Papers

The following is an overview of some of my papers. Please feel free to email me at lachlan.umbers@uwa.edu.au if you would like a copy of anything.

Compulsory Voting: A Defence
British Journal of Political Science, 50(4), 1307-1324.
Available, here.
Turnout is in decline in established democracies around the world. Where, in the mid-1800s, 70%- 80% of eligible voters regularly participated in US Presidential elections, turnout has averaged just 56% since 1972. Average turnout in general elections in the UK has fallen from 76.64% during the period 1945-1992, to 64.68% since 1997. Average turnout in Canadian federal elections has fallen from 74.52% during the period 1940-1979, to 62.5% since 2000. For most democrats, these numbers are a cause for alarm. Compulsory voting is among the most effective means of raising turnout. However, compulsory voting is also controversial. Most of us think that coercion may only be employed against the citizenry if it is backed by a justification of the right kind. Opponents of compulsory voting charge that no such justification is available. This paper resists this line of argument in two ways. First, I offer an argument from free-riding which, though gestured towards by others, and widely criticised, has yet to be defended in any depth. Second, I consider a range of objections to compulsory voting as such, arguing that none succeeds.

What’s Wrong with Vote Buying
Philosophical Studies, 177(2), 551-571.
Available, here.
Almost everyone would agree that vote buying is morally wrong, and that prohibitions on vote buying are morally justified. Yet, recently, several philosophers have argued that vote buying is morally permissible, and (in some cases) that it should be legally permitted. This paper begins by examining and criticising arguments that have been offered in defence of vote buying. I then go on to consider existing attempts to explain the wrongness of vote buying, arguing that none is wholly successful. I then advance a novel account of the wrongness of vote buying. Vote buying is objectionable, I argue, because it involves a failure of respect for one’s fellow citizens as autonomous agents. I also consider the implications of my account for a number of other controversial practices.

Workplace Domination and Labour Unions
Forthcoming at Perspectives on Politics
Available, here.
Recent decades have seen a precipitous decline in union membership, with deleterious consequences for the working class. Yet political theorists have devoted little attention to unions. In this paper, I argue that unions help solve collective action problems that attend workers’ attempts to pressure employers into attending more closely to their interests. Unions thereby afford workers a form of partial protection from domination. This has three important implications. First, insofar as workers have claims against subjection to domination, they must be afforded opportunities to unionise. Second, insofar as the ability of unions to afford workers such protection depends upon their being able to credibly threaten industrial action, it is essential that unions and their members have rights to take such action. Finally, workers have duties to join the union which represents them and contribute to its legitimate activities. This, I suggest, lends support to various forms of compulsory unionisation.

The Climate Duties of Sub-National Political Communities – co-authored with Jeremy Moss
Political Studies, 68(1), 20-36.
Available, here.
In recent years, several actors at the sub-national level (e.g. California, British Columbia, New York City) have taken unilateral steps to mitigate climate change by reducing their emissions. These developments have commanded considerable attention in the empirical literature. In this piece, we consider the philosophical dimensions of climate action at the sub-national level. Specifically, we argue that many sub-national political communities have moral duties to take unilateral action on climate change, where the national communities to which they belong fail to do so. Along the way, we consider complications arising out of the inevitable fact of partial compliance, and the phenomenon of carbon leakage.

Against Lottocracy
European Journal of Political Theory, 20(2), 312-34.
Available, here.
Dissatisfaction with democratic institutions has run high in recent years. Perhaps as a result, political theorists have begun to turn their attention to possible alternative modes of political decision-making. Many of the most interesting among these involve reliance on lotteries in some way or other – as a means of distributing the franchise, selecting representatives, or making social choices. Advocates of these ‘lottocratic’ systems contend that they retain the egalitarian appeal of democracy, while promising improved political outcomes. The aim of this paper is to defend democracy (or, at least, universal suffrage and majority rule) against the challenge posed by these proposals. I argue, firstly, that lottocratic systems necessarily involve the establishment of objectionable social and political inequalities that democracies do not. Secondly, I raise a number of doubts with respect to the purported instrumental benefits of these proposals.

Enfranchising the Youth
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 23(6), 732-755.
Available, here.
Children are, almost everywhere, denied the right to vote. Democratic theorists tend to assume, without a great deal of argument, that age-based discrimination in access to the franchise is justified. In this paper, I challenge the orthodoxy. I argue that all major, plausible accounts of the justification of democracy require the enfranchisement of a substantial proportion of the child population. Along the way, I consider and respond to a number of major objections to child enfranchisement.

