Epistocracy

This paper responds to Jason Brennan’s prominent critique of democracy. Brennan argues that the average citizen is ignorant and irrational, and votes incompetently, exercising illegitimate authority over her neighbors, thereby violating their right against subjection to incompetent government. He concludes that society should replace democracy with epistocracy; the rule of the educated. After clarifying the requirements of Brennan’s proposal, I present two lines of defense for democratic theorists, both compatible with the competence principle at the heart of Brennan’s argument. First, democracy can satisfy the standards of competence proposed by Brennan through institutional changes. And second, epistocracy falls short of its own epistemic standards by excluding voters, despite the place of voters in the division of political labor. I conclude that Brennan’s argument does not undermine democracy’s legitimacy, and in fact speaks against his epistocratic alternative.

Despite their many virtues, democracies suffer from well-known problems with high levels of voter ignorance. Such ignorance, one might think, leads democracies to occasionally produce bad outcomes. Proponents of epistocracy claim that allocating comparatively greater amounts of political power to citizens who possess more politically relevant knowledge may help us to mitigate the bad effects of voter ignorance. An important challenge to epistocracy rejects the claim that we can reliably identify a subset of citizens who possess more politically relevant knowledge than others. Roughly put, such knowledge should involve knowledge of various politically relevant social-scientific facts. But since the social sciences are mired in controversy, it’s not clear what the politically relevant facts are. Accordingly, we cannot definitively say of some citizens that they possess more politically relevant knowledge than others. Call this the Argument from Political Disagreement. In this paper I respond to the Argument from Political Disagreement. First, I argue that it conflates social-scientific knowledge with politically relevant knowledge. Even if there were no uncontroversial social-scientific knowledge, there is much uncontroversial politically relevant knowledge. Second, I establish the importance of such non-social-scientific knowledge for political decision-making. I conclude that this knowledge constitutes the minimal body of knowledge which epistocrats need to make their case.

Antik çağ dönemindeki demokrasi uygulamalarından günümüzdeki modern demokrasi uygulamalarına değin temsilcilerin ve yöneticilerin seçimi ve atanmasında kayırma ve kollamacılıktan uzak bir liyakat sistemi-ni oluşturmak hiç de kolay olmamıştır. Bugün en gelişmiş ve medeni olarak tanımladığımız ülkelerde dahi seçilmiş liderlerin ve temsilcilerin bilgi, liya-kat, etik, erdem ve sair değerler açısından fazlasıyla sorgulanır durumda olduğu pekâlâ bilinmektedir.  Trumpmania bunun en basit ve yakın tarih  örneğini oluşturur. Bir liderin karakteri, davranış ve tutumları, sahip olduğu değerleri sorgulanır olmasına rağmen seçmenler nezdinde bazen bunun bir karşılığı olmayabilmektedir. Buradan bakınca demokrasilerde seçmenlerin irrasyonel karar ve seçimleri ana sorun olarak görülebilir.

Epistokrasi ya da bir başka ifadeyle epistemik demokrasi temsilcilerin ve yöneticilerin seçimi ve atanmasında bilgi, eğitim, uzmanlık gibi değerle-rin önemli olduğunu savunur. Meritokrasi ise daha genel manada liyakat ilkelerinin önemli olduğuna dair bir yaklaşımdır. Meritokrasi epistemik değerlerin (akıl, zekâ, kapasite, muhakeme gücü, bilgi vs.) ;  aksiyolojik de-ğerlerin (etik, erdem vs.) ve diğer liyakat değerlerinin (beceri, yetenek, yeterlilik, ustalık, maharet, ehliyet, kifayet vs.) bir bütün olarak önemli ol-duğunu savunur.

