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INTRODUCTION: SYMPOSIUM ON DEMOCRATIC AUTHORITY

David Estlund has been a leading figure in normative democratic theory for some time and his recent book, Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework, consolidates that status. Tying together a number of earlier pieces, Estlund offers his own account of epistemic proceduralism, according to which democratic procedures are justified because they can be accepted by all qualified points of view as most likely to produce substantively just decisions. In the course of the argument, he makes a number of interesting and controversial contributions, such as rejecting the importance of both intrinsic fairness and Condorcet’s Jury Theorem, introducing the idea of ‘normative consent’, and defending the place of aspirational theory against ‘utopophobia’. The work should be of interest not only to political theorists/philosophers, but also to those working on institutional design and political structures. Not all of these matters can be explored here—the book is one that, as this collection shows, richly rewards careful reading—though a longer synopsis of its main argument follows below. The present collection of papers arose from an online reading group, hosted on the weblog Public Reason (http://publicreason.net/2007/12/06/reading-group-on-davidestlunds-democratic-authority-a-philosophical-framework/). Each chapter was discussed on a weekly basis, with replies from Estlund himself, and the authors represented here would like to extend their gratitude to all who participated in the most informative and enjoyable discussion, and in particular to Simon C. May for starting the weblog. The present papers have, however, been the result of much further work by the authors involved; seeking to grapple with the issues raised in that discussion, to really engage with Estlund’s arguments, and to develop what seemed to us the most serious problems with his position. I shall briefly outline the arguments of each paper at the end of this introduction, but first I summarise what I take to be the main points of interest in Estlund’s theory.