Conception Of Democratic Legitimacy Research Articles

Deliberativismo republicano y control constitucional

La democracia deliberativa recepta una particular concepción de legitimidad democrática, según la cual toda norma, institución o medida política debe ser justificada mediante un proceso deliberativo público. Por un lado, la principal función de este concepto es proveer criterios normativos desde los cuales evaluar las instituciones políticas reales. Por otro, a más de ciertos elementos normativos básicos, cabe advertir que el concepto de democracia deliberativa ha adoptado diversas concepciones rivales, pudiendo ellas ser clasificadas en liberales, republicanas y críticas. Actualmente asistimos a una notoria proliferación de concepciones deliberativas republicanas. Es por ello, que en este trabajo nos proponemos reconstruir y evaluar las respuestas brindadas por renombrados deliberativistas republicanos, a la par que ofrecer una propuesta de diseño institucional alternativa.

Deciding the demos: three conceptions of democratic legitimacy

The prevailing view is that democratic procedures are unable to confer democratic legitimacy to decisions about democratic procedures. This paper examines this claim in detail and uses referendums on the inclusion of previously disenfranchised groups in the demos as a running example. The paper distinguishes between pure, imperfect and quasi-pure models of procedural democratic legitimacy and sub-versions of them. To various extents, each model does have the capacity to confer legitimacy to demos decisions under well-defined circumstances. The paper argues that quasi-pure procedural legitimacy represents the most promising account of democratic legitimacy in cases where democratic procedures are the subject of collective decision-making. According to this model, the decision to revise the rules for membership in the demos is permissible by democratic standards if and only if the revision is not forbidden by democratic principles for inclusion. The point is that the range of alternatives that are not forbidden by democratic principles of inclusion are likely to be considerable due to vagueness of the principles themselves and/or them being subject to reasonable disagreement. The paper concludes with a discussion about the possibility of democratic legitimacy for democratic institutions not introduced as a result of democratic decision-making.

A multidimensional account of democratic legitimacy: how to make robust decisions in a non-idealized deliberative context

This paper analyses the possibility of granting legitimacy to democratic decision-making procedures in a context of deep pluralism. We defend a multidimensional account according to which a legitimate system needs to grant, on the one hand, that citizens should be included on an equal footing and acknowledged as reflexive political agents rather than mere beneficiaries of policies, and, on the other hand, that their decisions have an epistemic quality. While Estlund’s account of imperfect epistemic proceduralism might seem to embody a dualistic conception of democratic legitimacy, we point out that it is not able to recognize citizens as reflexive political agents and is grounded in an idealized model of the circumstances of deliberation. To overcome these ambiguities, we develop an account of democratic legitimacy according to which disagreement is the proper expression of citizens’ reflexive agency and the attribution of epistemic authority does not stem from a major expertise or specific ability, but it comes through the public confrontation among disagreeing agents. Consequently, the epistemic value of deliberation should be derived from the reasons-giving process rather than from the reference to the alleged quality of its outcomes. In this way, we demonstrate the validity of the multidimensional perspective of legitimacy, yet abstain from introducing any outcome-oriented criterion. Finally, we argue that this account of legitimacy is well suited for modeling deliberative democracy as a decision-making procedure that respects the agency of every citizen and grants her opportunity to influence public choices.

Where the Right Gets in: On Rawls’s Criticism of Habermas’s Conception of Legitimacy

AbstractMany commentators have failed to identify the important issues at the heart of the debate between Habermas and Rawls. This is partly because they give undue attention to differences between Rawls’s original position and Habermas’s principle (U), neither of which is germane to the actual dispute. The dispute is at bottom about how best to conceive of democratic legitimacy. Rawls indicates where the dividing issues lie when he objects that Habermas’s account of democratic legitimacy is comprehensive and his is confined to the political. But his argument is vitiated by a threefold ambiguity in what he means by ‘comprehensive doctrine’. Tidying up this ambiguity helps reveal that the dispute turns on the way in which morality relates to political legitimacy. Although Habermas calls his conception of legitimate law ‘morally freestanding’, and as such distinguishes it from Kantian and natural law accounts of legitimacy, it is not as freestanding from morality as he likes to present it. Habermas’s mature theory contains conflicting claims about the relation between morality and democratic legitimacy. So there is at least one important sense in which Rawls’s charge of comprehensiveness is made to stick against Habermas’s conception of democratic legitimacy, and remains unanswered.

