Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T19:05:12.193Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Democratic Public Justification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2020

Alexander Motchoulski*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

Abstract

Democratic institutions are appealing means of making publicly justified social choices. By allowing participation by all citizens, democracy can accommodate diversity among citizens, and by considering the perspectives of all, via ballots or debate, democratic results can approximate what the balance of reasons favors. I consider whether, and under what conditions, democratic institutions might reliably make publicly justified social decisions. I argue that conventional accounts of democracy, constituted by voting or deliberation, are unlikely to be effective public justification mechanisms. I conclude that the limitations of conventional mechanisms can be ameliorated through the use of lotteries instead of elections.

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Canadian Journal of Philosophy

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.)

References

Anderson, Elizabeth. 2006. “The Epistemology of Democracy.” Episteme 3: 822.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldassarri, Delia, and , Peter Bearman, . 2007. “Dynamics of Political Polarization.” American Sociological Review 72: 748811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldassarri, Delia, and , Andrew Gelman, . 2008. “Partisans without Constraint: Political Polarization and Trends in American Public Opinion.” American Journal of Sociology 114: 408446.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barrett, Jacob, and , Gerald Gaus, . 2020. “Laws, Norms, and Public Justification: The Limit of Law as an Instrument of Reform.” In Public Reason and the Courts, edited by Langvatn, S. A. Sadurski, W., and Kumm, M.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Benhabib, Seyla. 1994. “Deliberative Rationality and Models of Democratic Legitimacy.” Constellations 1: 2552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernhard, Helen, , Ernst Fehr, , and , Urs Fischbacher, . 2006a. “Group Affiliation and Altruistic Norm Enforcement.” The American Economic Review: 217–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernhard, Helen, , Urs Fischbacher, , and , Ernst Fehr, . 2006b. “Parochial Altruism in Humans.” Nature 442: 912–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bicchieri, Cristina. 2016. Norms in the Wild. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bjørnskov, Christian. 2008. “Social Trust and Fractionalization.” European Sociological Review 24: 271–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blais, Andre, , Kenneth Carty, , and , Patrick Fournier, . 2008. “Do Citizens’ Assemblies Make Reasoned Choices?” In Designing Deliberative Democracy: The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly, edited by Warren, M. E. and Pearse, H. 127–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boettcher, James W. 2005. “Against the Asymmetric Convergence Model of Public Justification.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18: 191208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bohman, James. 1997. “Deliberative Democracy and Effective Social Freedom: Capabilities, Resources, and Opportunities.” In Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reasons and Politics, edited by Bohman, J. and Rehg, W. 321–48. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boulianne, Shelley. 2018. “Mini-Publics and Public Opinion: Two Survey-Based Experiments.” Political Studies 66: 119–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, Samuel, and , Herbert Gintis, . 2013. Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and its Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brams, Steven J., and , Peter C. Fishburn, . 1978. “Approval Voting.” American Political Science Review 72: 831–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchanan, James M., and , Gordon Tullock, . 1999. The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund Pres.Google Scholar
Campbell, Richmond, and , Victor Kumar, . 2012. “Moral Reasoning on the Ground.” Ethics 122: 273–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christiano, Thomas. 1997. “The Significance of Public Deliberation.” In Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, edited by Bohman, James and Rehg, William 243–78. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Christiano, Thomas. 2008. The Constitution of Equality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, W. A. V. 1991. “Residential Preferences and Neighborhood Racial Segregation: A Test of the Schelling Segregation Model.” Demography 28: 119.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, Joshua. 1986.“An Epistemic Conception of Democracy.” Ethics 97: 2638.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Joshua. 2003. “Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy.” In Philosophy and Democracy: An Anthology, edited by Christiano, T. 1739. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. 1989. Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1954. The Public and Its Problems. Chicago: Swallow Press.Google Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P., and , Samuel J. Abrams, . 2008.“Political Polarization in the American Public.” Annual Review of Political Science 11: 563–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fishkin, James S. 2011. When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gastil, John, and , Erik Olin Wright, . 2019. Legislature by Lot: Transformative Designs for Deliberative Governance. New York: Verso Books.Google Scholar
Gaus, Gerald. 2011. “A Tale of Two Sets: Public Reason in Equilibrium.” Public Affairs Quarterly 25: 305–25.Google Scholar
