Kevin Elliott (Columbia), The Division of Democratic Labor and Epistemic Performance
Channel: Radio-CRÉ
Date: 2017-11-23

Discussant: Angie Pepper

Kevin Elliott
The Division of Democratic Labor and Epistemic Performance 

Can democracy make use of a division of intellectual labor to produce good democratic decisions? In this paper, I argue that democracy can approximate such a division by dividing the decision task between specialized groups of citizens organized into “issue publics.” The division of labor imagined here is not only ‘vertical’ as between individuals with different roles in a democratic or deliberative system, in the way that the tasks of representatives, activists, journalists, etc. differ in complementary ways from those of ordinary citizens, but is also ‘horizontal’ in dividing the field of democratic choice by issue area. On this account, citizens collect information about the small number of issues they find especially important and base their voting decisions on the comparative performance of candidates/parties on these few issues. Ideally, this means there’s a body of attentive and informed citizens surveilling every issue and making informed voting decisions by reference to that issue. Aggregated through electorally-motivated candidates/parties, this leads to more informed decision making at the macro level as candidates/parties shape their policies to appeal to these relatively well-informed publics. 

I respond to several worries about this theory including among others that issue publics will enable the special interest capture of policy, that there won’t be an issue public for every issue, and that citizens are not morally or epistemically allowed to make voting decisions by reference to only a few issues rather than all things considered. In response to some of these objections, I clarify that issue publics are not synonymous with interests but are rather arenas of relatively informed contestation within which members may disagree. In response to others, I argue that even single issues can alone justify decisions because they may have a special connection with individuals’ fundamental commitments and because most issues have, independently, sufficient intrinsic importance. 

Caméra et montage: Marc-Antoine Plouffe