Micro-domination
| Author | Orlando Lazar |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14748851211020626 |
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article EJPT
Micro-domination
Orlando Lazar
St Edmund Hall & Balliol College, University of Oxford, UK
Abstract
This article analyses the phenomenon of ‘micro-domination’, in which a series of dom-
inated choices are individually inconsequential for a person’s freedom but collectively
consequential. Where the choices concerned are objectively inconsequential, micro-
domination poses a problem for ‘objective threshold’ accounts of domination which
either prioritise particularly bad forms of domination or exclude powers that do not
risk causing serious harm to their victims. Where the choices concerned are subjec-
tively inconsequential to the victim, micro-domination poses a problem for the
common republican strategy of creating arenas of contestation for victims of domina-
tion, which rely on victims objecting strongly enough to a dominating relationship to
sound the alarm. This kind of invigilation may systematically fail victims of micro-
domination. Throughout the article, I suggest some ways of better accounting for
and responding to cases of micro-domination.
Keywords
Domination, power, republicanism
Sometimes domination is obviously very serious: a state’s power to break down
your door in the middle of the night and lock you in a prison cell, for instance, or a
man’s power to beat or starve his family with impunity. These are serious power
imbalances involving the ability to cause serious harms. But sometimes the poten-
tial harms involved are not obviously serious. My neighbour could refuse my
request to borrow his screwdriver – if he does, I will have to go and buy one.
Corresponding author:
Orlando Lazar, University of Oxford, St Edmund Hall, Queen’s Lane, Oxford, OX1 4AR, UK.
Email: orlando.lazar-gillard@balliol.ox.ac.uk
European Journal of Political Theory
!The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14748851211020626
journals.sagepub.com/home/ept
2023, Vol. 22(2) 217–237
Perhaps my landlord can decide whether the garden is being kept in a good con-
dition, and can tell me to cut the grass once a week rather than once a month. Or
perhaps my manager can decide whether I am dressed professionally, and can tell
me to wear trousers rather than jeans.
On their own, none of these powers risk serious harm, and they may be little
more than irritating. Nonetheless, I will argue that some of them, and others like
them, are extremely important forms of domination. In this article I sketch out and
explore the phenomenon of ‘micro-domination’, in which a series of dominated
choices are individually inconsequential but collectively consequential.
Contemporary republicanism risks systematically ignoring micro-domination in
at least two senses.
Where the choices concerned are objectively inconsequential, micro-domination
poses a problem for what I call ‘threshold’ accounts of domination, such as those
offered by Philip Pettit (2012), C
ecile Laborde (2010) and Christopher
McCammon (2015). These threshold accounts aim to do one of two things:
either prioritise (more or less strongly) particularly bad forms of domination, or
keep domination a morally serious category by excluding those would-be domi-
nating powers that do not risk causing serious harm to their victims, by whichever
objective threshold harm is defined – infringing on my basic liberties, causing me to
fail to meet my basic needs, threatening my basic capabilities, and so on. In the
case of micro-domination, they risk failing in both tasks.
Where the choices concerned are subjectively inconsequential to the victim,
micro-domination poses a problem for the common republican strategy of creating
arenas of contestation for victims of domination – the ‘fire-alarm’ model of invig-
ilation – which relies on victims objecting strongly enough to a dominating rela-
tionship to sound the alarm. This kind of invigilation may systematically fail
victims of micro-domination.
Micro-domination, then, complicates two important parts of the contempo-
rary republican project: attempts to carve out those kinds of domination that we
should care especially about (or, at the lower end of the scale, attempts to keep
domination a morally serious affair), and attempts to reform public and private
institutions to best reduce that domination. Although they are overlooked in the
literature, these problems are not insuperable, and throughout the article I sug-
gest some ways of moving forward that better account for cases of micro-
domination.
The first section offers a general account of domination, and the second sec-
tion introduces micro-domination. The third and fourth sections focus on the
problems that micro-domination poses for objective threshold accounts of dom-
ination, and the fifth explores the problems it poses for the use of subjective
thresholds as part of some common strategies to reduce domination, sketching
an alternative and superior strategy in the form of democratisation. Throughout
the article, I suggest some ways of better accounting for and responding to cases
of micro-domination.
218 European Journal of Political Theory 22(2)
To continue reading
Request your trial