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CoercionFirst published Fri Feb 10, 2006; substantive revision Thu Oct 27, 2011

The concept of coercion has two different faces, corresponding to the two parties involvedin its most ordinary cases. On one face, it picks out a technique agents (coercers) can use toget other agents to do or not do something. On the other face, it picks out a kind of reasonfor why agents (coercees) sometimes do or refrain from doing something. Coercion istypically thought to carry with it several important implications, including that itdiminishes the targeted agent's freedom and responsibility, and that it is a (pro tanto)wrong and/or violation of right. Nonetheless, few believe that it is always unjustified, sinceit seems that no society could function without some authorized uses of coercion. It helpskeep the bloody minded and recalcitrant from harming others, and seems also to be anindispensable technique in the rearing of children. A state's legitimacy and sovereignty issometimes thought to depend on its ability to use coercion effectively and to monopolizeits use within its territory against competitors, both internal and external.

Because of its usefulness and its sometimes devastating effects, coercion is a matter oflongstanding political and ethical concern. Nonetheless, there has been little sustainedscholarly attention to its nature until recently; historically, many seem to have been willingto accept the concept of coercion as a primitive. Since the 1970s, however, the nature andfunction of coercion has come in for significant philosophical discussion. This flourishingof interest may have been sparked by social unrest (including efforts to suppress it) and thesuccess of some mass non-violent resistance movements. Also of import were tensionsbetween the U.S. and U.S.S.R., centered on their arsenals of nuclear weapons, by whicheach aimed to deter the other from disastrous behavior, including the launching of a nuclearfirst-strike. More recently, philosophical interest in globalization and terrorism have addedto interest in coercion. The new found interest in the topic coincides with a marked changein the way philosophers have understood its nature. Though the pace of study has slowedsomewhat since 1990, the nature of coercion and its effects remains a matter of dispute.

Sometimes the term “coercion” is used in popular speech with a quite broad sense. Forinstance, one hears “coercion” used to describe social pressures (e.g., the need to conformto peer expectations or to placate one's parents); or the constraining or manipulative effectsof advertising, one's upbringing, or the structuring of society more generally (e.g., thenecessity of participating in a capitalist economy). It is also sometimes treated as a quite

general concept encompassing almost any sort of interpersonal infringement on one'srights. Such uses are not wholly foreign to philosophical discussions (see, e.g., Ripstein2004). Nonetheless, the following discussion will focus on a narrower sense of the termmore in line with its use by major historical philosophical writers and contemporarytheorists alike. This usage will rule out, by stipulation, such things as mere disapproval,emotional manipulation, or wheedling. (What is “ruled in” is subject to dispute, as isdiscussed below.) This minimal setting of boundaries still leaves considerable room fordisagreement over how best to understand coercion's workings, its preconditions, and itseffects.

1. History1.2 Aquinas1.2 Hobbes, Locke, Kant1.3 John Stuart Mill1.4 20th Century views to 1969

2. Contemporary philosophical accounts of coercion2.1 Nozick and a new approach to coercion2.2 Threats and Baselines2.3 Moralized vs. non-moralized baselines2.4 Coercive Offers?2.5 Non-baseline approaches

3. Uses for thought about coercion3.1 The effect of coercion on coercee responsibility3.2 The wrongfulness of coercion3.3 Coercion and freedom3.4 Political/legal theory and coercion

4. Applications for theories of coercion4.1 Domestic coercion4.2 International coercion

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1. HistoryHistorically, the use of coercion by powerful actors has been of great concern tophilosophers and legal theorists. Detailed attention to understanding the concept coercion,however, is a relatively recent phenomenon. One effect of this discrepant attention is that itis sometimes difficult to determine what precise meaning earlier writers intended in theirdiscussions of “coercion,” as well as to decide whether “coercion” captures somethingdifferent from or related to other frequently used terms, such as violence, compulsion,

punishment, force, or interference. A brief survey of a few notable thinkers suggests thatcoercion has commonly been understood as a use of a certain kind of power for the purposeof gaining advantages over others (including self-protection), punishing non-compliancewith demands, and imposing one's will on the will of other agents. The kind of powerneeded for these functions is the sort that states and other forceful or violent agentspossess. One of the clearest, most important uses of coercion has been understood to be thestate's enforcement of law, either through direct uses of force or through punishmentsmeted out to lawbreakers. The state's use of coercion is thought to be licensed in particularfor the sake of preventing private acts of violence or coercion, as well as for punishing thefailure to keep agreements. These public uses of coercion are thought justified because theymake possible private cooperation and peaceable coexistence among people not linked byties of affection or blood.

1.2 Aquinas

Although one could start earlier, Aquinas offers a picture of what might be regarded as thetraditional, canonical understanding of coercion, its importance, and consequences.Discussion of coercion (sometimes also described as “compulsion”) recurs in the SummaTheologica under several headings. In a discussion of necessity and the will, he notes thatwhen we speak of necessity, we mean “that which must be” (Aquinas, ST, I.II Q6 A6).There are various ways something may be necessary. Coercion, he says, is a kind ofnecessity in which the activities of one agent — the coercer — make something necessaryfor another agent. The “necessity of coercion” is that in which “a thing must be, whensomeone is forced by some agent, so that he is not able to do the contrary” (ibid.). Suchnecessity is “altogether repugnant to the will,” (ibid.) meaning that what is done because ofcoercion is not done voluntarily. To say that something is voluntary, for Aquinas, impliesthat it follows from or is in accord with one's inclinations; in contrast, coercion is linkedwith the notions of violence and the involuntary.

For we call that violent which is against the inclination of a thing. … [A] thingis called voluntary because it is according to the inclination of the will.Therefore, just as it is impossible for a thing to be at the same time violent andnatural, so it is impossible for a thing to be absolutely coerced or violent, andvoluntary (Aquinas, ST, I Q82 A1).

For Aquinas, the law and the government bear a special relationship to the use ofcoercion/compulsion. In a discussion of the nature of (human) law, Aquinas claims that“the notion of law contains two things: first, that it is a rule of human acts; secondly, that ithas coercive power” (Aquinas, ST, I.II Q96 A5). This power is identified with the ability ofrulers to use force and violence against their subjects: “the governor of a city has perfectcoercive power: wherefore he can inflict irreparable punishments such as death andmutilation” (Aquinas ST, II.II Q65 A2). The law, Aquinas suggests, must use “force andfear” in order to restrain those who are “found to be depraved, and prone to vice, and noteasily amenable to words,” so that they will “desist from evil-doing, and leave others in

peace,” as well as become “habituated in this way,” and “virtuous” (Aquinas, ST, I.II Q95A1). This power is not available for anyone to use: Aquinas argues that the coercivefunction should be “vested in the whole people or in some public personage,” and notallowed to private parties (Aquinas, ST, I.II Q90 A3). He does allow, however, that someparties, such as the head of a household (“an imperfect community”), must be able to usean “imperfect coercive power, which is exercised by inflicting lesser punishments, forinstance by blows, which do not inflict irreparable harm” (ibid.).

Aquinas also supports the common view that at least some coercion affects the coercee'sresponsibility or blameworthiness for what he does as a result of coercion. He holds thatone is not to be blamed for things done non-voluntarily. Insofar as violence undercuts thevoluntariness of one's doings, as suggested above, one is not to be blamed for them.Violence appears able to coerce in two ways: when used directly against one's body (“aman may be dragged by force: but it is contrary to the very notion of violence, that he bedragged of his own will” (Aquinas, ST, I.II Q6 A4)); and when used in a way that disablesone's will (“the will can suffer violence, in so far as violence can prevent the exteriormembers from executing the will's command” (Aquinas, ST, I.II Q6 A4)). Interestingly,however, the threat[1] of violence that causes one to act from fear, or to avoid that violence,does not make an act involuntary, on Aquinas' understanding. So only some uses ofviolence to hinder another's actions have the effect of exempting the person targeted fromblame for things done as a result of violence.[2]

1.2 Hobbes, Locke, Kant

These three modern-era thinkers differ in innumerable ways in their philosophical andethical views, though they seem to hold surprisingly similar views of the nature of coercionand its role in the function of justice and the state. Hobbes's fame as a political theoristderives at least in part from the central role he gives to coercion as a necessary part of astate's function. Noticing that many contracts require one party to perform one's obligationsbefore the other party acts, Hobbes suggests that such first performance would be irrationalif one has no means to secure the subsequent performance of one's bargaining partner.

For he that performs first has no assurance the other will perform after; becausethe bonds of words are too weak to bridle men's ambition, avarice, anger, andother Passions, without the fear of some coercive Power. … But in a civilestate, where there is a Power set up to constrain those that would otherwiseviolate their faith, that fear is no more reasonable; and for that cause, he whichby the Covenant is to perform first, is obliged so to do (Hobbes 1651, Ch.14).

Interestingly, Hobbes seems to share Aquinas' view that acting from fear does not undercutthe voluntariness of one's acts, as he famously asserts that “covenants extorted by fear arevalid,” at least if it is a covenant needed to secure one's life and no sovereign authorityprohibits the making of such a covenant (Hobbes 1651, Ch. 14).

More generally, the very possibility of establishing justice and injustice depends on thepossibility of coercing subjects to abide by their covenants.

[W]here there is no coercive Power erected, that is, where there is noCommonwealth, there is no Propriety; all men having Right to all things:Therefore where there is no Commonwealth, there nothing is Unjust. So thatthe nature of Justice, consists in keeping of valid Covenants: but the Validity ofCovenants begins not but with the Constitution of a Civil Power, sufficient tocompel men to keep them: And then it is also that Propriety begins (Hobbes1651, Ch. 15).

Hobbes thus holds that coercion is essential to both the justification of and function of thestate or commonwealth. In fact, it is a law of nature that we seek the protection of theLeviathan's coercive powers in order to exit the perilous conditions of the state of nature.

It is perhaps presumptuous to discuss Locke's views on coercion, since he very rarely usesthe term “coercion” or its variants.[3] But even though he seldom speaks of coercion, hebelieves like Hobbes that the function of the state is intimately tied to its role in securingindividuals against those who would kill, injure or rob them.

Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws, with penalties ofdeath, and consequently all less penalties for the regulating and preserving ofproperty, and of employing the force of the community in the execution of suchlaws, and in the defence of the commonwealth from foreign injury, and all thisonly for the public good (Locke 1823 [1689], Sec. 3).

Locke, more so than Hobbes, is wary of the power of the sovereign, but is less anxiousabout conditions in the state of nature. One reason for this reversal of concern, he suggests,is that sovereigns are more potent oppressors than ordinary inhabitants of the state ofnature, due to the ability of sovereigns to organize force and violence.

It cannot be supposed that [people] should intend … to give any one or more anabsolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force into themagistrate's hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them….Whereas by supposing they have given up themselves to the absolute arbitrarypower and will of a legislator, they have disarmed themselves, and armed himto make a prey of them when he pleases; he being in a much worse conditionthat is exposed to the arbitrary power of one man who has the command of ahundred thousand than he that is exposed to the arbitrary power of a hundredthousand single men (Locke 1823 [1689], Sec. 137).

Because individuals cannot reasonably give up power to an unchecked sovereign, Lockealso holds that an agent's ability to possess and use that power effectively depends in manyways on the rightness of that agent's use of power.

Wherever law ends, tyranny begins…; and whosoever in authority exceeds thepower given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under hiscommand, to compass that upon the subject, which the law allows not, ceasesin that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be opposed, as anyother man, who by force invades the right of another.… He that hath authorityto seize my person in the street, may be opposed as a thief and a robber, if heendeavours to break into my house to execute a writ, notwithstanding that Iknow he has such a warrant, and such a legal authority, as will impower him toarrest me abroad (Locke 1823 [1689], Sec. 202).

