Contestatory democracy cultivates the civic virtue the state needs

Evidence

The most important thing for the state to do by way of encouraging the widespread civility that it needs for its own success is to establish the republican legitimacy of its laws in the public mind; and this it can best do by being an effective, contestatory democracy. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 1292

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names the institutional mechanism Pettit proposes for generating legitimacy through contestation rather than command.
• XREF: connects to: Legitimacy, built through contestatory democracy, generates civic virtue.; Civic virtue grows through identification with the polity, offering new identities — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 1297; Democratic institutions presuppose the civic spirit they are meant to create. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 702 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Democratic institutions presuppose the civic spirit they are meant to create. #contradicts (0.85) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 702
• Democratic legitimacy depends on citizens’ internalized commitment that imposed systems cannot replace #corroborates (0.80) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 74