ABSTRACT

Unfortunately, there is a dilemma that affects the attempt to answer the question of what political equality requires. I call it the “political egalitarian’s dilemma.” This dilemma is an instantiation of the “procedure vs. substance” dilemma that Joshua Cohen has argued deliberative democracy can solve (cf. section 3.2.c.). In deliberative democracy, as discussed above, political equality means that people have the opportunity to participate in the deliberative decision-making process as equals. Whereas political equality in aggregative democracy can be summarized with the “one person one vote” formula, in deliberative democracy it also demands access to the institutions of public deliberation. It is thus clearly a substantive ideal, not just a procedural one. Since I have already argued against aggregative democracy in Chapter 3, I shall focus here on how to interpret the content of political equality in the context of a Deliberative Proceduralist conception of democratic legitimacy.