Should Animals Have Political Rights?

Alasdair Cochrane

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781509530083
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

All political communities must make decisions about how to regulate the treatment of animals. Most states currently protect animals through outlawing the infliction of 'unnecessary suffering'. But do animals' rights end there? In this book, Alasdair Cochrane argues that states must go much further. Animals have rights to be protected not only from the cruelty of individuals, but also from those structures and institutions which routinely (and, in some cases, necessarily) cause them harm, such as industrialised animal agriculture. But even that isn't adequate. In order to ensure that their interests are taken seriously, it is imperative that we represent their interests throughout the political process – they require not only rights to protection, but also to democratic membership. Cochrane's important intervention in this controversial debate will be essential reading for anyone interested in the intersection of political theory and animal rights.

1
Introduction

Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland,

Beasts of every land and clime,

Hearken to my joyful tidings

Of the golden future time.

Soon or late the day is coming,

Tyrant Man shall be o’erthrown,

And the fruitful fields of England

Shall be trod by beasts alone.

Rings shall vanish from our noses,

And the harness from our back,

Bit and spur shall rust forever,

Cruel whips no more shall crack.

(Orwell 2000: 8)

Perhaps the most famous book incorporating the subjects of both animals and politics is George Orwell’s Animal Farm. This cautionary tale of a group of farm animals who drive out their human master and attempt to run the farm themselves is rightly celebrated. Interestingly, and in spite of the fact that the characters that drive the plot are all animals, the conventional view is that the book is not actually about animals at all. On this reading, the use of animals is purely allegorical: this is a book about power, domination, equality, solidarity, revolution, corruption and tyranny; this is a book about politics. And since it is a book about politics, then it surely cannot be a book about animals.

This reflects a long-standing view in both scholarship and practice that politics is an exclusively human concern: a practice by humans for humans. Man, as Aristotle described him, is zoon politikon, a political animal. For Aristotle, politics is both the essence and purpose of human beings, a quality not shared by any other creature we know of. The human-exclusivity of politics is certainly reflected in university structures. Political science is devoid of scholars looking at animals; instead, the study of animals is ordinarily viewed as the domain of biologists and moral philosophers. And this human-exclusivity is also evident in political practice. Policy makers may very occasionally turn their attention to the interests of animals, but only if and when their constituents demand it; and their constituents are, of course, exclusively human. So, on this traditional view, animals stand apart from, and outside of, political life: they are not part of our power structures; they do not shape our political institutions; and they do not drive our policy agendas.

But this segregation of animals and politics is as flawed as it is futile. For the simple fact is that our societies are made up of creatures of multiple species. This is perfectly obvious when thinking about the animals we live among in our homes and in our cities. But it is also true of the wild animals who live outside of human dwellings. Those creatures also reside within communities defined and ruled over by humans. It is thus absurd to think that the institutions and policies which govern these societies are neither influenced by, nor have profound effects on, their non-human inhabitants. Animals do not live ‘out there’ in some alien non-human territory but in multi-species communities in which the exercise of political power is inescapable. Indeed, the text of Animal Farm itself seems to acknowledge this fact. Not only is the book littered with references to the cruelties to which farm animals are subjected, but it also acknowledges – often with disconcerting clarity – the tyrannical nature of humans’ rule over animals. The quotation at the start of this chapter, from the anthem ‘Beasts of England’, which is sung by the rebellious animals, illustrates this well. For, on the one hand, the song obviously invokes comparison with The Internationale and other political anthems. But, on the other, it also lays bare the inescapable domination of animals by humans – whether it be through nose-rings, harnesses, bits or the whip.

Given, then, that political relations with animals are inescapable, what should they look like? Since our political structures, institutions and policies are inevitably influenced by and have profound effects on non-human animals, how should they be organized? Crucially, should our political communities recognize and uphold certain animal rights? Answering these questions is the primary task of this book.

From animal ethics to animal politics

But there is one immediate difficulty with attempting to address such questions: quite simply, there is not a great deal to draw on. To explain, there has been much written on the issue of our moral relations with animals and plenty on the question of whether animals possess moral rights. In fact, animal ethics is a well-established field of inquiry in academia, with journals, edited books and academic conferences devoted to this area. However, scholarship on how these moral relations and rights ought to affect, if at all, how we do and organize politics is scant, reflecting the prevailing idea that animals and politics exist in two separate spheres.

