view that something is a moral infrastructure (Middleton, 2004). Too often morality is presented as if it is a set of individual life choices, rather than a collective vision of the type of society we want to live in. As the moral philosopher Roger Trigg (2005) has argued morality cannot be just what is in the interest of individuals (especially MPs), or what is in the interest of the majority. Rather morality “should provide the context in which all affairs are conducted and nations governed.” (Trigg, 2005:10) Indeed, deToqueville made a similar point.

To say that morality should underpin our political decision-making seems almost incontrovertible. The problem is that we tend to treat morality as something separate from politics. Largely this is a consequence of living in a society that has redefined itself in terms of individual freedoms as opposed to a collective good. That is not to say that morality can only be about the collective but it is, at heart, the collective response to individual actions. What morality does, that politics often doesn’t is give meaning to particular actions. As Aristotle, no less, would say “while it is desirable to secure what is good in the case of an individual, to do so in the case of a people or a state is something finer and more sublime” (Vardy & Grosch, 1999:22) For Aristotle the ‘good’ was defined as eudaimonia which translates, roughly, as happiness or ‘human flourishing’.

Do we have a right to happiness?

The idea that ‘happiness’ should be the goal of human society found its most cogent expression in utilitarianism, developed by Jeremy Bentham but given its most accessible formulation by James Stuart Mill. 

But if happiness is some kind of ultimate goal, we are entitled to ask: what is it about happiness that makes it so valuable? The truth is that it is not happiness per se, but human happiness. We don’t tend to care very much whether parrots, snakes, bugs or dogs are happy (actually we might care about dogs, but put that thought aside for a moment). 

We do care whether humans are happy. To say this is to state the obvious. It was so self-evident to Aristotle that all humans wanted to be happy that the goal was not to define happiness but to devise a society where each could obtain it. But, it is also true that we do prefer our own species over others. If I ask you if you want your child to be happy, you would have to be perverse to say ‘no’. And, if we want our own child to be happy, then clearly it would be wrong not to want other children to be equally happy. And, if we want all children to be happy it is not a big stretch to imagine that this is something we want for all humans. The point is that a moral foundation is based not so much on happiness, but something about humanity. We value humanity in a way which we do not, necessarily, value other life forms. Or, for that matter, inanimate objects (despite the seeming love affair some people have with their cars).

All humans have an inherent dignity

It is this human capacity for happiness, pleasure and suffering that is at the root of our moral outlook. Indeed, it is precisely this respect for the “dignity inherent in every human” that seems to be what David Schmidtz (2002) has 

described as our “basic moral desiderata”. To return then to our original question which was about decision-making, what I want to suggest is that decision-making removed from our moral infrastructure is decision-making which can be reduced to naked self-interest, or what is often referred to these days as ‘populism’, which is another way of saying ‘tell the people what they want to hear’. It is this tendency which removes the morality from politics. A moral infrastructure reminds us why we engage in political debate. It gives us reasons to favour one outcome over another. Rather than appealing to prejudice, self-interest and greed it enables us to develop policies and societies that are driven by a desire to enhance the dignity of every human being.

References

deToqueville A (2010/1840) Democracy In America Edited by Eduardo Nolla Translated from the French by James T. Schleifer (Paris: Liberty Fund)

Gidengil E & Bastedo H (2014) ‘Perceptions and Performance: How Do MPs Shape Up?’ Canadian Parliamentary Review 25-30

Ipsos-MORI and Mumsnet (2016) Enough of Experts. Trust and the EU Referendum available online at https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/publications/1896/Enough-of-Experts-Ipsos-MORI-Veracity-Index-2016.aspx

O’Callaghan J F (1967) ‘The Meaning of Moral Principle’ The Furrow, 22(9), 555-563

Middleton D (2004) ‘Why We Should Care About Respect’ Contemporary Politics  10(3-4), 227-241

Ryder R D (2006) Putting the Morality Back Into Politics (Exeter: Imprint Academic)

Schmidtz D (2002) ‘Equal Respect and Equal Shares’ Social Philosophy and Policy 244-274

Sylvester J (2010) ‘What makes a good politician’ The Pyschologist 23(5)

Trigg R (2005) Morality Matters (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing)

Vardy P & Grosch P (1999) The Puzzle of Ethics (London: Harper Collins)