Analyzing the Benefits of Electoral Bonds | John Rawls on a Fair Society

 

The Election Commission’s recent request for political parties to disclose details of their electoral bond donations underscores larger issues than just the ongoing legal examination of these bonds’ validity. This action is part of an ongoing case before the Supreme Court on the validity of electoral bonds. Introduced in 2017, electoral bonds were envisioned as a transformative mechanism to streamline political donations. Since then, the instrument has been criticized as having created an opaque mechanism of political funding that benefits India’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The petitioners in the case before the Supreme Court, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), have alleged that the anonymity provided by electoral bonds is antithetical to the principle of democratic accountability. The government, on the other hand, has argued that revealing the donor’s details would compromise their privacy.

The transparency argument has many supporters—it is well understood as an important facet of electoral democracy. Carnegie Endowment’s Milan Vaishnav has correctly argued that in India, the “murky flow of funds that fuels politicians and political parties” helps perpetuate corruption. Donations from commercial for-profit entities may often be made in expectation of favourable treatment from the winning dispensation, to the detriment of ordinary citizens. It is therefore in the interest of society that citizens know who their elected representatives are being funded by. One must, however, question if the value of safeguarding donor privacy is somehow being short-changed in this argument.

Confidentiality serves useful purposes in electoral democracy. While critics have assailed electoral bonds as a transparency-reducing mechanism, they have not sufficiently examined them for the benefits they provide, if any, in preserving confidentiality. In this piece, I begin with a brief explanation of electoral bonds and the changes that were made to political funding laws in 2017, the year electoral bonds were first introduced. I then provide some arguments on the benefits of anonymity in electoral democracy and try to explore how electoral bonds uphold these values. Through this piece, I seek to understand how both transparency and anonymity are important in Indian elections, even when they work at cross-purposes with each other.

 

The Introduction of Electoral Bonds

An electoral bond is a “bearer banking instrument” that does not carry the name of the “buyer or the payee.” The State Bank of India (SBI) is the only one authorized to issue and encash electoral bonds in specific bank branches. Any Indian citizen or entity incorporated in India can buy an electoral bond, and any registered political party that receives more than one percent of the total votes polled in the last election is eligible to receive donations through electoral bonds. Bonds are issued in specific denominations ranging from Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 1 crore and are valid for a period of fifteen days from issuance. The buyer has to submit his or her personal details—name, identification documents, and address—to purchase a bond. The SBI is required to treat this information as confidential (see Rule 7(4) of the Electoral Bonds Scheme):

The information furnished by the buyer shall be treated confidential by the authorised bank and shall not be disclosed to any authority for any purposes, except when demanded by a competent court or upon registration of criminal case by any law enforcement agency.

Former union minister Mr. Arun Jaitley introduced the electoral bonds scheme and related changes to political funding laws in the 2017–18 budget. The wording of his budget speech on this issue is interesting. He said:

Donors have also expressed reluctance in donating by cheque or other transparent methods as it would disclose their identity and entail adverse consequences (emphasis added). I, therefore, propose the following scheme as an effort to cleanse the system of funding of political parties…. to enable the issuance of electoral bonds in accordance with a scheme…. Under this scheme, a donor could purchase bonds from authorised banks against cheque and digital payments only.

The former minister ostensibly aimed to cleanse the political system by promoting confidentiality, among other things. In his own writing, Mr. Jaitley acknowledged that while he knew electoral bonds were not a panacea, they were a significant improvement over completely anonymous cash donations. This is because, while donations via electoral bonds would remain confidential, they would have to be made through formal banking instruments. Therefore, if required, the flow of political donations would be visible to law enforcement agencies. He wrote in his blog:

As against a total non-transparency in the present system of cash donations where the donor, the donee, the quantum of donations and the nature of expenditure are all undisclosed, some element of transparency would be introduced in as much as all donors declare in their accounts the amount of bonds that they have purchased and all parties declare the quantum of bonds that they have received. How much each donor has distributed to a political party would be known only to the donor. This is necessary because once this disclosure is made, past experience has shown, donors would not find the scheme attractive (emphasis added) and would go back to the less-desirable option of donating by cash.

