Democratic justice in global affairs
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation presents a reformulation of deliberative democracy as a theory of procedural justice, with the goal of applying democratic principles to the global context. It seeks to address the question: what does deliberative democracy require if we don't assume either a bounded demos or state institutions? Global decision-making already exists and is consequential; in additional, a host of global challenges may require expanding existing global institutions. Therefore, we need a theory that provides procedural standards in the global context. Democracy seems a fitting contender, but recent democratic theory has evolved, for the most part, against the background assumptions of a bounded community (that acts as a demos) and state institutions. Therefore, democratic theory needs revising before it can be applied in the global context. To address that, I present a novel theory of democratic justice. I argue that decision-making processes are a distinct matter of justice that I call procedural justice. Furthermore, I argue that deliberative democracy is best seen as a theory of procedural justice and not as a theory of legitimacy or justified authority. I do argue that democracy is relevant to global affairs by reformulating the concept of global public reason: the set of political values and principles for assessing political action that can be globally share. I argue that global public reason must rely on foundational democratic ideas such as the conceptions of global citizens as free and equal persons and of global society as a system of fair cooperation. Global public reason is a repository of values and principles that global citizens can expect others to accept. One such principle is the all-affected principle (AAP). I consider the boundary problem of democratic theory and offer an answer on the basis of a pluralistic interpretation of the AAP. I reformulate the AAP to overcome the charges of vagueness, circularity and indeterminacy that plague the formulation common in the existing literature. The AAP has to be interpreted pluralistically—people who are affected differently have different participation rights in decision-making processes. In the conclusion I apply my criteria to global decision-making structures. I argue that the processes of global norm formation as well as the decision-making structures of international organizations could be democratized by fostering and maintaining new avenues of participation and deliberation for affected people whose voices are missing from the current global conversation. Though many NGOs, activists, journalists and bureaucrats are already working to expand a global conversation on matters of global concern, there is more work to be done in order to create transnational communities of common concerns and global fora for deliberation.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2016 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Perry, Tomer J |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Political Science. |
| Primary advisor | Cohen, Joshua, 1951- |
| Primary advisor | Reich, Rob |
| Thesis advisor | Cohen, Joshua, 1951- |
| Thesis advisor | Reich, Rob |
| Thesis advisor | Holloway, David |
| Thesis advisor | McQueen, Alison |
| Advisor | Holloway, David |
| Advisor | McQueen, Alison |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Tomer J. Perry. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Political Science. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2016. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2016 by Tomer Jehoshaphat Perry
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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