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Democracy's Wisdom: An Aristotelian Middle Way for Collective Judgment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2013

JOSIAH OBER
JOSIAH OBER*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
*
Josiah Ober is Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Professor in Honor of Constantine Mitsotakis, Departments of Political Science and Classics, Stanford University, 100 West Encina Hall, 616 Serra Street, Stanford CA 94305 (jober@stanford.edu).
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Abstract

A satisfactory model of decision-making in an epistemic democracy must respect democratic values, while advancing citizens’ interests, by taking account of relevant knowledge about the world. Analysis of passages in Aristotle and legislative process in classical Athens points to a “middle way” between independent-guess aggregation and deliberation: an epistemic approach to decision-making that offers a satisfactory model of collective judgment that is both time-sensitive and capable of setting agendas endogenously. By aggregating expertise across multiple domains, Relevant Expertise Aggregation (REA) enables a body of minimally competent voters to make superior choices among multiple options, on matters of common interest. REA differs from a standard Condorcet jury in combining deliberation with voting based on judgments about the reputations and arguments of domain-experts.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 107 , Issue 1 , February 2013 , pp. 104 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2013

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