Theoria

All but one of the five papers in the present volume of Theoria deal with aspects of one of the central thematic concerns of contemporary political theory: the deliberative and participatory arrangements optimal for democratic flourishing. The first three essays are critical responses to Cass Sunstein’s treatment of democracy and deliberation in his timely and important book, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge (2006). Infotopia enquires as to how, in the information age, we may arrive at the best, most accurate information. Sunstein assesses arrangements by which dispersed information is pooled in order to improve collective decision-making. He evaluates competing methods for aggregating information, including surveys, deliberation, markets, blogs, open source software and wikis.

Sunstein's Infotopia offers four reasons for thinking that information-pooling via mechanical aggregation of votes is superior to discursive sharing of opinions. This article focuses on two of them—the Common Knowledge Effect and Group Polarisation—showing that both phenomena might have perfectly good Bayesian explanations. Far from constituting 'errors', both can actually contribute to truth-tracking in ways that cannot be accomplished via mechanical aggregation of votes alone.

Sunstein argues that democratic theory has recently rested its normative claims on a vast but empirically uninformed optimism about the ability of collective deliberation to lead to morally and rationally better decisions. Once that question is considered empirically, he argues, deliberation turns out to be mixed at best, and a disaster at worst. I want to suggest that Sunstein exaggerates the claims of the deliberative democrats, and interprets the empirical literature against deliberation in a way that appears, even based on his own descriptions of the studies, to be unfairly biased against the value of deliberation.

Cass Sunstein details intrinsic flaws in group discussion, even in ideal deliberation, and draws attention to prediction markets and information-aggregation devices on the internet as supplements to discussion. I respond that the supposed flaws do not affect ideal deliberation, and that the evaluation of group discussion is too pessimistic: there are alternative hypotheses to account for his findings, and there are doubts about their external validity. Also, I contend that his evaluation of prediction markets and internet devices is too optimistic. The markets have failed miserably, and the internet is vulnerable to astroturfing by the powerful and wealthy.

'(I've Never Met) a Nice South African'

Virtuous Citizenship and Popular Sovereignty

What marks the difference between modern and non-modern political philosophy? Such a question could be understood in two ways. On the one hand, it could be understood as a question concerning formal differences between modern and pre/non-modern modes of philosophising. On the other hand, it could be understood as a question about the changing nature of the object of the philosophical enterprise, namely a question concerning the historical differences between modern and pre-modern (domestic as well as international) politics. Contemporary political philosophy has focused primarily on meeting the first, formal, challenge. By failing to take proper account of the effects that major historical developments—especially the rise of commercial society and global market economy—have had on the character of political life, much of contemporary political theory tend to view its enterprise as essentially an extension to or an application of ethics. What is needed instead is a 'political economy'. Political philosophy must rise to this challenge if it wishes to help us contend with our present predicament. The final part of the article outlines a realist, non-moralistic, political philosophy which takes account of the interplay between human 'sentiments' and 'reason' in a commercial world order.