On Justifying Democracy (Routledge Library Editions:Political Science Volume 11) by William Nelson

Author:William Nelson [Nelson, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781135027148
Google: 8bBTAQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-10-17T11:46:33+00:00

Conclusions

Since Chapter III I have argued that a justification of democracy requires a conception of what democracy is together with a demonstration that democracy so conceived is at least as likely as any other kind of system to produce morally acceptable legislation. The theories discussed in Chapters II and III largely ignored evaluations of the likely outcomes of the democratic process. The theories discussed in Chapter IV were concerned with outcomes, but what they demanded of outcomes is of dubious moral value, and, in any case, seems to represent an unfeasible goal. The economic theorists discussed in the present chapter are seriously concerned to predict the likely results of democratic politics; and insofar as they are concerned with justification, they would argue for democracy by reference to its consequences. Though their approach is more formal, their conclusions about the nature of the system are not unlike the conclusions of political scientists who see democratic politics as a system for adjudicating among and responding to the demands of shifting pressure groups in a pluralistic society.17 But while their attempt to understand and evaluate the system in terms of its consequences represents, in my view, an appropriate approach to democratic theory, I believe it has not yielded an adequate moral justification for the system. Either they have ignored features of systems like ours that have significant effects on the range of likely outcomes, or we must redefine democracy, or democracy is not a particularly good form of government.

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