Democracy without voting
Citation
Export citationMunn, N. (2019). Democracy without voting. Presented at the 2019 American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Conference, Vancouver, Canada.
Permanent Research Commons link: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/13068
Abstract
Both epistocrats and lottocrats claim that democracy itself is problematic. They set themselves the task of providing a plausible alternative system. However, many of the problems they identify arise not from democracy as such, but from certain instantiations of it. When and how people vote; how many people choose not to vote; and how much the people who do vote know, are all subjects of criticism in this literature. In this paper I outline a democratic system which retains features such as majority rule and secrecy regarding the expressed preferences of citizens, but eliminates voting. I argue that this approach can achieve many of the benefits ascribed to epistocratic or lottocratic systems without importing their flaws.
Date
2019Rights
© 2019 copyright with the author