The Idea of a Democratic Authority

Does an organized society have the right to prescribe rules of conduct that create for the citizen a moral duty of compliance with them and can be enforced coercitivily? Is Democracy special about the justification of that right? To answer affirmatively both questions requires to formulate, as a regulative ideal of Democracy, a proposal of justification of Democratic Authority. A conception of Democratic Authority has to give an argument that overcome the basic objections against political authority, paradigmatically posed by philosophical anarchism. And must do it in a way that the justification of authority be specifically democratic, that is to say, showing that the decision procedure under conditions of political equality is able to serve the citizen in a specific manner, not available to any other form of exercising political power. The purposes of this paper are to make explicit some theoretical problem of Democracy as political authority, to pose comparatively some of the most influent contemporary proposals of justification and to conclude with a basic idea of Democratic Authority.