Academic literature on the topic 'Epistocrazia'

In recent years, the fortunes of democracy have waned both in theory and practice. This has added impetus not only to the republican case for strengthening democratic institutions but also to new anti-democratic thought. This article examines the claim made by Jason Brennan that epistocracy, rule by the ‘knowledgeable’, is compatible with freedom from domination. It begins by briefly explaining epistocracy and republicanism. It then presents the argument for epistocratic republicanism: that democracy can be a source of domination and that freedom from domination can be secured through non-democratic political institutions. The case against epistocratic republicanism is grounded in concerns about systemic domination and the ability of epistocrats to arbitrarily set the terms of social cooperation. These two arguments are judged on the basis of which better minimises domination while respecting its value to all people. Epistocratic republicanism is found to be less reliable because of the risks of epistemic injustice that accompanies systemic domination; democracy, accompanied by other republican institutions, is better at minimising domination and respecting persons. It concludes that republicans ought to be democrats.

Abstract Democracy and equality are different concepts. There are two fundamentally different ways of relating them. The first way defines democracy in terms of substantive political equality: the purest form of democracy is a regime in which each citizen (at any given level of aptitude and motivation) has equal influence over political decisions, regardless of the citizen’s wealth and other resources. The second way renders democracy as a device for assuring equality (or justice) by some measure external to the process by which political decisions are made. According to this second way, political equality -democracy’s defining trait on the first view- is at best of secondary importance. John Rawls is the most prominent exponent of the first way, and Ronald Dworkin and David Estlund of the second. This article explores the differences between the two ways, and concludes with the thought that the failure to appreciate how different they are contributes to our currrent democratic malaise.

Epistemic justifications of democracy affirm the comparative quality of democracies’ decisions. The challenge faced by those who endorse such views is to explain why we should prefer standard democratic institutions to some sort of epistocracy or rule of the wisest. This article takes up this challenge by assessing the epistemic potential of an epistocratic council, as imagined by Jason Brennan. Members of such council would be selected through competency exams, the required competencies being defined by the whole population. The argument defended in this article is that the potential gain in instrumental rationality that such an institution could offer under certain questionable conditions would be outweighed by the increased risks of misrule and involuntary biases if such council has decision-making or veto power. In comparison with the existing literature, this argument stresses the importance of moral rightness, here defined as impartiality, in the epistemic assessment of democracy and its alternatives. The article then ends with a qualified assessment of purely epistemic justifications of democratic inclusion, which could be insufficient to reject implausible but imaginable forms of epistemically justifiable disenfranchisement.

La ignorancia y la irracionalidad del ciudadano democrático promedio ha preocupado a los teóricos desde la época de Sócrates. Recientemente, y a la luz de la evidencia surgida de la investigación empírica, una nueva oleada de pensamiento epistocrático ha comenzado a emerger. En este trabajo se analizan algunas de las posiciones centrales de los “nuevos epistócratas” para afirmar que, aunque atendibles, dichas posiciones fallan en considerar los fenómenos mencionados en su dimensión sistémica y social y por ello sus propuestas de innovación institucional resultan desencaminadas. En segundo lugar, se sostiene que una orientación tal permitiría apreciar el concepto de aprendizaje como central para evaluar la capacidad epistémica de un sistema deliberativo. Por último, se ofrecen algunos ejemplos acerca de programas de investigación y diseños institucionales que podrían satisfacer el criterio de capacidad epistémica como aprendizaje.

Epistocratic arrangements are widely rejected because there will be reasonable disagreement about which citizens count as epistemically superior and an epistemically superior subset of citizens may be biased in ways that undermine their ability to generate superior political outcomes. The upshot is supposed to be that systems of democratic government are preferable because they refuse to allow some citizens to rule over others. We show that this approach is doubly unsatisfactory: although representative democracy cannot be defended as a form of government that prevents some citizens from ruling over others, it can be defended as a special form of epistocracy. We demonstrate that well-designed representative democracies can, through treatment and selection mechanisms, bring forth an especially competent set of individuals to make public policy, even while circumventing the standard objections to epistocratic rule. This has implications for the justification of representative democracy and questions of institutional design.

Jason Brennan, who proposes assessing democratic decisions based on non-procedural expert knowledge from a pure utilitarian standpoint, holds a prominent position among libertarian critiques of democracy. Brennan contends that epistocratic regimes can outperform democracies since democracies perform badly due to the phenomena of rational ignorance and deliberative democratic methods cannot solve this problem. Brennan, who compares epistocratic institutions to constitutional institutions, wants to tame democracies using negative externality arguments. In this study, we demonstrate that constitutional democracies cannot be assessed by the Brennanian metrics and that epistocracy will erode the libertarian political successes of constitutional democracy. Two important arguments back up this conclusion. First, transforming libertarian ideals beyond constitutional rules into the standard for daily politics allows experts tremendous discretion. Even with good intentions, the unchecked discretion of experts would most likely undermine the general, abstract, and egalitarian rules required by a complex society. Second, taking the concept of rational choice out of its original context will make the distinction between constitutional and unconstitutional governments unclear. Therefore, the libertarian ideal of the limited government established by the separation of powers and the procedures of checks and balances would lose its significance, giving place to the unchecked discretion of expert rule.

