Democratic Authority

This paper offers a Telic (Resolution Theory) account of democratic legitimacy grounded in three minimum ethical constraints for governance: preserving a system’s capacity to resolve under exposure over time, tracking exposure truthfully, and accounting for shared dependence. Democracy is defended not as a moral slogan but as a governance technology that distributes participatory authorship among the living, enables peaceful correction through reversibility, and supports plural truth-tracking through institutional contest. Yet modern democracies exhibit predictable structural weaknesses: short-horizon liquidation of future capacity, (...) degradation of the epistemic commons, and commons free-riding enabled by diffused responsibility and authorship laundering across process and time-lag. To repair these failures without abandoning democratic sovereignty, the paper proposes a “Telic democracy” architecture: temporally differentiated democracy with a Long-View Council to surface intergenerational exposure, an override rule that preserves sovereignty while killing anonymity through named sponsorship, a Resolution Flight Recorder that records assumptions and maintains ongoing scrutiny, and a responsibility regime with capture defences designed to deter authorship laundering under warning. The aim is not utopia but an institutional upgrade that binds democratic power to stewardship, truth-tracking, and accountable authorship across time. (shrink)

This paper introduces TGC v2, a deterministic governance protocol that formalizes trust as a machine-verifiable object and models collective decision-making through structured, localized democratic processes. Unlike blockchain systems that treat trust as something to be eliminated (“trustless” computation), TGC conceptualizes trust as a relational and responsibility-bearing structure. The protocol encodes trust into discrete Trust Objects—formal entities with signature, weight, scope, and expiry—thereby transforming trust from a sociological intuition into an ontologically explicit and computationally actionable component. -/- The TGC framework is (...) built on a Root–Sub delegation graph in which all governance occurs strictly at Depth-1, reflecting the philosophical insight that legitimate authority emerges from immediate relational constituencies rather than abstract global majorities. Consensus is resolved through a 51% rule among direct dependents, with abstentions automatically recognized through time-bounded voting windows to guarantee liveness. Structural transitions—joining, merging, detaching—are governed not by coercion but by localized democratic authority and responsibility symmetry. This produces a novel form of computational legitimacy where power and responsibility are structurally inseparable. -/- TGC v2 contributes to political philosophy, social ontology, governance theory, and the philosophy of information by offering the first formal model in which trust, responsibility, and authority are expressed as deterministic state transitions rather than sociological metaphors. It provides a conceptual and computational alternative to traditional blockchain consensus, Liquid Democracy, and DPoS models, none of which capture the structural interplay of relational trust and democratic responsibility embodied in TGC. -/- Finally, the paper outlines how this deterministic trust layer becomes the foundation for TGC v3, a human–AI hybrid governance architecture. In v3, machine-verifiable trust structures (from v2) integrate with human oversight, ethical constraints, and meta-level rule formation. This connection demonstrates how objectified trust can bridge the gap between human governance and algorithmic authority, enabling autonomous systems that remain aligned with democratic principles. -/- Thus, TGC v2 is both a standalone theoretical contribution and the necessary substrate for next-generation AI-integrated governance systems. (shrink)

In this chapter we discuss the difference between tyranny of the majority and tyranny of the minority. A first step to preventing either is to redesign existing political institutions. We therefore examine each of the major components of the U.S government, summarizing their functions, problems, and making suggested reforms. We then do the same for parliamentary systems of the sort found in Europe and elsewhere. Following this we look at alternate forms of democracy. These are more experimental systems that have (...) yet to be adopted at a national level. They include methodologies that foster forms of deliberative democracy, liquid delegation systems, quadratic voting, citizen assemblies, and prediction markets. Education is critical to an informed electorate, but educational institutions have yet to do an effective job in countering nefarious politicians and disinformation on social media. Democratic information systems that are unbiased and non-partisan include the Society Library's Internet Government Project and the Great American Debate project, which we describe. We conclude with a discussion of the role science can play in the political process. (shrink)

There is a large literature on how the use of an intolerant style of political rhetoric can erode democratic communication and give people reasons to question their faith in the democratic system. But the reverse is also true: that is, everyday linguistic practices shape political communication by providing stylistic forms and common words. My central claim is that an interactionist interpretation of the more-speech argument offers a normative foundation for a distinctive model of counterspeech as democratic self-defense: counterspeech as decentralized (...) democratic self-defense. The core of this model is the idea that democratic institutions have a role to play in making it easier for citizens to engage in conversations with those they would otherwise avoid. (shrink)

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)

The slogan "one person, one vote" is held to be essential to democracy. I argue, against its standard interpretation, that the power of one's vote should decline with age. The idea of relational equality it expresses is ambiguous, in ways currently unappreciated, between synchronic and diachronic conceptions. The standard interpretation is that voters must relate as equals synchronically in each election. I argue that they can do so diachronically, across elections. From the original position, rational people would prefer a voting (...) procedure giving more weight to their younger selves. The argument turns on the asymmetrical structure of political authority between cohorts: older cohorts influence the formative conditions of younger ones in ways the young can never reciprocate. Age-weighted voting addresses this asymmetry, concentrating more of our overall political influence on the parts of our lives that we actually live to experience. The strongest counterargument is committed to a form of epistocracy. (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)

