Christiano - Freedom, Consensus, and Equality in Collective Decision Making

Freedom, Consensus, and Equality in Collective Decision Making Author(s): Thomas Christiano Reviewed work(s): Source: Ethics, Vol.
101, No. 1 (Oct., 1990), pp. 151-181 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381897 . Accessed: 30/11/2012 16:09
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SURVEY ARTICLE
Freedom, Consensus, and Equality in Collective Decision Making* Thomas Christiano
This article examines three different approaches to the philosophical foundations of democracy. The idea has been to address basic normative theories of the justification of democracy. These theories differ in how they found democracy, the values they take to be basic, and also in how they conceive of democratic institutions. This is as it should be; the attempts of some to find the right definition of "democracy" and then to base arguments on such a definition is clearly a misguided enterprise.' "Democracy" is a generic term which may be vaguely but not very helpfully defined as a society in which all or most of the population has the opportunity jointly to play an essential if not always very formative role in the determination of legislation and policy. More than that we cannot say. The proper task for philosophers is to determine fundamental principles for social and political theory and then to show that some species of democratic rule is defensible on the basis of these principles. Before proceeding to a discussion of the theories, it will be useful to introduce a distinction. There are instrumentalist, intrinsic, and mixed arguments for democracy. Instrumentalists argue for democracy by showing that the consequences of having democratic institutions are desirable. They may argue that democratic institutions promote the greatest welfare either because the legislation is good or because of the effect the institutions have on the participants (Mill 1958). Or they may simply argue that democratic institutions tend to producejust legislation or protect liberty (Nelson 1980; Riker 1982). Benevolent dictatorships could do as well, instrumentalists argue, but it is highly unlikely that they will. A benevolent dictatorship would be equally defensible if it did produce equally good outcomes and better if it produced better outcomes. Intrinsic arguments, on the other hand, call attention to some intrinsically valuable qualities in democracy (J. Cohen 1989; Singer 1974). They are independent of whatever desirable or undesirable effects democratic institutions have. And some thinkers defend democracy on the basis of these intrinsic merits alone. Mixed theories defend democracy on the basis of intrinsic merits but regard the consequences of democratic decision making as having great importance in the overall assessment of democratic in* I have benefited greatly from discussion with Richard Arneson, Daniel Brudney, John Christman, Patrick Croskery, and Russell Hardin and the written comments of Joshua Cohen, Carol Gould, and William Nelson. Many disagreements remain, and I have followed my own judgment in these cases. 1. For one among many such attempts, see Arblaster (1987). Ethics 101 (October 1990): 151-181 ? 1990 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/91/0101-0009$01.00
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stitutions (Christiano 1989; Gould 1988; Rawls 1972). Such views give democracy intrinsic worth on some matters but look to the consequences of the institutions on other matters. On occasion such theories will require that trade-offs be made between the different standards of assessment. I shall focus exclusively on some main foundational theories in democratic theory, and I shall be concerned with whether these theories can provide a reasonable approach to democracy. Thus I shall not discuss the merits of the foundational theories except insofar as they bear on issues in democratic theory. Unfortunately, exhaustiveness is impossible to achieve in an article of this length, so I have restricted myself to examining what I take to be three recent well-developed sets of theories which embody very different foundational commitments. I discuss what I call positive liberty, contractualist, and egalitarian theories respectively in the following three parts.2 It will be clear from this survey that there are no clear winners and losers in this debate. All of these theories meet with a variety of problems.3 Positive liberty theories found democracy on the basis of the claim that democratic participation is a necessary component of liberty. Such theories face a variety of difficulties. Two stand out: (1) it is hard to explain why individuals should not be permitted to trade off their own particular political liberty for other personal liberties; if individuals would be granted this permission, then the result might well be an inequality in political liberties; (2) there is a deep tension between the idea that individuals should be free with respect to the world they share in common with others and the claim that this freedom should be equally distributed. It is hard to see how I can be free to have my way with regard to the common when what occurs must be the result of the assent of many others. These difficulties are addressed by some contractualist theorists. They invoke a more substantive conception of positive liberty to include a requirement to promote the common good and to do so through reasoned deliberation. Conflicts between citizens over the common are interpreted as conflicts of judgment regarding the common good, and the outcome of decision making is understood as most likely to be in the public interest. But this kind of view relies too heavily on the possibility of an underlying consensus for it to give us even an ideal account of democracy. Also it does not entirely escape the problem of trade-offs. Other contractualist arguments for democracy tend also to rely too heavily on consensus in various ways. On the other hand, the egalitarian theories I discuss start from the existence of irresolvable conflict of preference and convictions, and democracy is thought to be ajust or fair way of making decisions regarding the common life of citizens. But some of these theories face a difficulty of self-defeatingness given their commitment to skepticism and irresolvable disagreement. Finally, I discuss a theory which attempts to interpret conflict in terms of differing interests regarding
2. The distinctions between these different kinds of arguments are not hard and fast. In particular, some forms of contractualism seem to be based on conceptions of positive liberty while others are interest based. For that reason, I discuss one of the arguments for democracy that positive liberty theorists give in the section on contractualist views. 3. Methodologically, I follow the practice of giving detailed expositions of those theorists whom I regard as having the best versions of these theories. I supplement the account with ideas provided by other sympathetic thinkers, and sometimes I amend the theories when and where they can withstand criticisms which were not handled by the original theorist. I do this in order to avoid the distortions and other pitfalls of giving completely abstract accounts of ideas with which I may not entirely sympathize.
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the common and democracy as a principle of equality of resources for control over the common. There is a trade-off problem for this kind of theory as well since individuals may wish to trade their political resources for economic resources. But the theory can accommodate this problem. It is harder for this view to give an adequate interpretation of the role of deliberation as opposed to mere coalition building and bargaining in politics. POSITIVE LIBERTY ARGUMENTS
Argument TheFundamental
I shall begin with a presentation of Carol Gould's discussion of the argument from positive liberty so as to set the framework for an examination of this whole class of theories. The basic argument can be stated in the following claims: (1) The fundamental value in politics is that of freedom. (2) Freedom must ultimately be understood as self-development (Gould 1988, p. 45). (3) Each has an equal right to the conditions of self-development (Gould 1988, p. 61). (4) Participation in determining common activities is a necessary condition of self-development (Gould 1988, p. 78). (5) Therefore, each person has an equal right to participate in determining the course of common activities they are involved with (Gould 1988, p. 85). Let us look at each premise in turn. The first premise is based on a kind of Kantian argument. It is based on the claims that (a) an action is valuable if and only if it is free. Freedom is the condition under which any action and ultimately any object have value for a person; (b) insofar as freedom is the condition under which any action has value, free action reflexively confers value on itself (Gould 1988, p. 63). Each person has a claim or basic interest in freedom, and that claim is a valid claim insofar as freedom is the basis of all value. The notion of freedom must be spelled out. It involves (1) the fact of agency, that is, a capacity to make a choice; (2) my ability to carry out choices without the interference of others; (3) my possession of the means for carrying out my choices and, finally and most important, (4) self-development, which amounts to the autonomous formation of my own character and my being able in the fullest sense to carry out long-term projects.4 Gould appeals to the idea that individuals have a natural tendency to self-development and that the fulfillment of this tendency is what is important about notions of liberty. The idea of character and choice are to be understood in a content-neutral way. Individuals must choose the long-term projects and character traits they wish to develop. This condition ensures that the person is the author of his own life.5 In defense of the third claim, Gould asserts that all human beings have the basic capacity for self-development equally, and they all have a right to exercise it. Since all human beings have a tendency to self-development whose value is affirmed in their actions and the exercise of that capacity requires conditions, each person has a claim to the conditions of self-development. Without these conditions, the freedom would be empty. From these two claims, Gould infers
4. For a related notion of freedom and another argument for this kind of analysis, see Taylor (1979b) and Elster (1986b). 5. This is what distinguishes Gould's view from that of MacPherson (1973) who spells out a theory of essential human capacities which are exercised in the process of selfdevelopment. Gould seems to avoid this kind of theory out of a concern to avoid the objections of Berlin (1969).
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that individuals have a valid claim on the conditions of self-development. But since they are equal with respect to the possession of the basic capacity, they each have a prima facie equal right to the conditions of self-development.6 This principle of equal positive freedom is her basic principle of justice. The application of this principle to democracy follows from the fact that individuals pursue their self-development necessarily in two different contexts. They pursue personal projects and goals which do not require the cooperation of others (at least not locally), and they pursue activities which are "common." These require the willing cooperation of others and have as their goals objects which could not be achieved by individual action. Such activities determine much of what we are. Gould argues, therefore, that insofar as self-development requires that we are the determiners of our own characters as well as the ends we pursue, participation in determining the course of these common activities is a necessary condition for self-development. There are three ways in which participation contributes to self-development. These are the bases of two different positive liberty arguments for democracy. (1) Participation tends to form a person's character insofar as it demands that participants be capable ofjustifying their views of how things should go to others, it requires that they be open to a multiplicity of points of view, and it requires that a person be capable of taking other persons' points of view seriously enough to accommodate them. These are character traits that indiviuduals acquire from being active citizens (Gould 1988, p. 79). (2) Insofar as others participate and develop these capacities, participation will involve members' mutually supporting each other's concerns, enhance the self-esteem of each of the members, and provide conditions under which the first effect of participation on self-development can be fully realized (Gould 1988, p. 73). Inasmuch as participation has been thought to contribute to self-development, this has been offered as an argument for democracy. Let us call it the participation argument. (3) Most important, the common activities have three main effects: (a) they determine the environment within which our characters are formed; (b) they are the necessary basis of products which we use to pursue our purposes; and (c) they form the circumstances in which we define our projects. Intuitively, positive liberty theorists argue that if one does not participate in determining the course of these common activities others will be able to impose upon us the basic aspects of our characters and projects. Hence our participation in determining the common activities is necessary if we are to be the authors of our own lives (Gould 1988, p. 79; J. Cohen 1986b; Taylor 1979a; Graham 1986). Let us call this the argument from self-rule. From the principles of equal positive liberty and the conception of the person as essentially bound up with common activities, Gould derives the conclusion that each person has an equal right to participate in determining the course of the common activities they engage in. This she calls the "principle of democracy" (Gould 1988, p. 84). Problemswith Participation and Self-Development I shall first discuss the argument from participation and three objections: the self-defeatingness argument, the claim that participation is not necessary to selfdevelopment, and finally what I call the trade-off problem. The first two are
