The substantive purposes of democracy

Daryl Glaser

Chapter 5 in The Substance in Liberal Democracy, 2026, pp 76-98 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: One way in which a democracy might be held to be insubstantial is that it lacks a substantive purpose or point. This charge is directed particularly at procedural conceptions of democracy, which appear to prioritise procedural impartiality over ensuring good or just outcomes or, for that matter, real popular empowerment. What is it that democracy is meant to achieve? It must certainly give expression to a population's subjective preferences or subjective conception of its own interests individually and collectively. These preferences are not pristine, unmediated or definitive: they are the preferences collectively formed according to agreed rules, irrespective of whether, say, they incur problems of cycling. The objective interests of a population, by contrast, are matters for democracy's justification (or value) rather than its institutional design or definition. Ideologically open procedural democracy is premised on uncertainty concerning what can be known to be good or just and refuses the idea that a particular conception of good or just can be built into democracy's institutional design. Democracy's purpose is also to realise political rights. Its relationship to other rights is more controversial, even among liberals. There is empirical evidence that democracies are more protective of civil rights than other regimes. But ideologically open proceduralism requires that entrenched rights be neither too ideologically proscriptive (as in the case of some negative rights, such as rights in large-scale property) nor too prescriptive (as in the case of positive socio-economic rights). The substantial character of the social order must as far as possible be determined democratically and politically, and not by constitutions and courts.

Keywords: Democracy and rights; Socio-economic rights; Constitutionalism and democracy; Democracy and impartiality/neutrality; Democracy and interests; Objective versus subjective interests (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035333011
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