Democratic Decision-making Procedures Research Articles

Partisan science and the democratic legitimacy ideal

The democratic legitimacy ideal requires value judgments in science to be legitimised by democratic procedures in order for them to reflect the public interest or democratic aims. Such a view has been explicitly defended by Intemann (2015) and Schroeder (2021), amongst others, and reflects a more widely shared commitment to a democratisation of science and integration of public participation procedures. This paper suggests that the democratic legitimacy ideal in its current form does not leave space for partisan science – science that is politically or societally engaged. This is problematic because partisan research can contribute substantially to science and society, a point that I will illustrate with a recent case study from the Netherlands. To resolve this problem, I scrutinise the notion of democratic legitimacy and consider its use in the values in science discourse. Current discussions focus on democratic decision-making procedures to legitimise specific value judgements. I show that this focus does not adequately represent sound procedures of legitimisation at the hand of political theories of representation. Consequently, I develop a different approach: I propose to consider scientists as a special case of representatives who are authorised to make independent value judgements while nevertheless being constrained by the demands of their constituencies. Based on this approach, I argue that values in science do not need to be based on democratically agreed upon aims or the public interest in every instance. Instead, I advocate for a pluralist system of scientific mandates, which differs from both value pluralism and the democratic legitimacy ideal.

Deliberation and Voting: An Institutional Account of the Legitimacy of Democratic Decision-Making Procedures

Deliberation and Voting: An Institutional Account of the Legitimacy of Democratic Decision-Making Procedures

Federalism as an institutional doctrine

Federalism as an institutional doctrine

Authoritarianism as pathology of recognition: the sociological substance and actuality of the authoritarian personality

The rise of the notions of authoritarianism and the authoritarian personality is directly linked to pathologies of early modernity and to social constellations that systematically produce dispositions of character that ultimately form the base of Nazi fascism. The aim of this article, thus, is to explore sociological actuality, i.e., the explanatory power and informative value of the concepts of authoritarianism and the authoritarian personality. Therefore, throughout the article, authoritarianism is framed as a social, i.e., relational approach, similar to that of recognition. However, as authoritarianism does not point towards autonomy, it can be read as a pathology of recognition. The text starts by presenting authoritarianism and authoritarian personality as introduced to the academic debate by early Critical Theory, including a description of the historical and intellectual conditions of the time. It then explores three essential elements of these concepts and how they have changed from then to now; namely, authorities, authoritarian measures, and psychological dispositions used to accept both. The sociological tools thus laid open are then used to respond to current questions about authoritarianism using the example of the impact of experts on crisis discourses. Pointing towards discursive mediation, I ask when and how the need to rely on experts fosters authoritarianism. There are basically two ways of understanding authoritarianism as still present in our society. The first is as a backward-leaning ideology of the good old times. Especially in politics, we can find a wish to overcome complex democratic decision-making procedures with strong, authoritarian leadership. The second form involves understanding authoritarianism not as a personal authority but as a swarm authority in the modern and (digital) panopticon. This pathology of recognition leads to alienated relations with others as mere anonymous providers of evaluations.

Occupy and the constitution of anarchy

Abstract:This article provides the first comparative reading of the minutes of the General Assemblies of three iconic Occupy camps: Wall Street, Oakland and London. It challenges detractors who have labelled the Occupy Wall Street movement a flash-in-the-pan protest, and participant-advocates who characterised the movement anti-constitutional. Developing new research into anarchist constitutional theory, we construct a typology of anarchist constitutionalising to argue that the camps prefigured a constitutional order for a post-sovereign anarchist politics. We show that the constitutional politics of three key Occupy Wall Street camps had four main aspects: (i) declarative principles, preambles and documents; (ii) complex institutionalisation; (iii) varied democratic decision-making procedures; and (iv) explicit and implicit rule-making processes, premised on unique foundational norms. Each of these four was designed primarily to challenge and constrain different forms of global and local power, but they also provide a template for anarchistic constitutional forms that can be mimicked and linked up, as opposed to scaled up.

