Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

304----Chapter 7existence of competing parties, periodic elections with universalsuffrage, decisions which are collective or the result of compromise... or made on the basis of the majority principle, or in any eventas the outcome of open debate between the different factions orallies of a government coalition."16At the same time, this operationalization by no means exhauststhe normative content evident in democratic procedure when oneadopts the reconstructive vantage point of legal theory. Althoughpublic controversies among several parties are mentioned as anecessary condition for the democratic mode of decision making,the proposed definition does not touch the core of a genuinelyproceduralist understanding of democracy. The point of such anunderstanding is this: the democratic procedure is institutionalizedin discourses and bargaining processes by employing forms ofcommunication that promise that all outcomes reached in conformitywith the procedure are reasonable. No one has worked out this' view more energetically than John Dewey: "M