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  -