In particular, Locke seems to suggest that a system of property rights cannot be enforcedby the state if it renders others unable to secure their own economic survival. One isentitled to the protection of what one has labored to create so long as, with respect to landand other natural resources, “there is enough, and as good, left in common for others”(Locke 1823 [1689], Sec. 27). This “Lockean proviso,” as Nozick called it (Nozick 1974,p. 175 ff), creates a sort of baseline condition against which the acceptability of any set ofcoercive arrangements can be judged. So for Locke, more than for Hobbes, the power ofthe sovereign rests on the consent of those governed — not only for its justification, butalso for its stability against revolution, about which Locke was clearly more sanguine thanHobbes.

Kant also gives considerable attention to the importance of coercion for guaranteeing rightsof citizens, though he says little that would explain what he means by his use of the term.Kant's only prominent discussion of coercion occurs in his Doctrine of Right,[4] a treatiseon the nature of law. Kant thinks there are two sorts of “incentives” to follow the law:ethical and juridical. The ethical (i.e., rational) incentive to follow the law is the motive ofduty. But since the wills of some people are determined pathologically — that is, byinclinations and aversions, rather than by duty — there needs also to be a way to get suchpersons to follow the law as well, through such means as aversion to punishment (Kant1996 [1797], 20 [AK 6, 219]). Coercion is then a tool the law uses to get the lawless torespect the rights of others whether they want to or not. He associates it with the executiveauthority of the state's ruler, and the ruler's use of punishment in conformity with the law.Kant makes clear that coercion counts as a hindrance to freedom, in which respect it issimilar to all violations of a person's rights. But coercion can be used to prevent other rightsviolations, and thus may be justified on the grounds that it counts as a hindrance to ahindrance to freedom. “Right and authorization to use coercion therefore mean one and thesame thing” (Kant 1996 [1797], 26 [AK 6, 232]).

Kant's views on the necessity of coercion for the existence of right differ from those ofHobbes and Locke, but he is in general sympathetic to the idea that states require the abilityto use coercion in defense of the equal freedom of their subjects. Without such coerciveabilities, one can have “private right,” but that is no more than the rights one has in thestate of nature, which are by no means secure.

It is true that the state of nature need not, just because it is natural, be a state ofinjustice, of dealing with one another only in terms of the degree of force eachhas. But it would still be a state devoid of justice … in which when rights are indispute there would be no judge competent to render a verdict having rightfulforce. Hence each may impel the other by force to leave this state and enter intoa rightful condition; … [the] acquisition [of right] is still only provisional aslong as it does not yet have the sanction of public law, since it is notdetermined by public (distributive) justice and secured by an authority puttingthis right into effect (Kant 1996 [1797], 90 [AK 6, 312]).

So Kant, like Hobbes and Locke, sees it as a necessity for people to establish a state withcoercive powers in order to achieve justice.

1.3 John Stuart Mill

With respect to his thinking about coercion, Mill is most famous for his views, in OnLiberty, about what coercion is not fit to do: namely, be used to regulate people's behaviorfor their own good. Like his predecessors and his mentor Jeremy Bentham, Mill associatescoercion with the state's powers to punish lawbreakers. But Mill seems in general to take amore expansive view of what coercion amounts to than did those surveyed above,appearing to treat the terms “coercion” and “interference” as much the same thing in OnLiberty. In stating the thesis of that work, Mill writes,

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled togovern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way ofcompulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the formof legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is,that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively,in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. … [An individual] cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbearbecause it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier,because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. Theseare good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, orpersuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting himwith any evil in case he do otherwise (Mill 1909–14 [1859], Ch.1).

In treating coercion expansively, Mill apparently intended to capture a number of differentways in which powerful agents could exercise constraining power on others besides the useof force, violence, and threats thereof. So, for instance, Mill suggests that the potency oflegal penalties often resides more in the stigma they attach than the actual punishmentsthey apply. Concerning laws against unpopular views, Mill writes,

[T]he chief mischief of the legal penalties is that they strengthen the socialstigma. It is that stigma which is really effective… [Except for people who are]

independent of the good will of other people, opinion, on this subject, is asefficacious as law; men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from themeans of earning their bread.… Our merely social intolerance kills no one,roots out no opinions, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from anyactive effort for their diffusion (Mill 1909–14 [1859], Ch. 2).

Thus Mill decries “the despotism of custom,” as a force seemingly more potent than that ofgovernments, in that it is able to hold back whole civilizations for centuries (Mill 1909–14[1859], Ch. 2).

By contrast with Hobbes, Locke, or Kant, Mill recognizes that the power of civilinstitutions is frequently on a par with the power of the state, and treats the potential forcoercion by these other institutions as similarly a matter of concern. For instance, inthinking about the institution of marriage, Mill writes,

When the law makes everything which the wife acquires, the property of thehusband, while by compelling her to live with him it forces her to submit toalmost any amount of moral and even physical tyranny which he may choose toinflict, there is some ground for regarding every act done by her as done undercoercion (Mill 1909 [1848], Bk.V, ch. XI).

And in looking at the circumstances of child labor in his day, he noted,

Labouring for too many hours in the day, or on work beyond their strength,should not be permitted to [children], for if permitted it may always becompelled. Freedom of contract, in the case of children, is but another word forfreedom of coercion (Mill 1909 [1848], Bk. V. ch. XI).

Thus Mill's understanding of coercion appears to treat a wider array of powers as potentialmeans of coercion than did earlier thinkers.

1.4 20th Century views to 1969

With the advent of analytic approaches to philosophy and law in the 20th Century,philosophers and legal theorists began to give more explicit elaboration to what “coercion”means, and how it relates to other concepts. In the period prior to 1969, there were ofcourse some differences among theorists, but there seems to be a mainstream view ofcoercion that is more or less continuous with the view found in Aquinas andHobbes/Locke/Kant (and some of the views of Bentham and Mill). This view identifiescoercion with the use of force or violence, as well as to threats of the same. For instance,Hans Kelsen explains the nature of law by saying,

As a coercive order, the law is distinguished from other social orders. Thedecisive criterion is the element of force — that means that the act prescribedby the order as a consequence of socially detrimental facts ought to be executed

even against the will of the individual and, if he resists, by physical force(Kelsen 1967 [1934], 34).

Kelsen goes on to count as coercive acts such things as detaining those suspected ofcrimes, detaining for protective custody, detaining of the insane, detaining in internmentcamps potential enemies of the state, and the confiscation or destruction of property(Kelsen 1967 [1934], 40–41).

J. R. Lucas puts a slightly different cast on a similar thought, emphasizing the importanceof a technique by which one agent (e.g., the state) can assure that its decisions areimplemented.

[W]e are concerned with the enforcement of decisions: we are considering theconditions under which decisions will be carried out regardless of therecalcitrance of the bloody minded. We therefore define force in terms ofbloody-mindedness, of what happens irrespective of how recalcitrant a man is,of what happens to him willy-nilly. Force, then, we say, is being used against aman, if in his private experience or in his environment either something isbeing done which he does not want to be done but which he is unable toprevent in spite of all his efforts, or he is being prevented, in spite of all hisefforts, from doing something which he wants to do, and which he otherwisecould have done by himself alone. A man is being coerced when either force isbeing used against him or his behaviour is being determined by the threat offorce (Lucas 1966, 57; emphasis in the original).

[I]mprisonment is the paradigm form of coercion.… Even if it were notregarded as a penalty, it would still be effective in frustrating the efforts of therecalcitrant to prevent a judicial decision being implemented (Lucas 1966, 60).

If there is a single, continuous thread that runs through the various thoughts about coercionsurveyed above, I believe it could be identified as Lucas suggests with a concern for theability of some agents to implement and enforce decisions about the activities of others.With the possible exception of Mill, who allows for a greater range of coercive methodsthan the others surveyed, this general idea seems to capture what one might have said wasessential in the concept of coercion as pre-modern and modern political theorists employedit, by name or (in the case of Locke) by function.

2. Contemporary philosophical accounts of coercion2.1 Nozick and a new approach to coercion

Beginning in 1969, a spate of short articles were published on coercion. The earliest ofsignificance was Robert Nozick's “Coercion.” It was followed shortly by a collection ofessays by political philosophers published in a volume of the Nomos series, focused on

coercion (Pennock and Chapman 1972). These articles were in turn followed by anoutpouring of responses and original discussions of coercion that continued throughout the1970s and 80s. The influence of these early discussions of coercion remains strong. So it isuseful to begin thinking about contemporary treatments of coercion by looking at howthese early articles framed the topic.

Nozick's essay was by far the most influential of these early works. Besides being first, hisessay established a framework for thinking about coercion which provided an intuitivelycompelling picture of how coercion works. Nozick analyzed coercion by offering a list ofnecessary and sufficient conditions for judging the truth of the claim that P coerces Q.Somewhat simplified, he argued that P coerces Q if and only if:

1. P aims to keep Q from choosing to perform action A;2. P communicates a claim to Q;3. P's claim indicates that if Q performs A, then P will bring about some consequence

that would make Q's A-ing less desirable to Q than Q's not A-ing;4. P's claim is credible to Q;5. Q does not do A;6. Part of Q's reason for not doing A is to lessen the likelihood that P will bring about

the consequence announced in (3) (Nozick 1969, 441–445).[5]

Many theorists adopted this framework explicitly or implicitly, and it has influenced almostall subsequent analytic philosophical discussions of the topic. Subsequent sections willaddress the aspects of Nozick's analysis which have received the most attention and debate.The remainder of this section will highlight more quickly some of the less noticed waysthat Nozick's analysis framed subsequent discussions. In particular, it sketches out how thisanalysis differs from the more traditional understanding of coercion, as seen in the classicalpolitical theorists above. In short, Nozick's account diverges from the more traditionalapproach in that (1) it associates coercion only with proposals (e.g., conditional threats[6]),and excludes direct uses of force or violence[7]; (2) it insists that coercion takes place onlywhen the coercee acquiesces to it; and (3) it makes coercion explicitly dependent on thecoercee's choice to take or not take a specific action A, and mandates that a judgment aboutcoercion must refer to facts about the coercee's psychology, such as her assessment of theconsequences A-ing in light of the coercer's proposal. The overall effect of thesedifferences is to focus the analysis of coercion on how the coercee is affected by it, ratherthan on what the coercer does, and what is required for him to do it successfully. (SeeAnderson 2008b.)

2.1.1 Coercion via threats, and (not) via force

One significant departure from the traditional approach to coercion is that Nozick limits hisdiscussion of coercion to techniques that influence or alter the will of the coercee, byaltering the intentions or dispositions of the coercee. Such coercion usually takes the formof a conditional threat (or sometimes a conditional offer). Though a few subsequent

writers, like Michael Bayles (Bayles 1972; and Gunderson 1979, following Bayles) andGrant Lamond (Lamond 1996 and 2000), have accepted direct force as equally a means ofcoercion,[8] Nozick's restriction of the topic to the use of threats — that is, coercion thatoperates through the will of the coercee — has been the much more frequently acceptedview, whether explicitly or implicitly.

There are good reasons to treat coercion via the will and direct force or constraint appliedto the body as two methods of a single kind of activity. First, though direct force is usuallyunsuited to get an agent to perform a specific action, both are well suited to preventing anagent from taking a variety of actions, with direct force or constraint often being moredecisive. Second, the two techniques are often used hand-in-hand. For instance, policeofficers will shackle and manhandle someone in custody who refuses to cooperate whengiven instructions to move or stay still. Also, prison inmates are coerced into remainingthere by a combination of penalties for attempting escape along with physical obstacles thatlimit the feasibility of doing so. So using both techniques is often part of one and the sameactivity aimed at affecting or constraining what an agent will do (sometimes by affectingwhat she can do) (Anderson 2008a and 2010). Of course, under direct force, it will usuallybe true that the coercee does not act, but rather is acted upon, as H. J. McCloskey puts it(McCloskey 1980). However, from the coercer's perspective, it may be just as well, inenforcing his decisions, to prevent the coercee from acting at all as it would be to induceher to choose not to act.

