Knowledge-Making in Politics
Expertise in Democracy and Epistocracy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6350154 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matthew C Lucky (0000-0002-0825-5409, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 431-458 |
| Publication date | 2024-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Political Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00905917231199495 |
| OpenAlex | W4387540152 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 45 |
Recently, epistocrats have challenged the value of democracy by claiming that policy outcomes can be improved if the electorate were narrowed to empower only those with sufficient knowledge to inform competent policy decisions. I argue that by centering on contesting how well regimes employ extant knowledge in decision-making, this conversation has neglected to consider how regimes influence the production of knowledge over time. Science and technology studies scholars have long recognized that political systems impact the productivity of expert research. I argue that in order to evaluate which regime is “smarter,” we must consider not only how well they employ existing knowledge in decision-making, but we must also assess how those regimes influence the ongoing production of policy-relevant knowledge. Thus, I offer an instrumental defense of democracy based on its capacity to encourage a superior pattern and quality of expert research to inform policy decisions over time. Epistocracy may be effective at employing extant knowledge in the short run, but in the long run, democracy is a superior environment for producing knowledge to inform policy decisions
Conversation · Democracy · Economic growth · Economics · Epistemology · Extant taxon · Knowledge management · Knowledge production · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Production (economics · Productivity · Public relations · Quality (philosophy · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Computer Science · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies · Social Media and Politics
When All Else Fails
The Myth of the Rational Voter
Undone Science
The China Model
Neither Liberal nor Conservative
The Rational Public
Democracy and Expertise
Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise
An Epistemic Theory of Democracy
Science in Democracy
Cognition in the Wild
Uncivil Agreement
The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy
Democracy and Knowledge
Democracy and Political Ignorance
Democratic Authority
Against Democracy
Uninformed Why People Seem to Know So Little about Politics and What We Can Do about It
Power without Knowledge
The People vs. Democracy
Liberal Democracy 3.0
Critical Elitism
The Honest Broker
Democracy for Realists
Network Propaganda
Open Democracy
Trust in Numbers
Contested Boundaries in Policy-Relevant Science
U.S. House Members in Their Constituencies
The nature of belief systems in mass publics (1964)
Why democracies need science
Same Facts, Different Interpretations
Red and Blue States of Mind
Democracy and Epistocracy
Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs
Automating Inequality
The Origins and Consequences of Affective Polarization in the United States
Homer Gets a Tax Cut
The Power of the Multitude
Information Effects in Collective Preferences
Seeing Like a State
| Citations per year | 1.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |