Chapter 5: Radical Proceduralist Ideals: A Discursive Account

Radical proceduralists define legitimacy solely through inclusive democratic procedures. In Chapter 2, I argue that any account of democratic legitimacy that refers to extra-procedural epistemic standards is confronted with serious problems: In the “circumstances of politics,” that is vis-à-vis perennial philosophical and political disagreements, there is no concept of “truth” that specifies criteria which would allow to discriminate “right” and “wrong” policies and principles in a reliable and uncontroversial manner (see Waldron, 1999). At the same time, abstract or formal notions of “political truth” – such as Estlund's “formal epistemic approach” (2008, p. 169) – bear a high risk of being abused by elites who hold political or discursive power (also see Palumbo, 2012). I argue that to counteract this “paternalistic threat,” we should search for an account of democratic norms and institutions that generate legitimacy without relying on extra-procedural standards of truth or correctness – hence the quest for what I termed a “radical proceduralist alternative.”