Is democracy the best system of government?

@Jacob Bowden | Created: October 27, 2024 | Last edited: December 8, 2024

It is almost uncontroversial to claim that democracy is an imperfect system of government. Many, quite rightly, worry about the implications of suppressing the power of the minority, or feel unsure whether the boundaries surrounding the group of the electorate can be drawn in a just way. These are just a couple of worries people have about democracy. For many, then, the question is not whether democracy is a faultless system, but rather whether there is a more just alternative.

In this essay, I will focus on the potential issue with democracy expressed by Jason Brennan (amongst others) that it allows power to be exercised over citizens on the basis of incompetent decision-making. As well as this, I will assess universal suffrage as a system of government against the specific alternative that Brennan argues for. (I use ‘democracy’ and ‘universal suffrage’ interchangeably such that the extent to which a system is democratic increases with the universality of the suffrage it offers, and vice-versa.) Namely, the alternative that Brennan argues for is that of ‘epistocracy’. Under it, citizens are weeded-out of the electorate on the basis of judged incompetence for voting.

The type of argument that I will be responding to and making is procedural. Procedural arguments for/against democracy take into account the justness only of the process of government in question, and not of the outcomes it produces. Arguments which focus on the latter are termed instrumental. [1] Although Brennan believes that ‘it is better to produce just outcomes in an unjust way than to produce unjust outcomes in a just way’[2], and this might be true, procedural arguments are plausibly the only on which political philosophy can be brought to bear.[3] I argue that even the procedural argument of Brennan for epistocracy fails to show that it is more just than democracy.

In (I), I will outline Brennan’s argument for epistocracy. In (II), I will argue that the analogy on which Brennan’s argument relies fails. Then, finally, I will try to show in (III) that what follows from what I argue in (II) is that Brennan’s argument for epistocracy as a more just alternative to democracy fails to show that it is.

I. Brennan’s argument for epistocracy

In his The Right to a Competent Electorate, Jason Brennan puts forward an argument for epistocracy which can be formulated as follows:

(P1) it is wrong to force someone to submit to any decision influenced entirely or partly by someone who is incompetent to make it;

(P2) to allow people who are incompetent to make just decisions to vote is to force citizens to submit to decisions influenced at least partly by people who are incompetent to make them;

Brennan suggests that someone is incompetent to make just decisions at least when they are ignorant, irrational, and/or morally unreasonable. Someone is ignorant when they fail to pay attention to relevant details that bear on a decision. Someone is irrational when they neglect evidence that bears on a decision in favour of, for example, conspiracy theory. Someone is morally unreasonable when they are influenced in a decision by moral beliefs that few of us would take to be acceptable (for example, by arbitrary prejudice).[4]

If we accept that at least some voters are incompetent in this way, then, with this fact and the above premises, Brennan provides a valid argument for epistocracy:

(P3) at least some citizens are incompetent to make just decisions;

(C2) therefore, it is wrong to allow all citizens to vote (it is wrong not to institute a voter exam or similar policy to weed incompetent citizens out of the electorate).

More than merely valid, this argument is sound. It is wrong to allow incompetent citizens to vote and thereby exercise power over others (more on this in III). However, there is also good reason for thinking that it is wrong to institute a voter exam or similar policy to weed certain citizens out of the electorate. The question, therefore, is: ‘which is the lesser injustice?’

Answering this question will be the task of (III). First, I would like to illustrate a potential disanalogy in Brennan’s argument for epistocracy.

II. A disanalogy in Brennan’s argument

To motivate (P1), Brennan invites us to imagine three different juries. The ignorant jury find the defendant guilty despite having been ignorant of the details of the case they have been asked to deliberate about. The irrational jury find the defendant guilty, not on the basis of evidence, but of wishful thinking and bizarre conspiracy theory. The morally unreasonable jury find the defendant guilty solely because the defendant is a Muslim. These juries, it is supposed, have either admitted to deliberating in the respective ways, or have been shown with strong evidence to have deliberated as such.[5] The incompetent jury, then, is the jury in which most or all members are ignorant, irrational and/or morally unreasonable in the ways described above.

We would want to say both (i) that it would be wrong to enforce decisions made by the incompetent jury, and (ii) that it would be wrong not to allow the defendants subject to the will of the incompetent jury a re-trial.

Corresponding to the incompetent jury, Brennan invites us to imagine the incompetent electorate, in which most voters are ignorant, irrational, and/or morally unreasonable in the ways aforementioned.[6] Analogously, we would want to say both (i*) that it would be wrong to enforce decisions made by the incompetent electorate, and (ii*) that it would be wrong not to allow citizens subject to the will of the incompetent electorate a re-election. (Let us claim that (ii*) above is as plausible as, and follows roughly equally to, the claim that it is wrong not to institute a voter exam or similar policy to weed incompetent voters out of the electorate. In the context of a jury, a re-trial with a new jury would suffice to remedy worries of incompetence. However, as a new electorate under universal suffrage could not be as obviously found, it would be most appropriate to respond to the injustice of enforcing decisions made by an incompetent electorate instead by instituting a voter exam or similar policy to weed incompetent voters out of the electorate.)

There are disanalogies between the incompetent jury and the actual electorate of universal suffrage. First, there is a disanalogy between the incompetent jury and the incompetent electorate; and second, there is a significant difference between the incompetent electorate and the actual electorate of universal suffrage, even granting that at least some voters will be incompetent or will deliberate incompetently in the latter also. There are therefore two ways in which the incompetent jury is disanalogous to the actual electorate of universal suffrage.

Firstly, in making decisions, jurors only exercise power over the defendant of the trial which they have been asked to attend, whereas voting serves as a significant opportunity for a citizen to exercise political power over themselves, as well as a case of exercising power over others.[7] Secondly, in the case of the incompetent jury, we know that most or all of the members of the group are incompetent or have deliberated incompetently, whereas we do not know how much of the actual electorate behaves in this way.

The first of these disanalogies is significant because it means that, as mentioned in the previous section, the wrong of allowing the incompetent to vote needs to be considered against the wrong of instituting a policy to attempt to weed them out of the electorate. This much is accepted by Brennan.[8]