In the intellectual confusion prevailing since the demise of Marxism and “marxism”, the attempt is made to define democracy as a matter of pure procedure, explicitly avoiding and condemning any reference to substantive objectives. It can easily be shown, however, that the idea of a purely procedural “democracy” is incoherent and self-contradictory. No legal system whatsoever and no government can exist in the absence of substantive conditions which cannot be left to chance or to the workings of (...) the “market” but must be posited as objectives of political activity. The confusion results from a deficient understanding of what makes a society and an empty idea of “freedom”. The objective of politics is not happiness, an affair to be left to the individuals, but it certainly is liberty understood as participation in the governance of the polity; it is also the pursuit of the common good, defined as the sum of the prerequisites and facilitations of individual autonomy depending on collective action, and as the realization of commonly agreed collective goals. (shrink)

This essay reclaims a political proceduralist vision of democracy as the best normative defense of democracy in contemporary politics. We distinguish this vision from three main approaches that are representative in the current academic debate: the epistemic conception of democracy as a process of truth seeking; the populist defense of democracy as a mobilizing politics that defies procedures; and the classical minimalist or Schumpeterian definition of democracy as a competitive method for selecting leaders.

This article will argue that there is a coherent and attractive middle way between common law constitutionalism and the procedural conception of democracy, the two dominant positions on the legitimacy of strong constitutional judicial review. I will explore an intriguing alternative that decouples the legitimizing principles and institutional claims of the two dominant positions and argues that (i) democratic decision-making cannot be legitimate if it violates substantive principles of morality; and (ii) the strong form of constitutional review is (...) problematic. This article will present four theses. First, I will argue that political liberalism, properly defined, can allow us to avoid both the tyranny of the majority and the rule of Platonic guardians. Secondly, even if we can deflect both dangers, there is still real tension between the liberal principle of legitimacy and the procedural conception of democracy. Thirdly, if we accept the liberal principle of legitimacy, we have to grant a pivotal role to the epistemic credentials of our institutions. Finally, I will contend that courts should not be authorized to invalidate statutes on the ground that they violate fundamental moral principles. (shrink)

In the intellectual confusion prevailing since the demise of Marxism and “marxism”, the attempt is made to define democracy as a matter of pure procedure, explicitly avoiding and condemning any reference to substantive objectives. It can easily be shown, however, that the idea of a purely procedural “democracy” is incoherent and self‐contradictory. No legal system whatsoever and no government can exist in the absence of substantive conditions which cannot be left to chance or to the workings of (...) the “market” but must be posited as objectives of political activity. The confusion results from a deficient understanding of what makes a society and an empty idea of “freedom”. The objective of politics is not happiness, an affair to be left to the individuals, but it certainly is liberty understood as participation in the governance of the polity; it is also the pursuit of the common good, defined as the sum of the prerequisites and facilitations of individual autonomy depending on collective action, and as the realization of commonly agreed collective goals. (shrink)

In her book _Inclusion and Democracy_, Iris Marion Young offers a defense of a certain model of deliberative democracy and argues that political institutions that conform to this model are just. I argue that Young gives two contradictory accounts of why such institutions are just, and I weigh the relative merits of two ways in which this contradiction can be resolved.

This paper generalises the classical Condorcet jury theorem from majority voting over two options to plurality voting over multiple options. The paper further discusses the debate between epistemic and procedural democracy and situates its formal results in that debate. The paper finally compares a number of different social choice procedures for many-option choices in terms of their epistemic merits. An appendix explores the implications of some of the present mathematical results for the question of how probable majority cycles (...) (as in Condorcet's paradox) are in large electorates. (shrink)

In this article I attempt a normative analysis of the relations between the ideal of democracy and the distribution of power. In particular, I suggest that democratic institutions and procedures, as they are generally understood, are not able per se to avoid domination. In line with the interpretation of domination that I propose, I claim that in order to promote an ideal of democracy as non-domination we need to take into account power inequalities present outside the political sphere. (...) More specifically, I suggest that the obtainment of a certain degree of equality in the distribution of social power should be understood as a procedural requirement for the realization of the democratic ideal. (shrink)

The overall aim of this thesis is to assess the legitimacy of constitutional laws and bills of rights within the framework of procedural epistemic democracy. The thesis is divided into three sections. In the first section, I discuss the relevance of an epistemic argument for democracy under the circumstances of politics: I provide an account of reasonable disagreement and explain how usual approaches to the authority of decision-making procedures fail to take it seriously. In the second part (...) of the thesis, I provide an account of the epistemic features of democracy and of the requirements of democratic legitimacy. I develop a revised pragmatist argument for democracy which relies on three presumptive aims of decision-making: justice, sustainability and concord. In the third and last section, I first argue for the desirability of constitutionalism. I then explain why constitutionalism, as it is usually understood, is incompatible with my procedural epistemic account of democratic legitimacy. In the last chapter, I offer a two-pronged solution to the apparent incompatibility of constitutionalism and epistemic democracy. I first argue for the appropriateness of political constitutionalism, as opposed to legal constitutionalism, in understanding the relationship between rights and democracy. I then provide an account of rights protection and judicial review compatible with epistemic democratic legitimacy. Finally, I use the notion of pragmatic encroachment to explain how constitutional laws can achieve normative supremacy through the increased epistemic credentials of the procedure. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue that we should reframe the presentation and defense of the program of discourse ethics and deliberative democracy (DEP) in such a way that we make clear its connection to the substantive moral ideas of solidarity, equality and freedom. This program basically says that we should, when we can, determine the validity of the norms regulating our social life through practices of public deliberation. If we want to understand why engaging in public deliberation makes moral (...) sense, or is obligatory, we need to make explicit the connection between the formal procedures of deliberation and our most basic substantive moral ideas of freedom, equality and solidarity. In order to unpack this claim, I construct what I call an expressive-elaboration model of the relation between substance and procedure in public deliberation. According to this model, we should see the two dimensions as working in tandem, in such a way that deliberative procedures are understood as the medium of expression and elaboration of our basic substantive ideas of solidarity, equality and freedom. The three ideas are expressed in the fact and form of deliberation, and elaborated in their changing and specific interpretations as topics and consequences of deliberative practices. To develop this model, I start with a consideration of certain insights of Kant's moral theory, and proceed to bridge the gap between Habermas's more formalistic and Rawls's more substantive neo-Kantian accounts of practical reason. The result is a straightforwardly substantive articulation and defense of the dialogic procedures of DEP based on the recognition of the fact of widespread moral disagreement and a fundamental project of justice demanding that we deal with that condition of disagreement by constructing social arrangements in which we include each other, solidaristically, as free and equal members. This morally substantive defense of DEP referring to the fact of widespread moral disagreement and the fundamental project of justice is different from, and more compelling than, other common, formalistic and prudential defenses of DEP. (shrink)

This article critically examines Busk's Democracy in Spite of the Demos, which critiques the “categorical imperative of democracy.” Although Busk effectively challenges the commitment to value-neutral democratic procedures as the foundation for legitimate law, his alternative, curtailing powerful interests ability to manipulate voters using “socially necessary delusions,” risks establishing elite rule. This article instead proposes basic liberal rights as the normative foundation for legitimate public order and militant democracy as its most effective institutional safeguard, arguing that this (...) combination better realizes human emancipation. (shrink)

In Michael Sandel's latest book entitled ican republicanism, Aristotle, and Hegel, com- Democracy's Discontent (1996), he argues munitarians are critical of the individualistic that the prevailing public philosophy (what he methodology liberalism employs. Such a methcalls the procedural republic) that informs..

Democracy -- Political participation -- Value of democracy -- Procedure and substance -- Justice -- State coercion and criminal punishment -- Sufficiency and equality -- Humanitarian intervention.

The standard epistemic justification for inclusiveness in political decision making is the Condorcet Jury Theorem, which states that the probability of a correct decision using majority rule increases in group size (given certain assumptions). Informally, majority rule acts as a mechanism to pool the information contained in the judgements of individual agents. I aim to extend the explanation of how groups of political agents track the truth. Before agents can pool the information, they first need to find truth-conducive information. Increasing (...) group size is also important in the initial search for truth-conducive information. (shrink)

The word “populism” commonly elicits images of hordes of angry townspeople with pitchforks and torches. That is the classic picture of “the mob,” bolstered by countless movie and television productions, and it is clearly based on such historical events as the English civil wars, the sans-culottes’ terror, the Bolshevik revolution, and the recent genocides in Rwanda and Burundi. Many of the leaders involved in fostering such horrors are seen as radical democrats whose successors today should also be feared. In this (...) paper, I argue that any mob takeovers of the feared sort are actually antithetical to radical democracy. This is because an authentically democratic regime, even of the most extreme type, is necessarily inconsistent with “mobocracy” or any sort of “tyranny of the majority” given its essential procedural aspects. It is argued, in fact, that leaders of legitimately democratic movements have generally been quite vapid because of the fallibilistic, plebiscitary proceduralism inherent in any authentic attempt to require government policy to reflect the “general will.” And this vapidity is argued to inhere regardless of the extent of rhetorical powers of the advocate or advocacy. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to investigate the Habermasian way of problematizing the European political situation through consideration of the conceptual framework within which he develops his proposal. I begin by clarifying various conceptual difficulties that emerge when thinking about politics within the European Union. I then focus on the concept of popular sovereignty as procedure, which Habermas develops in Between Facts and Norms against the historical backdrop of the nation state. In the debate regarding European constitutionalization, the concept (...) of popular sovereignty as procedure first assumes a critical function against proponents of the no demos thesis. More recently, Habermas has advanced a concept of shared/divided sovereignty, which becomes indispensable when we consider Europe as a democratic federation. The conclusions hereby drawn disclose two problematic aspects of Habermas’s recent proposal. Respectively, these concern the viability of his approach and the questionable plausibility of this proposed federation’s ability to uphold democracy in terms of self-determination. (shrink)

