Political institutions and citizens' dispositions in a liberal democracy

In this dissertation is developed a theory of the interaction of institutions and dispositions in liberal democracies. Its central claim is that there is a relationship of mutual reinforcement between liberal-democratic institutions and the dispositions of citizens. To set up this claim the dissertation first explicates a critique of an institutional priority view that is a less-than-fully-accurate interpretation of liberal-democratic social conditions. The dissertation advances a theory of liberal dispositionalism that is unlike the institutional priority view in that it does not trace the stability and success of liberal democracies to an advantageous institutional framework. It rather describes liberal democracies in terms of the reciprocal interaction of institutions and citizens. By a relationship of mutual reinforcement is meant that the interaction of institutions and citizens in liberal democracies tends naturally to reinforce their respective orientations toward liberal-democratic ends: the stability and success of institutions is reinforced by the instantiation of liberal-democratic dispositions in citizens, just as the flourishing of liberal-democratic dispositions in citizens is reinforced by the stability and success of institutions. This claim is both descriptive and prescriptive: it describes the way in which institutions and dispositions usually already interact in liberal democracies, and it prescribes the way in which institutions and dispositions ought to interact in liberal democracies. The mutual reinforcement relationship is central to liberal democracies because it is present as a structural motif in the liberal social contract. The dispositions of liberal-democratic citizens are naturally instantiated in the mutual reinforcement relationship, and are stable states of character which are manifested differently in different domains. The dispositions of citizens are then separated into public and private aspects --- a private aspect which instantiates the dispositional traits of their reasonable comprehensive doctrines, and a public aspect which instantiates the dispositional traits of cooperation among free and equal interlocutors. There are four virtues which the dissertation highlights as valuable civic excellences: political autonomy, civility, liberal patriotism, and political prudence.