Kevin J Elliott
Biographic Data
| ID | 4247740 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kevin J Elliott |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kevin J |
| FAMILY NAME | Elliott |
| SIGNATURE | ELLIOTT K J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Murray State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4055-4326 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 52 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Being a Citizen in the Rubble of Institutions
What is the best foundation for democracy: citizenly habits sustained informally by the spontaneous effort of citizens themselves, or formal institutions and the law? C. L. Skach's How to Be a Citizen tells us how someone who dedicated her career to the importance of law and institutions lost her faith in them and came to see the habits and informal relations of citizens as the real site of democracy. Like many observers of politics in recent yea…
A defense of specialized citizenship
What does it take to be a good democratic citizen? Many scholars emphasize that being a good citizen is difficult because there is so much citizens should know to participate responsibly in politics. These critics implicitly assume that citizens should aspire to be “omnicompetent citizens:” fully informed about the issues of the day, candidates’ stances on them, and relevant scientific knowledge. In this article, I advance an alternative, less de…
What Is It Like To Be a Partisan? Measures of Partisanship and Its Value for Democracy
What is it like to be a partisan? How do individuals experience their relationship to political parties? The most common answer today, both in popular discourse and much political science, is identity, but many individuals do not identify with parties. Rather, they relate to parties in terms of psychological closeness or affinity—they do not say “we” about the party, as do identifiers, but rather “they.” In this article, I argue that both the emp…
Folk Constitutionalism, or Why it Matters How Ordinary People Think about the Constitution
Democracy for Busy People
An Institutional Duty to Vote: Applying Role Morality in Representative Democracy
Is voting a duty of democratic citizenship? This article advances a new argument for the existence of a duty to vote. It argues that every normative account of electoral representation requires universal turnout to function in line with its own internal normative logic. This generates a special obligation for citizens to vote in electoral representative contexts as a function of the role morality of democratic citizenship. Because voting uniquely…
Democracy for Busy People
Inclusion and the design of democratic executives in Steffen Ganghof’s Beyond presidentialism and parliamentarism
Steffen Ganghof’s book addresses pressing questions in democratic theory and institutional design regarding how to promote effective political inclusion and avoid personalizing power in democratic executives. His model of semi-parliamentarism manages to transform tradeoffs in these areas that were previously thought inescapable, unlocking novel potential for democratic reform
A Family Affair: Populism, Technocracy, and Political Epistemology
Jeffrey Friedman’s Power Without Knowledge provides not only a critique of technocracy but a compelling story about the intimate relationship between three of today’s most important political phenomena: populism, technocracy, and democracy. In contrast to many recent accounts that treat populism as a backlash against technocracy, Friedman’s theory suggests that populism is a lineal descendent of technocracy, with which it shares substantial intel…
Democracy's Pin Factory: Issue Specialization, the Division of Cognitive Labor, and Epistemic Performance
This article describes how issue specialization through deliberative institutions called “issue publics” can improve the quality of democratic decision making. Issue specialization improves decisions by instantiating a cognitive division of labor among the mass public, which creates efficiencies in decision making and grants large groups of average citizens a scalable advantage over small groups of even the smartest and most capable individuals. …
Democracy and the Epistemic Limits of Markets
A recent line of argument insists that replacing democracy with markets would improve social decision making due to markets’ superior use of knowledge. These arguments are flawed by unrealistic assumptions, unfair comparisons, and a neglect of the epistemic limits of markets. In reality, the epistemic advantages of markets over democracy are circumscribed and often illusory. A recognition of markets’ epistemic limits can, however, provide guidanc…
Making Attentive Citizens: The Ethics of Democratic Engagement, Political Equality, and Social Justice
Aid for Our Purposes: Mandatory Voting as Precommitment and Nudge
Mandatory voting has received public and scholarly interest as a solution for problems of unequal representation and policies that advantage the wealthy. Yet some oppose mandatory voting because it seems to coerce political expression, in violation of the human right to free expression. This article fundamentally reinterprets the point of mandatory voting as serving the self-identified purposes of citizens and so minimizes concerns about coercion…
Aid for Our Purposes: Mandatory Voting as Precommitment and Nudge
Mandatory voting has received public and scholarly interest as a solution for problems of unequal representation and policies that advantage the wealthy. Yet some oppose mandatory voting because it seems to coerce political expression, in violation of the human right to free expression. This article fundamentally reinterprets the point of mandatory voting as serving the self-identified purposes of citizens and so minimizes concerns about coercion…
Democracy's Pin Factory: Issue Specialization, the Division of Cognitive Labor, and Epistemic Performance
This article describes how issue specialization through deliberative institutions called “issue publics” can improve the quality of democratic decision making. Issue specialization improves decisions by instantiating a cognitive division of labor among the mass public, which creates efficiencies in decision making and grants large groups of average citizens a scalable advantage over small groups of even the smartest and most capable individuals. …
An Institutional Duty to Vote: Applying Role Morality in Representative Democracy
Is voting a duty of democratic citizenship? This article advances a new argument for the existence of a duty to vote. It argues that every normative account of electoral representation requires universal turnout to function in line with its own internal normative logic. This generates a special obligation for citizens to vote in electoral representative contexts as a function of the role morality of democratic citizenship. Because voting uniquely…
