early intimations of epistocracy Plato Aristotle John Stuart Mill - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

early intimations of epistocracy

Plato Aristotle John Stuart Mill From Roman Republic to Enlightened Absolutism

Basis for Modern Challenge

Two consequences of the ‘moral order’ of modernity

The meta-democratic assumption The sceptical mind

Estlund’s Epistocracy is not

 Plutocracy  Timocracy  Oligarchy  Aristocracy  Stratocracy  Theocracy  Bureaucracy  Democracy

Taking expertise seriously

 No single logic of rule attractive (including democracy, which

today needs supplements of bureaucracy and epistocracy)

 Most other logics of rule unappealing  Often other logics of rule are a kind of ‘epistocracy by proxy’

The modern paradox of expertise in politics

• cultural and structural

Cultural

 Post-metaphysical demand for knowledge-based government  That knowledge remains fragile and subject to challenge over competence

and good faith Structural

 Decline of representative nexus  Self-referential response of government exacerbates decline

The EU in epistocratic terms

 The EU a natural outgrowth of ‘paradox’ of expertise  Also a unique form of bureaucratic discipline to ensure mutual inter-polity

self-binding

Eurocracy a fusion of these two tendencies – we see this in its

 Political Culture  Institutional Architecture

Pathological Tendencies

 Greater Distancing  Scapegoating/Displacement  Ulysses in bad faith  Ambivalence over means and ends  Populist target