Democratic theorists often distinguish between two views of democratic procedures. ‘Outcomes theorists’ emphasize the instrumental nature of these procedures and argue that they are only valuable because they tend to produce good outcomes. In contrast, ‘proceduralists’ emphasize the intrinsic value of democratic procedures, for instance, on the grounds that they are fair. In this paper. I argue that we should reject pure versions of these two theories in favor of an understanding of the democratic ideal that recognizes a commitment to (...) both intrinsically valuable democratic procedures and democratic outcomes. In instances in which there is a conflict between these two commitments, I suggest they must be balanced. This balancing approach offers a justification of judicial review on the grounds that it potentially limits outcomes that undermine democracy. But judicial review is not justifiable in any instance in which a bad democratic outcome results from democratic procedures. When the loss that would result from overturning a democratic procedure is greater than the gain to democracy that would result from ensuring against an undemocratic outcome; judicial review is not justifiable. Loss or gain to democracy is defined by the negative or positive impact of each action on the core democratic values of equality and autonomy, aspects of the democratic ideal. Even when judicial review is justified, the fact that it overturns intrinsically valuable procedures suggests that such review is never ideal from the standpoint of democracy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Democracy, Culture, Catholicism: Voices from Four Continents eds. by Michael J. Schuck and John Crowley-BuckSteven P. MilliesDemocracy, Culture, Catholicism: Voices from Four Continents Edited by Michael J. Schuck and John Crowley-Buck NEW YORK: FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016. 350 pp. $105.00 / $35.00Democracy, Culture, Catholicism is the product of a three-year, international project that started from a less specific inspiration. Originally begun at Loyola University Chicago's Joan and (...) Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage in 2010 as a broad inquiry into the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and politics, the project leaders eventually took a different bearing from events as diverse as the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, and Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Caritas in Veritate to focus their project more squarely on democracy. Examining democracy from within the diverse experiences found in Lithuania, Peru, Indonesia, and the United States, the editors [End Page 208] present us with a valuable snapshot of where the Catholic engagement with democracy as a cultural expression finds itself today in a global perspective.Given the amount of material at play, the volume is a monumental achievement, if only for the clarity with which it presents its findings. Some essays are stronger than others. Still, the volume benefits tremendously from an apparent and unusual amount of editorial attention that sequences the essays and interrelates them with useful references to one another in such a way that Democracy, Culture, Catholicism escapes entirely the fate of so many volumes of collected essays. Here, the reader has the sensation of reading one coherent narrative, not twenty-three disparately connected, individual essays. This alone is impressive.The volume possesses other strengths. Reflections emerge throughout that engage the deeper questions of democracy. Who are these people making decisions together? How can we understand the composition of a political community? Too much democratic theory overlooks the complex interweaving of history, memory, and identity that operates like a substrate of our consciousness beneath our reason while we are presuming ourselves to be rational decision makers using democratic procedures. The book's engagement not just with democracy and Catholicism but also with culture is important. These essays treat culture not only in different local expressions but also (and in a way that is deep, serious, and sustained) as a phenomenon of consciousness.The American perspective always lurks in the narrative, threatening to dominate. This is inevitable not only because the project was managed in the United States but also because the polarizing obsessions of the church in the United States about how to acknowledge the norms of modern political arrangements have tended to dominate conversation in the church worldwide. The editors have shrewdly chosen to save the United States for the last part of this volume, allowing other voices to come forward first to claim their own space. This editorial decision, like so many others, improves the volume and keeps the narrative in good balance. Still, some questions linger in this reviewer's mind as the volume concludes.What do we mean by democracy? Throughout, the authors treat this as a question that is largely settled. Democracy is identified with democratic values that the church accepts, and in Schuck's words, what is under way is "a critical conversation with the culture of democracy" (330). Yet procedural democracy cannot be severed from these values. Are democratic norms and values vindicated when majorities choose undemocratic values? A more careful drawing of distinctions between democracy, liberalism, and republicanism would expose the inner conflicts in which Catholicism meets modern political norms.Perhaps most urgently for the subject matter of this book, are the claims of Catholic social teaching and Christian ethics a foundation for the democratic, participatory values of this secular age, as writers like Charles Taylor and David [End Page 209] Walsh have suggested? This also would raise questions about how culturally conditioned we should understand democracy to be, surely an important consideration for this very fine study.Steven P. MilliesCatholic Theological UnionCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Democracy is commonly associated with political equality and/or majority rule. This essay shows that these three ideas are conceptually separate, so the transition from any one to another stands in need of further substantive argument, which is not always adequately given. It does this by offering an alternative decision-making mechanism, called lottery voting, in which all individuals cast votes for their preferred options but, instead of these being counted, one is randomly selected and that vote determines the outcome. This (...) procedure is democratic and egalitarian, since all have an equal chance to influence outcomes, but obviously not majoritarian. (shrink)

Abstract Democracy is a fundamental right linked to the realization of a person’s worthy life project regarding its corresponding fulfillment of Human Rights. Along with the procedures to form political majorities, it is mandatory to incorporate the substantial part as a means and end for the normative content of Human Dignity to be carried out allowing it to: i) freely choose a project of valued life with purpose and autonomy ii) to have material and intangible means to function in (...) society; and iii) to live free from harm and fear in order to achieve human flourishing. The integral democracy is a means and an end to materialize individual happiness and the common good as long as everyone has concrete opportunities to unfold its inherent human dignity capacities within the trademark of the democratic constitutional State. Assuming this, integral democracy is the fundamental right of Fundamental Rights. (shrink)

