scholarly journals Legitimate Political Authority and Expertise

Legitimacy ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 32-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabienne Peter
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Available P ◽  
Mutual Accountability ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
Stephen Darwall

Can legitimate political authority be based on expertise? Stephen Darwall has argued that it cannot. According to Darwall, legitimate political authority requires a mode of justification involving mutual accountability, which is exemplified by public reason. Darwall has objected to the influential Razian account of legitimate political authority that it conflates expertise and legitimate political authority. In a first move, this chapter defends Raz’s account against Darwall’s objection and argues that expertise can be a ground of legitimate political authority. It also argues that mutual accountability remains important for political legitimacy, however. That is because political decisions often concern complex issues on which sufficiently robust expertise is not available.

Political Legitimacy Under Epistemic Constraints

2019 ◽  
pp. 147-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabienne Peter
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
The Public ◽  
Epistemic Constraints ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
Political Decision Making

The aim of this chapter is to provide an epistemological argument for why public reasons matter for political legitimacy. A key feature of the public reason conception of legitimacy is that political decisions must be justified to the citizens. They must be justified in terms of reasons that are either shared qua reasons or that, while not shared qua reasons, support the same political decision. Call the relevant reasons public reasons. Critics of the public reason conception, by contrast, argue that political legitimacy requires justification simpliciter—political decisions must be justified in terms of the reasons that apply. Call the relevant reasons objective reasons. The debate between defenders and critics of a public reason conception of political legitimacy thus focuses on whether objective reasons or public reasons are the right basis for the justification of political decisions. I will grant to critics of a public reason conception that there are objective reasons and allow that such reasons can affect the legitimacy of political decisions. But I will show, focusing on the epistemic circumstances of political decision-making, that it does not follow that the justification of those decisions is necessarily in terms of those reasons.

Confucianism on Political Legitimacy

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-51
Author(s):  
Tongdong Bai
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The State ◽  
Basic Fact ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Basic Goods ◽  
The People ◽  
Xun Zi ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Political Decisions

This chapter discusses political legitimacy within the Confucian context. It attempts reconcile the early Confucians’ embrace of equality with their defense of hierarchy. The chapter also considers how to reconcile their idea that the legitimacy of the state lies in service to the people, with the idea that it is not the people alone who make the final political decisions. It shows that the lack of capacities of making sound political decisions by the masses cannot result from the failure of the state to secure basic goods, education, and other necessary conditions for people to make sound political decisions, and it has to be the result of a basic fact of human life. That is, in spite of all these governmental efforts that are demanded by them, and in spite of their beliefs that human beings are all potentially equal (Mencius and Xun Zi) or close to being equal (Confucius), early Confucians also took it as a fact of life that the majority of the people cannot actually obtain the capacity necessary to make sound political decisions and participate fully in politics.

Religious Epistemology and the Problem of Public Justification

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Breul
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Religious Convictions ◽  
Epistemic Structure ◽  
Private Matter ◽  
Main Components ◽  
Expressive Dimension

SummaryIn this paper I argue that the debate on the legitimacy of using religious arguments in public discourse displays a one-dimensional understanding of the epistemic structure of religious beliefs. This holds true even for the most recent and most advanced approaches such as Andrew March’s innovative typology of religious arguments. Hence, my first aim in this paper is to provide an analysis of the epistemic structure of religious beliefs. I suggest that religious convictions have two main components: they have a cognitive-propositional dimension (belief) as well as a regulative-expressive dimension (faith). Therefore, they may be intersubjectively accessible, but not mutually acceptable. My second aim in this paper is to show that mutual acceptability is an adequate criterion for political legitimacy. However, although the demands of public reason require mutual acceptability, religious convictions ought not to be privatized as they offer essential input for public discourse beyond public justification. Thus, it is necessary to insist on the mutual acceptability of reasons in public justifications, but this does not imply that religion is a private matter.