Exit versus voice – options for socially responsible investment in collective pension plans

AbstractWhat do we owe participants in collective pension plans in terms of socially responsible investment (SRI)? This paper draws into question current conventional wisdom on SRI, which considers investor engagement a more effective strategy than divestment to change morally problematic corporate behaviour. More fundamentally, in light of reasonable disagreement about the objective of SRI, the paper argues that participants in collective pension plans are owed some kind of control over their investments. The final section considers four different institutional arrangements to respect this requirement in practice, ranging from democratic decision procedures to the availability of SRI alternatives.

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.

Beyond the Fact of Disagreement? The Epistemic Turn in Deliberative Democracy

This paper takes stock of a recent but growing movement within the field of deliberative democracy, which normatively argues for the epistemic dimension of democratic authority and positively defends the truth-tracking properties of democratic procedures. Authors within that movement call themselves epistemic democrats, hence the recognition by many of an ‘epistemic turn’ in democratic theory. The paper argues that this turn is a desirable direction in which the field ought to evolve, taking it beyond the ‘fact of disagreement’ that had previously blocked the conceptual road to acknowledging more than intrinsic properties to democratic decision procedures. The paper shows how two authors in particular – Joshua Cohen and David Estlund – have successfully lifted the Rawlsian requirement of epistemic abstinence and defends epistemic democrats and the implications of the epistemic turn in democratic theory against various misconceptions.

The epistemic benefits of deliberative democracy

One instrumental defense of democracy is epistemic in character: Insofar as there is a correct answer to be found to some question being politically addressed, democratic decision-making procedures are more likely to find it than any other. But that assumes that the correct answer appears on the agenda in the first place, and that the agenda is not so cluttered that it gets lost there. Two-stage deliberative procedures can help with both problems, first by populating the agenda and then by winnowing it. A good example of both occurring is found in the detailed records now available of top secret ExComm deliberations surrounding the US government’s response to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Same same but different: why we should care about the distinction between professionalism and ethics.

Medical professionalism forms a belief system which is used to defend physicians’ ethos against counterforces which might threaten the integrity of medical practice. The current debates on professionalism, however, are characterized by the lack of a clear distinction between professional and ethical aspects of physicians’ conduct. This article argues that a differentiation between professionalism and ethics is not of mere academic interest. Instead, it is of great practical importance with regard to morally contentious issues in medicine.A short analysis of the discussions in history and social sciences reveals that professionalism is more than a catchphrase of modern medical debates but has a complex theoretical background which is still not conclusively understood. Whereas professionalism is clearly linked to the honorable aims of providing services to the individual and the society, it potentially entails problematic aspects, such as elitism, monopoly or the maintaining of power and privileges. With regard to morally contentious topics, the professional ethos of physicians must be differentiated from the perspective of ethics which can take a universal standpoint and has the potential to critically assess context-specific moral norms. The example of the current regulation on suicide assistance in German professional law is taken as an example to demonstrate how professional bodies tend to overstep the limits of their expertise and regulatory power with regard to issues which need an ethical evaluation.The article concludes that the narrowing of ethics and professionalism in public discussions and in medical education should be seen as problematic and that morally contentious topics in modern societies should be open to a participatory and inclusive discussion and democratic decision procedures.

Hayek the Schmittian: contextualising Cristi's account of Hayek's decisionism in the age of global wealth inequality

That capitalism, in all its variants, produces material inequality is beyond dispute. What is less clear, however, is not only whether Hayek's ‘equality of opportunities’ is immune to the inegalitarian trend, but also whether liberalism itself is the occult source of this outcome. This paper delves into this by offering a post-national contextualisation and partial critique of Renato Cristi's 1984 and 1998 scholarship on Hayek's decisionism. The aim is to investigate the relationship between liberal thought and wealth inequality in light of the global-order project and crisis in democratic decision-making procedures. This will uncover a clear zone of interaction between Hayek's notion of legal liberty and Schmitt's sovereignty that was not spotted by Cristi and that will shed new light on the dehumanising and inegalitarian essence of the universalisation of liberalism and its notion of ‘civilised economy’.

