Political Dissent

Abstract

Although political dissent is an idea that perennially receives much public attention, its standing in the academic literature is relatively slight. Very few thinkers engage the idea of dissent outside of its manifestation as an illegal action, and ever fewer dedicate any time to understanding the idea conceptually. A substantial portion of my dissertation aims to address this conspicuous gap. In the remaining portion, I advance a normative claim. My claim is that the very same justificatory considerations that pertain to illegal acts of dissent pertain as well to those acts that ought to be legally protected by a citizen’s right to dissent. Put more simply, I argue that whether or not a dissenting action is done within, or outside of, the law is of no normative effect. The upshot of this argument is that it places the burden on agents to be responsible for all the dissenting actions they undertake. This is so regardless of whether or not those actions find institutional shelter.