engleski

Plural Voting and J. S. Mill’s Account of Democratic Legitimacy

This paper clarifies some of the contested ideas put forward by John Stuart Mill by analyzing the reasons and arguments Mill used to sup- port them and demonstrating how these ideas and arguments support- ing them are connected into a coherent system. Mill’s theory is placed in wider explanatory framework of democratic legitimacy developed by Thomas Christiano, and is portrayed as a typical example of democrat- ic instrumentalism—a monistic position that focuses on the outcomes and results of a decision-making process. Following this move, the focus is shifted on the understanding of political equality in Mill’s political thought. I claim that, contrary to some contemporary interpretations, Mill’s theory is based on a few fundamentally inegalitarian ideas. Fi- nally, Mill’s view on the role of experts in democratic decision-making is analyzed and compared with contemporary theories advocating demo- cratic expertism—Mill’s view is again portrayed as inegalitarian, both to the extent of setting political aims and creating methods for achieving these aims.

political legitimacy ; plural voting ; expertism ; Mill ; Christiano ; epistemic democracy ; division of epistemic labor

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