Legitimacy, Democracy and Public Justification: Rawls’ Political Liberalism Versus Gaus’ Justificatory Liberalism

Rawls versus Utilitarianism in the Light of Political Liberalism

The critique of utilitarianism forms a crucial subplot in the complex analysis of social justice that John Rawls develops in his first book, A Theory of Justice. 1 The weaknesses of utilitarianism indicate the need for an alternative theory, and at many stages of the argument the test for the adequacy of the new theory that Rawls elaborates is whether it can be demonstrated to be superior to th...

Liberalism versus Democracy? Schooling Private Citizens in the Public Square

Liberalism, Democracy and Development

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Contents Acknowledgements page vii List of abbreviations ix Introduction 1 1 The question: is 'liberal democracy' good for economic development? 10 1.1 The context 13 1.2 The pro-'liberal democracy' and anti-'liberal democracy' camps: situating the democracy–development debate within the general debate about 'liberal democr...

Between liberalism and democracy

We study and characterize axiomatically a class of voting rules, called consent rules, that incorporate aspects of majoritarianism and liberalism. An outcome of the vote specifies who among the voters are eligible to a certain right or qualification. Each outcome serves also as a permissible ballot. Consent rules are parameterized by the weights given to individuals in determining their own qua...

Political liberalism and religious claims

This article gives an overview of 4 important lacunae in political liberalism and identifies, in a preliminary fashion, some trends in the literature that can come in for support in filling these blind spots, which prevent political liberalism from a correct assessment of the diverse nature of religious claims. Political liberalism operates with implicit assumptions about religious actors being...