COHEN - An Epistemic Conception of Democracy

7/30/2019 COHEN - An Epistemic Conception of Democracy

1/14

An Epistemic Conception of DemocracyAuthor(s): Joshua CohenSource: Ethics, Vol. 97, No. 1 (Oct., 1986), pp. 26-38Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381404 .

Accessed: 12/10/2011 12:07

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toEthics.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpresshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2381404?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2381404?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress


2/14

An Epistemic Conceptionof Democracy*Joshua CohenFollowing common practice, Riker'sLiberalismgainstPopulismdistinguishespopulist from liberal conceptions of democracy.1 Intuitively, populistconceptions emphasize that political participation and public deliberationcan serve to articulate and advance a "generalwill,"while liberalconceptionsemphasize the role of regular electoral tests in limiting the power ofpublic officials. Riker assesses these two conceptions in light of socialchoice theory and draws two main conclusions from that assessment: (1)populism is incoherent and (2) liberalism survives intact.My remarks here begin (in the first section) by discussing threeobjections to Riker's argument.2 With those objections as background, Ithen consider (in the second section) what Jules Coleman and JohnFerejohn call "the epistemic interpretation of voting" (p. 15) and therole of that interpretation in a populist conception of democracy. Theaim of the second section is exploratory. My intention there is not todefend populism but to consider in more detail the structure of epistemicpopulism and to suggest that it represents a coherent and more plausibleinterpretation of populism than the version that Riker rejects.LESSONS AND OBJECTIONSRiker describes populism as the view that "the opinions of the majoritymust be right and must be respected because the will of the people is the

* This paper was originally written in reponse to Jules Coleman's Weingart conferencepaper on "Democracy and Social Choice" (California Institute of Technology, March 1985).The paper by Coleman and John Ferejohn on "Democracy and Social Choice" that appearsin this volume is a descendant of Coleman's paper and pursues several issues that werenot prominent in the first draft. To avoid that awkwardness of discussing the unpublisheddraft, I have (with the exception of n. 2) cited the Coleman-Ferejohn version. I have not,however, changed the substance of my remarks to accommodate the changes between thetwo versions.1. William H. Riker, Liberalismagainst Populism: A Confrontationbetween he TheoryofDemocracyand the Theoryof Social Choice(San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982).2. The first two issues were developed in Coleman's "Democracy and Social Choice,"while the third is discussed in Coleman and Ferejohn, pp. 22-24. Partlybecause of differencesin emphasis on the first two points and partly because the third objection was not inColeman's draft, I have kept my own statement of each of the three difficulties here.Ethics 97 (October 1986): 26-38t 1986 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/87/9701-0010$01.00

26


3/14

Cohen EpistemicPopulism 27liberty of the people."3 Riker's populist is thus committed to the existenceof a popular will, to the view that liberty consists in obedience to thatwill, and-what is most important from the standpoint of connecting thetheory of democracy and the theory of social choice-to the thesis thatthe popular will is revealed through voting. According to Riker, socialchoice theory undermines populism by showing that the third feature-the notion of a popular will revealed through voting-is incoherent. Thisincoherence is shown in particular by the instability theorems-that is,by the existence of cyclical majorities, by their ubiquity in the face ofmodest interpersonal variations in preferences, and multidimensionaland continuous alternatives, and by the fact that, when majority cyclesexist, they cover the entire space of political alternatives.4 Intuitively, thewidespread existence of cyclical majorities implies that the outcomesproduced by voting do not, in general, have the consistency we requireof a will. Riker concludes, therefore, that we should reject populism "notbecause it is morally wrong, but merely because it is empty."5But Riker in fact objects not only to the emptiness of populism butalso to its morally objectionable consequences. Populism is morally ob-jectionable because the populist identifies the will of the people with thechoice of a majority and then uses that identification to defend "populistinstitutions" that eliminate all constitutional checks on majorities.6 But,Riker maintains, constitutional checks on majorities are required for thepreservation of a system of regular elections in which officials can beremoved from office. And since a system of regular elections protects"negative liberty"by constraining actually or potentially tyrannical officialsthrough the threat of removal from office, the preservation of electionsis required for the preservation of liberty. Populism is, therefore, morallyobjectionable since it justifies institutions that tend to undermine liberty.Strictlyspeaking, only the incoherence objection derives from the problemof cyclical majorities. The immorality objection depends on claims aboutthe operations of institutions with and without constitutional limits onmajorities and on an implausible account of the institutional commitmentsof populism. I will therefore put it aside here and come back to theinstitutional issues below.Returning then to the problem of incoherence, Riker is surely correctthat decisions of majorities are sometimes wrong and often hard to in-terpret.7 And it is true as well that, like all other notions in politicaltheory, the idea of a "popular will" has been subject to considerableabuse. The problem is to find someone who would disagree. In fact, Ican think of no one who endorses the view that, for Riker,defines populism:

