ABSTRACT
How do we plan for collective decision-making without sacrificing the benefits of democratic pluralism to planning demands for rational consensus or precision? Seymour Mandelbaum argues that we adopt and promote open moral communities. We can take Mandelbaum’s critical insight that we enliven and improve the quality of public deliberation using a robust pluralism. However, binding that pluralism together will take more than respectful reciprocity and civic virtue, it requires that we do plans and planning to help guide collective decisions in an increasingly complex and interdependent world. Planning and plan-making play an important role coordinating these complex relationships. I offer two brief planning examples – one fitting Mandelbaum’s ideal and another that does not. Both show how a plan can still offer practical guidance even as the deliberations that frame it fail.
