Democratic Authority

La tesis central de este trabajo es que la tradicional tensión entre substancia y procedimiento socava las estabilidad de la justificación de la concepción liberal más extendida de la legitimidad (la Democracia Deliberativa). Dicha concepciones enfrentan problemas serios a la hora de articular de manera consistente dos dimensiones que parecen ir naturalmente asociadas a la idea de legitimidad: la dimensión procedimental, vinculada a la equidad del procedimiento, y la dimensión epistémica, asociada a la corrección de los resultados. En este trabajo (...) sostengo que a) esa tensión surge de la adopción de una concepción epistemológica social de tipo "veritativo-consecuencialista; b) es posible manejar dicha tensión mediante el remplazo de la epistemología subyacente por una concepción epistemológica social de tipo procedimentalista de orientación pragmatista y c) dicha operación orienta el diseño institucional en una dirección experimentalista. (shrink)

This paper examines two major challenges to epistemic theories of democracy: the “authority dilemma” and the “epistemic gamble.” The first is a conceptual challenge, suggesting that epistemic democracy is inherently self-undermining. The second is a normative challenge, asserting that the case for democracy should not rely on precarious epistemic grounds. I argue that both challenges fail, demonstrating that epistemic theories of democracy withstand these two prominent objections.

Michael Huemer and Daniel Layman’s book is brilliant. It is enjoyable, highly readable, and tightly argued. Their arguments address both theory and practice. I cannot say enough good things about it. Despite its brilliance, Huemer’s and Layman’s arguments fail. Layman’s argument fails because he fails to show that a democratic government is accountable, a government respects the side-constraint feature of rights, or there is a content-independent duty to obey a government’s commands. Huemer’s argument fails because it lacks a plausible foundation. (...) It fits best with a classic libertarian theory, but such a theory lacks foundation. It fits poorly with a consequentialist theory because of the way in which Huemer frames the issue of political authority and because Huemer does not argue that anarcho-capitalism is better than government rule. (shrink)

La théorie démocratique contemporaine entretient une relation ambivalente avec les élections. Alors que les points de vue agrégatifs et minimalistes les considèrent comme une institution centrale de la démocratie représentative , les conceptions plus riches de la démocratie n’ont pas nécessairement de penchant pour elles. Les théories délibératives ont tendance à négliger les élections pour se concentrer sur la délibération publique, c’est-à-dire sur le processus continu de formation de l’opinion et d’échange de raisons qui se produit entre les élections . (...) Les théories participatives ont également tendance à les écarter en faveur d’une vision moins agonistique et plus coopérative de l’action politique . Par conséquent, peu d’attention normative a été accordée dans la littérature récente à ce moment très distinctif de la vie démocratique, à quelques notables exceptions près . Une conséquence naturelle est que la plupart des théoriciens font appel à des expériences délibératives telles que les jurys de citoyens et les mini-publics comme réponse efficace aux préoccupations démocratiques actuelles . Le tirage au sort peut ainsi être présenté comme une alternative préférable à l’élection, car il garantit une représentation descriptive, évite la capture de l’État par des élites puissantes et promet des résultats substantiellement meilleurs. Alors que de nombreux théoriciens s’intéressent aux moyens de compléter les institutions électorales par des organes délibératifs non électoraux , certains chercheurs se débarrasseraient volontiers des élections . Le moment est-il venu de les abandonner ? Cet article se concentre sur une affirmation spécifique que beaucoup de partisans du tirage au sort ont avancée, à savoir que celui-ci serait plus égalitaire que les élections, et vise à la rejeter. D’autres chercheurs ont déjà critiqué le tirage au sort pour diverses raisons. Landa et Pevnick , ainsi qu’Umbers objectent qu’il ne permet pas d’obtenir les améliorations instrumentales du gouvernement promises par ses promoteurs ; Ceva et Ottonelli , ainsi que Lafont nient que les critiques lotocratiques des élections reflètent une compréhension adéquate de l’autorité démocratique en tant que forme d’autonomie collective ; et Umbers soutient également que la lotocratie est en contradiction avec les principes de justice distributive et d’égalité sociale . En complément à ces critiques récentes, nous soutenons que la vision de l’égalité politique qui sous-tend le tirage au sort est problématique et peu convaincante. (shrink)

Distributive justice and political legitimacy are different concepts with different roles. In John Rawls’s justice as fairness, the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society. The primary subject of legitimacy, in contrast, is the exercise of political power. Rawls claims that legitimacy is weaker than justice—a law may be legitimate even though it is unjust. Rawls also claims that a conception of legitimacy would be selected in the original position and that the argument for its adoption "is (...) much the same as, and as strong as, the argument for the principles of justice themselves." But if the parties in the original position have much the same reason to adopt a conception of legitimacy as they have to adopt a conception of justice, why is legitimacy less demanding than justice? If principles of justice and legitimacy are selected in the same way and for the same reasons, their requirements should not diverge. I propose a solution to this conflation problem. I argue that principles of political legitimacy should be selected in a special session of the original position that differs in key respects from the general session in which the two principles of justice as fairness are selected. I also suggest that insofar as the principles of legitimacy selected in this session do allow for some latitude of injustice, as is likely, the demands of legitimacy should take lexical priority over any competing demands of justice. (shrink)

Political leaders engage in alarmism when they inflate threats to the commonweal in order to influence citizens' behavior. A range of democratic theorists argue that alarmism is necessary to maintain political order, with some even contending that alarmism is particularly necessary in democratic polities. Yet there appear to be strong grounds for thinking that alarmism is incompatible with the democratic ethos, namely insofar as it contravenes the principle of collective self-determination. Prima facie, alarmism seems to violate this principle because it (...) involves deception and emotional manipulation, both of which are incompatible with a commitment to autonomous, collective decision-making. However, almost none of the democratic theorists who posit alarmism as a political necessity acknowledge this tension, let alone explore how it might be overcome. In this paper, I rebut the claim that alarmism is essentially anti-democratic and argue that under the right institutional conditions it is broadly compatible with the principle of collective self-determination. I argue that if leaders obtain community consent for their use of alarmism, then the apparent tension with collective autonomy dissolves. In the final section of the paper, I briefly sketch how this consent might feasibly be obtained. (shrink)