The 2017–18 budget introduced electoral bonds and simultaneously reduced the permissible cash donation limit from Rs. 20,000 to Rs. 2,000. This was a push toward formal mechanisms for donations: checks, online payments, or electoral bonds. Since the first two mechanisms already existed, the reduction in the amount of permissible cash donations complimented the introduction of electoral bonds.

It is therefore possible to make two assertions. First, electoral bonds are designed to encourage donations to political parties through formal channels, thereby increasing money flow visibility. This is different from the transparency-related demands regarding the details of donors that ADR is making before the Supreme Court. Here, we see two different transparency concepts at play. When ADR and the Election Commission claim that electoral bonds are opaque, they are concerned about the influence political funding has on elections, and they value disclosure as a panacea. Conversely, the government focuses on preventing money laundering and discouraging illicit practices that arise from cash donations.

Second, to create a mechanism for donating confidentially and to dispense with the use of cash, the government created electoral bonds and reduced the overall limits for cash donations.

These two assertions beg the question: does the prioritization of confidentiality have genuine value in electoral democracy, or is this merely a cynical ploy to enable anonymized corporate funding?

The Value of Confidentiality and Electoral Bonds as Confidential Donations

Imagine being able to donate openly to any political candidate or party without fearing any harassment, threats, ostracization, or denials of business licenses and permissions. This situation is unfortunately not common in India. For example, consider a hypothetical wealthy landowner in a village in an Indian state known for political violence. This person may support one party financially and be publicly compelled to signal support to another. In this situation, confidentiality may make the difference between his life and death.

Confidentiality allows citizens to vote with their money discreetly. This is an important part of the free exercise of political preferences. Free elections depend on both secret ballots and the ability to support candidates and parties confidentially. These considerations become more important when incumbent ruling parties have asymmetric advantages over their competitors. Confidentiality can therefore promote greater competition in risky political environments.

The current demand for transparency in the use of electoral bonds has been framed as an issue of political cynicism and corporate venality in the Supreme Court. While these undoubtedly exist in the Indian political system, it is worth looking at the more disparate effects of electoral bonds.

First, like all systems, cynicism and venality explain only part of the phenomenon. For example, the ADR prepared a report titled “Electoral Bonds and Opacity in Political Funding,” in which it tracked the use of electoral bonds between 2018 and 2023. It found that during this period, the total value of electoral bonds purchased was Rs. 13,792 crore. Out of this, it notes that about 94 percent of the total value of bonds purchased were in the denomination of Rs. 1 crore, “indicating that these bonds are being purchased by corporates rather than individuals.”

However, the ADR report also shows that close to half of the total number of electoral bonds purchased were in smaller denominations of Rs. 10 lakhs and less (11,013 out of 24,012, as per data on page eight of the report), indicating a diverse range of donors beyond large-value corporate donors. It is therefore possible to argue that while the concerns raised by ADR about large-value electoral bonds are valid, the confidentiality provided by electoral bonds may also be beneficial for some categories of voters who are not just corporates interested in quid pro quos from politicians.

Second, electoral bonds seem to have succeeded in shifting political donations away from cash, thereby fulfilling one of the stated objectives behind their introduction. Another ADR report from July 2023, “Analysis of Donations to Registered Recognised Political Parties,” states that between the six-year period of FY 2016–17 and FY 2021–22, “52 percent of BJP’s total donations came from Electoral Bonds.” During this period, the Indian National Congress (INC) declared the second-highest donations; of its total donations, 61.54 percent came from electoral bonds. Meanwhile, the All India Trinamool Congress received 93 percent of its donations through electoral bonds, the Biju Janata Dal 90 percent, and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam 90 percent. Although this data does not capture unaccounted cash donations, the shift toward electoral bonds does seem to align with the key stated objective behind their introduction.

Third, electoral bonds by themselves do not seem to be the reason for the BJP’s outsized funding advantage. As per ADR’s July 2023 report, while the BJP received the major share of donations made through electoral bonds and has also received a huge share of the overall value of donations made through electoral bonds, it also received nearly eight times as much through corporate donations (Rs. 3,299 crore) as the next largest recipient, INC (Rs. 406 crore), between FY 2016–17 and FY 2021–22.

