Personal - Why Rule by The People Is Better Than Rule by The Experts - Aeon Essays

Why rule by the people is better than rule by the experts | Aeon Essays 11/02/2024, 1:05 PM
Why rule by the people is better

than rule by the experts | Aeon
Essays
In early 2017, Scientific American published a symposium on the threat
that ‘big nudging’ poses to democracy. Big Data is the phenomena
whereby governments and corporations collect and analyse information
provided by measuring sensors and internet searches. Nudging is the
view that governments should build choice architectures that make it
easier for people to pick, say, the more fuel-efficient car or the more
sensible retirement plan. Big nudging is the combination of the two that
enables public or private engineers to subtly influence the choices that
people make, say, by autofilling internet searches in desirable ways. Big
nudging is a ‘digital sceptre that allows one to govern the masses
efficiently, without having to involve citizens in democratic processes’. The
symposium’s authors take for granted that democracy – the political
regime in which the people collectively determine its common way of life –
is better than epistocracy, or rule by experts.
Remarkably, many social scientists today do not share the belief that
democracy is better than epistocracy. On the contrary. In recent years,
numerous political theorists and philosophers have argued that experts
ought to be in charge of public policy and should manipulate, or contain,
the policy preferences of the ignorant masses. This view has its roots
Plato’s Republic, where philosophers who see the sun of truth should
govern the masses who dwell in a cave of ignorance, and in Walter
Lippmann’s Public Opinion (1922), where expert social scientists rule
behind the scenes and control the population with propaganda. While
there are differences between the views of Christopher H Achen and Larry
Bartels in Democracy for Realists (2016), Jason Brennan in Against
Democracy (2017), Alexander Guerrero here in Aeon, and Tom Nichols in
https://aeon.co/essays/why-rule-by-the-people-is-better-than-rule-by-the-experts Page 1 of 10
The Death of Expertise (2017), these social scientists share in common an

elitist antipathy towards participatory democratic politics.
In Democracy for Realists, for instance, the authors criticise what they call
the ‘folk theory’ of democracy. This maintains that elected representatives
should translate their constituents’ preferences into public policy. The
problem, according to these political scientists, is that most voters lack
the time, energy or ability to immerse themselves in the technicalities of
public policy. Instead, people tend to vote based on group identification,
or an impulse to align with one political faction rather than another.
In a memorable chapter of their book, Achen and Bartels show that

politicians often suffer electoral defeat for events beyond their control. In
the summer of 1916, for example, New Jersey’s beachgoers experienced
a series of shark attacks. In that November’s election, the beach towns
gave President Woodrow Wilson fewer votes than New Jersey’s non-
beach towns. The voters, it seems, were punishing Wilson for the shark
attacks. According to Achen and Bartels, voters’ ability ‘to make sensible
judgments regarding credit and blame is highly circumscribed’. This is a
polite way of saying that most voters are not smart enough to realise that
presidents are not responsible for shark attacks.
Achen and Bartels ostensibly defend a conception of democracy. But the

force of their argument, and spirit of their book, heaps ridicule on the
‘Romantic’ or ‘quixotic’ notion that the people should rule. They compare
‘the ideal of popular sovereignty’ – a cornerstone of modern democratic
political theory – to the medieval notion of a ‘divine right of kings’. A more
realistic view is that ‘policymaking is a job for specialists’.
Many political actors around the world, similarly, think that epistocrats
should rule and try to gain the emotional support of the population.
Consider the slogan of the Democratic Party in the 2016 US election: ‘I’m
with her.’ The Democrats were telling their own version of Plato’s salutary
myth, or simple story meant to induce people to identify with a political
cause.
Democracy, instead, requires treating people as citizens – that is, as

adults capable of thoughtful decisions and moral actions, rather than as
children who need to be manipulated. One way to treat people as citizens
is to entrust them with meaningful opportunities to participate in the
political process, rather than just as beings who might show up to vote for
leaders every few years.
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Democrats acknowledge that some people know more than others.

