 A further objection to the idea of public reason—again particularly Rawls’s account—is that it is antidemocratic. On Rawls’s account, the content of public reason is partly fixed via philosophical argument, prior to any actual democratic deliberation amongst citizens (see sect. 5). Seyla Benhabib thus complains that “public reason in Rawls’s theory is best viewed not as a process of reasoning among citizens, but more as a regulative principle, imposing certain standards upon how individuals, institutions, and agencies ought to reason about public matters. The standards of public reason are set by a political conception of liberalism” (Benhabib 2002, 108). Similarly, Habermas argues that Rawls’s theory does not take seriously enough the importance of democratic or political autonomy, and by giving public reason determinate content in the shape of certain liberal principles “generates a priority of liberal rights which demotes the democratic process to an inferior status” (Habermas 1995, 128). Although these complaints are made about Rawls’s account, the objection obviously applies, with greater or lesser force, to any conception of public reason that fixes the content of public reason, to some extent, prior to any actual democratic debate.