ABSTRACT
What normative conditions should apply to democratic decision-making? The concept that covers this form of evaluative exercise is democratic legitimacy. Legitimacy entails an ideal for how the members of a democratic constituency ought to make decisions about how to organize their life together. Democracy can mean many things, of course. There are numerous recognizably democratic forms in which the members of a democratic constituency might collectively exercise their political authority. And it is not my goal here to prescribe a particular form. The question that this book seeks to answer is primarily a philosophical question, not one of institutional design. Taking democracy as the starting-point, and allowing that there are many different recognizably democratic institutional arrangements, I am interested in what kind of considerations should matter in the evaluation of the democratic exercise of political authority.
