Order Ethics: The Turn towards Polycentric Democracy

In this essay, I want to challenge the order ethics defense of constitutional democracy by confronting it with two prominent lines of friendly criticism: the anarchist critique by Michael Huemer and the minarchist critique by James M. Buchanan and Ludwig von Mises. A critique by these two approaches seems especially interesting, because both share with order ethics moral as well as methodological commitments. Nevertheless, all three approaches come to very different conclusions with respect to the preferred political order. I will argue that this friendly challenge exposes a conceptual tension in order ethics. In particular, I will argue that order ethics’⁠ epistemic commitment is not consistent with its univocal support for constitutional democracy. Since order ethics’⁠ epistemic commitment is theoretically more fundamental, order ethics, I argue, needs to give up its support for constitutional democracy in favor of polycentric democracy.