Various kind of philosophical considerations have been offered in favor of democracy. By some accounts, democracy realizes some intrinsic value, such as equality or collective autonomy. According to other views, democracy’s value is more instrumental: it tends to produce or promote certain social goods like stability, prosperity, and peace. However, a longstanding alternative tradition locates democracy’s value in its capacity to make social and moral progress. Here, the idea isn’t so much that democracy produces an already-identified social good, but rather that democracy fosters a kind of social and moral discovery.

In Experiments in Living Together: How Democracy Drives Social Progress (Oxford UP, 2024), Michael Fuerstein draws on normative and empirical considerations in proposing a systematic account of democracy’s capacity to foster progress.