6. Gould introduces some other potentially conflicting principles in chap. 7, hence the qualification "prima facie."
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addressed to different theories within the broadly described "participationist" school (Arendt 1963; Bacharach 1967; Mill 1958; Pateman 1970, 1985). In the next section I will examine some versions of the argument from self-rule. Part of Gould's argument for democracy is that the interaction required in it has an effect on the characters of the participants. It produces the peculiar traits of citizenship. This has been a standard claim for participationists. Many participationists are primarily concerned with showing that participatory institutions would not have the deleterious effect on collective decision making that theorists such as Schumpeter claimed they would have (Schumpeter 1956). They argue that the more individuals participate in decision making, the more adept they will become at doing so, and that the net effect on collective decision making would actually be an improvement over a less participatory decision-making process. In addition, Gould argues that this effect on character is not only instrumentally valuable but that it is intrinsically valuable as well because of its relation to self-development. One objection to such an argument for participation has been presented by Jon Elster (Elster 1983). He claims that such "arguments for political institutions and constitutions are self-defeating since they justify the arrangements in question by effects that are essentially by-products" (Elster 1983, p. 92). A by-product for Elster is a result of an activity which one cannot intentionally or intelligently bring about by that activity. The paradigm examples are sleep and belief. We cannot intentionally and directly aim at falling asleep without undermining our plan to fall asleep.7 Elster objects that the main benefit or purpose of a political system cannot be found in the educative effect on citizens. He claims that if democracy is not superior to other systems of decision making in terms of its justice or efficiency, then it cannot be publicly advocated for its educative effect. This is because the educative effect of democracy is a by-product. If "the democratic method were introduced solely because of its side effects. . . and no one believed in it on any other grounds, it would not produce them" (Elster 1983, p. 96). These are not the only grounds of Gould's advocacy of democracy, but Elster'sobjection would fail even if that were her only argument. The last supporting premise is ambiguous. The antecedent may refer either to an advantage of democracy over other forms of government or to the desirability of democracy over no system of political decision making. Elster's argument might work if we interpret the antecedent in the second way, but the participationist arguments generally refer to the first. They do not deny that, as Brian Barry has said, "politics is a serious business" and that the actual substance of political decision making is important. Their theses are concerned with how one should go about making those decisions. It is perfectly coherent to claim that political decisions are of fundamental significance for people while asserting that what makes democracy preferable to other methods of making such decisions is its educative effect. This rationale need in no way undermine the seriousness of citizens when they confront the hard issues of politics in a democratic context. We might think of democratic institutions as regulating the process of decision making and, to use Elster's terms, a kind of indirect technology for the production of desirable 7. Of course, we can fall asleep by intentionallyusing a kind of indirect technology such as sleeping pills or distractingourselvesby thinkingof some soothing object,but the first technology is unaffectedby whether we are aiming at sleeping or not and the second relies on our being distractedfrom aiming at sleeping.
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character traits in citizens (Elster 1983, p. 53). Self-development is a by-product of citizens' having to resolve political questions in a democratic context. One might ask, however, whether participation in determining the course of common activities is a necessary condition of self-development in the way that Gould describes. Commenting on earlier, less sophisticated theories, William Nelson argues that the capacities which result from participation are not necessarily desirable qualities and that the desirability of many such capacities is predicated on the desirability of participatory institutions themselves (Nelson 1980). Hence, it is not clear that the production of these character traits is a possible justificatory ground for democratic participation. The issue is a serious one for Gould since she endorses a conception of self-development which avoids any appeal to essential human attributes and which requires that self-developing persons decide for themselves what qualities they are to develop (Gould 1988, p. 52). She does not defend the objective worth of any traits of character; these traits must simply be essentially tied to the process of self-development. She lists a number of character traits which democratic institutions tend to foster: a tendency to rationally justify one's actions to others, openness toward others' views and opinions, and more generally, a disposition to reciprocity which is a capacity and tendency to take other people's interests seriously as on an equal footing with one's own (Gould 1988, p. 291). Also she thinks that participation gives individuals "the opportunity to exercize and develop their social, moral and intellectual capacities" (Gould 1988, p. 79). We might ask, Is democracy necessary for these traits? and, How are these traits connected with self-development? Consider these two questions from the point of view of the individual alone first. The claim that democracy is necessary for the development of these traits seems overstated. It is certainly the case that individuals have had these qualities in a wide variety of circumstances. Also, it seems wrong to claim that they are essentially tied to self-development in the content-neutral way that Gould describes. There are two ways in which one might argue that they are so tied. One is that any self-developing individual would tend to develop these qualities as outcomes of a process of self-development. But this claim seems to be false. We can certainly imagine individuals who are autonomous and free thanks to a life of solitary contemplation but, due to such a life, they are less than enthusiastic about listening to the positions or being concerned with the interests of others. Another interpretation of the claim that these traits are essentially tied to self-development may be that these are the best all-purpose means to self-development. Virtually anyone might benefit by possessing them. They are a kind of psychological primary good. Of course, the analogy between traits of open mindedness and the capacity to give reasons and goods like money and power may break down. At some point, increases in the former may bring harmful marginal results such as indecisiveness while more money or power may have diminishing but never negative marginal returns. If we consider that in a democracy most will acquire these traits, then it is plausible that democratic institutions are most likely to produce such traits of character. Individuals would benefit from having these traits and would also benefit from others' willingness to engage in open-minded, rational debate. It should be clear, however, that (1) not all forms of self-development need be furthered by these traits and (2) we cannot say more than that democracy is most likely to promote these traits.
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These two concessions are important because Gould's argument works only if it can be shown that democratic participation is necessary for self-development. Gould rightly thinks there are activities outside participation in which one can pursue self-development. And they require conditions as well. But if participation is only conducive and not necessary to self-development, it is not clear why the principle of equal positive freedom should apply directly to determining the course of common activities. A general principle of equality of conditions for positive freedom does not entail directly that every kind of condition of positive freedom must be distributed equally. All that is entailed is that each person's bundle of resources should be equal to everyone else's. If some pursue selfdevelopment in a way that requires little or no political participation, they would not need opportunities to participate in collective decision making in their bundle of resources. Therefore, the principle of equal positive freedom does not entail a principle of democracy. This is what I call the trade-off problem. Gould would respond that not to have the opportunities to participate in the common activities in which they are involved is to be dominated by those who do have them. And this domination by others is more serious than the case in which a person has the opportunity but intends never to exercise it. In favor of this, one might argue that to forfeit all opportunities of participation may subject one to the risk of being enslaved. But as long as we assume that all persons' total bundles of resources for self-development remain equal, this danger cannot arise. Hence, it is not clear why the having of an unused opportunity to participate makes one more free than the circumstance in which one has forgone that opportunity for some other resource. Indeed, it may be argued that a greater liberty is afforded citizens if they have the freedom to make exchanges. As long as overall equality were maintained the more particular equalities might legitimately be disrupted. But if this were permitted, the outcome would not necessarily be democratic. Participationand Freedomto Determinethe Courseof CommonActivities Historically, the most important argument for democracy has been on the basis of a principle of self-rule (Rousseau 1967). I will review two versions of this argument: one in this section and the other in the part on contractualist theories. MYcritical remarks will focus on two main objections: the incompatibility objection and the trade-off problem, and attempts to evade these difficulties. The self-rule argument begins with the premise that human beings are social beings in three main ways: their characters, goals, and knowledge are socially conditioned; the wealth, institutions, education, and other means by which to further their ends are based on the activities of many people working in concert; and their projects are to a great extent defined in terms of a set of social relations.8 Insofar as these are social products, the only way in which persons can be said to be selfdeveloping is if they have a part in determining all of this cooperative activity. Free persons will wish that the circumstances in which they live and which they share with others be a product of their own free action. Rousseau's view, Cohen argues, is that "a [self-consciously free] person wants more than the availability of alternatives within a system of laws and institutions that they view as a set of constraints imposed by others on their action. Rather, they want to be able to regard those institutional constraints as themselves conforming to their own
8. See Sher (1989) for a good discussion of various forms of social involvement.
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judgments of what is right.... The free person wants to affirm the framework of rules itself; they want to 'have their own will as a rule"' (J. Cohen 1986b, p. 286). From here, we can establish a more direct relation between participation and freedom. In this section I will discuss one interpretation of "having one's own will as a rule." It is that the common activities are subject to their actual choice. Participation is a necessary part of self-development, because one thereby chooses the circumstances which determine one's life. Participation is free action, and living in a society in which one participates in determining its character is part of being a free person. One is not merely free concerning the choice of whether to participate or even how one should participate. The claim is that one exercise one's freedom with regard to the nature of the society one lives in. One lives subject only to laws that one chooses. There is an obvious difficulty here. I cannot be free to determine the course of an activity I share in common with others in a democracy. For whatever I want done must require the assent of some proportion of the other participants. This seems like a paradigmatic case of unfreedom. With regard to the common activity C which is democratically controlled by all the participants, I may be free to participate or not, and to participate in whatever way I wish, but I am not free to dispose of C as I wish. Put briefly, if I share roughly equal control over the common activities, then I am not free with respect to C. And if I am free with respect to C, then I have more than equal control. This is the incompatibility problem; it asserts an incompatibility between democracy and self-rule. In response to this, Gould claims that a different kind of freedom is involved: "since the form of such common activity differs from individual activity, in which one makes decisions about one's own actions independently of others, the nature of decision making in common activity must also differ" (Gould 1988, p. 89). Let us look at some proposals concerning the nature of collective decision making and how it is an exercise of freedom despite the problem above. One argument that Gould and others have given is "participation in joint decision making remains an exercise of autonomy, inasmuch as the individuals have freely chosen to participate in the activity and in the determination of the shared ends" (Gould 1988, p. 233). This claim can be interpreted in two ways. It may merely mean that I am more free if I am permitted to participate than if I have no such permission. But, from this version of the claim above it does not follow that my participation itself is an exercise of freedom with regard to the common activity in the sense that the rules determining the common activity are self-imposed. The scope of this freedom is just my action of participation. Furthermore, if this first interpretation is correct, it is not clear that this particular freedom is necessary to self-development. It is true that all other things being equal, I am more free if I may participate in joint decision making since I have one more opportunity. But it does not establish that the freedom to participate or not will increase my freedom all things considered. This can only be evaluated from the point of view of the overall effects of a system of participatory democracy on the society as well as on the individual, and it is not clear which way the evidence points for a society as a whole. Also, it is not clear, as I argued above, given the aims of some individuals that this is necessary to increase their freedom. Another interpretation is that my freely chosen participation constitutes a kind of free endorsement of the outcome of the joint decision-making process even when the decision is quite different from the outcome I desired (see Gould [1988], pp. 232-39, for another version of this). This kind of argument is similar
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to arguments that suggest that individuals indirectly consent to the outcomes of decision procedures when they freely participate in them. But it is false to say that individuals consent through their participation since someone can actually say without incoherence that they do not consent to outcomes they oppose by their participation. Some have claimed that participants do something like freely consent when they participate and thereby incur a self-imposed obligation to comply with the outcomes (Singer 1974, p. 50; Plamenatz 1963, p. 239; Jenkins 1970, p. 60). This may be a way of understanding the idea that one imposes the rules of the common activity on oneself. This is Singer's argument: 1. If there is a continuing system of voting, then that system must be such that individuals generally comply with the outcomes of the votes. Otherwise, the system would go out of existence. 2. Hence, if X votes, it is reasonable to expect that X will comply with the results and to rely on that compliance. 3. If by X's conduct, one is reasonably led to rely on X's compliance with the results of the vote, then X has an obligation to comply with the results of the vote. But this argument rests on an equivocation. Premise 2 is not equivalent to the antecedent of premise 3. It may be true that we can expect participants in a voting system to comply with the outcome of the vote, but this is quite different from claiming that they put me in the position of relying on them by participating in the voting procedure. Yet the latter is required at least for them to incur an obligation to comply with the outcome of the vote (Nelson 1980, p. 44; Christiano 1989, pp. 19-24). The same problem holds for the argument that since I cannot expect unanimous agreement and I know that the common activity cannot proceed if dissenters refuse to go along with the outcome, my free action of participating constitutes a free endorsement of the outcome of decision making. It should be noted that this version of the argument may work for very small groups where participation may be the best sign that the participant is willing to comply with whatever choice is made and where that sign is crucial for relying on the participant, but the argument does not generalize to larger groups and in particular not to the state since citizens hardly can or do rely on each others' compliance with the law on the basis of their participation. A second argument for the claim that participation can lead to the free selfimposition of the law is presented by Graham (1986). His argument is that in common activities, individuals' desires and goals are likely to conflict, and, insofar as their desires conflict, their autonomous activities conflict. Hence, it is sometimes necessary to limit some peoples' autonomous activity in favor of others. Since conflict is inevitable and must be resolved somehow we must give up the idea that the right to autonomy operates as a side constraint and think of autonomy as a goal to be maximized. This will resolve conflicts of autonomy. The best way to maximize autonomy in common activities is to introduce majority rule where, in each case, conflicts of autonomy between different individuals are resolved in favor of the greater number of individuals and therefore the greater amount of autonomy. Each inference is problematic here, but what this argument seems to imply is that a great deal of democracy will always maximize freedom. The argument is at this point an instrumentalist one, and it is not clear whether given all the evidence it will produce an argument for democracy or not. This is so if we take
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into account the fact that we may be free in ways that are independent of participation and that the outcomes of democratic decision making may restrict that freedom. Furthermore it assumes the claim that merely to get what you want is a case of freedom if you participated in the action that got you what you wanted even though you could not have gotten it if others had not assented. It is unclear still whether participation constitutes an exercise of freedom over outcomes at all. Let us look at this more closely. Perhaps one can argue that we are freer with respect to some outcome range if we have more power or resources with which to determine that outcome. That freedom would be compatible with a total absence of effect on the outcome. We might say that there is a kind of analogy between having more money to buy some object and having more resources with which to determine the outcome of a collective decision process. We might then say that the more resources we have to influence some outcome, the freer we are. But both cases are cases in which one's desire can be blocked by someone else (seller or other voters) depending on their preferences. The increase of resources does not in itself increase my freedom to do something unless I can do that thing without the assent of others. Perhaps we could modify this stringent condition by claiming that once I have the assent of others to my choosing between a and b, then I am free to choose between a and b. Hence, once a seller has agreed to sell me an object at the price I offered, then I am free to buy the object or not, even though I was not free to do so before they agreed to sell it to me. Remember that in the democratic case a and b do not stand for my actions merely but for the outcomes of the decision procedure. But this condition will be satisfied in a democracy only in very rare circumstances, namely, when my wishes are the same as the majority's wishes and when my vote can be said to be decisive in some sense. Even on the broadest possible account of decisiveness, I will rarely be free to determine the course of common activities. Moreover, that freedom will be quite limited since it will only exist after the agenda has been formulated and the alternatives are supported fairly evenly by all the other members. This would be a freedom that would appear only at the very end of the decision-making process. Surely this is not what these theorists have in mind.9 Hence, it appears that the first two arguments do not adequately support the contention that democratic participation is an instance of freedom over the common life. I shall discuss another argument for this position in the next section. CONTRACTUALIST ARGUMENTS Contractualism has been another important source ofjustification in democratic theory. The contractualist conception of morality can be expressed by means of the formula provided by Thomas Scanlon: "An action is wrong if its performance under the circumstances would be dissallowed by any system of rules for the regulation of behavior which no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced general agreement" (Scanlon 1982, p. 110). Such a principle has also 9. It might be objected that my criticismrelies on an identificationof democratic participationwith voting. And this is certainlynot all that is involved in democracy.My response is that voting is an important part of democraticdecision making, especiallyin cases of conflict, and that any theory of democracymust give a reasonableaccount of its role.
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been applied to specifically political justification. The idea has been that the basic structure of society or that laws and policies should conform to principles that no one could reasonably reject. Such views are generally quite different from what are described as contractarian positions. The latter type theory is based on the idea that individuals with self-interested motives will bargain over the cooperative surplus that is produced in joint activities (Gauthier 1986). Political institutions are seen by these theorists as the outcome of bargaining processes among rationally self-interested persons (Buchanan and Tullock 1962).10 The emphasis in contractualist views, on the other hand, is on the notion of "reasonableness" in contrast to rational self-interest. Though this notion is differently understood by different theorists, it is minimally different from rationalist views in that the individuals attempt to reach agreement by appealing to more than just the distribution of power among the parties. They wish to take each others' interests into account not merely in order to advance their own good but in order to advance everyone's good. The bases that have been offered as justification for this way of conceiving of political justification are: (1) skepticism about externally defended moral and political principles; (2) the idea that "institutions that can be justified in this way come as close as possible to the ideal of respect for each person's final authority over the conduct of her own life" (Beitz 1989, p. 104); and (3) the claim that moral principles motivate and that there is a specifically moral kind of motivation which is that individuals desire to be able to justify their actions to others. These latter two ideas are founded in different philosophical traditions: positive liberty (Rousseau 1967) and Humean, and I shall discuss theories of each type in turn. Recent contractualist theories of political justificatioin of democracy have ranged over a spectrum of views from the claim that democratic institutions would be the object of agreement among individuals who were devising rules such that no one could reasonably reject them (Beitz 1989), to the view that democratic institutions, suitably described, would themselves be the circumstances in which reasonable agreements about political institutions could be made (J. Cohen 1989). In the middle stands a view that democratic institutions are sufficiently like circumstances of reasonable agreement that they are likely to produce legislation which is morally acceptable from a contractualist point of view (Nelson 1980).
Positive and the Common Good Liberty

Some contractualist arguments such as those which have their inspiration in Rousseau are founded on a particular conception of positive liberty (J. Cohen 1986a, 1986b; Dent 1989). They employ a version of the argument from positive liberty which relies on a more substantial notion of liberty than the theories outlined in the first part. The boldest expression of this notion of liberty can be expressed in the following way: a free person must promote the common good in collective decision making. With respect to decisions concerning the common activities, in order to be free a person must promote the common good. This version of the argument provides a different gloss on the notion, mentioned earlier, of "having one's own will as a rule." The notion of the will in such theories goes beyond mere reflective choice and involves a substantive commitment to the common good.
10. For discussion of this important class of theories, see the essays in Brennan and Lomasky (1989) as well as critiques in Nelson (1980) and Barry (1965).