3. Riker, p. 14.4. See Riker, chaps. 5-7 for a summary of these instability results.5. Ibid., p. 239.6. Ibid., p. 247.7. On the difficulties of interpretation even in the case of "landslide" elections, seeStanley Kelley, InterpretingElections (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).


4/14

28 Ethics October1986"The opinions of the majority must be right and mustbe respected becausethe will of the people is the liberty of the people." In particular, thepopulists who provide Riker's chief targets do not identify majoritydecisionswith correct answers.Bentham, for example, distinguished correct answers (given by theprinciple of utility) from majority opinions, though he also believed that"general consent" provides "the surest visible sign and immediate evidenceof general utility."8 And while Rousseau thought that the general will-which aims at the common good-is 'always right," he denied that it"follow[s] that the people's deliberations always have the same rectitude"since those deliberations may reflect insufficient information, or be dom-inated by private interests, or subordinated to factional conflict, or addressedto issues on which there is no common interest.9 He concluded thatmajorityjudgments are good if fallible indicators of the general will undercertain specific background conditions, including good information,widespread political participation, absence of factions (or else a multiplicityof factions), limited economic inequality, and the rule of law.10 And evenwith these qualifications, Rousseau did not endorse rule by simplemajorities.Rather, he thought that, on more fundamental issues, it would be rea-sonable to require larger majorities. In fact, only on "business matters,"as distinct from laws, is it in general true that simple majorities shouldbe decisive. lThe incoherence argument misses its intended target because Rikerassumes that the populist is committed to a purelyproceduralaccount ofthe general will.12 He supposes, that is, that the populist defines the will

8. Cited in Ross Harrison, Bentham (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 214,emphases added.9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract, d. Roger D. Masters, trans.Judith R. Masters(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), bk. 2, chap. 3, p. 61.10. Ibid., bk. 2, chaps. 3, 6, 11; bk. 3, chaps. 12-15; bk. 4, chaps. 1, 2.11. Ibid., bk. 4, chap. 2.12. I should say that Riker assumes this generally because he does acknowledge in afootnote that populists need not identifythe object of the general will-the common goodor the public interest-with the opinions of the majority: "The notion of a public interest,so cherished by populist propagandists, is not, technically speaking, rendered meaninglesssimply because the populist interpretation of voting is meaningless." But he claims that ifpopulists distinguish the public interest from the outcomes of voting, then they shouldhave no interest in voting: "By definition ... a common or public interest is held in common,so voting is unnecessary to reveal it: Any randomly chosen member of the society can

articulate public interest [sic] as well as any other, provided he or she thinks about theinterest of the society rather than his or her own private interest" (Riker, p. 291, n. 2).But this is not at all obvious. In considering actual collective choice procedures, as distinctfrom idealized models ofjustification, why should we suppose that one person who adoptsthe perspective of a group is as good at judging common interests as the wider groupitself? Nor, in this same context, is it obvious that a "randomly chosen member of society"who is given the power to make political decisions is at all likely to make decisions on thebasis of "the interest of society rather than his or her own private interests." See Colemanand Ferejohn, pp. 17-18 for additional objections. I will return to these issues in thesecond section.