The Political Philosophy of Trust and Distrust in Democracies and Beyond

It is conventional to suggest that democratic states rely on widespread stores of among their populations. As far back as Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, in the good judgement of political representatives has been presented as an essential feature of democratic practice.1 Representatives are elected on the basis of credentials that suggest to voters they can be trusted to make good decisions on behalf of the population they govern. In the literature on in democracies, this kind of is sometimes dubbed vertical to signal the asymmetrical relation between truster (the voter) and trusted (the representative). So-called horizontal trust is the term given to describe among citizens, whether engaging in shared political institutions specifically, or in wider public space on a daily basis. Both forms of trust-among citizens and between citizens and their representatives-must be present in order to proclaim that a state is characterized by a climate of trust.2There are thought to be many virtues to a political state characterized by such a climate, all of which stem from the belief that widespread underpins a general willingness among citizens to comply more or less voluntarily with democratically determined legislation. These virtues range from the simple willingness to abide by laws that cannot, always, be coercively enforced; to high rates of participation in democratic decision-making procedures; to a widespread commitment to contribute to social-justice policies. The latter, in particular, is of special concern to egalitarians of all stripes who are being forced to confront recent evidence suggesting that states with higher and increasing rates of ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity struggle to sustain the that is needed to sustain support for these policies.3The contributions to this issue complicate our understanding of the relation between and democracies, suggesting among other things that may be less important than some have thought, and furthermore that distrust can serve important democratic ends. Together, the pieces press forward the political philosophy of in democracies in crucial ways, by asking readers to think clearly about when and where is a value in democratic states, and when and where it is a hindrance to the achievement of democratic values.By and large, the authors in this issue treat as a combination of attitude and behaviour: to say that we others is to say that we have a particular attitude towards them, and also that we act on that attitude. It is of little value to say that we others, but then refuse to follow that claim up with a relevant trusting action; a parent who claims to her child with her car, but then refuses to hand over car keys, can hardly be described as genuinely trusting her child to drive. What type of action is a trusting one? An action that manifests a willingness to make oneself vulnerable to others' free will; in extending our trust, we are giving others space to disappoint or betray us. For some scholars of trust, we will make ourselves vulnerable to others only when we believe (though the belief may not be a conscious one) that others possess good will towards us. If good will were necessary for trusting relations, however, very little would be extended, since especially outside of private, intimate, settings we cannot know much about others' attitudes towards us.4 It is enough rather to believe that others do not possess ill will in order to extend the kind of civic on which democratic states rely.One might say, and indeed many do, that there is a difference in kind between the we extend to intimates and the we extend to strangers with whom we happen to share political space. And, indeed, there are many differences-but they are contextual rather than foundational. That is, at its foundation, the we have in intimates and the we have in fellow citizens is the same-it is an attitude that supports behaviours that illustrate a willingness to make oneself vulnerable to others' freedom to act in ways that will ideally respect, but may disappoint, the extended trust. …

Is cultural group representation a fair option? Adolescents’ evaluations of forms of decision-making in multicultural Mauritius

Social psychological research on multiculturalism has mostly looked at recognition of differences and much less at equitable participation. The present study investigated adolescents’ fairness judgements of three democratic decision-making procedures (representative democracy, equal group representation, and proportional group representation) and one nondemocratic procedure (cultural group oligarchy) among Hindu (N=844), Muslim (N=630) and Creole (N=310) adolescents in Mauritius. We examined these judgements in two different contexts (i.e. school and national), and in relation to ethnic group identification, age and gender. Results show that representative democracy was viewed as the fairest decision-making procedure and cultural group oligarchy as the most unfair one. The group representation procedures were judged as relatively unfair although there were significant differences by ethnic group, age and gender. Strength of ethnic identification was linked to higher fairness ratings of democratic group representation procedures. The results are discussed in terms of morality, group positions and ideological representations of the Mauritian nation.

Theories of Democracy for Europe: Multi-Level Challenges for Multi-Level Governance

