{"content":[{"text":"Rerum Causae","bbox":{"left":0.48646,"top":0.106902,"width":0.104078,"height":0.017194}},{"text":"to produce ‘right’ answers, or answers reflecting political truth, than any other form \n of government, and holds that democracy should be justified on these grounds. \n (Estlund, 1993; Bohman 1998) While epistemic democrats can take a variety of ap- \n proaches, most couch their arguments in the deliberative context. Since deliberative \n democrats have engaged with the epistocratic position most frequently and com- \n prehensively, I will use their framework as representative of the democratic position \n throughout the rest of this paper. \n Understanding what is at stake in the deliberative democratic-epistocratic de- \n bate requires a familiarity with deliberative democracy’s position in democratic the- \n ory as a whole. In the broader scope of political theory, justifications for democracy \n are plagued by both practical and normative problems. The former include concerns \n over how to select decision-making procedures that generate collective outcomes \n that are both fair, and meaningful, i.e. uniquely correspond to citizens’ preferences. \n The latter are primarily concerned with the notion of justice and how different pro- \n cedures, democratic and non-democratic, may be ranked and therefore preferred in \n regards to their normative value. (Coleman & Frerejohn, 1986) \n It is within this context that deliberation makes significant contributions to \n the justification of democracy. By emphasizing civic participation and public delib- \n eration on collective decisions, deliberative democracy has the potential to alleviate \n both practical problems, by relaxing some of the requirements for constructing fair \n majority decisions, and normative problems, by giving democrats a reason to prefer \n one procedure over another. (Miller 1992; Dryzeck & List 2003) On this second \n point, deliberation aids by infusing the democratic procedure with certain normative \n values, namely, the ideal that “government should embody the ‘will of the people’ \n formed through public reasoning of citizens.” (Bohman 1998, p.401) \n But how exactly does deliberative democracy’s focus on the public reasoning \n of citizens assist a justification of democracy? Conceptualized ideally, deliberation \n secures the conditions for a fair and morally justified outcome by setting certain con- \n straints into the procedure (e.g. equal regard and respect for all participants). James \n Bohman describes the appeal as follows:","bbox":{"left":0.180126,"top":0.135785,"width":0.675338,"height":0.593396}},{"text":"As both a standard of legitimacy and a model for institutions, an ideal procedure \n is useful in making the normative features of consensus explicit: reasoning in a \n procedure that embodies norms of freedom, equality and publicity would produce \n … an outcome that everyone in principle could accept. (1998, p.402)","bbox":{"left":0.221592,"top":0.749986,"width":0.592367,"height":0.06591199999999997}},{"text":"However, the justificatory problem deliberative democracy was meant to solve \n rises again immediately. For when we ask how the outcome of our deliberation","bbox":{"left":0.180126,"top":0.831972,"width":0.6751499999999999,"height":0.03706299999999996}},{"text":"38","bbox":{"left":0.507976,"top":0.893962,"width":0.019595999999999947,"height":0.017194000000000043}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}