No-Bullshit Democracy

by Henry Farrell on April 4, 2023

Hugo Mercier, Melissa Schwartzberg and I have two closely related publications on what we’ve been calling “No-Bullshit Democracy.” One is aimed at academics – it’s a very short piece that has just been officially published in American Political Science Review. The other just came out in Democracy. It’s aimed at a broader audience, and is undoubtedly livelier. An excerpt of the Democracy piece follows – if you want to read it, click on this link. The APSR academic letter (which can be republished under a Creative Commons license) is under the fold. Which one you might want to read depends on whether you value footnotes more than fisticuffs, or vice versa …

The New Libertarian Elitists

What might be called “no-bullshit democracy” would be a new way of structuring democratic disagreement that would use human argumentativeness as a rapid-growth fertilizer. … But first we need to sluice away the bullshit that is being liberally spread around by anti-democratic thinkers. … . Experts, including Brennan and Caplan (and for that matter ourselves), can be at least as enthusiastic as ordinary citizens to grab at ideologically convenient factoids and ignore or explain away inconvenient evidence. That, unfortunately, is why Brennan and Caplan’s books do a better job displaying the faults of human reasoning than explaining them.

Analytical Democratic Theory: A Microfoundational Approach

Henry Farrell, Hugo Mercier and Melissa Schwartzberg.

Abstract

A prominent and publicly influential literature challenges the quality of democratic decision making, drawing on political science findings with specific claims about the ubiquity of cognitive bias to lament citizens’ incompetence. A competing literature in democratic theory defends the wisdom of crowds, drawing on a cluster of models in support of the capacity of ordinary citizens to produce correct outcomes. In this Letter, we draw on recent findings in psychology to demonstrate that the former literature is based on outdated and erroneous claims and that the latter is overly sanguine about the circumstances that yield reliable collective decision making. By contrast, “interactionist” scholarship shows how individual-level biases are not devastating for group problem solving, given appropriate conditions. This provides possible microfoundations for a broader research agenda similar to that implemented by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues on common-good provision, investigating how different group structures are associated with both success and failure in democratic decision making. This agenda would have implications for both democratic theory and democratic practice.

Over the last 15 years a prominent academic literature tied to libertarian thought has argued that democracy is generally inferior to other forms of collective problem solving such as markets and the rule of cognitive elites (Brennan 2016; Caplan 2008; Somin 2016). Following a long tradition of skepticism about democracy, these libertarians appeal to findings in cognitive and social psychology and political behavior to claim that decision making by ordinary citizens is unlikely to be rational or well grounded in evidence. Their arguments have been covered in magazines such as the New Yorker (Crain 2016) and popularized in proposals in the National Review for restrictions to dissuade “ignorant” people from voting (Mathis-Lilley 2021). Democratic theorists have mostly retorted with “epistemic” accounts, invoking mechanisms through which citizens can potentially reach good decisions—most significantly, deliberative mechanisms (Schwartzberg 2015).

This debate has been largely unproductive. Libertarian skeptics argue that democracy is generally inferior because of incorrigible flaws in citizens’ individual psychology, whereas democratic theorists lack a shared, compelling, and realistic micropsychological theory within which to ground their broader claims. Each side emphasizes empirical evidence that appears to support its own interpretation while discounting counterevidence.

This letter adopts a different approach. It demonstrates that democratic skeptics’ pessimistic conclusion—that democracy is unfixable—rests on a misleading and outdated account of the relevant psychological literature. Similarly, epistemic democrats often overestimate deliberation’s role in producing wise results or assume that aggregative models will operate at scale. We seek to avoid unwarranted skepticism and enthusiasm alike, instead providing microfoundations for a more empirically robust program investigating both the successes and mishaps of democracy, drawing on the experimental psychological literature on group problem solving (inter alia) to discover the conditions under which specific institutions perform well or fail in discovering solutions to collective problems.

Adapting a term from past debates, we contribute one foundational element of an approach that might be dubbed “analytical democracy.” Like the “analytical Marxism” associated with scholars such as G. A. Cohen, Jon Elster, John Roemer, and Adam Przeworski (see Roemer 1986), we provide more demanding and specific microfoundations for an account we find broadly sympathetic. Our research program might also be analogized to Ostrom’s work on the decentralized provision of common goods (Ostrom 1990). This emerged in response to Garrett Hardin’s influential article on “the tragedy of the commons,” which claimed that common-goods governance would inevitably collapse (Hardin 1968). Ostrom and her colleagues tested and falsified Hardin’s claims. However, rather than simply defending the proposition that decentralized communities could provide common goods, they investigated when common-good provision was likely to succeed or fail. Similarly, a research program on democratic problem solving, investigating success and failure, might not only provide possible foundations for a truly realistic account of democracy but also generate practical advice on building and improving democratic institutions. This program would build on research on the consequences of group composition and structure to understand the conditions under which democratic problem solving will operate well or badly.

Democratic Skepticism, Optimism and Social Science
A recent pessimistic literature, dominated by libertarian scholars, diagnoses widespread democratic ignorance and incompetence. Bryan Caplan (2008, 19) asserts that voters are irrational and “rule by demagogues … is the natural condition of democracy.” Jason Brennan believes that the democratic electorate is “systematically incompetent” so “some people ought not have the right to vote, or ought to have weaker voting rights than others” (Brennan 2016, 201, viii). Ilya Somin claims that “widespread public ignorance is a type of pollution” so that “democracy might function better if its powers were more tightly limited” (Somin 2016, 6, 9).

Each argues that democracy is profoundly flawed because of irremediable problems in individual incentives and cognition. Each proposes circumscribing democracy in favor of some purportedly superior alternative principle of social organization. Caplan claims that markets impose an effective “user fee” for irrationality that is absent from democracy (Caplan 2008, 133–4). Brennan proposes “epistocracy,” an aristocracy of those who know best. He defends restrictions on suffrage, identifying familiar possibilities such as restricting the franchise to those who pass a voter qualification exam and assigning plural votes to college graduates. Somin advocates what he calls “foot voting” (exit) over “ballot box voting” and emphasizes “the market and civil society as an alternative to government” (Somin 2016, 154), although he admits that the benefits “are likely to vary from issue to issue, from nation to nation, and perhaps also from group to group” (180).

These scholars ground their claims in social science findings. They invoke a literature leading back to Downs’s (1957) argument that citizens are rationally ignorant about politics because they do not have sufficient incentive to gather good information or to make good decisions. They emphasize that ordinary citizens display severe cognitive bias. Caplan (2008) blames such biases for differences between voters’ beliefs about economics and the beliefs of PhD economists, which he takes as a reasonable representation of empirical truth. Brennan (2016, 37ff) and Somin (2016, 94ff) cite work showing that biases lead people to search for information that supports their prior views and “not only reject new information casting doubt on their beliefs but sometimes actually respond by believing in them even more fervently” (Somin, 93–4; invoking the “backfire effects” described in Nyhan and Reifler 2010).

Brennan (2016, 40) unites rational ignorance and cognitive bias into a single stylized account in which most voters are either low information “hobbits” (ignorant) or politically fanatical “hooligans” (biased). He invokes Mercier and Sperber’s explanation of how “[r]easoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments” (Brennan 2016, 38). Furthermore, “human beings are wired not to seek truth and justice but to seek consensus… . They cower before uniform opinion” (Brennan 2012, 8; see also Brennan 2016, 47) as demonstrated by the famous Asch (1956) “conformity experiments,” where participants followed the obviously false opinions of confederates who were sitting next to them.

Achen and Bartels’ (2016) “realist” account of democracy does not share the skeptics’ normative priors but provides a similarly bleak judgment. They too draw on Asch and “similar studies” for social psychological microfoundations that stress the force of group identity and conformity (Achen and Bartels 2016, 220).

There is little scope for democratic problem solving if individual consensus seeking invariably leads to group conformity and “echo chambers” (Sunstein 2002), affective polarization (Iyengar et al. 2018), the rejection of countervailing arguments from nongroup members, and backfire effects. Yet it is far from clear that the despairing picture is empirically accurate. Growing affective polarization may not increase ideological polarization and extremism (e.g., Desmet and Wacziarg 2021). People’s economic beliefs are affected by economic reality (e.g. Duch and Stevenson 2008). Party leaders influence party members on some issues but on others adopt what they perceive to be the public’s dominant opinion (Lenz 2013). Backfire effects are the exception, not the rule (Nyhan 2021; Wood and Porter 2019). People generally change their minds when presented with well-sourced facts and good arguments (see, e.g., Nyhan et al. 2020; Sides 2015).

