Progressive constitutional deliberation: Political equality, social inequalities and democracy’s legitimacy challenge

Abstract

Social inequalities fuel a debate about the meaning of political equality. Formal procedural equality is criticised for reproducing discriminatory outcomes against disadvantaged groups but affirmative action, particularly in the form of group quotas, is also contested. When opposing conceptions of substantive equality support divergent views about which procedural rule genuinely respects political equality, democracies cannot identify a standard or rule of procedural fairness to be widely accepted as fair. This dispute over procedural fairness can carry on indefinitely and could challenge democracy’s legitimacy claim. I argue that democracies can renew their legitimacy claim by embracing this debate and by accommodating it through constitutional deliberation that must be as impartial and meaningful as possible. Impartiality ideally requires the presence of every citizen in this process because each of them has a unique and evolving experience of inequality. Meaningful deliberation is about offering periodic opportunities for constitutional reform, allowing for continuous feedback, reflection, and learning.

Market Democracy, Rising Populism, and Contemporary Ordoliberalism

“…In doing so, we do not argue that public deliberation is equally warranted for all political issues. While others have argued that public deliberation is particularly apt for questions of constitutional reform (Trantidis 2022), we think the recent example of the Chilean constitutional convention shows how difficult it is to address societal issues with complex externalities by means of public deliberation and participation. Instead, we argue in this chapter that deliberative channels can be regarded as particularly apt for policy challenges that address highly private matters and, in this context, function as sources of information that contribute to established avenues of law-making.…”

“…By exposing citizens to facts about policies and different evaluative standards in public discourse, people become aware of some of the unquestioned situational and socio-cultural context effects (Niemeyer 2011). Moreover, while people might start off with opposing standpoints, their preferences and beliefs are endogenous to deliberative decision-making processes and can be transformed in a converging way by communicative interaction in DCFs (Trantidis 2022;Habermas 1996).…”

Is Public Ignorance a Problem? An Epistemic Defense of Really Existing Democracies

“…Cohen 1986, 30). At best, the value of deliberative democrats is found in continual rounds of processes of reflection and reform acknowledging, negotiating and reformulating radical dissonance (Knight and Johnson 2011, 261;Trantidis 2022).…”