This issue begins with Peter Strandbrink’s argument that “standard liberal democratic theory should be pressed significantly harder to recognize the lexical and conceptual fact that civic political and cognitive participation in mass liberal democracies belong to different theoretical species.” It is by conflating both of these theoretical species, which Strandbrink sees as the dominant tendency in contemporary democratic theory, that we inhibit our ability to critically evaluate “epistocratic theoretical registers.” Further unsettling is Stranbrink’s view that, once separated from each other, neither the theories of civic political or cognitive participation offer much help in dealing with the rise of “alt-facts” or “post-truth” in liberal democratic societies today.

La ricerca analizza la crisi sistemica attraversata dalle democrazie contemporanee leggendone i sintomi alla luce di un profilo specifico, ossia quello del declino epistemico che colpisce l’utenza di tali sistemi normativi. Si è in particolare focalizzata l’attenzione sul divario sempre più marcato tra, da una parte, lo scarso livello di (in)formazione e capacità di ragionamento dei cittadini e, dall’altra, la crescente quantità di competenze necessarie per orientarsi correttamente all’interno della società. Si è quindi cercato di dimostrare come l’esacerbazione di tutti i principali sintomi dell’attuale crisi democratica sia fortemente correlata alle preoccupanti dimensioni ormai raggiunte da questo “differenziale epistemico”, il quale, pur rappresentando una fonte di criticità sempre latente all’interno di società organizzate democraticamente, incontra oggi condizioni di contesto che favoriscono il pieno dispiegamento dei suoi effetti anche sul piano fenomenico. La sintomatologia della crisi democratica viene esaminata ricorrendo all’ausilio di elaborazioni socio-demoscopiche sul rapporto tra cittadini e politica, di dati statistici relativi alle abilità cognitive e al livello delle competenze possedute dagli elettori, e di ricerche sul decision making applicato al contesto elettorale, prestando un’attenzione particolare al panorama italiano. Questo complesso di studi ha consentito di approcciare criticamente quelle teorie che, pur con molteplici sfaccettature, fondano la legittimazione assiologica della democrazia su una presunta capacità dei cittadini di autogovernarsi. L’analisi è stata quindi orientata verso la ricerca di soluzioni istituzionali volte a superare la crisi in modo strutturale. In primo luogo si è esplorata la possibilità di intervenire sul sistema formativo e sulla regolamentazione di quello mediatico, con l’obiettivo di innalzare il livello delle competenze, di incrementare le abilità analitiche, e di migliorare lo stato informativo dei cittadini. Realisticamente, simili interventi si prospettano tuttavia soltanto parzialmente risolutivi rispetto a un fenomeno diffuso, consolidato e persistente come il deficit epistemico che colpisce l’elettorato democratico. Nella seconda parte del lavoro si è quindi rivolto lo sguardo alle teorie elaborate nell’ambito della filosofia politica di orientamento epistocratico, la quale, pur con molte sfumature e diverse declinazioni, propone di ridiscutere la pressoché incondizionata universalità del suffragio caratterizzante le democrazie contemporanee, per sostituirla con forme di selezione dell’elettorato fondate sulla valorizzazione della conoscenza. La scelta di concentrare l’attenzione sulle dottrine epistocratiche discende dal fatto che esse stanno acquistando un ruolo sempre più rilevante nel dibattito scientifico, e configurano uno dei filoni di ricerca attualmente più innovativi (e al contempo più controversi) per l’analisi critica del modello democratico. Si sono quindi esaminate le condizioni giuridiche che un’eventale restrizione del suffragio dovrebbe rispettare per non violare i principî supremi degli ordinamenti democratici, per poi trattare il problema della realizzabilità di queste proposte anche dal punto di vista assiologico. Da ultimo ci si è interrogati se, al di là della legittimità giuridica e della condivisibilità teorica, simili interventi risulterebbero altresì realisticamente concretizzabili nell’attuale contesto socio-politico, ovvero se quest’ultimo imponga di orientare il processo di epistocratizzazione verso soluzioni politicamente meno dirompenti. In particolare, si sono prese in considerazione alcune proposte che, pur mantenendo formalmente inalterato il suffragio universale, potrebbero comunque ridurre per via indiretta l’incidenza dell’ignoranza politica sul processo elettorale.
This work analyzes the crisis faced by contemporary democracies moving from a specific point of view, i.e. the epistemic decline of democratic electorates. In particular, I focused on the gap between low level of information/reasoning ability of the average citizen, and the growing amount of skills he needs to get properly oriented in contemporary society. Therefore, I show that all the main symptoms of the current democratic crisis are strongly correlated with this “epistemic gap”, which has always been a potential problem for democracy, but its effects are nowadays amplified by the social, political and technological context we live in. In order to analyze the features of this epistemic crisis, I used surveys on the relationship between citizens and politics, statistical data on voters’ cognitive skills and studies on voters’ decision-making, focusing in particular on the Italian context. As a result, these studies cast a shadow over many democratic theories that base the axiological legitimacy of democracy on a citizens’ supposed ability to govern themselves. Therefore, I tried to find institutional solutions to overcome the crisis. First of all, I proposed some interventions for improving education and media systems, aimed at increasing competences, analytical skills, and information of citizens. However, a phenomenon as pervasive and entrenched as epistemic deficit cannot be fully solved only by this kind of interventions. Therefore, in the second part of the thesis I considered the theories developed by epistocratic political philosophy, which proposes to rethink universal suffrage and replace it with some kind of knowledge-based electorate selection. I chose to focus on epistocratic doctrines because of the increasingly key role they are acquiring in the contemporary scientific debate: nowadays, they are one of the most innovative (and controversial) line of research in the field of critical analysis of the democratic model. I studied the legal conditions that a suffrage restriction should respect in order not to violate the supreme principles of democratic systems. I then studied the same issue also from an axiological point of view. Lastly, I wondered about the feasibility of these kind of interventions in the current socio-political context. From this point of view, it has emerged it was appropriated to think also of less disruptive solutions in the short-medium term. In particular, I analyzed some reform proposals that could reduce indirectly the incidence of political ignorance on the electoral process, while keeping universal suffrage formally unchanged.