Fourth, while financial advantage does matter in elections, the causal link between this dominance and winnability is unclear. The BJP enjoys clear financial dominance as per the data regarding accounted finances. However, it loses state elections regularly despite this advantage. In addition, as Neelanjan Sircar’s writing in the book Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India (eds. Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav 2018) suggests, the wealth of the political candidates themselves is a critical determinant in winnability, given that many political candidates are required to self-finance elections:

Candidates must self-finance campaigns to win an election, and competitive parties prefer to select the wealthiest candidates because they have the greatest capacity to self-finance campaigns…. candidates for competitive parties are about 20 times wealthier than candidates for non-competitive parties. Second, even controlling for other relevant factors, in the median constituency (in terms of wealth difference between candidates), the wealthier candidate is predicted to be about 10 percentage points more likely to win the constituency.

The preceding arguments I make on the benefits of electoral bonds are valid if we assume that electoral bonds do truly help maintain confidentiality. An investigative report has, however, argued that this assumption cannot be taken for granted and that there are indeed mechanisms through which it is possible to identify the buyer of electoral bonds. The report states that each electoral bond has a serial number that can be tracked to identify its purchaser, raising concerns about confidentiality. Critics further contend that because SBI has the personal details of the buyer of the bonds, there’s a risk of government and law enforcement agencies accessing this information, compromising confidentiality. These are important arguments that may need clarifications from the government at some point.

However, because electoral bonds are bearer bonds (the person in possession is usually the owner of a bearer instrument, just like a bearer check), the purchaser and the eventual donor need not be the same person or entity. A donor may request someone to purchase the bonds on their behalf, and another person to make the donation to the political party, in exchange for a consideration, and manage to maintain their confidentiality. If this is indeed how electoral bonds are being used, the details available with the SBI and the serial number on the bond by themselves may not compromise confidentiality.

Balancing Confidentiality and Transparency

In the preceding section, I make the case that electoral bonds protect confidentiality in fraught political environments, that data shows a diversity of bond users beyond corporate donors, and finally, that the introduction of electoral bonds has seemingly succeeded in reducing cash use. However, electoral bonds are not an unalloyed good. Complete transparency and complete confidentiality both pose risks to electoral democracy. The challenge is to reconcile the two.

In particular, one could argue that donors capable of making large-value donations can better counter some of the risks posed by the lack of confidentiality. In finance, consumer protection laws often make a distinction between sophisticated and unsophisticated consumers and provide higher levels of protection to the latter. The rationale behind this is that sophisticated consumers, because of their wealth and financial nous, are able to understand financial risks better. A similar framework was employed until 2017 in political funding, where political parties were not required to disclose details of contributors who donated less than Rs. 20,000. This was, however, reduced to Rs. 2,000 in 2017 to incentivize the use of non-cash instruments for political donations

We need to rethink how to create differential levels of confidentiality and disclosure requirements in this new operating environment with electoral bonds. While the Supreme Court is currently hearing the case on the validity of electoral bonds and is best placed to adjudicate upon the issue on constitutional grounds, I submit that a judicial forum is not the best place to think about the design choices I am alluding to.

Simple solutions, like asking for the names of donors to be disclosed, may over-solve the problem. It may lead to the disclosure of not just high-value donors but also donors for whom confidentiality is a life-and-death issue. We need to think more about the following: 1. To what categories of donors should transparency requirements be directed? 2. How should transparency requirements be designed in this new environment with electoral bonds so that (a) they protect confidentiality where it’s necessary and (b) they take account of the fact that moving away from cash is a net positive for electoral politics in India?

 

—By Anirudh Burman

 

From the Bihar caste census to the electoral bonds case in the Supreme Court to the pollution in Delhi, issues involving principles of justice are being debated every day against the canvas of our democracy. But these debates are usually conducted with such factional bickering that it is easy to lose sight of the principles at stake. However, since a polity is made of people and not principles, this is the way justice is typically debated—the bickering is partly due to fundamental disagreements that are settled through political contestation. But are there principles of justice that we could all agree on? More importantly, how might we come to such an agreement?

In Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like?, economist and philosopher Daniel Chandler suggests that the American philosopher John Rawls’s theory of justice and the procedure he adopted for arriving at the theory could serve as the basis for discussions on justice among free and equal citizens. The book is divided into two parts across eight chapters. The first part, consisting of the first three chapters, gives an outline of the principles of Rawls’s theory of justice (chapter 1), explains how these principles could be developed using the procedure that Rawls proposed (chapter 2), and puts up a reasoned defense of these principles against certain critics (chapter 3). Anyone can read these chapters anywhere at any time and find something of use. Chandler does an excellent job of both introducing the theory and defending it. The remaining chapters present a list of reform ideas that he proposes based on Rawls’s theory of justice.