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The argument for this principle is: (1) It is a condition of my own full, secure, self-possession of my personhood that I acknowledge and meet others as free and equal persons. The arguments for this crucial premise are that my recognition of myself as a human being depends on my having some significance for others. We depend crucially on the esteem and respect of others to even have a conception of ourselves as moral persons. If nothing I ever do commands respect from others or moves others to action on a voluntary basis my conception of myself might be incapacitating. My capacities require a social context for their realization. But the condition under which others give me the respect and esteem I need, must be that they share an equal status with me. The approbation of children or insane persons is not sufficient for my self-esteem. I need the presence of other individuals who are equals at least in their moral and intellectual capacities. Nor am I moved by the esteem of those who are forced to say good things of me. They must have the real opportunity to express their approval and disapproval in actions or words. Hence, I cannot merely treat others as individuals whose interests and needs and understanding are completely insignificant to me, for if I do that then I stand alone and cannot have the esteem I need (Elster 1986b; Hegel 1977, pp. 111-18). This will mean that I cannot reasonably act without reference to the being and needs of others. (2) If I cannot rightly demand that I decide and act without reference to the being and needs of others, then I must act in accordance with that rule which is for the common good and not merely my own isolated good. A further premise states that (3) what is a requirement for my personhood is not a violation of my freedom but rather a requirement for my being free. Therefore, (4) being required to follow a rule which is for the common good is a necessary component of my freedom (Dent 1989, chaps. 4-5). There are some difficulties which should be noted with this argument: (a) it is not clear that the equality that is required is strong enough to motivate a concern for the common good; one might still will that one be preeminent among persons who have the minimal capacities to appreciate one's projects. Also (b) it does not appear necessary that one think of all people in this way; hence it may be necessary that I have some companions who are equals in some way to me but the universal equality that seems to underlie a concern for the common good does not seem necessary for my self-esteem. An aristocratic society founded on inequality does not seem inconsistent with the first premises of this argument. The next step in the argument, will be to show that (5) deciding and acting in accordance with the common good not only involves obedience to the rule which is for the common good but also consists in determining what that rule is. This is a crucial step for theorists of democracy. This premise asserts an intrinsic connection between the common good and democratic participation. It does not merely assert that democratic participation is a reliable way of securing laws that accord with the common good. That would not be strong enough for the argument to go through. The notion of the common good is not definable independently of the idea of democratic deliberation. The reason for this is the following. The common good is not understood as some function of interests and convictions which are given prior to democratic decision making. Instead such decision making has a transformative effect on those interests. Deliberation shapes our conception of the common good and insofar as we wish to decide and act in harmony with the common good this deliberation also transforms our personal interests and convictions themselves (J. Cohen 1989, p. 29). Hence,
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the common good is intrinsically connected to the outcome of democratic deliberation. This is where the idea of the epistemic conception of democracy comes in. The idea is that (6) participating in a democracy consists in deliberating about and voting for certain conceptions of the common good and that this will realize each person's interest in promoting the common good. Citizens participate in democratic processes ideally by advancing opposing conceptions of the common good and trying to secure reasoned agreement on these conceptions. When deliberation ends, citizens vote on the basis of what they conceive to be the correct conception of the common good. Finally, the position that garners the most support in the process is thought to be that position for which there is the most evidence that it is the common good. It has the force of the better argument on its side. This will be true especially if we assume roughly equal judgmental competence among the citizens and they have a more than fifty/fifty chance of being right about the common good. In such a circumstance, majority rule will be the best rule for producing outcomes which are the common good (J. Cohen 1986b; Coleman and Ferejohn 1986; Manin 1987; Rousseau 1967, bk. 4).11 Of course other rules and institutions may, under different circumstances, be more likely to produce alternatives which are in accordance with the common good. This provides the solution to the problem of incompatibility which was discussed in the first part since the free person will affirm the results of the decision making even if she voted against it. Hence, participation in democratic processes is compatible with freedom with regard to the common activities we engage in. Also, it appears that democratic participation is a necessary condition of freedom. But there is still a problem with premise 5. The argument for it does not establish a sufficiently strong version of the claim. It is one thing to argue that deliberation plays a crucial role in improving the understanding that individuals have of the common good. It is another thing to argue that the common good is to be understood only as the outcome of deliberation. The stronger claim does not follow from the argument for premise 5, while the weaker claim does. Deliberation will advance the common good, but this is because it is a good means to advancing it; it does not define it. This is important since positive liberty theorists wish to avoid the claim that deliberation and democratic participation is a good in and of itself and a necessary part of the good life."2 But if democratic deliberation cannot be thought of as more than a means to advancing the common good it cannot be seen as a necessary condition for being a free person even if the claim that a free person must advance the common good is true. It is still the case that a person or group of persons might prefer to pursue more fervently their own personal good rather than deliberate over conceptions of the common good. As long as it is thought that there are two different contexts for self-development, as all these theorists think, it is possible for there to be a trade-off between the freedom that is had in participation and the freedom that can be experienced in the pursuit of one's own personal projects. If so, then it will still not be true that participation is a necessary condition of freedom overall.
11. Such arguments were originally expressed by Aristotle (1988, bk. 4). 12. Civic republicans, whose theories I do not discuss here, do advance such a position (see, e.g., Arendt 1963; Sunstein 1985).
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Another premise may help secure the conclusion that democratic participation is not only free action but a necessary condition for any freedom. I shall call this the primacy principle. This principle states that the primary influences on individuals' lives are the social and political institutions that can be produced by collective decision making. Of course the meaning of "primary" is unclear. It might mean: (1) the only influences on our lives, at least when considered cumulatively, are the social and political institutions we live under; or (2) these institutions are more significant influences than all the other influences put together; or (3) these influences are the most significant of all. Version 1 seems to be clearly false, and version 3 seems clearly too weak to support the argument that participation is necessary for freedom overall. Only version 2 has a chance of being both plausible and strong enough to support the argument. The Trade-offArgumentAgain As stated above, one difficulty is that the requirements of participation and deliberation may reduce the amount of time and energy one may wish to contribute to the pursuit of personal goals-all of this not because participation is a good in itself but rather because it is a condition for that freedom which is peculiarly political. The loss of some freedom to pursue personal goods is not a loss to freedom overall only if the primacy principle is sufficiently strong to justify the claim that participation is necessary for freedom overall. But it is not clear that this principle can sustain that weight. Let us distinguish between the primacy principle and some other principles that are similar. First, the primacy principle is not the same as the first premise of the general argument. The first premise says that other free and equal people are necessary for one's self-development. But this is a much weaker claim than the idea that the social and political institutions that one lives under are the principal influences on one's life. The first principle has a far wider scope, including all social relationships. The primacy principle may be thought to be the claim that the social world that one lives in is the most important determinant of one's life. But while the latter claim is surely true it is not the same as the primacy principle. The social world one lives in is affected by many more things than social and political institutions, especially if one espouses a principle of pluralism. A member of a pluralistic society will be a member of voluntary and involuntary groups including universities, families, religious groups, and so on. Some aspects of these groups will be shaped by the basic social and political institutions, but many will not. And they will have a very serious formative effect on their members. They will also have a large effect on nonmembers. Furthermore, the effects that social and political institutions have on many of the prominent elements of smaller groups as well as other social phenomena are frequently diffuse and unintended, while each person's contribution to those outcomes is likely to be very small for any sufficiently large society. Hence, it is simply not clear that a person must participate in choosing those institutions in order to be free given the ample opportunities for pursuing self-development in less collective realms. Free persons may well be content to pursue their self-development through the alternatives available under the system of laws which they recognize as being for the common good while not actually participating in determining those laws. Hence, another version of the trade-off problem seems to threaten this view.
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The resolution of what I called the incompatibility problem in the first part depended on an epistemic conception of democracy. But there is a problem in that there must be sufficient consensus in a society for an individual to be able to affirm the choice of the majority as his own even when he originally voted differently. The epistemic conception of voting is meant to provide a link between a dissenting person's judgment and that of the majority by means of the claim that the majority vote will provide the best evidence for judgments about the common good when there is disagreement. In this way the dissenter may justifiably think that the majority judgment is his own insofar as the dissenter wishes to affirm the most reasonable judgment about the common good. But the epistemic conception requires two premises which may be false. The first is that individuals have equal judgmental competence not only overall but on each issue, and the second is that they have a better than fifty/fifty chance of being right on the issues. But the first is unlikely to be the case. It may well be the case that some citizens have more competence on some issues and other citizens will have more on others while overall they have equal competence. In such cases, individuals may be quite justified in thinking that sometimes the choice of the majority was wrong and hence not be able to affirm the choice of the majority. But even if there is equal judgmental competence, there is a difficulty with the second claim that everyone has a better than fifty/fifty chance of being right. This claim requires that the issue space is relatively simple. There cannot be a great number of proposed alternatives on each issue. The more alternatives there are, the less the odds are that individuals will make the right choice and hence the less reason there is for affirming the choice of the majority, if there is one. Perhaps the issue space will be simplified by deliberation in some cases, but this is a claim that may simply not be true in many circumstances. Hence it appears that this view depends too much on a notion of consensus to defeat the incompatibility problem. Democracyas the Conditionof Political Justification Joshua Cohen has recently proposed an account of a democratic association (J. Cohen 1988, 1989; Barber 1983).13 His account is as follows: "Outcomes are democratically legitimate iff they could be the outcome of a free and reasoned agreement among equals" (J. Cohen 1989, p. 22). Individuals are free in the sense that they are bound only by the results and preconditions of such a procedure and the participants can take their deliberation as sufficient grounds for complying with the result of the deliberation. Their arguments are reasoned in the sense that only the force of the better argument is exercised and that the decisions are the outcome of actual deliberation among individuals who have different preferences and ideals except that they want to reach agreement. They are formally and substantively equal, that is, they have an equal say at all levels of decision making and the power and resources are distributed in a way that does not shape their chances to contribute. Finally, consensus is the fundamental aim of ideal deliberation. And when consensus cannot be had, the citizens have recourse to majoritarian procedures.
