Epistemic Injustice and the Electoral Connection
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6230222 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Justin Pottle (0000-0001-7870-5527, Loyola University Chicago, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 69 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 118-131 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0092-5853 • E-ISSN: 1540-5907 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ajps.12806 |
| OpenAlex | W4386000355 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 73 |
This article argues office seekers’ messaging gives rise to a distinct and underappreciated epistemic form of political inequality. Electoral incentives push representatives to orient their rhetoric toward appealing to strategically valuable constituencies, yielding flows of elite cues that disproportionately reflect those groups’ perspectives. When inequalities in strategic value overlap with other inequalities of social power, politicians’ messaging strategies exacerbate the epistemic marginalization of disadvantaged citizens by denying them equal influence on the frames and understandings circulated in mainstream debate. This dynamic is best understood as a democratically perverse form of epistemic injustice distinct from but mutually reinforcing with citizens’ unequal influence on political outcomes. Moreover, I show how such inequalities distort otherwise epistemically salutary mechanisms of electoral accountability and undermine the quality of representative decision‐making. I conclude by suggesting hypotheses for testing electoral reform's potential to mitigate these discursive consequences
Accountability · Agency (philosophy · Disadvantaged · Economics · Elite · Epistemology · Incentive · Inequality · Injustice · Law and economics · Mainstream · Microeconomics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Power (physics · Rhetoric · Social science · Sociology · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies · Law · Political Philosophy and Ethics
The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Who Governs?
Voice, Trust, and Memory
An Epistemic Theory of Democracy
Representational Style in Congress
"Art" of Rhetoric
Uneasy Alliances
The Constitution of Equality
The Meaning of Partisanship
Democratic Reason
Inclusion and Democracy
Affirmative Advocacy
Democracy, Trust, and Epistemic Justice
Epistemic Injustice in the Political Domain
Race to the Bottom
Governing with Words
Conceptualizing Epistemic Oppression
Knowledge in a Social World
Democracy, Public Policy, and Lay Assessments of Scientific Testimony
Talking to Strangers
Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance
Insecure Majorities
Democracy for Realists
Open Democracy
Epistemic Justice as a Virtue of Social Institutions
The Race Card
The Epistemology of Resistance
Political Representation as a Democratic Process
Using Campaign Communications to Analyze Civility in Ranked Choice Voting Elections
Is Random Selection a Cure for the Ills of Electoral Representation
Relational Knowing and Epistemic Injustice
Congress, The Electoral Connection
Epistemic justice as a condition of political freedom
Unequal and Unrepresented
Hijacking the Agenda
The Equal Society
Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle? Experimental Evidence That Racial Resentment and Political Ideology Condition Responses to Racially Encoded Messages
Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections
Persuadable Voter
Are Voters Better Represented
Conceptualising Political Parties
Epistemic Political Egalitarianism, Political Parties, and Conciliatory Democracy
Whitewashing
Problem Definition, Agenda Access, and Policy Choice
Against Elections
Testing Theories of American Politics
Electoral Systems for Divided Societies
Compulsory voting and the dynamics of partisan identification
Democracy's Pin Factory
Racial Inequality in Democratic Accountability
Partisan Elites as Culprits? How Party Cues Shape Partisan Perceptual Gaps
Race, Ethnicity and Political Resources
Small Donors in Congressional Elections
Information, Knowledge, and Deliberation
Causal Stories and the Formation of Policy Agendas
Rethinking Representation
Do Facts Matter? Information and Misinformation in American Politics
Campaign civility under preferential and plurality voting
Social Construction of Target Populations
Is Democratic Leadership Possible
Representative Democracy as Defensible Epistocracy
Unequal Participation
Toward a Mobilization Conception of Democratic Representation
A Theory of Resonance
| Citations per year | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |