THE MORAL IMPACT OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ON POLICY OUTCOMES IN CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY

Background

One of the first cases of civil disobedience in the United States dates back to the ebbs of Henry David Thoreau—even the term ‘civil disobedience is formerly credited to him (Thoreau, 1848). His effort was complimented by Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose nonviolent form of civil disobedience inspired a number of public policy outcomes. Philosophically, the justification of civil disobedience is to effect necessary changes through nonlethal means in cases where traditional efforts are not possible (Keeton, 1964). Accordingly, the usefulness of expressing dissenting views in various ways (Boston Tea Party, freedom riders, boycotts, etc) coincides with the founding of the US nation state—hence, though these forms of dissent have hurt the American nation somehow unabatedly, they have invaluably contributed to the development of its democracy.

In addition to sit-ins, boycotts, filibustering, marching, are few of the forms of civil disobedience used to express dissent or influence public policy changes in democratic governance. These forms of civil disobedience have had their fair share of criticisms in the history of American democracy. Since the interests of stakeholders and citizens move from time to time, depending on the moral inadequacies of our laws and present social orders—civil disobedience is said to be a plausible means to reducing the tensions of competing needs and wants and the available public policies to address them (Keeton, 1964, p. 507). The introduction of information communication technology/social media (i.e., tweeter, texting, Facebook, youtube, wireless phones, etc) in disseminating information among activists, the so called internet freedoms, have not only modernized civil disobedience, but have expanded the need for additional policies to regulate their use.     

Situation

The World Bank teams up with many international organizations to assist post conflict countries rebuild their war ravaged nations. As Development Coordinator, my primary function is to assist civic societies reemerge through development machinery like the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS). Using American democratic principles, we involve all aspects of emerging democracies using the PRS module. By so doing, we set up steering committees comprising four pillars (economic, governance, security, and rule of law). The primary focus of the governance and rule of law pillar is to improve legislative and judiciary processes. We also help younger democracies transitioning from war; use other peaceful democratic means to influence public policy outcomes.

On December 11, 2009, a cross section of civic society organizations in the West African nation where I work, staged a relatively peaceful march against the national authority demanding widespread judicial and legislative reforms. For almost two decades, this nation was coiled in a civil war that was largely occasioned by lack of equal opportunities for all citizens. A few of the leaders of the demonstration were former public servants, who one way or the other, may have had the opportunity of introducing sweeping reforms that could have democratically transformed and perhaps presented the war that devastated this small West African nation.

In some ways, the demonstrators were knowledgeable of their rights and various ways to have them met in a transitional democracy. In addition, my office had been involved in the process of educating various communities on how to have their voices heard in a democracy other without resorting to violent means. Our social cohesion and peace building programs provide citizens the ability to democratically coexist in the community, workplace; how to engage tribal heads, manage disputes through traditional and nontraditional means; how to engage various community leaders such as, metropolitan or city council, township and national governments.

One of the tested aspects of the social cohesion program is the ability to organize local elections, build coalition and networks. In this aspect, members of the community learnt and mastered the art of ethically coping with competing interests through effective networking, in addition to ways of managing and accepting election results. These principles were tested in a general elections held in 2005, which brought in a president, senators (junior & senior, reps, mayors, chiefs, and others).

The United Nations declaration on human rights holds that every individual is born with the fundamental and inalienable rights of life, liberty and finding the means to fulfill happiness. Hence, it is incumbent upon member nations of the UN to vainly help all their free loving citizens meet these rights—not only that those governments of UN member states exist at the wills of their citizens, the main priority of governments is to cater to the wellbeing of their people. But when these governments are unable to assist citizens fulfill these fundamental rights, the organic laws and constitutions of member nations through the UN, support certain moral rights for citizens to exploit peaceful to demand these inalienable and other natural rights from their governments.

Abstract

This paper examined the effects of civil disobedience on public policy. It closely looked at the ethical implications of protesting against a set of wrongs with the hope of seeking reforms. The research is based on a case study surrounding a mass civil demonstration staged to obtain a number of legislative and judicial reforms in a post conflict nation, which among others, was fraught with a number injustices. The research also examined the various levels of interactions at various levels, including the government and other stakeholders. The use of information communication technology (ICT) and other social media tools through the internet is a huge part of this research. The research concluded that civil disobedience once done collaboratively with full media exposure, not only influenced legislations, but create greater public awareness.    