Democratic Legitimacy and the Competence Objection
Res Publica, 25(2), 283-293.
Available, here.
Elitist scepticism of democracy has a venerable history. This paper responds to the latest round of such scepticism – the ‘competence objection,’ articulated in recent work by Jason Brennan (2011, 2016). Brennan’s charge is that democracy is unjust because it allows uninformed, irrational, and morally unreasonable voters to exercise power over high-stakes political decisions, thus imposing undue risk upon the citizenry. I show that Brennan’s objection admits of two interpretations, and argue that neither can be sustained on close examination. Along the way, I consider the merits of Brennan’s preferred ‘epistocratic’ alternative to democracy, and argue that it is likely to lead to lower-quality outcomes. 

Going it Alone: Cities and States for Climate Action – co-authored with Jeremy Moss
Ethics, Policy & Environment, 21(1), 56-59.
Available, here.
Several US states and cities responded to President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement by committing to take unilateral action – i.e. to reduce their emissions, even in the absence of an adequate national-level climate policy. In this piece we consider the climate duties of sub-national political communities. We argue that many such communities have capacity-based duties to reduce their emissions.

A Citizens’ Assembly for the Cognitively Disabled
Social Theory and Practice, 46(1), 205-229.
Available, here.
The vast majority of democratic nations restrict the voting rights of persons with cognitive disabilities. Several democratic theorists have recently argued that such restrictions ought to be abolished, arguing, inter alia, that such restrictions lead to the disenfranchisement of persons on morally irrelevant grounds, express objectionable attitudes about the cognitively disabled, and do not plausibly prevent harms of any kind. I agree with such arguments. Yet some have also expressed the hope that the enfranchisement of such persons might give politicians more powerful incentives to attend to the interests of the cognitively disabled – a group who, by all accounts, are poorly served by governments the world over. In this paper, I argue that, for several reasons, such hopes are likely to be disappointed. If we wish to ensure that such persons’ interests are taken seriously in the political process, we must consider reforms of other kinds. I consider several possible reforms in this paper, arguing in the end for a deliberative solution, modelled upon the 2004 British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on electoral reform.

Regulating Political Advocacy by Charities Liberally – co-authored with Ian Murray and Murray Wesson
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Forthcoming.
Available, here.
In countries such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, whether certain classes of civil society groups are eligible to receive state support (by way of tax and other concessions) is primarily based on the entity’s intended purpose. Yet governments often view the advocacy, electioneering or lobbying activities that are the means adopted by some civil society organisations to achieve their purposes, as unjustified attempts to intervene in the political process. Attempts to restrict these activities are thus not uncommon, but raise challenges to fundamental tenets of liberal democracies. This article uses recent Australian experience as a case study to analyse such attempts through rule of law and freedom of expression lenses. It focuses on advocacy and electioneering via peaceful protest/civil disobedience activities and argues that charities have a valuable role to play as political actors and that any restrictions should meet the requirements of certainty and proportionality.

Assessing Objections to Compulsory Voting in Australia
A Century of Compulsory Voting in Australia: Genesis, Impact and Future’, Matteo Bonotti and Paul Strangio (eds), 2021.
Decades of survey data has consistently shown that an overwhelming majority of Australians support the institution of compulsory voting. Yet there is also a vocal minority who object to it, for a wide range of reasons. Amongst many other concerns, compulsory voting is said to be undemocratic, is charged with lowering the quality of election campaigns, constitutes an unacceptable infringement of individual liberty, unacceptably magnifies the power of ‘swing’ voters, and violates the right not to vote. In this chapter, I lay out and critically assess these objections. I argue that though many are interesting, none comes anywhere close to showing that compulsory voting in Australia ought to be repealed.

Sub-National Climate Duties: Addressing Three Challenges
Climate Justice: Corporations, Regions, Cities, and Individuals, Jeremy Moss and Lachlan Umbers (eds), Routledge, 2020.
In this chapter, I defend the claim that, where the sovereign states to which they belong fail to discharge their duties to reduce their emissions to mitigate climate change, many sub-national political communities have duties to take unilateral steps to reduce their emissions. I begin by setting out the positive case for this claim. I then seek to defend this claim against three important objections: the appeal to uncertainty, the appeal to unfairness, and the appeal to the possibility of carbon leakage. Each raises important, relevant issues. None, however, is ultimately successful.