"The criterion of enlightened understanding, I suggested, could now be interpreted to mean that persons who understand their interests in the sense just given possess an enlightened understanding of their interests. Following this line of thought, I now propose that an essential element in the meaning of the common good among the members of a group is what the members would choose if they possessed the fullest attainable understanding of the experience that would result from their choice and its most relevant alternatives. Because enlightened understanding as essential also to the meaning of the common good. Still further, the rights and opportunities of the democratic process are elements of the common good. Even more broadly, because the institutions of polyarchy are necessary in order to employ the democratic process on a large scale, in a unit as large as a country all the institutions of polyarchy should also be counted as elements of the common good."
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Democracy and Its Critics
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