However, democrats believe that people, entrusted with meaningful
decision-making power, can handle power responsibly. Furthermore,
people feel satisfaction when they have a hand in charting a common
future. Democrats from Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville to the
political theorist Carole Pateman at the University of California in Los
Angeles advocate dispersing power as widely as possible among the
people. The democratic faith is that participating in politics educates and
ennobles people. For democrats, the pressing task today is to protect and
expand possibilities for political action, not to limit them or shut them
down in the name of expert rule.
Every day, people demonstrate that they are capable of learning. People
master new languages, earn degrees, move to new cities, train for jobs,
and navigate the complexities of modern life. It is true that people tend to
be ignorant of things that do not touch their lives. Think of how well you
know the geography of where you live and work; now, think about how
much you know about the geography of a place on the other side of the
globe that you’ve never visited. People study things that they care about
and where knowledge helps them to accomplish things.
People also show every day that they can take an interest in other
people’s lives. Last summer, I served on a grand jury in Westchester
County in New York State. The county randomly called upon 23 eligible
adults to hear evidence to determine whether the district attorney could
move forward with criminal indictments. Everyone in the jury took their
responsibilities seriously, following the district attorney’s directions,
asking questions of witnesses, participating in the deliberations, and
voting. Before grand jury service, many of us had little knowledge of
criminal law or standards of legal evidence; afterwards, most of us did. We
learned by doing.
The ‘best and the brightest’ led the US into the Iraq War: the track record
of epistocracy is, at best, mixed
Pateman gives other examples of ways to involve more people in the

policymaking process, including citizens’ assemblies to review the
electoral system in Canadian provinces, or participatory budgeting in the
city of Porto Alegre in Brazil. In these instances, citizens assembled in
mini-publics and, given time for discussion and research, became
knowledgeable about public matters. Just as importantly, ‘the empirical
evidence from mini-publics shows that citizens both welcome and enjoy
the opportunity to take part and to deliberate, and that they take their
duties seriously’.
It is misleading to say that most people are too ignorant or apathetic to

participate in political affairs. In the right circumstances, many people
perform civic functions well. Citizens must consult with experts and are
liable to cognitive biases, but this holds true for whoever holds a
leadership position in the modern world. Realists criticise most people’s
understanding of political affairs, but the democratic response is that
people who have no real power lack a reason to study public policy.
In The Death of Expertise, Nichols contends that it is ‘ignorant narcissism

for laypeople to believe that they can maintain a large and advanced
nation without listening to the voices of those more educated and

experienced than themselves’. Of course, the ‘best and the brightest’ led
the US into the Iraq War, the subprime mortgage crisis, and a raft of bad
education policies; the track record of epistocracy in recent years is, at
best, mixed. Furthermore, the elitist stance clashes with the fact that
many people demand a say in how we lead our personal and collective
lives. Many people today value autonomy, or self-governance, and suffer
when it is denied.
One reason why is because of a certain progression in the history of

ideas. In The Invention of Autonomy (1997), Jerome B Schneewind shows
how the idea of autonomy developed from an intimation in Paul’s Letter to
the Romans, to Jean Jacques Rousseau’s conception of freedom as
following a law that one gives oneself as a member of the general will, to
Immanuel Kant’s practical philosophy that makes freedom its keystone.
Other historians have continued this work up to the present, showing how
the ideal of autonomy informs modern thinking about economics, race,
gender and so forth. Many people share the sentiment of the international
disability movement: ‘Nothing about us without us.’
Technological developments have also accustomed people to having

some control over their individual and collective lives. Cars, for instance,
make it possible for individuals to choose where they want to go; cars
cultivate the sense of individual autonomy. At the same time, there is no
natural order of cars, and human beings can decide together such
questions as whether to create high occupancy vehicle lanes on highways
or make it illegal to text on one’s phone while driving. In the medieval
world, people might have felt like they were locked into a certain place in
their society, but in the modern world they demand a say in the ordering
of things. That is why liberalism – a political doctrine that extols individual
freedom – and democracy – a political doctrine that valorises collective
freedom – are so often intertwined in modern political thought.
Modern people hate to be told: ‘Do it because I say so.’ Alienation from the
political process often leads people to identify with strong leaders who
claim to represent the silent majority. Across the world, we see political
battles between technocrats and populists, experts who claim authority
because of their knowledge versus leaders who fight against elites on
behalf of the ‘real people’. A third option is democracy, or the notion that
flesh-and-blood people can and ought to exercise meaningful power in
the governing of common affairs.
Some scholars take a kind of Machiavellian glee in debunking democratic

