Forthcoming book:
Rule by Multiple Majorities: A New Theory of Popular Control (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
Short description: The book answers a basic question in political theory: in what sense can one view democratic governments as under popular control if there is no such thing as `the will of the people'? Social choice theory appears to show that talk of a popular will is logically incoherent, raising a deep problem for traditional interpretations of popular control. The book explains how multiple, overlapping majorities can nonetheless have control, at the same time, even if there is no such thing as `the will of the majority' or `the will of the people'. After resolving these conceptual puzzles, I explain why popular control is a realistic and compelling ideal for democracies, notwithstanding voters' low levels of information and other shortcomings.
Published and forthcoming articles:
"Why Arrow's Theorem Matters for Political Theory Even If Preference Cycles Never Occur," Public Choice, forthcoming.
Abstract: William Riker (1982) famously argued that Arrow's impossibility theorem undermined the logical foundations of ``populism,'' the view that in a democracy, laws and policies ought to express ``the will of the people''. In response, his critics have questioned the use of Arrow's theorem on the grounds that not all configurations of preferences are likely to occur in practice; the critics allege, in particular, that majority preference cycles, whose possibility the theorem exploits, rarely happen. In this essay, I argue that the critics' rejoinder to Riker misses the mark even if its factual claim about preferences is correct: Arrow's theorem and related results threaten the populist's principle of democratic legitimacy even if majority preference cycles never occur. In this particular context, the assumption of an unrestricted domain is justified irrespective of the preferences citizens are likely to have.
"Can Deliberative Minipublics Influence Public Opinion? Theory and Evidence" (with Ines Levin) Political Research Quarterly 71(3) (2018): 654--667.
Abstract: Deliberative minipublics are small groups of citizens who deliberate together about a policy issue and convey their conclusions to decision-makers. Theorists have argued that deliberative minipublics can give observers evidence about counterfactual, "enlightened" public opinion---what the people would think about an issue, if they had the opportunity to deliberate with their fellow citizens. If the conclusions of a deliberative minipublic are received in this spirit and members of the public revise their opinions upon learning them, then deliberative minipublics could be a means of bringing actual public opinion into closer conformity with counterfactual, enlightened public opinion. We formalize a model of this theory and report the results of a survey experiment designed to test its predictions. The experiment produced evidence that learning the conclusions of a deliberative minipublic influenced respondents’ policy opinions, bringing them into closer conformity with the opinions of the participants in the deliberative minipublic.
"Effects of Deliberative Minipublics on Public Opinion: Experimental Evidence from a Survey on Social Security Reform" (with Ines Levin) International Journal of Public Opinion Research 30(1) (2018): 51--78.
Abstract: This paper examines the potential influence of deliberative minipublics on public opinion. Using data from a large-scale survey experiment with national coverage, we investigate whether learning the conclusions of a deliberative minipublic affects observers’ support for changes to the Social Security program. Survey respondents in the primary treatment conditions were exposed to the findings of deliberative citizens’ panels regarding proposed changes to Social Security. Respondents in control groups did not receive any information about the deliberative minipublic. Overall, our results suggest that deliberative minipublics have some ability to affect public opinion even if members of the public acquire only minimal information about them. In particular, they are able to influence the opinions of relatively uninformed citizens. The results also suggest, however, that the effects may be limited in their extent and magnitude—at least in the scenario, modeled by our experiment, in which citizens acquire only minimal information about deliberative minipublics.
"Popular Rule in Schumpeter's Democracy," Political Studies 64(4) (2016): 1071--1087.
Abstract: in this paper I argue that existing democracies might establish popular rule even if Schumpeter’s notoriously unflattering picture of ordinary citizens is accurate. Some degree of popular rule is in principle compatible with apathetic, ignorant, and suggestible citizens, contrary to what Schumpeter and others have maintained. The people may have control over policy, and their control may constitute popular rule, even if citizens lack definite policy opinions and even if their opinions result in part from elites' efforts to manipulate these opinions. Thus, even a purely descriptive, ‘realist’ account of democracy of the kind that Schumpeter professed to offer may need to concede that there is no democracy without some degree of popular rule.
"Social Choice and Popular Control", Journal of Theoretical Politics 28(2) (2016): 331--349.
Abstract: In democracies citizens are supposed to have some control over the general direction of policy. According to a pre-theoretical interpretation of this democratic norm, the people have control if elections and other democratic institutions compel officials to do what the people want, or what the majority wants. This interpretation of popular control is hard to reconcile with insights from social choice theory. Some commentators---Riker (1982), most famously---have argued that these insights should cause us to abandon the idea of popular rule as traditionally understood. This paper presents a formal theory of popular control that responds to the challenge from social choice theory. It makes precise a sense in which majorities may be said to have control over the direction of policy even if the majority preference relation has an empty core, i.e., even if it's true that, no matter which policy agenda elected officials pursue, a majority would prefer they pursue a different agenda.
