It is commonly held that political ignorance is rational, a response to the high costs and low benefits of acquiring political information. But many recent critics of the claim that political ignorance is rational instead urge that it is a simple consequence of agents not concerning themselves with the acquisition of political information whatsoever. According to such critics, political ignorance is inadvertent radical ignorance rather than a rational response to the incentives faced by agents in democracies. And since political ignorance (...) is not a response to incentives, these critics urge, it cannot be ameliorated by incentivizing the acquisition of political information. This paper has two goals. First, I show that these seemingly competing accounts of political ignorance are in fact complementary, together explaining much political ignorance. Indeed, there is a sense in which political ignorance can be both rational and radical at the same time. Second, I more closely examine the relationship between incentives, kinds of political ignorance, and the acquisition of political information. On the one hand, from the fact that political ignorance is rational it does not follow that it can be overcome by incentivizing the acquisition of information. On the other hand, from the fact that political ignorance is radical it does not follow that it cannot be overcome by incentivizing the acquisition of information. Lastly, the complexity of the information in question is more relevant to determining whether ignorance can be overcome than whether such ignorance is rational or radical. (shrink)

I argue that democratic citizens have a duty to educate themselves politically. My argument proceeds in two stages. First, I establish a case for the moral importance of individual competence for voting, but also maintain that the substantial content of the required competence must remain open. I do this by way of an assessment of Jason Brennan's provocative defense of epistocracy. I try to show that there is no notion of political competence that can meet with reasonable agreement among citizens (...) and that voter qualification exams are therefore illegitimate. Second, I maintain that the basic premise of Brennan's argument, the right to a competent electorate, is valid and that it corresponds to an individual duty to educate oneself politically. This duty is, in Kant's terminology, a wide and imperfect duty that we owe to our fellow democratic citizens. Yet since the content of competence must be left open, this moral duty cannot be transformed into a legal obligation. (shrink)

Habermas endorses democracy as a way to rescue modern life from the economic and bureaucratic compulsion that Weber saw as an inescapable condition of modernity. This rescue mission requires that Habermas subordinate democracy to people's true interests, by liberating their political deliberations from incursions of money or power that could interfere with the formation of policy preferences that clearly reflect those interests. But Habermas overlooks the opaque nature of our interests under complex modern conditions, and the difficulty of even knowing (...) what the modern state is doing—let alone judging whether what it is doing serves our interests well. These overlooked sources of public ignorance buttress Weber's more pessimistic understanding of democracy, and like the theatrics surrounding popular sovereignty, public ignorance both enables and masks the autonomy that allows state officials and non‐state opinion leaders to shape public policy undemocratically. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss an often-neglected topic in the literature on the ethics of voting. Our aim is to provide an account of what states are obligated to do, so that voters may fulfil their role as public decision-makers in an epistemically competent manner. We argue that the state ought to provide voters with what we call a substantive opportunity for competence. This entails that the state ought to actively foster the epistemic capabilities that are necessary to achieve competent (...) participation in political decision-making practices. (shrink)

In a certain sense, voluntary communities and market relationships are relatively less coercive than democracy and bureaucracy: they offer more positive freedom. In that respect, they are more like romantic relationships or friendships than are democracies and bureaucracies. This tends to make voluntary communities and markets not only more pleasant forms of interaction, but more effective ones—contrary to Weber's confidence in the superior rationality of bureaucratic control.

Abstract Democratic control of public policy is nearly impossible in the presence of extreme voter ignorance, and this ignorance is in part caused by the vast size and scope of modern government. Only a government limited in its scope can be meaningfully democratic. David Ciepley's response to my article does not seriously challenge this conclusion, and his attempts to show that limited government is inherently undemocratic fail. Ciepley's alternative vision of a ?democracy? that does not require informed voters turns out (...) to be not a defense of democracy at all, but a rationalization for any form of government that achieves a high level of leadership skill and bureaucratic efficiency. (shrink)

Two crucial distinctions regarding political competence must be made. First, the mere probability that you will make a morally right decision (reliability) is distinct from your ability to skillfully make a decision (competence). Empirical and normative accounts have focused primarily on reliability, but competence is more important if we take central normative commitments seriously. Second, the competence you have on your own (direct competence) is distinct from the competence you have in contributing to some collective enterprise (contributory competence). Direct competence (...) is likely to be extremely demanding in a democratic context, so we should move to a contributory account of competence. (shrink)

ABSTRACTOn September 4, 2015, the Political Epistemology/ideas, Knowledge, and Politics section of the American Political Science Association sponsored a roundtable on ideational turns in the four subdisciplines of political science as part of its annual meetings. Chairing the roundtable was Jeffrey Friedman, Department of Government, University of Texas, Austin. The other participants were Jeffrey Checkel, Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University; Matthias Matthijs, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; and Rogers Smith, Department of Political Science, University of (...) Pennsylvania. We thank the participants for permission to republish their remarks, which they were offered the opportunity to edit after the fact. (shrink)

Examination of a comprehensive database of political knowledge, constructed from pooled 1988 and 1992 National Election Studies, refutes criticisms that haue sometimes been lodged against standard tests that seem to reveal profound levels of public ignorance. Although most people know something about politics, the typical citizen is poorly informed, and only a small group is very knowledgeable about politics. Differentiating people according to their perceptions of the most important national problem does not reveal pockets of well‐informed “issue publics” among the (...) electorate. The NES data also show that knowledge makes a difference in how people feel about government spending for social‐welfare programs, and in how well citizens were able to connect their partisanship and ideological proclivities to their votes in the 2000 presidential election. (shrink)

. References. Critical Review: Vol. 18, Democratic Competence, pp. 331-360.

ABSTRACTA recent line of argument insists that replacing democracy with markets would improve social decision making due to markets’ superior use of knowledge. These arguments are flawed by unrealistic assumptions, unfair comparisons, and a neglect of the epistemic limits of markets. In reality, the epistemic advantages of markets over democracy are circumscribed and often illusory. A recognition of markets’ epistemic limits can, however, provide guidance for designing institutions in ways that capture the advantages of both.