The Priority of Democracy (ebook)

Argumento de The Priority of Democracy (ebook)

"Knight and Johnson have written an essential volume for scholars, public officials, and citizens living in the contemporary era. They stress that democracy does not just work by itself. No single design enables every democracy to generate fair and effective outcomes given the vast diversity of circumstances around the world. Knight and Johnson examine factors that increase the likelihood that democratic systems can be effective."--Elinor Ostrom, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics

"Knight and Johnson have provided us with an excellent extension of Dewey's idea that democracy and experimentalism walk hand in hand. They put forward a pragmatist or epistemic justification of democracy, arguing that democratic decision making delivers the best answers, and they show us what legal, economic, and political institutions are conducive to getting those good answers. Anyone interested in deliberative democracy will do well to read this book."--Cheryl Misak, University of Toronto

"This is a very important book that has the potential to become a classic. Highly ambitious, it provides a compelling, realistic, and genuinely original way of thinking about democracy. Even if democracy cannot transform interests or produce harmony, Knight and Johnson argue, it has crucial pragmatic benefits that cannot be reproduced by any other forms of social organization, whether markets, courts, or bureaucracies."--Henry Farrell, George Washington University

"This is a major book. It represents a significant advance in democratic theory, contributing to both political economy and political theory approaches to democracy. It addresses fundamental questions of institutional choice and the justification and possibilities of the institutions we establish. In the process it also illuminates when decentralized decision-making is possible and normatively appropriate. Furthermore, it resuscitates John Dewey as a key analyst of democracy, making pragmatism relevant again for contemporary democratic theory."--Margaret Levi, University of Washington and University of Sydney

"Overall, this study is a deeply considered, well argued contribution to contemporary debates about the relationship between democratic processes and context in normative political theory."--Hussein Banai, Political Studies Review

"[T]he book is a significant contribution to the academic literature on democratic politics and institutional design, one that will hopefully inspire critical response and perhaps some experimentation with democratic institutions."--Shane J. Ralston, Philosophy in Review

"The Priority of Democracy is the result of a long and productive partnership between two serious and seriously smart scholars. Much in the book will be familiar to readers who have been following the article trail of these two over the last 20 years. But nothing to my knowledge puts it all together into a full theory of democracy like this book. Unlike so many books these days, it is not a collection of their greatest hits marketed as a coherent whole. It is a real book that benefits from being read from beginning to end."--Simone Chambers, Perspectives on Politics

Jack Knight is professor of political science and law at Duke University and the author of Institutions and Social Conflict. James Johnson is associate professor of political science at the University of Rochester and former editor of Perspectives on Politics.0Preface ix

Part One
Chapter 1: Preliminaries 1
Chapter 2: Pragmatism and the Problem of Institutional Design 25
Chapter 3: The Appeal of Decentralization 51

Part Two
Chapter 4: The Priority of Democracy and the Burden of Justification 93
Chapter 5: Reconsidering the Role of Political Argument in Democratic Politics 128
Chapter 6: Refining Reflexivity 167

Part Three
Chapter 7: Formal Conditions: Institutionalizing Liberal Guarantees 193
Chapter 8: Substantive Conditions: Pragmatism and Effectiveness 222
Chapter 9: Conclusion 256

References 287
Index 307