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Fabienne Peter argues that political legitimacy doesn't just depend on respect for the will of the citizens.
The Grounds of Political Legitiamacy compares democratic and non-democratic conceptions of legitimacy and develops a novel hybrid conception of the grounds of political legitimacy.
List of contents
- 1. Political Legitimacy
- 1.1: What makes political decisions legitimate?
- 1.2: The normative concern with political legitimacy
- 1.3: The meta-normative perspective
- 2. The Political Will
- 2.1: Will-based conceptions of political legitimacy
- 2.2: Equal political authoritativeness
- 2.3: The arbitrariness objection
- 3. Political Factualism
- 3.1: Fact-based conceptions of political legitimacy
- 3.2: Making the right decisions
- 3.3: The accessibility objection
- 4. Political Cognitivism
- 4.1: Belief-based conceptions of political legitimacy
- 4.2: Cognitive political authority
- 4.3: The epistemic underdetermination objection
- 5. A Hybrid Account of the Grounds of Legitimacy
- 5.1: Going hybrid
- 5.2: Epistemic constraints on the political will
- 5.3: Responding to epistemic underdetermination
- 6. Political Deliberation
- 6.1: Justificationism about political legitimacy
- 6.2: Political justification and political deliberation
- 6.3: Well-ordered political deliberation
- 7. Epistemic Norms of Political Deliberation
- 7.1: Epistemic accountability in political deliberation
- 7.2: The justified belief norm
- 7.3: The responsiveness norm
- 8. Political Deference
- 8.1: What is political deference?
- 8.2: When is political deference required?
- 8.3: The limits of political deference
- 9. Responding to Political Disagreements
- 9.1: Political disagreements
- 9.2: Political disagreements and political justification
- 9.3: Why democracy?
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
About the author
Fabienne Peter is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, specialising in moral and political philosophy and social epistemology. She has previously held positions at Harvard University and at the University of Basel, and she has held visiting positions at the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU and the Murphy Institute at Tulane University. She is the author of Democratic Legitimacy and a co-editor of Rationality and Commitment (OUP, with Hans Bernhard Schmid), and Public Health, Ethics, and Equity (OUP, with Sudhir Anand and Amartya Sen).
Summary
Fabienne Peter argues that political legitimacy doesn't just depend on respect for the will of the citizens. The Grounds of Political Legitiamacy compares democratic and non-democratic conceptions of legitimacy and develops a novel hybrid conception of the grounds of political legitimacy.
Additional text
The book does an excellent job of inspiring exploration into the epistemic dimensions of political legitimacy. The questions it triggers regarding the possibility of a purely cognitive authority and the lacuna it leaves in dealing with citizens' obligations open up new avenues for further investigation.
