TY - JOUR A1 - Ganghof, Steffen T1 - Equality-based comparison how to justify democratic institutions in the Real World JF - Politics N2 - Political scientists regularly justify particular democratic institutions. This article explores two desiderata for such justifications. The first is a formal equality baseline which puts the burden of justification on those who favour more unequal institutions. This baseline is seen as an implication of the rule of law. The second desideratum, the comparison requirement, builds on the first: adequate justifications of particular institutions must compare them to the best alternative, and this comparison must consider the costs for political equality. The two desiderata are applied to political science debates about the proportionality of the electoral system and bicameral systems of legislative decision-making. KW - electoral systems KW - second chambers KW - political equality KW - institutional design KW - public justification Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9256.12002 SN - 0263-3957 VL - 33 IS - 2 SP - 101 EP - 111 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ganghof, Steffen T1 - Does public reason require super-majoritarian democracy? Liberty, equality, and history in the justification of political institutions JF - Politics, philosophy & economics N2 - The project of public-reason liberalism faces a basic problem: publicly justified principles are typically too abstract and vague to be directly applied to practical political disputes, whereas applicable specifications of these principles are not uniquely publicly justified. One solution could be a legislative procedure that selects one member from the eligible set of inconclusively justified proposals. Yet if liberal principles are too vague to select sufficiently specific legislative proposals, can they, nevertheless, select specific legislative procedures? Based on the work of Gerald Gaus, this article argues that the only candidate for a conclusively justified decision procedure is a majoritarian or otherwise 'neutral' democracy. If the justification of democracy requires an equality baseline in the design of political regimes and if justifications for departure from this baseline are subject to reasonable disagreement, a majoritarian design is justified by default. Gaus's own preference for super-majoritarian procedures is based on disputable specifications of justified liberal principles. These procedures can only be defended as a sectarian preference if the equality baseline is rejected, but then it is not clear how the set of justifiable political regimes can be restricted to full democracies. KW - public-reason liberalism KW - democracy KW - coercion KW - political equality KW - majority rule KW - Gerald Gaus Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594X12447786 SN - 1470-594X VL - 12 IS - 2 SP - 179 EP - 196 PB - Sage Publ. CY - Thousand Oaks ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ganghof, Steffen T1 - Reconciling Representation and Accountability: Three Visions of Democracy Compared JF - Government & opposition : an international journal of comparative politics N2 - An egalitarian approach to the fair representation of voters specifies three main institutional requirements: proportional representation, legislative majority rule and a parliamentary system of government. This approach faces two challenges: the under-determination of the resulting democratic process and the idea of a trade-off between equal voter representation and government accountability. Linking conceptual with comparative analysis, the article argues that we can distinguish three ideal-typical varieties of the egalitarian vision of democracy, based on the stages at which majorities are formed. These varieties do not put different relative normative weight onto equality and accountability, but have different conceptions of both values and their reconciliation. The view that accountability is necessarily linked to ‘clarity of responsibility’, widespread in the comparative literature, is questioned – as is the idea of a general trade-off between representation and accountability. Depending on the vision of democracy, the two values need not be in conflict. KW - visions of democracy KW - political equality KW - accountability Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2015.15 SN - 0017-257X SN - 1477-7053 VL - 51 SP - 209 EP - 233 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - GEN A1 - Ganghof, Steffen T1 - Does public reason require super-majoritarian democracy? BT - Liberty, equality, and history in the justification of political institutions T2 - Politics, philosophy & economics N2 - The project of public-reason liberalism faces a basic problem: publicly justified principles are typically too abstract and vague to be directly applied to practical political disputes, whereas applicable specifications of these principles are not uniquely publicly justified. One solution could be a legislative procedure that selects one member from the eligible set of inconclusively justified proposals. Yet if liberal principles are too vague to select sufficiently specific legislative proposals, can they, nevertheless, select specific legislative procedures? Based on the work of Gerald Gaus, this article argues that the only candidate for a conclusively justified decision procedure is a majoritarian or otherwise ‘neutral’ democracy. If the justification of democracy requires an equality baseline in the design of political regimes and if justifications for departure from this baseline are subject to reasonable disagreement, a majoritarian design is justified by default. Gaus’s own preference for super-majoritarian procedures is based on disputable specifications of justified liberal principles. These procedures can only be defended as a sectarian preference if the equality baseline is rejected, but then it is not clear how the set of justifiable political regimes can be restricted to full democracies. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 86 KW - public-reason liberalism KW - democracy KW - coercion KW - political equality KW - majority rule KW - Gerald Gaus Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-477860 VL - 12 IS - 2 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Ganghof, Steffen T1 - Reconciling representation and accountability BT - three visions of democracy compared T2 - Government and Opposition N2 - An egalitarian approach to the fair representation of voters specifies three main institutional requirements: proportional representation, legislative majority rule and a parliamentary system of government. This approach faces two challenges: the under-determination of the resulting democratic process and the idea of a trade-off between equal voter representation and government accountability. Linking conceptual with comparative analysis, the article argues that we can distinguish three ideal-typical varieties of the egalitarian vision of democracy, based on the stages at which majorities are formed. These varieties do not put different relative normative weight onto equality and accountability, but have different conceptions of both values and their reconciliation. The view that accountability is necessarily linked to clarity of responsibility', widespread in the comparative literature, is questioned - as is the idea of a general trade-off between representation and accountability. Depending on the vision of democracy, the two values need not be in conflict. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 96 KW - visions of democracy KW - political equality KW - accountability Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-413456 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ganghof, Steffen T1 - Justifying types of representative democracy BT - a response JF - Critical review of international social and political philosophy N2 - This article responds to critical reflections on my Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism by Sarah Birch, Kevin J. Elliott, Claudia Landwehr and James L. Wilson. It discusses how different types of representative democracy, especially different forms of government (presidential, parliamentary or hybrid), can be justified. It clarifies, among other things, the distinction between procedural and process equality, the strengths of semi-parliamentary government, the potential instability of constitutional designs, and the difference that theories can make in actual processes of constitutional reform. KW - political equality KW - semi-parliamentarism KW - presidentialism KW - institutional design KW - executive personalism Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2022.2159665 SN - 1369-8230 SN - 1743-8772 SP - 1 EP - 12 PB - Routledge CY - London ER -