Overview

The economist Kenneth Arrow proved in 1951 that a society of diverse individual preferences could only by ordered by dictatorship. His impossibility theorem is still an axiom of contemporary welfare economics and has never been seriously challenged. The American philosopher John Dewey, who died in 1952, had claimed that voting and electoral mechanisms do not define democratic self-government. His broad conception of social conflict addresses preference diversity and resolves Arrow’s impossibility. Since the 1980s, political scientists have focused on decision through democratic “deliberation.” Dewey saw that conversation alone is inadequate for resolution of conflicts in a democracy. Conflict is accompanied by discourse, but preferences are grounded in habits. Social habits resist adjustment in response to discourse alone, but demonstrably adjust in the process of conflict resolution, Preference conflict is distinguished from Marxist and later models, as a discovery and transformation process. It advances an original, updated theory of social conflict in a democracy relevant to today's problematic situations from discrimination to climate change and political polarization.

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9781793654281

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In this timely work, Kellogg unearths the flawed assumptions in Kenneth Arrow’s highly influential General Possibility Theorem using John Dewey’s concept of organic democracy. In so doing, Democracy and Conflict illustrates the role that extended conflict plays in continuously reconstructing the preferences and values of the public in the process of democratic deliberation. The book is a welcomed resource for readers concerned with the heightened polarization of our democratic processes as it replaces Arrow’s overly abstract and synchronic understanding of aggregated preferences with a diachronic and situated model of constant preference and habit reformation in public, democratic debate. -- Seth Vannatta, Morgan State University

Author Information

Frederic R. Kellogg is research scholar at The George Washington University and visiting professor at Universidad Federal de Pernambuco in Brazil.

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