idealism; others extol the ‘wisdom of the crowd’. But the wisdom-of-the-
crowd advocates often do not actually call for allotting more political
power to most citizens, as in Guerrero’s proposal for lottocracy.
Democracy means people exerting power, not choosing from a menu

made by elites and their agents
Guerrero, a philosopher at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks that

direct democracy cannot work because most people lack the time and
ability to understand the complexities of modern public policy. Democrats
have responded to this situation by creating a system of representative
democracy where people vote for politicians who act as our agents in the
halls of power. The problem is that most people cannot pay sufficient
attention to hold their representatives accountable. Citizens are ‘ignorant
about what our representatives are doing, ignorant about the details of
complex political issues, and ignorant about whether what our
representative is doing is good for us or for the world’. To make matters
worse, powerful economic interests have the knowledge and resources to
capture representatives and make them serve the rich.
The time for electoral representative democracy has passed, argues

Guerrero. Rather than waste people’s votes in elections, political systems
should create a lottocracy that randomly selects adults who can perform
modified versions of the jobs that elected politicians presently do. Right
now, US congresspersons are predominantly white, male, millionaires; a

lottocracy could instantly raise the number of women, minorities and
lower-income people in the legislature, and take advantage of each
group’s epistemic contributions to policy debates.
Guerrero envisions single-issue legislatures whose members are chosen

by lottery and serve three-year staggered terms. At the beginning of the
legislative session, experts set the agenda and bring the legislators up to
speed on the topic, then the legislators draft, revise and vote on
legislation. Guerrero dismisses the possibility that experts ‘would
convince us to buy the same corporate-sponsored policy we’re currently
getting’.
On the contrary, the wealthy and powerful could easily manipulate a

lottocracy. Think tanks and lobbyists, funded by economic elites, would
welcome the opportunity to educate lottery-chosen legislators. Those
who set the agenda make the most important decisions. This is the
democratic critique of plans that tightly regulate the ways that people may
participate in politics. Democracy means people exerting power, not
choosing from a menu made by elites and their agents.
The remedy for our democracy deficit is to devolve as much power as

possible to the local level. Many problems can be addressed only on the
state, federal and international level, but the idea is that participating in
local politics teaches citizens how to speak in public, negotiate with
others, research policy issues, and learn about their community and the
larger circles in which it is embedded. Like any other skill, the way to
become a better citizen is to practise citizenship.
Jefferson articulated the democratic faith in a remarkable series of letters

in the early 19th century. He first denounces the idea, shared by fellow
American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton and the French
philosophes, that elites should govern from the capital. Concentrating
power in this way enervates citizens, and opens the door to aristocracy or
autocracy. Jefferson envisions a system of ward republics that empower

people to handle local affairs, including care of the poor, roads, police,
elections, courts, schools and militia. Jefferson sees a role for counties,
states and the federal government, but he wants substantial political
power to be dispersed to every corner of the country. When people
participate ‘in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day
in the year, but every day’, Jefferson explains, they will protect their rights
and fight the accession of a Caesar or a Bonaparte.
A few decades later, the French political scientist Tocqueville argued in

Democracy in America (1835-40) that Americans have shown what
democracy in the modern world might look like. In France, when people
want something done, they petition the centralised government. In the US,
by contrast, people form democratic associations to accomplish their
shared goals:
Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly

form associations … The Americans make associations to give
entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct
churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in
this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools.
The brilliance of US democracy, for Tocqueville, is that it resides in civil

society as well as formal governmental structures.
A few years ago, I saw an example of democracy in action when my local

school district had a heated debate about the salary of the
superintendent. A group of people in the district sent out an email
protesting the school board’s approval of a raise for the superintendent
who was already one of the most highly paid officials in the state. At the
next school board meeting, the district meeting space was filled to
capacity and people were sitting on the floor, in the doorways and outside
the room. When it was time to discuss the issue, one person stood up and
said why she thought that the superintendent was overcompensated, and
that resources could be better spent elsewhere. Then, a school board

