Factional interests are identified only through open public contestation from every corner of society.
Evidence
The operational test suggested by the tradition is: when it is sectional or factional in character. But how to test for what is sectional or factional? The only possible means is by recourse to public discussion in which people may speak for themselves and for the groups to which they belong. Every interest and every idea that guides the action of a state must be open to challenge from every corner of the society; and where there is dissent, then appropriate remedies must be taken. People must find a higher-level consensus about procedures, or they must make room for secession or conscientious objection or something of that kind. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 296
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s research: public discussion as the mechanism that filters sectional from genuinely shared interests is a positive, non-enemy-based procedure for constituting common projects. — connects to: An ideal society is judged by open interplay and shared interests between groups.
- DEEPTHINKING: The claim that ‘the only possible means’ to test factionality is unbounded public discussion — with secession and conscientious objection as the terminal remedies for irreconcilable dissent — is a subtle and durable statement about how a shared civic will is legitimately constituted without coercion toward consensus.