What’s wrong with an epistocratic council?

Published date01 February 2020
AuthorPierre-Étienne Vandamme
Date01 February 2020
DOI10.1177/0263395719836348
Subject MatterArticles
/tmp/tmp-17CoqkIAQ0INgN/input
836348POL0010.1177/0263395719836348PoliticsVandamme
research-article2019
Article
Politics
2020, Vol. 40(1) 90 –105
What’s wrong with an
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
epistocratic council?
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395719836348
DOI: 10.1177/0263395719836348
journals.sagepub.com/home/pol
Pierre-Étienne Vandamme
KU Leuven Center for Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, Belgium
Abstract
Epistemic justifications of democracy affirm the comparative quality of democracies’ decisions. The
challenge faced by those who endorse such views is to explain why we should prefer standard
democratic institutions to some sort of epistocracy or rule of the wisest. This article takes up
this challenge by assessing the epistemic potential of an epistocratic council, as imagined by Jason
Brennan. Members of such council would be selected through competency exams, the required
competencies being defined by the whole population. The argument defended in this article is
that the potential gain in instrumental rationality that such an institution could offer under certain
questionable conditions would be outweighed by the increased risks of misrule and involuntary
biases if such council has decision-making or veto power. In comparison with the existing literature,
this argument stresses the importance of moral rightness, here defined as impartiality, in the
epistemic assessment of democracy and its alternatives. The article then ends with a qualified
assessment of purely epistemic justifications of democratic inclusion, which could be insufficient to
reject implausible but imaginable forms of epistemically justifiable disenfranchisement.
Keywords
democracy, epistemic justification of democracy, epistocracy, misrule, technocracy
Received: 17th July 2018; Revised version received: 6th February 2019; Accepted: 7th February 2019
The growing literature on the epistemic justification of democracy sheds an important
light on our various reasons to value democracy. Whether or not the comparative quality
of their decisions is sufficient to justify democratic institutions is a matter of lively debate.
To some, it seems that epistemic democrats take a risk in accepting the premise that we
should not value democracy if we were convinced that alternative regimes could produce
better results or make better decisions (Saffon and Urbinati, 2013). The worry is that
purely epistemic approaches to the issue might finally succumb to the so-called ‘episto-
cratic challenge’ and admit the epistemic inferiority of democratic institutions compared
to epistocratic or technocratic alternatives.1
Corresponding author:
Pierre-Étienne Vandamme, KU Leuven Center for Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, Andreas
Vesaliusstraat 2, Leuven 3000, Belgium.
Email: pierreetienne.vandamme@kuleuven.be

