ABSTRACT
The paradox is that representative democracy may help, by its insidious educative power, to sustain and promote a culture that is, in sectors and particulars, more directly democratic, more constitutionally delicate, and more beautifully illustrative of moral indeterminacy than the political system itself; while in the encouragement given to independence of spirit in the twofold sense, it may attain its highest justification. (Kateb, 1981, p. 368)
Introduction If it is right, as many argue nowadays1 (Dryzek, 2000; Elster, 1998; Habermas, 1998; Benhabib, 1996; Gutmann and Thompson, 1996; Cohen, 1989; Manin, 1987), that deliberation can be seen as a response to pervasive and persistent reasonable disagreement about justice and hence as a way of legitimizing political and legal decisions in conditions of reasonable pluralism,2 a difficulty remains: who is deliberating (Gargarella, 1998, p. 274)? Theories of deliberative democracy typically conceive of deliberators as representatives and not as citizens.3 The question that arises then is how to make sure our representatives’ deliberation can represent our deliberation, how to make sure their disagreement can represent our disagreement. Similarly, when political equality is invoked to justify majority decisions and explain their authority in the face of disagreement4 (Waldron, 1999, pp. 114, 165; Singer, 1972, p. 32ff.; Besson, 2003a, pp. 237-240), the appeal is to the equality of citizens; it is they who will be bound by decisions they disagree with and should therefore be able to regard themselves as these decisions’ authors. The difficulty is that most of the time majority decisions are not made by those who are subjects to the law, but by their representatives.
