Democratic Reason

Helene Landemore is assistant professor of political science at Yale University. She is the author of Hume: Probability and Reasonable Choice.

Acknowledgments xi Prologue xv CHAPTER ONE: The Maze and the Masses 1 *1. The Maze and the Masses 3 *2. On the Meaning of Democracy 10 *3. The Domain of Democratic Reason and the Circumstances of Politics 13 *4. Democratic Reason as Collective Intelligence of the People 17 *5. Overview of the Book 23 CHAPTER TWO: Democracy as the Rule of the Dumb Many? 27 *1. The Antidemocratic Prejudice in Contemporary Democratic Theory 29 *2. What's Wrong with the People? 31 CHAPTER THREE: A Selective Genealogy of the Epistemic Argument for Democracy 53 *1. The Myth of Protagoras: Universal Political Wisdom 55 *2. Aristotle's Feast: The More, the Wiser 59 *3. Machiavelli: Vox Populi, Vox Dei 64 *4. Spinoza: The Rational Majority 67 *5. Rousseau: The General Will Is Always Right 69 *6. Condorcet: Large Numbers and Smart Majorities 70 *7. John Stuart Mill: Epistemic Democrat or Epistemic Liberal? 75 *8. Dewey: Democracy and Social Intelligence 82 *9. Hayek: The Distributed Knowledge of Society 85 CHAPTER FOUR: First Mechanism of Democratic Reason: Inclusive Deliberation 89 *1. Deliberation: The Force of the Better Argument 90 *2. Deliberation as Problem Solving: Why More Cognitive Diversity Is Smarter 97 *3. Why More-Inclusive Deliberating Groups Are Smarter 104 *4. Representation 105 *5. Election versus Random Selection 108 CHAPTER FIVE: Epistemic Failures of Deliberation 118 *1. General Problems and Classical Solutions 120 *2. A Reply from Psychology: The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning 123 * Conclusion 143 CHAPTER SIX: Second Mechanism of Democratic Reason: Majority Rule 145 *1. The Condorcet Jury Theorem 147 *2. The Miracle of Aggregation 156 *3. Models of Cognitive Diversity 160 * Appendix 1: The Law of Large Numbers in the Condorcet Jury Theorem 166 * Appendix 2: The Logic of Cognitive Diversity in Judgment Aggregation 169 * Appendix 3: Information Markets and Democracy 173 CHAPTER SEVEN: Epistemic Failures of Majority Rule: Real and Imagined 185 *1. Politics of Judgment versus Politics of Interest and the Irrelevance of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem 185 *2. The Problem of Informational Free Riding 193 *3. The Problem of Voters' Systematic Biasesand Their "Rational Irrationality" 195 * Conclusion 206 CHAPTER EIGHT: Political Cognitivism: A Defense 208 *1. Political Decision Making as Imperfect Procedural Justice 210 *2. Political Cognitivism: Weak versus Strong 211 *3. The Three Sides of Political Questions 213 *4. Political Cognitivism: Culturalist versus Absolutist 217 *5. Implications for the Epistemic Argument for Democracy 219 *6. Status of the Standard: Postulate or Empirical Benchmark? 219 *7. The Antiauthoritarian Objection 223 * Conclusion 230 CONCLUSION: Democracy as a Gamble Worth Taking 232 *1. Summary 232 *2. Preconditions of Democratic Reason 233 *3. Limits of the Metaphor of the Maze 234 *4. Empirical Segue to the Theoretical Epistemic Claim 238 *5. The Wisdom of the Past Many and Democracy as a Learning Process 239 *6. Reason and Rationality 241 * Bibliography 243 Index 265