This is a good question, Corey. I’m thinking on my feet here, but here’s a potentially interesting way that the soft PPT view could be developed when pressed on the above:

Fans of the soft PPT view can plausibly try to lean on a distinction. They can submit that there’s a conceptual distinction being trying to specify what preconditions are necessary for fair democratic procedures and trying to specify what preconditions are necessary for democratic procedures in general (be they fair or unfair). That there is some distinction of this sort seems intuitive. For example, it seems open to a deliberative democrat to say that some aggregative democratic views do succeed in specifying terms for democratic government, just not terms for fair democratic government (e.g., maybe on the thought that general enfranchisement + regular multi party elections is more or less sufficent for democratic government but that strong additional conditions (e.g., that policies endorsed via govenment be mutually justifiable and not simply the products of majority decision making) are required for fair democratic government). If the above sort of distinction is available to draw on, then fans of soft PPTs can plausibly say: As for the question of preconditions for fair democratic procedures, we restrict ourselves to specifying a set of plausibly necessary preconditions; but as for the question of preconditions for democratic procedures simpliciter, we endorse no such restriction and are happy to try to specify what the necessary preconditions (e.g., perhaps voting rights) are for merely qualifying as a democratic procedure. (Naturally, if some right A is a precondition for B being a democratic procedure then A is also a precondition for B being a fair democratic procedure. So on the way I’m imagining developing the soft PPT view, the scope of the question of preconditions for fair democratic procedures is to be understood in a restricted sense: it’s the question of what, if any, preconditons there are for fair democratic procedures that aren’t more fundamentally just preconditions for being a democratic procedure simpliciter).

What are the prospects for this potential development of the soft PPT view? I’m not sure. But it’s worth trying to answer at least the following question, one that bears on that prospects question. If fans of the soft PPT view opt for the preceding tact, do they then immediately run - by virtue of taking a stand on what preconditions are necessary for democratic procedure simplicier - right back into versions of the problems identified in Democratic Politics for hard PPTs?

It’s not obvious that they do. In response to the analgoue of the problem of empirical rejection, soft PPTs that take the preceding tact can say that the question of what the necessary preconditions are for x merely being a democratic procedure isn’t an empirical issue. After all it’s plausibly not. It may just be a conceptual issue - an issue that can only be settled by thinking about the concept of democracy. This, or so the view would go, is distinct from the issue of what rights, if any, might be necessary preconditions in different political communities for fairness in democratic procedures to be achieved therein - an issue whose solution might well be highly context / community sensitive and, so, be sensitive to empirical findings. In response to the analogue of the problem of jettisoning, soft PPTs that take the preceding tact can say that while a political community might actually opt to jettion some right that is indeed a necessary precondition for democratic government, all this entails is that the community is democratically moving to jettison its democracy. Whenever some such thing occurs (as it may do in e.g., some ‘wartime executive powers’ cases) it’s probably apt to be a sad state of affairs. But it’s not a quandry for soft PPTs that take the tact we’re considering. They can coherently say both (a) and (b): (a) for whatever precondition rights a public might choose to jettison, if those jettisonings are undertaken by democratic means then they are legitimately undertaken; (b) none of this requires that some legitimately undertaken jettisonings don’t conceptually entail that a shift from a government’s being democratic to its being non-democratic is being effected.

This is just a basic sketch of a possible option, obviously. If there’s no good distinction between ‘preconditions for fair democratic procedures’ and ‘preconditions for democratic procedures’ for fans of the soft PPT view to try to appeal to, then it’s open (among other options, perhaps) to fans of the soft PPT view to just try to stand tall and say that in principle anything that’s suggested as a plausibly necessary precondition for fair democratic procedures is open for jettisoning. It’s at least not obvious that saying this would be a bad move. For one thing it’s nicely epistemically cautious. Obviously, it’s quite something to claim to have discerned that some particular right really is a necessary precondition for fairness in democratic procedures. Maybe it’s prima facie more justfiable to opt instead (as the soft PPT view seemingly does in general) to make a version of the preceding necessity claim that’s just preceded by an epistemic modal - e.g., ‘I claim to have discerned that such and such is plausibly a necessary precondition for fairness in democratic procedures’.

I thought I’d offer a small further thought on Micah’s second question, the question about whether Brettschneider (henceforth CB) merely “relocates” the “problem of constraint” within the ideal of democracy, rather than actually resolving the problem. It’s a fair question, though I think CB (both in the book and in his post here) admits that his theory won’t eliminate all tension between procedural and substantive democratic values. CB emphasizes that this is a tension within democracy, and therefore that favoring democratic outcomes over democratic procedures in certain cases may not be anti-democratic, even if it may be, for example, “counter-majoritarian.” (By the way, I think this might ultimately be how Alexander Bickel sees things. One way of reading The Least Dangerous Branch is as an attempt to describe a role for the U.S. Supreme Court that would balance our commitment to democratic procedures and democratic outcomes. After all, Bickel ultimately supports a certain kind of judicial review, and I don’t think he sees himself as advocating for an assertion of non-democratic values against democratic procedures. But that may be a discussion for another time.)

One way to take Micah’s question would be to ask whether it matters if we describe the relevant tension as a tension between democracy and other values (roughly, as the “problem of constraint” has it), or, rather, as a tension within the democratic ideal. One reason it might matter is that a proper understanding of the tension might lead us to different results in specific cases. I think we’ll have a better idea of whether that’s true of CB’s approach or not after reading and discussing subsequent chapters, so I’ll hold off on that point for now.

A second way a “relocation” of the tension might matter is simply by describing the tension better—i.e., in a way that gives a more accurate account of the values at stake. Let’s say that that this re-description doesn’t lead us to any different conclusions about what to do in given cases. Might the re-description still be valuable for giving us a better appreciation of our situation? Having a clear view of the values that we advance or sacrifice in making certain political decisions, and why those decisions are justified, may be valuable in its own right. Generally speaking, this seems like the goal of “philosophy-as-reconciliation.” I think this is a less significant goal than the basic practical aim of figuring out what to do, but that’s certainly not to say that reconciliation doesn’t matter.

So maybe relocating the problem of constraint within the ideal of democracy could give us a better appreciation of the political situation in which we find ourselves. Whether CB’s account does that, obviously, is a big substantive question, and one he tries to vindicate throughout the book. But I think that if he answers that question affirmatively, that would be a major accomplishment, even if he didn’t give us any reason to resolve differently any particular practical dilemmas. None of this is to say, of course, that CB should limit himself to this goal—obviously the book’s argument means to have practical consequence as well. But that needn’t be its only contribution.