contractualist OP t1_j4lo65c wrote on January 16, 2023 at 4:31 PM

Reply to comment by ProfMittenz in Democracy is Only a Means to an End (Examining the Inherent Political Authority of Democracy) by contractualist

Thank you for the recommendations! I will review that literature and will incorporate those ideas into my next post.

I agree with Rawls's original formulation of Public Reason since I believe certain moral values should be imposed on constitutional deliberation for political authority to be legitimate. This means that religious/aesthetic based arguments would be excluded from deliberation.

I argue in the piece that epistemic defenses of democracy are also insufficient. The empirical literature on deliberative democracy is weak and given certain anti-market/identitarian biases of the public (Caplan 2007 and Bartels and Achen 2017 respectively). This is why I believe experts should play a greater role as lawmaking demands more complexity.

ProfMittenz t1_j4lq6no wrote on January 16, 2023 at 4:44 PM

If you want to go with the old school.Rawlsian position, Jonathan Quong would be useful for you. But I think that position has been pretty roundly rejected for its antidemocratic implications. Two other things: "deliberative democracy" is an umbrella term that basically encompasses all democratic theory these days. It just means that deliberation is at the heart of political legitimacy but in lots of different forms (so this includes Rawls and political liberalism). Also I wouldnt be so quickly dismissive.of epistemic democracy. The first citation you gave is from 2007 and epistemic democracy theory has really exploded since then. Some of what you sound like you're arguing is in fact for epistocracy or rule by experts, but if you read Helene landemore, she utilizes the "diversity Trump's ability theorem" which claims that a plurality of thinkers are better at solving problems than a small group of experts. The diversity approach also helps solve the problem of who counts as an expert since in a democracy we all have to debate who the expert is anyway.