13. There are some affinities between this view and the view presented in the previous section. Cohen's actual view is the one I will now present, though I elaborated some of the previous theory with the help of his earlier papers.
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These four conditions specify what an ideal deliberative procedure is. This procedure is an ideal for citizens in a pluralistic association where conceptions of the good are diverse and none are mandatory. These citizens wish to reach reasoned agreement on the terms of their political association. And such reasoned agreement among free and equal citizens as well as the conditions under which it is possible are the only basis of legitimacy. It is intrinsically valuable not as embodying a particular conception of the good life or some sectarian ideal. Cohen describes the ideal deliberative procedure as the context in which political justification ought to take place. The notion of an ideal deliberative procedure is to provide a model for democratic institutions to mirror or approximate as much as possible. But in this way it is also to be distinguished from Rawls's notion of an ideal legislative procedure. Rawls's notion is instrumentalist in that the ideal legislative procedure is evaluated in terms of whether it produces just legislation where justice is externally specified by his theory. Though Cohen's ideal procedure embodies a kind of pure procedural justice, he distinguishes his view of the ideal deliberative procedure from an initial position in social contract theory. This is because the ideal deliberative procedure is a model for actual social institutions and not merely the basis upon which they are justified. The question is, Why are social institutions justified in this way? The basis for developing such a principle is to account for a variety of common intuitive beliefs associated with the idea of a democratic association. First, it helps account for the common belief that political debate should be concerned with considerations of the common good and not merely a process of bargaining. It also accounts for the roles that the ideas of the common good and autonomy of the citizens play in a democratic society (J. Cohen 1989, p. 19). The answer to this lies in a conception of persons and liberty which is distinct from the Rawlsian one. 14
to the OverallView SomeObjections

An obvious objection to such a view of democracy is its unrealism, most particularly, its commitment to consensus, the view that only the force of the better argument should hold sway, and the idea that citizens will be concerned to spend a considerable amount of time deliberating only in terms of the common good. These along
14. It may be useful to explore this difference. If we compare the ideal deliberative procedure and the original position, which play similar roles in some ways, we can see the difference in conceptions of the person which underlie these closely connected views. With Rawls the use of the original position as a fundamental justificatory device embodies a Kantian conception of the person as being independent of and prior to their natural and social positions and conceptions of the good (at least from the point of view of a political conception of justice). And this is expressed by means of the insulation of the original position from the influence of these factors. On Cohen's view, deliberation takes place given a set of preferences and convictions on the part of the participants. Participants will advance their own good as well as take into account the good of others. The freedom and equality of these persons is expressed by the strong constraints placed on the conditions of deliberation. Persons are not entirely identified with their preferences since it is expected that preferences will change as the result of deliberation. Nevertheless, the participants come to deliberation with a conception of the good and with ideas about the common good which may change but need not. Indeed, it is only because they bring their preferences and convictions with them that democratic deliberation is necessary. This more concrete conception of the person is also what explains the possibility of lack of consensus. For
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with the condition that the only terms of association that citizens will live by are those which are the condition or the result of such deliberation. The response to this will be that though the ideal deliberative procedure cannot be easily instantiated it can be approximated sufficiently closely for the ideal to provide a model for democratic institutions. Elster, though in general sympathetic to such views, has presented some interesting criticisms of them (Elster 1986a). Among his criticisms is that such a system will demand an unusually high degree of participation from the citizens. There are two different ways in which this criticism can go. Elster claims that it is unrealistic to assume that all will participate equally extensively, and hence a system which required such extensive participation might actually favor individuals who are especially inclined to activism. This inclination toward activism may be associated with other traits of individuals in the population such that the result of deliberation will be skewed in favor of the opinions and, possibly, interests of certain parts of the population. Hence the deliberation will be affected by various morally arbitrary facts. Along somewhat different lines, it is hard to see how the very strong emphasis on participation can be compatible with the pluralism that Cohen espouses. Such pluralism is hard to reconcile with the commitment to such active citizenship because it entails that many preferences regarding how one should live are going to be incompatible with this conception of democratic citizenship. A pluralistic approach to politics would seem to be more compatible with a somewhat less demanding view of citizenship such as the one Rawls proposes. Another pair of difficulties which Elster brings up is that there may be irresolvable differences of opinion over the common good given which even unlimited deliberation could not produce consensus and that there are time constraints on discussions (Elster 1986a, p. 115). Cohen would respond that, in the absence of unanimity, majority rule should be used to make decisions. But if the point of political association is to achieve consensus through reasoned debate among equals, what principle will justify cutting off debate and leaving the decision to the force of the greater number? Efficiency or some other measure of the quality of the decision might be the answer as it is in ordinary deliberation, but Cohen does not include this consideration in his ideal, and we are told that members are "bound only by the results of deliberation and by the preconditions for that deliberation" (J. Cohen 1989, p. 22). Perhaps it can be argued that too much deliberation on one issue may undermine deliberation on other issues and that we must foreswear unanimity on any issue in order to increase or improve deliberation overall. But this itself is a highly speculative claim both factually and conceptually, for the idea of increasing or improving deliberation would need a good deal of work in clarifying. Elster argues that in certain circumstances deliberation may go on for too long in that the quality of the decisions may deteriorate. This criticism does not make any sense on Cohen's model if the end point of deliberation is consensus since there is no external standard by means of which to evaluate the decisions.
Rawls there is consensus and that fact expresses the basic sameness of persons. Hence the notion of the common good for Rawls is not influenced by the particular interests of persons, while for Cohen those interests are what the participants bring to deliberation and hence influence the outcome.
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The context of deliberation is the condition of political justification. But the criticism does make sense for decisions which are less than consensual. A Contractualist Account of the Outcomesof DemocraticGovernment Nelson's view is that the institutions of a democratic society are not themselves the circumstances in which the informed and unforced agreement will be reached. His claim is that the situation of citizens in a democracy is sufficiently like that of parties trying to reach agreement on the terms of their association that it is likely that the outcome of democratic processes will be legislation and policy which is morally acceptable from a contractualist point of view. More formally, he states that: 1. Morality is a system of overriding rules of behavior on which there can be a consensus and which can be publicly avowed by free and independent persons and will be stable over time. [Nelson 1980, p. 126] 2. A good system of government is a system that leads people to formulate conceptions of fundamental rules of behavior which can be the object of a possible consensus and to adopt laws and policies compatible with such rules. [Nelson 1980, p. 118] 3. A system of representative government with an educated citizenry which promotes serious open discussion of governmental policy and legislation should lead people to formulate principles to justify legislation which can be the object of a possible consensus and to adopt laws and policies compatible with such rules. [Nelson 1980, p. 118] It should be clear that Nelson does not think that the democratic process per se is intrinsically important. Unlike Cohen, his account is instrumentalist in that he evaluates a system of government in terms of the outcomes of legislation. Nelson adheres to a contractualist view of morality and to an analytical claim about how liberal democratic societies are likely to work. Furthermore, unlike positive liberty theorists, his account of the moral motive is based on a set of psychological claims. First, members of a group will be unlikely honestly to choose rules which are especially advantageous to themselves since this is likely to result in instability and, in a society where there is a fair amount of social mobility, is likely to be risky (Nelson 1980, p. 106). Second, "it will hardly satisfy us to know that we can justify our conduct to others only because they have come to accept certain principles under duress or some psychological constraint" (Nelson 1980, p. 108) since we want to live openly and in good faith with our neighbors. Therefore, he thinks that the process of democratic deliberation, in which individuals participate in discussion and decision making, will have two important effects on citizens. It will tend to produce "active, self assertive persons concerned with improving the environment" (Nelson 1980, p. 116), and it will get people to think in terms of the common good since discussion on public policy will not proceed in terms of the private interests of each of the citizens. The public debate will tend to lead them to appreciate the situation of others, and it will require them to formulate positions which take (at least in appearance) everyone's concern into account. Theirjustifications of policy and legislative initiatives will be framed as objects of a possible consensus among individuals. In this way, citizens in a representative democracy will tend to acquire those motivations which are identified as the peculiarly moral motives by contractualists. And the principles they advance in public debate will be formed from these motives. It is these principles which "satisfy at least a necessary condition for
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adequate moral principles. And if we assume a populace sufficiently well educated to understand the consequences of legislative proposals, laws that can pass the test of public justifiability will be morally justifiable laws" (Nelson 1980, pp. 117-18). The view is that the different platforms on which politicians proceed represent competing bases of possible consensus for the citizens, and therefore presumably any of the platforms or alternatives which might be chosen are compatible with the requirements of an adequate morality. There does not have to be any actual consensus for the whole society, but the fact that there is actual consensus in the group that has been persuaded and that the principles are formulated in a way so as to appeal to all entails that it is a possible consensus for the whole society.