5/14

Cohen EpistemicPopulism 29of any particular group in terms of a procedure that yields consistentrankings from sets of individual rankings in general. Because there isno such procedure, he draws the skeptical conclusion that no groups atall have wills. Call a populist who endorses this view a "purely proceduralpopulist." But as the example of Rousseau underscores, populists canhold (and have held) instead that, at least in its broad features, the objectof the general will-that is, the common good-is defined prior to majoritydecisions. Decisions of majorities (sometimes of simple, sometimes ofqualified majorities) provide (given appropriate background conditions)"the surest visible sign and immediate evidence" about how best to advancethe common good. For such populists-call them "reasonable populists"-the judgments of majorities, made under suitable conditions, provide areasonable, although imperfectprocedure or determining the general will.'3Once we shift from purely procedural to reasonable populism, it is nolonger clear how the challenge that Riker proposes will go.On one version of reasonable populism-and I will restrict the term"epistemic populism" to this version-votes are expressions of opinionsor judgments about how best to advance the common good.'4 And inthe second section, I will give a more detailed rendering of this variantof populism. First, however, I will continue the skeptical review.Riker's second conclusion is that a liberal or "Madisonian"conceptionof democracy withstands the challenge of social choice theory. The reasonit survives is that the liberal conception is committed only to the thesisthat elections can serve to remove officials from office: "All elections door have to do is to permit people to get rid of rulers."'5 Elections needonly provide "an intermittent, sometimes random, even perverse, popularveto."'6 Since it does not require that voting reveal a coherent popularwill, this liberal conception-call it minimal liberalism-is unembarrassedby the absence of such a will. Minimal liberalism obviously faces noproblems from social choice theory because nothing in that theory suggeststhat elections "prevent the rejection of offenders-and that is preciselythe condition liberalism requires."'17 Riker rightly emphasizes "how easyit is for liberalism to survive the criticisms of social choice theory."'8

13. On the distinction between pure and imperfect procedures, see John Rawls, ATheoryofJustice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 85-86.14. Coleman and Ferejohn seem in places (esp. on p. 16) to run together the claimthat the general will is not characterized purely procedurally with the conception of votesas expressing judgments of the common good. But these two matters are independent anddo not appear together historically. Bentham, for example, endorsed a preference inter-pretation of voting, while Rousseau held the view that votes are judgments of the commongood, but both endorsed the view that voting is an imperfect procedure.15. Riker, p. 244.16. Ibid.17. Ibid., p. 243.18. Ibid., pp. 243-44.


6/14

30 Ethics October1986But like the defeat of the populist, the victory of the liberal is tooeasy.'9 Just as the important forms of populism are reasonable and notpurely procedural, the important forms of liberalism are not minimal.

