We are all (Democratic) Proceduralists Now. Or maybe Not

Epistemic democrats have provoked a debate about the priority of democratic procedures over outcomes. Epistemic proceduralist democrats, however, claim to settle this conflict by maintaining the priority of procedures, yet rejecting the principles according to which democratic procedures have been hitherto conceptualized. Epistemic rather than (or in addition to) fairness considerations should animate procedures, they claim. The same is done by some militant proceduralist democrats: they admit that primacy should be given to procedures, but these should be designed in a way that secures the preservation of democracy against popular threats. Inspired by these attempts to marry procedural (valuerelativistic) 0with substantive (value-specific) conceptions of democracy, this article performs two tasks. First, like epistemic and militant proceduralists, it questions the possibility of ‘pure’ proceduralism and admits that democracy is a value-specific regime. Second, unlike epistemic and militant proceduralists, it defends equal freedom as the value that should have lexical priority in the determination of what counts as a democratic procedure. I conclude by arguing that, at the minimum, any procedure set up to scrutinise democratic decisions through the lens of democratic core values should itself be subject to the same values.