According to epistemic ideology critics, a belief or set of beliefs is ideological when it: (a) empowers those responsible for disseminating these beliefs and (b) lacks compelling independent justification. In their view, beliefs satisfying these criteria are defective and ought to be debunked. I contest this claim by showing how, under conditions of political crisis, it is often both epistemically unwarranted and pragmatically inadvisable to debunk seemingly ideological beliefs. I examine the types of beliefs that constitute what are commonly called (...) “emergency frames.” An emergency frame is a system of beliefs concerning the nature of a severe collective threat and the best way to combat that threat. I argue that, due to the uncertainty inherent in many crisis situations, emergency frames often lack independent justification. Because this lack stems from unavoidable epistemic constraints, it should not be seen as a flaw warranting the debunking of any given emergency frame. I begin by outlining the notion of epistemic ideology critique (Section 1). In Section 2, I explore how, when this notion is applied to emergency frames, they often appear ideological and thus seem to warrant debunking. In Section 3, however, I show why it is sometimes epistemically unwarranted and pragmatically inadvisable to debunk such frames. I conclude that, in certain cases, when confronted with ostensibly ideological emergency frames, an attitude of political trust is more suitable than one of radical critique. (shrink)

Review of 'What is Political Philosophy?' by Charles Larmore, Princeton University Press 2020.

I review Alex Guerrero's Lottocracy: Democracy with Elections focusing on its central argument: elections can no longer achieve the things we want from political institutions while lottocracy can. I argue Guerrero book is extremely impressive in its detail and ingenuity in thinking through lottocratic institutions, but is less conclusive in showing that elections are the ultimate culprit of the problems he identifies, which weakens his case that only lottocracy can solve the problems plaguing electoral democracies. Regardless, the book is essential (...) reading for future democratic theory. (shrink)

Defenses of political obligation—the pro tanto obligation to obey the law because the state commands it—often operate at or near the level of ideal theory. Critics, though, increasingly question that approach’s relevance for the imperfect states that exist. This article develops a lesser evil framework to evaluate political obligation with several advantages over more ideal approaches: (1) avoids the questionable assumption that some actual states are reasonably just, (2) recognizes that context matters for political obligation, (3) captures the complicity involved (...) in obeying the state, and (4) identifies a basis—varying intuitions on lesser evil justifications—to distinguish philosophical anarchism from conceptions of political obligation without the former collapsing into the latter. We remain agnostic on whether this framework establishes political obligation to any state but argue that it offers a compelling account of the moral dilemma of obeying the state under nonideal conditions. (shrink)

In this thesis, I reconceptualise contemporary media institutions as constitutional epistemic actors whose governance roles parallel traditional legislative, executive, and judicial state functions. Drawing upon my original theoretical frameworks—Epistemic Clientelism Theory (ECT) and fiduciary epistemology—and canonical scholarship (Foucault, Habermas, Gramsci, Chomsky/Herman), I demonstrate how media entities exercise significant epistemic control, shaping democratic legitimacy, historical narratives, and societal discourse. Through empirical case studies, I illustrate practices of epistemic clientelism and algorithmic gatekeeping, highlighting constitutional concerns such as democratic accountability deficits and epistemic (...) injustice. In response, I propose a robust fiduciary-epistemic accountability framework, outlining fiduciary duties (transparency, epistemic fairness, accountability) and practical institutional mechanisms. Ultimately, I argue that explicit constitutional recognition and fiduciary regulation of epistemic gatekeepers is crucial for democratic governance, epistemic justice, and historical integrity. History is written by those who control epistemic gatekeeping; safeguarding democratic legitimacy thus demands explicit fiduciary governance of epistemic power. (shrink)

According to some theories, a rule counts as a social norm within a community only if the members of the community generally accept the rule. This is a conceptual claim: proponents of these theories do not deny that a rule can structure people’s interactions and relationships even though few people accept it; they simply deny that such a rule should count as a social norm. I argue that this approach draws arbitrary boundaries that cut through explanatorily significant categories with no (...) theoretical payoff. We typically invoke social norms either to explain empirical phenomena (e.g. what people do) or moral phenomena (e.g. what people should do). In both domains, “acceptance theories” of social norms do not define a category of rules that warrants distinctive attention. On an alternative approach, a rule counts as a social norm as long as people cooperate with expressive practices representing the rule as valid, whether they accept the rule or not. I argue that “practice theories” of social norms are more fruitful, and so we should abandon “acceptance theories.”. (shrink)

What electoral system should a democracy choose? I argue for proportional representation (PR). My main empirical premise is Duverger’s law: Under PR there are more viable candidates in district-level elections than there are under single-member plurality (SMP) systems. My main normative premise is that democracy is valuable because it enables ordinary citizens to rule themselves. To enjoy the value of self-rule, citizens must be able to make an autonomous vote choice. Yet, how autonomous any choice is depends on the diversity (...) of one’s adequate options. The fewer adequate options one can choose between, the less autonomous is one’s choice. So PR augments self- rule by increasing the diversity of adequate options citizens have at election time. (shrink)

