Democratic Legitimacy

by Fabienne Peter

This book offers a systematic treatment of the requirements of democratic legitimacy. It argues that democratic procedures are essential for political legitimacy because of the need to respect value pluralism and because of the learning process that democratic decision-making enables. It proposes a framework for distinguishing among the different ways in which the requirements of democratic legitimacy have been interpreted. Peter then uses this framework to identify and defend what appears as the most plausible conception of democratic legitimacy. According to this conception, democratic legitimacy requires that the decision-making process satisfies certain conditions of political and epistemic fairness.

164 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2005

Reviews

[ART · Rating 4 out of 5]

A reference book (dense, dry) on issues of social choice and deliberative democracy. Peter's own contribution to epistemic deliberative democracy, "pure epistemic proceduralism," which emphasizes pluralism and the social nature of knowledge-production, is a welcome refinement of standard accounts that assume that either objective data or common goals can justify an inclusive deliberative procedure. In Peter's view, taking "biases as resources" justify equal and inclusive procedures without a problematic reference to an external standard. While it does lay out the most important issues in deliberative democracy and focuses on the constructive function of deliberation, the book is not sufficiently attentive to deliberative practice and its bodily dimensions. But, perhaps this is to be expected from analytic philosophy.