Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T09:52:44.431Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Social Choice Theory and Deliberative Democracy: A Response to Aldred

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2004

JOHN S. DRYZEK
Affiliation:
Social and Political Theory Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University ([email protected])
CHRISTIAN LIST
Affiliation:
Department of Government, London School of Economics ([email protected])

Extract

Jonathan Aldred shares our desire to promote a reconciliation between social choice theory and deliberative democracy in the interests of a more comprehensive and compelling account of democracy. His comments on some details of our analysis – specifically, our use of Arrow's conditions of universal domain and independence of irrelevant alternatives – give us an opportunity to clarify our position. His discussion of the independence condition in particular identifies some ambiguity in our exposition, and as such is useful. We are less impressed by the way Aldred characterizes the overall terms of the reconciliation we propose. We believe that his argument on this matter should be resisted because it provides deliberative democrats with a bad excuse to dismiss social choice theory altogether, which is surely not what he intends.

Type
Notes and Comments
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)