"The last chapter left us with three central questions: (1) In determining the common good, whose good ought to be taken into account? (2) How can it best be determined in collective decisions? (3) What, substantively speaking, is the common good? As to the first I argued that in a collective decision the good of all persons significantly affected by the decision should be taken into account. [...] As we haven seen throughout this and the preceding chapter, pluralism compounds the difficulties of finding a satisfactory solution to the second question because, among other things, it requires us to consider how we are to determine which unit (or type of unit) is proper for making democratic decisions. [...] The unit ought to govern itself by the democratic process. The unit ought also to be justifiable as a relatively autonomous democratic unit, in the sense that it satisfies the criteria for a democratic unit set out in chapter 14. As to the third question, it should now be evident that it seems to me misguided to search for the good exclusively in the outcomes of collective decisions and ignore the good that pertains to the arrangements by which they are reached."
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Democracy and Its Critics
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