Reasoning as legitimacy

Democratic decisions draw their legitimacy from multiple sources: the procedures by which they are made, the participation they secure, the values they instantiate. Less often noted is the role of public reasoning — the requirement that decisions be made for stated reasons, that those reasons be recorded, and that they be available to scrutiny.

Public reasoning is procedural in a deep sense. It does not determine outcomes; it determines what an outcome can be defended as.

Documentation standards

We propose three documentation standards for the reasoning behind significant policy decisions: contemporaneous recording of the considerations on which a decision rests; structured disclosure of the considered alternatives; and routine availability of the reasoning record after a defined embargo period.

Disclosure architecture

These documentation standards require a disclosure architecture: a body responsible for receiving, indexing, and releasing the reasoning record. We sketch the institutional features that such a body requires to function — independence, mandate, capacity.