In this paper, we give an account of some of the necessary conditions for an effectively functioning public sphere, and then explore the question of whether these conditions allow for the expression of ideas and values that are fundamentally incompatible with those of liberalism. We argue that speakers who advocate or glorify violence against democratic institutions fall outside the parameters of what constitutes legitimate public debate and may in fact undermine the conditions necessary for the flourishing of free speech and (...) public dialogue more generally. (shrink)

The Rawls–Habermas debate is having a revival. In this article I argue that both philosophers develop different freestanding conceptions of political legitimacy, and show how they diverge when it comes to how political legitimacy can be justified. Habermas is looking for a deeper justification than Rawls will allow for. I then proceed to show how the different meta-ethical positions yield two different versions of democratic theory, focusing in particular on rights and popular sovereignty. I demonstrate how both conceive of the (...) co-originality of private and public autonomy, and subsequently take issue with Habermas’ reading of Rawls. I argue that Rawls should not be understood as a natural rights theorist, that Habermas misunderstands the role of the original position, and that Rawls cannot be considered a strong constitutionalist. Thus, the real difference between Rawls and Habermas revolves around their different conceptions of political legitimacy. (shrink)

No less an authority than John Rawls identified Judith Shklar as a ‘political’ liberal. However, though their respective conceptions of political liberalism are similar in a number of important respects, Shklar emphasizes that her vision differs notably from that of Rawls. In particular, she explicitly eschews Rawls’s focus on establishing and sustaining an overlapping consensus, arguing that his belief in the possibility of securing such a consensus is naïve and, indeed, dangerous insofar as it embodies an obvious disregard for the (...) painful lessons of history and thereby not only allows but invites the occurrence of new cruelties and horrors. Obviously, such an approach would seem to diverge dramatically from that promoted by Rawls and many other political liberals. The purpose of this essay is to analyze Shklar’s arguments and determine the validity of her claims regarding the differences between her conception and that of Rawls and, in so doing, assess the extent to which Shklar’s ‘liberalism of fear’ can be said to represent a meaningfully distinctive model of political liberalism. (shrink)

Recently several political theorists have argued that mainstream political theory, exemplified by John Rawls’ political liberalism, is based on such idealist and moralist presuppositions, that it cannot be relevant for real politics. This article aims to show that the criticism of these ‘realists’, as these critics are referred to, is based on an incorrect reading of Rawls’ work. The article explains that there are three ways in which his political liberalism can be said to offer a realist understanding of politics: (...) (a) political liberalism interprets the morality inherent in engaging in politics; (b) it acknowledges reasonable disagreement about justice; and (c) it develops standards of public reason, with which to assess the legitimacy of political compromises. The article recovers the realism of political liberalism and indicates new sites of discussion between political liberals and political realists. (shrink)

Governments are subject to the requirements of justice, yet often seem to go above and beyond what justice requires in order to act in ways many people think are good. These kinds of acts – examples of which include putting on celebrations, providing grants to poets, and preserving historic architecture – appear to be acts of government supererogation. In this paper, I argue that a common view about the relationship between government, coercion, and justice implies that most such acts are (...) not supererogatory, but wrong. Many will find that conclusion unattractive, but rejecting the common view that implies it raises problems, too. (shrink)

How to demarcate the political units within which democracy will be practiced? Although recent years have witnessed a steadily increasing academic interest in this question concerning the boundary problem in democratic theory, social contract theory’s potential for solving it has largely been ignored. In fact, contract views are premised on the assumption of a given people and so presuppose what requires legitimization: the existence of a demarcated group of individuals materializing, as it were, from nowhere and whose members agree among (...) themselves to establish a political order. In order to fill this gap in social contract theory, a distinction is made between three kinds of contract views: Lockean political voluntarism, contractarianism, and contractualism. Each of these views can be interpreted in such a way that it offers a democratic solution to the boundary problem. Ultimately, however, a Rawlsian interpretation of the contractualist solution is defended. (shrink)

This article looks at the problems of the co-determination of the political within western metaphysics and political reflection, and considers solutions that are figured in terms of failure and incompletion. The focus is on the relation of the political to political modernity, its defenders and attackers, and those who seek to overcome the opposition.

Political realism criticises the putative abstraction, foundationalism and neglect of the agonistic dimension of political practice in the work of John Rawls. This paper argues that had Rawls not fully specified the implementation of his theory of justice in one particular form of political economy then he would be vulnerable to a realist critique. But he did present such an implementation: a property-owning democracy. An appreciation of Rawls s specificationist method undercuts the realist critique of his conception of justice as (...) fairness. (shrink)

Rawls ‘s political liberalism abandons the traditional political‐theory objective of providing a philosophical account of liberal democracy. However, Rawls also aims for a liberal political order endorsed by citizens on grounds deeper than what he calls a “modus vivendi” compromise; he contends that a liberal political order based upon a modus vivendi is unstable. The aspiration for a pluralist and “freestanding” liberalism is at odds with the goal of a liberalism endorsed as something deeper than a modus vivendi compromise among (...) competing comprehensive doctrines. A liberalism that is supported “for its own sake” rather than as a compromise must necessarily be based on some conception of the good, of the sort that political liberalism eschews. (shrink)

In a well-functioning democracy, must citizens regard one another as political equals, despite ongoing disagreements about normatively significant questions of public policy. A conception of civility is needed to supply citizens with a common sense of the rules of political engagement. By adhering to the norms of civility, deeply divided citizens can still assure one another of their investment in democratic politics. Noting well-established difficulties with the very idea of civility, this essay raises a more fundamental problem. Any conception of (...) civility faces the problem of semantic descent, the phenomenon by which second-order norms devolve into tools for conducting first-order disputes. The problem of incivility in politics thus is not simply that of designing a suitably inclusive view of what civility demands. It might be that political civility can be cultivated only by way of interactions that are themselves not at all political. (shrink)

Commonplace among deliberative theorists is the view that, when defending preferred laws and policies, citizens should appeal only to reasons they expect others reasonably to accept. This view has been challenged on the grounds that it places an undue burden on religious citizens who feel duty-bound to appeal to religious reasons to justify preferred positions. In response, I develop a conception of democratic deliberation that provides unlimited latitude regarding the sorts of reasons that can be introduced, so long as one (...) is prepared to defend them against criticism. Moreover, I contend that religious citizens have a powerful incentive, based on their religious convictions, to be fully responsive to criticism. I defend this proposition by drawing on Robert Erlewine’s account of Hermann Cohen’s ‘religion of reason’. (shrink)

This article offers a critique of John Rawls’s great work, Political Liberalism, from a non-Rawlsian liberal standpoint. It argues that Rawlsian political liberalism is influenced as much by a comprehensive view I call “radical-democracy” as by comprehensive liberal views. This can be seen in Rawls’s account of some of political liberalism’s fundamental ideas—notably the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation, the “liberal” principle of legitimacy, and the idea of public reason. I further argue that Rawls’s impressive attempt (...) to unify liberal and democratic traditions philosophically obscures the prudent liberal attitude to democracy, which remains sound. (shrink)

Meu principal objetivo, neste artigo, é analisar o problema da justificação moral para JohnRawls, caracterizando a teoria da justiça como equidade como um sistema coerentista de justificaçãoque conta com uma epistemologia coerentista holística, uma teoria do contrato social que introduzuma ontologia social e uma estratégia pragmatista de justificação na teoria contratualista. No escopodeste trabalho, examinarei o pressuposto pragmatista de justificação na teoria do contrato social, o qual faz uso do argumento da estabilidade social e legitimidade política para garantir a validade (...) da regra, isto é, dos princípios de justiça, a partir de dois artigos centrais para este debate: "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical" e "Reply to Habermas" § 1, 2. Um objetivo específico será o demostrar a complementaridade entre o descritivismo e o prescritivismo nessa estratégia de justificação que possibilita a superação da dicotomia entre fato e valor. (shrink)

This article provides two empirical evaluations of deliberation. Given that scholars of deliberation often argue for its importance without empirical support, we first examine whether there is a "deliberative difference"; if actors engaging in deliberation arrive at different decisions than those who think on their own or "just talk." As we find a general convergence within deliberation scholarship around reasons and inclusion, the second test examines whether these two specific mechanisms are central to deliberation. The first evaluation looks at outcomes (...) within a laboratory setting; the second at videotapes of decision-making processes within this setting. Our results show two things. First, in terms of outcomes, deliberation differs from other forms of interaction. Second, reasons and inclusion are central to the deliberative process. The more reasons provided within each group, the more likely participants were to change their position; similarly, the more inclusive groups were, the more likely participants were to change their position. We conclude by arguing that more work needs to be done, both in evaluating the deliberative difference and in disaggregating deliberation and examining its central explanatory mechanisms. (shrink)

