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10 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back
Intrinsic justification: autonomy/liberty
Democracy respects our autonomy and freedom
Respects "liberty as non-dependence" (Elizabeth Anderson)
A benevolent dictator might respect justice, but only a free procedure by which we can make laws has legitimacy
Even if we make bad laws, at least they are OUR bad laws
Issues with the autonomy/liberty argument
Highly dependent on who 'we' is and how unitary the 'we' is
What about persistent minorities? Or minorities in general?
Intrinsic justification: equality
Democracy advances our interests and views equally (Cristiano)
Democracy provides a way to correct for other people's cognitive bias in a clear and public way
its laws will not be seen as the instruments of one part of society to pursue their interests
Jeremy Waldron: the procedure has treated us equallt and offers equal respect by taking all agents' views seriously
The procedure over the result
Issues with intrinsic justifications
David Estland: imagine you go to a micro-brewery and you get told to try the best beer ever, which you try and which is disgusting. Same with democracy?
Surely it is extremely important to get good laws at the too?
Instrumental justification: the Condorcet Jury Theorem
First put forward by Marquis de Condorcet
Theory about the relative probability of a given group of individuals arriving at a correct decision.
The probability of getting a good result is high because each voter is better than average. The more people involved, the more likely the collective are to get it right.
This justification is independent of deliberation.
Instrumental justification: deliberative epistemic
The exchange of reason the key epistemic feature of democracy.
Deliberation improves the quality of outputs and inputs
Democracy includes a feedback process which allows revision.
Along tith the CJT, this instrumental justification proves that democratic law can be regarded as more probably correct than any other form of law-formulation (e.g. rich people example)
Beer example: we may produce a bad beer, but at least we've gone through every procedure to prevent there being a bad beer, which is more than in other systems.
Issues with instrumental justifications
Opinion can often be split down the middle
What if democracy is clearly not achieving a good outcome?
Can't experts reach good decisions too with a good and thorough process?
How do we balance the democratic value with other considerations like justice, experience, expertise etc?
Even if we admit that democracy issues binding decisions, are there any limits to its authority?
Tyranny of the majority
De Tocqueville worried that modern democracies were conformist and that the formal freedom to vote was not sufficinet to remove the possibilty of a demagogue emerging
This would lead to a dumbing down of the electorate who find the average opinion acceptable
Can democracy decide to abolish democracy? Nazis, gradualist socialists.
Internal limits
= the values supporting democracy also limit democracy
E.g. democracy having the ability to abolish democracy
Democracy can fail to respect essential elements of its normative justification e.g. freedom of speech: everyone gets it, but people can vote against it in a pure democracy.
External limits
= considerations independent of democracy limit its authority: certain theories of justice, natural rights etc.
Liberalism and constitutionalism are prime examples.