Many contemporary democratic theorists are democratic egalitarians. They think that the distinctive value of democracy lies in equality. Yet this position faces a serious problem. All contemporary democracies are representative democracies. Such democracies are highly unequal: representatives have much more power than do ordinary citizens. So, it seems that democratic egalitarians must condemn representative democracies. In this paper, I present a solution to this problem. My solution invokes popular control. If representatives are under popular control, then their extra power is (...) not objectionable. Unfortunately, so I argue, in the United States representatives are under loose popular control. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the Convention’s “democracy clause,” that is Article 3 of Protocol No. 1, which provides for the right to free elections. Why should it be described as a “democracy clause” and what is its significance for today? The paper first sketches out the drafting history, which reveals that while the framers were keen to preserve their inherited domestic institutions, they also thought it crucial to promote democracy. The Convention invokes but does not define democracy. It is (...) within the Court’s competence to elucidate its meaning. The Court holds that pluralist democracy is the only system compatible with the Convention. This paper argues that Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 further presupposes a representative legislature. It does not require member states to introduce a specific system of elections and representation, but it obliges them to conform to parliamentary democracy. Thus, the Court’s model of democracy rests on two pillars: pluralism and parliamentarism. It subscribes to pluralist democracy theories but contradicts the monolithic conception endorsed by Carl Schmitt. The Court’s model has the potential to offer a robust account of democracy. Yet, Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 has never lived up to its potential. The Court’s relevant jurisprudence is inadequate to address the contemporary antidemocratic shifts that are underway in certain member states. Hence, the paper suggests that the Court’s power to apply this clause is not limited to general elections but also extends to presidential elections and referendums. (shrink)

The Grasshopper’s game-playing Utopia collapses because, ideal though it might seem to some, ultimately most of us want more out of life than game-play. Building on both The Grasshopper and the published sequels in which Bernard Suits attempts to vindicate his Utopia, the current paper reconstructs Suits’s Utopia in a new way. I start from deeper reflection on Suits’s example of John Striver, a Utopian citizen who wants to work but whose profound boredom occasions Utopia’s collapse. Although the Grasshopper returns (...) to Striver repeatedly and urges his interlocutors to bear him in mind, the case is underdeveloped and its implications undertheorized, both by Suits and his numerous commentators and critics. The Striver example reveals a picture of Utopian games as complex, dynamic, mutually responsive, and cooperative; such games are not only better for game-loving ‘Grasshoppers’ but make room in Utopia for work-loving ‘Ants’. This mutuality is the key to Utopia’s sustainability. The paper thus offers a new critique and reinterpretation of the central text in contemporary philosophy of sport and explicates the goods inherent in the ludic ideal. (shrink)

Why pursue economic growth? For poor countries this is an easy question to answer, but it is more difficult for rich ones. Some of the world's greatest philosophers and economists – such as John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes, and John Rawls – thought that, once a certain material standard of well-being has been achieved, economic growth should stop. I argue the opposite in this article. We always have reason to pursue economic growth. My argument is indirect. I shall not (...) argue that economic growth itself is always better. Rather, I shall argue that stopping growth requires morally objectionable actions. Economic growth tends to occur naturally if certain underlying conditions are in place. We have moral reasons to insist on these conditions independent their effect on growth, however. Halting growth requires that we alter these conditions, but we ought not do this. (shrink)

This essay extends Robin DiAngelo’s concept of white fragility in two directions. First, we outline an additional cause of white fragility. The lack of proper terminology available to discuss race-based situations creates a semantic false dichotomy, which often results in an inability to discuss issues of racism in a way that is likely to have positive consequences, either for interpersonal relationships or for social and political change. Second, we argue that white fragility, with its semantic foundations, has serious consequences for (...) racial justice. It perpetuates the mass incarceration of black Americans, and undergirds the knowledge gap and subsequent wealth gap. The result of these racial injustices, which are maintained partially through white fragility, is that black Americans do not live in a democracy; they neither occupy positions of social and political power, nor have the ability to obtain power or directly impact who does obtain power. (shrink)

Empirical research has transformed our understanding of autocratic institutions. Yet democratic theorists remain laser-focused on ideal democracies, often contending that political equality is necessary to generate democratic authority. Those analyses neglect most nonideal democracies and autocracies – regimes featuring inequality and practices like gerrymandering. This essay fills that fundamental gap, outlining the difficulties of applying theories of democratic authority to nonideal regimes and challenging long-standing views about democratic authority. Focusing on autocrats that lose elections, I outline the democratic authority of (...) nonideal, flawed procedures. Flawed elections are unjustifiably biased toward incumbents. But under certain conditions, ignoring an incumbent’s loss would require not treating one’s fellow citizens as equals. Under those conditions, therefore, citizens are bound to obey those electoral outcomes – that is, flawed procedures can possess democratic authority. (shrink)