For those who are not familiar with the terms used and issues discussed by political philosophers, or are familiar but want to go down the philosophical rabbit hole a little further, you can do so by having a look at my recent book—Analytical Fascism: What Stares Back When One Stares into the De-Enlightenment. The book came out at the end of last year, before Trump’s January 20, 2025 inauguration, but I think it fair to say that the underlying moral views (...) that are motivating every move the Trump administration has made so far are described and explained in that book. Of course, I can only mention a few of the many arguments I presented in that book here, but I will begin with one that might be the most philosophically significant: how Trumpism and liberalism as ideologies have such radically different starting positions that committed members of either group have no common moral language with which to talk to one other. (shrink)

Drawing on James Tully’s dialogical reconstruction of political theory as a critical activity, this chapter proposes to take the disconnect between theory and practice as an occasion to loosen the grip of a particular image of disobedience holding both liberals and their critics captive. Liberal political thought approaches civil disobedience as a problem of justification: namely, as a challenge of reconciling conflicting obligations to conscience and obligations to law where injustice causes the two to diverge. Recent criticisms of the liberal (...) paradigm seek to expand the boundaries of justifiable dissent, or propose new grounds of justification, but seldom question the very paradigm of political theory animating the hegemonic liberal approach itself. The project of resolving practical conflicts of democratic politics by handing down authoritative rules and procedures constitutes a “monological approach” to the study of politics. It figures the theorist as an authority standing over and above the problems of demos. Such an approach mystifies the ways political theory’s pronouncements are context bound and often serve as unreflective idealization of the status quo. Through a survey of the diverse ways the language of civil disobedience is used, and conscientious lawbreaking is practiced, this chapter seeks to disclose some of the ways a monological approach to dissent remains complicit in a racialized politics of law and order it often claims to challenge. (shrink)

The boundary problem in normative democratic theory is the problem of who should be entitled to participate in which democratic decision-making. The boundary problem is at the heart of many pressing political issues, including voting rights of resident aliens in their host countries and of expats in their home countries, the legitimacy of border regimes, the justifiability of global democracy, and the democratic representation of future generations. The two most popular answers to the boundary problem are the all-affected interests principle (...) and the all-subjected principle. According to the all-affected interests principle, all (and only) persons whose interests are affected by a democratic decision should be entitled to participate in making that decision. According to the all-subjected principle, all (and only) persons who are subject to a democratic decision should be entitled to participate in making that decision, where being subject is spelled out either in terms of being legally bound or in terms of being exposed to coercion. A well-known challenge for the proposed solutions to the boundary problem is posed by tourists. Tourists seem to be affected in their interests and subject in the relevant sense by democratic decisions in their host countries. But we would not normally consider tourists entitled to participate in the making of such decisions. In this paper, I examine the most natural responses to the challenge of tourists and argue that both the all-affected interests principle and the all-subjected principle are on the horns of a dilemma. The dilemma arises because responses that yield intuitively plausible verdicts about tourists on the other hand commit their advocates to implausible verdicts about dying citizens. (shrink)

As part of recent epistemic challenges to democracy, some have endorsed the implementation of epistemic constraints on voting, institutional mechanisms that bar incompetent voters from participating in public decision-making procedures. This proposal is often considered incompatible with a commitment to political equality. In this paper, I aim to dispute the strength of this latter claim by offering a theoretical justification for epistemic constraints on voting that does not rest on antiegalitarian commitments. Call this the civic accountability justification for epistemic constraints (...) on voting. On this view, voters stand to one another in a normative relation of reciprocal accountability that requires them to uphold an epistemically responsible conduct. Modest epistemic constraints on voting are justifiable because they secure that participation in voting is conforming to this normative requirement. Thanks to its distinctive features, the civic accountability justification can overcome two problems that egalitarians commonly associate with the idea of epistemic constraints on voting: the disrespect problem and the hierarchy problem. (shrink)

This work has two major goals. The first is to reframe the problem of political authority from its Conservative framing to a Reformist framing. This change creates a new benchmark for the success of a theory. Rather than justifying a pre-existing intuition, a theory can be successful if it could establish political authority whenever the state itself or an individual’s relationship to it changes. This change also shifts the focus from the state’s right to rule to moral housekeeping. In other (...) words, the main goal is not to see when the state can use coercion against its citizens but rather to determine what political obligations citizens could have under different scenarios so that citizens can more accurately keep track of their moral reasons for action. The second major goal is to call into question epistemic theories of democratic authority through a critical examination of David Estlund’s theory of normative consent. Normative consent cannot establish political authority. Even granting that it could, normative consent would bind individuals to epistemic procedures rather than democratic procedures given that epistemic procedures better solve the moral problems that generate normative consent. However, this then raises worries from the public reason perspective that epistemic procedures would impose a procedure on some citizens which they could reject from a qualified position. To overcome this worry, it is shown that epistemic procedures based on reducing the power of the ignorant rather than raising the power of the experts are not open to such qualified rejection, and democratic procedures in the real world will do no better than a coin flip at selecting correct policies. In the end, one branch of epistemic conceptions of democratic authority are proven untenable. (shrink)

Cooperative relations steeped in honesty and good faith are a necessity for any viable society. This is especially relevant to the police institution because the police are entrusted to promote justice and security. Despite the necessity of societal honesty and good faith, the police institution has embraced deception, dishonesty, and bad faith as tools of the trade for providing security. In fact, it seems that providing security is impossible without using deception and dishonesty during interrogations, undercover operations, pretextual detentions, and (...) other common scenarios. This presents a paradox related to the erosion of public faith in the police institution and the weakening of the police's legitimacy. -/- The book seeks to solve this puzzle by showing that many of our assumptions about policing and security are unjustified. Specifically, they are unjustified in the way many of our assumptions about security were unjustified after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when state institutions embraced a variety of brutal rules and tactics in pursuit of perceived security enhancements. The police are likewise unjustified in their pursuit of many supposed security enhancements that rely on proactive deception, dishonesty, and bad faith. -/- There are compelling reasons to think that the police's widespread use of proactive deception and dishonesty is inconsistent with fundamental norms of political morality regarding fraud and the rule of law. Although there are times and places for such tactics in policing, those times and places should be much more limited than current practices suggest. (shrink)