"Theorems and Models in Political Theory: An Application to Pettit on Popular Control", The Good Society 24(1) (2015): 98--117.
Abstract: in his recent book, Phillip Pettit presents a model of popular control over government, according to which it consists in the government being subject to those policy-making norms that everyone accepts. In this paper, I provide a formal statement of this interpretation of popular control, which illuminates its relationship to other interpretations of the idea with which it is easily conflated, and which gives rise to a theorem, similar to the famous Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem. The theorem states that if government policy is subject to popular control, as Pettit interprets it, and policy responds positively to changes in citizens' normative attitudes, then there is a single individual whose normative attitudes unilaterally determine policy. I use the model and theorem as an illustrative example to discuss the role of mathematics in normative political theory.
"Disagreement and Epistemic Arguments for Democracy", Politics, Philosophy & Economics 12(2) (May, 2013): 135--154.
Abstract: Recent epistemic arguments for democracy aim to show that in some qualified sense, democratic institutions have a tendency to produce reasonable outcomes. They aim to do so without presupposing any narrow, controversial view of what the outcomes of democratic procedures should be, much as a good justification of a particular scientific research design does not presuppose the hypothesis that the research aims to test. This paper considers whether this aim is achievable. It asks, in particular, whether epistemic arguments can be reconciled with the commonly held view that disagreement about which laws and policies should be enacted is a fundamental, permanent feature of democratic politics and imposes constraints on how we understand the value of democratic procedures.
Manuscripts available upon request:
``The Effects of Competence-Based Suffrage Restrictions: Toward a Full Accounting'' (with David Wiens)
Abstract: Democratic citizens often lack rudimentary knowledge about their political institutions, elected leaders, and the policies their leaders choose. Epistemic democrats contend democracies produce reasonable decisions despite the ignorance of the typical voter; against them, epistocrats claim that non-democratic regimes in which more knowledgeable citizens are put in charge would produce better decisions. We explain the shortcomings with the arguments on both sides. Epistocrats may be right that all else being equal, a more competent electorate would produce better decisions, and epistemic democrats may be right that all else being equal, a more diverse and inclusive electorate would produce better decisions. But all else is not equal, and neither camp provides arguments for believing that their favorite partial effect of restricting the franchise will prevail over countervailing effects. We explain why the total effect of such restrictions is theoretically indeterminate, and why more empirical evidence is needed.
``Republican Freedom, Popular Control, and Collective Action'' (with Frank Lovett)
Abstract: Republicans maintain that people are dominated merely in virtue of others having unconstrained abilities to frustrate their choices. They argue further that public officials may dominate citizens unless subject to popular control. Critics identify a dilemma. To maintain the possibility of popular control, republicans must attribute to the people an ability to control public officials merely in virtue of the possibility that they might coordinate their actions. But if the possibility of coordination suffices for attributing abilities to groups, then, even in the best case, countless groups will be dominating because it will be possible for their members to coordinate their actions with the aim of frustrating others' choices. We argue the dilemma is apparent only. To make the argument, we present a novel interpretation of the republican concept of domination with the help of a game-theoretic model that clarifies the significance of collective action problems for republican theory.
"A Theory of Responsive Representatives"
Abstract: In a democracy, it is often claimed, elected leaders should be responsive to citizens' preferences, with each citizen considered equally. Surprisingly, in light of the claim's importance to empirical political science and normative democratic theory, there exists no truly general account of the conditions under which elected officials can be said to be ``responsive'' to their constituents. This paper offers a general analysis of the concept, using a puzzle arising from results in social choice theory as motivation. According to this account, democratic responsiveness involves not just responsiveness to citizens' preferences but also to some measure of their relative urgency or importance. Rather than merely ``counting heads,'' a responsive representative must ``weigh'' the relative urgency of constituents' preferences---and may, accordingly, sometimes act contrary to the preference of a majority. After defending this analysis of democratic responsiveness, I explain how it can both inform debates in normative democratic theory about representation and guide the choice of statistical models in empirical studies of representation.
"A dilemma for theories of public reason"
Abstract: The ideal of public reason requires citizens to justify laws with public reasons. Unlike appeals to comprehensive doctrines, public reasons do not compel citizens to abandon their most basic religious or philosophical convictions, provided that these convictions are reasonable. The article presents a dilemma for theories of public reason. Either the proscription against appealing to comprehensive doctrines is redundant on ordinary rules of argument, or there are in effect public reasons for rejecting a reasonable comprehensive doctrine as false, i.e., public reasons that compel some citizens to abandon their most basic (and reasonable) religious, moral or philosophical convictions.