Examines democracy in the Philippines using the political thought of Jürgen Habermas. Winner of the 2016 Outstanding Scholarly Work Award for the School of Humanities presented by Ateneo de Manila University This book is a pioneering study of Philippine democracy, one of the oldest in the Asian region, vis-à-vis Habermasian critical theory. Proceeding from a concise examination of the theory of law and democracy found in Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms, Ranilo Balaguer Hermida explains how the law (...) occupies the central role in both the legitimation of political power and the attainment of social integration. He then discusses how Habermas proposes to resolve the tension that exists in modern society between democratic norms and social facts, through the adoption of a lawmaking procedure whereby the informal sources of issues and opinions from the public sphere are allowed to develop and interact with the formal deliberations and decision processes inside the political system. He also explores certain provisions of the present Philippine Constitution that were expressly intended to restore democratic institutions and processes destroyed by decades of martial law, as well as the problems and hindrances that stand in the way of their full implementation. Ranilo Balaguer Hermida is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. He received his PhD in philosophy from Monash University in Australia. (shrink)

In her recent book, Democratic Reason, Hélène Landemore argues that, when evaluated epistemically, “a democratic decision procedure is likely to be a better decision procedure than any non-democratic decision procedures, such as a council of experts or a benevolent dictator” (p. 3). Landemore's argument rests heavily on studies of collective intelligence done by Lu Hong and Scott Page. These studies purport to show that cognitive diversity – differences in how people solve problems – is actually more important to overall group (...) performance than average individual ability – how smart the individual members are. Landemore's argument aims to extrapolate from these results to the conclusion that democracy is epistemically better than any non-democratic rival. I argue here that Hong and Page's results actually undermine, rather than support, this conclusion. More specifically, I argue that the results do not show that democracy is better than any non-democratic alternative, and that in fact, they suggest the opposite – that at least some non-democratic alternatives are likely to epistemically outperform democracy. (shrink)

Why should one person obey another? Why (to ask the question from the first-person perspective) ought I to submit to another and follow her judgment rather than my own? In modern political thought, which denies that some are born rulers and others are born to be ruled, the most prominent answer has been: “Because I have consented to her authority.” By making authority conditional on the subjects’ consent, political philosophers have sought to reconcile authority’s hierarchical structure with the equal moral (...) standing of governor and governed. Yet such consent accounts of authority have long been deemed problematic on a number of grounds, not the least of which is that few citizens have given their consent to the state under whose laws they live. So unless we are willing to deny the state’s authority over those who have not consented, or revert to the pre-modern assumption of a natural political hierarchy, we must find another way of reconciling authority with our standing as free and equal moral agents. In recent political and legal philosophy, the most influential solution to this problem has been Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority, according to which legitimate authority, while it does not require the consent of the governed, must exist for their sake, or serve them. The normal way to justify someone’s authority, on the service conception, is to show that, by treating her directives as binding, the subjects are likely better to conform to reasons that apply to them anyway. The service conception has, however, recently been criticized (by, among others, Thomas Christiano, Scott Hershovitz, and Jeremy Waldron) for being insufficiently attuned to the significance that procedural, and in particular democratic, features of political and legal institutions have for the justification of their authority. If these ‘democratic critics’ are right, then two commitments that many in the liberal-democratic tradition may find independently attractive turn out to be in tension: the liberal idea that authority is normally legitimate only insofar as it serves its subjects, and the democratic idea that legitimate authority can (and regularly does) rest on fair procedures. In this article I argue that the critics’ arguments rest on a misunderstanding of the service conception; yet their worries point the way to an under-appreciated and interesting view of democracy as an authoritative arbitration procedure. After introducing the service conception’s view of justified authority, I briefly distinguish a broad and a narrow interpretation of it, and suggest that we should embrace the latter to make sense of the idea that political authority serves its subjects (Section I). Next I turn to the objection raised by the democratic critics: the service conception, they say, cannot make room for the intrinsic fairness of democratic procedures because it is preoccupied with the quality of outcomes (Section II). But, I argue, the objection rests on an illicit identification of two different kinds of outcomes: the outcome of the decision-making procedure on the one hand, the outcome or result of treating that first outcome as authoritative on the other. Distinguishing between these is crucial for an adequate understanding of democracy’s authority. While the service conception is indeed organized around the latter, this does not commit it to an exclusive concern with the former; yet it is a singular commitment to the former that is problematic from a democratic point of view (Section III). To bring home this point, I sketch a model of authority as arbitration that is frequently overlooked in recent discussions of authority even though it is centrally concerned with procedural (and ultimately democratic) values and fits squarely into the service conception of authority (Section IV). (shrink)

Moral disagreement about public policies—issues such as abortion, affirmative action, and health care—is a prominent feature of contemporary American democracy. Yet it is not a central concern of the leading theories of democracy. The two dominant democratic approaches in our time—procedural democracy and constitutional democracy—fail to offer adequate responses to the problem of moral disagreement. Both suggest some elements that are necessary in any adequate response, but neither one alone nor both together are sufficient. We (...) argue here that an adequate conception of democracy must make moral deliberation an essential part of the political process. What we call “deliberative democracy” adds an important dimension to the theory and practice of politics that the leading conceptions of democracy neglect. (shrink)

