Rule Over None II: Social Equality and the Justification of Democracy

Abstract

What is to be said for democracy? Not that it gives people what they want. Not that it realizes a kind of autonomy or self-government. Not that it provides people with the opportunity for valuable activities of civic engagement. Not, at least not in the first instance, that it avoids insulting them. Or so I argued in the companion to this article. At the end of that article, I suggested that the justification of democracy rests instead on the fact that democracy is a particularly important constituent of a society in which people are related to one another as social equals, as opposed to social inferiors or superiors. The concern for democracy is rooted in a concern not to have anyone else above—or, for