2.1.2 (No) unsuccessful coercion

Nozick's framing indicates that coercion is necessarily successful: if the coercee does notact as demanded, then there is no instance of coercion. At most, it seems, there is aninstance of attempted coercion. One might say that Nozick builds a “success condition”into his analysis of coercion. Others have disagreed with the success condition, thoughNozick's is apparently a majority view. (Those who agree include McCloskey 1980; Gorr1986; Murray and Dudrick 1995; Berman 2002; one who disagrees is Carr 1988). Thedisagreement seems to be over whether to identify instances of coercion with one or theother of the two faces mentioned at the outset: that is, to identify it with a kind of behaviorby the coercer (which may or may not be successful), or to identify it with specific eventsin the life of the coercee (namely, those that alter or constrain her activities). Severalauthors, picking up on the disagreement, have suggested that we might distinguish coercionfrom coerciveness, associating the former with completed, successful attempts, and thelatter with qualities of the attempt itself (Lamond, 2000).

Of course, if the coercee defies the coercer, there is no coerced action to investigate, norany question to answer about responsibility for such an action. There is also reason todoubt that what the coercer did in such cases rises to meet the bar at which we shouldconsider it coercive. (If a threat is trivial, we would likely resist saying that an agent wascoerced by it even if she acts to prevent its execution.) On the other hand, it may be unwise

to make a categorical distinction between cases in which coercion succeeds and caseswhere it fails: the difference between them on some occasions may be nothing more thanwhat mood the coercee happened to be in at the time. Since the coercer has the final anddefinitive say over whether he will engage in coercive activity (and who will be engagedby it), it may make more sense to identify our phenomenon of interest with a certain formof activity by the coercer, admitting that such activity may or may not result in any furthernoticeable consequences. (The would-be coercer may of course be bluffing, and theprospective coercee may call the bluff; this would not, by itself, give reason to deny thatwe have here an instance of the technique under study.)

2.1.3 Is coercion conceptually limited to specific coerced acts?

Finally, Nozick frames his analysis with respect to some particular action A taken or nottaken by the coercee. The connection of coercion to a specific action taken or foregone hasseemed natural to almost all subsequent commentators, even though it raises someproblems of which at least Nozick himself seems to have been aware. In the short detourthat is the second section of his essay, Nozick poses questions of the following sort: If Pcoerces Q into doing A, and B and C are the only ways to do A, does P coerce Q into doingB (assuming that is the means Q chose)? Similarly, if P coerces Q into not doing A, and Ais a necessary precursor to B, does P coerce Q into not doing B? Does it matter whether Qwas already aiming/hoping/expecting to do B? More generally, if as a result of prior acts ofcoercion by P, an act A is no longer possible for Q (perhaps Q doesn't think about it at all),has P coerced Q into not A-ing? Nozick broaches questions of these sorts, but leaves themaside without much mention of their significance (See Nozick 1969, 445–47). Takenseriously, however, they would force some significant revisions to the way theorists haveanalyzed coercion. They show that there may be difficulties in identifying coercion strictlywith actions taken or foregone, since it may be impossible to determine just what actionsthis description includes.

More generally, Nozick's analysis emphasizes the alteration in the coercee's choice ofactions which results from the way the coercer's proposal affects her reasons for acting.While this is certainly a plausible approach for distinguishing coerced from uncoerced acts,it puts the focus on how the coercee perceives her situation; it is only via this reflection thatit takes into account how the coercer is able to create this perception. That is, it leaves thestandard sorts of means (force, violence, perhaps even economic deprivation) that coercersuse out of the account, and instead treats all kinds of alterations to the coercee's costs andbenefits to acting as possible indications of coercion. While this more ecumenical approachto coercion may succeed in encompassing ways of coercing that the traditional theorieswould leave out, it creates a difficult challenge for the theory to distinguish coercive fromnon-coercive proposals. It is not surprising, therefore, that these are the issues that havebeen the focus of most subsequent theorizing on the subject.

2.2 Threats and Baselines

Since Nozick's essay, theorists have frequently treated the making of a conditional threat asan essential factor in coercion. The largest single effort expended in analyzing coercion hasbeen devoted to making sense of such threats, and determining their relationship tocoercion. Some, however, have questioned the linking of coercion with threats, andsuggested that conditional offers too can be coercive. Both conditional threats andconditional offers can be said to be proposals, where the distinction between them is theirrelationship to some baseline representing the coercee's situation prior to the proposal:compared to the baseline, threats worsen the coercee's situation, while offers do not. In thisand the next two sections, we'll examine some of the issues involved here. In Section 2.5we'll consider some approaches to coercion that attempt to escape from a “baseline”analysis of threats and offers.

Most will recognize the connection of coercion with threats as a matter of common sense:armed robbers, mafias, the parents of young children, and the state all make conditionalthreats with the intention of reducing the eligibility of some actions, making other actionsmore attractive by comparison. Note, however, that offers may also be made with the samegeneral intention as coercive threats: that is, to make some actions more attractive, othersless so. Consider the basic structure of a conditional threat by P that attaches undesirableconsequences C to some action A by Q:

P claims that (P will bring about consequences C if and only if Q does A).

This proposition has the same structure as an ordinary offer by P to do something Q desiresif Q agrees to pay for it, but not otherwise. Conversely, any ordinary offer has the samestructure as a threat. This suggests that any proposal whatever may be read as a threat or anoffer, depending on the relationship between the proposal and some specifiable externalfactors. (“Your money or your life” might equally be proposed by a back-alley robber or apharmaceutical company; in one case it's a robbery, in the other case it may be a life-savingoffer.) The idea that threats coerce while offers don't is frequently thought to be connectedto the fact that threats propose to make their recipient worse off than she would have beenotherwise. If so, we are required to specify how we should pick out and assess the relata inthis comparison, which is trickier than it may at first appear. Consider first the question ofwhat aspect of the proposal is relevant for this comparison; and then second what relevantcomparison case (usually called the “baseline”) should be used.

Any bi-conditional proposal can be analyzed into a conjunction of two component simpleconditionals, both of which must be true if the bi-conditional itself is true. However, onlyone of the two conditionals will have its antecedent satisfied (depending on what Qchooses to do), and will thus govern what comes about as a consequence. If the proposal isto have a motivational effect on its recipient, it will be because the recipient prefers thatone of the two possible consequents be realized — either that P brings about C, or that Pdoes not bring about C — so we may suppose that it is the difference in Q's valuation ofthese consequents that motivates (if anything does) Q to act in response to P's proposal. (Ifthe agent is indifferent between the two states, we may consider the proposal to be an offer,

but too unattractive an offer to tempt one to accept it.) So we look to the conditionalcontaining the less-preferred consequent, and compare it to the baseline in order to seewhether P's proposal makes Q worse off than she would be in the relevant alternative stateof affairs. (The following analysis slightly modifies the analysis in Gorr 1986, 391–397;and Berman 2002, 55–59.[9])

So, for instance, an armed robber issues a proposal to a passerby that amounts to thefollowing conditionals:

(a) If she keeps her valuables, he will harm her;

(b) if she hands them over, he will not.

The passerby prefers the consequent in (b), so we compare the conditional (a) to thebaseline. Normally, one faces no harm if one keeps one's valuables. So the first conditionalmakes the passerby worse off than she would normally be, thus turning the robber'sproposal into a threat.

By contrast, consider the offer of a salesman who proposes to a customer the following:

(c) If the customer pays X, he will provide her a vacation package;

(d) if she does not pay X, he provides no vacation package.

Assuming the customer would prefer having the vacation package to not having thevacation package, the second conditional contains the less preferred consequent. Butreceiving no free vacation is quite normal, so one is no worse off when the secondconditional is operative than under normal circumstances. Hence the salesman is makingonly an offer, not a threat.

(Some have discussed “throffers,” which are proposals that make one better off thannormal under one conditional, worse off than normal under the alternative conditional. Onthe above analysis, throffers will be included among the threats because the conditionalcontaining the less-preferred consequent makes one worse off than one normally wouldbe.)

This analysis works well enough for most purposes. Since we quite often know what'snormal and what's not, threats and offers are usually easily distinguished. Difficulties arise,however, when this is not the case.

2.3 Moralized vs. non-moralized baselines

Nozick explains the idea of the baseline by calling it the “normal or natural or expectedcourse of events” (Nozick 1969, 447). But all of these terms are ambiguous, in that theyhave normative (or “moral”) and non-normative (e.g., “predictive”) uses. Frequently, the

normative and predictive uses will point to the same state of affairs as the course of eventsthat is indicated. However, the extensions of the normative and non-normative uses willsometimes differ, thus requiring a theorist to choose one or the other in order to determinewhether a particular communication counts as a threat or an offer, and is therefore coerciveor not.

Nozick offers two of the best known cases in which the normative and non-normativebaselines would appear to diverge. Here's one of them (Nozick 1969, 450–51):[10]

The slave case: P is a slave owner who regularly beats his slave Q. One day P proposes tospare Q his regular beating if and only if Q now does A.

Q prefers not to be beaten, so we look to the conditional

(e) If Q does not do A, P will beat Q.

Since P beats Q regularly, this conditional's becoming operative makes Q no worse off thanwhat Q finds normal or expected (statistically speaking). So P's proposal amounts to anoffer, not a threat, on this way of understanding of what's normal. Yet we would reasonablyhold that if Q elects to escape a beating by doing A, Q's choice is made in response to athreat of a beating, and is thus coerced.

The slave case demonstrates an ambiguity in our thought about “what is normal” (or “whatis expected”). Although the slave is typically beaten and predicts he'll be beaten based onpast history, we expect on moral grounds that people are not beaten for no reason. Giventhe moral sense of what is normal, the slave owner's proposition amounts to a threat, thusvalidating our sense that the slave is coerced into doing A. Especially in contexts ofentrenched injustice, the “moral” and “predictive” baselines may diverge, forcing us tochoose between them.

Actually, any number of different possible baselines might be constructed for judgingwhether a proposal makes one better or worse off than the baseline. There are differentways of making a prediction; there are different “moral” standards; there are also ways oftaking into consideration what the recipient of the proposal would want. So divergencesamong the many possible baselines may be more common than we might at first suspect.This requires us to find a way to choose among the possibly diverging baselines. Nozick,for instance, proposes that when the “predictive” and the “moral” baselines diverge, weturn to the preferences of the recipient of the proposal, and use the baseline he prefers. Inthe slave case above, Nozick reasonably supposes that the slave would prefer that “normal”meant “moral”; in which case the slave would not be beaten even if he did not do A. Bycomparison to this baseline, the slave-owner's proposal is a threat, not an offer.

Some theorists have noticed that what the proposal recipient wants to happen may differfrom both the moral and predictive baselines. Michael Gorr, for instance, argues that if

preferences are important when the baselines diverge, “it is unclear why they should be lessso in cases where the two baselines coincide.” Hence he favors an account that “makes thesubject's preferences a controlling factor in all cases” (Gorr 1986, 398–399; see alsoRhodes 2000). The difficulty with this suggestion, however, is that it's very difficult to craftconstraints on what preferences will count for how things go; people can want others to door omit doing almost anything. Suppose we agree it is normal in both the moral andpredictive senses for workers who shirk to be fired, and for customers who refuse to payutility bills to have their electricity cut off. Of course, workers and customers would likelyprefer to get paid for nothing, and to get their electricity for free. Compared to thesebaselines, proposing to fire or to cut off electricity to someone amounts to going out ofone's way to attach undesirable consequences to some (non-)action A. On Gorr's criteria, itwould appear, both of these threats count as coercive threats, yet both seem to be parts ofordinary, non-coercive commerce based on offers and acceptances.[11] At any rate, it isdifficult to see how a fully preference-based baseline account can avoid seeing coercion ina vast array of situations where our pre-theoretic views would deny it.