Militant democracy is an attempt to defend democracy against totalitarian parties that would use democratic procedures to rise to power. This article is focused on the consistency of the concept of ‘militant democracy’. I argue that what militant democracy defends is not the democratic procedure itself but rather certain rights and the rule of law, and that those elements may in fact be compromised by democracy. This applies both if the democratic procedure is concerned and (...) if democracy is interpreted as a reflection of the will of the people. Those elements may be upheld, but democracy is to be mitigated rather than fortified in order to do so. (shrink)

Epistemic democrats are rightly concerned with the quality of outcomes and judge democratic procedures in terms of their ability to ‘track the truth’. However, their impetus to assess ‘rule by experts’ and ‘rule by the people’ as mutually exclusive has led to a meagre treatment of the role of expert knowledge in democracy. Expertise is often presented as a threat to democracy but is also crucial for enlightened political processes. Contemporary political philosophy has so far paid little attention (...) to our reliance on experts and has not sufficiently addressed the question of how expertise can be used to improve the epistemic quality of democratic decision making. We believe this lack of interest is spurred by a too hasty acceptance of arguments dismissive of the political role of experts. The article examines a series of often-cited epistemic objections and concludes that several of them are overstated or misconceived, yet they all reflect real difficulties that need to be addressed. On this background, we tentatively outline a set of mechanisms that can contribute to alleviating the irreducible problem of epistemic asymmetries and ensuring that experts really are experts and use their expertise in the right way. (shrink)

Taken as a model for how groups should make collective judgments and decisions, the ideal of deliberative democracy is inherently ambiguous. Consider the idealised case where it is agreed on all sides that a certain conclusion should be endorsed if and only if certain premises are admitted. Does deliberative democracy recommend that members of the group debate the premises and then individually vote, in the light of that debate, on whether or not to support the conclusion? Or does (...) it recommend that members individually vote on the premises, and then let their commitment to the conclusion be settled by whether or not the group endorses the required premises? Deliberative-democratic theory has not addressed this issue, and this is a problem. The discursive dilemma of my title--a generalisation of the doctrinal paradox from analytical jurisprudence--shows that the procedures distinguished can come apart. Thus deliberative democrats must make up their minds on where they stand in relation to the issue; they cannot sit on the fence. This paper is an attempt to address the issue and look at the grounds on which it may be resolved. (shrink)

The focus on the institutional implications of democratization in postcolonial plural societies invites the following conclusion. While procedural democracy, the general rules for aggregating preferences, is easily defeated, an alternative formulation, proportional representation or consociational democracy is defended. Consociational democracy has explicable reparable flaws and can be brought into coherence. The tools for repair require the embodiment of deliberative principles in the organs of consociational democracy. I argue in my conclusion that this theoretical argument can (...) be utilized to explicate the ethnic conflict in Burundi. (shrink)

The focus on the institutional implications of democratization in postcolonial plural societies invites the following conclusion. While procedural democracy, the general rules for aggregating preferences, is easily defeated, an alternative formulation, proportional representation or consociational democracy is defended. Consociational democracy has explicable reparable flaws and can be brought into coherence. The tools for repair require the embodiment of deliberative principles in the organs of consociational democracy. I argue in my conclusion that this theoretical argument can (...) be utilized to explicate the ethnic conflict in Burundi. (shrink)

It has been argued that environmental decision-making can be improved be introducing citizen panels. The authors argue that citizen panels and other models of citizen participation should only be used as a consulting forum in exceptional cases at the local level, not as a real decision-making procedure. But many problems in the field of environmental policy need nonlocal, at least regional or national, regulation due to the fact that they are of national impor-tance. The authors argue that there are good (...) reasons not to institutionalise national citizen panels. They advocate the view that more reasonable and more competent solutions can be found by introducing forms of direct democracy. (shrink)

This article shows that judicial review has a democratic justification even though judges may be no better at protecting rights than legislatures. That justification is procedural, not consequentialist: reflecting the ability of judicial review to express and protect citizen’s interests in political participation, political equality, political representation and political accountability. The point of judicial review is to symbolize and give expression to the authority of citizens over their governors, not to reflect the wisdom, trustworthiness or competence of judges and (...) legislators. Above a threshold level of competence – which may be impossible to determine a-priori – the legitimacy of judicial review does not turn on the special wisdom, virtue or personal qualities of judges. Instead, it reflects the importance that democracies properly attach to the ordinary virtues and competences of individuals in justifying power and authority. Hence, this article takes issue with the defence of judicial review in Eisgruber and Brettschneider, as well as with the critiques of judicial review found in Waldron and Bellamy. (shrink)

Abstract Democracy as a political system entailing multi-party competition for power is only one form of democracy. Given that democracy is government by consent, the question is whether a less adversarial system than the party system, which is bound up with majoritarian decision-making, cannot be devised. This paper contends that a system based on consensus as a decision procedure would be a democracy of just such a description. It is important to note that the kind of (...) consensus envisaged here is not agreement regarding questions of truth and morality; it is concerned only with the question of what is to be done. And it is an important fact that reasonable human beings can come to an agreement about what is to be done by virtue of compromise without agreeing on issues of truth or morality. A consensual system will naturally be a non-party arrangement. However, as I explain, such a polity need not be one without parties. (shrink)

