Rawls’s texts say very little about the day-to-day practice of democracy: there are only occasional, passing references to competitive multiparty elections, processes of political mobilization and public opinion formation, law making, the administration of justice, and so on. As Amy Gutmann points out, the index of Political Liberalism contains zero references to democracy, while Theory’s index contains only one – a reference to “democratic equality,” to Rawls’s own demanding interpretation of the second principle of justice (Gutmann 2002, 170; see also TJ §13). But the idea of democracy is clearly important to Rawls. In the Preface to the revised edition of Theory, he says that justice as fairness is meant to provide “a philosophical conception for a constitutional democracy” (TJ xi). And in the original Preface, Rawls says that justice as fairness “constitutes the most appropriate moral basis for a democratic society” (TJ viii).

Joshua Cohen helps us to ill in Rawls’s meaning in these prefatory remarks (Cohen 2002, 91–103). Justice as fairness, says Cohen, is a theory for a democratic political community in three important ways. First, Rawls’s theory outlines a democratic regime: justice as fairness requires institutional arrangements that secure and protect the standard bundle of democratic rights, including citizens’ equal rights to participation and association, conscience and expression (TJ 174–175 and 194–196). Second, Rawls’s theory outlines a democratic society, one that is animated by an egalitarian ethos, by the public recognition of all its members as free and equal co-authors of the basic structure of society (TJ 336 and 479–480). And third, Rawls’s theory outlines a deliberative democracy: a society of conscientious reason givers, each of whom is committed to strategies of justiication that respect the freedom and equality of all (TJ 17–18, 195–200, 229, and 313–318).