Brennan is a professor at Georgetown University and his book was published by Princeton University Press. As such, his polemic against democracy might hold added weight in the realm of political science academia. In fact, early on he makes pains to distinguish himself from “fringe heterodox anarchist” philosophers, such as Murray Rothbard, as well as Ayn Rand. His is to be a balanced and reasoned analytical process. Furthermore, it is to be based on real world statistics, examples, research, and empiricism, not just on a priori reasoning. First, he wants to distinguish between what he terms liberal “civic rights”, such as freedom of speech and the press, and “political rights”, which he defines narrowly and exclusively as the right to vote and run for office. Brennan attempts to knock down democracy on both instrumental and procedural grounds, that it is neither “more effective at producing just results, according to procedure-independent standards of justice”, nor is democracy simply best because “some ways of distributing power are intrinsically just or unjust.” In many ways he slays his beast well. However, reasonably, he writes primarily with the purpose of convincing an audience that is predisposed to the merits of democracy. As such, his arguments in favor of epistocracy (rule of the knowledgable), which is the model of government he favors, do little to dispel those who would prefer anarchy, monarchy, aristocracy, or any other political system. He goes through all the literature as to why the average citizen is politically stupid that would be familiar to anyone versed in behavioral economics or psychology- confirmation bias, availability bias, affective contagion, prior attitude effect, framing effects, as well as peer and authority pressure. Brennan is at his best when explaining why an epistocracy would create no less equal a citizenry than democracy, necessarily. He admits that “restricted suffrage and other forms of epistocracy do indeed communicate the idea that some citizens have better political judgement than others.” However, this in no way admits that the other citizens are less equal, in much the same way that those who are judged to be competent doctors, lawyers, plumbers, or drivers are in no way “better” just because they have been granted a special license. On the other hand, “giving a person or groups of people control rights- even weak control rights- over a stranger has to be justified… Political power is control over other people’s bodies. Modern polities make a greater number of decisions about what people are allowed to eat, what drugs they can take, where they are allowed or required to go, and even whether they can have consensual sex.” However, he remains completely agnostic as to the scale and scope of the best government. He explicitly does not call for less government, just a different means of choosing the legislators who would govern. He also makes a cogent case that equating human dignity with the right to vote is a completely subjective human artifice that has no basis in basic liberal rights. He makes a public goods case for regulating voting the way many would want to regulate pollution. He adds that society already restricts voting when it comes to children and criminals. He refutes the theory of the wisdom of the crowds by revealing that it does not apply because voters make systemic errors and so do not have cognitive diversity. Brennan ends by offering up possibilities for systems of epistocracy, which he admits are only guesses, since they have not been tested in the real world as of yet. He also admits that they all have their own flaws: values-only voting (with the means then implemented by legislators), restricted suffrage and plural voting (with various possible testing requirements to limit voters or extra votes for extra years of schooling, etc…), enfranchisement lottery (which would randomly limit the pool of voters, but then force them to attend information and deliberative sessions), or an epistocratic veto (not so different than the Supreme Court, but for the legislative branch as well). These possibilities are not the main point of his book, however. His point is to show that on moral, educational, and societal benefit grounds democracy is found wanting. He admits that in the real world there has been a high correlation between greater political rights and greater liberal rights, but he finds no evidence of causation. He dismisses all other forms of governance that have been previously tried on Earth and makes no triumphant claims about any specific type of epistocracy. Nonetheless, the book does service by going point by point over the specific claims propounded by pro-democracy academics and shows how in some important ways they are all found lacking.
No comments:
Post a Comment