How did the value of freedom become so closely associated with the institution of the market? Why did the idea of market freedom hold so little appeal before the modern period and how can we explain its rise to dominance? In The Invention of Market Freedom, Eric MacGilvray addresses these questions by contrasting the market conception of freedom with the republican view that it displaced. After analyzing the ethical core and exploring the conceptual complexity of republican freedom, MacGilvray shows how (...) this way of thinking was confronted with, altered in response to, and finally overcome by the rise of modern market societies. By learning to see market freedom as something that was invented, we can become more alert to the ways in which the appeal to freedom shapes and distorts our thinking about politics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay calls attention to two blind spots in Power Without Knowledge. First, the book has little to say about the role that political institutions can play in promoting effective democratic governance. Drawing on the “mixed government” tradition, I argue that properly designed institutions can correct for the epistemic deficits that Friedman describes by creating what I call the “pressure to conflict.” Second and more importantly, the book has nothing to say about the role of responsible leadership in a (...) democratic technocracy. Drawing on Max Weber’s analysis of the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of conviction, I argue that responsible leadership can promote judicious technocracy in a dynamic that I call the “spiral of responsibility.” The responsible leader recognizes that to recuse oneself from the exercise of technocratic power is to empower the unscrupulous and irresponsible. According to Weber, any theory of politics that fails to embrace the ethics of responsibility will therefore occupy an uneasy middle ground between quietism and enthusiasm. This, I fear, is where Power Without Knowledge may leave us. (shrink)

Robert Westbrook argues in Democratic Hope that for the pragmatist "all believers [must] be democrats simply by virtue of their desire to assert their beliefs as true," and that they must therefore "open their beliefs to the widest possible range of experience and inquiry." I argue against this view that doubt, not belief, lies at the center of the pragmatic theory of inquiry, and that our beliefs can be placed into doubt only by those whom we consider to be epistemically (...) reliable. It follows that any connection between pragmatism and democracy must be empirical and not conceptual in nature. (shrink)

The idea of the “public” is used in two different ways in Dewey's The Public and Its Problems: first, as a conceptual tool for thinking about the nature of politics, and second, as a hypothesis about the democratic aims that might be achieved through political association over time. By attending to this distinction we can better understand the connections between Dewey's political thought and his larger philosophical position, and the ways in which the former might be called into question by (...) those who share the latter. (shrink)

Contemporary critiques of the administrative state are closely bound up with the distinctively American doctrine that republican freedom requires that the legislative, executive, and judicial powers be exercised by separate and distinct branches of government. The burden of this essay is to argue that legislative delegation and judicial deference to the administrative state are necessary, or at least highly desirable, features of a democratic separation of powers regime. I begin by examining the historical and conceptual roots of the separation of (...) powers doctrine, paying particular attention to the unique way in which it was adapted to fit the American case. I then examine three concerns that the resulting constitutional system raises about the republican freedom of those who are subject to it—which I call the accountability, legitimacy, and stability concerns—and argue that the administrative state is a useful, albeit imperfect, tool for reducing the unavoidable tension between these concerns. The thrust of this discussion is to push us away from “in principle” objections to the administrative state, and back toward the kinds of prudential considerations that are associated with ordinary liberal politics. More importantly, the aim of the essay is to encourage sober reflection on the real dangers that face the American constitutional system under current circumstances. (shrink)

:The ideal theory debate rests on two conflicting claims: that justice is “the first virtue of social systems”, and that a just society is one in which “everyone accepts and knows that the others accept the same principles of justice”.Justice firstholds that questions about the meaning of justice — and thus about what an ideally just society would look like — must be settled before we can effectively pursue justice. However,universal consententails a project of justification that can only take place (...) over time. I propose that we avoid this impasse by treating freedom rather than justice as the “first virtue” of a liberal society. Liberal freedom has two distinct and complementary dimensions, which give rise to two distinct and complementary moral aims: on the one hand, to create the social conditions that make responsible agency possible, and on the other hand to carve out a social space within which the demands of responsible agency are relaxed or absent. Striking the appropriate balance between these two dimensions of liberal freedom is irreducibly a matter of judgment. A freedom-centered liberalism therefore requires that we treat justice as the endpoint rather than the starting point of political action, thus severing the link between legitimacy and consent. (shrink)

The pragmatic political liberal in my conception approaches the political realm as an arena within which the boundaries of reasonableness, and thus of legitimate state action, are worked out through public inquiry over time. I therefore hold that the political liberal claim that public policies must be publicly justified does not mean that the policies in question must be shown to be immune to reasonable disagreement, but rather that they be shown to be reasonable candidates for public inquiry. While I (...) have doubts about the attractiveness and viability of ‘Deweyan’ democracy as a political program, I think that it is a reasonable candidate for public action in this sense. (shrink)