For the thesis of minimal liberalism-that it is possible for elections toresult in the removal of officials-does not distinguish elections from ran-dom assassinations, select bombings, threats of revolution, and militarycoups. Elections do not create a popular political action or popular vetoes;instead they institutionalize such action and channel it into electoralarenas.20 A liberal defense of elections should show that elections arebetter at imposing restrictions on rulers than other arrangements-betterfor example than "a little rebellion now and then." But if the outcomesof elections are genuinely "random," then electoral "discipline"-the pos-sibility of throwing the bums out-does not by itself provide rulers withany reason for not being bums since they would be equally likely to bethrown out if they were not bums. So, if social choice theory really showsthat electoral outcomes are random (I do not mean to endorse the claimthat it does), then it challenges the rationality of preferences for electoralas opposed to nonelectoral methods of constraining power. If the pref-erence for electoral methods is rational, then the liberal view requiressomecoherence in election results, enough, at any rate, to provide potentialtyrants with incentives to refrain from grosser violations of liberties. Butonce the demands for coherence are thus increased, it is unclear whythe liberal conception does not run up against the same difficulties asthe populist conception.Coleman and Ferejohn come to a broadly similar conclusion aboutRiker's account of social choice theory and liberalism. In arriving at it,however, they misconstrue Riker's strategy and thus state their objectionin a misleading way. They accuse Riker of inconsistency, attributing tohim the claims that (1) elections are a good method for protecting "negativeliberty"and (2) electoral outcomes are random. But Rikeris not inconsistentsince his actual claim is weaker than claim 1. He does not say that electionsare a good method, only that elections can result in the removal ofoffending officials. Riker recognizes that what he calls "liberals in thepopulist period" might have expected more. But when it is "strictly in-terpreted," liberalism "requires only that it be possible o reject a putativelyoffending official, not that the rejection actually occur."'21 The problemin Riker's discussion of liberalism is not that it is inconsistent but, rather,that the minimal liberalism-the "strict interpretation"-that he securesagainst the challenge of social choice theory is so weak as to be uninteresting.The point of highlighting the distinction between my objection and the

19. Riker responds to this point in the final footnote in the book, but I find his responseunconvincing.20. For an interesting discussion of this issue, see Benjamin Ginsberg, TheConsequencesof Consent:Elections,Citizen Controland PopularAcquiesence Reading, Mass.: Addison-WesleyPublishing Co., 1982), chap. 3.21. Riker, p. 243.


7/14

Cohen EpistemicPopulism 31Coleman-Ferejohn criticism is not to quibble about the interpretation ofLiberalismgainstPopulismor to indicate a point of substantivedisagreement.Rather, I want to emphasize that Riker's explication of liberalism, likehis account of populism, is nonstandard and seems motivated more bythe aim of providing doctrines on which the results of social choice theorycan be brought directly to bear than by the plausibility or interest of thedoctrines themselves.The third objection concerns the relationship between institutionsand incoherent outcomes and follows naturally from the first two points.The reasonable populist holds that democratic decisions can provideevidence for the general will; the liberal holds that they can restrainpower. Both require some coherence in outcomes. But Riker suggeststhat the instability results of social choice theory show that such coherencecannot be expected. This, however, overstates the conclusions aboutincoherence that follow from those results. For as Riker recognizes, therange of political outcomes can be and is reduced by institutional con-straints.22Outcomes that are consistent with underlying preferences maybe rendered effectively inaccessible by, for example, amendment rules,or by the existence of a single-member district plurality system that reducespolitical alternatives to two parties, or by the restrictions on the politicalagenda that result from the private control of important political re-sources.23 Constraints on outcomes that derive from such backgroundconditions may, of course, come at a high price. Stable outcomes canreflect institutional constraints that are "exogenous to the world of tastesand values" as much as they reflect those tastes and values themselves.24And there is little comfort from the fact that outcomes are confined toa very restricted space if the boundary of the space is fixed by force andfraud or merely by tradition and habit.The fact that outcomes reflect institutional constraints is plainly ofgreat importance. But I do not see that any skeptical conclusions aboutpopulist conceptions of democracy follow from it. The fact that outcomesreflect institutions, and not just preferences-that, holding preferencesfixed, the outcomes would be quite different if the institutions weredifferent-does not by itself imply that outcomes are morally arbitrary.Instead, it underscores the central role of institutions and the importanceto the populist of ensuring that the basic institutions that provide theframework for political deliberation are such that outcomes tend to advancethe common good. But this is a point that populists have commonly

22. Riker, pp. 188-92.23. For recent discussion of resource-based constraints, see Joshua Cohen and JoelRogers, OnDemocracy New York: Penguin Books, 1983), chap. 3; Thomas Ferguson, "PartyRealignment and American Industrial Structure: The Investment Theory of Political Partiesin Historical Perspective,"in Researchn PoliticalEconomy, ol. 6, ed. Paul Zarembka(Greenwich,Conn.: JAI Press, 1983), pp. 1-82; and Charles Lindblom, Politicsand Markets(New York:Basic Books, 1977), chaps. 13-14.24. Riker, p. 190.