The great question, as John Locke put it, is not whether there should be political power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it. For domestic institutions, these three questions of normative political theory may well be separable and ordered as Locke indicated. However, the legitimacy of multi-level systems of can hardly be determined without keen regard for whether and why they should exist, and whence they arose. The characteristics and constraints of sovereign states have shaped the parameters for democratic answers to Locke's question. Just domestic government must be accountable to the governed. That is: the power to make laws and secure compliance should ultimately reside with citizens generally, securing coincidence oaf the affected and the electorate. This general and equal distribution of political rights gives expression to the equal worth of all citizens, and is the best institutional arrangement in light of the effects both on popular will formation and for collective decision-making. Theories of democracy have not only endorsed universal suffrage, but also justified more specific details. The commonplaces are constitutionally specified procedures and constraints, including the division of legislative, executive and judicial powers; transparency; accountability of elected representatives to the electorate; and majority rule.The European Union is a new subject for theories of legitimacy, and poses fundamental challenges to the established concepts and principles of democratic theory. The mere existence of the EU proves that the sovereign state cannot remain the sole focus of normative reflection. Indeed, the very conception of sovereignty is at stake in current disputes about the proper scope and legal powers to be transferred to central European institutions, without divesting traditional member states of all powers (Jachtenfuchs 1998). European institutions are not designed to replace domestic nodes of governance, but instead turn Europe into a system of multi-level governance.We must ask whether non-democratic modes of government may be justified to the citizens of Europe, such as has been suggested by such phrases as post-parliamentary governance (Andersen and Burns 1996). In any case, the received conceptual grid of democratic theory cannot easily be brought to bear on this polity at the supra-state level. It remains to be determined whether concepts such as the constitutional division of powers, transparency, accountability of representatives, and majority rule can play a role at all in assessing European institutions. The role of democratic decision procedures and consent must be rethought, both for domestic and multi-level governance, to consider why and in what sense legitimate government must rest on consent of the governed. A central issue must then be the proper scope of democratic decision procedures at the EU level. Several authors have addressed these issues, see reference list for an incomplete overview. This paper merely seeks to identify several of the challenges.

Inequalities in Non-Institutionalised forms of Political Participation: A Multi-Level Analysis of 25 Countries

Various studies suggest that while institutionalised and electoral forms of political participation are in decline in Western societies, non-institutionalised forms of participation (like demonstrating, political consumerism or signing petitions) are on the rise. However, this expansion of the political action repertoire of citizens also entails the question of equal participation opportunities. It can be argued that contemporary ideals of democratic participation assume an equal representation of citizens' interests. In this article we analyse the equality of participation patterns using comparative data from the 2004 ISSP survey. Our results suggest that non-institutionalised forms of participation increase patterns of inequality due to education but strongly reduce or even reverse gender and age inequalities. As such, both institutionalised and non-institutionalised forms of participation have specific (dis)advantages from the perspective of preserving equal access to democratic decision-making procedures.

Deliberation, Cultural Difference, and Indigenous Self-Governance

Deliberation, Cultural Difference, and Indigenous Self-Governance Jorge M. Valadez (bio) In this essay I argue that cultural differences between indigenous groups and settler societies are, in at least some cases, of significant importance for granting indigenous groups rights of self-governance. I maintain that the legitimacy of a political community crucially depends on whether none of the groups in that community are significantly disadvantaged in its democratic decision-making procedures. Significant political disadvantages are those that undermine the basic well-being of the members of the disadvantaged group. I contend that even under deliberative democracy, which places demanding conditions on understanding and taking into account the perspectives and interests of all members of the political community, some indigenous groups will find themselves continually losing out when collectively binding decisions are made after democratic deliberation. The primary reason for their losing out will likely be the significantly different cultural views they hold in such areas as empirical beliefs, normative principles and practices, and epistemic procedures for validating empirical and normative claims. These cultural differences will make it difficult for the criterion of political justification proposed by deliberative democracy, namely, the reciprocal giving of reasons that are reasonable from the perspective of other deliberators, to be satisfied. Secondary reasons include economic and social factors that make it difficult for indigenous groups to participate with equal effectiveness in the society's decision-making procedures. A just democratic society can bear the burden of particular groups being coerced to follow collective decisions with which they fundamentally disagree only if the realistic possibility exists that in future negotiations their point of view will win the day. However, when deep and pervasive cultural differences exist between minority indigenous groups and majority societies, this condition is not likely to be fulfilled. In these cases, it is difficult to maintain that they constitute a deliberative political community in which reciprocity in reason-giving is respected in procedures for making collectively binding political decisions. I maintain that there is an important connection between the principle of reciprocity and political equality and that when this principle is consistently violated in the democratic decision-making procedures of a political community, the legitimacy of that community is seriously undermined. Under these circumstances the just response is to grant the indigenous groups powers of autonomous governance that remove the source of the political disadvantages they face by being forced to be a part of a common civic body with the settler society. In the first part of this essay, I discuss briefly the criticisms that advocates of deliberative democracy have made of conventional procedures of democratic decision-making. This will help us understand how the legitimacy of political decisions that rely on these procedures can be called into question. In the second part, I discuss the alternative conception of political justification proposed by deliberative democracy and place particular attention on how this conception applies in culturally divided societies like those composed of indigenous groups and settler societies. In the third section, I argue that this conception of political justification—which is designed to produce just outcomes in pluralistic societies—cannot resolve the significant political disadvantages that indigenous groups face by remaining part of a common civic body with the majority society. I maintain that given these considerations, self-governance should be seriously considered as a way of removing these significant political disadvantages. Political Legitimacy and Deliberative Democracy In considering whether indigenous groups and majority settler societies can comprise a just political order in which fair decision-making procedures can be implemented, it is useful to examine deliberative democracy, for a central concern of this normative democratic theory is the justification of political decisions.1 For defenders of deliberative democracy, political decisions are justified only if they are reached through procedures that take into account the interests and views of all members of the polity. Since all members of the polity will be subject to the political decisions reached, their preferences should be given equal consideration in an open and uncoerced process of public deliberation. For the deliberative democrat, equal consideration means: (1) that deliberators will understand and take into account the views and interests of others and (2) that deliberators will provide...

