Political Knowledge and Democracy at Scale: A Systems Defense Against Democratic Skepticism

Many philosophical defenses of democracy are moral ones, appealing to ethical principles of inclusion or right or justice; this book argues - against an increasingly visible trend of democratic skepticism - for democracy as a goal on epistemic grounds. As part of a growing dissatisfaction with political outcomes, both political theorists and colloquial political discourse decry the seeming ignorance of democratic publics and seek to limit their influence on policy outcomes.The argument that ignorance causes bad political outcomes is the impetus for both arguments for epistocracy at the level of political theory and, more recently, actual political efforts to limit access to collective political self-determination. This book responds by arguing for the epistemic value of democracy and clarifying a definition of political knowledge beyond formal expertise.The embedded model of political knowledge understands political knowledge (including expertise) to be situated, incomplete, and fallib