Those who opt for a moralized baseline approach seem to offer a more plausible approach.The most prominent of these theorists has been Alan Wertheimer, whose book Coercionsets the current standard and starting point for continued scholarship in this area.[12] Sinceonly threats coerce, but not all threats do, he provides a two-pronged test for whether aproposal constitutes a coercive threat (Wertheimer 1987, especially chs. 2, 12, and 14). Theproposal constitutes a threat if the proposer indicates that, if his demand is denied, he willmake the recipient worse off than the recipient ought to be. (In particular, Wertheimerbelieves that this is frequently best understood as a question of whether the proposerproposes to violate the recipient's rights (Wertheimer 1987, 217).)[13] Yet the mere factthat something threatens one is not sufficient to ground a claim that it coerces anyone; thethreat may be wrongful but also trivial. So Wertheimer requires that the choice forced uponthe coercee be such that she has no reasonable choice but to succumb. This too requires acontextually specific, moralized judgment, Wertheimer thinks. One might, for instance, besupported in a claim that a threatened beating left one “no choice” but to sign a contract;the same might not be said about a choice to commit murder.

Wertheimer's approach is developed and defended by surveying legal reasoning in the U.S.and its common-law tradition with respect to such matters as contracts, criminalresponsibility, plea bargains, blackmail, and consent to searches and medical procedures.His work has been influential among many who have tried to determine what the lawshould say about various coercive phenomena, and Wertheimer himself has offered furtherapplications of his theories in subsequent work, including a book on consent to sexualrelations (Wertheimer 2004). Wertheimer's moralized account and moralized theories ofcoercion more generally raise some difficulties for understanding how there could be“justified coercion,” such as law enforcement, in that they tend to associate uses ofcoercion with immoral action. Some of these difficulties are considered in Section 3.4below.

2.4 Coercive Offers?

While the dominant strand in recent theory has associated coercion with threats, and deniedthat offers can be used to coerce, this sharp differentiation of these two sorts of proposalshas come in for some criticism. The parallel structure of conditional threats and conditionaloffers has led some to deny that there is a deep distinction to be made between them.Others have focused on the role of both in the broader political and economic context, andfound that these broader conditions make coercive offers a live possibility. Dealings incapitalist markets are often highly exploitative; governments often condition the provisionof ordinary benefits on the satisfaction of unrelated demands (such as making highwayfunding conditional on states' passing particular laws). Given the potency such offerspossess, one might suspect that there are many offers that one cannot reasonably refuse,possibly reflecting great imbalances in power or prior historical injustices between thebargaining parties. (See, for instance, O'Neill 1991; and Berman 2001.)

Of those who have argued that threats and offers can both be used coercively, DavidZimmerman has been most prominent (Zimmerman 1981; others who have argued offerscan coerce include Frankfurt 1988 [1973]; Held 1972; Lyons 1975; Van De Veer 1979;Benditt 1979; Feinberg 1986; Stevens 1988; for criticism of Zimmerman, Held, andStevens, see Alexander 1981; Bayles 1974; and Swanton 1989, respectively). Retaining thebaseline-approach to coercion found in Nozick, Zimmerman urges that in setting a baselinefor judging a proposal, we should take into account the possibility that the proposal makeris actively hindering the coercee from obtaining a situation for herself that would be betterthan the situation the coercer proposes. So, for instance, if a person is destitute on anisland, and someone proposes to employ this person for a life-sustaining pittance, thisproposal may count as an offer, since it is an improvement over the “pre-proposal”situation. But if the person is destitute and unable to obtain better conditions only becausethe employer actively prevents the person from leaving the island (say, by preventing thebuilding of boats), Zimmerman suggests the offer should be regarded as coercive. That'sbecause the appropriate baseline for evaluating the proposal is the state of affairs that therecipient would face in the absence of special interference by the proposal maker. (In thepresent case, this might be the situation the island inhabitant would face were she able tobuild a boat and return to the mainland.) If relative to this baseline the offer is less favored,then it should count as coercive, Zimmerman thinks.

Do such offers coerce? The dispute between those who say offers can coerce, such asZimmerman, and those who insist only threats coerce may be more verbal than real. WhileZimmerman, for instance, would label the offer itself coercive, what appears to do thecoercing here is whatever means were or are being used to keep the recipient of the offerfrom reaching a better bargaining state. If the offering party here has created the conditionsthat make even very unattractive offers still the best available, then the coercion, if there isany, seems to be vested in the offerer's actions that prevent the recipient from improvingher situation or finding better offers elsewhere.

Zimmerman grants that even if the offering party does not cause the recipient to be in theposition she's in, we may still want to criticize such offers. In these cases, the offer-makermay be guilty of engaging in exploitation, though not coercion. When one party is in amuch stronger bargaining position than another, the stronger party sometimes uses itsadvantage to keep for itself most or all of the gains to be had from cooperative interactionbetween the parties. So employers who are in a stronger bargaining position than theiremployees may exploit them by paying them a small fraction of the value their laborcontributes to the production of goods for the employer. This is especially feasible whenone party has a relative monopoly position with respect to some valuable good (say,employment opportunities). So, reconfiguring Zimmerman's results somewhat, we mightretain the exclusive connection between threats and coercion by saying that offers madefrom a position of superior bargaining strength are very likely to be exploitative; and thatsometimes coercion is used to create or maintain one's bargaining advantages.

Not all, however, would accept that the coerciveness of a large differential in bargainingpower depends upon its causal origins. Joan McGregor, for example, gives an analysis ofsuch offers in an account that eschews the baseline approach. She argues, “the ‘betteroff’/‘worse off’ distinction ignores the power relationships that occur when there areradically disparate bargaining strengths” (McGregor 1988–89, 24). To assess thecoerciveness of something like an economic transaction, one must instead attend to therelative strengths of the bargaining positions between parties involved. “[C]oercioninvolves exercising power over another; in the market, it involves exercising superiorbargaining power” (McGregor 1988–89, 25). At least two of the conditions for havingbargaining power sufficient to coerce another are that the weaker party is dependent insome way on the stronger party (e.g., there are no other options or potential exchangepartners), and the stronger party has influence over whether some significant evil occurs tothe weaker party (such as loss of life, health, security) (McGregor 1988–89, 34). If inaddition the stronger party decides to take advantage of these conditions, then this is notjust exploitation but coercion. While the details of her account of bargaining strength mayraise difficulties, her attempt to incorporate a measure of the coercer's power into theaccount of coercion seems a useful if relatively under-explored approach.

2.5 Non-baseline approaches

The need to establish a baseline is generated by a need to distinguish threats from offers asa central criterion of coercion. Threats and offers are both proposals put to the coercee,aiming to influence her behavior, and distinguished with respect to how they affect what isnormal for the coercee. There are two main ways in which some theorists have divergedfrom the baseline-style account that Nozick proposed, each of these ways admitting of bothmoralized and non-moralized versions. Instead of distinguishing threats and offers fromwhat's normal for the agent, we might instead see threats as applying a special sort ordegree of pressure on the coercee's will. Or, we might move away from focusing on thecoercee's will as the locus of coercion, and instead look at the powers, intentions, and

activities of coercers. A “coercer-focused” account seeks to determine what is special aboutcoercive actions, rather than trying to distinguish coerced from non-coerced actions.

One way to identify coercive threats is by looking for a distinctive way that pressure canaffect a coercee's will. Sometimes, a use of threats conditioned on the agent's activities mayaffect not just the coercee's choice but also her ability to choose at all. Under severepsychological pressure, faced with grave dangers or significant evils, people sometimesreact in ways that diverge from (or at least do not follow from) their more rational,considered desires. Harry Frankfurt seems to make this effect a requirement for somethingto count as coercive, saying “A coercive threat arouses in its victim a desire — i.e. to avoidthe penalty — so powerful that it will move him to perform the required action whether hewants to perform it or considers that it would be reasonable for him to do so” (Frankfurt1988 [1973], 78). Frankfurt has several reasons for insisting on this strong requirement, butperhaps most central is his view that coercion must have such an overbearing effect if it isto override the coercee's moral responsibility for acting (Frankfurt 1988 [1973], 75–76).However, if one treats such overburdening as a sufficient condition for coercion, then thisagain lends support to the view that some offers — irresistible ones — will also turn out tobe coercive. Though the fact that Q's will was overborne would seem compatible with theclaim that Q has been coerced, few besides Frankfurt have taken such overburdening to bea necessary condition for coercion to take place.[14]

Short of generating psychological compulsion, one might hold that coercion involves theimposition of an option which no one could reasonably refuse to take. Several have tried tocharacterize such situations in a way that neither reduces to a form of psychologicaldeterminism, nor implicitly invokes baseline comparisons. For instance, Mark Fowlerargues that “coercion generally involves the prima facie immoral imposition of practicalimperatives by use of threats” (Fowler 1982, 330). While this approach must besupplemented with further details (including, perhaps, a resort to a baseline to distinguishthreats from offers), its principal contribution is its reliance on “practical imperatives.”Fowler suggests that we need to see coercion in relation to our understanding of howpractical reason works. When we say that the coercer leaves the coercee “no choice,” wedon't necessarily mean that the coercee is literally unable to choose, but that for the coerceeto choose otherwise than the coercer demands would be contrary to practical reason(Fowler 1982, 331).

The normative approach Fowler favors links this criterion to a Kantian account ofautonomy, and suggests that the test of a coercive threat is that it violates the coercee'sautonomy. This would appear to produce a mismatch between our pre-theoreticunderstanding of coercion and the cases that will satisfy Fowler's conditions — forinstance, giving someone a false “warning” arguably violates her autonomy, but this seemsdifferent than coercion. Yet if there is a way to make sense of the notion of imposing apractical imperative, this seems a useful element of an account of coercion.

Joel Feinberg identifies coercion with a special degree or kind of pressure imposed on the

coercee's will, but avoids connecting pressure to a normative judgment. His account istailored to cases where the coercer seeks to obtain a token of “consent” to some harmful ordangerous activity from the coercee, but it could easily be generalized to cover other sortsof coerced activities. His account starts by offering a helpful description of the role of thecoercer, stipulating that the coercer:

threatens to “cause or fail to prevent some consequences that [the coercee]finds unwelcome”; and

“gives some evidence of the credibility of the threat”; and

“has actively intervened in [the coercee's] option-network, to acquire control ofthe relevant option-switches; in particular he can close tight the conjunctiveoption that consists of [the coercee's] noncompliance with the demand and [thecoercee's] avoidance of the threatened unwelcome consequences” (Feinberg1986, 198). [15]

These stipulations are useful supplements to the Nozickian-style account, in that theyrequire the coercer to demonstrate his power, and to actively use it to create the situationfacing the coercee, in particular by preventing the coercee from finding ways to avoid theforced choice.[16]

The bulk of Feinberg's account focuses, however, on how coercive proposals can generatepressure on the coercee's will that, if not irresistible, is sufficiently strong to make thecoercee's choice unfree. This account avoids a reliance on baselines because it makes thecoercee's judgment of the frightfulness, unwelcomeness and pressure involved in the threatthe key criterion for determining whether it coerces. Feinberg goes on to give a detaileddiscussion of how one might compare the pressures involved when coercers issue varioussorts of demands coupled with various sorts of threats, suggesting ways of calculating the“total coercive burden” a threat creates for a coercee.

Feinberg's account generates a number of apparently troubling results. For one thing, it willallow that extremely tempting offers are coercive if they create pressure similar to thatassociated with coercive threats; the only thing that seems to count is how much pressureone feels to act. It will also treat people with non-standard preferences or fears (say, a direfear of being patted on the back) as having been “coerced” by threats to do what are,objectively speaking, trivial things (Feinberg 1986, 212).

A different way of understanding coercion moves away from focusing on its impact on thecoercee. Some approaches, like McGregor's noted above, look for coercion in the coercer'staking advantage of certain sorts of power differentials between coercer and coercee.Others identify coercion with the making of threats, but seek to distinguish threats fromoffers in ways that avoid reference to a baseline, and instead look at the qualities of thecoercer and his activities. Mitchell Berman, following Vinit Haksar, has argued for anapproach the crux of which holds that immoral coercive threats propose to do something

that would be immoral to do if carried out. (See Berman 2002; Haksar 1976.) (Bermandoes not, it appears, offer a definition of coercion per se, but only of wrongful coercion.)Grant Lamond focuses instead on the coercer's intentional attempt to use pressure to alterthe activities of the coercee, where that pressure comes from an intention to deliberately setback the interests of the coercee. (See Lamond 1996 and 2000.) Because McGregor's,Berman's and Lamond's ways of capturing coercion attend to the coercer's actions andintentions, they avoid the need to distinguish coercive from other proposals based onspecific effects on the coercee. (For that reason, they could also reject the “success”condition on coercion found in Nozick's and most subsequent accounts of coercion.)

Scott Anderson, drawing upon some remarks of J. R. Lucas (1966), takes a different tack,and associates coercion with the use of an ability some agents have to enforce theirdecisions about what another will or will not do, “where the sense of enforceability here isexemplified by the use of force, violence and the threats thereof to constrain, disable, harmor undermine an agent's ability to act” (Anderson 2010, 6). Anderson requires that thecoercer engage in activity either to create a power differential between himself and thecoercee (say, by taking up arms), or else draw upon some existing differential betweenagents of the sorts to which coercer and coercee belong (say, policeman and citizen,respectively). This “enforcement approach” suggests that uses of these sorts of powers aredistinctive, and thus can be used to pick out long-standing threats (such as the criminallaw) as coercive, even if it is difficult to identify specific actions that they alter.

3. Uses for thought about coercionAlthough some writings on coercion might appear to aim principally for conceptualclarification, theorists of coercion more often aim to answer questions that have practicalimport for ethics, judicial decisions, political or legal theory, and social policy. Some of themost common implications of claims about coercion are explored below. The foursubsections here (on responsibility under coercion, the wrongfulness of coercion, its effecton freedom, and its political implications) overlap in a number of ways, so divisions amongthese sections are somewhat artificial. The divisions here foreground one or another aspectof the topic at a time, but do not indicate that these aspects are easily separable or can beusefully isolated from the other aspects of the topic.

3.1 The effect of coercion on coercee responsibility

There is no single, widely agreed upon theory that explains when an agent is or is notresponsible for something that happens in the world. Judgments of responsibility arenormative, and may depend on other normative facts specific to the particular sort of actionor practice in question. For instance, facts that might limit one's responsibility for signingor violating a contract might fail to limit one's responsibility for killing someone. So theeffect of coercion or its kin (duress, extortion) may differ depending upon the sort of actionfor which one seeks to limit one's responsibility, or upon the moral context in which one

acted. Nonetheless, a few central cases and some general tendencies can be given withsome confidence.

There are two traditional sorts of grounds on which an agent's responsibility might betruncated or attenuated because he was coerced. The first is by virtue of being excused forhis action; the second is by virtue of his action's being justified. The exact understanding ofthis distinction is under continuing dispute, but here is one way of understanding its mostsalient points. One may be excused, in whole or in part, for an action performed undercoercion if that action (or its consequences) was beyond one's control or willpower toprevent, or if that action (or its consequences) was unintentional. This latter conditionmight obtain if, for instance, one acquiesces under coercion to do something intentionally(like driving a car), but in so doing one does something else unintentionally (like helping amurderer escape). One is justified in acquiescing to coercion if one's action (or itsconsequences) is morally required, or is morally permissible under the circumstances evenif the action will foreseeably result in harm to others. (One obvious category of actions thatcarry such justifications are those taken to disable an attacker in self-defense or the defenseof others.) Inconveniently, neither sort of justification engages smoothly with most recenttheories of coercion that may be used to determine agent responsibility for acts performedunder coercion.

Most questions about coercion's effect on responsibility arise in cases of coercion viaconditional threats. When an agent is confronted by a threat, one ground on which heracquiescence may be excused is if the threat causes a total breakdown in her will. Likeother incapacities, this can affect her responsibility for actions taken because she was trulyunable to do otherwise. (This excuse may lead to questions about how the agent becamevulnerable to suffering such a breakdown in agency; but in such cases she may beresponsible for her weakness of character, though perhaps not for her action.) Excuse mayalso be invoked when the coerced person acts in ignorance or if the harm she causes isunintentional (excuses which are available regardless of whether one is coerced). But manypeople are able to react deliberately and rationally in response to coercive threats. So itseems that most cases of diminished responsibility under coercion will appeal tojustification rather than excuse.

Some accounts of coercion apply a moralized test to the coercee's situation, holding thatone may avoid responsibility for an act taken under coercion if the coercer's proposal issuch that one “is entitled to yield to [the coercer's] proposal and then be released from thenormal moral and legal consequences of [one's] act” (Wertheimer 1987, 267). Such amoralized test might be the best theorists can do, but it requires a theory separate from thatwhich explains the coerciveness of the proposal to begin with. (For instance, Wertheimer'stheory has two “prongs”: the first prong decides whether a particular proposal is coercive;it's the second prong which then determines whether a coercive proposal, once made, doesindeed coerce someone in the sense that it affects her responsibility for acquiescing).Although there are some specific moralized or normative tests one might use to decideresponsibility for action under coercion, it is unclear that any of them is robust enough to

handle more than a fraction of the cases.[17]

One test of responsibility that might be proposed would limit the responsibility of someoneacting under coercion if she acts in a way that minimizes the total amount of harm(invoking the “lesser-evil principle”). So, for instance, we might deny that a person isresponsible for choosing to injure another to avoid being killed, but hold her responsible ifshe chooses to kill someone to avoid being injured herself. Though this principle isintuitively plausible, we clearly do not accept it in other, non-coercive contexts. Forinstance, we do not permit one to snatch a spare kidney from one individual to save the lifeof another. Although we might add conditions to this test to make the limitation of one'sresponsibility harder to obtain, and therefore more in line with our intuitions, it remainsunclear that there is any well-formed moral principle of this sort that would cover all casesequally well.

Instead of a moral test, one might propose a psychological test, on which acquiescing to acoercer's demands in a way that harms others is justified if the net value of doing so issufficiently great to the coercee. Roughly speaking, this is Feinberg's approach, taken up byMurray and Dudrick as well. (See Feinberg 1986; and Murray and Dudrick 1995.) Thepoint of such a standard is to recognize that some pressures on the will are too much tobear, without implying that in such cases it is literally impossible for the coercee to makechoices because of an overborne will. The difficulty with this approach is that it lets thedegree of inducement alone justify one's yielding to it. A number of causes other thancoercion can create extreme inducements to do harm to others; consider what some havedone for fame, wealth, or love. Because most would be reluctant to accept that evenextraordinarily tempting offers limit one's responsibility for yielding to them, themagnitude of the inducement by itself seems not to suffice to explain our judgments ofresponsibility. Although we might add other conditions to restrict the limiting effect onresponsibility exclusively to threats and not offers, if the justification lies in the pressure onthe will, then it would seem one might have the same justification for yielding totemptation that one has for acquiescing to a mortal threat. (Note that some tempting offershave life or death riding on them.)

Law is sometimes required to make judgments about actions performed under necessitydue to exigent circumstances. Sometimes persons harm the interests of others in order tosave themselves or others from death or serious injury from causes beyond their control.[18]

Coercion, however, presents a more complicated set of issues for making judgments ofresponsibility than do cases of natural necessity. Coercion involves a strategic and dynamicinteraction between two agents — coercer and coercee — and the standard used to judgethe coercee's responsibility for acting under coercion can affect that strategic situation. Theprinciples by which we judge a coercee's responsibility for acquiescing to coercion mayaffect whether it is rational or productive for a would-be coercer to attempt coercion in thefirst place. (By comparison, in cases of bad luck and natural disaster, the situation issimpler because the behavior of the weather, unlike the behavior of coercers, is unaffectedby the incentives facing those who might be pressured into acting under its power.) If we

are permissive in limiting the responsibility of coercees, this will make acquiescing tocoercion a more reasonable option; if instead we are stingy in limiting responsibility forharms caused under coercion, coercees may be much less likely to acquiesce to a coercer'sthreats. But if a (would-be) coercer knows that a potential victim will be unyielding to histhreats, then coercion becomes a less productive or reasonable means to use. So inchoosing a principle that justifies coercees in acquiescing under coercion, we need to takeinto account that this principle may alter the dynamic between coercer and coercee in waysthat may in turn affect the rationality and fruitfulness of using coercion.

There are, however, some cases in which coercion may alter an agent's responsibility forwhat happens as a result of coercion that don't raise the difficulties noted above. If, likesome older ideas about coercion, we count uses of direct physical interference among themeans of coercion, then in some cases it is comparatively easy to see how coercion canaffect an individual's responsibility for things done or not done because of coercion. If oneis restrained, incapacitated by violent means, or denied essential means to achieve apurpose, then it may be fairly obvious why one has an excuse for not doing otherwise thanone did (See Anderson 2010). Relying on the principle of “ought implies can,” when onecannot do something, this provides a good excuse for why one is not responsible for failingto do it. Related questions may arise about how one came to be incapacitated; for instance,if one fails to care for one's children, and seeks to be excused for this neglect because onewas incarcerated, we may want to know why one was incarcerated before crediting theexcuse. Nonetheless, there will be some cases where the answers to these questions willshow that the coercee played no role in his own incapacitation, and is therefore not to beheld responsible for things the coercer caused him to do or not do.

Similarly, it is worth noting that there are some cases in which coercees may be justified,and not just excused, for acquiescing to threats, even if they do so calmly and deliberately.This sort of justification can be granted when the coercer has structured an coercee'ssituation in such a way that the coercee's will becomes essentially redundant to theoutcome. If, for instance, a bouncer is able to remove a patron from the bar whether shelikes it or not, then if the bouncer threatens to do so, her walking out of the bar in responseto such a threat may be regarded as no more voluntary than her being carried out by force.When a coercer has the power to enforce his decision regardless of what the coerceechooses to do, this may provide the coercee a justification for failing to engage in anexercise in futility.[19]

3.2 The wrongfulness of coercion

In the next section, we'll consider how coercion is thought to impinge upon freedom,something that raises obvious ethical implications in its own right. So consideration ofthese sorts of ethical issues will be postponed until there. The present section looks atcertain more basic questions about whether coercion is intrinsically wrong, and what elsemight be wrong with it besides its effect on freedom or autonomy.

There has been considerable debate over the question of whether coercion is intrinsicallywrongful. There seem to be three categories in which answers to this question might fall:coercion is intrinsically wrongful; it is prima facie or pro tanto wrongful, though it may bejustified by further facts; and it is intrinsically morally neutral, though some uses of it maybe wrongful because of specific facts about them. Differences in understanding what iswrongful about it may account for these different positions.

One is most likely to accept the first view, that coercion is intrinsically wrongful if onedefines coercion as some sort of violation or threatened violation of the coercee's rights.Wertheimer's account seems to accept such a view, as does Cheyney Ryan's arguments fora normative conception of coercion. (See Wertheimer 1987; Ryan 1980.) This close tiebetween coercion and immoral action captures a number of intuitions we have aboutcoercion, reflecting also a lot of ordinary language. People often associate uses of coercionwith injustices done to themselves or others. This tie also provides a sharper divisionbetween coercive and non-coercive activity than might otherwise be found: if an activity ismorally unobjectionable, then it is ipso facto not coercive. Of course, if identifyingcoercion requires a prior moral judgment, then one will need to be able to make suchjudgments reliably in order to be able to identify coercion reliably. But this suggests anobjection to this view of coercion's wrongfulness: there are some situations in which thecoerciveness of an action appears obvious even though it may be difficult or impossible toascertain its rightfulness or wrongfulness (this objection goes doubly for the next proposal,viz., that coercion is prima facie or pro tanto wrongful). Thus some (e.g., Zimmerman2002) have resisted making judgments of coercion depend on prior moral judgments. TheWertheimer/Ryan view also generates a categorical distinction between different possibleuses (and users) of the same technique: if the mafia threatens to destroy your property ifyou fail to pay protection money, this threat will count as coercive; but if the just, well-regulated state threatens to confiscate your property unless you pay taxes, this threat isarguably not coercive, on this view. Some difficulties stemming from this implication willbe noted in the next section.