The legislature and the judiciary have been a constant focus of contemporary political philosophy. However, the executive – ‘the government’ itself – has been comparatively neglected. Today, this is changing with a well-spring of new work that bears upon what we might call the ideal of ‘good governance’, that is, how governments (and/or their agents) should exercise their powers. This review paper begins by clarifying the concepts of ‘governance’ and ‘good’ governance (§1). It then highlights five sets of values, working (...) nominally from the most foundational constraints on the exercise of government power to those that should guide the exercise of discretion: legitimacy and rule of law (§2); respect and trustworthiness (§3); efficiency and rationality (§4); public participation and accountability (§5); and the public interest and fiduciary duties (§6). (shrink)

This article aims to critically evaluate the recent proposals of Confucian political meritocracy by focusing on two sets of questions: the first set on the connection between traditional Confuciani...

Many authors argue that refugees should be enfranchised independently of citizenship. The enfranchisement of refugees is often seen as crucial for affirming their agency in the politics of asylum. However, most arguments in the literature do not explain why precisely it matters that they exercise their agency in the realm of democratic decision-making, i.e. why it matters that refugees participate in collectively wielding the public power to which they are subjected, rather than passively enjoy protection against the excessive and intrusive (...) exercise of this power. This leaves it unclear what value refugee enfranchisement realises precisely, and what function or role it is meant to play within the overall provision of asylum. My goal is to propose a plausible explanation of the significance of democratic inclusion from the viewpoint of refugees' agency. I argue that refugee enfranchisement affirms refugees' agency by advancing their interest in acting as makers of justice within the political context in which they find themselves. (shrink)

Legal scholars generally consider the theorisation and constitutionalisation of constitutional interpretation as a matter for the courts. This article first challenges this tendency on conceptual grounds, showing that no institutional commitment follows from the nature of interpretation in law, constitutional law included. It then provides guidance for thinking about institutional perspectives according to two criteria: the nature and normative strength of the sources interpreted and the capacity of the interpreter to include and consider every possibility affected when her interpretation carries (...) collective effects and is authoritatively final. The application of these criteria places the discussion on the grounds of democratic theory. The article thus reviews competing democratic theories and champions deliberative democracy as the alternative whose constitutive features best allow for the development of institutions capable of exercising constitutional interpretation when the imposition of meaning on the constitution is final and carrieserga omneseffects. (shrink)

Early voting behavior research confronted liberal democratic theory with the average American citizen's meager ability to think politically. Since then, several lines of analysis have tried to vindicate the mass electorate. Most recently, some researchers have attempted to reconceptualize the political reasoning process by viewing it in the aggregate, while others describe individuals as effective—albeit inarticulate—employers of cognitive shortcuts. While mass publics may, in these ways, be described as “rational,” they still fail to meet the basic requirements of democratic theory.

The deliberative model of democracy, as presented by Jürgen Habermas and others, claims to reconstruct the normative content of the idea of democracy. However, since it overemphasises the epistemic facet of decision‐making, the model is unable to take into account other valuable aspects of democracy. This is shown in reference to two concrete phenomena from political reality: majority voting and the problem of the dissenter. In each case, the deliberative model inevitably fails to account for several normatively desirable features of (...) democracy, such as formal political equality and proper respect for the judgement of each citizen. (shrink)

This article responds to critical reflections on my Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism by Sarah Birch, Kevin J. Elliott, Claudia Landwehr and James L. Wilson. It discusses how different types of representative democracy, especially different forms of government (presidential, parliamentary or hybrid), can be justified. It clarifies, among other things, the distinction between procedural and process equality, the strengths of semi-parliamentary government, the potential instability of constitutional designs, and the difference that theories can make in actual processes of constitutional reform.