Epistokrasi modern demokrasilerdeki seçmen cehaletinin yol açtığı so-runlara radikal bir öneri ile çözüm sunar: cahil-cühela seçmenlere oy hakkı verilmemesi ya da bilgi ve eğitim sahibi seçmenlerin oylarının daha fazla değerli kılınması. Epistokrasi liyakat değerleri içerisinde sadece bilgi ve eğitime önem veren bir yaklaşımdır; bu bakımdan meşruiyeti ve kabul edi-lebilirliğine dair pek çok soru işareti bulunmaktadır.Meritokrasi ise epistokrasinin temelini oluşturan bilginin yanısıra diğer liyakat değerlerinin insan kaynaklarının seçimi ve atanmasında esas alınması görüşünü dile getirir. Meritokrasinin karşı karşıya bulunduğu ana sorun yukarıda da ifade ettiğimiz üzere irrasyonalitedir. Seçmenlerin irrasyonel karar ve seçimleri sonucu göreve gelen bir devlet başkanı yada temsilcilerin liyakat sahibi oldukları her zaman sorgulanır olmak durumundadır.

Bu monagrafide meritokrasi ve epistokrasinin teorik ve felsefi temelle-rini inceleyen çalışmalarımız yeralmaktadır.

Cet article commence par examiner trois justifications épistémiques de la démocratie, proposées par José Luis Martí, David Estlund et Hélène Landemore. Tous trois cherchent à montrer en quoi la (ou certaines formes de) démocratie(s) possède(nt) une tendance à engendrer des décisions correctes, mais font face au risque de légitimer une organisation technocratique du politique, en contradiction avec le principe d’égalité politique. Ils estiment donc que l’argument épistémique ne peut pas suffire à justifier des institutions démocratiques. Cependant, si l’on comprend la valeur « épistémique » d’une décision politique à la fois d’un point de vue factuel et normatif, c’est-à-dire qu’on considère à la fois sa rationalité et son impartialité, une justification épistémique de la démocratie beaucoup plus robuste émerge. C’est cette dernière qui est explorée et défendue dans la seconde partie de cet article.

Das Problem der Expertokratie (Herrschaft der Experten) wirkt zunächst unscheinbar gegenüber dem öffentlichkeitswirksameren Diskurs über ‚Populismus'. Bei näherem Hinsehen zeigt sich jedoch ein enger Zusammenhang, wenn es sich nicht gar um zwei komplementäre Phänomene handelt: Der Aufstieg des Populismus kann auch als Antwort auf die ungebremste Macht von Experten verstanden werden. Als politisches Problem hat Expertokratie eine lange Geschichte, die auf die Anfänge der griechischen politischen Philosophie zurückgeht. Das Thema der Macht von Experten ruft die grundsätzliche Frage nach dem Wissen von politischen Dingen auf und verweist auf die Krise des politischen Wissens. Auf diese Weise konfrontiert es uns mit tiefgreifenden Herausforderungen für die Demokratie im 21. Jahrhundert.

The epistemic turn in deliberative democracy has led to a re-evaluation of the search for truth as the ultimate aim of public deliberation and caused a decline of interest in popular participation and mass democracy. This democratic U-Turn is not confined to theoretical debates, but is also influencing normative reflections on the democratic experimentalism originally promoted by the deliberative turn. The article starts by proposing a riconceptualisation of recent developments in democratic theory that distinguishes between four main ideal-types of deliberative democracy: Epistemic, Guardian, Integrative and Radical deliberative democracy. After setting the stage, the article discusses and critically assesses the justification of the epistemic model of deliberative democracy put forward by David Estlund. First, the metaethical arguments employed by Estlund to show the inconsistencies affecting nonepistemic conceptions of deliberative democracy are discussed. Second, the more substantive content of his epistemic reading of deliberative democracy is considered. The conclusion supported by the article is that epistemic conceptions of deliberative democracy are not only deeply problematic, but also counterproductive. For, they tend to undermine the legitimacy of the forms of democratic experimentation promoted so far and dampen the participatory spirit of those involved in it.