The second view, that coercion is prima facie or pro tanto immoral, is probably the mostcommonly held view. Yet it is difficult to find and describe the immoral factor in coercionthat will then suffice to explain its wrongfulness when not rebutted, while avoiding themiscategorization of cases. Here are two recent attempts at such a description.

One suggestion holds that it is the wrongness of the act threatened that makes the use ofsuch a threat a wrongful act itself. Mitchell Berman has argued that when a coercerthreatens to do something, the rightness or wrongness of the use of such a threat to coercedepends on whether it would be rightful or wrongful for that agent to carry through withthat threat (Berman 2002). Berman's account of wrongful coercion thus apparently relies ona principle of inference that holds that if it is wrong to do A, then it is wrong to threaten todo A, and vice versa. While this principle would seem to get support from a lot of particularcases, it's not clear that it holds in all cases. At least sometimes it appears appropriate tothreaten to do something which would be wrong to carry out (nuclear deterrence is

sometimes thought to be like this; see Section 4.1 below). And sometimes it may bewrongful to threaten what it would be right to carry out (blackmail and extortion aresometimes thought to include such cases). In general, making a conditional threat allowsfor considerable ethical complexity because a threat can amount to nothing more than a bitof communication, yet in some circumstances such communication is tantamount to an actof considerable violence, with similar consequences. In fact, making a conditional threat isoften a more troublesome and ethically problematic act than making a plain, unconditionalthreat.[20] Unfortunately, the ethical complexities involved in the making of conditionalthreats have been little explored to date by those more centrally interested in coercion.[21]

(For criticism of and an alternative to Berman's approach, see Anderson 2011.)

A second suggestion holds that there's something special about the coercer's intention vis-à-vis the coercee that makes coercion frequently problematic. Grant Lamond suggests thatthe wrongness of wrongful coercion derives from the fact that it involves a “proposaldeliberately to impose a disadvantage on another” (Lamond 2000, 49). “The distinctivewrong involved in [coercive conditional] threats is to propose to take an action because it isunwelcome to the recipient, i.e., because he does not want it done” (Lamond 1996, 228). Itis thus the coercer's intention to harm or disadvantage the coercee (or to propose to do so)that creates coercion's special burden of justification (though Lamond does not supposesuch justifications are particularly difficult to find). But it isn't clear either that when oneproposes to harm another that one thereby intends to bring about any harm (one could bebluffing).[22] More importantly, it's also unclear that all intentions to impose disadvantagesare even prima facie in need of justification. Unless we accept that all activities are primafacie unjustified absent specific justifications, it requires an argument to show thatdisadvantaging another person is itself something that always must clear a hurdle to countas justified. Certainly some kinds of disadvantage require special justification, but somemay not. One might, for instance, intend to disadvantage one's social rival by arranging tohave him seated between two dreary bores at a dinner party. While perhaps not nice, itseems to require no special moral justification for this action (or the threat of this action) tobe ethically permissible. We might say that so long as one respects the rights of others (aset as rich as one likes), one needs no special justification to act towards them as one likes.And surely no one has the right that no one else will ever act for the sake of disadvantagingone. If this is the case, then the mere intention to disadvantage someone, perhapsconditionally, does not suffice to violate her rights.

The ethics of coercion, when this is understood to be a morally neutral means to thecoercer's purposes, have been little explored in the contemporary literature, at least as adistinct subject. It is of course true that many ways of coercing someone are dangerous,damaging, and (when used by private parties) unlawful. But the fact that coercion is anecessary tool, even for just governments in well-ordered societies, gives some reason tosuppose that the ethics of coercion depend principally on a set of discrete factors in its use,rather than on its intrinsic qualities. These factors include why and how it is used, who usesit, against whom, in what circumstances, and what other means were possible instead.Coercion is no ordinary means. But it's unclear why we should say that it is intrinsically

(even prima facie or pro tanto) immoral, instead of simply noting that it is a very potentmeans, prone to abuse, and something that deserves ethical scrutiny whenever it is used.

3.3 Coercion and freedom

Some choices are said to be made freely, others unfreely, or involuntarily. More generally,people may be said to live more freely or less freely, depending on facts such as the rangeand quality of choices open to them, the extent to which they are immune to interferencefrom outside powerful parties, or the extent to which they can pursue options of deepsignificance to them. Autonomy seems to be a special type of freedom which, insofar as itdiffers from the above types, is used to refer to an inner state of orderly self-directedness.Coercion has been thought to be inimical to at least some of these types of freedom,perhaps all, and also to have deleterious impacts on the special type we call autonomy.

If coercion includes uses of direct force against a person's body, it is clear enough how itcan constrain most kinds of freedom (though not necessarily how it can affect autonomy).But as Aquinas long ago noted, it's unclear why coercion in the form of threats should bethought to be in tension with freedom. As Craig Carr puts the worry, “if at least someinstances of coercion involve making choices, and if being able to make one's own choicesis part of what it means to be free, in what sense (if any) is coercion antithetical tofreedom?” (Carr 1988, 59). Certainly many instances of coercion make one's choices lessappealing than they would be otherwise, or reduce the quality of the compossible optionsone has available. But it does sound somewhat odd to say that one is less free just becauseone's choices have become less appealing, or some options for action have fallen off themenu of choices. Is there a sense we can give to the claim that one is less free because ofcoercion?

Let us consider first a type of freedom associated with the range and quality of actionsopen to a person. One gets an intuitive idea of this sort of freedom in comparing thesituation of a prison inmate to that of someone outside prison. Someone confined to a cellaround the clock has less freedom than does someone who is able to move about as shewills, interact with others in a variety of ways, and choose from a broad variety of activities(at least if she has available sufficient means to pursue them). We might be tempted to saythat the unincarcerated person has more and better choices of actions. But severaldifficulties get in the way of making such a comparison precise. We lack a precise way toenumerate actions, which seems necessary if we are to count them or compare theirnumber. The incarcerated and unincarcerated both have indeterminately many differentthings they can do, each can do only perform some small range of those actions at any onetime. (It's even likely that the incarcerated person can do some things the unincarceratedperson can't.[23]) So it is probably more helpful to focus on the greater quality anddesirability of the actions open to the unincarcerated person. Being confined to a jail celltakes away one's freedom at least in part because it denies one the necessary means topursue many other activities that would ordinarily be desirable. But we also have no goodmeans for reckoning the value of different actions interpersonally. So even this comparison

is hard to make in a robust, defensible fashion.[24]

With some threats, it seems an interpersonal comparison is unnecessary. When the gunmandemands one's money or one's life, one goes from being able to have both to being unableto have both. What were compossible goods have now become incompossible, and avaluable option (e.g., keeping one's money) has become essentially foreclosed. So freedomis decreased.

Focusing locally on the coercee's situation, such analysis seems reasonable enough.However, it is possible that some general threats, made against a group of people, maymake the individuals in the group more rather than less free. Consider the threats that arepart of laws against stealing. The state may threaten to jail those who steal, which (let usassume) makes it incompossible both to steal and to retain one's freedom. The possibility ofa stable system of private property, however, would seem to depend on the existence ofsuch laws which prohibit the wanton expropriation of the goods of others. If such a regimeis in fact valuable, then the threat to incarcerate thieves may both reduce people's freedomwith respect to one sort of action (by making stealing incompossible with remainingunincarcerated), while enhancing it with respect to others (by making it possible toaccumulate, use, and trade private property). For another example, notice that the ability tomake enforceable contracts with others greatly enhances one's abilities to gain throughcooperation, but that it relies precisely on the fact that contracting parties give up certainseemingly compossible benefits (say, gaining the goods of another while failing to fulfillone's half of the bargain).

Craig Carr suggests that we can grapple with the complexities here by noticing that manysocial interactions are regulated by conventions that arise from particular sorts ofinterpersonal relationships. So, for instance, a sports team is managed by a coach, who may“threaten” to pull a player out of the game unless he sticks to the game plan. But this threatdoes not, we may agree, lessen the player's freedom in any interesting sense (Carr 1988,62). Given the nature of sports, the roles of players and coaches, and the necessity oforganization in making the team and sport possible, Carr suggests that when such threatsare licensed by the appropriate conventions, then there is no reason to suppose that theyimpinge on freedom. It may be difficult in many cases to decide just what conventions areappropriate and controlling in a situation, but it seems reasonable to suppose thatsomething like Carr's analysis is helpful in understanding the relationship between threatsand freedom in conventional contexts.

There's a different way of thinking about freedom that is political in nature. This is the wayof thinking that some (e.g., Pettit 1996) have associated with civic republicanism, in whichfreedom amounts to being undominated by another agent. One is dominated by another if itis continually possible for another party to step in and impose his will on one's choices(even if the dominant party rarely finds it useful to do so). Freedom from dominationdiffers from the previous sort in that one who is subject to the domination of another mayin fact have a wide variety of valuable choices open to her. The sense in which she is

unfree is that her choices must always be made with an eye towards retaining the favor ofthose in a position to interfere with her choices. Conversely, one may be undominated byanyone else, yet lack (for various reasons) many of the different valuable options thatmight be available to some who are highly subject to the power of others (e.g., adolescentchildren of wealthy parents, or prisoners in minimum-security facilities).

Coercion is one method by which a powerful agent can exercise and maintain hisdominance over another. When one has the power needed to credibly threaten another, onecan use that power to impose one's will on her regarding many choices (Anderson 2010).This power may give one the ability to dominate another in Pettit's sense, since it can beused arbitrarily to alter or constrain another's activities, even if it is in fact used only rarely.If one's threats are sufficiently credible, and if meeting one's demands is not devastating initself, one may be able to leverage one's powers to influence many of the activities ofothers, while only rarely being required to expend one's powers in enforcement. Malignantgovernments and mafias are frequently able to maintain control over sizeable populationsthrough threats and intimidation, though they may only infrequently interfere directly in theactivities of others. If one's powers and wishes are well enough known through pastdemonstrations, one may even be able to avoid making many overt threats while stillgetting one's way.

This raises a question about whether the use of coercion requires or implies that the coerceris in a position of dominance over the coercee. While most would likely accept that one cancoerce without having such dominance, this may be a rarer and more curious scenario thanit at first appears. It is true that virtually anyone can state a claim that has the form of athreat against another, and it is also true that many agents can issue credible threats that arenonetheless bluffs — that is, can threaten without possessing the power that is advertised.Nonetheless, the possibility and usefulness of issuing threats depends in general on thelikelihood that such threats can be executed successfully, without the coercer suffering acost comparable to that of the coercee. Also, it would seem that for coercion to be possible,one must be in a position to do more than trivial damage to the coercee's interests;otherwise, one might be said to use coercion when one threatens, e.g., to quit one'sminimum-wage fast-food job if one's employer doesn't raise one's wage to match what onecould make at the restaurant across the street. Moreover, coercers frequently need to craftand adapt their threats to the specific vulnerabilities of the coercee. Gideon Yaffe hasnicely expressed this aspect of the relationship between the coercer's power and theirability to affect one's freedom:

The key to the explanation for the freedom-undermining force of coercion isthat, as a general rule, coercers don't merely produce, but also track, thecompliance of their victims. … [T]he coercer is rarely attached to the particularnasty consequence that he threatens; with some limits, he is ready to bringabout whatever consequences would serve to bring the victim around tocompliance (Yaffe 2003).

If a coercer lacks the power needed to do these things, it may be irrational for the coercer toexecute his threat if defied, and hence frequently irrational for the coercee to accede to it.So unless the coercer or coercee is irrational (and the other perceives him as such), orunless one is deceived about the other's relative power (or rationality), coercion requiressome significant differential in power between coercer and coercee for it, in general, to be arational, useful technique. So even if a just state does not dominate its citizens in Pettit'ssense of exercising its power over them arbitrarily, it still must be capable of suchdominance if it is to be able to keep order against those who would otherwise defy itscommands.

