Defending Democratic Participation Against Shortcuts: a Few Replies to Thomas Christiano
- PDF / 254,354 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 71 Downloads / 188 Views
Defending Democratic Participation Against Shortcuts: a Few Replies to Thomas Christiano Cristina Lafont 1 Published online: 10 August 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract
In this essay, I address some questions and challenges brought about by Thomas Christiano in his inspiring review of my book Democracy without Shortcuts. First, I defend the democratic credentials of the conception of self-government that I articulate in the book against conceptions of self-determination that are allegedly compatible with non-democratic government. To do so, I clarify some aspects of the notion of “blind deference” that I use in the book as a contrast concept to identify a minimal, necessary condition for democratic self-government. In a second step, I clarify my criticism of deep pluralist conceptions of democracy and argue that Christiano’s own criticism does not seem to address the main challenge to which pure proceduralism is supposed to provide an answer. Lastly, I address Christiano’s contention that my criticism of lottocracy does not address the worries that lottocrats are responding to. I distinguish between populist and epistocratic worries and argue that both of them have anti-democratic roots and thus should be criticized rather than “responded to” in their own terms. Keywords Democracy . Self-government . Pluralism . Legitimacy . Participation . Deliberation . Minipublics I am extremely grateful for Thomas Christiano’s careful and insightful comments on my book Democracy without Shortcuts (Lafont 2020).1 It is a privilege to enter into dialog with colleagues who have been deeply engaged with democratic theory for many years. I cannot provide a complete answer to all the challenges Christiano presents. Instead, I will focus on addressing some of his core questions as a first step in what I hope will be an ongoing dialog.
1
See Christiano (2020). All references to the page numbers are in parenthesis.
* Cristina Lafont [email protected]
1
Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University, Kresge Hall 3-441, 1880 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL, USA
206
Jus Cogens (2020) 2:205–214
1 Is the Ideal of Self-government a Democratic Ideal? In the book, I interpret the ideal of self-government as expressing the minimal core of the democratic ideal, namely, the idea that all those who are subject to the law should be able to see themselves as its authors. I argue that this ideal requires not only political equality but also democratic control over decision-making. However, I do not articulate a full interpretation of the democratic ideal of self-government in the book. This is important given my ecumenical aims. I aim to show that the three approaches I criticize fail to meet the democratic ideal under any minimally plausible understanding of it. Although they present themselves as conceptions of democracy, they in fact are not since they fail to meet a necessary condition of democracy. If I had focused on a fully articulated conception of democracy and tried to show that various alternative approaches
Data Loading...