Democracy has changed throughout history and it is still transforming, moving on the dichotomy legitimacy-efficiency. Is the relation between these two terms that time by time determines its shape, therefore, it is not an immutable given system, it is a process that has to be followed, understood and sometimes corrected in order to preserve its important conquests.
Nowadays the liberal democracy is threatened by two main forces: the populism and the technocracy, which respectively claim for more legitimacy and for more efficiency. This double pressure on our institution takes the name of techno-populism and it will be the playmaker of the next future. The manners by which the aforementioned requests will be addressed will determine the future outline of the liberal democracy. Indeed, the resilience of the system depends in part on its institutional adaptation and responsiveness to the incoming challenges. Considered the difficulty of finding these features, it is not a causality that we often hear about the retreat of democracy.
In order to provide a satisfying pattern which could well-balanced the double pressure that democracy is facing, I shall expose some proposals for a new institutional design. We shall explore the arguments of Brennan, who claims for restricting the political rights for the need of more competence; Von Reybrouck, who supports the case of a chamber whom members are citizens picked by sortition to yield more legitimacy; and a middle-ground proposal based on the Dahl’s advice to afford what he called Polyarchy III.

Recent years have witnessed growing controversy over the " wisdom of the multitude. " As epistemic critics drawing on vast empirical evidence have cast doubt on the political competence of ordinary citizens, epistemic democrats have offered a defense of democracy grounded largely in analogies and formal results. So far, I argue, the critics have been more convincing. Nevertheless, democracy can be defended on instrumental grounds, and this essay demonstrates an alternative approach. Instead of implausibly upholding the epistemic reliability of average voters, I observe that competitive elections, universal suffrage, and discretionary state power disable certain potent mechanisms of elite entrenchment. By reserving particular forms of power for the multitude of ordinary citizens, they make democratic states more resistant to dangerous forms of capture than non-democratic alternatives. My approach thus offers a robust defense of electoral democracy, yet cautions against expecting too much from it—motivating a thicker conception of democracy, writ large.

Proponents of epistocracy worry that high levels of voter ignorance can harm democracies. To combat such ignorance, they recommend allocating comparatively more political power to more politically knowledgeable citizens. In response, some recent critics of epistocracy contend that epistocratic institutions risk causing even more harm, since much evidence from political psychology indicates that more politically knowledgeable citizens are typically more biased, less open-minded, and more prone to motivated reasoning about political matters than their less knowledgeable counterparts. If so, perhaps epistocratic institutions will perform worse epistemically than corresponding democratic institutions. Call this 'the problem of epistocratic irrationality'. This paper argues that the problem of epistocratic irrationality can be overcome. First, I argue that critics of epistocracy have overlooked several complications regarding the psychological data they claim shows that more knowledgeable citizens are less politically rational. Second, I argue that appropriately designed epistocratic institutions could overcome the problem of epistocratic irrationality even if such critics have interpreted the data correctly. I first explore whether refined selection mechanisms could allow epistocrats to avoid empowering less rational citizens, before assessing the prospects of implementing only those epistocratic institutions with a solid track record of reliable performance.

Moram da priznam da se, osim činjenice da se bavim obrazovanjem utoliko što radim u obrazovnoj instituciji, nisam bavila obrazovanjem kao predmetom istraživanja na neki sistematski način. Tokom naših prethodnih čitalačkih klubova u okviru Humanistike u tranziciji na kojima smo pričali o obrazovanju shvatila sam koliko je to jedna neobična situacija. Ona je verovatno posledica činjenice da sam profesionalno više želela da se identifikujem kao istraživačica, a manje kao neko ko se bavi nastavom, iako pozicija asistentkinje beogradskog univerziteta pre svega znači da se bavite nastavom, i da znatno manje vremena ostaje za naučni rad što oslikava podelu rada u kojoj naše, globalno posmatrano, marginalne akademske sredine nemaju sredstava za istraživačke projekte i zaposleni na fakultetima se pre svega bave podučavanjem. ipak, razmišljajući o tome da je demokratija predmet mog teorijskog promišljanja a da zapravo najviše vremena provodim baveći se obrazovanjem kroz rad sa studentima na vežbama, seminarima i različitim školama, došla sam do pitanja na koje bih pokušala da odgovorim: na osnovu kojih sposobnosti su neki ljudi kvalifikovani da vladaju? Već ovo pitanje ukazuje na neraskidivu vezu između te dve oblasti – demokratije i obrazovanja – koju nisam ranije istraživački jasno artikulisala kako bih to pokušala da učinim ovom prilikom. Da objasnim u čemu je stvar: čak i danas kada je univerzalno prihvaćeno pravilo " jedan čovek jedan glas " , ljudi svakodnevno izražavaju intuicije da mudri treba da vladaju jer su mase iracional-ne a većina običnih ljudi nedovoljno obrazovana. ono što želim da preispitam je kako odgovor na pitanje ko su " mudri " , " obrazovani " , " visokokvalifikovani " u kontekstu kvalifikacija za vladavinu zavisi od toga šta se razume kao relevantno znanje.

Proponents of epistocracy worry that high levels of voter ignorance can harm democracies. To combat such ignorance, they recommend allocating comparatively more political power to more politically knowledgeable citizens. In response, some recent critics of epistocracy contend that epistocratic institutions risk causing even more harm, since much evidence from political psychology indicates that more politically knowledgeable citizens are typically more biased, less open-minded, and more prone to motivated reasoning about political matters than their less knowledgeable counterparts. If so, perhaps epistocratic institutions will perform worse epistemically than corresponding democratic institutions. Call this 'the problem of epistocratic irrationality'. This paper argues that the problem of epistocratic irrationality can be overcome. First, I argue that critics of epistocracy have overlooked several complications regarding the psychological data they claim shows that more know...

Call “epistocracy” a political regime in which the experts, those who know best, rule; and call  “the epistocratic claim” the assertion that the experts’ superior knowledge or reliability is “a warrant for their having political authority over others.” Most of us oppose epistocracy and think the epistocratic claim is false. But why is it mistaken?
Contemporary discussions of this question focus on two answers. According to the first, expertise could, in principle, be a warrant for authority. What bars the successful justification of epistocracy is that the relevant kind of expertise does not exist in politics (either because there are no procedure-independent standards of right or wrong in politics, or because, though such standards exist, no one knows better than anyone else what they require). This skeptical position comes, however, at a significant cost: Without the assumption that some political decisions are better than others, and that some people know better than others what these decisions are, it is difficult to make sense of much of our political practice, including how we criticize politicians and choose among candidates for office.
The second answer accepts that there is expertise of the relevant sort in politics. It argues, however, that such expertise does not justify political authority because political justifications are subject to special “acceptability requirements.” Since claims to expertise are normally not acceptable to all qualified (reasonable etc.) points of view, they cannot function as premises in the justification of political authority, and the epistocratic claim fails. Yet as a number of critics have pointed out, this (broadly Rawlsian) strategy faces significant problems: it is at least unclear whether the strategy in fact bars all epistocratic conclusions whether there is any principled way to draw the distinction between qualified and non-qualified points of views on which it depends; and whether principled defenses for it are available and internally consistent.
This article outlines a third and previously largely overlooked answer, which resists the epistocratic claim without either denying the existence of expertise in politics or invoking special acceptability requirements for political justifications. The only plausible argument for the epistocratic claim, this article argues, focuses on the compensatory role that the expert’s authority plays in correcting the subject’s relative unreliability or other agential shortcomings. The expert’s authority is thus justified only if the subject, by adopting a policy of obeying the expert’s directives, does not face problems that are very similar to the ones that the expert’s authority was meant to solve in the first place. If, for instance, the subject finds it no easier to reliably identify what the expert’s directives require of him than to reliably assess and act on the reasons with which the expert is meant to help him, then the expert’s directives lack the compensatory value that would justify her authority. But if some widely accepted empirical conjectures about politics in a pluralistic political community are correct, then citizens normally either have no reason to adopt a policy of obeying experts, or the experts with regard to whom they have reason to adopt such a policy differ, so that no expert has the kind of general authority over the polity that we associate with political rule. (We may call this the “non-compensation argument” against epistocracy.)
The argument is important both because it helps shed light on the proper relation between authority and expertise in general, and because it shows that we can normally reject the epistocratic claim without adopting either the skeptical or the Rawlsian strategy, thus undercutting whatever support these views derive from the mistaken perception that they are necessary for resisting the threat of epistocracy. Finally, because the anti-epistocratic constraints it introduces apply only to justifications of the subjects’ duty to obey, but not to the existence or activities of political institutions as such, the compensation argument can accommodate our anti-epistocratic intuitions without excluding epistemic considerations from the design of political institutions more generally.

