Epistocracy Within Public Reason
Epistocracy—a political system in which formal political power is distributed on the basis of expertise—may produce better outcomes than democracy. Yet, David Estlund contends that epistocracy is incompatible with public reason liberalism. This essay argu
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Epistocracy Within Public Reason Jason Brennan
Abstract Epistocracy—a political system in which formal political power is distributed on the basis of expertise—may produce better outcomes than democracy. Yet, David Estlund contends that epistocracy is incompatible with public reason liberalism. This essay argues that, contrary to Estlund, epistocracy can be justified within public reason, even if, as Estlund argues, reasonable people cannot all agree on just what constitutes political expertise or who the experts are.
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Why Not Epistocracy?
David Estlund says, “…removing the right issues from democratic control and turning them over to the right experts would lead to better political decisions, and more justice and prosperity” (Estlund 2008, 262). Why not support epistocracy? The most important objection to epistocracy is the Objection from Public Reason: Epistocracy violates the liberal principle of legitimacy, which holds that coercive political regimes and polices are legitimate and authoritative only if there are no reasonable objections to that regime or those policies, and if all reasonable people subject to coercion have conclusive grounds for accepting that regime or those policies. (Estlund 2008, 262).
Estlund argues epistocracy is ruled out on procedural grounds. Epistocracy is incompatible with public reason liberalism. In this essay, I argue that the Objection from Public Reason is mistaken. Epistocracy is in fact compatible with the liberal principle of legitimacy. Epistocracy can be justified within public reason.
J. Brennan (*) McDonough School of Business and Department of Philosophy, Georgetown University, Hariri 504, 37th and O Streets NW, 20057 Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected] A.E. Cudd and S.J. Scholz (eds.), Philosophical Perspectives on Democracy in the 21st Century, AMINTAPHIL: The Philosophical Foundations of Law and Justice 5, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02312-0_14, © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
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J. Brennan
The Liberal Principle of Legitimacy
Public reason liberals hold that to justify coercive interference and coercive authority, one must produce a justification that all reasonable people, by their own lights, have strong enough grounds to accept. This idea is expressed in a moral principle called the liberal principle of legitimacy. Different public reason liberals advocate slightly different versions of the principle. 1. Estlund’s Version: No one has legitimate coercive power over another without a justification that could be accepted by all qualified points of view (Estlund 2008, 33). 2. Gaus’s Version: A’s coercive interference with B is permissible only if there is a justification for it that B may reasonably be expected to endorse (Gaus 2003, 208). 3. Rawls’s Version: Political power is legitimate only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse (Rawls 1996, 137).
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The Argument that Epistocracy Is Incompatible with
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