Who should decide what counts as democratic, and how? This series argues that such a challenge raises an ethical, a practical, and a philosophical difficulty. Leonardo Fiorespino questions the ethical issue and suggests that the practical and philosophical problems require ad hoc solutions
This new phase in the Science of Democracy series claims that we should reorient democratic theory toward new, much broader fields of objects. This requires new research networks and methods, along with new ways of organising and presenting the resulting knowledge.
Such a visionary and ambitious thrust, however, is not the most impressive feature of where this discussion has arrived. What is most impressive is the inventiveness, vitality, self-reflexivity, and intellectual rigour scholars have deployed to show how we can pursue those daring goals.
The point of this series and of Jean-Paul Gagnon's project is to collect thousands of meanings of democracy and present them through various 'institutions' (interactive databases, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, exhibitions). A frequent question, therefore, is: what, if anything, guides the selection of the 'things democratic'? Can we exclude anything? Who should make that decision, and how?
Gagnon argues that this question raises a philosophical and a practical difficulty. Moreover, if we entrust the task to experts of democracy, we also face an ethical difficulty.
Let's start with the ethical issue. Take, for example, a claim made in The Sciences of the Democracies, a new book from the ECPR Research Network of the same name based on this blog series. The authors (more than thirty scholars) wonder: 'how can the democracies of the world be determined through epistocratic/expertocratic means?'.
Here one may respond that Gagnon’s original claim, keystone to the whole project, was epistemic. We know only 'fragments' of democracy, and mistake such fragments for democracy tout court. For this reason, we are light years away from knowing 'democracy’s total texture'. Thus, we should launch a research project with distinctively epistemic goals.
We know only 'fragments' of democracy and are therefore light years away from knowing 'democracy’s total texture'
Just like any other research project, the researchers involved decide who else should participate with the goal to maximise epistemic results. The success or failure of their choice of inclusion could only be epistemic, not ethical, for they would be making no collectively binding decisions which require generalised inclusion.
If we really were to fulfil an ethical-democratic requirement, why not summon the entirety of human (or even sentient) beings? In fact, this does not seem to be the point the authors are making, and rightly so. What they want from the individuals they consider involving is information: they decide whom to include for their epistemic purposes. Likewise, the decision of what should count as a 'thing democratic' may well be made by the researchers, and, if they deem it epistemically relevant, by the individuals they choose to summon.
Perhaps this unease with expert-led decisions is the result of the project’s second component, which is indeed political, and thus prone to epistocratic distortions. The hope in this new phase of the Science of Democracy series is that better knowledge of democracy and broader research networks will facilitate democratisation worldwide.
Shouldn’t we address concerns about epistocracy in the project’s discussion of its political aims? For instance, it surprised me that these fears go unmentioned in the presentation of the AutoDem Field Score, a tool designed to help communities improve their democratic life.
If we broaden the scope of democratic research to include experts and non-experts, philosophical and practical difficulties will arise when deciding which 'things' are democratic and which are not
Be that as it may, this series argues convincingly that we should broaden the scope of democratic research to include thousands of experts and non-experts. For this reason, difficulties philosophical and practical arise when deciding which 'things' are democratic and which are not.
Without a single view of democracy, how will we make this decision? What procedure will we set up, and how will we justify it philosophically? Here, I wish to suggest that the abstract framing of the problem is largely responsible for its apparent intractability. It may be beneficial to approach the matter with reference to the specific 'institutions' we are shaping, their features and purposes.
Take DemEarth, a digital model of the world that gathers existing data on democracy and organises it by place and time. Its focus seems epistemic, and any interested user is welcome to contribute as a valuable source of information. So, should we welcome any entry equally? If not, what should DemEarth include – and how should it decide whether some entries contain 'things undemocratic'?
A solution might work as follows: once users (non-experts and experts alike) flag an entry a certain number of times, the editors of DemEarth appoint some (let’s say five) experts (not necessarily scholars) to evaluate the democratic quality of the flagged conception of democracy, perhaps with the requirement that their opinion not be narrowly based on one particular conception of democracy.
An 'asteroid belt of democracies' would be a section of entries with dubious democratic credentials, and thus a valuable object of study
If all or most of the opinions are negative, the entry is transferred from its original part of the world model to what we might call 'the asteroid belt of the democracies': a section collecting views of democracy which, just like asteroids, we want to know and yet keep at a safe distance from planet Earth. So, no view of democracy would be really excluded from DemEarth; rather, some of them would become 'asteroids', so that users are warned of their dubious democratic credentials.
The motivations of the 'asteroidisation' would be presented as metadata for everyone to read and could themselves be flagged by users willing to reopen the case, in a virtually endless process. Perhaps severely contested cases could occasion events where the two sides meet and debate. For anyone interested in the conceptual distinction of democracy and non-democracy, the 'asteroid belt' could become a valuable object of study.
Leonardo completed his PhD in political philosophy at University of Rome Tor Vergata in 2021.
He is the author of Radical Democracy and Populism: A Thin Red Line? (Springer, 2022), of articles in international journals, and editor of three books.
He currently teaches moral and political philosophy at the University of New York in Prague.
Leonardo's research focuses on contemporary democratic theory, populism, conceptions of and issues with the concept of ‘people’, and normativity in political philosophy.
