Populist movements have become key players in European politics. These movements are readily criticized by journalists or political rivals, yet none of the common objections to populism seems to arrest their success. This article turns to normative political theory to cultivate sensitivity to problems arising from some existing arguments against populism, and to explore possible alternatives. It offers a critical reading of prototypical liberal and conservative arguments against populism, and proposes that the principles of solidarity and procedure provide good grounds (...) for a sustainable critique of populism. (shrink)

In Democratic Reason, Hne Landemore has built a case for the epistemic virtues of inclusive deliberative democracy based on the cognitive diversity of the group engaged in making collective decisions. She supports her thesis by appealing to the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem of Lu Hong and Scott Page. This theorem is quite technical and the informal statements of it aimed at democratic theorists are inaccurate, which has resulted in some misguided critiques of the theorem's applicability to democratic politics. This paper (...) provides an exposition of the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem that does not sacrifice precision for accessibility. It also shows that it is not possible to satisfy the assumptions of this theorem when there are only two options. Thus, the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem cannot provide support for the epistemic virtues of inclusive democratic deliberation for binary collective decisions. (shrink)

In this companion piece to 'On the Philosophy of Group Decision Methods I: The Non-Obviousness of Majority Rule', we take a closer look at some competitors of majority rule. This exploration supplements the conclusions of the other piece, as well as offers a further-reaching introduction to some of the challenges that this field currently poses to philosophers.

Majority rule is often adopted almost by default as a group decision rule. One might think, therefore, that the conditions under which it applies, and the argument on its behalf, are well understood. However, the standard arguments in support of majority rule display systematic deficiencies. This article explores these weaknesses, and assesses what can be said on behalf of majority rule.

E l conflict o entr e l a democraci a a g r e gat iva (basad a e n e l v alo r igualitari o d e l a r e gla d e l a m a y oría ) y l a deliberat iva (centrad a e n l a fuerz a epistémic a de l mejo r a r gumento) constitu ye un a d e la s principale s tensione s d e l a (...) teorí a contemporáne a d e l a democracia. Est e trabaj o sostien e qu e quiene s dibuja n dich o conflict o l o hace n a pa r ti r d e un a visión e xces iv ament e optimist a de l v alo r mora l d e l a primer a y demasiad o pesimist a de l carácte r no igualitari o d e l a s e gunda . N i l a con e xió n d e l a r e gl a d e l a m a y orí a co n l a igualda d política sería n ta n fue r t e y e xclus iv a , n i l a deliberació n u n proces o controla b l e únicament e po r la búsqued a objet iva d e solucione s política s co r recta s y n o tambié n po r e xigencia s d e justicia procedimental . N o obstante , aunqu e co n una s proporcione s mucho s meno s e xagerada s a la sugeridas , e xistirí a entr e ambo s procedimiento s u n cie r t o g rad o d e incompatibilida d que podría , s i n o superars e po r completo , s í relajars e d e admiti r qu e cualquie r justi f icació n de u n procedimient o d e tom a d e decisione s n o pued e desa r rollars e d e fo r m a completamente abstracta , sin o qu e h a d e ajustars e a l cont e xto. (shrink)

Hervé Pourtois | : En dépit de débats nourris sur la délibération et la représentation démocratiques, la question de la justification de l’élection comme mode de désignation des gouvernants a été peu abordée par la philosophie politique contemporaine. Cette question est pourtant importante. Une confrontation avec l’alternative que pourrait constituer le tirage au sort d’une assemblée représentative permet d’identifier les vertus spécifiques de l’élection au regard de quatre critères de légitimité démocratique : le consentement et la responsabilité des gouvernés, l’inclusion (...) égalitaire des citoyens, le contrôle des décideurs et la contestabilité des décisions, la qualité épistémique de la décision. L’analyse conduit à conclure au caractère essentiel de l’élection dans des démocraties de masse. C’est à partir d’elle, et non en dépit d’elle, que doit être surmontée la crise de la représentation. (shrink)

This article provides a survey of existing studies of majority rule, outlines misconceptions of majority rule, and highlights underexplored fields of research. It argues that the reasons why the minority complies with majority decisions have been underexplored.