 

The Principles and Procedure of Rawls’s Theory

Since the book seems to be aimed at informing reform of institutions, Chandler’s focus is on the principles that comprise Rawls’s theory. But he follows Rawls in emphasizing that the procedure through which the theory is developed is also important. It is possible that the procedure may lead to slightly different details in the theory of justice when applied by different people.

For Rawls, the point of departure for building a theory of justice was that citizens will have different “comprehensive doctrines”—their views of the good life based on religion and morality—and different objectives that they pursue in their lives. Rawls believed that a theory of justice should allow for various such conceptions, and it should include certain basic principles to inform the design of political and economic institutions that everyone can agree on, irrespective of their religious or moral beliefs.

Rawls’s procedure for arriving at the principles of justice involves adopting what he called the “original position,” which is a thought experiment. The key to the original position is to consider the principles of justice from behind a “veil of ignorance” about our specific identities, as if we don’t know where in society we would land up—with respect to our income, gender, religion, caste, talents and skills, ideologies, generation in history, and so on. All we are supposed to know in this original position are: general facts about human life and conclusions about how the world works; the assumption that citizens have different comprehensive doctrines and objectives, but everyone has an interest in certain primary goods (Chandler identifies three categories—income and wealth, economic power and control, and opportunities for self-respect); and that we live in a society of moderate scarcity with not enough to fulfill everyone’s wants.

The basic idea is that to arrive at principles that everyone can accept, we must think from a position where no one knows what their values and interests are in order to preclude self-serving reasoning. According to Chandler, “a fair agreement can only be reached under fair conditions,” and the point of this thought experiment is to “define an ideally fair hypothetical situation in which we can imagine citizens coming to such an agreement.” The social contract tradition of thinking typically involves some such procedure to arrive at what could be commonly accepted principles.

Chandler explains that according to Rawls, from such a position, one could arrive at two principles of “justice as fairness,” which can, in his view, resolve the conflicts between freedom and equality. The first principle focuses on liberty, stating that each person equally has certain basic personal, political, and procedural liberties, to the extent that having these liberties does not conflict with everyone else enjoying them as well. Rawls identified certain equal basic liberties: political liberty (the right to vote and hold public office), freedom of speech and assembly, liberty of conscience and freedom of thought, freedom of the person (freedom from psychological oppression and physical assault and dismemberment), the right to hold personal property, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure. Societies are increasingly moving in the direction of accepting these, which is not the case with the second one.

The second principle, which is about equality and fraternity, is given in two parts. The first part states that inequalities are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of “fair equality of opportunity,” which Rawls distinguished from “formal equality of opportunity.” The latter concerns itself only with formally opening opportunities to anyone who is qualified, but the former calls for addressing the upstream social and economic conditions in which people build capabilities. The second part is the “difference principle,” which states that any inequalities should only be justified because they maximize the life chances of the least advantaged members of society, subject to the “just savings principle,” which states that we have a duty to maintain the material wealth and vital ecosystems on which society depends. So, there is an egalitarianism toward the least well-off and toward the future generations. When Rawls writes about inequalities, he is concerned with not just income and wealth but also economic power and control, as well as self-respect and social recognition. Chandler writes that Rawls saw the difference principle as an expression of fraternity in a society because it builds on a commitment to reciprocity. This is a key philosophical difference from the egalitarian principles that are justified based on the sole concern for equality.

Rawls proposed the following order of priority for these principles: 1) basic equal liberties, 2) fair equality of opportunity, and 3) the difference principle, subject to the just savings principle.

Defending Rawls

Liberal theories of justice are usually theories of constraints on power, while egalitarian theories usually pertain to powers to constrain. Rawls’s theory combines these in a “liberal egalitarian” theory that constrains the use of state power to infringe upon basic liberties while justifying the use of state power to constrain the citizens to promote certain egalitarian ideals. His egalitarianism is expansive in scope but of moderate depth—though it includes not just the ones who are least well-off now but also all future generations, it doesn’t seek to create a perfectly equal society. Anyone trying to theoretically reconcile values that in theory and in practice have been in conflict is liable to attract criticism from those who resist such reconciliation. The attempt to reconcile requires changing the procedure of reasoning, which can come under attack. Further, a theory of what a just society would look like is always an easy target for arguments pertaining to “realism.”

