High Stakes Instrumentalism
In this paper, I aim to establish that, according to almost all democratic theories, instrumentalist considerations often dominate intrinsic proceduralist considerations in our decisions about whether to make extensive use of undemocratic procedures. The reason for this is that almost all democratic...
| 1. VerfasserIn: | |
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| Medienart: | Elektronisch Aufsatz |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
| Verfügbarkeit prüfen: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Veröffentlicht: |
[2017]
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| In: |
Ethical theory and moral practice
Jahr: 2017, Band: 20, Heft: 2, Seiten: 295-311 |
| IxTheo Notationen: | NCD Politische Ethik VA Philosophie ZC Politik |
| weitere Schlagwörter: | B
Political equality
B Experts B Instrumentalism B Democratic theory B Intrinsic proceduralism B fundamental rights |
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| Zusammenfassung: | In this paper, I aim to establish that, according to almost all democratic theories, instrumentalist considerations often dominate intrinsic proceduralist considerations in our decisions about whether to make extensive use of undemocratic procedures. The reason for this is that almost all democratic theorists, including philosophers commonly thought to be intrinsic proceduralists, accept High Stakes Instrumentalism (HSI). According to HSI, we ought to use undemocratic procedures in order to prevent high stakes errors - very substantively bad or unjust outcomes. However, democratically produced severe substantive injustice is much more common than many proponents of HSI have realised. Proponents of HSI must accept that if undemocratic procedures are the only way to avoid these high stakes errors, then we ought to make extensive use of undemocratic procedures. Consequently, according to almost all democratic theorists, democratic theory ought, for practical purposes, to be reoriented towards difficult moral and empirical questions about the instrumental quality of procedures. Moreover, this is potentially very practically important because if there are available instrumentally superior undemocratic procedures, then wholesale institutional reform is required. This is one of the most potentially practically important findings of normative democratic theory. In spite of this, no-one has yet explicitly recognised it. |
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| ISSN: | 1572-8447 |
| Enthält: | Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10677-016-9759-9 |
