Perhaps recent events should make us rethink how philosophers write about democracy. There’s a disconnection between how democracy actually works and what philosophers say, between what researchers say in empirical political science and the implicit empirical models philosophers work with in democratic theory.I don’t think this just shows us that democracy falls short of an ideal. It may be that our ways of theorizing are largely irrelevant. We’re talking about how awesome hammers would be if only they worked like screwdrivers.
...
Ideal theory democratic theory is in a way incoherent. Some of it is the equivalent of “Hey, I came up with a solution to the problem of drunk driving, but it turns out my solution only works in a world where alcohol had never been invented”.I’m hopeful that this will push political philosophy to a philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE) turn. On that point, though, I suspect few democratic theorists or political philosophers could teach Poli Sci 101 or Econ 101 off the cuff, or even pass the final exams, and that’s a problem. We’re spending too much time writing philosophy that assumes institutions work differently from how they actually do, will, or could.--Jason Brennan'@DailyNous.
In principle, there is no problem with there being a (i) "disconnection between how democracy actually works and what philosophers say" [about democracy]. After all, many philosophers happily (too happily, really) accept a distinction between their task as normative theorists aiming to improve the world or, more often, to provide standards by which we can judge the world, and the real world (which is described by empirical social scientists). That is to say, many of our peers happily go along with the idea that we are experts on values while others are the experts on facts [see here for a genealogy of this]. I don't think Brennan rejects this way of thinking (that's important--I'll return to it), but the rest of the sentence makes clear what he has in mind: "[there is a disconnection] between what researchers say in empirical political science and the implicit empirical models philosophers work with in democratic theory." In context, Brennan strongly suggests that philosophers, especially those who are ideal theorists, work with possibly false or outdated and naive implicit empirical models philosophers that fundamentally reflect their normative commitments not our best knowledge of the world.* In particular, he thinks we need to be better educated in politics and economics.
As somebody who works in a political science department -- I even recently co-taught a course that included an introduction to comparative politics -- and as a self-described philosopher of economics, I warmly welcomed the drift of Brennan's remarks. But I would not leave out, as he does, sociology, social psychology, media studies, and anthropology (to name just a few and not to ignore our sister disciplines in the Humanities). More subtly, I note three further reservations: first, most purportedly (non-naive, true-ish) empirical theories have non-trivial normative commitments built into them at various levels. So, good philosophers do not merely uncritically adopt recent social science (and humanities) in their theorizing. In addition, second, some such theories also can have conceptual confusions/conflations--the kinds of things philosophical training is likely to spot. Third, a lot of fantastic social science has various kinds of status quo bias built into its results (and, as I note regularly, this has gotten worse in data-mining social sciences)--such status quo bias may well be very problematic in context of policy and in context of theorizing about democracy.
When folk complain about so-called ideal theory, they have in mind the Rawls industry. But it is worth noting, that as regular readers of this blog know, that (a) Rawls was incredibly knowledgeable about economics of his own age (I am not alone in thinking this). It is, in fact, one of the great mysteries of Rawls-qua-teacher that he did not do more to pass on his knowledge of it. In addition, Rawls was (b) not an uncritical consumer of economics. In fact, regular readers are familiar with my argument that Rawls was right to resist the interpretations of Knightian uncertainy by his colleague, the famous mathematical economist, K. Arrow (recall).
In his post, Brennan offers a more focused charge: political philosophers assume "institutions work differently from how they actually do." I think I recognize what he means: a lot of ideal theory assumes (with Weber) that institutions are populated with solid and honest rule followers and that they are neither subject to regulatory capture nor advised by experts subject to various perverse incentives or biases. (Undoubtedly this is not the extent of Brennan's complaint--he has a special fondness for markets that is rarely shared even by his fellow (Liberal/Libertarian) travelers.) But even if Brennan is right here, it does not follow social science today really understands how institutions work and, in particular, how various institutions and leadership within them facilitate desirable normative and moral ends in practice and in light of other background-commitments. This is a great, open research topic (recall Lisa Herzog on moral phenomenology in institutions, my post on affective nudging, and my post on (bad) leadership within crony capitalism inspired by Levy & Peart). So, rather than drawing on pre-existing social science, this is an area in which we can collaborate with social scientists.
Finally, and this is where I probably diverge most sharply from Brennan, "rethink how philosophers write about democracy" involves rethinking not just the purpose of democratic theory, but also the nature of public speech in light of so-called inductive risk; in particular, a lot of democratic theory when converted to public speech generates downside risks for those whose views are not well represented among fellow philosophers and our would-be (mostly technocratic) interlocutors among the public (and publics) [recall]. One wishes for a democratic theory that does not confuse the seminar room for public speech, and that is neither futile (in the way described by Brennan) nor the dangerous, romantic decisionism of the political realist. But about exemplars of that some other time, more.
*I expressed strong initial approval for Brennan's post on facebook. The thoughts above are my second, more cautious thoughts.
Comments