8/14

32 Ethics October1986emphasized since populists have commonly thought that the primaryexpression of the general will is precisely in the specification of the basicinstitutions of property and politics that provide the framework for col-lective decision making.25It might, however, be argued that this is not really an out for thepopulist, at least for the populist who (like Rousseau) construes the jus-tification of basic institutions as itself a collective choice problem. For itmight be thought that social choice theory undermines such justificationsby showing that they land in paradox. But this is not at all obvious andcertainly does not follow from the fact that paradoxes arise on unrestricteddomains of preferences. For populist institutionaljustifications can proceedin more ideal terms, abstracting from a wide range of actual preferences,and may be able, as a result of such abstraction, to secure agreement onfundamentals. This is certainly true for Rousseauean populism. Rousseauwanted to find a form of social association in which each member couldcount on the protection of their person and their goods and yet beautonomous.26 Like the Rawlsian restriction to primary goods, this re-striction to common interests in security of the person, securing of basicgoods, and autonomy may permit the avoidance of paradox. Whetheror not it does, one should be careful not simply to assume that paradoxwill arise when the problem of political theory shifts to assessing basicinstitutions.Thus, one version of populism that survives Riker's criticism has atwo-tier structure. The general will is characterized in terms of an idealprocedure of deliberation or collective choice, while democratic decisionmaking is construed as an imperfect procedure which, when suitablyorganized, has the property of providing evidence about how best toachieve the object of the general will. It may, of course, have otherdesirable properties as well. Coleman and Ferejohn rightly suggest that,even if voting does not produce coherent outcomes, it might neverthelessbe true that it "strengthens allegiance, increases competence, developsa sense of community, and the like."27 But the epistemic populist wantsto show that democratic decision making also provides evidence abouthow to advance the general will. And in the discussion that follows, Iwill fill out this view in more detail.EPISTEMIC POPULISMMy remarks on epistemic populism will begin with some comments on"interpretations" of voting. This will be followed by a brief account ofepistemic populism and a discussion of some institutional issues in light

25. Rousseau, for example, held that each meeting of the popular assembly shouldbegin with the question, "Should we retain the present form of government?" See Rousseau,bk. 2, chap. 18.26. Ibid., bk. 1, chap. 6.27. Coleman and Ferejohn, p. 22.


9/14

Cohen EpistemicPopulism 33of that account. The aim of the discussion is to deepen the response toRiker'scriticism of populism by showing that epistemic populism providesa more plausible account of populist ideals than the populism Rikerrejects. This will require a fuller characterization of the structure ofepistemic populism and a discussion of how that characterization enablesus to understand populist views about the framework of collective decisionmaking.Interpretationsof Voting:Explanatoryor Normative Theory?In suggesting populist avenues of response to the problems raised bysocial choice theory, Coleman and Ferejohn distinguish different inter-pretations of voting. But it is not clear just what the dimensions are onwhich they suppose interpretations to differ. In some places they focuson the relationship between voting and the general will (semantic orevidential), in other places on the psychology of voting (judgments abouthow to advance the common good or expressions of personal preferences).Furthermore, they do not distinguish the different roles that interpretationsof voting might play in a conception of democracy. I want to begin mydiscussion of epistemic populism by clarifying the point of providing aninterpretation of voting and bring the other dimensions into the accountin due course.One task of an interpretation of voting is to provide a frameworkfor explaining why people vote, what the determinants of their votingdecisions are, and how those determinants vary across circumstances:whether, for example, those determinants are in fact judgments of thecommon good or, rather, assessments of what the candidates are likelyto do for me soon on the basis of what they have done for me lately. Ifthis is what is meant by an interpretation of voting, then whether weought to "interpret" votes as expressions of preferences or as expressionsof beliefs about the common good depends on which view, or whichcombination of views, provides the most plausible explanation of votingbehavior.But this is not how I will understand an "interpretation of voting"for the purposes of the present discussion. Rather, I will suppose thatan interpretation of voting is part of a normative political theory, inparticular, that it is part of an account of the operations of the institutionsof a just, democratic society. In presenting such an account, one needssome conception of the determinants of voting in order to characterizethe operations of the political iystitutions-for example, whether thoseinstitutions are stable and what their outputs are likely to be. A plausibleinterpretation of voting, for the purposes of a normative theory, neednot take current determinants of voting as authoritative, though it alsocannot just be made up. For example, if the interpretation is that peoplevote their opinions of the common good-their beliefs about the generalwill-rather than just their preferences, then it is important that suchvoting be psychologically plausible. And it is important as well that it be