Com esta tese, pretende-se analisar a democracia representativa com sufrágio universal, desde o seu aparecimento no século XIX. O objetivo principal do trabalho consiste em analisar o princípio do sufrágio universal de uma forma realista à luz dos «três modelos sucessivos de democracia liberal, dos quais se pode dizer tenham prevalecido alternamente desde inícios do século XIX até o presente»1. Consequentemente, pretende-se explorar a função que estes modelos atribuem à participação política dos cidadãos na democracia liberal, bem como algumas das críticas ao princípio do sufrágio universal que foram apresentadas por vários teóricos liberais. Face às razões contraditórias que foram apresentadas por eles para justificar a limitação do sufrágio universal, tornou-se imperioso dizer que, no contexto atual da democracia representativa é possível defender sufrágio limitado recorrendo aos estudos empíricos sobre o comportamento dos votantes. Neste sentido, esta tese tem como fim a defesa do sistema epistocrático no qual o governo é eleito pelos eleitores mais informados sobre os fatos políticos à luz do princípio da competência política individual.
This thesis aims to analyze representative democracy with universal suffrage, since it’s emergence in the 19th Century. The prime objective of the work is to realistically analyze the principal of universal suffrage in light of the “three successive models of liberal democracy, which have prevailed alternately since the beginning of the 19th century until present day” 1. Consequently, the thesis seeks to explore the functionalities that these models attribute to political participation by citizens in liberal democracy, as well as some critiques on the principals of universal suffrage that have been presented by various liberal academics. Due to the contradictions they present to justify the limitation of universal suffrage, it becomes imperative to defend in the context of representative democracy resorting to the empirical studies on voter behavior. With that in mind, the ultimate end of this thesis is the defense of the epistocratical system in which the government is elected by the most informed voters regarding political affairs, considering individual political competence.

Classical liberalism entails not only a view about the proper scope of government and its relationship with the market but also a distinct theory about how government should operate within its proper area. This book presents the basic governance theory and political economy principles underpinning this vision. Building upon the works of diverse authors such as Friedrich Hayek, James Buchanan, and Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, the book offers a profound challenge to how public governance is commonly understood, by shifting the focus along several dimensions. First, it challenges the technocratic-epistocratic perspective in which social goals are set and experts simply provide the means to attain them. Instead, the focus is on the diversity of opinions in any society regarding “what should be done,” and on the design of democratic and polycentric institutions capable of limiting social conflicts and satisfying the preferences of as many people as possible. Second, the book explains the knowledge and incentive problems associated with technocratic-epistocratic governance. This has deep implications for how public governance itself should be construed. The book’s three parts reconstruct the theoretical foundations of the position, then explore its nature and development at the interface between public choice and public administration, and finally illustrate via a set of concrete governance issues how it operates at the applied level. The book thus fills a large gap in the academic literature, as well as the public discourse, about the ways decision makers understand the nature and administration of the public sector.