In part, we do not see the expected universally negative consequences because citizens are not as ignorant as the skeptical consensus suggests. “Issue publics,” whose members acquire specialized information on a particular issue across a spectrum of opinion (Converse 1964), provide an important epistemic resource for democracy (Elliott 2020; Han 2009). Citizens do better on domain-specific knowledge, including information about candidates’ positions on issues they care about (Henderson 2014; Krosnick 1990), than on the surveys of general factual information that skeptics rely on.

More fundamentally, individual-level biases are not devastating for collective democratic problem solving. The psychological literature on group effects and individual cognition is systematically misunderstood by skeptics and underexploited by political scientists. Contrary to Brennan’s (2016) misinterpretation, scholars like Mercier and Sperber (2017) find that even if humans are subject to “myside bias,” they can filter out erroneous messages (including those from their “side”) and change their minds when presented with good evidence from the other “side.” A realistic understanding of the capacities of democratic citizens need not be altogether bleak.

But it should not be overly sanguine. Democratic theorists (including those who are interested in practicalities) often rely on either conjecture or quasi-empirical claims. For instance, David Estlund argues that democratic procedures will tend to outperform non-democratic ones epistemically while acknowledging that the claim is conjectural rather than empirical (Estlund 2008, 157, 160, 176). Hélène Landemore (2020, 8) asserts more forcefully that what she calls “open democracy” is empirically superior to other forms of social decision making: “in a complex and uncertain world, … empowering all members of the demos equally … is overall the best method we have to figure out solutions to common problems.”

We lack a research framework for establishing whether this strong assertion is more robust than competing claims from those who champion different forms of democratic decision making or who emphasize the possibility of democratic failure. Even if deliberation and other forms of reasoned exchange are morally valuable, they may not necessarily yield superior solutions to problems. Extrapolations such as Landemore’s (2013, 104) “Numbers Trump Ability” postulate that democracy can readily be scaled up so that “if twelve jurors are smarter than one, then so would forty-one or 123 jurors,” building on Hong and Page’s (2004) “Diversity Trumps Ability” theorem. Such claims are qualified by empirical findings from jury deliberations (Watanabe 2020) and Hong and Page’s later prediction that increasing group size does not necessarily improve problem-solving capability (Hong and Page2021).

To move away from general claims for democracy’s superiority, epistemic democrats need to understand not just when democracy works but also when it doesn’t. Neblo et al. (2017, 915) establish an important possibility claim by showing how “scholars have assembled strong evidence that deliberative institutions positively influence citizens.” Still, it is hard to build from such demonstrations to a properly scientific account that can explain both democratic success and failure without some externally grounded theory of human decision making. Similarly, there is no very straightforward way of moving from a demonstration that Habermasian claims for deliberation can be grounded in plausible psychological mechanisms (Minozzi and Neblo 2015) to a broader account of when these mechanisms will or will not operate.

Surprisingly, possible microfoundations for such an account can be found in the literature on group psychology and cognition that skeptics have deployed against democracy. As Landemore (2013, 143) says, the “argumentative theory of reasoning” allows us to predict where deliberation will and will not work well. This is a pivotally important claim: we need to know where deliberation will function well to empirically assess theories of institutional design and practical justifications of democracy.

The argumentative account of reasoning is grounded in a recent “interactionist” literature in psychology, which explores how individual bias may or may not be corrected through social interaction. It investigates how mechanisms of “epistemic vigilance” allow people to employ cues to evaluate communicated information including the expertise and benevolence of the source, the plausibility of the message, and the quality of the arguments (for an overview, see Mercier 2020; Sperber et al. 2010). Chambers (2018) has also identified both the interactionist approach and the empirical literature on deliberation as reasons to doubt skeptical claims based on group psychology.

For example, contrary to skeptical claims that people conform to majority opinion, the experimental literature finds that people take account of relevant cues when evaluating the majority opinion including the absolute and relative size of the majority, the competence and benevolence of the majority’s members, the degree of dependency in the opinions of the majority, and the plausibility of the opinion (for review, see Mercier and Morin 2019). The much-bruited Asch (1956) experiments describe the consequences of external pressure rather than those of internalized bias. Practically no one was influenced when participants did not have to voice their opinion in front of the group, and contrary to the widespread academic folklore (Friend, Rafferty, and Bramel 1990), the experiments demonstrated independence as well as conformity. The literature finds that people are well able to evaluate arguments, that they are more influenced by strong than weak reasons (e.g., Hahn and Oaksford 2007), and that they partly change their minds when confronted with challenging but good arguments (e.g., Guess and Coppock 2020).

Interactionist scholarship suggests that reasoning processes are best evaluated in their normal environment of social interaction. It provides possible microfoundations for theories of variation. Instead of looking to the (supposedly invariant) cognitive limitations of ordinary citizens as skeptics do, an interactionist approach suggests that we should investigate the social context of decisions—how groups are structured—to understand when group identity and social pressure can distort or swamp problem solving. Both problem-solving capacity (which depends on whether groups harness individual biases and mechanisms of epistemic vigilance) and collective pressures to conformity will plausibly vary with group structure. Skeptical accounts, which depict group politics as simple condensates of individual bias writ large, are poorly fitted to capturing this variation. Equally, interactionism provides microfoundations for a framework that can investigate democratic theorists’ findings about when democracy works well while also investigating democratic failure.

This provides a more promising path forward than does the universal pessimism of democratic skeptics. It also provides more robust foundations for the claim that deliberation can occur under psychologically realistic circumstances and a starting point for investigating what those circumstances are. Democratic “realists” like Achen and Bartels (2016) need not be democratic pessimists. A microfoundational approach, grounded in endemic individual cognitive bias, avoids the possible charge that the desired normative outcomes are baked into the initial empirical assumptions.

If outright democratic skeptics are sincerely committed to understanding the cognitive underpinnings of democratic processes, as their reliance on this literature ought to entail, they too should find it attractive. It allows the serious investigation of observed democratic failure as well as democratic success. Of course, these are not the only possible microfoundations, and like all empirically based accounts, they may be modified or even rejected as empirical evidence emerges.

Still, such microfoundations could support a broader analytical account that seeks to understand and address variation. If both the benefits and disadvantages of democracy arise at the group rather than individual level, then the challenge for advocates of democracy is to build democratic institutions that can better trigger the relevant cognitive mechanisms so as to capture the benefits of group problem solving instead of deferring to the social pressures that do sometimes lead to conformity. In other words, our goal is to better explain how democracy incorporates the capacities of groups to solve problems (under some circumstances) as well as their tendency to magnify conformity and factionalism (under others).

We do not provide a complete alternative account of democracy here. That would be a heroic undertaking, which would involve not just providing microfoundations but rebuilding existing institutional and organizational theories on their basis. Instead, we sketch the beginnings of a broader research program that we hope others will find attractive.

A Research Program on Democratic Problem Solving
Ostrom (1990) began by demonstrating the systematic flaws in Hardin’s skepticism of common goods but went on to articulate a coherent alternative research agenda on the conditions under which common goods provision succeeds or fails. Political science and related disciplines should commence a similar research program, uniting scientific research on group composition, network structure, and institutional form to investigate the conditions under which democratic problem solving is likely to succeed or fail.

As we have argued, this program could build on research in experimental cognitive psychology, which provides an alternative set of microfoundations to both rational choice and the social psychological arguments that have dominated political science debates. Specifically, this research identifies specific dimensions along which trade-offs in group problem solving plausibly occur:

• Between social comfort and comfort in expressing dissent (Baron 2005).

• Between shared common ground and some measure of preexisting disagreement. Stasser and Titus (1985) point to the benefits of ground-level agreement for problem solving, whereas Schulz-Hardt et al. (2006) discuss how some level of background dissent allows for better problem solving.

• Between group size and the need to represent diversity. Fay, Garrod, and Carletta (2000) discuss how the quality of communication deteriorates as group size increases, whereas Hong and Page (2004; 2021) highlight the benefits of diversity and its complex interaction with group size and Mercier and Claidière (2022) examine whether deliberation is robust to increases in group size.

• Between pressures for conformity and concerns for epistemic reputation, Origgi (2017) describes how the cognitive mechanisms of reputation can generate both market bubbles and reliable collective information systems.

By understanding how different positions in this multidimensional space are associated with better or worse problem solving, we can arrive at useful hypotheses about how to fashion democratic systems. This research program should also incorporate scholarship on a broader level of social aggregation, which explores how network structure and social influence affect flows of information and opinion between individuals with different perspectives (Feng et al. 2019). It might incorporate practical findings about democratic decision making—for instance, the circumstances under which juries can form more accurate collective beliefs (Salerno and Diamond 2010) and how citizen constitutional assemblies (Farrell and Suiter 2019) and online town halls (Neblo, Esterling, and Lazer R2018) can support better communication between politicians and the public.

Crucially, the proposed research program would investigate democratic failures as well as successes, better explaining, for example, the circumstances under which epistemic breakdown and misinformation can become established in democracies. O’Connor and Weatherall (2018; Weatherall and O’Connor Weathera2021) investigate how epistemic factionalization occurs among people who do not trust others with different beliefs. Nyhan (2021) emphasizes the importance of elite messaging and information decay in spreading misinformation, suggesting that punishing elites who spread falsehoods and focusing on intermediaries may have benefits.

Finally, such a research program would help address recent (Neblo et al. 2017) and current (Notes from the Editors 2020) demands for a “translational” approach to democracy that “challenges dominant disciplinary norms.” It would seek to reconcile scientific rigor with normative analysis, providing the groundwork for institutional improvement and reform.

{ 30 comments }

1

Henry Farrell 04.04.23 at 1:06 pm

As an aside for the comments section – I’ve read accusations that Jason Brennan took an overly pugnacious attitude to moderating people who criticized him at Bleeding Hearts Libertarians, back when Bleeding Hearts Libertarians was a thing. I don’t know if this is true, but if Brennan shows up here, he is free to say what he wants within our rules, just like any other ordinary commenter. I don’t anticipate that I’ll be responding to him either – no particular inclination to get into a likely useless fight, and too many other things that I need to be doing.

2

Michael 04.04.23 at 1:27 pm

3

Brett 04.04.23 at 2:48 pm

New research in cognitive science shows that even if individual human beings are biased in favor of their own side and against others, they can still make good collective decisions.

You’d think this would be obvious to the libertarian crowd, given how often they have to defend against claims that they treat market participants as rational actors.

4

roger gathmann 04.04.23 at 4:15 pm

Attribution where attribution is due. The slogan No Bullshit was the slogan of Norman Mailer in 1969, when he ran for mayor. A great run that – Mailer went out of his way to get the Black Panther endorsement.

5

Bob Zannelli 04.04.23 at 5:32 pm

Many tech bro libertarians seem to view democracy as a threat to freedom and seem to think that an oligarch provides for more freedom. Of course they seem to see themselves as the natural group to lead society. Unquestionably this would give THEM more freedom

6

Sashas 04.04.23 at 6:08 pm

A brief sidenote: I was taught that the advantage of a broad-based democracy was not in the correctness of its decisions, but rather that it imparted stability and legitimacy to those decisions.

i.e. When I am given means to peacefully influence decision-making, even if things don’t necessarily go my way, I feel more content with the decisions that are made and am less likely to turn to extreme (violent) measures.

Or put more bluntly: disenfranchised people start dreaming about guillotines.

7

Tim Worstall 04.04.23 at 7:25 pm

Oooooh…..

“Our research program might also be analogized to Ostrom’s work on the decentralized provision of common goods (Ostrom 1990). This emerged in response to Garrett Hardin’s influential article on “the tragedy of the commons,” which claimed that common-goods governance would inevitably collapse (Hardin 1968). Ostrom and her colleagues tested and falsified Hardin’s claims. However, rather than simply defending the proposition that decentralized communities could provide common goods, they investigated when common-good provision was likely to succeed or fail. Similarly, a research program on democratic problem solving, investigating success and failure, might not only provide possible foundations for a truly realistic account of democracy but also generate practical advice on building and improving democratic institutions. This program would build on research on the consequences of group composition and structure to understand the conditions under which democratic problem solving will operate well or badly.”

Umm, no, not really. Hardin said that the common-access resource would inevitably fail if – and only if – demand rose above the generative capacity of the resource. We’re not facing a great shortage of seawater right now, even if we are of the fish in it.

Ostrom asked one of the great questions. So, if Hardin is right then why do we have commons resources which do have demand – under a Marxian access model – greater than supply through regeneration but which haven’t collapsed?

The answer being that among small groups of humans, up to the 2,000 to 3,000 sorta limit, strong social pressure can work. Above that sort of limit it doesn’t, the free rider problem is too great for that social exclusion, or ostracism, to overcome. See fisheries again, inshore and deep sea. If you’re dating the guy’s mother/sister, your kids are going to grow up around here, resource preservation through social pressure works – to an extent. If you’re catching tuna 11,000 miles from home perhaps not.

Now, since you’re arguing for the commonality of the argument, the commonality needs to be emphasised. Small communities can indeed be run by democracy. Not even necessarily by voting either, but possibly by the folding of the arms, the pursing of the lips and, in extremes, the tapping of the feet. But there’s that limit to it. The size of the community we’re trying to run that way.

As definitively not science or academia, just a piece of freelance typing, I once invented something called the Bjorn’s Beer Effect. If you live in a Danish commune (the political unit, not the hippy thing) of perhaps 10,000 people then you might well be willing to pay higher taxes, decide more through government. Because you know who Bjorn is, the guy who levies taxes and assigns budgets. You also know where Bjorn has his Friday night beer. Most important, Bjorn also knows that you know where he has his weekend sup. Money is likely to be better spent under such circumstances (as a little story of the limits to Danish social democracy peaceableness there’s a well known story of a Danish sergeant in Afghanistan who used to go out on patrol with a double headed, rune inscribed, Viking axe strapped to his backpack. Which didn’t always come back clean either.) where the feedback loop is short and direct – therefore more money will be offered into that system with the feedback loop.

Now, it’s you who call Ostrom into evidence, as a direct comparison to your own thinking. Great, why not, Nobels are given for great insights. But it would be a useful idea that the insight itself is understood. What Ostrom really proved is that scale matters for human beings. Societal scale determines what works. Because, obviously, all that blathering about humans being primarily social beings is entirely correct. But what’s the society that we see ourselves being anchored in, the one that determines our behaviour?

Something larger than the village cricket club, sure, but much larger than the village which supports the club? Hmm, perhaps not you know.

But whether that’s true or not, the argument that “democracy/resource use limitation works among groups of a couple of thousands of people” is not proof of the idea that deciding everything via Wash DC works. But that does seem to be what you’re attempting. It is still logically possible that the Ostrom result allows for the libertarian solution – bugger off matey, that’s not a subject for government or democracy – still operates more efficiently, effectively, at larger scale.

8

reason 04.04.23 at 9:29 pm

I agree with Sashas, but my emphasis is more on the legitimacy side than the stability side. Who has the right to make decisions on collective action and (importantly) rules and why? To look at it from the individualist point of view – why should somebody have the right to make a decision on my behalf, without consulting me?

9

J-D 04.05.23 at 12:40 am

But whether that’s true or not, the argument that “democracy/resource use limitation works among groups of a couple of thousands of people” is not proof of the idea that deciding everything via Wash DC works. But that does seem to be what you’re attempting.

Is it? Is it, though? What makes somebody think that? I don’t find anything in the post which translates to ‘let’s decide everything via Washington DC’. I do find the suggestion that ‘a research program on democratic problem solving, investigating success and failure, might … generate practical advice on building and improving democratic institutions.’ Somebody who is interested in improving democratic institutions is unlikely to be somebody who thinks that everything in Washington DC works well.

To my way of thinking, criticism of democracy is generally based on the idea that when people make decisions for themselves, sometimes the results are bad. That’s true: but the only alternative to people making decisions for themselves is some people making decisions for other people, and sometimes the results of that are bad. In general, some people (no matter how cognitively elite they may be) making decisions for other people produces worse results than people making decisions for themselves.

10

Ebenezer Scrooge 04.05.23 at 1:01 am

I, too, agree with Sashas and reason–democracy’s claim to primacy does not require superior wisdom of the demos. But legitimacy and stability are not the only claims. My claimed advantage assumes elite rule, checked by democratic mechanisms. Such mechanisms hinder entrenchment of any particular elite–a kind of salutary instability.

11

reason 04.05.23 at 8:19 am

J-D
Your last sentence: “making decisions for other people produces WORSE results” – what does worse mean here? It is not clear that is knowable. There are almost always winners and losers – how do you weight their preferences. The market does it by wealth. How should political processes weight them? (This is obviously a probably with single member electorates where marginal voters in marginal electorates have an outsize voice. And can also be problem under proportional representation where majorities are narrow.)

12

TM 04.05.23 at 10:36 am

From the Democracy piece: “Perhaps, he [Brennan] says, political knowledge is “negatively correlated” with being Black and “strongly negatively correlated” with being a woman. Still, that is a bullet that Brennan is prepared to bite.”

How admirably rational of him! But does he consider the possibility it might be the other way round? Also, if he thinks that the educated are better citizens, is he ok with the implication that most Republican voters should be kept away from political decision-making?

13

Tim Worstall 04.05.23 at 10:57 am

“I don’t find anything in the post which translates to ‘let’s decide everything via Washington DC’.”

In American political discourse “more democracy” does seem to generally mean Bernie gets to decide how many deodorants there are (“fewer”) and Boebert whether boys can wear dresses. Both sides do use it as code for centralised power through politics.