This paper provides a philosophical critique of social choice theory insofar as it deals with the normative evaluation of voting and voting rules. I will argue that the very method of evaluating voting rules in terms of whether they satisfy various conditions is deeply problematic because introducing strategic behaviour leads to a violation of any condition that makes a difference between voting rules. I also argue that it is legitimate to make interpersonal comparisons of utilities in voting theory. Combining a (...) realistic account of voters’ behaviour with a utilitarian evaluation of the outcomes then leads to the judgment that strategic voting is beneficial. If it is, then Arrow's theorem does not have far-reaching consequences for democracy because one of its conditions is not normatively acceptable. (shrink)

The project of public-reason liberalism faces a basic problem: publicly justified principles are typically too abstract and vague to be directly applied to practical political disputes, whereas applicable specifications of these principles are not uniquely publicly justified. One solution could be a legislative procedure that selects one member from the eligible set of inconclusively justified proposals. Yet if liberal principles are too vague to select sufficiently specific legislative proposals, can they, nevertheless, select specific legislative procedures? Based on the work of (...) Gerald Gaus, this article argues that the only candidate for a conclusively justified decision procedure is a majoritarian or otherwise ‘neutral’ democracy. If the justification of democracy requires an equality baseline in the design of political regimes and if justifications for departure from this baseline are subject to reasonable disagreement, a majoritarian design is justified by default. Gaus’s own preference for super-majoritarian procedures is based on disputable specifications of justified liberal principles. These procedures can only be defended as a sectarian preference if the equality baseline is rejected, but then it is not clear how the set of justifiable political regimes can be restricted to full democracies. (shrink)

The modal argument against materialism, in its most standard form, relies on a compatibility thesis to the effect that the physical truths are compatible with the absence of consciousness. I propose an alternative modal argument that relies on an incompatibility thesis: The existence of consciousness is incompatible with the proposition that the physical truths provide a complete description of reality. I show that everyone who accepts the premises of the standard modal argument must accept the premises of the revised modal (...) argument, but not vice versa. (shrink)

For many liberal democrats toleration has become a sort of pet-concept, to which appeal is made in the face of a myriad issues related to the treatment of minorities. Against the inflationary use of toleration, whether understood positively as recognition or negatively as forbearance, I argue that toleration may not provide the conceptual and normative tools to understand and address the claims for accommodation raised by at least one kind of significant minority: democratic dissenting minorities. These are individuals, or aggregates (...) of them, who oppose, on principled grounds, the outcomes of the majoritarian decision-making process. I argue that democratic dissenting minorities' claims are better understood as calls for respect for a person's capacity for self-legislation. I view respect as the cornerstone of justice in a liberal democracy: all norms resulting in a constraint on a person's conduct should be appropriately justified to her. I argue that the reconciliation of democratic dissenting minorities' claims requires an enhancement of the justificatory strategies of democratic decisions by enhancing in turn citizens' rights to political participation. This should be done both during decision making and after a provision is enacted by also securing space for contestation through such forms of illegal protest as civil disobedience and conscientious objection. (shrink)

I provide a novel argument in favour of majority rule. In particular, I consider the distribution of voter satisfaction in response to the outcome of a vote and prove that under certain conditions majority rule minimizes the level of inequality present in the distribution of voter satisfaction. This finding is reinforced by a computer simulation as well as an analysis of over four decades of polling data. Results complement existing procedural justifications of majority rule, demonstrating that majority rule ensures equality (...) at the level of both procedure and outcome. (shrink)

When scientists are asked to give expert advice on risk-related questions, such as the authorization of medical drugs, deliberation often does not eliminate all disagreements. I propose to model these remaining discrepancies as differences in risk assessments and/or in risk acceptability thresholds. The normative question I consider, then, is how the individual expert views should best be aggregated. I discuss what “best” could mean, with an eye to some robustness considerations. I argue that the majority rule, which is currently often (...) used in expert panels, has significant drawbacks. (shrink)

May's theorem famously shows that, in social decisions between two options, simple majority rule uniquely satisfies four appealing conditions. Although this result is often cited in support of majority rule, it has never been extended beyond decisions based on pairwise comparisons of options. We generalize May's theorem to many-option decisions where voters each cast one vote. Surprisingly, plurality rule uniquely satisfies May's conditions. This suggests a conditional defense of plurality rule: If a society's balloting procedure collects only a single vote (...) from each voter, then plurality rule is the uniquely compelling electoral procedure. To illustrate the conditional nature of this claim, we also identify a richer informational environment in which approval voting, not plurality rule, is supported by a May-style argument. (shrink)

Scientists are often asked to advise political institutions on pressing risk-related questions, like climate change or the authorization of medical drugs. Given that deliberation will often not eliminate all disagreements between scientists, how should their risk assessments be aggregated? I argue that this problem is distinct from two familiar and well-studied problems in the literature: judgment aggregation and probability aggregation. I introduce a novel decision-theoretic model where risk assessments are compared with acceptability thresholds. Majority voting is then defended by means (...) of robustness considerations. (shrink)