Take, for example, the ‘canonical’ text by Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (1995 [1975]). It is true that the book can hardly be called apolitical. Singer claims that all animals have an equal moral value in light of their sentience. And because of this value he argues that when deciding on an action which potentially affects them, we must consider animals’ interests equally to those of humans. Such arguments clearly have important political implications, not least for policies relating to animal agriculture and animal research. And yet it is also fair to say that Singer does not address how these claims about the moral worth of animals affect our overall political relations with animals – our political ideas, structures and institutions. That is because, as a moral philosopher, Singer is primarily interested in the implications of the moral worth of animals for individuals and their choices. Indeed, the early editions of Animal Liberation even contained vegetarian recipes! So it is no surprise, then, that Brian Barry (2001 [1992]: 481) once claimed: ‘Nobody – from the most fervent animal liberationist to the most unrepentant carnivore’ considers animals to be ‘fitted by nature to enjoy civil and political rights’.

But that view is changing. And engagement with the question of the proper nature of our political relations with animals is growing. A number of thinkers (Cochrane 2018; Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011; Garner 2013; Nussbaum 2006; O’Sullivan 2011) have started to imagine what our political communities might look like if they took animals seriously. It is important to point out that such works build on, rather than depart from, traditional theories of animal ethics. These political approaches start with the conclusions of animal ethicists – that animals have moral value and moral rights – in order to ask what this means for the relations of power we have with them. They move from questions about how individuals ought to think about and treat animals to questions of what animals are owed as a matter of justice. They ask how our political order might be shaped and reimagined in light of the value of animals. They take seriously the idea that the themes of Animal Farm – power, domination, equality, solidarity, revolution, corruption and tyranny – can and do apply to our relations with animals. And they take seriously the idea, contrary to Barry, that animals could and should have political rights. But are they right?

Political rights and animals

Before answering this question, we need to have some understanding of what we mean when we talk about political rights for animals. It is important to note that when I talk about political rights in this book, I do not use the term in a particularly strict way. For one, I do not have in mind a determinate list of entitlements which constitute political rights. For example, I do not want to restrict the discussion solely to those ‘civil liberties’ – freedom of association, freedom of speech, right to protest and so on – that are sometimes associated with the term. Rather, then, I adopt a somewhat broader and looser understanding of political rights. In particular, I focus on what animals are owed as a matter of justice and hence the behaviour and action that a political community can and must legitimately enforce. So when I talk about ‘political rights’ in this book, I simply mean what animals are owed within a political community; what others – citizens, state authorities and so on – have a duty to provide for them. Are animals entitled to have their interests considered by policy makers? Do they have a right not to endure certain injurious practices? Do they have fundamental rights which ought to be weighed equally and impartially with those of humans? Do they have rights of membership and democratic representation? These are the core concerns of this book.

The book, then, does not devote a huge amount of time to analysis of the kinds of thing that rights are, nor to the question of whether animals can meaningfully possess them. A great deal of ink has been spilt on these issues, and there is little that a book like this can add to these debates. Its primary focus is on how we ought to organize our political life with animals, not conceptual discussions on the nature of rights. The book thus adopts a very simple understanding of rights – one which is widely, if not universally, shared within the scholarship of rights. It takes rights to be those individual interests which are important enough to impose duties on others (Raz 1988). And it argues that sentient animals do possess rights on the grounds that they hold interests, some of which impose duties on others (Feinberg 1974).

Outline of the book

This book explores the question of the political rights of animals over five substantive chapters. Each of these chapters examines one means by which to organize our political relations with animals; and it investigates the rights, if any, that such a mechanism affords to animals. So, following this introduction, chapter 2 examines the most common way in which political communities govern their relations with animals: through animal welfare legislation. This chapter looks at how animals are treated in the absence of animal welfare legislation, and shows that animals are only protected if and insofar as such protection coincides with the interests of humans.

But the chapter argues that animals deserve – and have rights to – more than this. In fact, it maintains that sentient animals have intrinsic value, meaning that their interests matter in and of themselves, and not simply i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Series title
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Animal Welfare Laws
• 3 Constitutional Provisions
• 4 Legal Personhood
• 5 Membership
• 6 Democratic Representation
• 7 Conclusion: Political Rights for Animals
• References
• End User License Agreement