English Law and American Democracy in the Revolutionary Republic: Maryland, 1776-1822

Between 1776 and 1784, eleven of the original thirteen states made some provision for the continuing authority of the common law and British statutes. But there were highly significant variations in the pattern from state to state, variations that helped to differentiate each state as a unique jurisdiction. In Maryland, despite the effort of leading lawyers to settle the matter once and for all in 1776, the precise effects of Article 3 had to be worked out over several decades of political, legal, and intellectual maneuvering. As a result, Marylanders left a remarkable record of politicians, lawyers, and judges contesting for different views of the importance of legal continuity in a democratic republic. This history helps explain why Marylanders are still entitled to the benefits of the common law by the authority of Article 5 of their current constitution, and it also illuminates a defining feature of American democracy, the tension between its theory of sovereignty and the rule of law in practice. As historians and students of the revolutionary era in Maryland well know, the constitution of 1776 as a whole was a defeat for direct democracy and any popular agenda of social leveling or economic equality that may have been in play, A few idealists, notably Colonel Rezin Hammond of Anne Arundel County, were elected to the 1776 convention but were unable to build a strong statewide political coalition. Effectively led by their wealthy and worldly leaders, notably Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Matthew Tilghman, Samuel Chase, Thomas Johnson, Charles Carroll the Barrister, and William Paca, a majority of delegates embraced independence from the British Empire but voted consistently for a style of government that was familiar and predictable. Why was this plan so conservative? In part because delegates embraced a conception of democratic legitimacy shaped not just by Revolutionary ideals and rhetoric about liberty and rights, but also by the particulars of local legal history.

Democratic Legitimacy: The Limits of Instrumentalist Accounts

Political legitimacy is an important concept for democracies. Since the fundamental characteristic of any democracy is that through their collective decision-making, citizens are effectively the source of the political authority of the polity, it makes sense to ask when it can be said that a democratic polity is morally justified in exercising coercive political power over citizens. Understood in this way, legitimacy is linked to authority, the right to issue commands and enforce them through the use of coercive power. Questions about legitimacy apply at many different levels within any given democratic polity. If a question about legitimacy is asked of a particular government, the answer would, presumably, contain information about how the government or persons in question came to be or be in a position of power. Such a question can also be asked of the order or structure of a specific polity, of particular institutions within the structure, of specific laws or policies, and of an entire democratic polity. To raise a question of legitimacy with regard to an entire democratic polity is really nothing less than to ask why citizens should follow the laws of their society or affirm its order and actions as justifiable. Posing the question in this way reflects the nature of democracy as a political system which is rooted in the collective action of individuals aimed at establishing the terms according to which each person will be allowed to live freely. Democratic legitimacy therefore requires that the structure and actions of a democratic polity reflect this collective aim. Understood in this way, a question of legitimacy is open to a number of competing responses. This is reflected in the variety of conceptions of democratic legitimacy in contemporary democratic theory, which vary not just in how the question of legitimacy should be

Possible application of deliberative democracy in parliament

Abstract Deliberative democracy, as a dominant paradigm in contemporary democratic theory, offers a new, attractive conception of democratic legitimacy, which represents an alternative to a democracy that functions through the mechanism of political competition. A major problem with deliberation is the issue of its institutionalisation, as the theories of deliberative democracy have not produced a more specific institutional framework or form in which it could be used in political practice. Parliaments appear to be particularly suitable places for its potential implementation. Moreover, deliberative democracy could contribute to a change in discourse quality and the way decision-making is conducted in parliaments, which is often considered problematic. Due to its incompatibility with competitive democracy, the opportunities for introducing deliberative democracy into parliaments are very limited. The study also outlines three ways of reconciling deliberative democracy and parliaments.

Veil of Ignorance Rules in Election Law

Election law struggles with the question of neutrality, not only with its possibility — can election rules truly be neutral between parties?—but also with its definition. What does it mean for election laws to be ― neutral? This Article examines one form of election law neutrality, found in what it terms ― veil of ignorance rules Such rules are formed in circumstances where neither party knows which rule will benefit its candidates in future elections.This Article considers the existence of veil of ignorance rules in two recent election law controversies: the rule that write-in ballots must be spelled correctly (in the Lisa Murkowski Senate race in Alaska), and the rule that a candidate must be a ― resident of the city in which he plans to run for mayor (Rahm Emanuel‘s candidacy for Mayor of Chicago). Both rules can plausibly lay claim to being formed in conditions where neither party could know, ex ante, which rule would benefit its own candidates.Veil of ignorance rules are interesting in their own right, but they also suggest a possible modification in what Professor Rick Hasen has recently dubbed ― the democracy canon. The canon suggests that ambiguous election law rules should be read in a way that maximizes voter enfranchisement and voter choice. But if there are some rules that are neutral, because formed behind a veil of ignorance, they may deserve a type of deference not due to rules that were formed with an eye toward partisan advantage — even if those rules serve to limit voter participation.Moreover, to the extent that the rules in the Murkowski and Emmanuel cases were neutral, upsetting them means upsetting a prior, legitimate, democratic decision. Voter participation and voter choice (that is, popular democracy) are not the only hallmarks of democratic legitimacy. Legislative decisions can also be democratic. The democracy canon only upholds one conception of democratic legitimacy. It is not, I conclude, the only one that can or should guide us in deciding close election law cases.

