HKS Authors

See citation below for complete author information.

Director, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government

Abstract

This article argues, against all previous deliberative theory, that self-interest ought to play a role in deliberative democracy. Among the conditions that legitimate the entry of self-interest into deliberation the authors include both the “regulative ideal” of the absence of coercion (recognizing its impossibility in practice) and the constraint of self-interest by fairness. They consider integrative and “fully cooperative” negotiation to be forms of deliberation. Finally, they argue that deliberation can have a complementary relation to non-deliberative, aggregative democratic mechanisms.

Citation

Mansbridge, Jane, with James Bohman, Simone Chambers, David Estlund, Andreas Føllesdal, Archon Fung, Christina Lafont, Bernard Manin, and José Luis Martí. "The Place of Self-Interest and the Role of Power in Deliberative Democracy." Journal of Political Philosophy 18.1 (March 2010): 64-100.