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Democracy's Wisdom: An Aristotelian Middle Way for Collective Judgment

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  • OBER, JOSIAH

Abstract

A satisfactory model of decision-making in an epistemic democracy must respect democratic values, while advancing citizens’ interests, by taking account of relevant knowledge about the world. Analysis of passages in Aristotle and legislative process in classical Athens points to a “middle way†between independent-guess aggregation and deliberation: an epistemic approach to decision-making that offers a satisfactory model of collective judgment that is both time-sensitive and capable of setting agendas endogenously. By aggregating expertise across multiple domains, Relevant Expertise Aggregation (REA) enables a body of minimally competent voters to make superior choices among multiple options, on matters of common interest. REA differs from a standard Condorcet jury in combining deliberation with voting based on judgments about the reputations and arguments of domain-experts.

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  • Ober, Josiah, 2013. "Democracy's Wisdom: An Aristotelian Middle Way for Collective Judgment," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 107(1), pages 104-122, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:107:y:2013:i:01:p:104-122_00
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    Cited by:

    1. Jérôme Mathis & Marcello Puca & Simone M. Sepe, 2021. "Deliberative Institutions and Optimality," CSEF Working Papers 614, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy, revised 09 Jun 2021.
    2. Täuscher, Karl, 2017. "Leveraging collective intelligence: How to design and manage crowd-based business models," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 237-245.
    3. Franch, Fabio, 2021. "Political preferences nowcasting with factor analysis and internet data: The 2012 and 2016 US presidential elections," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    4. Eric A. Posner & E. Glen Weyl, 2017. "Quadratic voting and the public good: introduction," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 172(1), pages 1-22, July.
    5. Leslie Paul Thiele, 2020. "Integrating political and technological uncertainty into robust climate policy," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 163(1), pages 521-538, November.
    6. Mirko Canevaro, 2018. "What was the law of Leptines’ really about? Reflections on Athenian public economy and legislation in the fourth century BCE," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 440-464, December.

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