The point of departure in this article is the Danish debate about democracyin schools. This article presents a first step in a study of how the relationshipbetween democracy and education can be understood. A juxtaposition of thetwo concepts requires, first of all, an analysis of how the concept of democracyis used in the educational debate. In this article three models of democracy areapplied as an analytical framework: a liberal model (Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Rawls,Dworkin), a communitarian model (MacIntyre, Sandel, Nussbaum) and (...) a communicative/deliberativemodel (Walzer, Benhabib, Taylor, Habermas). Numerous contradictions and tensionsbetween concepts of democracy and education can be found in such a juxtaposition,depending on which conception of democracy one chooses to apply. In this articleI discuss which conception affords us the most meaningful concept of democraticteaching. As an introduction, a brief historical overview of the interplay betweendemocracy and education in Danish school is provided. (shrink)

A questão que se coloca diz respeito ao tema do contratualismo moral. Envolve uma tentativa de resposta à questão sobre os motivos, ou as razões, para uma conduta moral por parte de agentes numa sociedade pós-secular. Numa sociedade que não se pauta quer pela religião como pressuposto comum, quer pelo ideal moderno de uma sociedade secular, a questão sobre os motivos de nossa ação moral adquire novos contornos. Essa resposta tomará como ponto de partida, neste texto, a filosofia moral e (...) política kantiana.The issue concerns the subject of moral contratualism. It tries to answer the question about the motives, or reasons, for a moral behavior of the agents in a post-secular society. In a society which does not adopt as a standard either religion, or the Modernist ideal of a secular society, the question about the motives of our moral behavior receives new meanings. This answer will take as starting point, in this paper, the Kantian moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: I argue that Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority cannot convincingly account for the nature and source of democratic authority. It cannot explain why decisions made democratically are more likely to be sound than decisions made non-democratically, and therefore, why democratic decisions might be understood as constituting moral reasons for action and compliance independently of their instrumental dimensions. My argument is that democratic authority cannot be explained completely in terms of the truth or soundness of the outcomes it tends (...) toward. A full account of democratic authority must involve non-instrumental values about the moral caliber of democratic procedures. (shrink)

Em Facticidade e Validade, a forma-direito é um conceito central que possibilita a Habermas: enfocar a dimensão institucional do direito; elucidar a problemática da legitimação do direito; realizar uma abordagem funcionalista do direito propícia a reconstrui-lo racionalmente; e explicitar o sistema dos direitos fundamentais. Entretanto, Habermas não procede a uma análise sistemática do nexo funcional entre a forma-direito e o modo de produção de mercadorias. Por isso, ele deixa de prover uma compreensão mais abrangente e mais crítica da forma-direito e (...) das possibilidades emancipatórias na sociedade capitalista. (shrink)

In this essay I situate Rawls’s conception of liberal democratic toleration within the account of political and law-making activity undertaken by free equals that he develops across his three main...

The Paradox of PostmodernismModernism is, roughly speaking, the Enlightenment belief in a single unified rational perspective, founded on some indubitable evidence given in human experience – either innate conceptsà laDescartes and the rationalists, or sensationsà laLocke and the empiricists – and elaborated according to reliable logical rules. This view was first attacked for its ‘foundationalism.’ Philosophers, such as Nietzsche, Dewey, Heidegger and the later Wittgenstein, denied that there is any indubitable given upon which truth can be founded. There is no (...) experience, no testimony of the senses or of reason that blazons forth the undeniable truth. Rather the ‘given’ is, so to speak, constructed - which is to say, not given to us, but made by us. Some experience or other evidence is interpreted as this or that with this or that epistemological status, on the basis of beliefs that one already has about, say, space or mathematics or sense perception or the nature of what is ultimately real. Postmodernism is an intensification of this attack, with a distinctive political spin. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo intento demostrar que existe una relación de necesidad epistémica entre prueba y verdad. Esto quiere decir que no es posible, en el proceso, ni creer justificadamente ni aceptar que está probado que p si, por información pública pero extraprocesal, el juez sabe que p es falso. Con todo, ello es así bajo ciertas condiciones, a saber: en primer lugar, que se trate de un proceso penal legítimo en términos de Estado de derecho; y en segundo lugar, (...) que por verdad se entienda correspondencia entre enunciado y mundo. Esa es la tesis principal y se desarrolla en esta segunda parte de la investigación. Pero tiene apoyo en algunas tesis secundarias, ya analizadas en la primera parte del trabajo, publicada también en este volumen. (shrink)

