Reducing arbitrary power requires both filtering mechanisms and penalty-backed accountability

Evidence

There are two generic sorts of constraint that we might expect to call on in trying to reduce arbitrariness: that is, in forcing a powerful agent like the state to track relevant interests and ideas. The first sort would put preconditions of action in place which make sectional interference that much more difficult: this, say, in requiring government to follow certain parliamentary procedures or to meet certain legal conditions in the way they act. These constraints are designed to filter or screen out unsuitable acts; they mean, where they are effective, that the agent does not interfere at will. The other sort of constraint would put penalties in place rather than filters: penalties which mean that any agent who perpetrates certain types of interference—violence, fraud, and the like—or who perpetrates otherwise legitimate types of interference under certain conditions—as when a public official has an undeclared interest in the outcome of their decision—can be called to account and punished. These constraints are designed to expose unsuitable acts of interference to sanction, rather than screening them out; they mean, when they are effective, that the agent cannot interfere with a guarantee of impunity. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 302

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the two distinct means of institutional constraint — screening preconditions versus sanctioning penalties — a scaffolding concept for republican institutional design.
• XREF: connects to: Anti-domination institutions must remove power, not just reduce harm probability — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 371; Power functions by controlling the exceptional rather than by sanctioning

Broader Connections

• Power functions by controlling the exceptional rather than by sanctioning #contradicts (0.70)