Liberal democracies of the twenty-first century face the continuing economic tensions of globalization and the various populist political responses. In A Political Theology of the Bureaucratic State, Steven T. Lane argues that a deeper problem exists underneath the neoliberal system of contemporary democratic capitalism—the bureaucratic state and the ways it deploys its sovereignty. Yet these problems have received little attention from Christian political thinkers in the fields of ethics or political theology. By bringing thinkers from across the academic disciplines, from (...) political philosophy and economics to biblical interpretation and public policy, and using modern case-studies related to public health and welfare state, Lane address the foundational issues affecting liberal democracies and the claims to power they make against their citizens. (shrink)

Increasingly secret, complex, and inscrutable computational systems are being used to intensify existing power relations and to create new ones; in particular, they are being used to govern. To be all-things-considered morally permissible new, or newly intense, power relations must meet standards of procedural legitimacy and proper authority. This is necessary for them to protect and realise democratic values of individual liberty, relational equality, and collective self-determination. For governing power in particular to be legitimate and have proper authority, it must (...) meet a publicity requirement: reasonably competent members of the governed community must be able to determine that they are being governed legitimately and with proper authority. The publicity requirement can be satisfied only if the powerful can explain their decision-making to members of their political community. At least some duties of explanation are therefore democratic duties. This chapter first sets out the foregoing argument, then applies it to opaque computational systems, and clarifies precisely what kinds of explanations are necessary to fulfil these democratic values. (shrink)

There are two bodies of literature, one offering theories of the legitimacy of domestic institutions like states, another offering theories of the legitimacy of international institutions like the IMF. Accounts of domestic legitimacy stress the importance of democratic procedure, while few to no theorists make democracy a necessary condition for the legitimacy of international institutions. In this paper, I ask whether this asymmetry can be defended. Is there a unified higher-order theory which can explain why legitimacy requires democracy in the (...) domestic context, but not in the international context? I argue that no proceduralist higher-order theory succeeds, and that we need to look for other solutions. (shrink)

L’une des fonctions des institutions publiques des démocraties libérales est de formuler des recommandations à l’attention des décideurs. Or, les institutions publiques savent que leurs recommandations seront souvent ignorées en partie par le décideur. Cette situation de « conformité partielle » aux recommandations soulève plusieurs problèmes de nature philosophique pour les institutions. En nous appuyant sur une analyse de 570 recommandations tirées de 40 documents et rapports du secteur public québécois, nous identifions deux enjeux entourant la structure des recommandations issues (...) du secteur public. (shrink)

One of the key responsibilities of public institutions in liberal democracies is to formulate recommendations for decision makers. However, public institutions realize that decision makers will often partly ignore their recommendations. This situation of “partial compliance” with recommendations raises a number of philosophical issues for institutions. Based on an analysis of 570 recommendations drawn from 40 Quebec public-sector documents and reports, we identify two issues surrounding the structure of public-policy recommendations.

In this paper I investigate Dewey's view of how institutions might use fine art to contribute to democracy. I first show that Dewey’s pragmatic conception of democracy is a collaborative problem-solving effort to enhance human experience. I then establish two Deweyan criteria of what I call an “institution of democratic art”. The first involves the curation of artworks with a democratic message, and the second involves the democratic process by which the institution selects those works. I then explain Dewey’s pragmatic (...) conception of aesthetics, where art emerges as a solution to social needs and problems, and, contrary to what traditional museums do, how art should not be isolated from its original social context. I then analyze the success of two examples Dewey gives of institutions of democratic art: the Barnes Foundation and The Section of Fine Arts. I argue that they both succeeded with their art’s democratic content, although their art selection process could have been more democratic. Finally, I show how a Deweyan notion of an institution of democratic art is relevant to recent discussions of controversial public art. (shrink)

We are facing a crisis of trust in expertise today. Fewer and fewer people trust experts, and more and more politicians openly ignore expert consensus. 'Democracy in the Post-Truth Era' asks what might happen to democracy if we reject the fundamental liberal assumption that people are capable of making informed choices. The book explores the potential impact on society if people, including politicians, never appreciate the relevance of expert opinions. What if people cannot choose between supporters and opponents of key (...) issues such as the causes of climate change, effectiveness of vaccines and ways of combating economic and social crises? Applying social epistemology to these questions, the book considers whether democracy can be defended in the post-truth era. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag möchte ich Argumente für zwei Thesen vorbringen. Erstens möchte ich darlegen, dass der Ausschluss vom Wahlrecht durch eine Altersgrenze rechtfertigungsbedürftig ist. Zweitens werde ich argumentieren, dass es keine hinreichende Rechtfertigung für diesen Ausschluss gibt. Wenn beide Behauptungen richtig sind, dann folgt, dass wir die Altersgrenze beim Wahlrecht abschaffen sollten. Meiner Auffassung nach reicht es also nicht, dass wir das Wahlalter von 18 auf ein geringeres Alter wie 16 oder 14 herabsetzen, wie häufig gefordert wird. Vielmehr sollte jeder (...) Mensch unabhängig von seinem Alter die Möglichkeit bekommen, sich selbstständig als Erstwähler zu registrieren und dann auch wählen zu gehen. (shrink)

