ABSTRACT
In Democracy and Its Critics, Robert A. Dahl sought to design a society of political equals. In the decades before Democracy and Its Critics was published, some people raised doubts about whether the United States could properly be considered a pluralist democracy. Theories about democracy tend to range from populist to elitist. The more populist thinkers assume the public is competent to rule itself, and that it should have authority to do so. Two American political scientists conducted one of the most important discussions on this subject in the twentieth century—the so-called "Lippmann-Dewey debate". Walter Lippmann, an elite theorist, and John Dewey, a populist theorist, exchanged views through books and articles about the nature of democracy. For Dahl, "both moral understanding and instrumental knowledge are always necessary for policy judgments". A just system requires both moral decision-making and a general public agreement, reached after debate, on what the state should do.