Rule by Multiple Majorities: A New Theory of Popular Control (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
Short description: The book answers a basic question in political theory: in what sense can one view democratic governments as under popular control if there is no such thing as `the will of the people'? Social choice theory appears to show that talk of a popular will is logically incoherent, raising a deep problem for traditional interpretations of popular control. The book explains how multiple, overlapping majorities can nonetheless have control, at the same time, even if there is no such thing as `the will of the majority' or `the will of the people'. After resolving these conceptual puzzles, I explain why popular control is a realistic and compelling ideal for democracies, notwithstanding voters' low levels of information and other shortcomings.
Published and forthcoming articles:
"Why Arrow's Theorem Matters for Political Theory Even If Preference Cycles Never Occur," Public Choice, forthcoming.
Abstract: William Riker (1982) famously argued that Arrow's impossibility theorem undermined the logical foundations of ``populism,'' the view that in a democracy, laws and policies ought to express ``the will of the people''. In response, his critics have questioned the use of Arrow's theorem on the grounds that not all configurations of preferences are likely to occur in practice; the critics allege, in particular, that majority preference cycles, whose possibility the theorem exploits, rarely happen. In this essay, I argue that the critics' rejoinder to Riker misses the mark even if its factual claim about preferences is correct: Arrow's theorem and related results threaten the populist's principle of democratic legitimacy even if majority preference cycles never occur. In this particular context, the assumption of an unrestricted domain is justified irrespective of the preferences citizens are likely to have.
"Can Deliberative Minipublics Influence Public Opinion? Theory and Evidence" (with Ines Levin) Political Research Quarterly 71(3) (2018): 654--667.
Abstract: Deliberative minipublics are small groups of citizens who deliberate together about a policy issue and convey their conclusions to decision-makers. Theorists have argued that deliberative minipublics can give observers evidence about counterfactual, "enlightened" public opinion---what the people would think about an issue, if they had the opportunity to deliberate with their fellow citizens. If the conclusions of a deliberative minipublic are received in this spirit and members of the public revise their opinions upon learning them, then deliberative minipublics could be a means of bringing actual public opinion into closer conformity with counterfactual, enlightened public opinion. We formalize a model of this theory and report the results of a survey experiment designed to test its predictions. The experiment produced evidence that learning the conclusions of a deliberative minipublic influenced respondents’ policy opinions, bringing them into closer conformity with the opinions of the participants in the deliberative minipublic.
"Effects of Deliberative Minipublics on Public Opinion: Experimental Evidence from a Survey on Social Security Reform" (with Ines Levin) International Journal of Public Opinion Research 30(1) (2018): 51--78.
Abstract: This paper examines the potential influence of deliberative minipublics on public opinion. Using data from a large-scale survey experiment with national coverage, we investigate whether learning the conclusions of a deliberative minipublic affects observers’ support for changes to the Social Security program. Survey respondents in the primary treatment conditions were exposed to the findings of deliberative citizens’ panels regarding proposed changes to Social Security. Respondents in control groups did not receive any information about the deliberative minipublic. Overall, our results suggest that deliberative minipublics have some ability to affect public opinion even if members of the public acquire only minimal information about them. In particular, they are able to influence the opinions of relatively uninformed citizens. The results also suggest, however, that the effects may be limited in their extent and magnitude—at least in the scenario, modeled by our experiment, in which citizens acquire only minimal information about deliberative minipublics.
"Popular Rule in Schumpeter's Democracy," Political Studies 64(4) (2016): 1071--1087.
Abstract: in this paper I argue that existing democracies might establish popular rule even if Schumpeter’s notoriously unflattering picture of ordinary citizens is accurate. Some degree of popular rule is in principle compatible with apathetic, ignorant, and suggestible citizens, contrary to what Schumpeter and others have maintained. The people may have control over policy, and their control may constitute popular rule, even if citizens lack definite policy opinions and even if their opinions result in part from elites' efforts to manipulate these opinions. Thus, even a purely descriptive, ‘realist’ account of democracy of the kind that Schumpeter professed to offer may need to concede that there is no democracy without some degree of popular rule.
"Social Choice and Popular Control", Journal of Theoretical Politics 28(2) (2016): 331--349.
Abstract: In democracies citizens are supposed to have some control over the general direction of policy. According to a pre-theoretical interpretation of this democratic norm, the people have control if elections and other democratic institutions compel officials to do what the people want, or what the majority wants. This interpretation of popular control is hard to reconcile with insights from social choice theory. Some commentators---Riker (1982), most famously---have argued that these insights should cause us to abandon the idea of popular rule as traditionally understood. This paper presents a formal theory of popular control that responds to the challenge from social choice theory. It makes precise a sense in which majorities may be said to have control over the direction of policy even if the majority preference relation has an empty core, i.e., even if it's true that, no matter which policy agenda elected officials pursue, a majority would prefer they pursue a different agenda.
"Theorems and Models in Political Theory: An Application to Pettit on Popular Control", The Good Society 24(1) (2015): 98--117.
Abstract: in his recent book, Phillip Pettit presents a model of popular control over government, according to which it consists in the government being subject to those policy-making norms that everyone accepts. In this paper, I provide a formal statement of this interpretation of popular control, which illuminates its relationship to other interpretations of the idea with which it is easily conflated, and which gives rise to a theorem, similar to the famous Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem. The theorem states that if government policy is subject to popular control, as Pettit interprets it, and policy responds positively to changes in citizens' normative attitudes, then there is a single individual whose normative attitudes unilaterally determine policy. I use the model and theorem as an illustrative example to discuss the role of mathematics in normative political theory.
"Disagreement and Epistemic Arguments for Democracy", Politics, Philosophy & Economics 12(2) (May, 2013): 135--154.
Abstract: Recent epistemic arguments for democracy aim to show that in some qualified sense, democratic institutions have a tendency to produce reasonable outcomes. They aim to do so without presupposing any narrow, controversial view of what the outcomes of democratic procedures should be, much as a good justification of a particular scientific research design does not presuppose the hypothesis that the research aims to test. This paper considers whether this aim is achievable. It asks, in particular, whether epistemic arguments can be reconciled with the commonly held view that disagreement about which laws and policies should be enacted is a fundamental, permanent feature of democratic politics and imposes constraints on how we understand the value of democratic procedures.
Manuscripts available upon request:
``The Effects of Competence-Based Suffrage Restrictions: Toward a Full Accounting'' (with David Wiens)
Abstract: Democratic citizens often lack rudimentary knowledge about their political institutions, elected leaders, and the policies their leaders choose. Epistemic democrats contend democracies produce reasonable decisions despite the ignorance of the typical voter; against them, epistocrats claim that non-democratic regimes in which more knowledgeable citizens are put in charge would produce better decisions. We explain the shortcomings with the arguments on both sides. Epistocrats may be right that all else being equal, a more competent electorate would produce better decisions, and epistemic democrats may be right that all else being equal, a more diverse and inclusive electorate would produce better decisions. But all else is not equal, and neither camp provides arguments for believing that their favorite partial effect of restricting the franchise will prevail over countervailing effects. We explain why the total effect of such restrictions is theoretically indeterminate, and why more empirical evidence is needed.
``Republican Freedom, Popular Control, and Collective Action'' (with Frank Lovett)
Abstract: Republicans maintain that people are dominated merely in virtue of others having unconstrained abilities to frustrate their choices. They argue further that public officials may dominate citizens unless subject to popular control. Critics identify a dilemma. To maintain the possibility of popular control, republicans must attribute to the people an ability to control public officials merely in virtue of the possibility that they might coordinate their actions. But if the possibility of coordination suffices for attributing abilities to groups, then, even in the best case, countless groups will be dominating because it will be possible for their members to coordinate their actions with the aim of frustrating others' choices. We argue the dilemma is apparent only. To make the argument, we present a novel interpretation of the republican concept of domination with the help of a game-theoretic model that clarifies the significance of collective action problems for republican theory.
"A Theory of Responsive Representatives"
Abstract: In a democracy, it is often claimed, elected leaders should be responsive to citizens' preferences, with each citizen considered equally. Surprisingly, in light of the claim's importance to empirical political science and normative democratic theory, there exists no truly general account of the conditions under which elected officials can be said to be ``responsive'' to their constituents. This paper offers a general analysis of the concept, using a puzzle arising from results in social choice theory as motivation. According to this account, democratic responsiveness involves not just responsiveness to citizens' preferences but also to some measure of their relative urgency or importance. Rather than merely ``counting heads,'' a responsive representative must ``weigh'' the relative urgency of constituents' preferences---and may, accordingly, sometimes act contrary to the preference of a majority. After defending this analysis of democratic responsiveness, I explain how it can both inform debates in normative democratic theory about representation and guide the choice of statistical models in empirical studies of representation.
"A dilemma for theories of public reason"
Abstract: The ideal of public reason requires citizens to justify laws with public reasons. Unlike appeals to comprehensive doctrines, public reasons do not compel citizens to abandon their most basic religious or philosophical convictions, provided that these convictions are reasonable. The article presents a dilemma for theories of public reason. Either the proscription against appealing to comprehensive doctrines is redundant on ordinary rules of argument, or there are in effect public reasons for rejecting a reasonable comprehensive doctrine as false, i.e., public reasons that compel some citizens to abandon their most basic (and reasonable) religious, moral or philosophical convictions.