This article addresses the exclusivism–inclusivism debate about religious reasons in law within a justificatory liberal framework. The question of whether religious reasons have justificatory capacity for attaining public justification has increasingly been seen as a matter of how public justification is understood between two rival models: the consensus model being aligned with exclusivism, the convergence model with inclusivism. More recently, however, that alignment has been challenged with attempts to show that consensus can reach an equivalent degree of inclusivism as convergence. (...) Against this, I contend that the purported equivalence is misplaced. First, I identify a crucial ambiguity about public justification and two corresponding domains. Upon demonstrating these to be mutually independent and severable, I conclude that the moves to equalize the models are confined within the more narrow domain while, in the more fundamental domain, the choice of model continues to prove determinative as to the exclusivist or inclusivist valence of justificatory liberalism. (shrink)

In this chapter I develop my own proposal for a workable form of political liberalism that can be intuitively referred to as relational liberalism and that I describe, a little provocatively, as laying out a path ‘beyond Rawls’. My goal is to argue that relational liberalism is compelled to establish procedures of decision-making that try to include every member of the constituency, whether they are reasonable or not. In order to show the distance between my proposal and the Rawlsian paradigm, (...) in this chapter I begin by illustrating what I believe is the most coherent and reliable defense of Rawls’s justificatory paradigm, the one provided by Jonathan Quong in Liberalism without Perfection (2011). The justificatory strategy that I support relies upon the alternative view of the overlapping consensus defended by Quong and focuses on the possibility that real-world citizens might converge on the validity of a loose normative framework of evaluative standards and liberal organizing ideas extrapolated from ongoing democratic practices. Thus, I shall argue that the nonideal phase has two goals: (i). putting in place justificatory processes to legitimate political decisions to the widest possible constituency of real citizens (criterion of liberal inclusivity); (ii). trying to establish a workable (for the specific political community of reference) public justification of a specific interpretation of the normative intuitions, standards and ideals that constitute the loose background framework of political liberalism (criterium of shared standards). (shrink)

This chapter introduces the Rawlsian paradigm of political legitimacy and pays special attention to the strictly political version of liberalism that Rawls defends in Political Liberalism. My goal is to highlight the ambiguities of his model and to propose a justificatory strategy for a strictly political conception of liberalism that reaches beyond the path envisaged by Rawls himself. My strategy revolves around the attempt to properly spell out the implicit epistemic assumptions of the Rawlsian justificatory approach. I argue, pace Rawls, (...) that political liberalism cannot be robust vis-à-vis different theories of justification, because it is required that, as theorists, we take a stance regarding the epistemological framework we employ while developing a specific theory of political legitimacy. My proposal is that a modest approach in political epistemology expresses the best scheme available to us − as moral agents constrained by the limits of our rationality − for establishing a normatively binding, and yet realistic, procedure of justification for political institutions and practices. (shrink)

My goal in this chapter consists in testing the applicability of my general paradigm against a case study: the political and legal conflict over the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples. This case constitutes a paradigmatic example of a public conflict arising around the attempt to revise the public interpretation of a normative concept, when a stable and shared agreement over such a concept has been historically and contextually established and has been taken for granted for a very long (...) time – at least by members of dominant groups. The battle over marriage equality involves a public debate over the opportunity of proceeding with a re-conceptualization of the legal concept of marriage to make this practice more inclusive. There are two normative perspectives that are relevant for dealing with this case study. First, it is important to illustrate the power dynamics at play for determining control of the symbolic characterization of the public space, specifically underscoring that this political struggle for the extension of a particular right implies, more extensively, fighting for full citizenship, to wit, equal visibility and equal membership within the public space. Second, it is fundamental to analyze the literature concerning legal litigation around this case and to investigate the adjudication function that the judicial system can at times successfully play. Finally, I shall illustrate the Italian case concerning the institution of civil unions for same-sex couples. Specifically, I will evaluate whether such a political compromise can be considered an acceptable second-best solution and if so, why. (shrink)

This book investigates the unresolved issue of democratic legitimacy in contexts of pervasive disagreement and contributes to this debate by defending a relational version of political liberalism that rests on the ideal of co-authorship. According to this proposal, democratic legitimacy depends upon establishing appropriate interactions among citizens who ought to ascribe to one another the status of putative practical and epistemic authorities. To support this relational reading of political liberalism, the book proposes a revised account of the civic virtue of (...) reasonableness along with an investigation of the epistemic-specific dimension of political equality. By engaging with political epistemology and social theory, this book explores ways to address inherent tensions within the liberal paradigm, using the following strategies of addressing these tensions: first, it defends a twofold model of legitimacy that distinguishes the goals, methodologies, and justificatory tasks of both ideal and nonideal phases of the two-level justificatory framework; second, it contends that democratic legitimacy requires an engaged and contextual critical appraisal of the injustices that characterize our daily social lives, illustrating how structural forms of injustice represent a profound betrayal of the liberal ideal of democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

The analysis I develop in this chapter aims at illustrating in a technical sense the epistemic nonideal circumstances that characterize our social life as agents embedded in intersubjective settings. I defend a version of political liberalism that is willing to clarify its epistemic tenets, instead of supporting the Rawlsian strategy of epistemic abstinence. My goal is to show that there is something important to say, epistemically, about what the fact of entrenched disagreement normatively entails for agents involved in intersubjective deliberation. (...) The heart of this proposal is that given certain epistemic circumstances (i.e. the doxastic presupposition; a fallibilist clause; pervasive disagreement due to an opaque appraisal of evidence; our limited epistemic capacities), agents have good reasons for respecting a symmetric credibility constraint. Therefore, when sincerely engaged in a decision-making process, they must attribute some (even minimal) epistemic credibility to other parties’ perspectives. Finally, I connect this debate with an illustration of reasonableness as a virtue of liberal citizenship and claim that the epistemic dimension of this virtue has not been adequately investigated. I conclude that reasonable citizens, in accepting the limits of their epistemic abilities, should be ready to share political and epistemic authority with their fellow citizens. According to my paradigm, this characterization of democratic political agency is grounded in the analysis of the epistemic circumstances of politics and rests on the normative ideal of democratic co-authorship. (shrink)