Critics and defenders of Rawls' idea of public reason have tended to neglect the relationship between this idea and his conception of democratic legitimacy. I shall argue that Rawls' idea of public reason can be interpreted in two different ways, and that the two interpretations support two different conceptions of legitimacy. What I call the substantive interpretation of Rawls' idea of public reason demands that it applies not just to the process of democratic decision-making, but that it extends to the (...) substantive justification of democratic decisions. I shall argue against this interpretation and suggest a procedural interpretation instead. On this view, public reason is invoked when it comes to the political justification of the principles that should govern the process of democratic decision-making, but not – at least not directly – in relation to the content of public deliberation. (shrink)

Rawls''s recent modification of his theory of justice claims that political liberalism is free-standing and falls under the category of the political. It works entirely within that domain and does not rely on anything outside it In this article I pursue the metatheoretical goal of obtaining insight into the anthropological assumptions that have remained so far unacknowledged by Rawls and critics alike. My argument is that political liberalism has a dependence on comprehensive liberalism and its conception of a self-serving subjectivity (...) that is far more binding as well as undesirable than it has been so far acknowledged. I proceed with a heuristic approach that introduces us to the possibility that political liberalism presupposes tacitly the Occidental metanarrative of reason harnessing rampant self-interest and subordinating it to a higher-order interest. As the presuppositions of political liberalism emerge, I draw from the debate between Rawls and Habermas in order to illustrate my argument for the existence of a dependence on these presuppositions. I outline some implications of the anthropological basis of political liberalism and conclude by exemplifying them with reference to Rawls''s comments on the division of a cake. (shrink)

Political liberalism purports to be independent from any controversial philosophical presuppositions, and its basic principles and features are often presented as the most accommodating of difference and heterogeneity, so long as the latter is not illiberal, oppressive and fanatic. Educational theory welcomes this assumption and attempts to utilise it in citizenship curriculum debates, often in a receptive and arguably uncritical way. I shall critique the above by unveiling the contestable epistemological and anthropological theses underlying Rawls’ difference principle and by discussing (...) the conception of education that they ground. I shall draw especially on sociology of education and its questioning of the ‘racism of intelligence’ in order to show that political liberalism mistakes its self- and world-understanding as a reflection of general and undisputed facts. Further, I shall explain how a more critical perspective would give educational theory a more active role by challenging the so-called ‘reproductive’ conception of education. I shall conclude by assessing the significance of such a critique for teaching citizenship, putting forward some suggestions for a reorientation of political education. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Richard Rorty est souvent vu comme une sorte de clone américain de Derrida et considéré, en tant que tel, comme irresponsable à la fois au plan philosophique et au plan politique. Je soutiens que c’est là une caricature. Rorty propose à la fois une version unifiée, pénétrante et raisonnée du pragmatisme, et une métaphilosophie originale et stimulante, imprégnée de la tradition analytique et qui, tout en lui adressant un défi de taille, lui reste néanmoins tout à fait accessible. Tel (...) est mon propos principal. J’ai deux sous-thèmes: 1) que Rorty a été caricaturé par la gauche; et 2) qu’une position comme celle de Rorty et celle du marxisme analytique peuvent être compatibles. (shrink)

RésuméRichard Rorty est souvent vu comme une sorte de clone américain de Derrida et considéré, en tant que tel, comme irresponsable à la fois au plan philosophique et au plan politique. Je soutiens que c'est là une caricature. Rorty propose à la fois une version unifiée, pénétrante et raisonnée du pragmatisme, et une métaphilosophie originale et stimulante, imprégnée de la tradition analytique et qui, tout en lui adressant un défi de taille, lui reste néanmoins tout à fait accessible. Tel est (...) mon propos principal. J'ai deux sous-thèmes: 1) que Rorty a été caricaturé par la gauche; et 2) qu'une position comme celle de Rorty et celle du marxisme analytique peuvent être compatibles. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Le recours au raisonnable est partout présent dans l’œuvre de John Rawls. Et cependant, le concept lui-même est souvent vu comme problématique et nombreux sont ceux qui pensent que le raisonnable ne saurait avoir la portée cruciale que Rawls lui attribue. Le concept est ici élucidé et certaines conceptualisations du raisonnable sont explicitées. L’auteur soutient que ces conceptualisations permettent au raisonnable de jouer le rôle-clé que Rawls en attend.