In the third chapter, Chandler defends Rawls’s theory of justice against four sets of critics—libertarians, socialists, communitarians, and realists. He picks a few key thinkers and their criticisms as examples. For instance, he cites Robert Nozick as the key libertarian critic of Rawls. Nozick argued that Rawls’s theory allows for excessive infringement of property rights that he considered natural and absolute and even questioned the idea that justice should be about trying to bring about a fairer or more equal distribution of resources. Chandler’s main counter is that economic freedoms are not “all or nothing,” and we can choose a system in which some property rights are respected, but at the same time, some intervention is allowed in the interest of fairness.

The “socialist” critiques of Rawls’s theory are that it would not promote sufficient equality. His ordering of principles has often attracted criticisms from the left. Chandler argues that this prioritization makes sense because the liberties that Rawls’s first principle supports are very basic. For instance, the property rights in this principle pertain only to limited personal property and not all property. So, this ordering would allow for redistribution or even more fundamental interventions under the second principle. He also explains how fair equality of opportunity along with the difference principle might be better than the principles advocated by socialists, especially in the Marxist tradition. He calls for understanding the important role that markets play and being open to certain forms of private ownership of firms and materials in the interest of both efficiency and equity.

On criticism from a communitarian perspective, Chandler cites the argument that Rawls’s theory of justice elevates personal choice, leading to an excessively individualistic culture that is responsible, in part, for “social problems ranging from the decline of civic and religious associations to an epidemic of loneliness.” Chandler’s counter to these criticisms is fundamental—he argues that it is unfair to apply them to Rawls’s theory, which is “grounded in an idea of reciprocity rather than self-interest.” He suggests that the communitarian criticism is due to a confusion about the interpretation of the original position, which, Chandler argues, is not “grounded in empirical claims about human psychology but in moral claims about the kinds of reasons that are relevant when it comes to selecting such principles.”

Among the “realists,” Chandler cites Raymond Geuss and Amartya Sen, both of whom argued in their own ways that Rawls focuses entirely on what an ideally fair society would look like but not on how justice should be promoted in the societies we live in. While Chandler accepts these arguments, he argues that this is not a weakness of Rawls’s ideas but a conscious choice made by Rawls. He suggests that “we need to combine them with a realistic theory of change and with a political strategy tailored to our circumstances here and now.” Rawls’s “ideal theory” was always meant to be, Chandler suggests, a precursor to “non-ideal theory”—“one that asks how this long-term goal might be achieved, or worked towards, usually in gradual steps.”

Although he makes these counterarguments against criticisms of Rawls’s theory, Chandler accepts, citing Rawls, that the ultimate test of any theory of justice is the lived experience of people whom the institutions designed on the theory serve. So, there are limits to philosophical arguments in settling these debates.

Rawls and the “Real World”

Many ideas about institutions that at one time seemed unrealistic have become widely accepted and have come to define the social contract that underpins the structure and working of public institutions. It is human beings that make the political, social, and economic institutions. While we do need to accept the limits of our reason, consider certain basic facts about human life, and understand what paths are historically feasible, there is little that is truly permanent about these institutions. So, we should be open to discussing the principles underpinning the institutions and what reform ideas may flow from the principles. What should this discussion consider? While the acceptance of the principles is substantially linked to the promotion of the reform ideas, even those who accept the principles philosophically may need to consider the world they live in before implementing them.

Rawls accepted that his theory does not translate into clear policy prescriptions because practical knowledge is essential for the latter. The scope of Rawls’s theory partly defines its relationship with the real world. Rawls’s is a theory of justice for a nation-state, which means that it does not directly address local justice within families and communities and global justice among the nation-states. The principles of justice adopted by a nation-state will have some bearing on both local as well as global justice. Similarly, the realities of local justice and global justice will also affect justice in a nation-state. For instance, the difference principle suggests that we should choose an economic system that maximizes the life chances of the least advantaged in the country, even if it means that the aggregate (or average) performance is lower than in other systems. In the present global order, the countries that face much richer adversaries may find it difficult to follow this principle, as the necessity of improving national capability—to the extent that is associated with the aggregate performance—may override the moral imperative of Rawls’s theory.