The main goal of this chapter is investigating the role that public reason can play within the justificatory paradigm that I defend in this work. Public reason is the notion, within the Rawlsian paradigm, that connects the justificatory enterprise with the less defined and always changing deliberative aspects of political decision-making processes. The practice of public reason requires that citizens, when discussing political matters, respect the constraints imposed by the loose normative framework of deliberation and by the ideal of equal (...) respect and, therefore, do not address other citizens with reasons that they know are inadmissible for the other party. Along these lines there are two main topics I want to address in this chapter: i. investigating whether the deliberative constraints imposed by the idea of public reason are in fact compatible with the liberal ideal of inclusivity; ii. clarify if and in what way the requirement of public reason can be satisfied in order to guarantee the legitimacy of coercive acts. To address these topics, in this chapter I first introduce Rawls’s analysis of public reason reinterpreting this debate along the lines of the epistemic framework that I have been outlining in this book. Then, in part 2, I introduce Steven Wall’s illustration of why the public justification principle cannot satisfy the reflexivity requirement, namely, that a theory of public justification should itself be publicly justified. Finally, in part 3, I discuss Gerald Gaus’s proposal for a justificatory version of liberalism. (shrink)

In writing this book, I had two fundamental purposes: (i) to propose a revised account of liberal legitimacy within a general paradigm of relational liberalism and (ii) to adequately clarify the different goals, methodologies and justificatory tasks that characterize the ideal and nonideal phases of a justificatory paradigm for democratic decisions. In this work I started my analysis from the assumption that these two purposes are strictly related, and my goal was to underscore that the ambitious justificatory project of liberalism (...) faces internal tensions and to propose a way out of these tensions. In order to solve these difficulties of the traditional accounts of liberal legitimacy, I have proposed a justificatory framework aimed at guiding actual decision-making processes and avoiding indeterminacy (guidance), defining standards that everyone has equal opportunity to fulfill (inclusion), and granting that citizens exercise their reflexive control over the whole democratic system (reflexivity). As I argue in this work, this framework relies on a dual justificatory strategy that involves both ideal and nonideal analyses. (shrink)

In this chapter I focus on an analysis of ordinary practices for overcoming disagreement in nonidealized political settings. My goal is to show that compromises are the most common outcomes of public procedures of adjudication among disagreeing parties over political matters, rather than consensus-based decisions. If my analysis of the actual epistemic circumstances of democracy is convincing, it follows that wide-spread consensus over political decisions is an unrealistic goal for democratic settings in a pluralistic world. Against this backdrop, my analysis (...) will show that certain forms of political compromises do however rely upon normative commitments, even though in a less straightforward way than it is usually imagined for consensus-based political decisions. The normative dimension of compromise agreements rests on the quality of the intersubjective exchange; it is a matter of relational justice, since it demands that the parties involved reciprocally respect one another. Realistically, each party tries to get as much as it can from the negotiation. Yet, we can distinguish between a principled, mutually respectful way, to negotiate with others and a dynamic in which power relations and manipulative attempts are everything that counts. Since, however, it appears quite obvious that power dynamics can deeply affect compromise, in the last section of the chapter I introduce some cautionary remarks on the possibility that principled compromises can warrant an adequate response to structurally entrenched asymmetries of power and to stark differences in public visibility for members of different social groups. (shrink)

In this introductory chapter I lay out the general outline of the book. I introduce the traditional notion of liberal legitimacy and observe that traditional approaches of liberal legitimacy tend to fall into a justificatory dilemma. Liberal theories ought to find a balance between two fundamental desiderata: (i) providing normative arguments in support of the legitimacy of a specific political conception; (ii) guaranteeing actual endorsement to political principles and social norms by real-world individuals. I illustrate that these two goals often (...) are in tension with one another, especially in highly conflictual contexts as contemporary multicultural societies. In the chapter I suggest that the only winning strategy to satisfy both desiderata, while being loyal to the overall liberal project, is to clearly establish that these desiderata can be satisfied, though not simultaneously, by implementing different justificatory strategies. According to this twofold model of legitimacy I shall defend in this work, a normative approach of justification for democratic decisions cannot rely solely on standards that are drawn from an idealized analysis, because there is another essential goal, that is, developing a theory that proves also politically efficacious, that cannot be satisfied with the same strategy. This means that a liberal account of legitimate political authority should look for establishing political procedures of decision-making, deliberative settings, ex-post forms of contestation, checks and balances rules that are both normatively justifiable and also efficacious enough to overcome indeterminacy and to be stably supported by the majority of the members of the polity. (shrink)

Polarization often happens asymmetrically. One political actor radicalizes, and the results reverberate through the political system. This is how the deep divisions in contemporary American politics arose: the Republican Party radicalized. Republican officeholders began to use extreme legislative tactics. Republican voters became animated by contempt for their political rivals and by the defense of their own social superiority. The party as a whole launched a wide-ranging campaign of voter suppression and its members endorsed violence in the face of electoral defeat. (...) This paper is about how such asymmetric polarization affects everyone else’s obligations. My core claim is that two kinds of relationship – civic friendship and non-subordination – underpin critical democratic norms. Republican misbehavior has severed cross-partisan civic friendships. Their authoritarianism forfeits their claim to non-subordination. The former means that non-Republicans need not justify policy on public grounds. The latter undercuts Republicans’ claim to enjoy minority vetoes when out of power and it gives their rivals reason to disobey the laws that Republicans make when they are in power. More generally, when one political actor contravenes the proper norms of democratic politics, their opposition is not bound by those norms. (shrink)

