Democracy and Equality

This article defines democracy as that form of government which aspires to realize the value of collective self-determination. It inquires into the relationship between democracy, so understood, and the values of equality. The article argues that although democracy intrinsically requires that persons be treated equally as self-determining agents, democracy does not require the forms of substantive equality often associated with theories of distributive justice and fairness. These forms of substantive equality are in fact often in tension with the self-governance required by democracy, as is signified by their enshrinement in a tradition of rights that restricts the ambit of self-determination. But because democracy requires that citizens have the warranted conviction that they are engaged in the process of governing themselves, and because this requirement can be satisfied only if citizens identify with the processes by which public opinion is formed, infringements of substantive equality can sometimes alienate citizens and impair the forms of identification that make up the autonomous self-determination that defines democracy. Democracy and substantive egalitarian commitments are thus bound in an indissoluble knot, mutually reinforcing and mutually antagonistic.