Intelligent Democracy: Answering the New Democratic Scepticism (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics)

Cover
Intelligent Democracy
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The New Democratic Scepticism
	Defending the Intelligence of Democracy
	Overview of the Book
1. Democracy’s Epistemic Problems
	Do Democracies Need to Make Good Decisions?
	What Is a Good Political Decision?
	What Makes an Institution Intelligent?
	Institutional Diversity and the Priority of Democracy
	A Note on Method
	Responding to the New Democratic Scepticism
2. The Limits of Elections and Markets
	The Epistemic Abilities of Elections and Markets
	The Common Good and Other-​Regarding Decisions
	The Incentive Problem
	The Information Problem
	The Invisible Hand of Elections and Markets
	A Preliminary Case for Collective Politics
3. Democracy and the Division of Knowledge
	Hayek’s Division of Knowledge
	The Division of Knowledge and the Deliberative System
	A Systemic Division of Epistemic Labour
	Collective Politics in the Deliberative System
	Comparing Deliberative Systems
	Knowledge Gathering in the Deliberative System
4. Bias, Misinformation, and the Democratic System
	Failing to Find the Truth
	Trust in the Deliberative System
	A Politics of Bias and Misinformation
	Not So Biased After All
	Error Correction in the Deliberative System
	Knowledge Evaluation in the Deliberative System
5. Polycentricity For and Against Democracy
	The Polycentric Critique of Democracy
	The Limits of Bottom-​Up Selection
	The Benefits of Top-​Down Selection
	Polycentricity within Democracy
	Realizing the Polycentric Benefits of Deliberative Systems
	Who Should Make Empowered Decisions?
6. Diversity and Political Problem-​Solving
	Can Diversity Trump Ability?
	Deliberating with Oracles
	How Forceful Is the Force of the Better Argument?
	An Alternative Model of Cognitive Diversity
	How to Select for Diversity
	The Threat of Deliberative Failures
	How Far Can Diversity Take Us?
7. Elections and Elite Rule
	The Conventional Democratic Solution
	What Elections Can and Cannot Do
	Political Meritocracy and Its Limits
	Epistocracy and Its Limits
	Is Representative Democracy the Best We Can Do?
8. The Sortition Branch
	The Potential of Random Sortition
	Deliberative Mini-​Publics and Their Limits
	Randomly Selected Legislators and Their Limits
	The Sortition Branch of a Deliberative System
	The Sortition Branch as a Democratic Proposal
	Intelligent Democracy as a More Participatory Democracy
Conclusion: A More Intelligent Democracy
References
Index