Democratic Legitimacy and the European Union

This is an introduction to a Special Issue that first considers representative and deliberative conceptions of democratic legitimacy in the EU, and then presents empirical research on how the institutions of the EU are attempting to increase the democratic legitimacy of the multi‐level political system. The first three articles concern central democratic concepts and use political theory and institutional analysis. The second set of three articles turns to an empirical analysis of the institutions and institutional processes of the EU and the member states, including the European Commission and the media, the European Parliament and the Open Method of Coordination. It is concluded that both representative and deliberative mechanisms within each of the member states and the EU institutions need to be improved in order to increase the democratic legitimacy of the EU among the citizens.

Rawls' Idea of Public Reason and Democratic Legitimacy

Abstract Critics and defenders of Rawls' idea of public reason have tended to neglect the relationship between this idea and his conception of democratic legitimacy. I shall argue that Rawls' idea of public reason can be interpreted in two different ways, and that the two interpretations support two different conceptions of legitimacy. What I call the substantive interpretation of Rawls' idea of public reason demands that it applies not just to the process of democratic decision-making, but that it extends to the substantive justification of democratic decisions. I shall argue against this interpretation and suggest a procedural interpretation instead. On this view, public reason is invoked when it comes to the political justification of the principles that should govern the process of democratic decision-making, but not – at least not directly – in relation to the content of public deliberation.

Deliberation or Tabulation? The Self-Undermining Constitutional Architecture of Election Campaigns

Perhaps the one completely uncontested truth in the shared public ideology of American politics is that an election campaign ought to be a serious occasion in the life of a democratic polity, a time when citizens reflect maturely on the great public issues of the day. On this view, the ultimate purpose of election campaigns is to offer voters and candidates a meaningful opportunity for deliberation and persuasion. Of course, the typical modern American election campaign does not seem seriously reflective and deliberative so much as shallow and unengaging. Reasoned persuasion seems to play a minor role, if that. The paper asks whether this gulf between American political ideals and reality might have its roots in any kind of flaw in our legal institutions. Do we have, that is to say, a constitutional infrastructure well suited to summoning forth the kind of electoral politics to which we aspire? The paper pursues this question through a close institutional analysis of the federal constitutional jurisprudence of ballot access, public financing of presidential campaigns, the associational rights of political parties, and the giving and spending of money in election campaigns. This analysis reveals that although the American constitutional regime pays emphatic lip service to the ideal of reasoned persuasion in elections, its actual institutional arrangements in fact presuppose just the opposite - election campaigns that are thin rather than thick, that are aggregative rather than deliberative, that are aimed at counting political preferences, not creating them. The paper concludes by examining briefly some of the implications of this disjunction between our democratic ideals and practices for our conceptions of democratic legitimacy, our aspirations for better quality campaigns, our notions of the venues in which democratic politics is actually conducted, and some important scholarly critiques of electoral regulation.

Rethinking Democratic Procedures: Democracy and Deliberative Experiences in Turkey's LA21 Process

This paper attempts to describe the conditions necessary for the furthering of democracy in Turkey by focusing on a certain conception of democratic legitimacy that goes beyond formal arrangements. It argues that the effective participation of citizens in democratic procedures is necessary for the consolidation of democracy in public life. To defend this argument, the theoretical background developed in deliberative models of democracy is followed. The quality of ‘talk’, as a constitutive feature of democracy, is explored by following the critical perspectives in deliberative theory that focus on the discursive mechanisms of exclusion and on power relations intrinsic to deliberative procedures. For this purpose, the deliberative processes in a series of ‘working group meetings’, carried out as a part of the Local Agenda 21 project, are analysed. The democratic capacity of deliberative experiences and public dialogue is analysed by examining the inclusion/exclusion of opposing ideas, different identities and discourse styles during these working groups meetings.

Is there a ‘Democratic Deficit’ in World Politics? A Framework for Analysis

AbstractMany scholars, commentators and politicians assert that international organizations suffer from a severe ‘democratic deficit’. This article proposes a basic framework for evaluating this applied ethical critique of global governance. It rests on two criteria. The first, philosophical coherence, dictates consistent adherence to one or more conception of democratic legitimacy (libertarian, pluralist, social democratic or deliberative). The second, pragmatic appropriateness, requires that any philosophical standard be calibrated to reasonable expectations in the ‘second-best’ world constrained by transaction costs, commitment problems, and justice claims. The latter judgement is in large part empirical, for which existing constitutional practices in advanced industrial democracies provide the most reasonable baseline. By these two criteria – regardless of which specific conception of democracy is adopted as a starting point – the European Union appears to be democratically legitimate. This establishes a point of democratic legitimacy on the continuum of international institutions that could be analysed using this framework.