Edited by Sam Haselby

How a generation of political thinkers has underestimated the abilities of ordinary people and undermined democracy

In early 2017, Scientific American published a symposium on the threat that ‘big nudging’ poses to democracy. Big Data is the phenomena whereby governments and corporations collect and analyse information provided by measuring sensors and internet searches. Nudging is the view that governments should build choice architectures that make it easier for people to pick, say, the more fuel-efficient car or the more sensible retirement plan. Big nudging is the combination of the two that enables public or private engineers to subtly influence the choices that people make, say, by autofilling internet searches in desirable ways. Big nudging is a ‘digital sceptre that allows one to govern the masses efficiently, without having to involve citizens in democratic processes’. The symposium’s authors take for granted that democracy – the political regime in which the people collectively determine its common way of life – is better than epistocracy, or rule by experts.

Remarkably, many social scientists today do not share the belief that democracy is better than epistocracy. On the contrary. In recent years, numerous political theorists and philosophers have argued that experts ought to be in charge of public policy and should manipulate, or contain, the policy preferences of the ignorant masses. This view has its roots Plato’s Republic, where philosophers who see the sun of truth should govern the masses who dwell in a cave of ignorance, and in Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion (1922), where expert social scientists rule behind the scenes and control the population with propaganda. While there are differences between the views of Christopher H Achen and Larry Bartels in Democracy for Realists (2016), Jason Brennan in Against Democracy (2017), Alexander Guerrero here in Aeon, and Tom Nichols in The Death of Expertise (2017), these social scientists share in common an elitist antipathy towards participatory democratic politics.

In Democracy for Realists, for instance, the authors criticise what they call the ‘folk theory’ of democracy. This maintains that elected representatives should translate their constituents’ preferences into public policy. The problem, according to these political scientists, is that most voters lack the time, energy or ability to immerse themselves in the technicalities of public policy. Instead, people tend to vote based on group identification, or an impulse to align with one political faction rather than another.

In a memorable chapter of their book, Achen and Bartels show that politicians often suffer electoral defeat for events beyond their control. In the summer of 1916, for example, New Jersey’s beachgoers experienced a series of shark attacks. In that November’s election, the beach towns gave President Woodrow Wilson fewer votes than New Jersey’s non-beach towns. The voters, it seems, were punishing Wilson for the shark attacks. According to Achen and Bartels, voters’ ability ‘to make sensible judgments regarding credit and blame is highly circumscribed’. This is a polite way of saying that most voters are not smart enough to realise that presidents are not responsible for shark attacks.

Achen and Bartels ostensibly defend a conception of democracy. But the force of their argument, and spirit of their book, heaps ridicule on the ‘Romantic’ or ‘quixotic’ notion that the people should rule. They compare ‘the ideal of popular sovereignty’ – a cornerstone of modern democratic political theory – to the medieval notion of a ‘divine right of kings’. A more realistic view is that ‘policymaking is a job for specialists’.

Many political actors around the world, similarly, think that epistocrats should rule and try to gain the emotional support of the population. Consider the slogan of the Democratic Party in the 2016 US election: ‘I’m with her.’ The Democrats were telling their own version of Plato’s salutary myth, or simple story meant to induce people to identify with a political cause.

Democracy, instead, requires treating people as citizens – that is, as adults capable of thoughtful decisions and moral actions, rather than as children who need to be manipulated. One way to treat people as citizens is to entrust them with meaningful opportunities to participate in the political process, rather than just as beings who might show up to vote for leaders every few years.

Democrats acknowledge that some people know more than others. However, democrats believe that people, entrusted with meaningful decision-making power, can handle power responsibly. Furthermore, people feel satisfaction when they have a hand in charting a common future. Democrats from Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville to the political theorist Carole Pateman at the University of California in Los Angeles advocate dispersing power as widely as possible among the people. The democratic faith is that participating in politics educates and ennobles people. For democrats, the pressing task today is to protect and expand possibilities for political action, not to limit them or shut them down in the name of expert rule.

Every day, people demonstrate that they are capable of learning. People master new languages, earn degrees, move to new cities, train for jobs, and navigate the complexities of modern life. It is true that people tend to be ignorant of things that do not touch their lives. Think of how well you know the geography of where you live and work; now, think about how much you know about the geography of a place on the other side of the globe that you’ve never visited. People study things that they care about and where knowledge helps them to accomplish things.[…]

Continue reading: https://aeon.co/essays/why-rule-by-the-people-is-better-than-rule-by-the-experts