Political epistemology is a newly flourishing area of philosophy, but there is no comprehensive overview to this burgeoning field. This chapter maps out the terrain of political epistemology, highlights some of the key questions and topics of this field, draws connections across seemingly disparate areas of work, and briefly situates this field within its historical and contemporary contexts.

Adam Gibbons (2022) holds, in response to my recent paper on epistocracy (Méndez 2022), that the severity of what I identify as a very relevant epistemic problem for epistocracy is overstated. What I call the Information Gap Problem refers to the gap of information that an elite electorate of well-informed citizens would experience, with regards to what epistocrats call ‘ill-informed’ lay citizens’ preferences. In that paper, I claimed that a group of highly qualified people could be better at determining the (...) content of policies to foster general goals, but that this does not mean they could also be able to identify the best forms for those policies to be implemented. The form is what I connect to the lived experiences of lay citizens, and an epistocratic arrangement— which equals to distribute political power in accordance with political competence—would exclude the preferred forms of implementation of the ill-informed citizens. That information would thus be out of reach for an elite electorate, and persisting socio economic differences would reduce the overlap between the preferences of the elite and the preferences of illinformed citizens. According to Gibbons, it is not clear why such information is so important. Additionally, Gibbons states that the Information Gap Problem would be less of a threat, and even no threat at all, to some types of epistocracy. Finally, from Gibbons’s perspective, there are other more pressing issues for epistocracies that are not properly addressed in my paper, such as the difficulties of assessing political competence, and the risks of abuse in epistocratic arrangements. Here I will argue that the importance of including preferences from lay citizens comes back to the goal of the epistocratic project, namely, to improve the outcomes of our democracies for everyone. As I state in the paper, lay citizen’s lived experiences are crucial to do so. Relatedly, I will show that all forms of epistocracy are in some way exclusionary, since they do involve restricting the electorate, be it directly or indirectly, which means that no matter the type, they would all be susceptible to the Information Gap Problem. As well, I will briefly address the final objection regarding competence by showing that Gibbons’s worries regarding competence are present and developed in my paper. (shrink)

There is widespread agreement among philosophers and legal scholars that the distribution of educational resources in the US is unjust, but little agreement about why. An increasingly prominent view posits a sufficientarian standard based on the requirements of democratic citizenship. This view, which I refer to as democratic sufficientarianism, argues that inequalities in educational resources or opportunities above the threshold required for democratic citizenship are morally unobjectionable if and only if all children are provided with an education sufficient to meet (...) those demands. In the article, I argue that democratic sufficientarianism faces a democratic education dilemma. Either the philosopher specifies a precise and demanding threshold with antidemocratic implications, or she insists upon democratic equality irrespective of educational achievements, thereby undercutting the search for anything but a minimal educational threshold. As an alternative, I defend a new sufficientarian standard that is reflexive, education-specific, and democracy-compatible. This reflexive sufficientarian standard can act as a guide to democratic deliberation about education policy. The article also sketches possibilities for litigation on behalf of children who have received insufficient primary education. (shrink)

Confucian meritocratic rule has been recently advocated on the basis of the economic performance of Western democracies and the political ignorance of their average voters. These arguments are grou...

Until relatively recently, few democrats had much to say about the constitution of the ‘demos' that ought to rule. A number of recent writers have, however, argued that all those whose interests are affected must be enfranchised if decision-making is to be fully democratic. This article criticizes this approach, arguing that it misunderstands democracy. Democratic procedures are about the agency of the people so only agents can be enfranchised, yet not all bearers of interests are also agents. If we focus (...) on agency, rather than who is affected, then this leads us to focus on the permissible limits of action, rather than who makes the decision. Just as individual sovereignty is ordinarily limited by the requirement not to injure others, we may apply similar restrictions to what a demos can permissibly do. Thus, any collection of individuals may choose to regulate their affairs collectively for mutual benefit, but should be prohibited from imposing negative externalities on outsiders. On this view, the constitution or definition of the demos is arbitrary, from the democratic point of view. Moreover, democracy does not require the expansion of the franchise, unless injuries cannot be avoided. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Recently, political models which employ lottery-selection instead of ballot voting have been proposed. Proponents argue that such lottocratic models can improve the representation of the population and reduce undemocratic influences. In this paper, I argue that these proposals also satisfy the egalitarian requirement of democracy. I claim that having an equal chance to be selected by lot is equally egalitarian as having an equally weighed vote for two reasons: first, having a chance to be selected by lot satisfies the requirement (...) for political justice better than electoral democracy, and second, it provides citizens with equal political influence and not merely equal impact. (shrink)

Efficiency requires legislative political institutions. There are many ways efficiency can be promoted, and so an ongoing legislative institution is necessary to resolve this choice in a politically sustainable and economically flexible way. This poses serious problems for classical liberal proposals to constitutionally protect markets from government intervention, as seen in the work of Ilya Somin, Guido Pincione & Fernando Tesón and others. The argument for the political nature of efficiency is set out in terms of both Pareto optimality and (...) aggregate welfare maximisation, and similar arguments can be generalised to other social values. (shrink)

Mark Pennington argues political systems should be decentralized in order to facilitate experimental learning about distributive justice. Pointing out the problems with Pennington's Hayekian formulation, I reframe his argument as an extension of the Millian idea of 'experiments in living.' However, the experimental case for decentralization is limited in several ways. Even if decentralization improves our knowledge about justice, it impedes the actual implementation of all conceptions of justice other than libertarianism. I conclude by arguing for the compatibility of egalitarian (...) redistribution with the epistemic virtues of markets pointed out by Hayek. (shrink)

Being autonomous depends on the kind of relations we enjoy in the different domains of our lives, but the impact of decision-making and the power exercise that takes place in the political sphere, makes political relations crucial to our development and enjoyment of autonomy. This dissertation develops a novel view of political participation by interrogating its connection to our personal autonomy. According to this view, our political relations are partially constitutive of our personal autonomy, which in other words means there (...) is a political aspect of our autonomy. The kind of political relations we should hold to fully enjoy our autonomy is what I call Relations of Mutual Recognition. It is the mutual recognition of each agent’s autonomous standing—translated into a proper distribution of political power— that will face dominating political relations. The basis for that domination comes from our democracies’ power imbalances that condition influence over political decision-making to each individual’s economic, social or cultural standing. Consequently, there are political conditions for our autonomy to thrive. Relations of Mutual Recognition require two main conditions: non-domination and control. I take these two neo-republican ideals and redefine them to shape what a proper distribution of political power amounts to. Political participation comes in precisely to identify a way to challenge power imbalances. Therefore, my definition of political participation, which I call Collective Self-Government, requires a particular sort of implementation. Accordingly, I suggest a deliberative and inclusive arrangement that involves direct and innovative forms of decision-making, and more importantly, grants relevant shares of authority to all actors, i.e., common citizens, legislators, technocrats, etcetera. This project could rightly belong to both a relational approach to autonomy and be labelled as a version of deliberative democracy. However, relational accounts focus on our social relations, whilst I claim that we cannot be “less” or non-autonomous in the political sphere and still enjoy an autonomous life. Likewise, the participatory focus—in the sense of inclusion of all actors—of this proposal more accurately turn it into either a participatory version of deliberative democracy or a deliberative version of participatory democracy. (shrink)