3.4 Political/legal theory and coercion

As the historical section of this entry suggests, the relationship between states, law, andcoercion has been a subject of vast discussion throughout Western philosophical history.Many of the most pressing issues belong to a discussion of states and law rather than to adiscussion of coercion.[25] However, some theorists have attempted to draw some fairlyrevisionist lessons about politics and law from their theoretical discussions of coercion.This work is worth consideration here, since their conclusions may impact how weunderstand the nature of coercion, and its place in law and politics.

As noted above, there are a number of accounts of coercion that insist that coercion is aviolation of right, or otherwise normatively defective, of which Alan Wertheimer'sCoercion is the most prominent. But if coercion is necessarily immoral action, then it ishard to explain how an act of coercion could count as justified.[26] Among otherimplications, this view is in apparent contradiction with the traditional approach tocoercion which treats states as paradigmatically, even necessarily users of coercion. AsWilliam Edmundson has pointed out (and as Nozick 1969, had noticed), if the state isjustified in punishing wrongdoers, then when it threatens to do so, it does not threaten tomake them worse off than they ought to be (Edmundson 1995 and 1998, chs. 4–6). Henceon a approach to coercion that insists it is immoral activity, the state's use of police powersto enforce the law is not coercive.

Could this be right? It hinges, first, on whether one accepts a moralized analysis ofcoercion; if one can give a non-moralized account of coercion, then the grounds for theclaim are much more tenuous. It would also seem to depend on whether the moralevaluation of the coercer's action is an “all things considered” judgment, or merely a protanto one. While the government's use of coercion may be all-things-considered morallybenign, the threat of jailing someone may count as pro tanto wrong in a way that, say,paying a reward is not. If so, then even on a moralized account we may suppose thatgovernment coercion requires special justification before it can be accepted. Wertheimer,Haksar, Lamond, and Oberdiek, for instance, seem to find no problem accepting that thereis “justified coercion” — that is, acts which are coercive on a moralized theory of coercion(baseline or otherwise), yet which are ultimately justified by other considerations(Oberdiek 1976; Haksar 1976; Wertheimer 1987; and Lamond 2000 and 2001).

Edmundson, however, argues that such a view is unmotivated and not required by amoralized theory, properly understood. If he is right, then the uses of what are normallythought of as coercive techniques do not call for special scrutiny if they are constrained tothe support of just, procedurally sound law.

Edmundson's criticism of the canonical view of the state as coercive reveals a deeper rootto some disagreements over coercion. In effect, Edmundson provides a reason to questionhow special or important coercion really is. Coercion may make some actions necessary,but human beings in any natural world will be constrained by necessities of many sorts: thephysical limits of our bodies in our environments, and our needs for things such asnourishment, shelter, protection, and even perhaps community, recognition, and love. Tobe coerced adds to or alters in some ways what it is necessary for one to do. But beingsubject to a coercive set of laws might also provide one greater opportunities or freedomfrom necessity, as arguably the criminal law does, at least if well-drafted and enforced.[27]

If just laws provide us protection from wrong-doers while leaving us at liberty to take anymorally justifiable act (assuming here that the criminal law prohibits only unjust acts), thenthe law's threatened use of force against lawbreakers may not merit any special scrutiny.We might instead regard it as a shifting, regularization, and rationalization of thenecessities to which human beings are anyways subject. Edmundson and those he disputeswith can all agree that coercion used for illicit ends is a matter of moral significance and acause for special scrutiny and opposition. What Edmundson shows is that moralizedapproaches to coercion make it hard to see why the technique itself and the agents who canuse it are especially worthy of our attention.

One might thus object to moralized accounts on the grounds that we have reason to trackand scrutinize uses of this technique whether performed well or badly, justly or unjustly.This is because when an agent has the power to coerce willy nilly, as the state does, it is upto such an agent to decide what purposes it will use its powers for. Natural necessities aretypically predictable, stable requirements on our actions, persisting without regard to us asindividuals. By contrast, powerful agents are not necessarily predictable, stable, orindifferent to us as individuals. Rather, they can target and direct their powers to suit theirpurposes. Of course we hope that they are constrained by justice, but even mostly justgovernments are likely to enact bad laws or have rogue elements within them. Hence thereis value in having a concept to pick out the sort of technique used in law enforcement,forced migrations, mafia protection rackets, back-alley robbery, and the training of somerecalcitrant children, since one and the same state might use the same tools and techniquesto engage any or all of these sorts of activities, with only the whim of the leader orparliament to decide which it shall be.

A slightly less radical, though still revisionist claim about the coerciveness of law, holdsthat the coerciveness of law resides in its claim to a right to use (or authorize the use of)enforcement power. Drawing a distinction between the state and its apparatuses on the onehand, and the law on the other, Grant Lamond argues that the coerciveness of law shouldnot be thought to depend on the fact that the state has such things as police departments and

prisons as its enforcement mechanisms. Rather, he argues that the coerciveness of lawresides in its claim to a “right to authorize the enforcement of [its subjects duties,responsibilities, etc.]… It is not that legal duties are sanction-based, nor that every lawmust ultimately be linked to coercive measures, but that law claims the right to back up itsdirectives with force” (Lamond 2001, 55). He later clarifies this view to point out that thelaw claims indeterminate authority to enforce its dictates.

Lamond's aim in making this distinction is to clarify what he sees to be several possibleconfusions. First, he argues that the law's coerciveness need not depend directly on thestate's own enforcement apparatus; the state might use vigilantes, private contractors, orother private means for this function.[28] Moreover, he aims to limit law's responsibility forcoercive acts to just those that it in fact authorizes: extra-legal uses of coercion by the stateshould not be chalked up to law's coerciveness. He also argues that some of the coerciveenforcements that law uses are not themselves uses of force; instead, one might confiscatebank accounts or take away rights in non-tangible property (such as intellectual propertyprotections) as means to pressure subjects to comply with the law. Lamond holds that ifsuch interventions exert sufficient pressure on the will of those considering a particularoption, such that they change course, then they may be counted as coercive, even if they donot involve the threat or imposition of sanctions conditioned on the activities of the peoplegoverned (Lamond 2000, 56–57). Lastly, like Edmundson, he aims to downplay thesupposed role that coercion plays in our appreciation of the law, holding that many of law'sfunctions do not depend specifically on its function of authorizing (or not authorizing)enforcements on the subjects. “It is easy to exaggerate the role of coercion in maintainingthe efficacy of the legal system, and to overestimate its capacity to sustain efficacy”(Lamond 2001, 57).

Lamond's claim about law's coerciveness stems from a number of considerations, butundoubtedly one is his understanding of the nature of coercion itself, which was discussedin Section 2.5 above. Whether or not his account of coercion is tenable, what Lamond saysabout why law is coercive generates independent difficulties. Even if the law claims toauthorize the enforcement of its subjects' duties, it is not clear why the mere claiming ofsuch authorization would suffice to make the claiming coercive. The laws of a state maywell provide for and instruct agencies or mechanisms to serve as its enforcers (e.g., police,vigilantes, or robots); but if these enforcers quit, or are bought/killed/shut off, thecoerciveness of the law will quickly evaporate. If, for instance, the army decides to sidewith the protestors rather than the government, the law loses its force in a hurry, no matterhow legitimate. Moreover, were a private association or other institution to “lay claim” touse such indeterminately bounded enforcement powers, what would determine whether infact they ended up being coercive is whether in fact they managed to engage inenforcement activities through agencies or mechanisms similar to those that states regularlyuse, or so Lucas points out. (Lucas 1966, 61–2) A church, for instance, might evenleverage its threats with claims about the final disposition of one's mortal soul. But this sortof claim to reward and punish does not give the church the ability to coerce, at least as thisconcept is usually understood in political contexts.

Some have argued directly that law does not require coercive backing in order to count aslaw (e.g., Raz 1975), holding that what is instead important is that law is made by theappropriate authority (see also Oberdiek 1976). Responding to Joseph Raz, Edmundson,and Lamonde, inter alia, Ekow Yankah defends the traditional view connecting law andcoercion, contending that “Legal norms must be ultimately enforceable by coercion to beincluded in the core concept of the law” (Yankah 2008, 1198). After developing his ownnon-moralized conception of coercion, Yankah argues that law requires not only authoritybut the ability to compel obedience. There are, after all, many different possible normativesystems, for example religious ones, that claim to have moral authority to commandobedience, but law is distinctive among them because it has the possibility to compelcompliance with the edicts of justified authorities. Countering Raz's view that coercionmight be merely instrumentally needed, Yankah asserts, “the inability of any structure toeven theoretically compel [a lawbreaker] to obey would cast serious doubt on the system'sclaim to be the law” (Yankah, 2008, 1236).

If in fact law must be backed by coercion to be law, and if, as follows from this, states willnecessarily and legitimately use coercion against their citizens, then this may place aparticular justificatory burden on the state and its citizens. Christopher J. Eberle sees that“justificatory liberalism” (which he associates with the work of liberals such as Rawls,Charles Larmore, Robert Audi, and Gerald Gaus) rightly puts the justification of coercionas its central mission. “The claim that respect requires public justification provides a basisfor the central component of the justificatory liberal's ethic of citizenship: the norm ofrespect imposes an obligation on each citizen to discipline herself in such a way that sheresolutely refrains from supporting any coercive law for which she cannot provide therequisite public justification” (Eberle 2002, 12, emphasis omitted; see also Gaus 2010). Butalong with this obligation, the necessity of state coercion is argued to put citizens of asingle state in a kind of relationship to one another that differs from their relationship tothose outside their state. Michael Blake argues along these lines to conclude that a duty topromote economic equality as a matter of justice “is a plausible interpretation of liberalprinciples only when those principles are applied to individuals who share liability to thecoercive network of state governance” (Blake, 2002, 258).

Thomas Nagel reasons likewise to a similar conclusion, and extends it to justify theexclusion of immigrants from a state. “Immigration policies are simply enforced againstthe nationals of other states; the laws are not imposed in their name, nor are they asked toaccept and uphold those laws. Since no acceptance is demanded of them, no justification isrequired that explains why they should accept such discriminatory policies, or why theirinterests have been given equal consideration. It is sufficient justification to claim that thepolicies do not violate their prepolitical human rights” (Nagel 2005, 129–30). Against thisview, the use of coercion to exclude non-citizens from a state has been argued to violatebasic rights (Huemer 2010) and principles of democratic theory (Abizadeh 2008; forobjections and replies, see Miller 2009 and 2010; and Abizadeh 2010). As the next sectionwill further illustrate, the coercion beyond a state's borders is a contentious issue.

4. Applications for theories of coercionTheories of coercion can have significant implications in a number of different particularranges of application, falling roughly into two categories: domestic and international.These categories may also be regarded as the sub-legal and super-legal uses of coercion.This section gives a brief discussion of the questions in these areas, and what these areasadd to thought about coercion.

4.1 Domestic coercion

Questions of coercion arise in numerous different judicial contexts, including judgments ofresponsibility and/or culpability for torts and crimes. We may, for instance, want to knowwhether an illegal action has been performed voluntarily, or whether one has been coercedby another party into performing it. Many uses of coercion are also criminal, and sojudgments about coercion may come into deciding whether, for instance, a rape, extortion,or blackmailing has occurred. Contracts, marriages, waivers of responsibility, andevaluations of varying sorts are considered void if made because of coercion. Confessions,“guilty” pleas, and testimony are to be discounted if given under coercion.