scholarly journals An overview of Liberalism Without Perfection

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-11
Author(s):  
Ivan Cerovac
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Overlapping Consensus ◽  
Political Justification ◽  
The Status ◽  
Critical Scrutiny ◽  
The One ◽  
Influential Book

Quong?s influential book probably represents the most sophisticated defence of Rawlsian political liberalism. This review focuses on its content and systematizes it by chapters, emphasizing its relevance both in the first part, where the author puts the liberal perfectionist position under critical scrutiny by advancing three major objections (regarding autonomy, paternalism and political legitimacy), and the second, where the author presents and defends a distinctive version of political liberalism that clearly differs from the one presented by Rawls in several important features. The review also summarizes Quong?s innovative arguments regarding the nature of an overlapping consensus, the structure of political justification, the idea of public reason, and the status of unreasonable persons.

Democracy without Shortcuts

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Lafont
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Democratic Ideal ◽  
Democratic Control ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
Better Than

This book articulates a participatory conception of deliberative democracy that takes the democratic ideal of self-government seriously. It aims to improve citizens’ democratic control and vindicate the value of citizens’ participation against conceptions that threaten to undermine it. The book critically analyzes deep pluralist, epistocratic, and lottocratic conceptions of democracy. Their defenders propose various institutional “shortcuts” to help solve problems of democratic governance such as overcoming disagreements, citizens’ political ignorance, or poor-quality deliberation. However, it turns out that these shortcut proposals all require citizens to blindly defer to actors over whose decisions they cannot exercise control. Implementing such proposals would therefore undermine democracy. Moreover, it seems naïve to assume that a community can reach better outcomes “faster” if it bypasses the beliefs and attitudes of its citizens. Unfortunately, there are no “shortcuts” to making a community better than its members. The only road to better outcomes is the long, participatory road that is taken when citizens forge a collective will by changing one another’s hearts and minds. However difficult the process of justifying political decisions to one another may be, skipping it cannot get us any closer to the democratic ideal. Starting from this conviction, the author defends a conception of democracy “without shortcuts.” This conception sheds new light on long-standing debates about the proper scope of public reason, the role of religion in politics, and the democratic legitimacy of judicial review. It also proposes new ways to unleash the democratic potential of institutional innovations such as deliberative minipublics.

Free Speech and the Duty of Civility

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Bonotti
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Legal Enforcement

This chapter critically examines which arguments for free speech may be consistent with Rawls’s political liberalism, in order to establish whether there are good reasons, within political liberalism, for rejecting the legal implementation of the duty of civility. Among the various arguments for freedom of speech, the chapter argues, only those from democracy and political legitimacy seem to justify Rawls’s opposition to the legal enforcement of the duty of civility. However, the chapter concludes, since Rawls’s own conception of political legitimacy is not merely procedural but grounded in the ideas of public justification and public reason, political liberalism is in principle consistent with some restrictions on free speech, including those which would result from the legal enforcement of the duty of civility.

Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Bonotti
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Overlapping Consensus ◽  
Political Obligations ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
The Stability

Since its publication in 1993, John Rawls’s Political Liberalism has been central to debates concerning political legitimacy, democratic theory, toleration, and multiculturalism in contemporary political theory. Yet, despite the immense body of literature which has been produced since Rawls’s work was published, very little has been said or written regarding the place of political parties and partisanship within political liberalism. This book aims to fill this gap in the literature. Its central argument is that political liberalism needs and nourishes political parties, and that political parties are therefore not hostile but vital to it. First, partisanship generates its own distinctive kind of political obligations, additional to any political obligations people may have qua ordinary citizens. Second, contrary to what many critics argue, and despite its admittedly restrictive features, Rawls’s conception of public reason allows significant scope for partisan advocacy and partisan pluralism, and in fact the very normative demands of partisanship are in syntony with those of public reason. Third, parties contribute to the overlapping consensus that for Rawls guarantees stability in diverse societies. Fourth, political liberalism nourishes political parties, by leaving many issues, including religious and socio-economic ones, open to democratic contestation. In summary, parties contribute both to the legitimacy and to the stability of political liberalism.

