Democratic Justice

Institution for Social and Policy Studies

by Ian Shapiro

Democracy and justice are often mutually antagonistic ideas, but in this innovative book Ian Shapiro shows how and why they should be pursued together. Justice must be sought democratically if it is to garner legitimacy in the modern world, he claims, and democracy must be justice-promoting if it is to sustain allegiance over time. Democratic Justice meets these criteria, offering an attractive vision of a practical path to a better future.

Wherever power is exercised in human affairs, Shapiro argues, the lack of democracy will be experienced as injustice. The challenge is to democratize social relations so as to diminish injustice, but to do this in ways that are compatible with people’s values and goals. Shapiro shows how this can be done in different phases of the human life cycle, from childhood through the adult worlds of work and domestic life, retirement, old age, and approaching death. He spells out the implications for pressing debates about authority over children, the law of marriage and divorce, population control, governing the firm, basic income guarantees, health insurance, retirement policies, and decisions made by and for the infirm elderly. This refreshing encounter between political philosophy and practical politics will interest all those who aspire to bequeath a more just world to our children than the one we have inherited.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Political Science

351 pages, Paperback

First published August 11, 1999

About the author

Ian Shapiro is Sterling Professor of Political Science and Henry R. Luce Director of the MacMillan Center at Yale University. He is known primarily for interventions in debates on democracy and on methods of conducting social science research. In democratic theory, he has argued that democracy's value comes primarily from its potential to limit domination rather than, as is conventionally assumed, from its operation as a system of participation, representation, or preference aggregation. In debates about social scientific methods, he is chiefly known for rejecting prevalent theory-driven and method-driven approaches in favor of starting with a problem and then devising suitable methods to study it.

Reviews

[Noah Kidd · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were several features I liked about this book. I appreciate the fact that Shapiro applied his philosophical principles in a pragmatic and balanced manner. Rather than devise ironclad principles that must be obeyed in all circumstances, Shapiro presents his principles as guiding ideals that can be implemented in various ways depending on the context. Shapiro is not a dogmatist and he writes with an acute awareness of the difficulties associated with applying principles to real life.

I also appreciated Shapiro's life cycle approach. Political theorists too often assume that independent adults are the default social unit. Shapiro's examination of childhood and old age in the context of democratic justice was novel and interesting.

I was less enthusiastic about Shapiro's conception of democracy as "rule by the people" and "collective self-governance." This understanding of democracy does not reflect how modern democracies function in practice. "The people" do not rule in a meaningful sense in modern democracies. All modern democracies rely on the rule of representatives -- even Switzerland, which is often touted as a 'direct democracy,' is in large part a representative government. These representatives for the most part act independently of their constituents. Their decisions are primarily influenced by party leaders, lobbyists, and political expediency. And their constituents almost always lack the knowledge, time, interest, and inclination necessary to meaningfully hold their representatives accountable at the ballot box. Conceiving of modern democracy as "rule by the people" is a big mistake and obscures the practical realities of democratic governance.

For readers interested in the political theory of justice and democracy, this is worth reading.