In-Person | Is there a democratic rationale for compromise?

Please note that the time allocated for this colloquia will be devoted to discussion.

Speaker: Prof Daniel Weinstock (McGill University)

About the Session: It has been argued that compromise is at best dubiously democratic. When a governing party compromises, it is said, it betrays the pledges it has made to those who have voted for it. A democratically obtained mandate, on this view, not only allows but more strongly requires the implementation of the platform that it presented to the electorate. Against this view, I will argue that compromise is a democratic requirement. I will argue, first, that compromise is already an under-appreciated dimension of the standard picture on the basis of which the anti-compromise view is developed. Second, I will suggest that compromise is a requirement of three impeccably democratic values: legitimacy, respect, and stability. Third, I will consider whether the case for compromise is in specific circumstances defeated by the presence of two kinds of political opponents: the unreasonable and the non-reciprocator. 

About the speaker

Daniel Weinstock holds the Katharine A. Pearson Chair in Civil Society and Public Policy at McGill University, where he holds appointments in the Faculty of Law, the Department of Philosophy, the Max Bell School of Public Policy, and the School of Population and Global Health. He is a member of the Order of Canada and the Royal Society of Canada. He has written extensively on a range of issues in political philosophy, and is currently completing a monograph on the place of compromise in liberal democracies.

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The Institute brings together political and legal theorists from Law, Political Science and Philosophy and organises regular colloquia in terms 2 and 3. Read more about the Institute's work.

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