Public Reason and Illiberal Democracy

2020 ◽  
pp. 287-302
Author(s):  
Anna Śledzińska-Simon
Keyword(s):  
Majority Rule ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
State Action ◽  
Illiberal Democracy ◽  
Political Advantage ◽  
Rules Of The Game

Illiberal democracy is characterized by four features: pretending to play the democratic rules of the game; instrumental use of the law to gain political advantage; location of the source of political legitimacy in majority rule; and recourse to religiously driven morality as a basis for state action. Paradoxically, in this regime, both legislators and constitutional adjudicators continue to use rational justification to legitimize public policies and court decisions, but the reasons they provide do not indicate an overlapping political consensus on a given matter. This contribution aims to demonstrate that in illiberal democracy public reason ceases to fulfil its two main functions: to discipline those who dominate the political process and to protect the autonomy of those who are prevailed upon. Hence, it argues, public reason in illiberal democracy has a new meaning: it denotes a hierarchy of values that prevail over individual rights and interests.

Tolerating Decent Societies

John Rawls ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 371-382
Author(s):  
Jon Mandle
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Liberal Democratic Society ◽  
Political Decisions

Rawls argues that the public reason of a liberal democratic society should aim to include—and therefore tolerate—all reasonable persons. But the public reason that he defends for the Society of Peoples (globally) is considerably more inclusive. Rawls argues for the toleration of “decent” societies that are not liberal democracies. Critics have charged that such toleration, while perhaps pragmatic, is unprincipled. But a careful examination of Rawls’s criteria for “decency” reveals a defense of Rawls’s position that is grounded in the institutional requirements for a society to be able to make its own legitimate political decisions.

scholarly journals An Introduction to the Problem of Authority

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-29
Author(s):  
Michael Huemer
Keyword(s):  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Jel Classification ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
Physical Force ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
The Government ◽  
Do So

By general consensus, there is a presumption against coercion: Only in a relatively narrow range of circumstances may an individual or group deploy physical force, or threats of physical force, against other individuals or groups. However, these circumstances do not include most of the circumstances in which governments actually deploy force. In other words, the typical behav- ior of governments is behavior that would be considered unacceptable, if adopted by any non-governmental person or group. This happens because the government is thought to have a special kind of authority (political authority), which private individuals and groups lack. The central contention of this paper is that there is nothing special about the state that explains why it would have authority over everyone else. The state, therefore, has only political power, not political authority. That is, it has the ability to coerce other agents and to take their resources, but it has no more moral right to do so than any other agent has. This view leads to a libertarian political philosophy. Keywords: political authority, political legitimacy, political obligation coercion, libertarianism JEL Classification: D63, D74, Z18 Resumen: Por consenso general, existe una presunción contra la coerción: sólo en un rango relativamente estrecho de circunstancias puede un individuo o grupo desplegar fuerza física, o amenazas de fuerza física, contra otros indi- viduos o grupos. Sin embargo, estas circunstancias no incluyen la mayoría de las circunstancias en las que los gobiernos realmente implementan la fuerza.  En otras palabras, el comportamiento típico de los gobiernos es un comportam- iento que se consideraría inaceptable si fuera adoptado por cualquier persona o grupo no gubernamental. Esto sucede porque se piensa que el gobierno tiene un tipo especial de autoridad (autoridad política) de la cual carecen los individuos y grupos privados. El argumento central de este artículo es que no hay nada especial en el estado que explique por qué debería tener autoridad sobre todos los demás. El estado, por lo tanto, sólo tiene poder político, no autoridad política. Es decir, tiene la capacidad de coaccionar a otros agentes y de tomar sus recursos, pero no tiene más derecho moral de hacerlo que cualquier otro agente. Esta visión conduce a una filosofía política libertaria. Palabras clave: autoridad política, legitimidad política, obligación política, coerción, libertarianismo Clasificación JEL: D63, D74, Z18

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