itself says something important about democratic theory. It has failed to communicate its
solution to this problem in a way that those outside its own professional circles can
detect. Or so, at least, it seems to us.
The paper begins by stating the problem we see in contemporary democratic theory. It
then reviews certain current events to show the practical urgency of the problem, and
examines the content of a set of contemporary democratic theories to show how the
problem is manifested there. From there, it turns to a similar problem raised and
answered in the democratic theory of John Locke. We believe that Locke succinctly
states the case that democracy cannot be an end in itself, but must serve a metanorm. We
are not advocating Locke’s whole theory of democracy; we are not even advocating the
particular metanorm (natural law) that he favored. Instead, we are appropriating one
argument he makes as a valid statement of the case that democracy can never serve as an
ultimate norm of political legitimacy, and must therefore serve some metanorm that
stands above it.
Elections and the Infinite Series Problem of Democratic Legitimacy
It seems to us (from our perspective as outsiders) that the conversation among
contemporary democratic theorists is surprisingly blind to the problem of where
democratic processes come from in practice. Saward, for example, simply brushes aside
as “self-evident and uncontroversial” the fact that any deliberative procedure must
necessarily be instituted by a prior non-deliberative procedure.
But isn’t it necessary for
democratic theory to justify these non-democratic, non-deliberative processes before
proceeding to argue over which particular democratic process or mechanism is best?
Skipping this first step seems to make all subsequent theorizing suspect, on grounds that
4
Convention