Epistemic justifications of democracy affirm the comparative quality of democracies’ decisions. The challenge faced by those who endorse such views is to explain why we should prefer standard democratic institutions to some sort of epistocracy or rule of the wisest. This article takes up this challenge by assessing the epistemic potential of an epistocratic council, as imagined by Jason Brennan. Members of such council would be selected through competency exams, the required competencies being defined by the whole population. The argument defended in this article is that the potential gain in instrumental rationality that such an institution could offer under certain questionable conditions would be outweighed by the increased risks of misrule and involuntary biases if such council has decision-making or veto power. In comparison with the existing literature, this argument stresses the importance of moral rightness, here defined as impartiality, in the epistemic assessment of democracy and its alternatives. The article then ends with a qualified assessment of purely epistemic justifications of democratic inclusion, which could be insufficient to reject implausible but imaginable forms of epistemically justifiable disenfranchisement.

The aim of this paper is threefold. First, I will comment on Mill’s epistocracy in connection with his applications of the political analogy, which highlight both the value of authority derived from the epistemic superiority of the physician, and the non-delegable authorisation of patient consent. In the second section I will briefly consider some contemporary epistemic defenses of democratic deliberation that try to get rid of the suspicion about the survival of epistocracy, and for that reason assume the notion of informed consent in a new application of the political analogy of the doctor-patient relationship. In the final section, I will discuss the persistence of an ambiguous Millian legacy behind libertarian paternalism’s endorsement of expertocratic schemes. For that I will discuss the vindication of the notion of presumed consent and the consequent mandated choice by ruling institutions, as well as the attempt to redescribe the very idea of informed consent by making it compatible with choice architecture interventions.

In light of recent political occurrences such as the Brexit Referendum and Donald Trump’s election as well as overall economic instability throughout democratic states around the world, there is an increasing urgency to discuss alternative political systems. This dissertation will form a comprehensive thesis in favour of epistocracy – a political system where political power is distributed according to knowledge. My dissertation will begin with establishing the values and standards according to which a political system ought to be evaluated. This will be followed by demonstrating the ways in which democracies are failing and what the reasons might be. I will show with empirical data that due to voter ignorance and the use of rhetoric to manipulate voters, democracies tend to elect bad politicians and policies. I will also outline Plato’s concept of the philosopher-kings from the Republic. I will contend that several problems associated with democracy can be resolved by epistocratic systems. I conclude that an epistocracy will likely perform better than a democracy and therefore we, citizens and intellectuals alike, ought to seriously consider it.