Vandamme
91
In this article, after having defined epistocracy (section ‘The epistocratic challenge’),
I will argue that, properly understood, the epistemic justification of democracy can
address the ‘epistocratic challenge’ without necessarily calling upon democracy’s intrin-
sic virtues. I intend to do so by arguing that good democratic decisions must not only be
instrumentally rational but also morally impartial (section ‘What makes the epistemic
value of a political decision?’), that existing responses to the epistocratic challenge
neglect this dimension (section ‘Existing responses to the epistocratic challenge’), and by
comparing standard democratic institutions with what I see as one of their strongest and
most plausible competitors: an epistocratic council, as imagined by Jason Brennan, whose
members would be selected through a competency exam (section ‘Would an epistocratic
council perform better than democracy?’). The argument against an epistocratic council
is that it increases the risks of biases and misrule that egalitarian inclusion and democratic
accountability help minimize – albeit very imperfectly. I then consider the objection that
depriving one person or very few people of the right to vote would not necessarily entail
epistemic losses and I qualify my initial claim by conceding that the epistemic argument
for democracy may not be fully sufficient to tackle hypothetical (and practically implau-
sible) objections (section ‘Do we really need everyone?’). I nevertheless highlight the
importance of laying the emphasis on the epistemic case for democracy compared with
procedural approaches.
Behind the theoretical interest of imagining an epistocratic council and assessing its
epistemic prospects, the general discussion has concrete political implications. There is
nowadays a growing scepticism about democracy’s intelligence (Achen and Bartels,
2017; Brennan, 2016; Caplan, 2011) and a tendency to depoliticize many democratic
issues and hence delegate political power to non-electorally accountable institutions such
as central banks, courts, independent committees, or the European Commission (Hay,
2007: ch. 3; Urbinati, 2014: ch. 2). Our view on the epistemic potential of standard demo-
cratic institutions and epistocratic alternatives should inform our judgement about this
technocratic trend.
The epistocratic challenge
Many epistemic democrats are uneasy with the possible implications of their epistemic
starting point (see, in particular, Estlund, 2008; Martí, 2006). They seem afraid that their
reasoning, unless qualified properly and topped with procedural arguments, might lead to
the justification of epistocratic institutions, that is, institutions in which those who are
more knowledgeable, or wiser, have more formal political power than the rest of the popu-
lation. Arguably, it is already the case in our democracies that some people enjoy more
political power than others. People having a good knowledge of political institutions are
more likely to access positions of power than others. And people with a certain expertise
or communicative skills generally enjoy more political influence than others. Yet despite
these political inequalities – which are not necessarily undesirable (Dworkin, 2000: ch. 4)
– democratic regimes are based on a fundamental, formal political equality (one person,
one vote) in the selection and retrospective judgement of political representatives. In an
epistocracy, this would be the first salient difference: the selection and/or assessment of the
rulers, if there is one, would not be grounded in formal political equality.
Two different aspects might differentiate an epistocracy from a democracy in this
respect:

92
Politics 40(1)
•• The absence of political equality in the selection of the rulers: either there is no
suffrage at all, or suffrage is restricted to some citizens, or some have more votes
than others (plural voting).2
•• The absence of inclusive and egalitarian accountability.
The second aspect introduces a distinction between democratic accountability and
other forms of accountability, such as accountability to a subset of adult citizens or to an
unelected (or non-representative) body. Although epistocratic institutions can include
some form of accountability, this will typically not be accountability to the whole popula-
tion. An epistocratic body could, for example, be accountable to other unelected bodies.
The border cases are unelected bodies accountable to elected ones. Some may consider
them democratic because, indirectly, they derive legitimacy from an authorized body.
Others will consider them as epistocratic. According to this wider definition of epistoc-
racy, institutions such as central banks or the European Commission can be regarded as
epistocratic institutions embedded in (more or less) democratic arrangements. In a pure
epistocratic regime, though, none of the decision-making bodies (if there is more than
one) would face inclusive and egalitarian accountability. Otherwise, they would lose their
independence from public opinion. Yet this independence is justified by their higher wis-
dom or better knowledge and necessary to insulate this wisdom from public pressure.
In addition to these undemocratic aspects, an epistocracy would differ from other non-
democratic regimes by some mechanism selecting people who distinguish themselves
from the mass by their wisdom or expertise to rule, or at least to enjoy an important
degree of political power. A particularly interesting example is Brennan’s (2016: 215–
220) idea of an ‘epistocratic council’. Members of this council would be selected on a
meritocratic basis, passing a competency exam. And in order to minimize the risks of a
biased test, all citizens could have a say and an equal vote in the determination of the
required competencies.
What makes this idea particularly challenging is its relative political plausibility com-
pared with other epistocratic arrangements disenfranchising a set of the population or
overtly rejecting political equality as in plural or weighted voting. With an epistocratic
council, there would be some degree of popular participation and political equality in the
determination of the required competencies. There would also be formal equality in the
access to political power. Differences in skills would of course translate into unequal real
opportunities, but this is also the case with elections. Hence, the main difference with
electoral representation is that there would be no institutionalized democratic accounta-
bility: during their mandate, epistocrats would have more or less free...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT