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Inductive Risk and the Legitimacy of Non-Majoritarian Institutions.
- Source :
- British Journal of Political Science; Apr2024, Vol. 54 Issue 2, p389-404, 16p
- Publication Year :
- 2024
-
Abstract
- In political discourse, it is common to claim that non-majoritarian institutions are legitimate because they are technical and value-free. Even though most analysts disagree, many arguments for non-majoritarian legitimacy rest on claims that work best if institutions are, in fact, value-free. This paper develops a novel standard for non-majoritarian legitimacy. It builds on the rich debate over the value-free ideal in philosophy of science, which has not, so far, been applied systematically to political theory literature on non-majoritarian institutions. This paper suggests that the argument from inductive risk, a strong argument against the value-free ideal, (1) shows why a naive claim to value freedom is a poor general foundation for non-majoritarian legitimacy; (2) provides a device to assess the degree of democratic value inputs required for an institution to be legitimate; which (3) shows the conditions under which a claim to technical legitimacy might still be normatively acceptable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- POLITICAL science
PHILOSOPHY of science
DEMOCRACY
ARGUMENT
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 00071234
- Volume :
- 54
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- British Journal of Political Science
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 176097538
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123423000200