Political Epistemology

ABSTRACT

Normative political epistemologists, such as epistemic democrats, study whether political decision makers can, in principle, be expected to know what they need to know if they are to make wise public policy. Empirical political epistemologists study the content and sources of real-world political actors' knowledge and interpretations of knowledge. In recent years, empirical political epistemologists have taken up the study of the ideas of political actors other than voters, such as bureaucrats and politicians. Normative political epistemologists could follow this lead if they were to focus on the technocratic orientation of nearly all political actors in the West: that is, on their desire to solve social and economic problems. Since most technocratic policy is made by political elites, the reliability of elites' knowledge of the causes of and cures for social and economic problems is a natural topic for normative political epistemology.

Notes

1. In reality, the first issue, dated Winter 1987-88, appeared 27 years ago. See Friedman 2007, 15n1.

2. See Blyth 2003 and Béland and Cox 2011 for surveys. Bevir 2010 is an important recent example of empirical political epistemology applied to elite political actors.

3. The literature on epistemic democracy has grown rapidly. Estlund 2008 sets some theoretical limits on epistemic-democratic claims. Ober 2008 is an extensive treatment of the consequences of democracy for Athens. Landemore and Elster, eds., 2012 presents some of the best work in the field. Talisse 2004, 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2010 investigate democracy as a source of moral knowledge.

4. See Brennan 2014, Gunn 2014, Kelly 2014, Landemore 2014, Levinson 2014, Moore 2014, Muirhead 2014, Quirk 2014, Somin 2014, and Stich 2014.

5. See DeCanio 2000, 2006, and 2007.

6. Dahl 1961.

7. See the twentieth-anniversary symposium on Lewin 1991 in Critical Review 23(3).

8. See Murakami 2008 and 2010.

9. Landemore 2014; see also Landemore and Page forthcoming.

10. E.g., Mirowski 1991, Hausman 1992, Rosenberg 1992, Lawson 1997, Hodgson 2001, and Reiss 2008.

11. See Cochran and Harpending 2009, Lieberman 2013, and Richerson and Boyd 2005, for example.

12. The best term of all, despite its obscurity, might be epistocracy. But Estlund (2008) has already applied this term both more broadly and more narrowly than what we need (as has Brennan in the symposium). Too broadly, he includes “experts” about ends as well as means under the “epistocracy” banner. Too narrowly, he assumes that epistocrats must constitute an elite. Historically, however, the people at large have often believed, and still often believe, that they have the necessary problem-solving expertise. This is the very belief that epistemic democrats defend, and we cannot presuppose that it is wrong.