The YTL Annual Lecture 2019: Richard Tuck

The Yeoh Tiong Lay (YTL) Centre for Politics, Philosophy & Law’s Annual Lecture was delivered by Professor Richard Tuck (Harvard), on 23 January 2019.

In his lecture, 'Active and Passive Citizens', Professor Tuck offered a novel interpretation of the value of voting within a democratic majoritarian system, explaining that the value of casting such a vote does not merely consist in the instrumental effect of bringing about a desirable outcome nor in its expressive value.

Instead, Professor Tuck offered an 'agentive' account of democratic voting, one inspired by Rousseau, according to which there is value in casting a vote as part of a collective system of political decision. It is the presence of this 'agentive' value, he argued, that helps mark the historically important distinction between active citizens and passive citizens.

Professor Tuck also described various tendencies at work in the world today - such as technocratic rule by experts and the constitutional entrenchment of rights - which convert active citizens into passive citizens by withdrawing important political decisions from the remit of democratic majoritarianism.

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