Knowledge and Communication in Democratic Politics: Markets, Forums and Systems
| Author | Jonathan Benson |
| Published date | 01 May 2019 |
| Date | 01 May 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032321718772711 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321718772711
Political Studies
2019, Vol. 67(2) 422 –439
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321718772711
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Knowledge and Communication
in Democratic Politics: Markets,
Forums and Systems
Jonathan Benson
Abstract
Epistemic questions have become an important area of debate within democratic theory. Epistemic
democrats have revived epistemic justification of democracy, while social scientific research has
speared a significant debate on voter knowledge. An area which has received less attention,
however, is the epistemic case for markets. Market advocates have developed a number of
epistemic critiques of democracy which suggest that most goods are better provided by markets
than democratic institutions. Despite representing important challenges to democracy, these
critiques have gone without reply as democratic theorists have tended to exclude markets from
consideration. This article responds to these critiques and argues that there are good epistemic
grounds for granting a much greater role to democracy than its market critics have claimed. It
argues that there is a broad range of goods, including important ethical goods, which are better
provided by democracy than markets due to the particular epistemic burdens they create.
Keywords
epistemic democracy, deliberative democracy, deliberative systems, markets, Hayek
Accepted: 29 March 2018
Epistemic questions have become an important area of debate within the theory and prac-
tice of democracy. Democratic theory, which often focuses on the intrinsic or procedural
value of democracy, has seen a revival of epistemic justification which focuses on the
ways that democratic procedures, such as vote aggregation and deliberation, communi-
cate and aggregate knowledge. Epistemic democrats, for instance, have placed such
issues at the centre of democracies’ legitimacy and have developed innovative new argu-
ments for the epistemic abilities of democracy (Anderson, 2006; Estlund, 2008;
Landemore, 2013). Social scientific research on voter ignorance has also speared a sig-
nificant debate on the extent to which citizens can make effective decisions when voting.
Some within this debate take these studies to be damaging enough to require restriction
Department of Politics, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Corresponding author:
Jonathan Benson, Department of Politics, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
Email: j.benson@manchester.ac.uk
772711PCX0010.1177/0032321718772711Political StudiesBenson
research-article2018
Article
Benson 423
of voting rights to the more knowledgeable, while others defend the ability of voters to
overcome their limited knowledge through the use of various shortcuts or heuristics
(Brennan, 2016; Caplan, 2007).
An epistemic area which has received much less attention from democratic theory is
the epistemic case for markets. Market advocates have put forward a number of epistemic
critiques of democracy which suggest that most goods are better provided by the market
than any democratic institution. Hayekians, for instance, have argued that democratic
institutions, such as assemblies and parliaments, require knowledge to be centralised to a
democratic forum and will, therefore, fail to utilise knowledge which is local, dispersed
and fragmented (Pennington, 2003, 2011). Samuel DeCanio (2014) has further argued
that the singular nature of democratic decisions forces decision-makers to make accurate
policy predictions which require large amounts of knowledge. In contrast, markets coor-
dinate individuals and goods through price signals, while allowing multiple firms to
implement alternatives simultaneously so consumers can compare their outcomes with-
out predictive knowledge. Markets, therefore, reduce the epistemic burden facing deci-
sion-makers relative to democracy. Wherever markets are possible, it is argued that there
are good epistemic grounds to prefer them to democratic institutions. This epistemic case
for markets over democracy has received particular attention in environmental debates
(Benson, 2018; Cordato, 2004; Greenwood, 2012, 2015; O’Neill, 2012; Pennington,
2001, 2005, 2011; Sagoff, 2008; Shahar, 2017). Much of environmental politics is highly
sceptical of markets and instead tends to favour democratic institutions for the achieve-
ment of environmental values. Environmental democracy, however, has been argued to
face significant epistemic challenges in attempting to gather and utilise the knowledge
required to manage and coordinate environmental goods. Alternatively, a system of prop-
erty rights and price signals can coordinate individuals as they act on their own local
knowledge, without the need to centralise information to some democratic authority.
This epistemic challenge to democracy has yet to be addressed as many democratic
theorists concerned with epistemic questions have tended to exclude markets from con-
sideration. This article engages with these critiques and argues that there are good epis-
temic grounds for giving a much greater role to democratic institutions than their
pro-market critics have claimed. It will develop the concept of low feedback goods, and
argue that they represent a broad range of goods which cannot be accounted for by the
pro-market arguments. These goods are disconnected from the individuals who pursue
them and do not, therefore, provide market actors with the feedback information they
require. As a result, individuals will face significant burdens for explicit knowledge
which markets are unable to deal with. Low feedback goods include many environmental
goods but also others, such as health, human rights resource distributions and fair labour
practices. It will then be argued that democratic institutions, conceived in deliberative
terms, have a number of important epistemic advantages which make them better place to
deal with these goods than markets.
The Market Critique of Democracy
This section will lay out two epistemic critiques of democracy made by market advocates
and will use the example of environmental goods to demonstrate their significance.
Democratic decision-making can take a number of different forms, but the focus here will
be on democratic decisions as found in democratic forums, such as representative parlia-
ments and citizens assemblies. Although some of the arguments considered also affect
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