In the book, Chandler’s discussion on reforms is situated in developed countries that he is most familiar with, and mostly draws evidence and examples from developed countries. Chandler goes straight from a theory of justice to reform ideas without addressing the intervening politics. He does explain that this is because these principles are supposed to transcend “ordinary politics.” Chandler writes that we should distinguish between “ordinary democratic politics” and “constitutional politics,” with the former being the subject of majority rule and therefore always open to change, while the latter concerns the most fundamental freedoms. The principles in Rawls’s theory of justice are mainly meant to inform constitutional politics.

Even constitutions are developed and sustained through political processes. There is no fully Rawlsian constitutional republic, but some such principles have been enshrined in the constitutions at certain moments (or critical junctures) when a temporary, near-consensus on these principles was achieved. For instance, such a consensus can sometimes be reached at the moments of founding through a constituent assembly process that forces the leaders to get close to the original position and support ideas that would in principle be acceptable to everyone. After this, sustaining the constitutional order is less about widespread support for it and more about avoiding widespread opposition to it. Given the procedures laid down in most constitutions, once the game of ordinary politics is afoot, it becomes difficult to change the constitutional settlement. So, even a moment of consensus can have long-lasting effects.

However, depending on the design of the institutions, a growing gap between public opinion and constitutional principles may create difficulties in the de facto working of the constitution. It would only be a matter of time before a re-founding of the constitutional order happens, perhaps initially through executive decisions and eventually through real legislative acts. So, there is a need for some public support for constitutional principles because the society has a latent but fundamental normative power in a nation-state.

A paradox of Rawlsian liberalism is that it is most useful in societies with a diversity of religious and moral positions involving fundamental differences, but its implementation is also most difficult in such societies—the diversity in question makes it harder for most to think of justice from an original position. To achieve acceptance of these ideas, a key question we must consider is: Would this theory be equally neutral toward all major comprehensive doctrines that exist in society, or does it tilt toward some of them?

Rawls distinguished between liberalism as a comprehensive doctrine of the good life, which privileges individual autonomy and personal choice above other considerations, and liberalism as a constitutional doctrine that allows for different comprehensive doctrines to coexist. So, in theory, a society where people who subscribe to different comprehensive doctrines coexist can benefit from a liberal constitutional framework. However, if in practice, the constitutional institutions favor liberalism as a comprehensive doctrine without going through the ordinary democratic politics, people who do not subscribe to liberalism as a comprehensive doctrine would suspect that the Rawlsian institutions are a step toward a society built entirely on the tenets of liberalism as a comprehensive doctrine. This could risk the legitimacy of the political project.

Consider religions and other social groups that want freedom to regulate their members. Since the basic logic of group formation involves giving up some personal liberties in exchange for membership of the group, all groups face free-rider problems. By coming between these groups and their members, the state can limit such groups’ freedom to regulate their members. This is acceptable to the extent equal basic liberties are involved but if such intervention is based on liberalism as a comprehensive doctrine, it would be an overreach.

Another tendency of Rawlsian politics that makes it difficult to accept, especially for conservatives, is that it seeks to move issues like drugs, pornography, euthanasia, and so on from the realm of social choice to the realm of personal choice. Conservatives often see this move as tantamount to social acceptance. Further, this move makes it more difficult to regulate some of these activities. For instance, in today’s technological era, what chance do families have of regulating access to pornography once it has been moved to the realm of personal choice?

Chandler suggests that while Rawls has been extremely influential in academia, his influence on real-world politics has been quite small. While this may be true of electoral politics, this is only half of the picture. Rawls is often directly or indirectly cited in the higher judiciary, and since higher courts are increasingly playing a role in shaping norms, Rawls’s influence is not small. But the judicial forum is limiting when it comes to creating widespread acceptance for these ideas. Debates around these principles and their application to specific cases, especially when multiple principles are in conflict, need to be much more open and involve a larger number of people.

Chandler’s book is an invitation to think carefully about these questions, but it should be complemented with serious engagement with a variety of comprehensive doctrines so that one can think about how a liberal constitutional order that is acceptable to other reasonable and decent doctrines can be built and sustained.

—By Suyash Rai