The Value Theory of Democracy: A Proceduralist Account

Corey Brettschneider in Democratic Rights, articulates the flaw of what he sees as the two views of democracy: the epistemic and proceduralist views. The epistemic view, as he claims it to be, is an embrace of the problem of constraint – or the defense of "majoritarian procedures as valid means of lawmaking because they tend trad the promotion of truth; when these procedures fail to promote truth, epistemic theorists believe that they should be overridden”, which inherently undermines the democratic process (18). This process is appealing to theorists because they “explain why the principles that underlie democratic procedure can also justify overriding that procedure” (18). The proceduralist view, shown by Brettschneider through Jurgen Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy, is that “ideal procedure is defined by citizens’ willingness to reason about policy by appeal to reasons that acknowledge each participant's status as an equal. . . citizens would be assured a variety of preconditional rights to ensure that they can function within the procedure as autonomous and equal” (15) – which, as Brettschneider puts it, introduces the problem of constraint (the struggle to “reconcile external constraints on democratic procedures with the belief that democracy is the fundamental basis for legitimate policies” (8)). This is where he introduces the value theory of democracy, which “emphasizes [that] the status of citizens are more fundamental than their role in democratic procedures” (19). He invokes three core values as part of this theory: equality of interests, political autonomy, and reciprocity. 

However, while Brettschneider’s value theory of democracy positions itself as a third option between epistemic and proceduralist accounts, I fail to understand how it escapes the proceduralist logic it so desperately tries to escape. By grounding democratic legitimacy in equality, autonomy, and reciprocity, Brettschneider replaces what he defines as “procedure” with nothing more than a higher order procedure in which democratic outcomes and institutions are repeatedly checked against these foundational values (similar to Rawls’ reflective equilibrium theory which he likely would label a proceduralist account). Therefore if Brettschneider’s theory operates similarly, then I believe that what he has produced is a procedure which operates at a higher level of abstraction – not actually an alternative to proceduralism itself, as he claims. This also complicates his critique of Habermas. When Brettschneider faults deliberative proceduralism for foundationally embedding substantive values in the preconditions of ideal procedure, he fails to recognize that his own value theory remains vulnerable to a similar critique: it also embeds procedural logic within the supposedly substantive foundations. 

I believe that even if Brettschneider were to contest that the values he provides offer genuinely non-procedural standards, this logic only holds true if these values remain uncontested enough to serve as a stable foundation. If these values prove to be too thin to settle disputes on their own, the process itself would be to revise their interpretation and applications – which again, is inherently procedural. Therefore the solution that Brettschneider establishes (one distinct from the flaws of a proceduralist account of democracy), is not as distinct as he claims it to be.