10/14

34 Ethics October1986plausible that members of the society would develop such opinions andhave incentives for voting on the basis of those opinions. An interpretationof voting for the purposes of explaining voting behavior is relevant tothe account of voting in a normative theory. But the reasonableness ofthe view is not settled by deciding which interpretation best serves ex-planatory purposes.EpistemicPopulismAn epistemic interpretation of voting has three main elements: (1) anindependent tandardof correct decisions-that is, an account of justice orof the common good that is independentof current consensus and theoutcomes of votes; (2) a cognitiveaccount of voting-that is, the view thatvoting expresses beliefs about what the correct policies are according tothe independent standard, not personal preferences for policies; and (3)an account of decisionmaking as a process of the adjustment of beliefs,adjustments that are undertaken in part in light of the evidence aboutthe correct answer that is provided by the beliefs of others. Thus, theepistemic conception treats processes of decision making as, potentially,rational processes of the formation of common judgments.According to the epistemic populist, the "independent standard" isa "general will" or "popular will." A group has a general will if (1) themembers of the group share a conception of the common good; (2) themembers regard the fact that an institution or policy advances the con-ception as a reason for supporting it; (3) it is fully common knowledgethat the conception is shared; and (4) the conception is consistent withthe members of the society regarding themselves as free and equal.28 Tofix matters for the sake of discussion, think of the content of the generalwill as given by Rawls's requirements of equal basic liberties, fair equalityof opportunity, and the difference principle, and of a society regulatedby a general will as a society in which there is a publicly shared view thatinstitutions and policies ought at least to satisfy these principles. Agreementon these general principles is, of course, compatible with disagreementsabout the institutions and policies that are best suited to these principlesand their continued satisfaction over time. What the epistemic populistclaims is that, when there is a general will, and public deliberation isguided by the principles that define that will, the decisions of majoritiesabout which policies to pursue can provide good evidence about whichpolicies are in fact best. The epistemic populist is not committed to theview that all decisions should be subject to popular judgment-the populistthat I have described here does not think that there is a general will onall issues-but, rather, to the claim that on those that bear on the basicprinciples, majorityjudgments can serve as reasonable and sound indicatorsof the general will.

28. Condition 4 is intended to capture the idea that the shared interpretation of thecommon good is not forced-that there is genuinely a shared will.