This briefing presents key findings from independently funded doctoral research on police governance in Scotland following reform in 2012. The briefing discusses key issues identified by the research and sets out recommendations aimed at strengthening the SPA's legitimacy, increasing stakeholder and public confidence, and enhancing the capacity of the Authority to implement robust governance and accountability mechanisms. The SPA was envisioned by its architects as an apolitical arms-length body aimed at providing national strategic oversight and accountability of the single police service. It was envisaged that Board Members, appointed rather than elected, on the basis of specific skills, expertise and competencies, would provide the capacity and capability that the previous local police authorities lacked, and strengthen overall police governance. Although the SPA has continued to evolve and develop, the Authority has faced challenges both in terms of internal organisation, and the ability to effectively hold the police to account. This research identifies a range of factors that have arguably impeded the role of the SPA. These include gaps in terms of knowledge and skills, differing interpretations of the Authority's role, purpose and statutory powers, as well as external pressures and impositions that undermined the autonomy of the Authority, particularly in its formative years. A joint policy engagement protocol with Police Scotland, and more recently, the delivery of the 10-year strategy Policing 2026 has created avenues for the SPA to proactively influence and scrutinise policing policies. Going forward, in order to ensure effective governance of transformation and robust accountability of operational policing, it is recommended that the SPA should strengthen its own knowledge-base by proactively engaging with external stakeholders, clarify and emphasise its role in delivering public accountability of the police, and establish sufficient autonomy to adequately position itself as a buffer between local and centrally elected representatives, and the police.

Most laypersons and political theorists endorse the claims that (1) all adults should be enfranchised and (2) all children should be disenfranchised. The first claim rejects epistocracy; the second is a commitment to a minimum voting age. I call the conjunction of these two claims mainstream democracy. In this paper, I argue that mainstream democracy is in a predicament: it cannot consistently maintain both (1) and (2). Given that we oppose epistocracy, we must endorse the enfranchisement of children. To make this point, I first develop what I take to be the most plausible argument for mainstream democracy, derived from David Estlund's epistemic proceduralism. In the second part of the paper, I explain why this argument fails. In the third part, I address some practical concerns about enfranchising children. I conclude that abandoning mainstream democracy is not problematic because the enfranchisement of children is unlikely to have harmful consequences.

This paper contributes to growing debates over the decision-making ability of democracy by considering the epistemic value of deliberative democracy. It focuses on the benefits democratic deliberation can derive from its diversity, and the extent to which these benefits can be realised with respect to the complexities of political problems. The paper first calls attention to the issue of complexity through a critique of Hélène Landemore and the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem. This approach underestimates complexity due to its reliance on an 'oracle assumption' and this is shown to highlight more general difficulties for applying the benefits of diversity to the realities of political problems. The paper then develops a new model of deliberation-based on an relationship between cognitive diversity and diminishing returns to cognitive type-which does not involve an oracle assumption and can therefore support the epistemic value of deliberation democracy even for complex problems. The benefits of diversity are also argued to be better realised though sortition than either democratic elections or epistocracy, pointing to the value of deliberation between randomly selected citizens. Finally, and contrary to past work, the new account suggests that diversity cannot alone establish the superiority of democratic deliberation over all non-democratic alternatives, and that it is insufficient to mount a purely epistemic argument for deliberative democracy. The paper therefore furthers our understanding of the epistemic value of deliberative democracy by clarifying when and to what extent diversity is a benefit to political problem solving (A version of this paper is published open access in the journal Synthese: https://doi-org.proxy.library.uu.nl/10.1007/s11229-021-03161-0).

Riassunto
Questo articolo analizza brevemente uno dei problemi più significativi della Federazione Russa e cioè i conflitti etnici.
Tale fenomeno assume diverse dimensioni e differenti manifestazioni: dalla discriminazione nell’ambito del mercato
del lavoro agli eventi estremi della pulizia etnica durante le guerre in Cecenia. 
L’autore  focalizza  l’attenzione  su  di  un  aspetto  alla  base  del  problema:  l’oppressione  strutturale  esercitata  dalle
minoranze contro la maggioranza culturale del paese con particolare riferimento alle repubbliche del Caucaso del nord
ove l’obiettivo e l’intensità della lotta etnica hanno assunto forme assolutamente pericolose ed esplosive in grado di
minacciare lo stato tramite la sua disgregazione.