In order for democratic deliberative interactions in educational settings to fruitfully occur, certain favorable conditions must obtain. In this chapter I chiefly concern myself with one of these putative conditions, namely that of school integration, believed by many liberal scholars to be necessary for consensus-building and legitimate decision-making. I provide a critical assessment of the belief that integration is a necessary facilitative condition for democratic deliberation in the classroom. I demonstrate that liberal versions of democratic deliberation predicated on this condition (...) are puzzlingly inattentive both to the inevitability of segregation, as well as the inequities occasioned by ‘school integration’. I then move to probe the possibilities for democratic education in the absence of integration. I argue that neither the possibilities for deliberation nor the cultivation of civic virtue turn on an environment being ‘integrated’. Indeed some kinds of segregation may be more conducive to fostering both deliberation and civic virtue. (shrink)

This paper analyzes how Jacques Maritain anticipated much of the questions that can be raised concerning the Church’s active participation today in matters that many have supposed to pertain only to politics: To what extent is the Church’s involvement in political life permissible in light of its perceived duty to translate its apostolic and spiritual values into social actions? What boundaries does the Church recognize regarding a proper delineation between the spiritual and temporal spheres towards the linking of which Catholic (...) Action is said to be directed? To what limits can the Church exercise its auctoritas within a personalist democracy that emphasizes the common good as its chief aim for the human community? Insights in response to these will show that far from ‘meddling’ with or ‘disrupting’ the political order, the Church’s approaches are sensible and just within a democracy that Philippine politics embraces. (shrink)

Does the democratic provenance of the law ground a pro tanto duty to obey the law? According to the social-egalitarian argument, it does, because individuals have a pro tanto duty to uphold relations of social equality, and because, by obeying a democratically made law, they uphold relations of social equality. In this paper, I argue, however, that even if we grant the premisses of the argument, the conclusion still does not follow.

Many commentators lament that American democracy is in crisis. It is becoming a system of minority rule, wherein a party with a minority of the nationwide vote can control the national government. Partisan gerrymandering in the House of Representatives fuels this crisis, as does the equal representation of small and large states in the Senate. But altering these features of the legislature would not end minority rule. Indeed, it has long been held that majority rule cannot be guaranteed within any (...) district system, as a minority of voters nationwide can be efficiently distributed such that a minority party wins a majority of districts by narrow margins. -/- This Article offers a way to save majority rule. Since the way a party can gain control of the legislature with a minority of the vote is to win a majority of districts by narrow margins of victory and lose a minority of districts by large margins of victory, the solution is to make margins matter. Hence, this Article proposes that we preserve electoral districts in which the candidate with the most votes wins, while making the weight of their vote in the legislature (a representative’s “legislative power”) a function of margins of victory. The first goal of this Article is to outline how this proposal, which I call “weighted voting by margin of victory” (WVMV), retains the democratic virtues of district systems while ending minority rule. This is the first basis for the democratic imperative to make margins matter. -/- There is, however, a second basis for that same imperative, which turns on the political equality of voters. The U.S. Supreme Court has long held that the democratic equality should be understood in terms of equal voting power (one person, one vote). But when margins of victory don’t matter, the power of a vote lies exclusively in its potential decisiveness. A vote that changes the margin of victory without changing the victor is “wasted”. But it is an electoral reality that votes in competitive districts are more likely to be decisive, and votes in uncompetitive districts are more likely to be wasted; as a result, candidates and parties are more responsive to some voters than others. So voters are not political equals. They do not have equal voting power, except in an empty formalistic sense. By contrast, WVMV gives votes a second type of power. The power of a vote is to potentially decide who wins and to actually change the legislative power of the victor. Each vote, in effect, transfers a unit of political power to a democratic representative. This “transference” power can be meaningfully equalized between voters. A voter in an uncompetitive district is far less likely to change who wins, but is equally able to change the margin of victory, such that their vote is no longer wasted. This gives candidates and parties a strong reason to be more equally responsive to all voters who can change the margins. Hence, there is a democratic imperative to make margins matter, in order to give voters a meaningfully equal form of voting power. -/- The final goal of this Article is to explain how we can implement WMVM in modern democracies, focusing on three particularly challenging cases: the U.S. Senate, the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and the U.S. House of Representatives. These cases are challenging for several reasons, the most pertinent of which turn on the ways we should understand margins of victory when electorates are of unequal sizes (as in the U.S. Senate) or are contested by more than two parties (as in the U.K.) or are conducted under different voting procedures (as in many districts in the U.S. House). I argue that WVMV should be considered feasible in such contexts, and hence offers a practical, rather than purely theoretical, alternative to the status quo. (shrink)

At the opening of Dune, we find humanity in a political mess, having reverted to a “feudal trade culture” with a hereditary emperor. By Heretics of Dune, the Bene Gesserit are directly ruling in the remnants of the old empire. Self‐discipline is the cornerstone of Bene Gesserit training. They distinguish two types of people: “humans” and “animals.” Considering the best role for the Bene Gesserit in the Dune universe should help to decide what to say about the real world. Over (...) the centuries, many thinkers have wanted to see power concentrated in the hands of a guardian class of political experts, something like the Bene Gesserit. In Western philosophy, this tradition begins with Plato. Plato is right that democracy is rule by the unqualified, but the corruption of guardian classes has been so harmful that keeping power with the unqualified masses is a better bet, in general, than concentrating it in the most capable hands. (shrink)

According to the democratic borders argument, the democratic legitimacy of a state's regime of border control requires granting foreigners a right to participate in the procedures determining it. This argument appeals to the All-Subjected Principle, which implies that democratic legitimacy requires that all those subject to political power have a right to participate in determining the laws governing its exercise. The scope objection claims that this argument presupposes an implausible account of subjection and hence of the All-Subjected Principle, which absurdly (...) implies that all domestic laws subject foreigners to their requirements. I argue that this objection misconstrues the logical structure of the legal requirements enshrined in domestic laws: domestic laws typically enshrine narrow-scope, not wide-scope, legal requirements. To be sure, some state laws do subject foreigners to their requirements, and the All-Subjected Principle conditions democratic legitimacy on granting foreigners some say in determining them. But the best reading of the Principle does not have such general expansionary implications. (shrink)

