Premium
Democracy: A Convergent Value? Comments on Sheldon Leader and Ernesto Garzón Valdés
Author(s) -
Passerin D'entrèves Maurizio
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9337.00054
Subject(s) - toleration , flourishing , democracy , value (mathematics) , law and economics , liberal democracy , political science , law , epistemology , sociology , philosophy , psychology , mathematics , social psychology , statistics , politics
In this paper, the author contends that Leader's attempt to ground the value of toleration on a common understanding of democracy faces a number of fundamental obstacles. Such obstacles could only be overcome if both liberals and their opponents were to reach an agreement on the value of democracy and thereby converge in their support of toleration. The author shows that far from providing a common ground that liberals and their opponents can share, the so‐called “shareable understanding” of democracy appeals primarily to liberals. The author also argues that Garzón Valdés's thesis that democracy is the system best suited to the flourishing of toleration faces the same kind of difficulty, namely, that not every group in a liberal constitutional regime can be convinced of the priority of democratic principles over their other fundamental value‐commitments.