ABSTRACT
The main difference between Rational and Pure Proceduralist conceptions of democratic legitimacy lies in how the scope of political justifi cation is defi ned. In Rational Proceduralist conceptions, legitimacy depends not just on an appropriately justifi ed decision-making process, but also on some standards of justifi cation that target the decisions themselves. In Pure Proceduralist conceptions, by contrast, the legitimacy of democratic decisions only hinges on them being the outcome of an appropriately justifi ed decision-making process. Different accounts of democracy advocate different standards of justifi cation, of course. In Kenneth Arrow’s version of Rational Aggregative Proceduralism, for example, the standards for the justifi cation of outcomes refer to the rationality of social preferences. In Philip Pettit’s version of Rational Deliberative Proceduralism, these standards refer to a different interpretation of collective rationality. And as I shall explain it in Chapter 7, Rational Epistemic Proceduralism relies on procedure-independent standards of correctness.
