Alfred Moore

Deliberative Elitism? Distributed Deliberation and the Organization of Epistemic Inequality

ABSTRACT In the systemic turn, deliberative theory seems to have come full circle. After a phase of empirically engaged research on practices of deliberation in various ‘natural’ settings, and experiments in the production of considered public opinions in ‘minipublics’ and other citizen panels, deliberative theory is returning to problems of locating deliberation within democratic systems. This paper explores the question of how expert authority might be integrated into a deliberative democracy, thereby addressing an important tension between the principle of democratic equality and the inequalities implied by expert knowledge. The problem of locating expertise within deliberative politics, I argue, is just a special case of a general problem in deliberative systems: How to locate the different deliberative ‘moments’ with respect to each other and to observing publics. In answering this question I emphasize the importance of ‘metadeliberation’ on the value and functions of divisions of deliberative labor. I describe deliberation among experts, contestation in the critical public sphere and deliberation in minipublics from the point of view of their capacity to support a wider context of public judgment of expertise. And I conclude with a discussion of the problem of ‘deliberative elitism’.

Deference in Numbers: Consensus, Dissent and Judgement in Mill's Account of Authority

The need for deference to well-grounded claims to expert authority often seems to conflict with democratic ideals and practices of equality and contestation. In this article I identify a parallel tension in Mills work on authority. Against the idea that Mills thought is contradictory, I argue that in both his early and later work he was very clear about the tension between the good of thinking for oneself and the necessity of epistemic dependence, and in particular deference to a consensus of experts. He does not resolve this tension, but he makes it productive in the figure of the ‘competent observer’, who exercises judgement in deferring to authorities. Mills contribution is to focus on the process of questioning and scrutiny that underpins this sort of judgement. I conclude with some observations about the value and limitations of Mills account of authority for understanding contemporary problems of expertise in democratic systems.

Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theories and Democracy:

Conspiracy theories are attracting increasing attention from political scientists, much of it negative. Three recent books, from the disciplines of political science, cultural history and social theory, provide a valuable critical corrective. Uscinski and Parent argue that conspiracy theories are connected to partisan distrust and are largely stable across the twentieth century. Michael Butter uses detailed historical cases from the Puritan witch trials to the Red Scare of the 1950s to show the central and influential role that conspiratorial beliefs have played in American history. Luc Boltanski focuses on conspiracy narratives in early detective and spy novels, but situates them in a broader account of the relation between the state, the social and political sciences, and popular representations of political power. Taken together, these books place the problem of conspiracy theory firmly in the context of democratic politics, opening important empirical and conceptual questions about partisanship, populism, publicity and secrecy. Boltanski, L. (2014) Mysteries and Conspiracies: Detective Stories, Spy Novels and the Making of Modern Societies. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Polity Press. Butter, M. (2014) Plots, Designs and Schemes: American Conspiracy Theories from the Puritans to the Present. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Uscinski, J. E. and Parent, J. M. (2014) American Conspiracy Theories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.