RésuméLe recours au raisonnable est partout présent dans l'œuvre de John Rawls. Et cependant, le concept lui-même est souvent vu comme problématique et nombreux sont ceux quipensent que le raisonnable ne saurait avoir la portée cruciale que Rawls lui attribue. Le concept est ici élucidé et certaines conceptualisations du raisonnable sont explicitées. L'auteur soutient que ces conceptualisationspermettent au raisonnable dejouer le rôle-clé que Rawls en attend.

We formulate a distinctly 'political liberal' conception of mutual respect, which we call 'civic respect', appropriate for governing the public political relations of citizens in pluralist democratic societies. A political liberal account of education should aim at ensuring that students, as future citizens, learn to interact with other citizens on the basis of civic respect. While children should be required to attend educational institutions that will inculcate in them the skills and concepts necessary for them to be free and equal (...) citizens, parents should be granted as much freedom as is compatible with the requirements of civic respect to raise their children in accordance with their respective 'comprehensive doctrines' (systems of beliefs and values, including religious doctrines). We consider an objection to our position drawn from the account of upbringing recently advanced by Matthew Clayton, namely, that the conception of civic respect that we advance rests on an implausible view about the limited scope of the requirements of political justice. We develop an account of the 'basic structure of society' as the appropriate subject of political justice that can overcome this objection. (shrink)

One prominent criticism of John Rawls’s The Law of Peoples is that it treats certain non-liberal societies, what Rawls calls ‘decent hierarchical societies’, as equal participants in a just international system. Rawls claims that these non-liberal societies should be respected as equals by liberal democratic societies, even though they do not grant their citizens the basic rights of democratic citizenship. This is presented by Rawls as a consequence of liberalism’s commitment to the principle of toleration. A number of critics have (...) claimed that Rawls’s treatment of these non-liberal societies is symptomatic of a more general problem with political liberalism, namely, its reliance on toleration as its ‘fundamental principle’. Against this view, I argue that the principle of toleration should not be understood as political liberalism’s ‘fundamental principle’. This is revealed through a consideration of the normative basis of what Rawls calls the ‘Liberal Principle of Legitimacy’. A correct understanding of political liberalism’s ‘fundamental principle’, which I claim is a principle of equal ‘civic respect’ for citizens, shows that Rawls’s toleration of non-liberal societies is in fact a misapplication of political liberalism to the global domain. Moreover, I explain that political liberalism must assert that the principle of equal civic respect for citizens is the correct principle to govern the public political relations of citizens in all pluralist societies, and that most ‘decent hierarchical societies’ are pluralist in nature. Identifying political liberalism’s fundamental principle as that of equal civic respect for citizens helps to render political liberalism, in both the domestic and international domains, a more coherent and compelling approach to thinking about fundamental political issues. Key Words: civic respect • international relations • justice • political liberalism • Rawls • toleration. (shrink)

John Rawls proposed, as what he called “the liberal principle of legitimacy,” that coercive exercises of political power can be justified to free and equal dissenters when “in accordance with a constitution (written or unwritten) the essentials of which all citizens, as reasonable and rational, can endorse.” Does “unwritten constitution” there refer to norms of constitutional import, but that subsist only as custom, not as law? To norms that subsist as common law but not as code law? To empirical regularities (...) of political practice, as opposed to normative rules and standards? Which interpretation is best? (shrink)

L’analyse de la notion de procéduralisme montre qu’elle est utilisée dans la littérature en deux sens très différents. Nous mettons en évidence une condition suffisante à la mise en cohérence de ces deux idées, basée sur une compréhension pragmatique de la notion d’acceptabilité. Nous montrons alors que l’adoption de cette condition suffisante implique que tout dépassement procéduraliste du welfarisme passe par un travail de formation des préférences.