Making Attentive Citizens: The Ethics of Democratic Engagement, Political Equality, and Social Justice
A Family Affair: Populism, Technocracy, and Political Epistemology
Jeffrey Friedman’s Power Without Knowledge provides not only a critique of technocracy but a compelling story about the intimate relationship between three of today’s most important political phenomena: populism, technocracy, and democracy. In contrast to many recent accounts that treat populism as a backlash against technocracy, Friedman’s theory suggests that populism is a lineal descendent of technocracy, with which it shares substantial intel…
What Is It Like To Be a Partisan? Measures of Partisanship and Its Value for Democracy
What is it like to be a partisan? How do individuals experience their relationship to political parties? The most common answer today, both in popular discourse and much political science, is identity, but many individuals do not identify with parties. Rather, they relate to parties in terms of psychological closeness or affinity—they do not say “we” about the party, as do identifiers, but rather “they.” In this article, I argue that both the emp…
Democracy and the Epistemic Limits of Markets
A recent line of argument insists that replacing democracy with markets would improve social decision making due to markets’ superior use of knowledge. These arguments are flawed by unrealistic assumptions, unfair comparisons, and a neglect of the epistemic limits of markets. In reality, the epistemic advantages of markets over democracy are circumscribed and often illusory. A recognition of markets’ epistemic limits can, however, provide guidanc…
Folk Constitutionalism, or Why it Matters How Ordinary People Think about the Constitution
Making Attentive Citizens: The Ethics of Democratic Engagement, Political Equality, and Social Justice
Aid for Our Purposes: Mandatory Voting as Precommitment and Nudge
Mandatory voting has received public and scholarly interest as a solution for problems of unequal representation and policies that advantage the wealthy. Yet some oppose mandatory voting because it seems to coerce political expression, in violation of the human right to free expression. This article fundamentally reinterprets the point of mandatory voting as serving the self-identified purposes of citizens and so minimizes concerns about coercion…
Democracy and the Epistemic Limits of Markets
A recent line of argument insists that replacing democracy with markets would improve social decision making due to markets’ superior use of knowledge. These arguments are flawed by unrealistic assumptions, unfair comparisons, and a neglect of the epistemic limits of markets. In reality, the epistemic advantages of markets over democracy are circumscribed and often illusory. A recognition of markets’ epistemic limits can, however, provide guidanc…
A Family Affair: Populism, Technocracy, and Political Epistemology
Jeffrey Friedman’s Power Without Knowledge provides not only a critique of technocracy but a compelling story about the intimate relationship between three of today’s most important political phenomena: populism, technocracy, and democracy. In contrast to many recent accounts that treat populism as a backlash against technocracy, Friedman’s theory suggests that populism is a lineal descendent of technocracy, with which it shares substantial intel…
Democracy's Pin Factory: Issue Specialization, the Division of Cognitive Labor, and Epistemic Performance
This article describes how issue specialization through deliberative institutions called “issue publics” can improve the quality of democratic decision making. Issue specialization improves decisions by instantiating a cognitive division of labor among the mass public, which creates efficiencies in decision making and grants large groups of average citizens a scalable advantage over small groups of even the smartest and most capable individuals. …
Democracy for Busy People
Inclusion and the design of democratic executives in Steffen Ganghof’s Beyond presidentialism and parliamentarism
Steffen Ganghof’s book addresses pressing questions in democratic theory and institutional design regarding how to promote effective political inclusion and avoid personalizing power in democratic executives. His model of semi-parliamentarism manages to transform tradeoffs in these areas that were previously thought inescapable, unlocking novel potential for democratic reform
Democracy for Busy People
An Institutional Duty to Vote: Applying Role Morality in Representative Democracy
Is voting a duty of democratic citizenship? This article advances a new argument for the existence of a duty to vote. It argues that every normative account of electoral representation requires universal turnout to function in line with its own internal normative logic. This generates a special obligation for citizens to vote in electoral representative contexts as a function of the role morality of democratic citizenship. Because voting uniquely…
A defense of specialized citizenship
What does it take to be a good democratic citizen? Many scholars emphasize that being a good citizen is difficult because there is so much citizens should know to participate responsibly in politics. These critics implicitly assume that citizens should aspire to be “omnicompetent citizens:” fully informed about the issues of the day, candidates’ stances on them, and relevant scientific knowledge. In this article, I advance an alternative, less de…
What Is It Like To Be a Partisan? Measures of Partisanship and Its Value for Democracy
What is it like to be a partisan? How do individuals experience their relationship to political parties? The most common answer today, both in popular discourse and much political science, is identity, but many individuals do not identify with parties. Rather, they relate to parties in terms of psychological closeness or affinity—they do not say “we” about the party, as do identifiers, but rather “they.” In this article, I argue that both the emp…
Folk Constitutionalism, or Why it Matters How Ordinary People Think about the Constitution
Being a Citizen in the Rubble of Institutions
What is the best foundation for democracy: citizenly habits sustained informally by the spontaneous effort of citizens themselves, or formal institutions and the law? C. L. Skach's How to Be a Citizen tells us how someone who dedicated her career to the importance of law and institutions lost her faith in them and came to see the habits and informal relations of citizens as the real site of democracy. Like many observers of politics in recent yea…
Political science (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Democracy (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Law and economics (7 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (6 works) · Argument (complex analysis (5 works) · Economics (5 works)