Résumé
Cet article fournit une brève analyse de l’un des problèmes les plus importants de la Fédération Russe, c’est-à-dire les
conflits ethniques. Ce phénomène se manifeste de plusieurs manières  : de la discrimination dans le marché du travail
aux événements extrêmes du nettoyage ethnique pendant les guerres en Tchétchénie.
L’auteur  s’intéresse  à  l’un  des  aspects  du  problème  jusque-là  inexploré :  l’oppression  structurelle  exercée  par  les
minorités ethniques  contre les communautés majoritaires du pays et en particulier le cas des républiques du Caucase du
Nord où la portée et l’intensité des conflits ethniques ont présenté les formes les plus dangereuses et extrêmes pouvant
menacer l’état  par sa désintégration.   

Abstract
This paper represents the brief analysis of one of the most important problems of the Russian Federation – the ethnic
conflicts. Such a phenomenon has various dimensions and manifestations: from discrimination on the labor market to
the extreme of ethnic cleansing during wars in Chechnya. The author focuses on the previously unexplored side of the
problem: structural oppression conducted by minorities against the cultural majority of the country with a special regard
to  the  republics  of  North  Caucasus  where  the  scope  and  intensity  of  ethnic  strife  found  the  most  dangerous  and
explosive forms threatening with disintegration of the state.

Despite their many virtues, democracies suffer from well-known problems with high levels of voter ignorance. Such ignorance, one might think, leads democracies to occasionally produce bad outcomes. Proponents of epistocracy claim that allocating comparatively greater amounts of political power to citizens who possess more politically relevant knowledge may help us to mitigate the bad effects of voter ignorance. In a recent paper, Julian Reiss challenges a crucial assumption underlying the case for epistocracy. Central to any defence of epistocracy is the conviction that we can identify a body of political knowledge which, when possessed in greater amounts by voters, leads to substantively better outcomes than when voters lack such knowledge. But it is not possible to identify such a body of knowledge. There is simply far too much controversy in the social sciences, and this controversy prevents us from definitively saying of some citizens that they possess more politically relevant ...

The Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 has created a multi-faceted approach to police governance. Despite the multitude of actors, the Scottish Police Authority with complete oversight of policing and a statutory duty to hold the chief constable to account occupies a central role in the new police governance landscape in Scotland. This paper outlines the conceptual framework thatdeveloped as part of an independent PhD study exploring the landscape of police governance and accountability in Scotland, with a particular focus on the role of the Scottish Police Authority. The current arrangements, in particular the composition of the Scottish Police Authority as a body of experts, present an ideal opportunity to shift away from the traditional focus on democratic governance and explore the contemporary debates on the role of Epistocracies in public service governance and administration.

This paper discusses the epistemic value of public deliberation in a democratic decision-making process. I first discuss David Estlund's standard account of epistemic democracy – in order to be legitimate, a decision must be a result of both fair and epistemically reliable procedure, i.e., of procedure that in most cases leads us to (procedure-independent) correct outcomes. This approach is characterized by the idea that democratic deliberation only has instrumental epistemic value, i.e., serves as a good means to achieve desired ends – a high correctness probability of the outcomes. I defend this approach from three objections put forward by Fabienne Peter, who claims that Estlund's position is not a practicable conception of democratic legitimacy, that it makes unnecessary demands and that it is normatively misleading. Finally, I argue against pure epistemic proceduralism, an alternative approach that tends to reject consequentialist epistemology in favor of proceduralist epistemology. By doing so, it has lost a way to evaluate the epistemic value of (deliberative) democratic procedures, and is thus vulnerable to the problem of various (reasonable) people holding different epistemic practices and disagreeing on which practice should be the one that is epis-temically valuable and that produces legitimate decisions.

