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An Epistemic Conception of Democracy

Following common practice, Riker's Liberalism against Populism distinguishes populist from liberal conceptions of democracy.1 Intuitively, populist conceptions emphasize that political participation and public deliberation can serve to articulate and advance a "general will," while liberal conceptions emphasize the role of regular electoral tests in limiting the power of public officials. Riker assesses these two conceptions in light of social choice theory and draws two main conclusions from that assessment: (1) populism is incoherent and (2) liberalism survives intact. My remarks here begin (in the first section) by discussing three objections to Riker's argument.2 With those objections as background, I then consider (in the second section) what Jules Coleman and John Ferejohn call "the epistemic interpretation of voting" (p. 15) and the role of that interpretation in a populist conception of democracy. The aim of the second section is exploratory. My intention there is not to defend populism but to consider in more detail the structure of epistemic populism and to suggest that it represents a coherent and more plausible interpretation of populism than the version that Riker rejects.