Gaus, Gerald. 2012. The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gaus, Gerald. 2016. The Tyranny of the Ideal. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gaus, Gerald, and , Kevin Vallier, . 2009. “The Roles of Religious Conviction in a Publicly Justified Polity.” Philosophy and Social Criticism 35: 5176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gooden, Robert E., and , John S. Dryzek, . 2006. “Deliberative Impacts: The Macro-Political Uptake of Mini-Publics.” Politics & Society, 34: 219–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guerrero, Alexander A. 2014. “Against Elections: The Lottocratic Alternative.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 42: 135–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartley, Christie, and , Lori Watson, . 2009. “Feminism, Religion, and Shared Reasons.” Law and Philosophy 28: 493536.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartley, Christie, and , Lori Watson, . 2018. Equal Citizenship and Public Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, Joseph. 2008. Following the Rule: Practical Reasoning and Deontic Constraint. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hennig, Brett. 2017. The End of Politics: Time for a Real Democracy. London: Unbound Publishing.Google Scholar
Hertel, Guido, and , Norbert L. Kerr, . 2001. “Priming In-Group Favoritism: The Impact of Normative Scripts in the Minimal Group Paradigm.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 37: 316–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Himmelroos, Staffan, and , Henrik Serup Christensen, . 2013. “Deliberation and Opinion Change: Evidence from a Deliberative Mini-Public in Finland.” Scandanavian Political Studies 37: 4160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingham, Sean, and , Ines Levin, . 2018. “Can Deliberative Minipublics Influence Public Opinion? Theory and Experimental Evidence.” Political Research Quarterly 71: 654–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, Daan, and , Wesley Kaufmann, . 2019. “The Right Kind of Participation? The Effect of a Deliberative Mini-Public on the Perceived Legitimacy of Public Decision-Making.” Public Management Review. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/14719037.2019.1668468.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lafont, Cristina. 2015. “Deliberation, Participation, and Democratic Legitimacy: Should Deliberative Mini-Publics Shape Public Policy?The Journal of Political Philosophy 23: 4063.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landemore, Hélène. 2013.“Deliberation, Cognitive Diversity, and Democratic Inclusiveness: An Epistemic Argument for the Random Selection of Representatives.” Synthese 190: 1209–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leydet, Dominique. 2016. “What Conception of Equality Do Deliberative Mini-Publics Promote?European Journal of Political Theory 18: 349–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lister, Andrew. 2011. “Public Justification of What? Coercion vs. Decision as Competing Frames for the Basic Principle of Justificatory Liberalism.” Public Affairs Quarterly 25: 349–67.Google Scholar
Lopez-Guerra, Claudio. 2011. “The Enfranchisement Lottery.” Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 10: 211–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mercier, Hugo, and , Hélène Landemore, . 2012. “Reasoning Is for Arguing: Understanding the Successes and Failures of Deliberation.” Political Psychology 33: 243–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Motchoulski, Alexander. 2020. “The Epistemic Limits of Shared Reasons.” European Journal of Philosophy 28: 164–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neufeld, Blaine. 2019. “Shared Intentions, Public Reason, and Political Autonomy.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49: 776804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niemeyer, Simon. 2011. “The Emancipatory Effect of Deliberation: Empirical Lessons from Mini-Publics.” Politics & Society 39: 103–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quong, Jonathan. 2011. Liberalism without Perfection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rapp, Carolin. 2016Moral Opinion Polarization and the Erosion of Social Trust.” Social Science Research 58: 3445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, John. 2005. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Sarkissian, Hagop, , John Park, , , David Tien, , , Jennifer Cole Wright, , and , Joshua Knobe, . 2011. “Folk Moral Relativism.” Mind & Language 26: 482505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saunders, , , Ben. 2010. “Democracy, Political Equality, and Majority Rule.” Ethics 121: 147–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schelling, Thomas C. 1971. “Dynamic Models of Segregation.” The Journal of Mathematical Sociology 1: 143–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schelling, Thomas C. 1978. Micromotives and Macrobehaviors. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Smith, Graham, and , Maija Setälä, . 2018. “Minipublics and Deliberative Democracy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy, edited by Bächetiger, A. Dryzek, J. S. Mansbridge, J., and Warren, M. E. 301–11. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Spenkuch, Jörg L. 2018. “Expressive vs. Strategic Voting: An Empirical Assessment.” Journal of Public Economics 165: 7381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stasavage, David. 2006. “Polarization and Publicity: Rethinking the Benefits of Deliberative Democracy.” The Journal of Politics 69: 5972.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, Peter. 2009. “The Logic of Random Selection.” Political Theory 37: 375–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunstein, Cass R. 2002. “The Law of Group Polarization.” The Journal of Political Philosophy 10: 175–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vallier, Kevin. 2011. “Convergence and Consensus in Public Reason.” Public Affairs Quarterly 25: 261–80.Google Scholar
Vallier, Kevin. 2009. Must Politics Be War? New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vandamme, Pierre-Etienne. 2017. “Voting Secrecy and the Right to Justification.” Constellations 25: 388405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Reybrouck, , , David. 2016 Against Elections: The Case for Democracy. London: Random House.Google Scholar
Wendt, Fabian. 2018. “Rescuing Public Justification from Public Reason Liberalism.” In Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, edited by Sobel, D. Vallentyne, P., and Wall, S. 123. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar