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A Rawlsian Idea Of Deliberative Democracy, Angela D. White

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In my thesis, I develop a framework based on John Rawls's Political Liberalism that addresses the question: how is it possible for democratic institutions and their decisions to be legitimate, given that (i) they are supposed to be governed by the "will of the people", but (ii) the people will disagree with each other about what political institutions ought to do about any given issue? Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson advance a deliberative democratic response to this question, which has served as the basis of governments' attempts to "strengthen democracy". They argue that political decisions are justified insofar as they …