In this paper I defend a form of epistocracy I call limited epistocracy – rule by institutions housing expertise in non-political areas that become politically relevant. This kind of limited epistocracy, I argue, isn't a far-off fiction. With increasing frequency, governments are outsourcing political power to expert institutions to solve urgent, multidimensional problems because they outperform ordinary democratic decision-making. I consider the objection that limited epistocracy, while more effective than its competitors, lacks a fundamental intrinsic value that its competitors have; namely, political inclusion. After explaining this challenge, I suggest that limited epistocracies can be made compatible with robust political inclusion if specialized institutions are confined to issuing directives that give citizens multiple actionable options. I explain how this safeguards citizens’ inclusion through rational deliberation, choice, and contestation.

In this paper I defend a form of epistocracy I call limited epistocracy— rule by institutions housing expertise in non-political areas that become politically relevant. This kind of limited epistocracy, I argue, isn't a far-off fiction. With increasing frequency, governments are outsourcing political power to expert institutions to solve urgent, multidimensional problems because they outperform ordinary democratic decision-making. I consider the objection that limited epistocracy, while more effective than its competitors, lacks a fundamental intrinsic value that its competitors have; namely, political inclusion. After explaining this challenge, I suggest that limited epistocracies can be made compatible with robust political inclusion if specialized institutions are confined to issuing directives that give citizens multiple actionable options. I explain how this safeguards citizens' inclusion through rational deliberation, choice, and contestation.

The suggestion that deliberative democratic approaches would suit the management of bioethical policymaking in democratic pluralistic societies has triggered what has been called the " deliberative turn " in health policy and bioethics. Most of the empirical work in this area has focused on the allocation of healthcare resources and priority setting at the local or national level. The variety of the more or less articulated theoretical efforts behind such initiatives is remarkable and has been accompanied, to date, by an overall lack of method specifi city. We propose a set of methodological requirements for online deliberative procedures for bioethics. We provide a theoretical motivation for these requirements. In particular, we discuss and adapt an " epistocratic " proposal and argue that, regardless of its merits as a general political theory, a more refi ned version of its normative claims can generate a useful framework for the design of bioethical forums that combine maximal inclusiveness with informed and reasonable deliberation.

In my article, I want to focus on the critique Cristina Lafont makes to expertocracy and epistocracy, mainly through the institution of judicial review, to which she dedicates chapter 7 and part of chapter 6 of her book Democracy without Shortcuts. First I will reconstruct the premises that support her arguments in favour of a democratic reading of judicial review. Then, I will pose some questions about its viability as an institution that favours the participation of the citizens in the shaping and the determination of the scope of the norms they are subjected to.

In recent years, the fortunes of democracy have waned both in theory and practice. This has added impetus not only to the republican case for strengthening democratic institutions but also to new anti-democratic thought. This article examines the claim made by Jason Brennan that epistocracy, rule by the ‘knowledgeable’, is compatible with freedom from domination. It begins by briefly explaining epistocracy and republicanism. It then presents the argument for epistocratic republicanism: that democracy can be a source of domination and that freedom from domination can be secured through non-democratic political institutions. The case against epistocratic republicanism is grounded in concerns about systemic domination and the ability of epistocrats to arbitrarily set the terms of social cooperation. These two arguments are judged on the basis of which better minimises domination while respecting its value to all people. Epistocratic republicanism is found to be less reliable because of the risks of epistemic injustice that accompanies systemic domination; democracy, accompanied by other republican institutions, is better at minimising domination and respecting persons. It concludes that republicans ought to be democrats.

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The suggestion that deliberative democratic approaches would suit the management of bioethical policymaking in democratic pluralistic societies has triggered what has been called the "deliberative turn" in health policy and bioethics. Most of the empirical work in this area has focused on the allocation of healthcare resources and priority setting at the local or national level. The variety of the more or less articulated theoretical efforts behind such initiatives is remarkable and has been accompanied, to date, by an overall lack of method specificity. We propose a set of methodological requirements for online deliberative procedures for bioethics. We provide a theoretical motivation for these requirements. In particular, we discuss and adapt an "epistocratic" proposal and argue that, regardless of its merits as a general political theory, a more refined version of its normative claims can generate a useful framework for the design of bioethical forums that com...