Renewing Democracy

Abstract

If the purposes of the learning society are to be realised then the institutional order of the public domain will need to be reconstituted to support the purposes of active citizenship and the government of public choice, enabling members of a society to deliberate together, serve public needs equitably, and take responsibility with others. Institutions are constituted to create and sustain the values and purposes of society. We distinguish between the necessary characteristics of any institution, those which define the nature of institutions as such, and the constitutive conditions of a particular institutional order, those which provide the necessary requirements to sustain the development of its defining purposes.