14

TM 04.05.23 at 11:11 am

TW 7: “Hardin said that the common-access resource would inevitably fail if – and only if – demand rose above the generative capacity of the resource.”

That would be a banal observation. The point is that Hardin predicted that the common resource would inevitably be overused because he didn’t understand the difference between common property (CPR) and open access resources, and he simply ignored the possibility that collective norms might limit the use of the resource to a sustainable level.

https://www.slideshare.net/amenning/tragedy-commons
https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/people-files/emeritus/pd10000/publications/07/commons.pdf

15

TM 04.05.23 at 12:51 pm

TW 13: Your trolling is not as interesting as you seem to think.

16

Sashas 04.05.23 at 2:35 pm

@OP

I forgot to say this before, but I think this is a really cool project and I’m excited to see more of it! I do think that many (most?) of the scholars you are responding to are not operating in good faith, so, uh, good luck!

@Tim Worstall (13)

I object to the oversimplification of “two sides” in this context, but possibly more to the point I have no idea how you came up with Sanders and Boebert as the leaders who gain power under “more democracy”. Your response to @J-D does really suggest that you’re conflating “more democracy” with “a more centralized democracy”, on top of the other issues I already stated.

To me, “more democracy” means two things. First, a broader electoral base. i.e. More people are allowed to vote, and are able to vote easier. Second, election processes are adjusted so that the outcomes of votes better reflect the will of the electorate. e.g. Ranked Choice voting, an end to gerrymandering, etc.

You’ll note that neither of these have anything to do with centralization. To the extent that currently “elites” currently get to vote more and more easily than “plebs”, I suppose it is populist? Maybe that’s the connection to Sanders and Boebert?

17

Tim Worstall 04.05.23 at 5:48 pm

“he didn’t understand the difference between common property (CPR) and open access resources, and he simply ignored the possibility that collective norms might limit the use of the resource to a sustainable level.”

Well done, you’ve just restated Ostrom’s point. Which was to explain when the “might” umm, might work and also when it possibly won’t. When we’re in a small enough group of humans that collective norms can be enforced. When we’re in a large enough group that it doesn’t work like a collective that can enforce then….

18

scritic 04.05.23 at 8:56 pm

I like the Democracy piece a lot and I think it deals quite well with the “epistocracy” argument. But I would have liked to see the authors engage more with the question of “misinformation” where the main arguments come from the left. Many in the left–and indeed, many regular people–now make the argument that people believe what they believe because of online “misinformation”; I notice it a lot in my classes when my students, who are mostly left-of-center, often account for things like people voting for Donald Trump or not getting the COVID vaccine on misinformation (which, of course, they themselves are immune to). This is also partly why the left has taken such a consistently aggressive attitude towards questions of content moderation on platforms. The way I see it, this sort of research on “cognitive democracy” should have something to say about how platforms might moderate content.

19

J-D 04.06.23 at 12:16 am

Your last sentence: “making decisions for other people produces WORSE results” – what does worse mean here?

I did not intend it to have a meaning in this context which was different from its meaning in other contexts.

It is not clear that is knowable.

Sometimes it is hard to figure out what’s better and what’s worse, but sometimes it isn’t.

There are almost always winners and losers …

I agree, as a general observation, that sometimes there are winners and losers–at a sports carnival, for example. However, it’s not clear that this is ‘almost always’ true.

… how do you weight their preferences. The market does it by wealth. How should political processes weight them?

The question ‘How should political processes weight preferences?’ presupposes that political processes should weight preferences. It’s not clear that they should. If the answer to the question ‘Should political processes weight preferences?’ is ‘Yes’, then the question ‘How should political processes weight preferences?’ is meaningful (and probably important), but if the answer to the question ‘Should political processes weight preferences?’ is ‘No’, then the only way to answer the question ‘How should political processes weight preferences?’ is something like ‘They shouldn’t’ or ‘Not at all’.

20

J-D 04.06.23 at 12:18 am

In American political discourse “more democracy” does seem to generally mean Bernie gets to decide how many deodorants there are (“fewer”) and Boebert whether boys can wear dresses.

I think this statement is false. I think it’s a story that you made up, for which you would not be able to provide substantiation if you tried.

21

TM 04.06.23 at 7:43 am

TW 17: You claimed at 7 that the OP misrepresented Hardin and I showed at 14 that you misrepresented both Hardin’s position and the position of his critics. Also, this position isn’t just “Ostrom’s point”, Hardin has been widely and rightly criticized ever since his paper got published. I mention this not for the trolls but because there is still considerable misunderstanding of the “tragedy of the commons” outside of expert circles.