No statue raised in a public place should stand there indefinitely. Any such monument should have a set date when it is due to be replaced. I make three arguments to support this principle of non-permanence for public commemorative art. First, the opportunity cost of permanent statues is too high. States have a duty, grounded in their need for legitimacy, to support and cultivate democratic values. Public art is a powerful tool that is being drastically underemployed because existing statues are (...) already taking up so many prominent sites. Second, permanence undermines stability by unnecessarily raising the stakes of change and so exacerbating predictable tensions between social groups who ought to be able to respect one another as honourable civic partners. My proposal reduces the significance of replacing a monument by making removals a commonplace event. Third, we ought to do away with permanent statues as a means of increasing democratic control for both current and future generations over public spaces. Each generation inherits a more cluttered civic landscape which makes it progressively more difficult to shape it in accordance with their needs, preferences, and cultural vocabulary. Taken together, these arguments tip the balance of reasons decisively against the status quo. (shrink)

In this paper, two claims are made. The main claim is that a fruitful approach for theorizing the political legitimacy of global governance and the proper normative role of civil society actors is the so-called ‘function-sensitive’ approach. The underlying idea of this approach is that the demands of legitimacy may vary depending on function and the relationship between functions. Within this function-sensitive framework, six functions in global governance are analyzed and six principles of legitimacy defended, together constituting a minimalist account (...) of political legitimacy. This account suggests that civil society actors may strengthen political legitimacy by performing five of these functions under certain conditions and insofar as the proposed normative political principles are fulfilled: problem identification, agenda-setting, implementation, enforcement and monitoring, and evaluation. The second claim is critical and is chiselled out against the backdrop of this function-sensitive account, through which I demonstrate that much vagueness and confusion with regard to the proper role of civil society actors for strengthening the political legitimacy of global governance could be traced to the so-called ‘transmission belt’ model, which has gained popularity in international political theory. This model depicts civil society as a transmission belt between the public sphere and decision-making loci, where it is assumed that civil society actors contribute to the strengthening of political legitimacy by transmitting peoples’ preferences, beliefs, and opinions from the former to the latter space by indirectly or directly influencing the decision-making. It is argued that this picture is misleading and generates erroneous prescriptions of how civil society actors should act to increase political legitimacy. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed growing controversy over the “wisdom of the multitude.” As epistemic critics drawing on vast empirical evidence have cast doubt on the political competence of ordinary citizens, epistemic democrats have offered a defense of democracy grounded largely in analogies and formal results. So far, I argue, the critics have been more convincing. Nevertheless, democracy can be defended on instrumental grounds, and this article demonstrates an alternative approach. Instead of implausibly upholding the epistemic reliability of average voters, I (...) observe that competitive elections, universal suffrage, and discretionary state power disable certain potent mechanisms of elite entrenchment. By reserving particular forms of power for the multitude of ordinary citizens, they make democratic states more resistant to dangerous forms of capture than non-democratic alternatives. My approach thus offers a robust defense of electoral democracy, yet cautions against expecting too much from it—motivating a thicker conception of democracy, writ large. (shrink)

Being autonomous depends on the kind of relations we enjoy in the different domains of our lives, but the impact of decision-making and the power exercise that takes place in the political sphere, makes political relations crucial to our development and enjoyment of autonomy. This dissertation develops a novel view of political participation by interrogating its connection to our personal autonomy. According to this view, our political relations are partially constitutive of our personal autonomy, which in other words means there (...) is a political aspect of our autonomy. The kind of political relations we should hold to fully enjoy our autonomy is what I call Relations of Mutual Recognition. It is the mutual recognition of each agent’s autonomous standing—translated into a proper distribution of political power— that will face dominating political relations. The basis for that domination comes from our democracies’ power imbalances that condition influence over political decision-making to each individual’s economic, social or cultural standing. Consequently, there are political conditions for our autonomy to thrive. Relations of Mutual Recognition require two main conditions: non-domination and control. I take these two neo-republican ideals and redefine them to shape what a proper distribution of political power amounts to. Political participation comes in precisely to identify a way to challenge power imbalances. Therefore, my definition of political participation, which I call Collective Self-Government, requires a particular sort of implementation. Accordingly, I suggest a deliberative and inclusive arrangement that involves direct and innovative forms of decision-making, and more importantly, grants relevant shares of authority to all actors, i.e., common citizens, legislators, technocrats, etcetera. This project could rightly belong to both a relational approach to autonomy and be labelled as a version of deliberative democracy. However, relational accounts focus on our social relations, whilst I claim that we cannot be “less” or non-autonomous in the political sphere and still enjoy an autonomous life. Likewise, the participatory focus—in the sense of inclusion of all actors—of this proposal more accurately turn it into either a participatory version of deliberative democracy or a deliberative version of participatory democracy. (shrink)