Learning vs. Knowing Regimes: Knowledge Production in Epistocracy and Democracy

• In Event: Representation and Electoral Systems & Normative Theory Virtual Poster Session
  In Virtual Poster Session: Normative Theory Virtual Poster Session

Abstract

The proper role of expertise in politics has seen renewed interest in recent literature. Epistocrats argue that the mass public is irredeemably ignorant and irrational, and the epistocrats are able to support this indictment with a host of evidence from empirical political science scholarship. Further, they can highlight current examples such as the politicization of guidance from public health experts responding to the Covid-19 pandemic to illustrate how democratic politics sabotages the public utility of expert advice with devastating consequences. Thus, they argue that instrumental policy outcomes could be improved if we simply placed the right people with the correct expertise into authority. In contrast, epistemic democrats argue that democracies, properly structured, still hold the advantage. Collective reasoning in democracies, they argue, can draw upon the cognitive diversity of a plural set of participants when making decisions, and through this mechanism popular rule can be expected to retain an advantage over monocultures of expert decision-making.

I argue that these existing approaches to the relationship between expertise and politics have been insufficiently attentive to the conditions of knowledge production when evaluating the comparative epistemic merits of regimes. That is to say, the focus in the current discussion on competing claims concerning which regime best optimizes the use of existing knowledge in the decision-making room has left a lacuna concerning where and how new knowledge is generated. In order to address this I employ an interdisciplinary approach drawing upon science and technology studies (STS) scholarship to examine the role of knowledge systems in epistocracy and democracy. Those knowledge systems are the infrastructures in society by which we generate, verify, distribute, and deploy expert knowledge. Those knowledge systems importantly stand in bi-directional relationships with political bodies with both influencing and contributing to the functions of the other. As a result of these relationships when political bodies render policy decisions they frequently contain unexamined knowledge system effects regarding the quality, quantity, and pattern of knowledge produced. By incorporating knowledge systems into the evaluation of the epistemic merits of democracy and epistocracy I provide a new evaluation regarding how well they produce knowledge. To wit, I analyze how well they perform as learning regimes.

Working from this knowledge systems perspective I offer a new epistemic defense of democracy based upon its ability to produce greater knowledge over time. This advantage results from how pluralism in democracy impacts on knowledge systems, and I develop this in two arguments. First, democracies hold an advantage because they must incorporate a greater diversity of viewpoints and interests into policy compromises, and by way of the bi-directional relationship with knowledge systems that translates into a greater variety of knowledge system effects. Secondly, competitive elections within democracies in which parties must explain themselves to a diverse public generates a greater and more varied demand for knowledge systems to produce and test knowledge claims. In contrast, the monoculture nature of epistocracies through their interactions with knowledge systems generate less policy variations and accompanying knowledge system effects over time. Thus, I argue that regardless of how well epistocracies optimizing existing knowledge democracies still epistemically outperform epistocracies in the long run because pluralistic popular governments are superior learning regimes.

Author

• Matthew Lucky, Indiana University Bloomington