Introduction

This paper is centered on a case study on civil disobedience that occurred in a post conflict nation in West Africa. Using the case study, the paper looked at the effect of civil disobedience on policy outcomes within a democracy. Based on a course matrix, the paper took an in-depth look into the basic processes of protestation through civil disobedience, analyzed the various institutions that participated in a network of interest groups to orchestrate a civil demonstration that is geared towards broader constitutional, legislative and judicial reforms. It also described the roles of leaders and other participants of the protestation, along with their influences, politically and psychologically, on the demonstrators.

There is a section that discussed the ethical implications of civil disobedience on society in general, along with its unintended consequences, diversity issues, and the various beneficiaries and potential victims. Toward the end of this paper, is a portion that looked at the challenges posited to democratic governance by civil disobedience, and along with how they were handled. But the role played by information technology and the internet is a pivotal part of this paper in that it touched on modern methods of civilly demonstrating against the state.  

The question is how effective is civil disobedience on public policy? Research has concluded that mass civil protest does impact public policy especially when done peacefully, and with the full knowledge of the public (Agnone, 2007). However, though guaranteed by the First and Fourth Amendments (The US Constitution), the legitimacy of civil disobedience is one that has not been fully embraced by most governments, including the United States, in that it does not serve as an adequate excuse for going against the law.

Review of the Literature

Seeking reforms through civil disobedience is an act that is provided for in the United Nations Declaration of human rights, but has somehow rooted in the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The First Amendment guarantees free speech to all peaceful citizens, institutions, and including the press. Accordingly, the US Constitution through the First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws that will stifle free speech, peaceful assembly, and ability to formerly redress to citizens’ grievances from the government. But the ability to utilize these rights in US democratic governance is credited to the founding fathers, especially the framers of the Bill of Rights, James Madison et al, who were all products of the 18^th century, an era known as the Age of Enlightenment/Reason (ACLU, n.d).

Civil disobedience addresses three democratic principles, liberty and free speech as guaranteed under the First Amendment; equality, and the ability to seek redress through peaceful means. While civil disobedience is fully justified under the law, philosophically, it is morally right when done peacefully.  Cohen (1966) held that in order for a civil act to be considered disobedient, it must not only violate the law or goes contrary to what the law allows or disallows, it should be publicly staged and done with the full knowledge of state authorities.

But what makes civil disobedience, an act that breaches the law, morally acceptable under the law? As cited in the Stanford Encyclopedia, Rawls (1971) vindicated that civil disobedience is tolerated under the law because it is normally peaceful, and a diligent means of effecting changes to legislations or public policies. Consequently, there is a stronger level of commitment shown by those engaging in civil disobedience, the ability to accept the full weight of the law.

In their efforts to decentralize the demonstration, the organizers as mentioned in the case study, sought to collaborate with a number of civic organizations and other interest groups nationally, so as to enable the demonstration held simultaneously in other parts of the country. Among the network of organizations that morally offered to support the civil disobedience, was the national association of lawyers. As officers of the court, lawyers are morally and legally bound to defend the law and the constitution (McMorrow, 1991). Hence, offering to participate in a statewide civil protestation, though somehow contradictory, legitimizes the process—issues of law are flexibly dynamic, and compel those in the profession to constantly shift their opinions and positions from time to time in an attempt to help shape the law, which is also the duty of layers (Wilkins, 1990, as cited in McMorrow, 1991).  

While lawyers may be able to rationalize the legality or illegality of disobedience, the question exists whether the case is the same for other professionals? To what extent are citizens conscious of their rights or consequences of their actions more so when civil disobedience is morally justified? McMorrow (1991, p. 141, para. 1) stated that, in addition to their ability to choose which sides of the law to support, lawyers are especially required by their oath to positively uphold the rule of law and exercise good judgments when deciding to participate in a civil disobedience more than other citizens. For instance, even though there were teachers union, Local Port Workers and other teamsters unions, the press union, volunteer paramedic association, nurses and doctors union, jointly pooling their resources to coordinate the effort to seek judicial reform, the consequences of participating lawyers may range from loss of privileges to practice, to serving jail time.

Using civil disobedience as a tool to seek policy reforms is not completely an outlandish process, neither is it a disregard of the law. The case is made that those political actions, which are directly aimed at certain critical policies, such as seeking to eliminate highly politicized policies like health care, gun control, indoor smoking, environmental and other climate issues, and others (as cited in Markovits, 2005). And since it seeks to put a check or limit the role of government, political disobedience is somehow deemed liberally egalitarian—the idea of a limited government, that is, one with less say in the lives of citizens, for most part, is credited to Rawls and Mills.

Nonetheless, one classical account of liberal disobedience against the majority, points to the civil rights movement, which sought to obtain equal treatment for all, principles that shape American democracy (p. 1905). The trial of Socrates perhaps marks the turning point of civil disobedience in Western political governance—and equally so, networking with the press to provide maximum publicity is also precedential to the process (Calabrese, 2004). However, if Socrates was only guilty of acts of civil disobedience, why should the expression of one’s dissatisfaction over certain injustices within the state receives a punishment as harsh as death? Moreover, how can an act which violates the law, civil?

When done peacefully and in those fashions tolerable under the law, disobedience is said to be civil. But if this is so, why then would someone or group seeking to change an order of the day elects to use civil disobedience over other forms of political protestations? One widely held notion is that civil disobedience, unlike other forms of political protestations, seeks to expose some form of discreditable injustices and those who perpetrate them. As a way of fighting back, perpetrators tend to even up with those who bring up these shameful issues.

The intended outcome of using civil disobedience in the case study was to positively impact public policy in a way that will reform the shameful judicial and legislative injustices of the day.  The judicial system was weak and riddled with bribery, crowded dockets, blatant disregard of constitutional issues, such that those remanded in custody pending judges arraignments spend years in prisons without having to see a judge for the first time. In some instances, people were not read or advice of their rights through Miranda, right to bond or bail, right to attorney privileges, etc. There was this widely held belief that there was no justice for the poor. On the judicial aspect, government officials (senators, reps, cabinet officials) acted with impunity, laws were made that benefitted only those who made them over the rest of society. In addition, there were many unresolved post war issues, including land reforms, concession agreements, restructuring of security apparatus, redistricting issues, constitutional reform (i.e., provisional decrees like 88A which has to do with press censoring), civil service reforms, etc.

There are many ethical implications when interest/pressure groups collaboratively use civil disobedience and other legally acceptable means such as lobbying, to have the many judicial and legislative reforms addressed.  While these groups may direct their resources towards specific legislative and judicial concerns, the characteristics of those legislations of interests are important factors worth considering (Victor, 2007). 

Hence, interest and pressure groups have been able to infiltrate the system by liaising with those members of congress and other networking affiliates to obtain key information on the perceptions of targeted legislations, the level of nuances of those affiliated congress people and other insiders on targeted legislations visa vie, public knowledge; existing opinions on particular legislations, and the processes to block or stop legislations. Two related issues on this, have to do with ways to obtain right of way to carry on with a protest after failing to obtain a permit from city hall.

Accordingly, Gais and Walker (1991) as cited by Victor (2007, p. 827) suggested that though a compounded process,  interest groups wishing to reform or change the outcome of a specific bill, say police reform, may want to know the level of active efforts within the legislature on this issue. Those who are opposed to civil disobedience have three major concerns, that it is chaotic and produce no results; that the precedence of breaking the law to correct a set of rights in and of itself, threatens every other right out there; as evident by the widespread anarchy, looting, street carnage, shutdown of basic services, civil disobedience regardless the intent, is the wrong approach in that it symbolizes that it is right to infringe on the rights of others, as long as the intention is to correct an injustice; that it has some related consequences in that innocent bystanders are affected one way or the other—besides, it eliminates the aspect of civil dialogue through persuasion, which is a composite part of any functional democracy, and replaces same with intimidation and command (Haiman, 1967).

 One interesting ethical dilemma of civil disobedience is the fact that governments are obligated nationally and internationally to encourage free dialogue as long as it is peaceful, and equally so, those same governments are bound by their national laws to protect the rights of other citizens who are not parties to the protest.

As mentioned under the ethical concerns, civil disobedience though meant to create awareness to a set of wrongs, is also fraught with many diversity issues. What it considers most, is the injustice or wrongs it hopes to correct, regardless the unintended consequences. With that being said, civil disobedience may not take into account, the rights of other demographics either considered as prime target of the protest, or not a part of those it seeks to protect. For instance, African American demanding civil rights from White dominated government may tend to target all Whites regardless their alignments; or the same group will only seek its own interests and not others.

In the same token, advocating for the rights of one set of minorities could benefit all minorities under the same privilege class based on what John Rawl considered as fair cooperation for mutual advantage liberty—such that those fundamental structures that are valuable to one class, could be idealistic in recognizing the ethics of fairness (Rawls, 1985). For instance, an effort to seek wage opportunities for women may benefit part time or temporary employees who are not on benefits. Consequently, Rawl’s principle of liberty and equality which holds that what benefits one, benefits all. Secondly, under socio-economic disparity, as long as a group falls under a minority under privileged class, it can benefit under a protected class privilege.