Objections
Beitz objects to the purely instrumentalist theory that is proposed here. It does not take sufficiently into account the dimension of procedural fairness itself and the demeaning effects of procedural inequality on the participants. The openness and deliberative aspects are compatible, as they were with Mill, with a system of plural voting wherein the votes of the most intelligent or qualified count for more than others. This, claims Beitz, would appear to violate a fundamental interest that citizens have in democracies: the interest in a public recognition of their equal status as citizens (Beitz 1989, p. 109; see also J. Cohen 1989, p. 19). Perhaps Nelson might respond that if all citizens have a basic interest in being publicly recognized as having equal public status, then, on his account, this might be part of what is chosen among the laws in a liberal democracy. Indeed, Nelson himself recognizes that some requirement of procedural equality might be part of an overall agreement among citizens concerning the terms of their association. Another difficulty in understanding Nelson's view is that the notion of a possible consensus is ambiguous. We might parse it out in one of the following ways: Principles P are a possible consensus among a set of free and independent persons S if and only if it were one of a set PX of mutually exclusive principles which would be agreed on in circumstances where there are no transaction costs and, 1. P1 constitutes a consensus among S given an unlimited domain of preferences (universal possibility). S would agree on one among this set of principles no matter what preferences the members have, as long as they are free and independent and recognize each other as such; or 2. P2 constitutes a consensus which S given the particular preferences of the members would agree on (actual psychological possibility); or 3. P3 constitutes a consensus which S would reach were it to have a particular set of preferences which it may not now have (logically possible consensus); or 4. P4 constitutes a consensus which, given all that a particular member knows about S, would be reached (epistemic possibility). For Nelson's conception of morality in premise 1 to be a plausible one, P2 is the most likely interpretation of the idea of a possible consensus. It is a genuine contractualist notion, and it does not require actual agreement (since actual agreement will introduce transaction costs), nor does it require that there be a unique set of principles. It may be that the interests and morals of the group underdetermine the principles (hence the requirement that there only be a set
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of principles). It is also considerably weaker than the requirement for PI, but it is probably sufficient for the task. Principles P2, P3, and P4 are clearly not equivalent sets of principles, and indeed many principles which passed the tests of P3 or P4 would be experienced as oppressive by the members of the group defined by P2 (i.e., with preferences constant). These principles would therefore not satisfy the (specifically moral) need that Nelson attributes to people to be able to justify their actions to others. Hence, P3 and P4 are not candidates for the best interpretation of the idea of a possible consensus. Yet Nelson's argument seems to rely on the claim that either P3 or P4 are sufficient for an adequate morality in the premise 2 that I described above about good government. On his view it is sufficient that a position be formulated on the basis of some conception of a possible consensus for it to be the basis of an adequate morality. And if P3 or P4 were the right interpretation, Nelson's argument might actually go through since politicians and citizens do for the most part attempt to cast their positions as being in the common interest. The trouble here is that P3 does not identify a notion of possible consensus which will support a plausible version of premise 1. Furthermore this will remain a problem even if we impose the further condition on preferences and convictions in P3, that they all pass a test of being evaluable on the basis of a common set of standards.'5 Even if we do suppose that there are commonly held standards by which to evaluate political decisions and institutions, the diversity of convictions that will live up to these standards is likely to be so great that for any conviction there will be a group of people in the society who will feel oppressed by the implementation of those convictions into law. But if P2 is the right interpretation, then Nelson's view, like positive liberty views, seems to rely excessively on the claim that there is an underlying consensus. And it lacks any basis for dealing with the inevitable situation in which there is no underlying consensus. This is a problem because it is at most wishful thinking that there might be consensus even without transaction costs in modern societies. We ought to question the motivational claims that Nelson makes as well. Whether the fear of instability or the riskiness of assigning advantages to our social situation in a socially mobile society will actually dissuade individuals from advancing proposals which are to the advantage of their own social class or group is not clear. First of all, the choices people make will depend on their assessment of the risk to themselves, and they will also vary with different levels of aversion to risk. Hence, the extent to which individuals will have an interest in discovering a possible consensus will depend on these factors. And given Nelson's account of motives, it is not clear that politicians and citizens would be as interested in finding consensus as he claims. In most cases, politicians are primarily concerned with finding a sufficient amount of support for their candidacy and do so by appealing to the interests or convictions of a sufficiently large group of people regardless of the potential for unanimity in the society at large. Another question we might ask of Nelson's view is, Suppose we had a consensus on the fundamental charter of a public system of justice and we were in a wellordered society, would this mean that democracy was no longer useful? How
15. See Nagel (1987) for an account of the reasonableness of a conviction which is based on the idea that the conviction can be publicly evaluated (but not necessarily endorsed) on the basis of a common set of standards.
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would we regulate all those aspects of our lives in common which are left open by the fundamental charter? Perhaps democracy would have to be present so as to guarantee the consistent application of these principles to every new subject of controversy. Nevertheless it appears that moral principles underdetermine the possible solutions to problems concerning the lives we live in common. For example, if we have a circumstance where we must choose between pollution control and defense because of limited resources, it is not clear that morality, on Nelson's account, is going to give us a clear answer as to what to do here. Unless Nelson thinks that the citizens would agree to a utilitarian position here or some other moral principle which gives answers to all possible questions, it appears that a democratic method of making the decision would have no special significance. But these are ideal cases in which democratic decision making might come in. It provides each person with an equal say in determining what is to be done when their interests in the common features of the society conflict. EGALITARIAN THEORIES Egalitarian theories attempt to derive a conception of democracy directly from a principle of equality. I discuss three varieties of egalitarian theory. They start with the observation that there are fundamental conflicts of interests and convictions in a society. Some form of democracy is then seen as a kind of fair orjust process for making decisions despite these differences. In contrast to contractualists, egalitarians emphasize the problem of there not being consensus on many issues and that arguments on the merits fail. Egalitarians differ over what should be decided on as well as over what the basic principle of equality is. Equal Considerationof Interests A common egalitarian theory of democracy requires determining the laws and policies of a society on the basis of some notion of equal consideration of everyone's interests (Dahl 1979; Jones 1983). It is not clear what this principle is supposed to mean to the theorists who use it. It can be interpreted as a kind of utilitarian theory where the interests of each are to count for one and only one. Or it could be a kind of equality of welfare theory. In either case, it seems to me that the connection between the satisfaction of the principle of equal consideration of interests and political equality would be purely contingent (Mansbridge 1980). No intrinsic defense of democracy would be possible here. The reason for this is that votes will not always be cast on the basis of interests or desires. A vote may be cast on one of a variety of bases (moral or aesthetic judgments), or individuals may choose not to vote at all, in which case the outcome of the vote will not necessarily reflect an aggregation of interests. The outcome of a vote may, of course, produce the greatest amount of satisfaction or even an equal distribution of welfare, but this will be a contingent matter.
as a Compromise Equality
A very different egalitarian argument is presented by Peter Singer (1974). He starts with the view that among individuals there are ineliminable differences of opinion concerning how society as a whole ought to be organized. These differences are ineliminable insofar as the individuals are unable, by arguments on the merits, to get others to agree on what is the proper way to organize society. The question is, When individuals differ concerning how to arrange things and some agreement must be reached on these arrangements, how are we to reach agreement? There
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are two kinds of disagreement at issue here. One concerns who is to make decisions and the other concerns what those decisions are supposed to be. Since the issue of what decisions are to be made varies with each individual and no one can adjudicate between these different views the idea is that some higher level procedure which takes all these different views into account is supposed to resolve the dispute. Singer argues that, when individuals disagree over competing conceptions of fairness and they must reach some agreement, the only way to resolve such issues is to compromise. He then claims that there can be some standard of fairness concerning the nature of the compromise even if there is no accepted standard of what he calls "absolute fairness" (Singer 1974, p. 32). Singer uses an analogy with irresolvable factual disagreement to illustrate his point. For example, if two people make competing claims to some set of goods and no agreement as to how those goods should be divided up can be reached, there may still be a way to resolve the dispute by means of a fair compromise. Let us suppose that each agrees that the goods should be distributed on the basis of contribution. Each individual may still claim a larger share of the goods because they contributed more to their production. An arbitrator who was unable to resolve the dispute by determining the merits of either position might divide the goods up equally as a kind of compromise. Or if the good is indivisible, he might flip a coin to determine who is to get the good (Singer 1974, p. 33). Singer thinks that we can apply this kind of compromise procedure with even more fundamental kinds of disagreements, for example, over issues concerning the very principles of distribution of power or wealth. The way this is to be understood is that if everyone disagrees as to how the society is to be set up (i.e., which social state ought to be realized), then if any of these individuals attempts to implement their particular conception of the good society regardless of the views of others, they are imposing themselves (as if they were dictators) on the rest of the individuals. This is because there is substantial disagreement on these principles and there is no way to resolve the disputes between them concerning these principles. Hence, analogously to our previous equal division situation (in Singer's analogy), we must produce a fair compromise. Also, as in our previous case, this compromise will bring into play some presumption of equality. For Singer, the way to do this is to allow everyone to have an equal say in determining what is to be done since there is no sufficient reason for an unequal distribution of power (Singer 1974, p. 36). It should not be thought that general agreement is necessary to implement this compromise procedure. If this were true, then naturally whatever compromise solution would be worked out would be the result of bargaining and there would therefore be differences in the amount of influence individuals would have over the outcome depending on their success in bargaining. 16 This would be a serious objection to Singer's claim to defend democracy, but such an objection would miss the point. The idea of fair compromise is supposed to apply whenever there
16. This is Charles Beitz's objection (Beitz 1983). For the use of this kind of argument, see Brian Barry's (1965, pp. 246-47) criticism of Buchanan and Tullock (1962). Singer, however, is not a contractarian. Beitz's objection, it should be noted, does apply with deadly effect to one of the reasons that Singer suggests, i.e., that such a procedure is the best and most acceptable way of resolving conflict among the parties. But from the fact that this version of Singer's proposals is not a good one, it does not follow that the proposals are simply wrong. In any case, I think that Singer's argument from analogy with fair division when only factual claims are disputed is the better defense.
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is ineliminable disagreement over some set of issues, and some solution must be found. The idea is that some other compromise notion of fairness comes into play at a higher level at this point. It is not the same kind of fairness as the ones which are in dispute since it does not actually implement any one of them, it simply gives everyone, with their different notions of absolute fairness, an equal say in the controversy. This position has also been criticized by claiming that procedural fairness is not as important as substantive fairness and that therefore it is not of any concern to us since our concern must ultimately lie in the outcome (Nelson 1980, p. 22).'7 Against this argument Singer can maintain that the procedure can be criticized in terms of its outcomes only if there is some way to evaluate the outcomes. But it is only when there is no generally acceptable way to evaluate these outcomes that we are intrinsically interested in using the procedure itself. 18 Relating this to our discussion of democracy, if Singer's argument here is correct, then individuals should have the right to participate in decisions regarding all the features of the society, even those having to do with the principles of justice themselves. Problemswith Democracyas a Compromise One problem with Singer's notion of "fair compromise" is that it is not true that giving everyone an equal say in matters is a fair compromise in all circumstances. Singer defines a compromise as an arrangement in which each person gives up something of what they are making a claim to. A fair compromise is a compromise in which the parties give up equally what they are making a claim to (Singer 1974, p. 33). This definition of "fair compromise" is both unclear and unjustified in Singer's book, but it is clear that this concept of "fair compromise" is contextual in the sense that it does not, of itself, yield any substantive idea of what arrangements are in themselves fair compromises. That is, the substance of a compromise must depend on what the initial points of disagreement are as well as the fair compromise procedure. The way Singer sets up the disagreement, all the parties are claiming the right to be dictator (hence the dispute is over who is to make decisions). This is because each wishes to impose his conception of fairness on the others. If each individual wishes to be dictator, it may be true that giving each an equal say in determining what to do amounts to getting them all to give up an equal amount of what they are claiming. This may then appear to be a fair compromise on Singer's account. But if we suppose that the parties to the dispute are not all equally megalomaniacal and that some might wish to institute democracy while
17. Nelson does correctly note that Singer seems to be inconsistent, however, on these issues. 18. I think this is a plausible way of interpreting some of the ideas of social choice theory which is one of the major approaches to democracy (see Little 1982). When there is no way of adjudicating between various individuals' views about what the best social state would be (and most economists seem to think that this is a matter of course), the best way to resolve the issue is to amalgamate all the "preferences" of these individuals with the help of a rule which satisfies certain criteria of fairness for decision making (e.g., weak unanimity, nondictatorship, unlimited domain, and the independence of irrelevant alternatives). Those criteria of fairness are not criteria which could be applied to the preferences themselves; they just regulate the way in which each individual may contribute to the social decision. Hence, the introduction of some sort of social welfare function would constitute some sort of a fair compromise.
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others have more oligarchical aspirations, then it is not true that giving each an equal say will constitute any compromise at all; the democrats will have their way while the aspiring oligarchs will get nothing. The fair compromise in this case should be some mix of democracy and oligarchy. Hence, this version of Singer's argument cannot produce an argument for democracy except under special circumstances. Singer presents his solution as a means of resolving disagreement concerning decision procedures (i.e., determining who is to make decisions). But it is clear, I think, that he cannot justify democracy on this basis. We might try to amend his view by excluding considerations of what procedures are to be used to make decisions, or who is to make decisions and think of democracy as a way of making compromises on nonprocedural issues such as distributive justice as well as the other overall features of the society. That is, we might try to make a neat division between procedural and nonprocedural issues and take the nonprocedural issues as the primary object of concern; and when there is no agreement on what is the "absolutely fair" thing to do, we can have recourse to a democratic procedure to determine what to do. But such a move would undercut the argument. It is unlikely that democracy can be the result of each person giving up equally what they are making a claim to, when their claims concern substantive matters of justice. Presumably, the result would have to be another substantive conception of justice that is a compromise.
and Skepticism Democracy

On this account, Singer means to apply a notion of pure procedural justice to all decisions concerning the overall properties of the society. The basic reason being that even in cases of standards of justice there is no agreement on the merits of competing conceptions and that such disagreements can be resolved (as in the cases of disputes over factual claims of desert) only by recourse to procedures. It should be noted that Singer does not use the term "pure procedural justice"; his term is "fairness as a compromise" as opposed to "absolute fairness." But insofar as a fair compromise is supposed to make an outcome fair on its own, the two ideas are very close. On the other hand, insofar as a fair compromise is not always absolutely fair, there is an important difference. In a sense, Singer conceives of his procedure as an independent source of the fairness of an outcome even when the outcome can be described as unfair on some more substantive account regardless of the procedure which produced it. It seems to me that Singer's account is marred by a kind of inconsistency. The point of having a procedural solution to cases of conflict is that there is no knowledge of how to correctly assess the principles of distribution in question. It is not mere disagreement that requires a notion of fairness as a compromise since, in that case, we would either have some kind of infinite regress problem, since it is hard to believe that a procedural solution can be agreed upon on the merits by everyone any more than the outcome itself; or we would run into the kind of problem that Beitz and Barry discuss where the solution will reflect the bargaining abilities and motivations of the agents. In such cases, individuals could claim to disagree in order to get a better arrangement for themselves. Strategic misrepresentation of preferences is frequently a serious problem in contexts where unanimity is required.
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Hence, on Singer's account, it must be for lack of knowledge or lack of an independent criterion of fair outcomes that we must have recourse to intrinsically fair procedures. Since it is clear that there are many standards of justice that are proposed for the distribution of goods in a society, it can only be for lack of knowledge that a fair procedure would be used. Hence, Singer must claim that in cases of the distribution of resources in society we simply do not have knowledge concerning what the appropriate principles of distribution are while we can have knowledge of what the best procedure would be for resolving disputes about these issues. Let us compare the situation of disagreement on moral principles with Singer's example of irresolvable factual disagreement. The problem of dividing some good up when there is inadequate information concerning the facts of the matter (as in the first cases) is quite different from the one where some resolution of differences over principles of distribution is concerned. The resolutions of cognitive problems admit more easily of simple proportional solutions in general. If a single person cannot determine whether one of two possible states of affairs has obtained, they may well be inclined to assign both of them equal probabilities. This is what one does sometimes in the case of uncertainties. Likewise, it may be reasonable for a person to divide things up equally who is (a) arbitrating between two conflicting factual claims, about the extent of two individuals' contributions to some cooperative venture, and (b) unable to determine the merits of either claim, but (c) concerned only with the factual content of these claims (i.e., not with a dispute between principles of distribution). This is because there is no dispute about the principles themselves. But such methods are not appropriate when it comes to resolving disputes between distributive principles. One difference between these two kinds of situations is that Singer's examples of factual disputes which are resolved by means of a coin toss involve a skepticism regarding factual claims, whereas in attempting to extend the idea of fair compromise to all matters of moral principle, he seems to commit himself to some kind of moral skepticism (unless he accepts the unwelcome interpretation that Beitz gives of his thesis). The question naturally arises, How can such skepticism be used to establish a defense of political equality? In my opinion, skepticism with regard to moral principles does not sit very well with a principle such as Singer's which requires us to fall back on a presumption of equality between participants in making decisions on matters of moral concern. Hence, I conclude that on any of the interpretations I can give of Singer's views, there cannot be a moral defense of democracy.
Equality of PoliticalResources
The last egalitarian theory that I shall discuss can be described in the following claim. Political equality, in the sense of equality in the resources necessary to determine the outcome of a central decision-making procedure, is a requirement of the principles ofjustice when that central decision-making procedure is concerned with choosing collective properties. Hence, there is an intrinsic justification for democratic decision making in a society or any group if there are collective properties in the society or the group (Christiano 1989). There are three steps in the argument that democracy is defensible in terms of a principle of justice: (1) justice requires that individuals be equally treated; (2) the principle of equality requires equality of resources; (3) the principle of
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equality of resources requires democratic decision making only for objects of a certain sort, called collective properties of society. It should be noted that the same principle of equality will have different implications for other kinds of objects, for example, the objects desired in personal projects. Here, the principle will require an egalitarian distribution of economic resources. Examples of collective properties are: (1) the arrangement of public symbols and spaces, (2) environmental protection, (3) the geographical disposition of various elements of the community by means of zoning laws, (4) defense, (5) some aspects of public education. These and other unlisted concerns relating to the arrangement of public institutions must not only be decided on in themselves; their relative importance will also be in contention. Individuals will have to make decisions about the whole package of items. I define "collective property of the society" in the following way: a property of individuals' lives in a society is a collective property if and only if in order to change one person's welfare with regard to this property one must change all or almost all of the other members' welfare with regard to this object. This definition imposes certain salient conditions on collective properties. First they must satisfy a condition of nonexclusivity. It cannot be possible to affect one person's life without affecting the lives of the others. Collective goods and bads are the most obvious example of this. But it is not necessary that everyone be affected in the same way; some may be benefited and some harmed. A second condition is publicity; the point of saying that everyone's welfare is affected is that it rules out the possibility that the property satisfies purely nosy preferences. Another condition is that of nondivisibility. This condition requires that the benefit of the property not be divisible into shares of resources which can satisfy purely self-regarding preferences and not affect other peoples' welfares. An example of this is a factory decision regarding whether one ought to introduce a new piece of technology whose effect is merely to increase the productivity of the factory. Finally, such properties are ineluctable. For example, every society has a public environment. That environment is characterized by its collective properties. It can have different properties just as a surface can be different colors. It will have some such properties necessarily.'9 Hence, some collective decision-making procedure will be appropriate for these properties.
Justiceand Collective Properties

Equality of economic resources is a solution to the problem of the just division of benefits and burdens when there is a scarcity of goods (Rawls 1972; Williams 1967). The way such scarcity comes about is when the interests of individuals are such that they conflict as a result of there not being enough resources to satisfy them all. Without abundance, some principle for dividing the social wealth must be found. For collective properties there is an analogy to the problem of scarcity. There may be considerable disagreement among individuals over all 19. One choice for a communityis not to make a decision, leaving the determination of collective properties up to the play of social forces. In the case of collectivegoods this will mean that many of them will not be provided even if almost everyone wants some level of provision.Such is also the case with the more culturalcollectivepropertiesI have identified.Mostindividualshave interests(albeitconflicting)in living in one kind of public environment or another, and it is unlikely that such an environmentwould come about without some planning.
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these things. In the case of collective goods, there will be conflict over the level of provision insofar as different levels of provision have different costs. In the case of the cultural goods, there will be conflict over the very goods to be provided as well as the level of provision. All that is necessary is that these concerns determine the whole nature of the community. That is, individuals have common areas of concerns in which there are conflicts. Insofar as there is a reasonable diversity of opinion among the citizens on the issues of which collective properties to implement, few will get their way on any particular issue. Hence, there is a high demand (relative to what can be supplied) for having one's preferred possible collective property implemented. These last claims provide reasons for thinking that collective properties ought to be subject to principles of just distribution. What does justice require in these circumstances? and, Why aren't properties which are not collective to be treated differently? As I noted above, collective properties are nondivisible. We cannot give some proportion to one individual and another proportion to another. But we can vote on what they are to be, and the collective properties of a society can be the object of a compromise. That is, individuals may decide to agree to bring about a compromise that only partially satisfies the previously competing collective concerns. Naturally, the outcomes of such compromises will depend on the relative power of the concerned groups. The idea of political equality is to distribute power so as to have a just resolution to the conflict over collective properties. Egalitarianjustice is best understood as equality of resources (Dworkin 1981a, 1981 b).20The basic idea is that equality of welfare is an unacceptable ideal insofar as it suggests that welfare is something that can be summed up over a lifetime in some unambiguously valuable way. Individuals do not value the unrestricted maximization of desire satisfaction any more unambiguously than they value pleasure or some other specifiable mental state. Nor is it possible to come up with any notion of value that can be added up among individuals in a way that is unambiguously significant. These arguments along with the relatively universal quality of individuals' interests in resources (admittedly as instrumentally valuable), combine to suggest that an equal distribution of resources is the only acceptable ideal connected with equality. Hence, an egalitarian will be concerned to determine collective properties in accordance with an equality of resources scheme. The principles of justice require that resources be divided equally. Hence, in this case, we shall say that the resources to be divided are the resources which are to be used to determine the outcomes of the collective decision-making procedure. The way to solve the problem of just distribution in the case of collective properties is to give individuals equal political resources for determining what these collective properties are to be. Two points should be made in connection with this argument. One is that the basic principle of equality will require that the equality is complex in the sense that there will be equal distributions of economic resources and of political resources. Because of this the theory of democracy will be a mixed one in that some democratic decision making will be defensible only insofar as it produces just legislation, that is, legislation in accordance with the two principles of equality.
20. See G. A. Cohen (1989) for a critical discussion of many of the theories on this subject.
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For that the choice of institutions will reflect an instrumentalist view. On the other hand, for the collective properties of society, democratic decision making will be intrinsically defensible as embodying the ideal of equality. The second point is that such a notion of democracy is not purely formal in that it requires the equal distribution of all resources which go into collective decision making. Hence resources for coalition building must be distributed equally along with votes and other formal devices (Christiano 1990).
Objections
One question is whether the general principle does require equality of economic resources and equality of political resources. Though complex equality might be sufficient for general equality, it is not clearly necessary for it. If equality of resources is measured in terms of an envy-free distribution of resources, it may be that some envy-free distributions will involve some inequalities in the particular distributions. The fact that a distribution of a-type resources and b-type resources is envy free does not entail that the distribution of a-type resources will be envy free. Why not allow some people to sell their votes for money? Or why not simply give them less votes to start with as long as that satisfies envy freeness? Such an argument would be devastating to the claim that the egalitarian is giving an intrinsic defense of democracy since it might permit radical inequalities in political resources. In response, one might argue that the problem with this kind of vote trading is that the cumulative effects would be undesirable for most even though the effect on each individual of her own sale would be beneficial. This is because a person's political resources have value only when they are combined with many others' resources. Thus there will be a collective action problem with each person desiring to have individually valuable economic resources in exchange for political resources (Hardin 1986). But the consequence of such an exchange is that it is possible that a small group of persons will acquire control of all the political resources, and that is a disturbing effect that most will not want even if they cannot affect the outcome individually. Hence, it would be better to simply insulate the two distributions from each other. Another important objection to this kind of view has been stated by Beitz (1989, pp. 12- 13) and J. Cohen (1989, p. 19). They claim that this conception of democracy does not give an adequate account of the role of deliberation in democratic societies. Here deliberation is understood to involve a possible change of preferences on the part of the participants.2' This is because participants on the egalitarian account use their resources in order to advance their concerns. This is the purpose of distributing resources equally. But sometimes participants persuade each other to change their preferences and convictions, and resources are used for this, but it is not clear why justice requires that such persuasion be seen in the same way as the bargaining and coalition building that characterize the conflictual use of resources. This objection can take various forms. One is that the conception of democracy which is presented fails to take into account some crucial and ineliminable aspects of political activities. The other is that there is something fundamentally important 21. Roughly,preferencesare psychological entities,while interestsmaybe understood as informed preferencesfor welfare-enhancing objects.There are also preferenceswhich are more impersonal,and they may be more or less informed as well.
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which is missing in a society where deliberation is absent or plays a decidedly secondary role in political decision making. Another way of putting the first objection is to claim that the view assumes that individuals enter the process with fully informed preferences regarding the collective properties of society. But this assumption would certainly be false. Preferences change during the process of political activity. It might be argued in response to this that, insofar as resources can be spent and some resources are used for the purpose of deliberation and hence for the purpose of preference formation, the use of those resources should not count when we determine an egalitarian distribution of resources. Only when resources are used to develop coalitions on the basis of informed preferences will their use be counted as an expenditure. The egalitarian would "compensate" those who use some of their resources for deliberative purposes.22 Hence, we look at the equal distribution of resources as a way of resolving conflicts between informed preferences. Democracy, then, is a process wherein individuals deliberate so as to become more informed about their interests and are given equal shares of resources so as to advance those interests. Hence, a society becomes more democratic insofar as individuals become more informed about their interests. There are a number of objections which can be made here. One is that it will be very hard to implement the distinction in practice. How do we distinguish between uses of resources which are meant to enlighten others concerning their true interests and those uses which are merely meant to advance one's own interests? Another objection to the response above is that individuals do not merely advance what they take to be their own interests in democratic deliberation. They also advance the satisfaction of impersonal preferences and common interests. They may be concerned with such issues as saving the whales, protecting the environment, or forwarding international justice, and they may also be concerned with advancing the common good. The preferences they have here may not change merely because of new information about how to advance more basic concerns; individuals' convictions on these subjects may change through other kinds of arguments. Hence, there is a difficulty in representing changes in these kinds of preferences as merely the result of becoming more informed about one's interests. For example, if some person starts by believing that one ought to protect the whales but after much time hearing arguments to the contrary believes that whales are not worth saving, it is not clear that one can represent this change of mind as merely a matter of having a more informed preference. Here it seems that deliberation should play a more fundamental role in the process. And there are many other kinds of changes of preference that exhibit similar features. CONCLUSION Philosophical conceptions of democracy are still in a relatively early stage of development as is clear from this survey. In particular the issue of how to put together the elements of deliberation and of conflict needs to be worked out since the theories which rely on one or the other element alone seem to be excessively narrow.
22. Perhapsthis distinctioncould be used to explain the difference between the way we think public service announcements should be funded while we feel advertisements should be paid for by the advertiser.
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Little, I. M. D. 1982. Social Choice and Individual Values. In Rational Man in Irrational Society?ed. Brian Barry and Russell Hardin, pp. 265-87. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications. MacPherson, C. B. 1973. DemocraticTheory:Essays in Retrieval. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manin, Bernard. 1987. On Legitimacy and Deliberation. Political Theory 15:338-68. Mansbridge, Jane. 1980. BeyondAdversaryDemocracy.Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mill, John Stuart. 1958. Considerations on RepresentativeGovernment.London: Dent. Nagel, Thomas. 1987. Moral Conflict and Political Legitimacy. Philosophyand Public Affairs 16:215-40. Nelson, William. 1980. On Justifying Democracy.New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pateman, Carole. 1970. Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pateman, Carole. 1985. The Problem of Political Obligation:A Critiqueof the Liberal Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press. Plamenatz, John. 1963. Man and Society: Vol. 1. London: Longmans. Rawls, John. 1972. A Theoryof Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Riker, William. 1982. Liberalismversus Populism: A Confrontationbetweenthe Theoryof Social Choiceand Democracy.San Francisco: William Freeman. Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1967. The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. G. H. D. Cole. London: Dent. Scanlon, Thomas. 1982. Contractualism and Utilitarianism. In Utilitarianismand Beyond, ed. Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, pp. 103-28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schumpeter, Joseph. 1956. Capitalism,Socialismand Democracy.New York: Harper & Row. Sher, George. 1989. Three Grades of Social Involvement. Philosophyand Public Affairs 18: 133-57. Singer, Peter. 1974. Democracyand Disobedience.Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sunstein, Cass. 1985. Interest Groups in American Public Law. Stanford Law Review 38: 29-87. Taylor, Charles. 1979a. Atomism. In Powers, Possessionsand Freedom:Essays in Honour of C. B. MacPherson, ed. Alkis Kontos, pp. 39-62. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Taylor, Charles. 1979b. What's Wrong with Negative Liberty? In TheIdea of Freedom:Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin, ed. Alan Ryan, pp. 175-94. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, Bernard. 1967. The Idea of Equality. Injustice and Equality, ed. Hugo Adam Bedau. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

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Freedom, Consensus, and Equality in Collective Decision Making Author(s): Thomas Christiano Reviewed work(s): Source: Ethics, Vol.

Freedom, Consensus, and Equality in Collective Decision Making* Thomas Christiano

Positive and the Common Good Liberty

to the OverallView SomeObjections

and Skepticism Democracy

Justiceand Collective Properties

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