This paper analyzes critically the appeal the unpolitical is enjoying among contemporary political philosophers who are democracy's friends. Unlike a radical critique of democracy, what I propose to call "criticism from within," takes the form of dissatisfaction with the erosion of an independent mind and impartial judgment per effect of the partisan character of democratic politics. This paper proposes three main criticisms of the actual trend toward unpolitical views of democracy: the first points to the strategic use (...) of deliberation as an antidote against democratic procedures themselves ; the second to the negative conception of democracy that the unpolitical aspiration makes visible; and the third to the dissolution of political judgment within a model of judgment that is tailored around justice. (shrink)

The majoritarian conception of democracy implies that counter-majoritarian institutions such as federalism—and even representative institutions—are derogations from democracy. The majoritarian conception is mistaken for two reasons. First, it is incoherent: majoritarianism ultimately stands against one of democracy’s core normative commitments—namely, political equality. Second, majoritarianism is premised on a mistaken view of power, which fails to account for the power of numbers and thereby fails to explain the inequality faced by members of persistent minorities. Although strict majority rule (...) serves the democratic values of political agency and equality as interpreted by a set of formal conditions, an adequate conception of power shows why in real-world conditions formal-procedural inequalities, instantiated by counter-majoritarian institutions such as federalism, are sometimes required to serve democratic equality. (shrink)

Is it the case that the law, in order to be fully legitimate, must not only be adopted in a procedurally correct way but must also comply with certain substantive values? In the first part of the article I prepare the ground for the discussion of legitimacy of democratic laws by considering the relationship between law’s legitimacy, its justification and the obligation to obey the law. If legitimacy of law is seen as based on the law being justified (as in (...) Raz’s ‘service conception’), our duty to obey it does not follow automatically: it must be based on some additional arguments. Raz’s conception of legitimate authority does not presuppose, as many critics claim, any unduly deferential attitude towards authorities. Disconnection of the law’s legitimacy from the absolute duty to obey it leads to the second part of the article which consists in a critical scrutiny of the claim that the democratically adopted law is legitimate only insofar as it expresses the right moral values. This claim is shown to be, under one interpretation (‘motivational’), nearly meaningless or, under another interpretation (‘constitutional’), too strong to survive the pressure from moral pluralism. While we cannot hope for a design of ‘pure procedural democracy’ (by analogy to Rawlsian ‘pure procedural justice’), democratic procedures express the values which animate the adoption of a democratic system in the first place. (shrink)