11/14

Cohen EpistemicPopulism 35EpistemicPopulism:InstitutionsHow can the epistemic populist support the claim that majorities providesound evidence about the general will? One reason is provided by ar-guments modeled on the Condorcet jury theorems. Such argumentsattribute a "judgmental competence" to the members of a group-thatis, a probabilityof getting the correct answer as specified by an independentstandard. They then assess decision rules by considering the probabilitythat a group will arrive at a correct answer by using those rules. So, forexample, if there are two alternative policies, and the average individualcompetence is greater than 0.5, then the probability of getting the correctanswer from a simple majority increases rapidly as the size of the groupincreases. On the other hand, if average competence drops below 0.5,then confidence in the judgments of majorities diminishes as group sizeincreases.29The jury theorems thus support the confidence of the populist inmajority decisions-but subject to two obvious constraints, namely, thatindividuals are good judges and that individuals who are good judgesvote their judgments and not their preferences. But the epistemic populistcannot simply assume that judgmental competences are fixed and high,and that individuals vote their judgments. Instead, the populist must beattentive to the way that rules and the collective choice institutions inwhich they operate shape the competence and motivations of voters.Furthermore-and here I depart from Coleman and Ferejohn-the ep-istemic populist cannot be satisfied with assessing procedures in termsof their reliability, apart from any public confidence in the reliability ofthe procedures.30 For the populist needs to be concerned as well aboutthe confidence of those who choose according to the procedures thattheir procedures produce decisions that conform to the general will.Thus, in assessing the institutions and rules that shape collective decisions,the epistemic populist needs to consider more than their capacity toproduce good collective decisions from competent individual judgments.In the discussion that follows I consider three such aspects and illustratehow the concern to accommodate each helps to explain characteristicepistemic populist views.1. Judgmental competence cannot be taken for granted since levelsof political cognition plausiblydepend on institutional conditions.3' Becauseof this dependence of political cognition on institutional context, an

29. For a more precise statement of this generalized Condorcet theorem and a summaryof related jury theorems, see Bernard Grofman, Guillermo Owen, and Scott Feld, "ThirteenTheorems in Search of Truth," Theoryand Decision 15 (1983): 261-78. On the relevanceof the Condorcet theorems to a Rousseauean view, see Brian Barry, "The Public Interest,"Proceedingsof the AristotelianSociety38 (1964): 9-14.30. Coleman and Ferejohn, p. 17.31. See Walter Dean Burnham, "Theory and Voting Research," in The CurrentCrisisin AmericanPolitics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 78-87; and V. 0. Key,Public Opinion and AmericanDemocracy New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), esp. pt. 6.


12/14

36 Ethics October1986epistemic populist needs to consider the effects of the framework ofcollective decisions on such competence, that is, on the inputs to thedecisions. Concern with the effects of different forms of decision makingon judgmental competence is reflected in the populist emphasis on theeducative effects of political participation.32 And it is reflected as well inother populist concerns about the framework of collective decision making.So, for example, consider a political system in which there is a single-member-district plurality system, and, as a consequence, considerablebarriers to the development and persistence of third parties.33 Partly asa result of this system, there are in fact only two parties, and the twoparties are close on the issues. Their closeness, in turn, reduces the scopeof public political debate and dampens interest and involvement in politics.Reduced interest and involvement may then diminish judgmental com-petence, and this diminishing may in turn prompt the continued narrowingof the scope of political debate. This provides the epistemic populist witha reason for supporting a system of proportional representation, thoughthis consideration needs, of course, to be balanced against the disadvantagesof proportional representation systems.Or, consider a system in which politicalinformation is largely subsidizedby interested private actors. Such a system may also diminish judgmentalcompetence by producing systematic biases in the information on whichjudgments are based. And even if the information is in fact reliable,citizens may tend to discount it in virtue of its source and may supposethat uninformed judgments are as good as beliefs based on available"information." And so the epistemic populist has some reason for dis-satisfaction with arrangements in which political debate and competitionis largely subsidized out of private resources.2. If individuals are reasonably good judges about how to advancethe common good, and if they vote their judgments, then there can beconfidence in the outcomes. But the epistemic populist cannot assumethat the mere existence of a general will is sufficient to provide individualswith an incentive to vote their judgments of the common good ratherthan their personal preferences. For even if there is a general will, andthere are sound judgments about what promotes the common good,individual preferences may still conflict with those judgments, and thedecision procedures themselves can tempt people to vote those prefer-ences-for example, by encouraging the belief that others are likely tobe so tempted. Just as it is unreasonable to suppose that people neverresist such temptations, so, too, it is unreasonable to think that all incentiveproblems are solved simply by the existence of moral and solidaristicmotivations. So, in assessing the decision procedures, we need to know

32. See Pateman for a discussion of these concerns.33. E. E. Schattschneider, Party Government New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston,1942), p. 75; Maurice Duverger, Political Parties (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1954), p.217; and Anthony Downs, An Economic Theoryof Democracy(New York: Harper & Row,1957), p. 124.


