Naslov
Epistemic Democracy

Autori
Cerovac, Ivan

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Ocjenski radovi, doktorska disertacija

Fakultet
Department of Humanities

Mjesto
Trieste, Italy

Datum
20.04

Godina
2016

Stranica
183

Mentor
Marrone, Pierpaolo

Ključne riječi
Epistemic Democracy, Legitimacy, Deliberation, Proceduralism, Instrumentalism, Rawls

Sažetak
The subject of my thesis is the epistemic justification of democratic legitimacy. Can political decisions we make be right or wrong, or true or false? If they can be true or false, are there people who are better at getting it right or wrong? And if there are, does this imply that those who are better in making correct decisions should have political authority over others? If not, what should be the role of experts in politics? These are some of the key questions I try to answer in this thesis. I start by rejecting pure proceduralism, a position claiming that political decisions have no truthvalue, or that their truth-value is not above the reasonable disagreement. I argue that political decisions can be right or wrong and that, at least regarding some clear cases (like famine and genocide), all reasonable people should be able to agree on the (un)desirability of some end states. I also reject the idea of epistemic peerhood which claims that though political decisions are right or wrong, all citizens are equally likely to make a right decision. Our background, education and area of specialization make some people epistemically more reliable, at least regarding some political issues. Finally, I discuss and reject the idea that those who know best should have political authority to rule over others. Citizens can reasonably disagree on who the experts are, and thus political authority cannot be grounded in expertise, but in the idea of (normative) consent of reasonable citizens instead. I follow and further support David Estlund's position, claiming that a collective decision-making procedure should have both purely procedural (respect for the moral equality of citizens) and instrumental (good chance to produce correct decisions) qualities in order to have legitimacy-generating potential. Political decisions are therefore legitimate if (and only if) they are the product of epistemically the best procedure from among the set of fair procedures. I argue that deliberative democracy is such a procedure. Since the fairness of the procedure and epistemic quality of outcomes constitute its legitimacy-generating potential, democratic procedures should still rely on the expertise of those who know better (though expertise is no longer considered as a ground for political authority), but distribute resources and positions to promote fairness and equality in a political community as well.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Politologija, Filozofija

POVEZANOST RADA