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Welcome Threats and Coercive Offers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Daniel Lyons
Daniel Lyons
Affiliation:
Colorado State University
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Extract

In American legal journals over the last decade there were hundreds of pages of articles worrying over threats to justice and freedom arising from the power to withhold benefits. Government officials have tremendous discretion to offer or withhold foreign aid, ration-books, government contracts and jobs, welfare subsidies, public housing, tariff protection, academic grants, alien resident status, paroles, or exemption from conscription or combat, from arrest or prosecution or imprisonment. Right-wing economists have worried about welfare-state emphasis on administrative discretion rather than the rule of law. And left-wing economists have worried about the rich man's power to intimidate the poor man by threatening to cut off his productive work.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 50 , Issue 194 , October 1975 , pp. 425 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1975

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References

1 I will assume here that Q is coerced if P successfully tries to force Q to do y by threatening to withhold x, i.e. whenever P takes advantage of Q's necessity (or greed) to make Q reluctantly willing to do y.

2 In the ‘Threats and Offers’ section of ‘Coercion’, reprinted in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, 4th Series, edited by Laslett, P. et al. (Blackwell, 1972) pp. 101–135Google Scholar (hereafter, ‘Laslett’).

3 Laslett, , pp. 115–116.Google Scholar

4 In ‘Coercion and Moral Responsibility’, in Essays on Freedom of Action, edited by T. Honderich (1973)Google Scholar (hereafter, ‘Honderich’).

5 Honderich, , pp. 71–72.Google Scholar

6 Ibid, p. 69.

7 Ibid., p. 71.

8 The impropriety of the y Q is asked to do is relevant to coercion only indirectly, only when Q is reluctant to do y on any terms because he thinks y is wrong. Even if P thinks doing y is wrong, and we as critics think so, and Q thinks so too, but does not care, the transaction might not be coercive. And of course the impropriety of the x which P offers does not make the transaction coercive. Offering heroin could be a bribe.

9 Suppose Q is not reluctant to trade y for x, but has reason to be:

—Perhaps x is bad, or bad-for-Q, but Q does not care. (If Q is delighted to be offered heroin for a crime, P is not coercing him.) (Also, see note 8 above.)

—Perhaps Q knows he is entitled to easier terms, but does not know that P would ordinarily offer easier terms—the offer seems coercive.

—Perhaps Q wrongly thinks that he is not entitled to easier terms, and that P would not ordinarily offer easier terms—then the offer may wrong Q without coercing him.

10 Suppose Q is reluctant to trade y for x, but has no reason to be:

—Perhaps Q wrongly thinks that doing x or y is wrong. P's proposal could be coercive anyway.

—Perhaps Q wrongly thinks he is entitled to better terms, or that P would ordinarily offer easier terms—then Q thinks he is coerced, but we would disagree.

—Perhaps Q irrationally overvalues y—yet P's offer to trade x for y could be coercive.

My final formula states this criterion very cautiously: ‘P's proposal is coercive if Q is rationally reluctant to trade (Q is reluctant and has reason to be) and also if…’

11 D. & C. Builders Ltd vs. Rees, 2 Queen's Bench Division, 1966, at p. 619Google Scholar. Thanks to Professor Neil MacCormick for this example.

12 What is more, Dean Q would perhaps not be much excused for doing a wrong to avoid losing rich P's contribution. ‘Dean Q's shabby conduct here is understandable; he stood to lose a large contribution. But that does not excuse his decision to exclude all women students.’ So some forced wrongs are not much excused! (This is also true in central cases of threat: ‘It was easy to make John hand over the keys to his mother's house—it took only the threat of a punch in the nose.’) To force a weak person to do wrong by a mild threat is to commit the evil of coercion; but perhaps the recipient cannot use duress as much of an excuse.

13 This is why my final formula requires for P's coercing Q that P proposes the exchange. However, P could get Q to need P's x, then wait for Q to come to beg for x on any terms. This would be hyper-coercive.

14 I concede that P may wrongly think he is coercing Q (just as Q may be wrong in thinking he is being coerced by P). In Twain, Mark's line, ‘I thrust my nose firmly between his teeth, and threw him to the ground on top of me.’Google Scholar But in the cases I have cited where P boasts he has forced Q to comply, I think P's boast is justified.

15 See ‘Entitled to Complain’, in Analysis, 03 1966.Google Scholar

16 I wish to thank Michael Bayles, Vinit Haksar, Dudley Knowles, and Joseph Raz especially for their comments.

17 Laslett, , p. 129.Google Scholar

18 Laslett, , p. 116.Google Scholar

19 Laslett, , pp. 115–116Google Scholar. And Nozick also says that the reader who believes people should rescue drowning men gratis will judge that the offer to rescue a person in return for his fortune is a threat (Laslett, , p. 115)Google Scholar. Presumably this would be true also if P would ordinarily have let Q drown.

20 In fact, one could argue that such a promise is morally binding. If good men do not feel bound by promises made to kidnappers, then good men lose the power to secure their children's release by promises not to help the police, etc. Nevertheless, if such promises are binding, they are so in spite of their having been forced.

21 Honderich, , pp. 82–83.Google Scholar

22 Benevolent, meddling bystanders might forget this point, however. Lobbyists for minimum-wage laws might want to stop rich farm-corporations from hiring unskilled labour at marginal-subsistence wages. These meddlers may forget that if they cannot also force someone to subsidize the workers otherwise, they might leave the workers even worse off (if the growers automate, to avoid paying a ‘decent’ wage). In fact, the minimum-wage meddler's mistake can be expressed thus: ‘Since this wage-offer is coercive, it cannot leave the workers better off.’ And this can be logically derived from the claim that no threats can leave Q better off.

23 This assumes that Q's reluctance to trade y for x comes from a reluctance to give y to P at all, coupled with Q's valuation of x as worth only a little more than y to him. If Q does not hesitate to give x to P, and is reluctant to trade only because he does not want to be bothered, there is no clear coercion.