When we think about the ideal democratic citizen, we think about someone who is not only a valuable member of the political community, but also a competent political decision maker. The “good” democratic citizen is informed and knowledgeable, thinks clearly and cohesively about political matters and votes based on these assessments. One of the most longstanding—and disheartening—conclusions reached by those who study the political psychology of democratic citizens is that this picture hardly matches the reality of their behavior. Most democratic citizens seem to know very little about politics. They seem to lack any cohesive view or assessment of many important political issues and seem to make their political decisions based on their social attachments or group identity rather than on the basis of well-formed political beliefs.
This problem has led to a resurfacing of skepticism about the credentials of democracy as a “smart” political system, capable of making wise political decisions. One version of this skepticism goes as far as to entertain the possibility of replacing democracy with a different political decision-making system, epistocracy. In an epistocracy, the right to vote is constrained by criteria of political competence. Before citizens are allowed to exercise their voting rights, they must demonstrate that they have the “epistemic credentials” necessary to do so appropriately, such as a sufficient level of knowledge, information, understanding, etc. This could be done, to cite the most (in)famous proposal in this regard, by having them pass a suitably designed competence test.
The mere idea of placing any such competence barrier on the exercise of voting rights tends to provoke strong reactions. To many, it represents a fundamental betrayal of what a democratic society stands for, namely a society in which citizens act as the joint coauthors of political decisions on equal terms. Standard proponents of epistocratic barriers on voting rights do little to quiet the concern. Their arguments tend to rely on a rather uncompromising form of political instrumentalism, for which only political outcomes truly matter. If putting competence barriers on voting rights gets us to better political decisions, then so much the worse for ideals of joint democratic coauthorship. From this standpoint, they are a luxury we cannot afford.
Against both critics of epistocracy and standard supporters thereof, I think there is a case to be made for implementing some competence barrier on voting rights, or epistemic constraints on voting as I call them. The constraints I propose have little to do with the quality of political outcomes—indeed, what justifies them is precisely the commitment to a proper democratic coauthorship of political decisions that is usually invoked against them. That is because the act of coauthoring political decisions through voting has an internal normative logic, a logic centered on citizens’ reciprocal accountability.
The argument for this view, which I am currently developing in a book manuscript, revolves around two key premises.
One follows an emerging trend in the literature on democratic theory, namely that democratic practices such as voting can be modeled as instances of joint agency. When we vote, we are doing something together. Our individual inputs feed in a larger collective endeavor. If we understand joint agency as a phenomenon with an inherent normative logic, we see how participation in voting changes our relation to one another. Like in other cases of acting together, we become coparticipants who jointly commit ourselves to making a common decision about the course of political action our state or community should follow. As such, we owe it to each other to play our role in this shared endeavor appropriately, and we are accountable to one another for our conduct.
The second key premise is that, once applied to voting, the logic of joint agency generates important epistemic responsibilities for democratic citizens. Our role in the joint decision is like that of someone who is asked to answer a question about a matter of common concern: What is it that we should do politically? What direction should we pursue, what kind of objectives and priorities? If this is correct, then we fulfil our role appropriately by using our vote as a statement of what we believe on this matter. And traditional epistemology tells us that, when we make statements about what we believe, we are bound by epistemic requirements. We need to make sure that our beliefs meet certain standards. For example, we need to make sure that they are justified, that they are premised on a reliable assessment and understanding of the matters we adjudicate, etc. These epistemic responsibilities apply to voting too, and they overlap with what we conventionally call political competence.
When these two premises are drawn together, they tell us that voting is a practice that jointly commits citizens to contribute to political decision-making on epistemically responsible terms, and that makes them mutually accountable accordingly.
This interpretation of the practice of voting supports the idea of implementing some epistemic constraints on the exercise of voting rights. On this view, what would justify these “barriers” is not so much the idea that they would lead to better outcomes but rather the extent to which they ensure that those who join the effort of authoring political decisions together do so on the appropriate terms. Epistemic constraints on voting would act as a guarantee against excessively unthoughtful or superficial engagement with public decision-making as a mechanism that enforces the standards of conduct citizens commit themselves to uphold upon participation. An argument of this sort is far from reflective of the elitist idea that only the smartest and brightest of us are worthy of a say. And it is indeed immune to important objections from political equality, such as subjecting citizens to a disrespectful or hierarchical treatment.
What shape could epistemic constraints on voting take? If the case for them is premised on a logic of civic accountability and not on an outcome-focused one, we do not need to push things too far and rely on overtly exclusionary barriers. For example, instead of subjecting voters to any sort of competence test, we can make the right to vote conditional upon participation in competence-building opportunities, for instance in the form of a periodic training on political matters. These initiatives would offer citizens the chance to enhance their knowledge and political understanding and qualify them for an epistemically responsible exercise of voting rights.
Even if arguably less exclusionary than other epistocratic proposals, there are of course open challenges associated with implementing this sort of constraints on voting in the real world. For instance, it would be imperative to secure that politically motivated agents do not capture the organization and conduction of these competence-building trainings, lest they become designed ad hoc to exclude specific categories of voters and entrench certain political actors into positions of power.
How to do so is a discussion that I hope to open rather than resolve. In any case, there is a critical upshot that my theory conveys and that remains valid beyond issues related to its implementation. If, as paradoxical as it sounds, the normative logic internal to making political decisions together does truly support some competence requirements, then we should not shy away from rethinking our political institutions and ethos accordingly.
Michele Giavazzi
Michele Giavazzi is a research fellow in philosophy and political theory at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. His work is sponsored by a German Research Foundation (DFG) individual grant. His research focuses on issues at the intersection between democratic theory and political epistemology. His publications have appeared in venues such as Philosophy & Public Affairs (2024) and The Journal of Moral Philosophy (2023).
