Robinson Crusoe democracy

One of my central arguments in this book is that inputs themselves can be more democratic or less democratic. To the extent that people practise ‘democratic deliberation within’, their own inputs will encapsulate the concerns of many other people as well. A person who has internalized the perspectives of others, balancing them with her own, will have already partially performed the bottom-line democratic aggregation inside her own head. Her own input will therefore be ‘more democratic’, even just in the standard vote-aggregating sense of the term. [10]

1 comment

  1. This is heavily reminiscent of Crusonian science. Just as scientific legitimacy, such as it is, does not stem from some putative individual objectivity, democratic legitimacy does not stem from individuals trying to walk in another’s shoes in their own heads.

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