An Epistemic Theory of Democracy

Democracy has many attractive features. Among them is its tendency to track the truth, at least under certain idealized assumptions. That basic result has been known since 1785, when Condorcet published his famous jury theorem. But that theorem has typically been dismissed as little more than a mathematical curiosity, with assumptions too restrictive for it to apply to the real world. In An Epistemic Theory of Democracy, Goodin and Spiekermann propose different ways of interpreting voter independence and competence to make jury theorems more generally applicable. They go on to assess a wide range of familiar political practices and alternative institutional arrangements, to determine what constellation of them might most fully exploit the truth-tracking potential of majoritarian democracy. The book closes with a discussion of how epistemic democracy might be undermined, using as case studies the Trump and Brexit campaigns.

Bob Goodin is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Australian National University. He is Founding Editor of the Journal of Political Philosophy and was General Editor of the eleven-volume series of Oxford Handbooks of Political Science. Goodin's work centres on political theory and public policy. He is co-author of, most recently, On Complicity and Compromise and Explaining Norms, both published by OUP in 2013.


Kai Spiekermann is Associate Professor of Political Philosophy at the London School of Economics. Among his research interests are normative and positive political theory, philosophy of the social sciences, social epistemology and environmental change. He is particularly interested in applying formal methods, computational simulations, and experiments to problems in political philosophy. His recent publications have focused on mechanisms of norm avoidance, strategic ignorance and moral knowledge, on information aggregation, jury theorems and epistemic democracy, and on reductionism and holism in the social sciences.

1. Introduction
Part I: The Condorcet Jury Theorem
2. The Classic Framework
3. Extensions
4. Limitations
5. Independence Revisited
Part II: Epistemic Enhancement
6. Improving Individual Competence
7. Diversity
8. Division of Epistemic Labour
9. Discussion and Deliberation
Part III: Political Practices
10. Respecting Tradition
11. Following Leaders
12. Taking Cues
13. Pluralism: Differing Values & Priorities
14. Factionalism: Differing Interests
Part IV: Structures of Government
15. Epistocracy or Democracy
16. Direct versus Representative Democracy
17. Institutional Hindrances to Epistemic Success
18. Institutional Aids to Epistemic Success
Part V: Conclusions
19. The Relation Between Truth and Politics, Once Again
20. Headline Findings, Central Implications
21. Epilogue: What About Trump and Brexit?
Appendices
A1. Key to Notation
A2. Estimating Group Competence by Monte Carlo Simulation