Kantian democracy and administrative legitimacy: a reply to my critics

Abstract

ABSTRACT I first defend my Kantian account of the authority of democracy against Harel’s objection that it mandates democratic rule when it is not required and Stilz’s concern that the justification of democracy I propose is not sufficiently capacious to rescue democratic rule from epistocratic challenges. I then rescue my integrated model of administrative legitimacy from Vredenburgh’s charge that such model cannot solve the tension between the demands of democracy and those of bureaucracy. I finally address Saunders-Hastings’ concern that my account of the wrong of privatization relies on an excessively idealized view of political institutions for it to be action-guiding.