A Case for Reasonableness over Epistemic Competence as a Democratic Legitimation Criterion

Within a Rawlsian liberal democratic framework, the concept of the reasonable plays a central role as a justificatory standard applicable to the design of a fair basic political structure (Rawls 2005, 2001, 1999). On that account, a given political proposal is justified where it is advanced on terms, and for reasons, that ideally free and equal citizens could in principle consent to as fair terms of cooperation, despite holding distinct comprehensive doctrines. Yet as a justificatory standard for democratic authority, the reasonable has generated a variety of criticisms, with reference to its being an unrealisable, overly demanding, or unrealistic standard lacking sufficient argumentative support (Christiano 2009, Mouffe 2005). Furthermore, the reasonable as a legitimation criterion presently competes with epistemic justifications of democratic authority. Epistemic democratic theory advances the case that the legitimacy of democratic authority depends upon the fulfilment of an alternative standard, that of reliability in producing factually correct, intelligent or well-informed outcomes, through aggregation of public opinion and/or fair and open deliberation (Raber 2020, Goodin & Spiekermann 2018, Landemore 2012, Estlund 2009, Peter 2008, Anderson 2006). Democracy’s capacity and reliability in selecting correct decisions is thus emphasised over its capacity to produce consensus in relation to the justification of democratic authority. In response, this paper reformulates and thereafter defends a distinct conception of the reasonable as a normative legitimation standard for democratic decision-making. That reformulated conception incorporates two conditions and is informed by the work of Gerald Gaus on public reason and liberal democratic theory (2016, 2011). The first condition is a public reason condition that proposed law and policy can be justified by reference to a single or various conceptions of the good and/or the right acceptable to a threshold proportion of citizens. The second condition is a soundness condition stating that democratic decisions must cohere with established primary law and be minimally practically rational. In order to make its case for the adoption of reasonableness as a normative legitimation criterion, this paper develops its standard in response to limitations identified with epistemic competence standards (Goodin and Spiekermann 2018, Estlund 2009) as well as by offering response to critiques of the reasonable from political cognitivist (Landemore 2012) and epistemic pure procedural (Peter 2021, 2009 \& 2008) perspectives. This serves ultimately to demonstrate the plausibility of this conception of the reasonable by reference to its superiority in grounding the entitlement of duly appointed officials within the political system to carry out the functions of government, with a commensurate duty of citizens to comply with duly enshrined law and policy.