Political Decision-Making in a Digital Context at the Crossroads Between Reflective Equilibrium and Discourse Ethics

Both e-democracy and e-government face issues concerned with encouraging participation, avoiding manipulation through the malign use of technology and the need to avoid becoming functionally remote. In this philosophically based analysis, a combination of reflective equilibrium, most associated with John Rawls, and discourse ethics, most associated with Jürgen Habermas, is seen as offering answers to these issues by providing a framework and process for the electronic public forum, as also a method for moral justification in public decision making.