Outside of specifically judicial contexts, questions about coercion may arise, either withrespect to shaping public policy, or for the sake of measuring social progress. For instance,we may want to know whether and under what circumstances workers are coerced intoworking, either in particular jobs, or in general. It may also be of interest to know whethersexual harassment in workplaces or schools is coercive, for purposes of justifying a legalresponse to it. Those who design medical and other human-subject-based experiments needto be able to determine whether their subjects participate freely or under coercion. Moregenerally, market economic transactions are thought to add to overall welfare (economicefficiency), but only if they are performed freely, which includes their not being coerced.The possibility of relying on ballots, survey data and other communications will alsodepend on whether such responses are given free from coercion.

These questions are raised almost exclusively in contexts where there is already in place afunctioning legal authority possessing coercive enforcement powers. The existence of suchan ordering force has a significant effect on the ability of other agents in society to use andto detect specific uses of coercion, as well as other, non-coercive means of getting peopleto do things. When a generalized mechanism for ensuring compliance with law is in place,other entities − legal, corporate, and informal − can establish rules governing the use ofvarious sanctions, disabilities, and rewards, and expect these to have certain effects. (Forhelpful discussion here, see Lucas 1966, 61.) For instance, merchants and customersengage in commerce, exchanging goods, because they are prevented from simply takingthose goods by force, fraud, theft, etc. Sometimes the interactions between agents in a sub-legal context will overstep the boundaries between the voluntary and coercive, and thusrender the actions of one party non-voluntary. But all such judgments here are made within

a background context of laws that govern quite generally how persons may behave towardsone another. And the coercive enforcement of those laws makes possible meaningfuldistinctions between coerced and uncoerced activity in all of the other parts of social lifegoverned by the rule of law.

4.2 International coercion

Compared to the domestic context, the international context is usually a much less clearlyor justly ordered place. Although it is possible to identify and analyze uses of coercionhere, there are difficulties in some of the main sorts of cases that both enrich andcomplicate thought about coercion. Several factors contribute to these difficulties,including the typically much greater power of the agents involved; the much weakerepistemic position they typically occupy vis-à-vis the motives, abilities, and intentions ofother actors; the complexity and (sometimes) irrationality of the actors involved; and thelack of any central coercive authority to provide the basis for predictable, just, andenforceable rules for the conduct of such large, powerful agents. Given these difficulties, itcan be hard to say much that is useful about international coercion. However a few specifictopics are worth discussing briefly to show the issues that arise here.

4.2.1 Threats based in nuclear and other mass-casualty weapons (MCWs)

Although less prominent as a topic now than it was before the collapse of the Soviet Union,a large and useful philosophical literature has developed around the questions of the justiceand efficacy of various strategies for avoiding both nuclear war as well as subjection tonuclear blackmail/extortion. The questions here are tremendously difficult to addresssensibly, in part because the stakes of the policies and decisions at issue are so high andnovel that they are almost beyond comprehension. Although nuclear threats appearsuperficially to be similar in structure to ordinary coercive threats, several facts set themapart. For one thing, the morality and rationality of such threats are significantly morecomplicated than in most ordinary cases of coercion. As Gregory Kavka puts it, there's a“paradox of deterrence” which holds that it is potentially morally proper to threaten to useMCWs even though it is arguably immoral to actually use them for any reason (includingin executing that threat) (Kavka 1978). This violates a plausible principle that holds that itis wrongful to intend to do what it would be wrongful to do (the “wrongful intentionsprinciple”). Moreover, even though it may be morally proper to threaten such use, Kavkaargues that no rational, morally motivated person could form the proper intention needed tomake a credible threat of such use. Subsequent writers have argued over whether in factthese paradoxes hold as Kavka suggests. (See, e.g., Dworkin 1985; Wasserstrom 1985;Kroon 1996.) The moral issues in deterring nuclear war and the use of MCWs moregenerally are of central importance, and depend little if at all on our understanding thenature or ethics of coercion, per se (Hardin 1986). But, looking in the other direction,issues around deterrent threats involving MCWs do tell us some things about the nature ofcoercion.

There is a general and acknowledged difficulty in explaining how coercion by threat ispossible: if the coercee defies the demand backed by the threat, it is typically irrational,because futile, for the coercer to go ahead and execute his threat. In some cases, thisproblem is solved by the fact that the coercer gains reputational benefits by executing thethreat, or the coercer enjoys a sufficient advantage in power that executing the threat maybe a relatively trivial matter for him. But coercion is a different and much morecomplicated matter when executing a threat is much more costly to the coercer than is themere making of the threat. The threat of massive retaliation in response to a nuclear attackis a paradigmatic example of a kind of threat that would be irrational to execute after theassociated demand is defied — if, for instance, one has already been the victim of one'sopponent's first-strike. For this reason, the ability to make such a threat credibly requiresmore than a simple intention and ability to execute the threat, but rather a whole systemthat effectively removes decision from the process (by, say, building redundancy andautomation into it). So, it would appear that nuclear deterrence cannot be an ordinaryspecies of coercion, since the coercer cannot remain at liberty with respect to whether ornot it will execute the threat. (For the difference this makes, see DeRose 1992.)

Nuclear deterrence thus pushes to the forefront consideration of two facts that recentphilosophy of coercion tends to obscure: one, the deep connection between the credibilityof one's threats and the demonstrable ability and willingness to execute them; and two, thedynamic or strategic nature of coercive interactions. If execution of a threat would beirrational, then the coercer must use some technique to precommit to its execution, or elsedemonstrate irrationality (or something like it) so as to make the threat credible (seeSchelling 1956). The dynamic aspect of coercion comes out in the fact that the rationalityand morality of one actor's choices depends on what the other actor (would) choose to do inresponse to them; and consequently the rationality/morality of the latter actor's choices maydepend on that of the former actor's choices. While it is difficult to see through to asatisfactory account of such matters, it is important to keep these difficulties in mind intheorizing about how coercion works.

4.2.2 Terrorism

Terrorism is often associated with coercion, but of the reasons to doubt the justifiability ofterrorism, its coerciveness is perhaps one of the lesser ones. Much more important is thefact that terrorism typically, though not always, targets innocents and non-combatants. Somost philosophical effort on terrorism has gone towards arguing about whether suchtargeting of innocents is ever morally acceptable, and if so, under what conditions.

If thinking about the coerciveness of terrorism helps at all, it is perhaps by bringing outsome ways in which terrorism differs from more standard forms of coercion, and why thesedifferences may make it more problematic, rather than less. (For discussion of thesematters, see Waldron 2004). Terrorism aims at affecting the psychological workings of oneor more people (often, a large part of society), though not necessarily in the way that

coercion by threat does. There are differences of the aim, means, and powers involved. Theaim of terrorism is often less specific than the aim of coercion. While those who use terrortactics may have a specific policy change or end result in mind, sometimes the end is, atleast initially, simply to create chaos, fear, and panic on the part of those terrorized. It mayalso be to provoke a retaliatory response, or to enact revenge on or to make a statementabout the worth of one's enemy. When terrorism is used instrumentally, with a change inaction desired, terror tactics often differ from ordinary coercion in that those targeted bythe harms or violence are typically distinct from those whose action the terror user hopesultimately to influence. Terrorism works by generating a sort of psychological responseamong those who are targets or potential targets of the attacks, typically with the aim ofputting pressure on their political leaders or representatives to quell the chaos or anxiety ofthe affected public. As for the power involved, terrorism might be a tactic of an agent whopossesses overwhelming power, but frequently those who engage in terror tactics lack thesort of power that is needed to genuinely overpower the resistance of their target (incontrast to the way that police, say, can overpower the resistance of virtually any criminalsthey manage to arrest). If not for such weakness, they could simply impose their will ontheir targets instead of using terrorism.

In fact, the comparative weakness of some who use terror means that they frequently needto engage in repeated acts of violence in order to establish their credibility with respect toany subsequent demands and threats they might make. It is unlikely that a group will beable to gain acquiescence to its demands by threatening to use terror tactics if it has notalready engaged in such activity. But while the use of terror often betrays a relativeweakness, those who use it also often rely on stealth, geographic dispersion, and choices ofsoft targets, making their attacks both very difficult to prevent (at least in ways that areconsistent with significant openness in one's own society), as well as very difficult toretaliate against.

4.2.3 Coercion in international relations between rich and poor

Although relations between those with unequal economic power are often said to becoercive, this claim is more accurate in some cases than in others. The claim may beaccurate in referring to many interactions between agents from the richer, developed worldand agents from the poorer, less developed world. But in addition to the fact of disparitiesin wealth, even if they are alterable, something further is required to show that theserelations are indeed coercive. After all, many interactions between rich and poor have atleast the veneer of being freely agreed upon economic exchanges. Sometimes, thecoerciveness of these relationships resides not so much in the economic exchangesthemselves as in the way these exchanges are premised on and supported by moretraditional forms of coercion.

Thomas Pogge's work can be mined for suggestions as to how we might recognize coercionin the relations between richer and poorer parts of the world. (See Pogge 2002, esp. chs. 4

and 8.) Three general suggestions emerge. First, Pogge holds that the historical uses ofpower, both economic and military, by developed nations, have given rise to a globalinstitutional framework which imposes and enables the unjust exploitation of poorerpeoples by the world's more powerful actors. Here, we can look to paradigmatic types ofcoercion, such as war and invasion, coupled with economic leverage created by controlover institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, to see how thisframework has been created and maintained. Colonialism and military interventionism,past and present, have continuing impacts on which countries have the power to dictateterms of trade and international relations to others. This “institutional order,” which is“implicated in the reproduction of radical inequality,” owes its existence to “the developedcountries [who], thanks to their vastly superior military and economic strength, controlthese rules and therefore share responsibility for their foreseeable effects” (Pogge 2002,199–200).

A second way coercion is active in creating global poverty and inequality is in therepressive means used by some autocrats to maintain power over their own poor subjects inunderdeveloped countries. These autocrats benefit from the recognition of wealthiercountries as the arbiters of what happens to the natural resources in the territories theygovern. By suppressing the inhabitants of these territories and keeping them pliant, rulersare able to trade and sign agreements on their behalf with the countries and corporations ofthe rich nations. These transactions frequently denude poorer countries of valuableresources and dispossess people of their land and rights, while the autocrats rake in profitsand commissions from these exchanges. They can then use this wealth to purchase theweapons and armies needed to maintain power. Richer countries and institutions play acrucial role in this process by both recognizing these rulers as legitimate bargainingauthorities on behalf of their peoples, and also by seeking to enforce the bargains that theseautocrats strike against subsequent governments and against the people themselves. AsPogge points out, when a multinational corporation buys the rights to something in one ofthese autocratically governed countries, “the purchaser acquires not merely possession, butall the rights and liberties of ownership which are … protected and enforced by all otherstates' courts and police forces” (Pogge 2002, 113).

A third respect in which global poverty may be seen as coercive is by comparing the actualconditions of the world's poorest residents to a minimal moral baseline needed to makeacceptable any institution of coercively enforced property rights. According to this moralbaseline, any institution is coercive if it leaves some destitute because of theiruncompensated exclusion from the world's natural resources. This follows, as Locke seemsto suggest, from the fact that no one would rationally and voluntarily agree to a bargainsuch as that (Pogge 2002, 202). “[T]he affluent states are therefore violating a negativeduty of justice when they, in collaboration with the ruling elites of the poor countries,coercively exclude the poor from a proportional resource share” (Pogge 2002, 203).

The interest in linking the persistence of global poverty to coercion is suggested in thepreceding quotation. Pogge argues that such poverty is not merely a natural fact, but is

something that the wealthier parties in the world, who reap rewards from their dominationof the poorer parts of the world, have a negative duty to redress. That is, by showing thatthese arrangements are not just unfair but are unfairly and coercively imposed by one partyagainst another, Pogge believes that a stronger case can be made for the richer countriesand institutions to alter the institutional structure of global economic relations. Thesegrounds even justify paying compensation to the worst off for their involuntary exclusionfrom the natural resources that underlie the prosperity of the rest of the world.

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Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Thomas Pogge for numerous helpful suggestions and clarifications to thisentry.

Copyright © 2011 by Scott Anderson <scott.anderson@ubc.ca>