It does not seem that the argument generalizes to just plain democracies, for the very reason that Chris Bertram mentioned in the above post – some countries which have free and fair elections do not see themselves as being part of a project to advance democracy, do not share systems of values and practices with other democracies, and do not value the group ethos. Bertram mentions that nevertheless many democracies “publicly proclaim their allegiance to such [democratic and human rights] standards.” I don’t think this quite does it – there is a lot of room for completely different policies and beliefs within the notion of “human rights” and some democracies may in fact be committed to the project of a less expansive sets of human rights.

1.
Pragmatic concerns do not exhaust the debate, as many objections to international sanctions, to which I reply in the paper, are not pragmatic. One is the ‘lack of right’ objection, according to which interference in the affairs of a political community violates the principle of democratic autonomy. The second is the ‘lack of obligation’ objection, according to which states are not obligated to incur the high costs of sanctions, in light of their overriding obligations to their own citizens.

2.
Consistency in the treatment of unjust liberal democracies is important. However, I would like to draw attention to an interesting argument made by Chris Brown in this context. In his ‘Selective Humanitarianism: in Defense of Inconsistency’ (in Ethics and Foreign Intervention Chatterjee and Scheid (eds.)), Brown argues that we cannot always follow strict rules when making moral decisions and that ‘sound moral judgement always respects the detailed circumstances and specific kinds of cases’. This recommendation can and should be applied to cases of sanctioning unjust liberal democracies; presumably, no two such cases would be identical.

3.
Some comments referred to the problem of picking on Anne even though she is more environmentally conscious than other people on the whole. I have several replies to this objection:
a. Contrary to Steve and M. Gordon (comments 10 and 17), I think Anne is not so likely to say ‘the hell with you’ to her environmentalist friends. If she values the group’s ethos, and sees herself as an environmentally committed person, a rejection of the group’s ideals would be quite hard for her. Instead, it’s likely that she will come to realise her behaviour is not in line with her own values.

b. argument (a) can ground an obligation for liberal democracies to ‘pick on’ other liberal democracies: if liberal democracies have the unique capacity to convince an unjust liberal democracy to change its ways (a capacity which arguably they do not have with regard to non-democracies, at least within the limits of reasonable costs), then this capacity may create the obligation to do so.
c. The fact that Anne is more environmentally conscious than average (comment 1) does not give her the right to commit environmental harms, or to demand that the group ignores these harms because more serious harms are committed elsewhere. Similarly, a democratic political community does not have the right to demand that its minor violations of human rights be ignored, because worse violations are committed elsewhere. However I concede that it might be the case that if we have limited resources and can either sanction Democracy A for minor human rights violations or non-democracy B for gross human rights violations, we may reach the conclusion, other things being equal, that the latter takes precedence.

Pasternak’s example of environmentalists is a poor one. It has little to do with the anarchy of the international order in which the mutual obligations between liberal democracies are vague or non-existent. There is no “group” when it comes to liberal democracies. Admiring John Locke or reading the NYRB does not create a group. Sanctions within the group for violating norms suggests a level of organization among liberal democracies which does not exist.

The UN of course cannot be offered as an example of a “group” as it includes many horrendous states and to create a tiered system within it which distinguishes between liberal democracies and “the rest” is an interesting idea, and just that. The European Union might be a “group” and of course it is already formally organized (so I understand) with all sorts of internal sanctions between its members and clear responsibilities (though I don’t know to what degree there is any mutual defense obligation.)

Her analogy of an environmenatl group to liberal democracies fails at the threshold because so far as I can see, liberal democracies do not form any group within which there are agreed-to norms. Putting it another way, norms by themselves do not create a “group” with the moral much less practicallauthority to sanction.

However, the original argument was largely pragmatic as well – reprimanding Anne is useful because it would “preserve the integrity of the group and its loyalty to its values, and hopefully convince Anne.” The latter two are certainly pragmatic explanations. Which is why if pragmatic objections don’t exhaust the territory, they certainly exhaust most of it.

And like attending UN meetings on genocide it does wonders for the conscience without doing much for the reality?

I think your argument makes sense for small marginal differences in treatment (say waterboarding vs. electro-shock to the genitals) but not so much for greater differences (say using faked menstrual blood vs. electro-shock to the genitals) and really bad for vastly greater differences (say leaving prisoners handcuffed on the plane from Afghanistan to Gitmo vs. electro-shock to the genitals).

This is an argument that makes entirely tolerable our hypocrisy in protesting against the lesser rather than the greater offences.

What seems to do the work in the Anne case is that there is some kind of group, however loose and informal; so it seems if the analogy is to hold it only applies to groups that have some kind of formal structure and voluntary membership (along the lines of EU, UN, etc), rather than a group that one becomes a member of simply by being (or becoming) a liberal democracy.

After all, the Anne example wouldn’t work if other red-heads pressurised her into doing something they all did on the grounds she should live up to the standards expected of red-heads…

I’m quite confident that you would hold all democracies to the same standards; I am less certain that the actual implementation of any “let’s sanction badly-behaving democracies” would actually accomplish that.

1) Different standards of implementation. Anne only recycles paper and not plastic. The group recycles both.

2) Disagreement of standards. Anne believes in using cloth diapers. The group uses disposable diapers. (Note: this was chosen because environmentally speaking it is a wash)

3) Disagreement of objectives. Anne does not car pool but does have solar panels her house. The group car pools but does not use solar panels their houses.

Well, if a liberal-minded group of citizens decide to organize a boycott or publicity campaign – that may help and perhaps eventually even force their government to do something, I suppose. But it’s not easy.