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Democratic Theory and the Public Interest: Condorcet and Rousseau Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1989

David M. Estlund ,
Jeremy Waldron ,
Bernard Grofman  and
Scott L. Feld
David M. Estlund
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
Jeremy Waldron
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Bernard Grofman
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
Scott L. Feld
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Stony Brook
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Abstract

Bernard Grofman and Scott Feld argued in the June 1988 issue of this Review that Jean-Jacques Rousseau's contributions to democratic political theory could be illuminated by invoking the theorizing of one of his eighteenth-century contemporaries, the Marquis de Condorcet, about individual and collective preferences or judgments. Grofman and Feld's claims about collective consciousness and the efficacy of the public interest provoke debate. One focus of discourse lies in the application of Condorcet's jury theorem to Rousseau's theory of the general will. In this controversy David M. Estlund and Jeremy Waldron in turn raise a variety of issues of theory and interpretation; Grofman and Feld then extend their argument, and propose clarifications.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 83 , Issue 4 , December 1989 , pp. 1317 - 1340
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1989

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