One of the main objections that Gutmann and Thompson make to Rawls’s theory is that justification for political decisions is based on hypothetical rather than actual agreement between citizens. As I discussed in §2.1, Rawls relies on hypothetical reasoning because relying on actual public discourse to settle political disagreement has two important shortcomings. First, we cannot rely on actual public discourse because of what Gutmann and Thompson refer to as the burdens of injustice. The burdens of injustice are those elements of the current structure that seem clearly to be contrary to the principles of democracy. However, these elements remain in place because those who could change them are well-served by that structure, and have significant incentive not to do so.
Second, the burdens of judgement prevent us from relying on public dis- course to determine political decisions as well.(Rawls, 2005, 54–58) These are the circumstances that lead to disagreement among reasonable people, no mat- ter how much they discuss political issues. These include reasonable people’s values and beliefs, and the meanings they ascribe to concepts involved in po- litical issues. And they will also disagree about, e.g., what information should count as evidence for any particular position, how much weight it adds to the strength of a position, etc.
As I pointed out in my discussion of their principle of reciprocity in §3.1.4, Gutmann and Thompson draw an analogy between justifying claims about what is true in science and how to determine which decisions are justified in politics. They argue that publicly replicating experimental results in science
serves a purpose similar to publicly defending political decisions to stakehold- ers. In both contexts, the process of publicly defending claims in open view of others improves the justificatory basis of the decision.
In his discussion of the burdens of judgement, Rawls also contrasts the role of public discourse in the context of science with that of politics. When Rawls (2001, 35) compares the two contexts, however, he draws a somewhat different conclusion. Within science, it seems as though public discourse eventually set- tles controversies and disputes about the truth. But ongoing public discourse in politics rarely seems to bring the parties to agreement about what the state ought to do about political issues. If what justifies claims in science is that eventually the parties involved come to agreement, then in politics, we need an alternative standard to adjudicate between conflicting claims about what is right, for agreement in the latter context rarely obtains.
In spite of these limitations of public discourse, Rawls explicitly acknowl- edges its valuable role in a well-functioning democracy:
Here I am concerned only with a well-ordered constitutional democ- racy [...] understood also as a deliberative democracy. The defini- tive idea for a deliberative democracy is the idea of deliberation itself. When citizens deliberate, they exchange views and de- bate their supporting reasons concerning public political questions. They suppose that their political opinions may be revised by dis- cussion with other citizens; and therefore these opinions are not simply a fixed outcome of their existing private or non-political interests.(Rawls, 1997, 772)
Clearly, Rawls recognizes the important role that public deliberation among citizens can play in maintaining the stability and order of a modern liberal democracy.
And this quote suggests that he agrees with Gutmann and Thompson about the potential advantages of public discourse. Both acknowledge that engaging in public discourse with one another gives people the opportunity to reflect on their positions on political issues in light of others’ perspectives. And public debate and deliberation about their reasons and views may result in changes to citizens’ own, as well as others’, views about the issues under discussion.
Indeed, according to Rawls, citizens have a moral obligation to explain their own views about political issues to each other. As he says,
[...], the ideal of citizenship imposes a moral, not a legal, duty – the duty of civility – to be able to explain to one another on those fundamental questions how the principles and policies they advocate and vote for can be supported by the political values of public reason.(Rawls, 2005, 217).
A citizen has a moral obligation to offer reasons for her views about political issues to others, and to explain why she believes that others should view her position as a reasonable one to hold. A person has this obligation because if the state is making decisions in accordance with the principles of liberal democracy, citizens will each carry some amount of responsibility for the actions it takes. And these decisions will have implications for other citizens’ abilities to live out their conceptions of the good. Because of their shared responsibility for the actions of the state, and because individuals in a stable and well-ordered modern liberal democracy must (as I will argue below) recognize each other as moral equals, citizens have an obligation to account to one another for their political views and the ways that they act to direct government.1
1I think it is noteworthy that the way Rawls has worded this implies that the duty
However, the aim of Rawls’s theory is not to address the question of how citizens are to fulfil this moral obligation to one another. Its central aim is to develop a principled account of how to determine how to structure political institutions, and how democratic institutions ought to make their decisions, given persistent disagreement among citizens about these questions. Following Rawls, my account is not opposed to the idea that public discourse may be used for that end, or that the principles that Gutmann and Thompson outline may be good ones. But the Rawlsian account that I defend here rejects resting the justification of political decisions on public discourse because of the burdens of injustice and judgement. It is meant to supplement their view with an account of when and in what ways aspiring to fulfil their principles may be justified.