member explained that if the district was going to remain successful, it
needed to compensate its leader on a par with other successful
executives. The debate was about one person’s salary, but it was also a
conversation about what kind of education we envisioned for our children.
Many people shared their thoughts and learned what others had to say.
In an epistocracy, a few make all the crucial decisions; everyone else

might as well stay at home and watch TV
The discussion about the superintendent’s salary grew heated. People

raised their voices, insulted others, and threatened litigation. Tocqueville
counsels his readers to see the value of democratic participation that
spills outside of the bounds of calm discourse: ‘Such evils are doubtless
great, but they are transient; whereas the benefits which attend them
remain.’ Because our voices mattered, many parents attended the
meeting, voiced their concerns, and heard from others. In a large,
centralised school system, each parent has a negligible share of power;
but in a small school district, each parent is able to experience the
exhilarating feeling of speaking on one’s feet in public about a matter of
common concern. Neighbours meet one another, and reaffirm their
commitment to making their collective life better.
In an epistocracy, a few people make all the crucial decisions, and

everyone else might as well stay at home and watch television. In a
participatory democracy, people exercise their civic muscles and become
more thoughtful, involved in community affairs, and passionate about
making the world a better place. In Against Democracy, Brennan argues
that democracy is the site of ‘hobbits’, ‘hooligans’ and ‘vulcans’: this
scheme misrepresents the citizens I have met at the grand jury, the
school-board meeting, or political demonstrations acting together to solve
a common problem.
In modern democracies, expert rule has returned in the form of ‘big

nudging’. Maybe not all epistocrats favour this particular technology, but
they open the door to it with their critique of the intellectual capabilities of
the masses and their advocacy of elite rule.
Scientific American notes that big nudging can lead to a new form of
dictatorship based on ‘technocratic behavioural and social control’. Most
of the recommendations to combat this threat, however, rely on modifying
computer use, including enabling user-controlled information filters,
improving interoperability of computer systems, and promoting digital
literacy. These measures all miss the essential point: democracy requires
empowering people to participate in the political process. There is no
algorithm that can replace entrusting people to do the hard work of
running community affairs.
The way to learn how to walk is to walk; the way to become a citizen is to
exert some kind of power in the government or civil society. There is no
technological quick fix to make our society more democratic. To learn
what Tocqueville called ‘the art of being free’, people must have a hand in
the governance of common affairs.

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Why rule by the people is better than rule by the experts | Aeon Essays 11/02/2024, 1:05 PM

Why rule by the people is better

The Death of Expertise (2017), these social scientists share in common an

In a memorable chapter of their book, Achen and Bartels show that

Achen and Bartels ostensibly defend a conception of democracy. But the

Democracy, instead, requires treating people as citizens – that is, as

Join over 250,000+ newsletter subscribers

Democrats acknowledge that some people know more than others.

Pateman gives other examples of ways to involve more people in the

It is misleading to say that most people are too ignorant or apathetic to

In The Death of Expertise, Nichols contends that it is ‘ignorant narcissism

nation without listening to the voices of those more educated and

One reason why is because of a certain progression in the history of

Technological developments have also accustomed people to having

Some scholars take a kind of Machiavellian glee in debunking democratic

Democracy means people exerting power, not choosing from a menu

Guerrero, a philosopher at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks that

The time for electoral representative democracy has passed, argues

now, US congresspersons are predominantly white, male, millionaires; a

Guerrero envisions single-issue legislatures whose members are chosen

On the contrary, the wealthy and powerful could easily manipulate a

The remedy for our democracy deficit is to devolve as much power as

Jefferson articulated the democratic faith in a remarkable series of letters

autocracy. Jefferson envisions a system of ward republics that empower

A few decades later, the French political scientist Tocqueville argued in

Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly

The brilliance of US democracy, for Tocqueville, is that it resides in civil

A few years ago, I saw an example of democracy in action when my local

that resources could be better spent elsewhere. Then, a school board

In an epistocracy, a few make all the crucial decisions; everyone else

The discussion about the superintendent’s salary grew heated. People

In an epistocracy, a few people make all the crucial decisions, and

In modern democracies, expert rule has returned in the form of ‘big

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