Democratic justice holds that democracy functions as a subordinate good whose constraints must be applied contextually to the superordinate goods pursued within existing hierarchical institutions—such as the family and the workplace—so that power relations within an institution are democratized only to the extent necessary, leaving the institution's substantive purpose otherwise intact. The theory distinguishes basic interests (survival- and participation-oriented resources warranting state fiduciary protection) from best interests (flourishing-oriented goods properly entrusted to more particularized fiduciaries such as parents), and situates the degree of permissible state regulation of hierarchical institutions along a continuum of background social protections. This falls within political philosophy, specifically theories of distributive and democratic justice, extending resourcist frameworks (in the tradition of Rawls, Sen, and Dworkin) and Lockean consent-based theories of legitimate authority and disenfranchisement.
Democratic justice holds that democracy functions as a subordinate good whose constraints must be applied contextually to the superordinate goods pursued within existing hierarchical institutions—suc…