In the case study, communities which participated in the civil disobedience were seeking legislative and judicial reforms for all citizens. However, most women and children who joined the demonstration did so with the hope of enacting legislations that protected their rights (i.e., child support, longer and more drastic punishments for sex offenders, child abuse, children’s rights to education, equal access of women to public offices, and others).

Another issue of diversity was securing retirement opportunities for retirees. The challenges these demands posited to the central authority were largely fiscal. In a society where the gap between the haves and have-nots is extremely wide, granting equal socio-economic opportunities to all is costly. Furthermore, the cost of associated with repealing and enacting laws, plus running referendums is also a costly and difficult process.  

But the introduction of information technology (E-democracy) to handle processes in political governance among the parties involved (the press, government, political institutions, elected officials, and electorates/citizens), to some extent have not only enabled broader level of participation among these parties, through the use of the internet, wireless communication, and others, a greater number of public policy issues have come to be handled relatively shortly. The availability of information technology has encouraged broader citizen participation in the democratic process—closed the gap that once divided citizens from their law makers, and to some extent, overturned those skepticisms or distrusts that clouted citizens toward their public institutions (Franke-Ruta, 2003; Stockwell, 2001).  

In the case study, participants of the civil disobedience used social media via internet, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, wireless mobile, podcasting, e-networking, and others to rally at various designated centers. Other means participants used in the process to interact with each other, included, but not limited to wireless messaging (SMS texting), ListServs, in-network blogging opportunities, internet chatting, RSS feeds, electronic mailing list, peer-to-peer, and radio-television via the internet. Novak and Hoffman (1998) argued that not only does the internet possess many features that promote creative thinking about all aspects, including democratic governance; it provides a decentralized access that escapes the usual governmental censorship that bounds the broadcast media.

Besides, Norris (2001) held that the internet draws people much closer with renewed energies towards broader civic commitment and involvement—and the better educated people are of public issues, the more trustworthy they become of the process, and  the more they are eager to participate and engage governments in wider public policy matters.

According to a 2008 publication by the Center for Digital Government, the internet provides easy access to important information that provides impetuses for broader civic engagement, such as access to legislations, public policy agendas—essentially, as a tool the internet has cut through those difficulties posed by distance to important information.  In addition, the use of information technology and communication (ICT), keeps those in the vanguard in touch with their followers in a succinct manner at every aspect of the process—in line with uniting people under a common front and a unique philosophy (Frissen, 2008; Kubicek & Westholm, 2007). 

The emergence of the internet along with information technology to expedite political expedience has its own downside. For instance, while the leaders of the demonstrators were successful to attract the youths of the society who are technologically savvy, to raise the level of awareness that is necessarily required for a civil disobedience, not all those who will like to participate have internet access, or other means of monitoring events.

But there are areas of the state that entirely cut off from mainstream events. In discussing some of the disadvantages of political participation using the internet and other information technologies, Komito (2007) cited the likelihood of democratic governance slicking into demagogic-pluralism, and the inability of those vast majority still living under the poverty line who cannot afford these amenities in place of other essentials of life—plus there is greater cynicism on the effect of the internet on political participation.   

Conclusion

The use of civil disobedience as a means of collaborating with others representing divergent interests, is a great way to cooperatively influence public policy decision making. And in so far as civil disobedience is blended with information technology, the process can become diverse. Even though civil disobedience owes its root to David Henry Thoreau, the modernization of this concept with the use of the internet and other information communication technology, often referred to as ‘hacktivsm’, is not only attracting a much wider audience, it is venturing beyond those political landscapes the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi were unable to tap.  Now known as electronic civil disobedience (ECD), cyber civil disobedience has its own damning impact on democratic governance—the impacts the Wikileaks and the wave of civil of mass disobedience currently sweeping the world through the use of Facebook and twitter are simply tips of the iceberg.

The actual impacts of civil disobedience as a tool of voicing political dissent, or influencing public policy reforms are firmly ingrained in the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights struggle led by Dr. Martin Luther King, and the recent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, and to some extent, Libya. As cited in Agnone (2007), these two historical events—the former help shaped the dovish senate votes on ending the war in Vietnam, while the latter brought up some tremendous policy changes as contained in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In addition, Olzak (2004) as cited in Agnone (2007) discovered that interest groups and social movement organizations were instrumental in the ratification of policy amendments. In concluding, no matter the outcome or impact that civil disobedience has on public policy, it can never be undertaken in isolation of the media. As a matter fact, research has shown that even when undertaken in consonance with the media, civil disobedience will still fall short if it fails the public opinion scrutiny.     

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