Abstract. Behavioral public policy has largely been dominated by nudging—welfare-oriented interventions that exploit heuristics through choice architecture. This paper engages a central recent objection: even when nudges improve welfare, they can fail to respect or promote individual autonomy, and the literature lacks a stable, shared account of what “autonomy” amounts to in this context. The article maps three main conceptions in BPP—freedom of choice, agency, and self-constitution—and defends an autonomy-as-self-constitution approach that integrates instrumental rationality with people’s capacity to reflect on (and revise) their goals, identities, and aspirations. It then identifies epistemic, normative, and psychological obstacles for autonomy-centered policy, and argues that structured public deliberation (notably via mini-publics) can mitigate several of them. The upshot is a shift from i-frame interventions (individual choice settings) toward s-frame interventions (institutional design shaped through public deliberation).
Abstract. This introduction frames the special issue around an enduring tension in normative political economy: markets can be seen as supporting democratic agency (through decentralization, pluralism, and experimentation), yet also as undermining democracy (through inequality, private power, and depoliticization). The text situates the issue in contemporary debates on the institutional preconditions of democracy and sketches how the contributions refine the “markets vs. democracy” opposition by isolating specific mechanisms of compatibility and conflict. It also clarifies the special issue’s organizing questions—how to specify democratic values at stake, how to assess market institutions as enabling or constraining them, and how to compare policy and constitutional responses. Finally, it briefly positions the included papers as complementary explorations of conceptual history and institutional analysis, ranging from pragmatic and Austrian traditions to critical social theory.
Abstract. Many central social phenomena—markets, norms, and complex institutional dynamics—are plausibly described as spontaneous orders: patterned outcomes that cannot be predicted or controlled in detail. Yet spontaneity is not automatically desirable, so the political problem is to identify what kinds of institutional frameworks can recognize spontaneity while still remaining normatively defensible. Using Hayek as a focal case, the article reconstructs the normative appeal of spontaneous orders in terms of freedom and the protection of reasonable expectations under conditions of complexity. It argues that “governing spontaneity” is not a contradiction: political power is not eliminated, but should be constrained and oriented toward rules and structures that cope appropriately with dispersed knowledge and unpredictable social processes.
Abstract (English translation). Polycentric arrangements—especially federal structures—allocate substantial autonomy to multiple jurisdictions. Standard defenses emphasize (i) an epistemic benefit (mobilizing dispersed knowledge in complex societies), (ii) a political benefit (limiting unified sovereign power), and (iii) a democratic benefit (enabling stronger local self-government). The paper argues that these familiar defenses face important limitations, and it proposes an additional rationale: polycentric federal orders can be antifragile. Because multiple jurisdictions can experiment in parallel, the overall system can learn, adapt, and sometimes strengthen through diversity and institutional trial-and-error. Polycentric federalism thereby supports a plurality of institutional realizations of socio-political ideals rather than enforcing a single model from the center.
Abstract (English translation). Prompted by the publication of Public Reason and Diversity (ed. Kevin Vallier), this article introduces Gerald Gaus’s contribution to public reason liberalism for a Francophone audience and situates it as a critical continuation of Rawls. Gaus’s central move is to take evaluative diversity more seriously than Rawls typically allows, treating deep axiological pluralism as the normal background condition for political justification. This reorients political philosophy toward the justification of political rules under conditions of persistent disagreement—and it also reframes diversity as potentially epistemically productive rather than merely a contractualist obstacle. The piece highlights key themes in Gaus’s work, including the governance of complex social orders and the attraction of polycentric (federal) institutional arrangements.