  On the other hand, the democratic principle lies at a different level from principles like (U), as Habermas himself emphasizes (1996b, 110). The latter specify (D) for this or that single type of practical discourse, in view of internal cognitive demands on justification, whereas the former pulls together all the forms of practical discourse and sets forth conditions on their external institutionalization. From this perspective, the democratic principle acts as a bridge that links the cognitive aspects of political discourse (as a combination of the different types of idealized discourse) with the demands of institutional realization in complex societies. As such, the democratic principle should refer not to consensus, but rather to something like a warranted presumption of reasonableness. In fact, in a number of places Habermas describes democratic legitimacy in just such terms, which we might paraphrase as follows: citizens may regard their laws as legitimate insofar as the democratic process, as it is institutionally organized and conducted, warrants the presumption that outcomes are reasonable products of a sufficiently inclusive deliberative process of opinion- and will-formation (2008, 103). The presumption of reasonable outcomes thus rests not so much on the individual capacities of citizens to act like the participants of ideal discourse, but rather on the aggregate reasonableness of a “subjectless communication” that emerges as the collective result of discursive structures—the formal and informal modes of organizing discussion (1996b, 184–86, 301, 341). This means that democracy is “decentered,” no longer fully under control of its own conditions and no longer based on a congruent subject of self-legislating discourse.