The Normative Architecture of Progressive Democracy

This chapter develops a normative model of Progressive democracy on the basis of the intellectual and institutional history presented in the previous chapters. The Progressive theory remedies deficiencies in existing arguments for administrative legitimacy—those based on efficiency, constitutional values, or republican political theory. Unlike these theories, Progressivism draws an intrinsic connection between the purpose and the structure of regulatory law. Its purpose is to promote individual freedom through law. The structure of regulatory law ensures that such norms arise from the people’s own self-understandings. Progressivism aligns with deliberative democratic theory, but focuses on ex post deliberation about the consequences of policies, rather than solely on ex ante justification. This democratic theory requires an iterative process where abstract norms are expressed in law and then specified in a participatory and rational administrative process. The United States has a thin version of such a process in the Administrative Procedure Act’s “notice-and-comment” rule-making provisions. But today this process is too technocratic and distorted in favor of well organized and powerful interests. Opportunities for inclusive and egalitarian participation must therefore be deepened. At the same time, administrators must understand that they have an official duty to further the equal freedom of the persons their decisions affect. Judicial review of administrative action impedes such a self-understanding because it focuses on technocratic and instrumental reasoning. At the same time, the increasing investment of power in the president threatens to undermine deliberation with arbitrary assertions of personal will.