Many believe that voter ignorance threatens democracy. Consequently, ambitious institutional remedies have been proposed – epistocratic suffrage exams, foot voting, devolution of decisions to the local level, new bureaucratic agencies to inform voters, and more. There are reasons to doubt such proposals will actually improve democratic governance, however. The mistake these proposals share is a failure to recognize that voter ignorance comes in many forms, and that existing remedies may target the wrong kinds of ignorance. We develop a new typology of voter ignorance and show that every existing proposal leaves certain types of ignorance unaddressed. If it is these neglected forms of ignorance that drive bad democratic outcomes, then the entire portfolio of remedies that philosophers have proposed is superfluous – they literally make no progress toward better governance. We end by briefly sketching how to think about the problem of voter ignorance going forward.
This article revisits functionalist traditions in the sociology of ignorance and reformulates them for the analysis of modern democratic politics. Moving beyond both early functionalism and contemporary approaches that treat ignorance primarily as a deficit, the article develops a concept of functional ignorance center...
Political power is one of the few forms of consequential authority granted without any test of competence, an asymmetry democracy leaves largely unexamined.This paper argues that this asymmetry cannot be sustained once the mechanics of rational ignorance are taken seriously. Drawing on Anthony Downs’ theory of rational...
A. Budden· International Journal For Mu...· 0 citations
In more and more Western democracies, voters face the following dilemma: Should one vote for a democratically minded candidate with whom one disagrees politically, or for a candidate from one’s own party who threatens democracy? New research shows that most voters prioritize party loyalty over democratic principles and...
Blake Roeber’s
Political Humility
is a wonderful piece of work; it’s clear and accessible enough that I’d expect a general educated audience with no philosophical background to profitably read all but the last two chapters (which get more into the epistemological weeds than the earlier parts of the book), while sti...
Daniel Greco· Canadian Journal of Philosop...· 0 citations
Widespread intraparty reforms empower party members and create coprincipalship with party voters. This alters the structure of democratic delegation and may lead to policy drift and ineffective accountability. Existing research is vague on how voters see this arrangement, and we therefore ask, What leads voters to ac...
A. Kölln, H. Pedersen· Perspectives on Politics· 0 citations
This paper argues that the standard rationale for regulating markets also applies to democracy. Economists and philosophers commonly defend government intervention in markets on the grounds that markets predictably suffer from failures such as public goods problems, information asymmetries, principal–agent dilemmas,...
Jason Brennan, Christopher Freiman· Economics and Philosophy· 0 citations
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