What economic system does a Kantian ideal of freedom entail? In Living with the Invisible Hand, Waheed Hussain argues it entails intermediated capitalism. Here, I investigate these arguments within the framework of a Kantian theory of right. I sketch a Kantian theory of equal democratic government where we have the right to make together through equal democratic processes decisions that structure our rightful relationships with one another. I argue that any plausible Kantian view of the natural determinacy of property rights (...) justifies extensive government intervention in the economy, creating space to argue for alternative economic systems such as intermediated capitalism. (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)

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)

Democratic competition is often analogised to market competition, where parallel efforts to satisfy preferences produce efficient outcomes—namely, parallel competition. A contrasting model is offered by adversarial legal systems, where social benefits stem from structured mutual interference between opposing sides—namely, friction competition. These models rely on distinct mechanisms, each effective under different conditions. This chapter argues that while both are essential to democracy, contemporary theorists and reformers systematically over-emphasise the parallel model. This imbalance distorts the structure of democratic competition; from constitutional (...) design and voting rules to campaign strategy and the media environment. The chapter also highlights how the value of friction is increasingly discounted not only in democratic politics, but also within legal systems and market economies. In short, democratic institutions need more—not less—structured and beneficial forms of friction. (shrink)

Democracy and Competition sets out to reframe the role of competition in democratic theory. Competition is the defining feature of modern democratic politics. On the dominant account of 'competitive democracy', competition is framed as electoral competition. This framing is shared by both defenders and critics of the dominant model, who then argue whether democracy needs more or less (of this kind of) competition. However, the contributions to this volume highlight the diversity of concepts, sites, and modes of competition within democratic (...) politics. They ask: when, where, and what kind of competition we need in democracies today, what purposes these varied forms of competition serve, and what kinds of competition threaten democracy. This volume aims to set a new research agenda for democratic theorists of all stripes, while also making arguments about competition and institutional design that are relevant to empirical political science, legal scholarship, and studies of communication. (shrink)

This article re-examines the orthodox Diceyan conception of parliamentary sovereignty in light of contemporary constitutional principle and practice in the United Kingdom. It argues that the traditional claim that Parliament may legislate without legal limitation remains doctrinally influential but is no longer an adequate account of legislative authority within a constitutional order committed to the rule of law. The article contends that sovereignty should not be understood as an inherent or absolute attribute of Parliament, but as a contingent and legally (...) mediated form of authority, sustained through recognition within the legal order and bounded by the constitutional requirements of legality, accountability, and access to justice. Rather than treating Parliament as a monolithic constitutional actor, the article analyses legislation as the product of individual parliamentarians acting within structures of party discipline, executive dominance, and electoral distortion. On that basis, it argues that the language of sovereign Parliament obscures the reality that law-making power is exercised by identifiable political actors whose authority requires legal constraint. It develops this claim through public law doctrine and constitutional theory, including the rule of recognition, the grundnorm, social contract thought, and contemporary jurisprudence on legality and ouster clauses. The article concludes that the better view is not that the rule of law bends to parliamentary sovereignty, but that Parliament’s legislative authority is itself conditioned by the rule of law and by the constitutional limits necessary to secure democratic legitimacy. In that sense, the article advances a redefined account of parliamentary sovereignty suited to the modern constitutional framework of the United Kingdom. (shrink)

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)

I argue that because many forms of viewpoint-based moderation by major social media companies (SMCs) undermine subjects’ equal opportunity for political influence (EOPI), such moderation violates users’ right to free expression and ought to be prohibited. I then refute three common defenses of SMCs’ freedom to moderate as they please, each of which seeks to establish relevant disanalogies between state- and SMC-imposed speech regulations: the substitution argument, argument from government abuse, and argument from corporate rights. I argue that the presence (...) of substitutes does not excuse viewpoint-based regulation, that the risk of abuse does not meaningfully distinguish state from social media moderation, and that corporate rights are limited by users’ right to EOPI. (shrink)

Das tagesaktuell brisante und zugleich philosophische Buch analysiert die aktuellen Krisensymptome, die sich in vielen westlichen Demokratien zeigen. Dafür unterscheidet der Autor grundsätzlich zwischen Republik und Demokratie und zeigt, dass im Prinzip der Republik Tendenzen angelegt sind, die sich gegen die Demokratie wenden können. Das Buch zeigt zugleich, was getan werden kann, um die Demokratie in der modernen Republik lebendig zu halten, ohne dass die Republik im Populismus einer angeblichen Volksherrschaft zerstört wird.

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.

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)

Political power is always coercive, and is none more so in domestic politics than the criminal law and its associated power to punish. If this power is to be used in a just way, it must be done in a manner that all members of society can accept. This paper is an attempt to work out some normative parameters for an acceptable theory of punishment by examining its institutional role in a just, liberal state. In doing so, this paper treats (...) punishment theory as a topic in political philosophy, as opposed to moral philosophy. In this way, the account differs from most approaches to a theory of punishment, which are based on what we might call “personal morality.” In this paper, I focus on the role that punishment would play as an institutional part of a state governed by just rules and explore how the features of the institution could be justified to the citizens of the state in question. (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)

Recent social or relational egalitarian accounts of democratic authority attempt to vindicate the demand for an equal say in political decisions by appealing either to an analogy with valuable interpersonal relationships that include equal authority as their constitutive element, or to a bedrock judgment that inequality of authority and power absent mitigating conditions is morally objectionable. This paper argues that neither the positive view (as I refer to the first conception) nor the negative view (as I call the second) are (...) successful on their own. The positive view provides a plausible account of when authority over collective decisions ought to be shared, yet it fails to explain why it ought to be shared on equal terms. By contrast, the negative view provides a convincing account of why authority ought to be shared on equal terms whenever it ought to be shared, its analysis of when authority ought to be shared is insufficiently discerning. Yet the paper also argues that the insights of the two approaches can be combined in a fruitful way that promises to vindicate democratic authority without rendering either approach redundant. (shrink)

Scholars of trust and misinformation typically assume that the only two poles of legitimacy are democratic pluralism and scientific technocracy. This paper examines Singapore’s response to Covid-19 to argue that this nation-state instantiates an alternative ideal: political technocracy. Singapore’s ruling party of sixty years, the People’s Action Party (PAP), has long positioned itself as a long-term steward, whose authority rests on the trust it has cultivated among citizens, which it attributes to governmental transparency. We present a taxonomy of the state’s (...) rhetorical strategies – ontological, moral, and statistical – to highlight the government’s active role in shaping public perceptions of national problems and the aptness of its policies. This taxonomy elucidates how Singapore’s political technocracy differs from scientific technocracy, while still highlighting the state’s strategic deployment of the rhetoric of science and ad hoc experts for legitimacy. In so doing, we invite further consideration of the relationships between science and public trust in illiberal authoritarian states. (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)

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)

Contemporary democratic theory frequently justifies political standing by appeal to competence, capacity, or rational agency, while assigning participation through categorical administrative proxies that neither assess nor meaningfully approximate those capacities. This paper offers a conceptual diagnosis of the resulting disjunction between justificatory language and institutional practice. -/- Rather than proposing reforms or alternative criteria for inclusion, the analysis examines how competence functions within democratic legitimacy despite its limited operational role. It argues that competence operates less as an inclusion criterion than (...) as a legitimating vocabulary that renders proxy-based boundaries intelligible, defensible, and resistant to contestation. Through an analysis of age thresholds, asymmetrical inclusion, and the conspicuous absence of competence assessment in democratic institutions, the paper shows that the gap between justification and mechanism is not accidental but structurally stabilising. -/- The persistence of competence language is further explained by distinctive epistemic features of democratic participation, including diffuse responsibility, opaque feedback, and the ritualisation of participation itself. Under these conditions, dissatisfaction with outcomes need not generate pressure to recalibrate the link between capacity and standing, allowing legitimacy to be maintained without alignment between justificatory claims and institutional operation. -/- The paper concludes by situating this gap as a constitutive feature of contemporary democratic legitimacy rather than a defect awaiting correction, and by clarifying the limited sense in which competence continues to function within democratic systems. (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)

This book addresses a systematic weakness in contemporary political theory and philosophy. Most contemporary political theorists and philosophers are unable to explain, vindicate, or justify the authority of the liberal democratic institutions most of them live under. Instead, they endorse moralist accounts of the right to rule which require governments to meet impossibly high standards to avoid condemnation as illegitimate usurpers. This is true not just of the dominant Rawlsian mainstream, but of many of its radical critics, whose membership of (...) more critical traditions leaves them sceptical of the value of existing institutions, even where they provide stable, decent rule. The book instead provides a realist account of the authority of liberal democratic rule focused on impersonal rule and regulated democratic competition. It uses groundbreaking work in political economy to explain how, at least under reasonably favourable conditions, these two mechanisms can be expected to combine to generate a growing surplus whose fruits will be made widely available. The prosperity and protection provided by liberal democratic rule to most of those it governs forms the basis of its authority, even though the hierarchies and exclusions that remain leave liberal democratic societies a long way from justice. Understanding liberal democratic authority in this way allows us to reassess challenges to it. Protest and resistance must accept impersonal rule and regulated democratic competition. While anger, and even violence, may then be acceptable and even appropriate, even peaceful attempts to remove the winners of democratic elections must be condemned. (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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)