The Priority of Democracy: Political Consequences of Pragmatism

The Priority of Democracy: Political Consequences of Pragmatism

Jack Knight, James Johnson

Language: English

Pages: 336

ISBN: 0691151237

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Pragmatism and its consequences are central issues in American politics today, yet scholars rarely examine in detail the relationship between pragmatism and politics. In The Priority of Democracy, Jack Knight and James Johnson systematically explore the subject and make a strong case for adopting a pragmatist approach to democratic politics--and for giving priority to democracy in the process of selecting and reforming political institutions.

What is the primary value of democracy? When should we make decisions democratically and when should we rely on markets? And when should we accept the decisions of unelected officials, such as judges or bureaucrats? Knight and Johnson explore how a commitment to pragmatism should affect our answers to such important questions. They conclude that democracy is a good way of determining how these kinds of decisions should be made--even if what the democratic process determines is that not all decisions should be made democratically. So, for example, the democratically elected U.S. Congress may legitimately remove monetary policy from democratic decision-making by putting it under the control of the Federal Reserve.

Knight and Johnson argue that pragmatism offers an original and compelling justification of democracy in terms of the unique contributions democratic institutions can make to processes of institutional choice. This focus highlights the important role that democracy plays, not in achieving consensus or commonality, but rather in addressing conflicts. Indeed, Knight and Johnson suggest that democratic politics is perhaps best seen less as a way of reaching consensus or agreement than as a way of structuring the terms of persistent disagreement.

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Other player cooperates or not. Generalized reciprocity consists in a strategy profile for all players in which it is equilibrium play for each to sanction any player who fails to cooperate, regardless of whether that player is the one with whom they themselves are matched in the current round. 40   Calvert (1995b, 80–­82) remains agnostic regarding the variety of accounts that might explain the emergence of equilibrium institutions. We return to this issue at length below and are decidedly not.

Effective performance of the institutions as a whole. And, as we have suggested earlier and will argue in what follows, effective performance is in large part a function of the conditions under which the institutions operate. In this way, our pragmatist justification of democracy will be grounded in the interrelationship of consequences and conditions, that is, in a tempered consequentialism. III.  Democracy’s Burden of Justification There is, despite common practice, no compelling reason to.

Speech acts. For our present purposes, it will suffice 10   As he states succinctly: “With the concept of communicative action, the important function of social integration devolves on the illocutionary binding energies of a use of language oriented to reaching understanding” (Habermas 1996, 8). 11   For a précis of his views, see Habermas (1996, 1–­27). For a more detailed discussion of the points we make in this and the next paragraph, see Johnson (1991; 1993). 12   Thus, Habermas insists that.

The process. Similarly, the argument for competition as an effective process of experimentation and testing entails constraints on the use of power to perpetuate inequality within the sphere of competition. 89   This discussion clearly simplifies what is a complex process. On some of the complexities that we neglect, see Kitcher (2006) and especially his discussion of what he terms the Inquiry-­and-­ Information System upon which a democracy relies to generate, authenticate, and disseminate.

Ineffective—­as a first-­order mechanism for coordinating ongoing social interaction. Conversely, it is a virtue of competing institutional forms, such as markets and common law adjudication, that they allow us to more effectively coordinate social interaction precisely because they are not reflexive in the sense we indicate. In circumstances in which the requirements of coordination recommend nonreflexive choice, institutions like the market will be more appropriate as a first-­order.

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