The publication of Political Liberalismhas allowed John Rawls to bring to the fore issues that remained in the background of A Theory of Justice. His explicit attention to the concept of ‘the reasonable’ is a welcome development. In a more recent publication, he affirms the importance of this concept, ‘while [granting] that the idea of the reasonable needs a more thorough examination than Political Liberalism offers.’ In this paper, I will present a critical exposition of the senses of the reasonable (...) on which justice as fairness relies. Rawls employs the term in four main contexts. I will outline these various senses and argue that in each case, a controversy in the secondary literature can be resolved by close attention to the concept of the reasonable. In three of these contexts, Rawls relies on what I will call a ‘strong’ sense of the reasonable, while in one he sometimes seems to rely on a ‘weak’ sense. I argue that justice as fairness is best served by relying on a strong sense throughout. (shrink)

Dentre os vários modelos normativos de democracia elaborados na Filosofia Política, um dos mais influentes é o da democracia deliberativa, cuja característica mais essencial é a exigência de justificação pública. John Rawls, ao estabelecer as bases do que ele chamou de razão pública, tornou-se um dos principais marcos teóricos desse modelo democrático. Atrelado à razão pública, Rawls tratou do dever de civilidade, um dever moral coerente com ela e com a sua ideia de democracia. O cidadão que o cumpre colabora (...) com a construção e manutenção da própria democracia. O escopo do presente artigo é, à luz da teoria rawlsiana, estabelecer quatro componentes de naturezas distintas e aparentemente contraditórias (singular, plural, subjetivo e objetivo) que, somados, completam o dever de civilidade, tornando-o essencial para o regime democrático. (shrink)

A number of phenomena have lent a new complexity to the long-standing challenge of constructing a legitimate and stable political order. I contend that both legitimacy and integration under contemporary conditions ultimately hinge upon a form of public practical reasoning that departs considerably from the ones proposed by John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas and several deliberative democrats. I argue that the generalizability test that constitutes the cornerstone of most contemporary neo-Kantian theories of public reason should be abandoned as a rule of (...) public argumentation and be replaced by a norm of civic responsiveness towards minority claims. I not only suggest that a wider variety of reasons, motives and genres of speech needs to be admitted within the purview of public reason, but more fundamentally that generalizability cannot cogently be seen as anything more (or less) than a civic virtue. The underlying point of this article is that neo-Kantian theories of public reason work with a problematic conception of practical reason. I conclude by providing reasons, against some radical and agonistic democrats, why the language of public reasoning needs to be retained and renovated. Key Words: acknowledgement • agonistic democracy • deliberative democracy • generalizability • Habermas • pluralism • practical reason • public reason • Rawls • social integration. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to investigate the epistemic dimension of reasonableness. In the last decades, the concept of reasonableness has been deeply analysed, and yet, I maintain that a strictly epistemic analysis of reasonableness is still lacking. The goal of this article is to clarify which epistemic features characterize reasonableness as one of the fundamental virtues in the political domain. In order to justify political liberalism through a public justification that averts the risk of falling into a dilemma, (...) it is important to establish in advance which are the epistemic constraints that should be respected. My proposal is that a moderate approach in moral epistemology expresses the best scheme available to us – as moral agents constrained by the limit of our rationality – for establishing a normatively binding, and yet realistic, procedure of justification for political institutions and practices. (shrink)

Health-care goods are goods with peculiar properties, and where they are scarce, societies face potentially explosive distributional conflicts. Animated public and academic debates on the necessity and possible justice of limit-setting in health care have taken place in the last decades and have recently taken a turn toward procedural rather than substantial criteria for justice. This article argues that the most influential account of procedural justice in health-care rationing, presented by Daniels and Sabin, is indeterminate where concrete properties of rationing (...) institutions are concerned. Such properties inscribe substantial norms into institutions. These norms can derive validity only from democratic majority decisions, which must be seen as an instance of pure procedural justice. We therefore have to move the discussion to a meta-level and ask how concrete properties of institutions are being chosen. I suggest four criteria for sufficiently democratic institutional design choice and conclude that as institutional properties are likely to have effects on the resulting distribution of health care, design choices should be empirically informed and taken both democratically and deliberately. (shrink)