Social Science as If History Mattered

Ruling Oneself Out is an extremely impressive scholarly achievement at multiple levels. It offers a model of how to identify and pose an important research question; that is, a question worth asking and answering not only because it is intrinsically interesting but also because it is theoretically puzzling and at the same time of great practical significance. Ruling Oneself Out is all this and more.Ivan Ermakoff (2008) begins by asking about the conditions that lead dominant actors to surrender their power in ways that are likely to undermine their own interests. It is an intriguing question and all the more puzzling because he examines this process in the context of two cases in which the decision to surrender power was reached after a long and public process of deliberation and discussion. Moreover, both cases—the German Reichstag’s passage of the enabling act in March 1933 that gave Adolf Hitler the authority to circumvent the constitution and the transfer of state power to the proponents of an authoritarian and reactionary Vichy regime in the summer of 1940—followed open and democratic decision-making procedures to realize an outcome that would ultimately undermine the commitment to democracy that made those outcomes possible.

The Institutional Embedding of Interactive Policy Making

In this article, the authors address citizen involvement at the central government level in the Netherlands. Through comparative research in which they systematically analyze eight interactive projects in three governmental departments, the authors especially pay attention to the relation between the informal character of interactive policy making and formal democratic decision-making procedures. They call this the “institutional embedding of interactive policy making .” The authors address the question, which forms of institutional embedding are most promising in securing continued effect from interactive policy making on formal democratic decision making? To answer this question, they distinguish three different forms of institutional embedding—that is, administrative, governmental, and political. The comparative research shows that a multiple institutional embedding of administrative, governmental, and political secures the continued effect of interactive policy making. Political embedding is especially important in creating enough pressure to organize and manage interactive processes well and take outcomes seriously into account.

Democracy Justifies the Means: Political Group Structure Moderates the Perceived Legitimacy of Intergroup Aggression

The present research tested the hypothesis that the political structure of conflicting groups moderates perceived legitimacy of intergroup aggression. In two experiments, participants read scenarios of fictitious summer camps in which members of one group aggressed members of another group. The political structure of both the perpetrator and the victim groups was described as either egalitarian (defined with democratic decision-making procedures) or hierarchical (authoritarian decision-making procedures). Results of both experiments showed that aggressions perpetrated by members of egalitarian groups at the expense of members of hierarchical groups were evaluated as less illegitimate than aggressions committed in the three remaining conditions. This effect is discussed as a function of the higher social value attributed to democratic groups.

Authority, Equality and Democracy

Abstract. The purpose of this essay is to argue that considerations of fairness play an essential role in the justification of democratic decision procedures. The first part argues that considerations of fairness form part of a practical authority's legitimacy, and that in the political context, those considerations of fairness entail a principle of equal distribution of political power. Subsequently, the article elaborates on the kind of equality which is required in democratic procedures, arguing that different principles of equality should apply to the deliberation and the decision stages of democracy. Finally, the article concludes with a few sketchy remarks on the possible relations between considerations of fairness and soundness of democratic procedures.