This book articulates a participatory conception of deliberative democracy that takes the democratic ideal of self-government seriously. It aims to improve citizens’ democratic control and vindicate the value of citizens’ participation against conceptions that threaten to undermine it. The book critically analyzes deep pluralist, epistocratic, and lottocratic conceptions of democracy. Their defenders propose various institutional “shortcuts” to help solve problems of democratic governance such as overcoming disagreements, citizens’ political ignorance, or poor-quality deliberation. However, it turns out that these shortcut proposals all require citizens to blindly defer to actors over whose decisions they cannot exercise control. Implementing such proposals would therefore undermine democracy. Moreover, it seems naïve to assume that a community can reach better outcomes “faster” if it bypasses the beliefs and attitudes of its citizens. Unfortunately, there are no “shortcuts” to making a community better than its members. The only road to better outcomes is the long, participatory road that is taken when citizens forge a collective will by changing one another’s hearts and minds. However difficult the process of justifying political decisions to one another may be, skipping it cannot get us any closer to the democratic ideal. Starting from this conviction, the author defends a conception of democracy “without shortcuts.” This conception sheds new light on long-standing debates about the proper scope of public reason, the role of religion in politics, and the democratic legitimacy of judicial review. It also proposes new ways to unleash the democratic potential of institutional innovations such as deliberative minipublics.

Epistocracy—roughly, political rule by the wise—is similar to paternalism. In both cases, knowing better is not enough to justify taking charge. But also in both cases, the prohibition is unlikely to be absolute. If one person’s competence is low enough, and the other person would do enough better by taking over, then (simplifying) it is plausibly justified. Arguably it is partly on such grounds that children may be governed by others in ways that adults may not be. May political subjects likewise be ruled by those who know enough better? A right to collective self-rule is not enough by itself to answer this, any more than a right to individual self-rule tells us whether and when the competence disparity is enough to justify paternalism. This rough analogy exposes important issues in the project of defending a requirement of democracy as against epistocracy.

This chapter specifies and defends the concept of semi-parliamentary government. It provides an operational definition of semi-parliamentarism and identifies the cases that fall under it. It shows that existing typologies in political science disregard this unique constitutional structure because they neglect how directly elected second chambers relate to the executive. The chapter also compares how well the cases that fall under the operational definition express the underlying logic of constitutional design. Finally, the chapter generalizes the analysis—and hence an ideal-typical definition of semi-parliamentarism—in two ways. First, it shows how semi-parliamentary government could balance fundamentally different visions of majority formation: partisan and individualist visions, electoral and sortitionist visions, democratic and epistocratic visions. Second, it explains why semi-parliamentary government does not require two separate chambers.

The elaboration of some paradigms of governance lies upon the opposition between the democratic and the non-democratic, namely, as will be shown and defined, the technocratic (skilled-based power), the ethocratic (virtue-based power), and the epistocratic (wisdom-based power). The point in this opposition is that, contrary to the democratic paradigm, the non-democratic ones assume that the condition for social rules or decisions to be valid is their reflecting, discussing and making by an elite of experts, virtuous or wise individuals or groups. There is no doubt in these paradigms a basic distrust as to the ability of the people to take in charge the public affairs and then to elaborate the appropriate standards and norms accounting for the regulation of actions and conducts. The re-construction of these four paradigms (the democratic and the non-democratic) can be illuminating as regards the interpretation of the actual expert and law-driven trends in the ethical governance of technology. It appears, indeed, that the paradigms of technocracy as well as that of ethocracy still operate in the design of governance settings aimed at regulating research and innovation projects.

The elaboration of some paradigms of governance lies upon the opposition between the democratic and the non-democratic, namely, as will be shown and defined, the technocratic (skilled-based power), the ethocratic (virtue-based power), and the epistocratic (wisdom-based power). The point in this opposition is that, contrary to the democratic paradigm, the non-democratic ones assume that the condition for social rules or decisions to be valid is their reflecting, discussing and making by an elite of experts, virtuous or wise individuals or groups. There is no doubt in these paradigms a basic distrust as to the ability of the people to take in charge the public affairs and then to elaborate the appropriate standards and norms accounting for the regulation of actions and conducts. The re-construction of these four paradigms (the democratic and the non-democratic) can be illuminating as regards the interpretation of the actual expert and law-driven trends in the ethical governance of technology. It appears, indeed, that the paradigms of technocracy as well as that of ethocracy still operate in the design of governance settings aimed at regulating research and innovation projects.