13/14

Cohen EpistemicPopulism 37what the inputs to the procedures are likely to be, and this dependspartly on the sorts of motivations that the procedures themselves encourage.Concerns about such incentive problems provide the epistemic populistwith a rationale for placing some issues out of the reach of simple majorities.Rousseau, for example, recognized the problem of temptation, and itled him to restrict popular decision making to votes on laws, rather thanthe implementation of those laws in particular cases. The thought wasthat the impact of laws was sufficiently indirect and uncertain that citizenswould be able to put their preferences or "particular wills" aside in theirdeliberations. Similarly, there are cases in which we know that we aresubject to temptation-for example, the temptation to interfere with freeexpression because we are angered by its content-and therefore likelyto come to incorrect collective decisions if we were able to decide thesematters by simple majorities.3. Coleman and Ferejohn suggest that the populist can appeal to areliability theory of justification on which procedures are justified if, infact, they are more likely than alternatives to yield correct outcomes,quite apart from the views of citizens about the reliabilityof the procedures.But considerations of reliability are too narrow here. For political pro-cedures are not just ways of shaping inputs and turning them into decisions.They also lend legitimacy to the outcomes. The populist does not simplywant procedures that in fact produce outcomes that are more likely tobe correct than alternative procedures-that is, procedures that are infact reliable apart from their legitimacy effects. It should also be manifestthat they have the property of producing good outcomes. That is, thepopulist wants procedures that are reliable, and that citizens have reasonto expect to be reliable as well.The concern about public confidence in the reliability of proceduresis reflected in populist concerns about the funding of the political processand the ways that different funding schemes shape the political agendaand the strategies of political actors. Even if it were true that decisionsthat result from publicly and privately funded campaigns would in factbe exactly the same, still, doubts about the reliability of decisions arereasonable in the latter case.Similar considerations might be reflected in views of populists whosupport an expanded use of referenda. Suppose that there are two waysof organizing referenda that would in fact yield exactly the same outcomes.But on the first, there are always two votes taken at six-month intervals,while on the second, only one vote is taken. Even if they would in factyield exactly the same outcomes,'still, it is reasonable to prefer the formerbecause of the greater confidence in the deliberative character of theprocess and the increased confidence in the outcomes that results.34

34. For a proposal along these lines, see Benjamin Barber, StrongDemocracy: articipatoryPolitics or a New Age (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), pp.288-89. For doubts about referenda, see Riker, p. 251.


14/14

38 Ethics October1986These remarks about epistemic populism are, as I indicated at theoutset, not intended as an argument for populism. Rather, the aim hasbeen to further substantiate the doubts expressed in Colemand and Fe-

rejohn and in the first section of my discussion about the force of Riker'scriticisms of populism. Populism is not a precise theory, and there aremany ways to elaborate its central commitments. The purely proceduralpopulism criticized by Riker is one interpretation of populism. But thatinterpretation offers, I think, a far less plausible rendering of populistideals and institutional concerns than the epistemic populism I havesketched here. Riker, I conclude, overstates the major conclusion of hisassessment of populism. He has shown that one interpretation of populismis incoherent, and that social choice theory can serve to clarify otherinterpretations. He has not, however, shown that populism itself shouldbe rejected as empty and incoherent.

COHEN - An Epistemic Conception of Democracy

Documents

Transcript of COHEN - An Epistemic Conception of Democracy