Loss of freedom of speech turns great power war.

As was the case of competitive democracy, our definition of liberalism has the counterintuitive implication that a society can have a maximal level of liberalism even if it does not grant liberal rights to the majority of the population (e.g., a society with liberal rights for property-owning white men, but there is little legal protection for other groups and a slave economy). However, we do not mean to say that such a society should be classified as a liberal democracy (see Appendix C), or even liberal in the everyday sense of the word.

What low levels of liberalism might look like: Parliamentary sovereignty, tyranny of the majority, authoritarian democracy, totalitarianism.

Components

Rule of law: Transparent laws, equality under the law, de facto law enforcement and access to legal remedy.

Checks and balances: There are institutions in place to restrain the power of governments, e.g., separation of powers.

Constitutional limits on government power to preserve civil rights, including freedom of conscience, religion, speech and assembly, and right to privacy.

Minority rights.

Pluralism: Toleration of many different opinions and ways of life.

Liberal norms amongst the decision-making group (e.g., voters) and the representatives (e.g., support for liberalism).

Illustrative interventions related to this feature

(Note that we are not necessarily endorsing these interventions or organisations):

Preventing or prosecuting government corruption.

Prosecuting human rights violations, e.g., via funding Amnesty International.

Investigative journalism, e.g., the Global Investigative Journalism network (Hillebrandt, 2020).

Protecting freedom of press, e.g., The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (Hillebrandt, 2020).

1.7 Inclusion

What is this feature?

Inclusion has two parts:

(1) Most or all beings who are capable of participating in group decision-making and are affected by policy decisions are allowed to participate in group-decision-making (i.e., most or all beings which are in both the decision-capable group and affected group are also in the decision-making group).

(2) The interests of most or all of the beings who are affected by policy decisions are taken into account during those decisions (i.e., the moral circle includes most or all of the affected group).

Clarifications:

Inclusion can be specified with respect to any of the features, e.g., inclusion with respect to competitive democracy might be high (if there is universal suffrage) in the same society/institution where inclusion with respect to responsiveness is low (if the opinions of one group are systematically ignored when making actual policy decisions)[6:1].

A maximally inclusive society would be one in which the following conditions are met:

The decision-making group (e.g., voters) contains all beings who are both in the moral circle and are capable of decision-making

The moral circle includes everyone in the affected group.

This has the implication that a maximally inclusive society would give voting rights and liberal rights to, for example, people in other countries, under-18s, felons and others who don’t currently have such rights in most liberal democracies.

What low levels of inclusion might look like: Aristocracy, limited franchise, no representation of non-voting beings.

Components

Proportion of the population that has voting rights, liberal rights, etc., and absence of barriers to those rights being upheld in practice.

Representation for the interests of non-voting beings (e.g., through lobbying/interest groups, councils, official positions such as ministers, or just individual voters taking those beings’ interests into account)

Illustrative interventions related to this feature

(Note that we are not necessarily endorsing these interventions or organisations):

Widening the franchise, e.g., to 16-year-olds, felons, or non-citizen residents.

Protecting minority voting rights, e.g., preventing gerrymandering through redistricting (Hillebrandt, 2020).

Institutional reforms to represent future generations (see e.g., John & MacAskill, 2020).

Interventions related to moral circle expansion.

2. Potential intermediate goals for longtermists

This section covers ways in which each of seven potential intermediate goals may:

affect the long-term future

be affected by changes in a society’s level of the features of liberal democracy as discussed above.

A potential intermediate goal for longtermists is a goal we could pursue to potentially increase the value of the far future. Fulfilling a goal is not obviously of positive expected value; indeed, some intermediate goals may be ambiguous or negative for the far future. We cache out the costs and benefits of pursuing each goal into four broad categories: existential risk reduction, trajectory change, speeding up development and meta-longtermism[1:1]..

The potential intermediate goals we identify are:

Reducing great power conflict

Intellectual progress

Moral circle expansion (MCE)

Economic growth

Preventing authoritarianism

Preventing infohazard proliferation

Building effective altruism

We chose these particular intermediate goals because they seemed (a) plausibly substantially affectable by some democracy-related interventions and (b) relatively clearly relevant to the long-term future. But the choice was somewhat arbitrary and partly for illustrative purposes; there are also other goals that meet those two criteria, and these seven are not necessarily the most important for evaluating a given democracy-related intervention. We elaborate on this in Section 4 (Directions for further research). Finally, we focus only on how features of democracy affect potential intermediate end goals. However, in reality there are likely bidirectional relationships and feedback loops, with some intermediate goals impacting particular features of democracy.

2.1 Reducing great power conflict

What is this potential intermediate goal?

Reducing the probability of conflict between major powers - e.g., China and the USA.

What are some ways great power conflict might affect the long-term future?

Existential risk reduction and trajectory change: Great power conflict is often seen as an existential risk factor. That is, it increases the probability of existential catastrophes indirectly rather than directly. This operates through multiple mechanisms - for instance, great power conflict might increase the probability of an AI arms race, make nuclear war more likely, or make global co-operation on various existential risks harder[9]. Thus, reducing the likelihood of great power conflict could reduce existential risk. Additionally, conflict between great powers could alter the global hegemony, changing humanity's long-run trajectory. Whether this is positive or negative depends on the particular trajectory change.

What are some ways democracy might affect great power conflict?

Democracies have historically engaged in war less often than non-democracies. This may be mere correlation (e.g., it may be confounded by GDP). But proponents of democratic peace theory argue that the correlation is in fact causal. Below, we briefly overview some possible, speculative ways in which various features of liberal democracy might indeed reduce the likelihood of war.

Competitive democracy, responsiveness, participation and accuracy: Leaders in countries high in these features must follow the demands of voters more closely, in order to be re-elected. That increases the influence of public opinion on policy decisions, such as in decisions on conflict. Therefore, if voters are more averse to war than leaders are, increasing competitive democracy, responsiveness, participation, and accuracy would, all else equal, make war (including great power conflict) less likely. Conversely, if voters are more inclined towards war than leaders are, increasing these features would, all else being equal, make war more likely. Whilst we tentatively believe that voters are more aversive to war than leaders are, there are likely also other causal mechanisms taking place[10]. Thus, we only weakly suggest that increasing these features is positive for reducing great power conflict.