If, however, you believe that governments really are just proxies for persons, and that citizens can be liable for their nations’ debts, the argument will not be persuasive.

Bill’s first point, namely the critique to the common argument that democracy is inherently better than dictatorship (usually buttressed by reference to the Enlightenment ideal of the expression of the people, the exercise of public reason, etc.) is well taken. I am also generally skeptical of claims of the inherent value of democracy based on these grounds. In the interest of debate, however, I’d offer a different (older) justification of democracy instead.

If we are to look at this question from an Aristotelian perspective (valuing situations that encourage individual human development, virtue or Arete), a new basis for valuing democracy over tyranny arises. Democracies at least nominally require their citizens to chose, to take part in questions of governance, and thus to have a stake in the working of the State. While Aristotle would not necessarily have agreed with the egalitarian populism that undergirds today’s conception universal suffrage (being something of an elitist himself), he certainly would have seen these activities as encouraging excellence among the populace.

Any thoughts?

I’m not so sure that Mr. McArthur’s point that all governments necessarily embody a sovereignty deriving from the people is so far off the mark. Or, at least, I don’t think that Mr. McArthur errs in the way you point out. As the other comments have pointed out, in the sense that a people have given implicit permission to even the most despotic regime by refraining from overthrowing it, even a tyranny such as you mention does enjoy at least some permission from the people.

That said, I do think that this proposition falls short in application towards the edges of the sovereignty bell curve. On the one hand, there may be such a state in which the State wields so much military/industrial/informational power that it may be no longer even possible for the people to dissent. In such a state, one could hold that the State exists in spite of the people’s will. That said, even in such a state, there may be some way in which there could be a rupture in the dialogue between the state and the people (a strike, a sit-in, etc.) that would undermine even such an intrenched tyranny as North Korea.

On the other side, I would take issue with Bill’s implicit assertion that a people that democratically elect their leaders cannot be held hostage. Although the mechanisms of a democratic state can be employed to remove an official who no longer enjoys the support of the people, such mechanisms are still imperfect and not instantaneous. The existence of lame-duck periods, the lack of better alternative candidates, and the existence of political parties all undermine any argument for the ability of any democratic to express the will of the people.

But under tyranny, there is no rule of law: the instruments of state power simply conform themselves to the caprices of the tyrant. Such thuggishness sets the tyrant apart from the The People, precluding any truly — or even fictionally — constitutive relationship. As such, no transfer of sovereignty has occurred; and anyone foolish enough to lend to the tyrant cannot seek repayment from his helpless former subjects.

Just how rough is this calculus? This and the other standards described in your dissent (when a people are being held hostage) seem to necessarily default to a bare majority.

On a separate note: why must we stop our debt calculus at 1776, if we are associating it with a body politic that is roughly the same? Why wouldn’t the newly-minted Americans be liable for debts incurred by the British government on their behalf (the costs of the French and Indian War, for example)? They are, after all, the same body politic. The fact that they were a colony of England seems to be a mere constitutional issue, in your telling.

What if one party has redistricted a permanent political majority, independent of political opinion? In that case, would we have to waive debts until the next redistricting commission came through?

That sovereignty derives from the people has been an axiom does not convince me that it is axiomatic (logically speaking, anyway).

In any case, states with unstable political systems seem unlikely to do much better in the status quo; there’re more reasons than metaphysical continuity to doubt repayment in such circumstances.

Garbanzo’s two suggestions are interesting, but the first seems to lack normative grounds (unless you use a thick version of the term “legitimate,” in which case the standard is question-begging). The second obviously creates epistemic problems, since it seems possible that some people are worse off in many societies than they would be in the absence of government.

The question, then: why should a tyrannical regime embody sovereignty any less than a democratic one? In neither case do citizens make an active choice to transfer their sovereignty; we simply accept the fiction that this transfer occurred. As to when a government truly embodies sovereignty, then, I propose two standards for your comment:

1) It enjoys a monopoly on the legitimate use of force
2) It leaves citizens better off than in the state of nature