A Dilemma for Proceduralist Theories of Democracy: Elected Delegates or Elected Monarchs?

Abstract Emphasizing the intrinsic value of formal political equality, a prominent strand of democratic theory—proceduralism—sharply disassociates democracy from substantive justice. This paper elucidates a resultant dilemma: that proceduralism is either underinclusive in its exclusion of robust forms of representative democracy or overinclusive in its inclusion of elective dictatorship. I show how the horns of this dilemma respectively derive from different conceptions of political equality: the standard view, which foregrounds the choice of legislative text itself, and an alternative view, drawn from Robert Dahl’s model of “procedural democracy,” which privileges the choice of procedure by which to resolve disagreement over the choice of text. Conceiving of democracy in terms of political equality alone leads to a rigid characterization of the elected legislature either as an institution whose structure is entirely open or as a mechanism for enacting citizens’ wishes that denies legislators their intuitive input.