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Neville Morley 04.06.23 at 7:45 am

There’s a lot of stuff here that I’m going to have to go away and think about. Inevitably, as someone who spends his time mostly on classical antiquity and its modern influence, I’m struck by the sense that Brennan et al offer a spin on the old Platonic argument against democracy, perhaps with an element of Thucydides’ depictions of cognitive bias in action. And in that context Sashas’ comment and responses to it raised a question: how far have arguments that democratic decisions are good because they are consensual, legitimate, stable etc. been a fall-back defence, already conceding the Platonic claim that democratic decisions are flawed and inferior to those taken by men with superior knowledge and understanding, but suggesting that we can defend democracy on grounds other than competent deliberation? This is mainly a question about the history of political thought rather than present theory.

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John Quiggin 04.06.23 at 9:49 am

TW: there can be few famous papers more thoroughly discredited than Hardin’s. It was no surprise that he ended up as an authoritarian racist.

As regards Jason Brennan, I wrote him off when I read him pontificating about the merits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (with opposition a mark of voter ignorance). It was obvious that he nothing at all about the subject or about the views of actual experts ( I am one, at least in comparison to Brennan). https://crookedtimber.org/2017/07/06/against-epistocracy/

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TM 04.06.23 at 11:00 am

NM 22: “already conceding the Platonic claim that democratic decisions are flawed and inferior to those taken by men with superior knowledge and understanding”

The old adage goes that yes, “democratic decisions are [often] flawed”, but no, there is no evidence that decisions taken by dictators or oligarchs are superior.

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John H 04.06.23 at 12:17 pm

Great post! Gotta think about it.

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reason 04.06.23 at 4:44 pm

J-D re Weighting of preferences – well you just sort of confirmed my point. The weight of people’s preferences in my view should be as close to the 1 person 1 vote ideal as possible. That existing systems are far from this, should be also clear. And I think this is a good reason to support compulsory voting a la Australia. People who don’t vote thinking it is a toss up (or their vote won’t count) are in fact de facto pushing politics towards the fanatical. Commitment is not a good measure of judgement.

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J-D 04.07.23 at 3:44 am

J-D re Weighting of preferences – well you just sort of confirmed my point.

I can’t tell whether you think we’re disagreeing about something. I can’t find any point of disagreement between us in this exchange so far.

In your most recent comment you refer to voting systems and suggest you favour systems in which votes are not unequally weighted. I have so far made no references to voting systems, but if I had I would have taken the same position. If you read any suggestion to the contrary into my previous comments, I’d love to know how.

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Peter T 04.07.23 at 12:48 pm

If an empirical note can intrude, TW’s argument that management of a commons can only work well at small scale (his hypothetical goes as high as 10,000) can be refuted with numerous examples. Joachim Radkau documents a number in his Nature and Power – an example is Venice, a city of over 150,000 and a territory of around 1.5 million, which managed its lagoons, rivers and upland forests well for centuries. Radkau’s conclusion is that the key factor is the ability to control elites: once they obtain access to external sources of power local sustainability ceases to become a key concern. IBGYBG writ large.

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conchis 04.08.23 at 1:04 am

It’s been a while since I read Ostrom, but I feel like there was a lot more to her point than just ‘size matters’?

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LFC 04.11.23 at 4:37 pm

From Farrell et al., “The New Libertarian Elitists”:

The solution, Brennan believes, is to replace democracy with “epistocracy”—the rule of those who know better. Those who are more knowledgeable might have their votes count for more, or those who fail a qualifying exam (which might test their knowledge of “introductory microeconomics and introductory political science”) would be barred from voting.

So despite Brennan’s boast that he is a graduate of “the top-ranked political philosophy program in the English-speaking world,” he wants prospective voters to be tested not on political philosophy, but on introductory microeconomics (why not macro?) and intro political science — conceivably the latter would include political philosophy, but it’s not clear from the quoted passage.

More to the point, the Supreme Court, long before it was captured by the current majority, held, I’m pretty sure, that literacy tests for voting are unconstitutional, so Brennan’s proposed tests would be even more so. Farrell et al., a bit later on in the piece, refer to Brennan’s “obnoxious trolling,” suggesting perhaps that they don’t think he’s being serious. His obnoxious trolling does not appear to have hurt his career, and maybe it’s helped it (?).

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