The politics of Plato's Republic has been all but universally condemned by modern liberal readers as totally and odiously inimical to democratic ideals. Plato's proposals for government by an unelected elite class of guardians, for censorship and indoctrination, for occupational restrictions, etc., are seen at best as stifling freedom and individual initiative and at worst as totalitarian. It has seldom or never been noticed, however, how much his polity resembles our own, for better or worse. American democracy, present and past, (...) has endorsed most of the basic political principles of the Republic. If often only tacitly, we recognize natural inequalities among people; that some are more fit than others for some occupations, including governing; and that indoctrination and censorship are desirable in some circumstances. Most important, though little recognized outside political theory, is the fact that the United States, like most modern democracies, has a guardianship form of government, comparable to that outlined in the Republic, in which the electoral franchise has little significance. Making due allowance for our own ideological myths on the one hand and for Platonic whimsy on the other, it can be seen that Plato's Republic and ours are, paradoxically, much the same in both aims and means. (shrink)

The rise of nationalism parallels that of the state, suggesting that the relationship between the two is symbiotic and that nations are neither natural nor spontaneous but rather are political constructions. Ernest Gellner's economically determinist account of the rise of the nation?state, however, understates the emotive and psychological appeal of nationalist ideology. The Social Identity Theory of Henri Tajfel, by contrast, suggests that nationalism benefits from possibly innate human tendencies to affiliate in social groups and to act in furtherance of (...) these groups, while Serge Moscovici's social psychology of popular belief elucidates the means by which such tendencies can take the shape of nationalism in mass publics. (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)

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)

According to the principles derived from his theory of discourse ethics, Habermas's model of deliberative democracy is justified only if the public is capable of making political decisions that advance the common good. Recent public‐opinion research demonstrates that the public's overwhelming ignorance of politics precludes it from having such capabilities, even if radical measures were taken to thoroughly educate the public about politics or to increase the salience of politics in their lives.

Abstract Paul Feyerabend is famous for presenting a scathing indictment of modern experts as a threat to democracy. While commentators have questioned the accuracy of his portrayal of experts, they have not assessed the accuracy of his depiction of laypeople. Although Feyerabend has political reasons for wanting to demythologize grandiose notions of expertise, his political project hinders clear thinking about the question by idealizing the alternative lay perspective.