Realizing the ideal of democracy requires political inclusion for citizens. A legitimate democracy must give citizens the opportunity to express their attitudes about the relative attractions of different policies, and access to political mechanisms through which they can be counted and heard. Actual governance often aims not at accurate belief, but at nonepistemic factors like achieving and maintaining institutional stability, creating the feeling of government legitimacy among citizens, or managing access to influence on policy decision-making. I examine the (...) traditional relationship between inclusiveness and accuracy, and illustrate this connection by discussing empirical work on how group decision-making can improve accuracy. I also advance a Generic Epistemic Principle that any evidence-based decision-making procedures must embrace. Focusing on policy-making, I then measure the distance between these standards and the ones actually implemented in U.S. political settings. Psychological research on individual and group decision-making is a source of normative assessment for existing policy judgment, but it neither rationalizes nor legitimates the actual and typical processes used in U.S. institutions of political decision making. To establish this point, I focus on one characteristic government institution—the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology—that displays deliberative processes at odds with the sciences they advocate, and with the Generic Epistemic Principle. I explain this discouraging condition in terms of several inveterate factors in U.S. politics: a limitlessly money-driven and endless campaigning process that effectively forces elected representatives to align themselves with money and vote strategically, the use of procedural arrangements known to make people feel politically included when they are not, and the unresponsiveness of a majoritarian (vs. consensus) democracy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A new ‘political philosophy’ is indispensable to the ‘post-Corona world,’ and this paper tries to analyze the future of ‘liberal democracy’ in it. It shows that ‘liberal democracy’ faces a ‘global crisis’ that has begun before, but the ‘novel Coronavirus pandemic,’ as a setback for it, strongly encourages that crisis. ‘Liberalism’ and ‘democracy,’ which had long been assumed by ‘political philosophers’ to go together, are now becoming decoupled, and the ‘liberal values’ of ‘democracy’ are eroding. (...) To find why and how, this paper analyzes ‘authoritarianism,’ ‘totalitarianism,’ and the evils and propensities of ‘democracy’ that bring about further erosions of ‘liberal values.’ There may be difficult trade-offs to be made between ‘liberal’ and ‘authoritarian’ ‘values’ - and, after the experience of ‘Coronavirus,’ this paper shows the ‘illiberal or authoritarian democracy’ may become stronger. -/- KEYWORDS: democracy, liberalism, liberal democracy, illiberal democracy, the novel Coronavirus pandemic, Covid-19, authoritarianism, totalitarianism. -/- EXTENDED ABSTRACT For almost a century in West, ‘democracy’ has meant ‘liberal democracy’-a political system marked not only by ‘free and fair elections,’ but also by ‘liberal values.’ ‘Liberalism’ applied to the problem of the limits of the criminal law would require commitment to the presumption in favor of ‘liberty.’ If the word ‘liberal’ is to have any utility in this context, it should refer to one who has so powerful a commitment to ‘liberty’ that she is motivated to limit the number of acknowledged liberty-limiting or coercion-legitimizing principles as narrowly as possible. So, she only believes in ‘harm-principle’ as the morally relevant reason for criminal prohibitions. ‘Offense principle’ and ‘paternalistic’ and ‘moralistic’ considerations, when introduced as support for penal legislation, have no weight at all. So, it means ‘autonomy’ and ‘self-regarding vs. other-regarding actions distinction’ based on which the human is the owner of her mind and body and everything consenting adults do is beyond the realm of morality and law. It leads to ‘individual’ ‘basic rights and liberties’ such as ‘basic rights and liberties’ of ‘speech,’ ‘religion,’ and ‘property’ and ‘collective’ ‘basic rights and liberties’ such as ‘basic rights and liberties of assembly,’ ‘civil society,’ ‘political pluralism,’ ‘democratic institutions,’ and ‘non-governmental organizations.’ ‘Liberalism’ also believes in ‘equality of conditions, ‘equal and free participatory rights in political decision making,’ and ‘collective self-governance.’ It also believes in the ‘rule of law,’ a ‘separation of powers,’ and ‘checks and balances.’ However, even under fair and free elections, the elected leaders can be ‘populists,’ ‘ultra-nationalists,’ ‘racists,’ ‘fascists,’ and ‘authoritarians’ who do not respect ‘inviolable basic rights and liberties,’ and suppress ‘minorities.’ Democratically elected leaders can routinely ignore constitutional limits on their power and deprive their citizens of ‘basic rights and liberties.’ The two strands of ‘liberal democracy’ have been coming apart in the world, and the ‘liberal’ elements of ‘democracy’ have been fraying and eroding even before the ‘novel Coronavirus pandemic.’ Even before the Coronavirus hit, there was already much discussion of a crisis of ‘liberal democracy.’ In particular, there has been a debate about whether ‘liberalism’ and ‘democracy,’ which had long been assumed to go together, were becoming decoupled. This paper shows ‘liberal democracy’ faces a ‘global crisis’ that had begun before the ‘novel Coronavirus pandemic.’ It also analyzes ‘authoritarianism,’ ‘totalitarianism,’ ‘liberalism,’ and ‘democracy’ and shows that Covid-19 is a setback for ‘liberal democracy.’ What is striking about the current moment is that many of the ‘liberal’ elements of ‘democracy’ are so far holding up under immense pressure. ‘Illiberal democracies’ seemed to be emerging in many countries. This model of ‘illiberal democracy,’ in which elections continue to be held but some individual rights and liberties are curtailed, may emerge stronger from this new crisis. In that sense, the ‘pandemic’ may become a challenge not only to ‘democracy’ as such but also to ‘liberal democracy’ in particular – in other words, a system of popular sovereignty together with guaranteed basic rights, such as freedom of association and expression and checks and balances on executive power. ‘Authoritarian’ procedures may succeed in mitigating the spread of the ‘Coronavirus,’ but the world now faces another problem: that when the virus recedes, many ‘liberal democracies’ will be far less ‘liberal’ or ‘democratic’ than they were before. In times of crisis, ‘liberal values’ have been ignored temporarily in the name of executive power. However, the ‘temporary’ can become ‘permanent.’ In addition, if citizens lose their faith in the legitimacy of ‘liberal democracy’ as the best form of government, and think ‘liberal democracy’ cannot function effectively during a crisis, and ‘authoritarian regimes’ manage the crisis more decisively, the world will slide towards ‘illiberal or authoritarian democracy,’ and many ‘liberal democracies’ will be at grave risk of failure. There may now be difficult trade-offs to be made between those basic rights and security - and, after the experience of Covid-19, many citizens may choose security. (shrink)

Several distinct epistemic states may be properly characterized as states of ?ignorance.? It is not clear that the ?public ignorance? on which Jeffrey Friedman bases his critique of social democracy is objectionable, because it is not evident which of these epistemic states is at issue. Moreover, few extant theories of democracy defend it on the grounds that it produces good outcomes, rather than because its procedures are just. And even the subcategory of democratic theories that focus on epistemic (...) issues take the state of epistemic justification, not the condition of reaching the truth, to be the touchstone of democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

I argue that Habermas’s proposed system of rights fails to offer an adequate account of the relation between rights and moral injury. In providing a non-moral justification for rights, Habermas’s functional-normative argument excludes the moral intuition that persons are worthy of being protected from a class of injurious actions (i.e. false imprisonment, religious persecution). Habermas does offer clearly stated reasons for his proposed normative, yet non-moral foundation for a legitimate legal order, including the claim that the functional imperatives of modern (...) legal systems cannot be reduced to morality. My positive thesis is that at least some rights are moral norms whose content and justification derive from a moral point of view informed by the idea of persons as free and equal. (shrink)

Suppose a committee or a jury confronts a complex question, the answer to which requires attending to several sub-questions. Two different voting procedures can be used. On one, the committee members vote on each sub-question and the voting results are used as premises for the committee’s conclusion on the main issue. This premise-based procedure can be contrasted with the conclusion-based approach, which requires the members to directly vote on the conclusion, with the vote of each member being guided by her (...) views on the relevant sub-questions. The two procedures are not equivalent: There may be a majority of voters supporting each of the premises, but if these majorities do not significantly overlap, there will be a majority against the conclusion. Pettit (2001) connects the choice between the two procedures with the discussion of deliberative democracy. The problem we want to examine instead concerns the relative advantages and disadvantages of the two procedures from the epistemic point of view. Which of them is better when it comes to tracking truth? As it turns out, the answer is not univocal. On the basis of Condorcet’s jury theorem, the premise-based procedure can be shown to be superior if the objective is reach truth for the right reasons, without making any mistakes on the way. However, if the goal instead is to reach truth for whatever reasons, right or wrong, there will be cases in which using the conclusion-based procedure turns out to be more reliable, even though, for the most part, the premise-based procedure will retain its superiority. (shrink)

The argument of this paper is that the justification of democracy’s core principles of popular control over government in conditions of political equality, and the defense of them against paternalist alternatives, requires appeal to basic features of political decision-making and of human nature, respectively*its capacities and limitations*which are universal in their scope, and do not stop at borders. It follows that if a democratic form of government is appropriate anywhere, it must be so everywhere, though differences of social structure (...) and historical tradition may make it more difficult to establish and sustain in practice in some countries than in others. However, these common features do not entail uniformity. The fundamental freedoms necessary to popular selfgovernment in any form encourage diversity, and allow it to find full expression in the public sphere. Yet, there is a limit to the movements and beliefs that are compatible with democracy, and that comes when they reject one or other of its core principles. At the same time, some of democracy’s characteristic elements*freedoms of expression and association, electoral competition for office, majoritarian procedures*can serve to exacerbate societal conflict, especially though not only in newly democratizing countries. In such circumstances only the establishment of a process of inclusive dialogue, involving respect for difference and an understanding of the requirements of political equality, can serve to resolve such conflicts. In other words, a commitment to democracy’s core principles is needed to moderate the effects of some of its own typical procedures. Keywords: democratic principles; universalist; paternalism; rights; democracy; majoritarianism; minorities (Published: 4 December 2009) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2009, pp. 281–296. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v2i4.2111. (shrink)

Although the root meaning of democracy is simple – ‘rule by the people’ from the fifth‐century bc Greek demokratia – and democracy is almost universally commended in contemporary politics, the ideal of democracy is complex and contested, as are its justifications and practical implications. Democracy is sometimes identified narrowly with majority rule and other times broadly to encompass all that is humanly good, but neither view is adequate to an understanding of democracy as a social (...) ideal. Majoritarian decision making may be a presumptive means of democratic rule, but it cannot be a sufficient democratic standard. Other standards – concerning who rules, by what procedures, over what matters, within what limits, and with what degree of deliberation – have from the beginning been implicated in the ideal of democracy as rule by the people, and continue to be entailed by the public aspirations of democratic and democratizing societies. (shrink)

The chapters in this book deal with different, though related, topics concerning the tense relationship between democracy and diversity. On the one hand, social diversity represents an opportunity, widening the horizon of social options and perspectives of innovation, but, on the other hand, it creates problems for the social cohesion and peaceful coexistence of many groups, be they majority or minority. The chapters depart from the intrinsic connection between democracy and diversity – and the unavoidable challenges that pluralism (...) poses to decision-making procedures – investigating, from different perspectives, how the normative requirement of fully respecting agents’ reflexive agency impacts the revision of democratic decision-making procedures and the way in which institutions react to citizens’ justice-based claims. (shrink)

Constitutional reform has been an important means to push populist authoritarian agendas in Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Venezuela. The embrace of constitutional means and rhetoric in pursuit of these agendas has led to the growing recognition of ‘populist constitutionalism’ as a contemporary political phenomenon. In all four examples mentioned above, democracy, popular sovereignty and direct plebiscitary appeal to the people is the rhetorical and justificatory framework for constitutional reform. This, I worry, gives democracy a bad name and reinforces (...) the widespread suspicion that citizens should not be directly involved in constitutional reform as popular participation can lead to dangerous majoritarianism and is easily manipulated by elite actors seeking to weaken constitutional checks and balances. But the problem, I argue, is not inherent in citizen’s participation in constitutional reform. In contrast to populist constitutionalism, I develop an idea of deliberative constitutionalism in which citizens can participate in constitution-making and reform without hijacking constitutionalism for majoritarian, nationalist or anti-pluralist ends. Deliberative constitutionalism as I understand it has four features: a Habermasian co-originality thesis that articulates the interdependence of democracy and liberalism mediated by a conception of discourse; a proceduralized idea of popular sovereignty that reduces the tension between appeal to the people and respect for pluralism; the centrality of the public sphere over the voting booth as the cradle of democracy; institutional innovations intended to include citizens in constitutional reform but avoid majoritarian and populist pathologies. (shrink)