There are both instrumental and intrinsic reasons to value democracy. In short, democracy is valuable instrumentally because
- democracy can assist us in producing laws and policies that protect the rights and interests of citizens,
- democracy more often than other systems produces the right laws and policies (there are epistemic benefits to democratic decision-making), and
- democracy can improve the people in it through increased autonomy and knowledge (Christiano and Bajaj, 2022). Intrinsic reasons to value democracy include self-governance and liberty, the value of public justification and deliberation, and the promotion of equality. We take each of these valuable aspects in turn.
Concerning the instrumental value of democracy, other governmental structures, for example oligarchy or dictatorships, do not protect the rights and interests of citizens as well. Landemore (2013: 3) for example argues that “a democratic decision procedure is likely to be a better decision procedure than any non-democratic decision procedures, such as a council of experts or a benevolent dictator” because of the epistemic benefits gained from civic participation and democratic deliberation. There are also strong correlations to be found between democracies and the protection of core rights (Landman, 2018).
One way to conceptualise these epistemic benefits include Condorcet’s Jury Theorem (Condorcet, 1785). Other ways to understand the epistemic benefits of democracy include the notion of cognitive diversity (Waldron, 1995), the idea that diversity can trump ability (Landemore, 2013; Hong and Page, 2004), and the fact that the citizens within democracies may be better placed to understand and identify problems in society, even if experts may be needed to devise the best solution (Dewey and Rogers, 2012). Condorcet’s Jury Theorem suggests that if we assume that voters are competent, sincere, and statistically independent of each other, then the probability of the right decision being made increases the more voters there are. These conditions however are not always met. For example, voters may lack independence (Anderson, 2008: 133; Estlund, 2008), or importantly in the context of knowledge technologies, AI and big data, some groups may have better or different access to information than others. Finally, we may instrumentally value democracy because of the autonomy and active decision-making role it confers to its citizens. Concerning intrinsic reasons to value democracy, we may value democracy because it ensures citizens have the ability to self-govern (Gould, 1988), the laws democracies make are publicly justified (Habermas, 1996), and it protects and promotes equality amongst its citizens.
There are of course multiple forms and degrees of democracy which offer varying levels of freedom to their citizens. This section has only sought to discuss the benefits of democracy if it were employed in an ideal setting. In reality increasing political polarisation and the erosion of the power of elected representatives may see some democracies move closer to illiberal ones. This is of particular importance to KT4D as the use of knowledge technologies may differ and produce different outcomes under varying levels of citizen freedom. Later versions of this Module, and the social risk toolkit as a whole, will explore the implications of the use of knowledge technologies in different democratic contexts.