Abstract
In the discussion of principles of social policy so far, we have been concerned for the most part with what decisions ought to be made rather than with how decisions ought to be made. This one-sided emphasis now needs to be rectified for a number of reasons. The contractarian theory of social choice leaves a considerable amount of indeterminacy in the specification of the social welfare objective at which the government is to aim. Although it prescribes the form that such an objective should take, namely that it should be a weighted sum of individual welfares, it does not prescribe how the weights are to be fixed. The essential indeterminacy in the attitudes towards risk of the contracting parties behind the veil-of-ignorance means that no particular level of equality can be justified by contractarian considerations alone. That task is left to the democratic process and to those persons living this side of the veil-of-ignorance. Moreover, this aspect of the contractarian theory needs to be understood in the context of our prior result about the importance of maintaining the conditions for autonomous development. A second reason why an interest in democratic control is important in our theory is that this theory presupposes that persons living in a political community are capable of choice and deliberation. A theory of democracy is therefore necessary to show how those capacities can be given effect within communities.
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Notes and References
For a review of these, and a number of other arguments, see J. Roland Pennock, Democratic Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979) ch. 4.
R. Wollheim, ‘A Paradox in the Theory of Democracy’ in P. Laslett and W. G. Runciman (eds), Philosophy, Politics and Society, series 2 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962) pp. 71–87.
Compare Amy Gutman, Liberal Equality (Cambridge University Press, 1980) p. 177.
The best account of this form of democracy is still to be found in Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1942, 4th edn 1954), who defines this form of democracy as ‘that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote’ (p. 269).
Compare Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, pp. 294–5.
G. D. H. Cole, Guild Socialism Re-Stated (London: Leonard Parsons, 1920) pp. 32–3.
On Health Systems Agencies see A. A. Atkinson and R. M. Grimes, ‘Health Planning in the United States: An Old Idea with New Significance’, Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, I 3 (1976) pp. 295–318,
and James A. Morone and Theodore R. Marmor, ‘Representing Consumer Interests: The Case of American Health Planning’, Ethics, LXLI 3 (1981) pp. 431–50.
On Community Health Councils, see Rudolf Klein and Janet Lewis, The Politics of Consumer Representation: A Study of Community Health Councils (London: Centre for Studies in Social Policy, 1976).
Department of Education and Science and Welsh Office, A New Partnership for Our Schools. Report of the Committee of Enquiry under The Chairmanship of Mr Tom Taylor, CBE (London: HMSO, 1977).
For the Social and Economic Council, see Arend Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation — Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968) pp. 112–15.
For an account of consociational democracies in general, see Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977).
See also Hans Daalder, ‘The Netherlands: Opposition in a Segmented Society’ in Robert A. Dahl (ed.), Political Opposition in Western Democracies (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966),
and ‘The Consociational Democracy Theme’, World Politics, XXVI 4 (1974) pp. 604–21.
See Robert A. Dahl and Edward R. Tufte, Size and Democracy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973) ch. 2.
Report of the Royal Commission on Local Government in England and Wales (London: HMSO, 1969).
Robert A. Dahl, After the Revolution? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970).
Report of the Royal Commission on Local Government in England and Wales, vol. 3, pp. 132–6.
Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation, pp. 109–12, and Daalder, ‘The Netherlands: Opposition in a Segmented Society’, p. 214.
Here, and in the account of HSAs, I follow Morone and Marmor, ‘Representing Consumer Interests: The Case of American Health Planning’.
Frances Svensson, ‘Liberal Democracy and Group Rights: The Legacy of Individualism and Its Impact on American Indian Tribes’, Political Studies, XXVII 3 (1979) pp. 421–39.
Paul E. Peterson, ‘Forms of Representation: Participation of the Poor in the Community Action Program’, American Political Science Review, LXIV 2 (1970) pp. 491–507.
L. J. Sharpe, ‘American Democracy Reconsidered. Part II’, British Journal of Political Science, III 2 (1973) pp. 129–68.
The assumption of trust is a large one to grant, however. One study of citizen attitudes towards public services in ten cities in the United States showed a majority thinking that there was at least some illegal activity among local officials, and a majority in some cities thought there was an even higher level of illegal activity. See F. J. Fowler Jr, Citizen Attitudes Towards Local Government Services and Taxes (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1974) pp. 185–9.
J. Rothenberg, The Measurement of Social Welfare (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1961) pp. 316–23.
Rudolf Klein, ‘The Case for Elitism: Public Opinion and Public Policy’, Political Quarterly, XLV 4 (1974) pp. 406–17.
Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970).
Tiebout presents the standard account of how people can vote with their feet to obtain the level of public services they want: C. M. Tiebout, ‘A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures’, Journal of Political Economy, LXIV (1956) pp. 416–24.
I follow Mueller in his criticism of this model: D. C. Mueller, Public Choice (Cambridge University Press, 1979) ch. 7.
See Gerald Hoinville and Gillian Courtenay, Measuring Consumer Priorities, Methodological Working Paper No. 15 (London: Social and Community Planning Research, 1978).
Morone and Marmor, ‘Representing Consumer Interests: The Case of American Health Planning’, pp. 443–4.
Here and in the next paragraph I drew on material in Albert Weale, ‘Representation, Individualism and Collectivism’, Ethics, LXLI 3 (1981) pp. 457–65.
Department of Education and Science, A New Partnership for Our Schools.
T. G. Maguire, ‘Budget-Maximizing Governmental Agencies: An Empirical Test’, Public Choice, XXXVI 2 (1981) pp. 313–22.
For a clear discussion of its various senses, see Raymond Plant, Community and Ideology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974).
Report of the Royal Commission on Local Government in England and Wales, vol. 3, p. 161.
See Hugh Butcher, Patricia Collis, Andrew Glen and Patrick Sills, Community Groups in Action (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980).
Brian Abel-Smith, Value for Money in Health Services (London: Heinemann, 1976) p. 161.
Compare Geraint Parry, ‘The Idea of Political Participation’ in Geraint Parry (ed.), Participation in Politics (Manchester University Press, 1972).
Douglas Yates, Neighbourhood Democracy (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973).
See Owen M. Fiss, ‘School Desegregation: The Uncertain Path of the Law’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, IV 1 (1974) pp. 3–39.
Klein and Lewis, The Politics of Consumer Representation.
Compare Bleddyn Davies, Social Needs and Resources in Local Services (London: Joseph, 1968).
Compare Alan Day’s Note of Reservation in Local Government Finance, Report of the Committee of Inquiry (Layfield Committee) (London: HMSO, 1976) Cmnd 6453, pp. 302–14.
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© 1983 Albert Weale
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Weale, A. (1983). Democracy and Participation. In: Political Theory and Social Policy. Studies in Social Policy. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17144-6_10
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