The first part of this book contains a selection of Leszek Nowak’s (1943-2009) works on non-Marxian historical materialism, which are published here in English for the first time. In these papers, Nowak constructs a dynamic model of religious community, reconstructs historiosophical assumptions of liberalism and considers the methodological status of prognosis of totalitarization of capitalist society. In the second part of the book, new contributions to non-Marxian historical materialism are presented. Their authors analyze mechanisms of the oligarchization of liberal democracy, (...) the democratization of real socialism, and the development of early modern Ottoman and post-war Chinese societies. The volume will be of interest to graduate and undergraduate students, as well as specialists who deal with the development of capitalist society, philosophy of history, the philosophy of social sciences and the political philosophy of liberalism. (shrink)

This book explores the implications of agonistic democratic theory for political practice. Fuat Gürsözlü argues that at a time when political parties exacerbate political division, political protesters are characterized as looters and terrorists, and extreme partisanship and authoritarian tendencies are on the rise, the agonistic approach offers a much-needed rethinking of political practice to critically understand challenges to democracy and envision more democratic, inclusive, and peaceful alternatives. Inspired by Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic theory and drawing on insights of other prominent agonistic (...) scholars, Gürsözlü offers a distinctive approach that develops the connections between the agonistic approach and political practice. His main claim is that approaching democratic politics from an agonistic perspective changes the way we understand the nature of democratic society, the place of political protest in democracy, the nature of adversarial engagement, and the democratic function of political parties. The book also advances an account of agonistic peace that is best fitted to the pluralistic and inherently conflictual nature of democratic societies. This book should be of interest to anyone working in the field of contemporary political theory, political philosophy, peace studies, and philosophy of peace. (shrink)

The Catholic Church never officially endorses political candidates but rather respects the freedom of its faithful to vote according to the dictates of their conscience. However, in the last presidential elections, some Catholic bishops and priests in the Philippines publicly and openly supported the presidential candidacy of Vice President Leni Robredo while urging the rest of the faithful to do the same. These bishops and priests anchored their position on their shared belief that voting for Robredo was the only rightful (...) and moral option because of her clean track record, non-involvement in any act of corruption, and principled approach in governance. In contrast, her political archnemesis Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. had long been embroiled in several allegations of corruption, non-payment of taxes, and fakery of educational attainments. Hence, for these bishops and priests, voting for Marcos Jr. was both wrong and immoral. And yet, the election results hit them with a big “slap in the face,” as more than 31 million Filipinos (majority of whom are Catholics) cast their votes for Marcos Jr., while only 15 million voted for Robredo. This outcome, no doubt, raises the question: Why did the repeated calls of these bishops and priests go unheeded? In this paper, I will attempt to answer this question by subjecting the political moralism of these Catholic leaders to some objective postmodern evaluation. To do this, I will employ the postmodern thoughts of Nietzsche, Lyotard, and Rorty as a lens to examine why many Filipino Catholics today no longer buy the political moralism of their religious leaders. (shrink)

Political actions by Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, and other climate activists often involve violations of legal regulations – such as compulsory education requirements or traffic laws – and have been criticized for this in the public sphere. In this essay, I defend the view that these violations of the law constitute a form of morally justified civil disobedience against climate policies. I first show that these actions satisfy the criteria of civil disobedience even on relatively strict conceptions of civil (...) disobedience. I then argue that they meet plausible justification conditions for civil disobedience because they are directed against serious and clear injustices, which legal means of influence have failed to remedy for decades. Finally, I reject the objection that civil disobedience against climate policy violates basic democratic principles because it claims authority to override democratically enacted agreements. When addressed to Fridays for Future activists, the objection misfires for the reason alone that these activists are largely minors that are excluded from democratic participation. Moreover, disobedience even by adult activists is justified by the existence of serious democratic deficits in our climate policies, especially since it can help to correct them. Such deficits include the lack of representation of the interests of people affected by climate change in the future and globally. (shrink)

This book advances a novel justification for the idea of "public reason": citizens within diverse societies can realize the ideal of shared political autonomy, despite their adherence to different religious and philosophical views, by deciding fundamental political questions with "public reasons." Public reasons draw upon or are derived from ecumenical political ideas, such as toleration and equal citizenship, and mutually acceptable forms of reasoning, like those of the sciences. This book explains that if citizens share equal political autonomy—and thereby constitute (...) "a civic people"—they will not suffer from alienation or domination and can enjoy relations of civic friendship. Moreover, it contends that the ideal of shared political autonomy cannot be realized by alternative accounts of public justification that eschew any necessary role for public reasons. In addition to explaining how the ideal of political autonomy justifies the idea of public reason, this book presents a new analysis of the relation between public reason and "ideal theory": by engaging in "public reasoning," citizens help create a just society that can secure the free compliance of all. It also explores the distinctive policy implications of the ideal of political autonomy for gender equality, families, children, and education. (shrink)

Scientists are frequently called upon to “democratize” science, by bringing the public into scientific research. One appealing point for public involvement concerns the nonepistemic values involved in science. Suppose, though, a scientist invites the public to participate in making such value-laden determinations but finds that the public holds values the scientist considers morally unacceptable. Does the argument for democratizing science commit the scientist to accepting the public’s objectionable values, or may she veto them? I argue that there are a limited (...) set of cases in which scientists can, consistently with a commitment to democratized science, set aside the public’s judgments. (shrink)