Liberalism, polarization, and the aggregation problem

Successful public justification of coercive policy in liberal societies relies on a solution to what I call the aggregation problem. Without a method of weighing and balancing shared reasons that is acceptable to all, no genuine consensus on the acceptability of a political principle or policy is possible. This is a serious problem for theories of liberalism that rely on public justification or public reason that has largely been ignored. I show the seriousness of this problem by using an example from contemporary politics, abortion policy. Within the context of abortion policy, I consider three approaches to the aggregation problem and argue that none of them offers a promising solution. This result, I argue, generalizes beyond abortion policy and poses a problem for the entire project of public reason liberalism. Even in an idealized society where all deliberate from a shared standpoint, it may not always be possible to find a policy all citizens regard as acceptable: not because there is a diversity of reasons, but because there is no uncontroversial method of weighing and aggregating reasons. This doesn't mean public reason is useless, though. Instead of being a standard for justifying coercive policy, I argue public reason should be seen as a procedural tool for managing and mitigating the inescapable political conflicts that will inevitably arise in a pluralistic democratic society.

Automated summary

Successful public justification of coercive policy in liberal societies relies on a solution to the aggregation problem. This problem has been largely ignored by theories of liberalism that rely on public justification or public reason. The article examines three approaches to the aggregation problem within the context of abortion policy and argues that none of them offers a promising solution. The author suggests that public reason should be seen as a procedural tool for managing and mitigating political conflicts in a pluralistic democratic society.