Equality Over Competence? An Epistemological Argument Against the Priority of the Epistemic Requirements of Democracy

In the field of deliberative democracy, scholars face a challenge: how the different elements making up the democratic legitimacy of political systems should relate to one another? Should we prioritize the production of substantially “good” decisions (epistemic element)? And if so, what criteria must be used? Or should we focus on giving each citizen equal opportunities to shape decision-making processes (proceduralist element)? Such questions have crucial importance when designing democratic innovations. My hypothesis is that an analysis of the epistemological structure of political judgments could answer this conundrum. This investigation shows that political judgments have plural epistemic grounds and comprise an irreducible volitional moment. This has three normative consequences: 1) Ideally, each citizen must have an equal opportunity to exercise her discretionary will after having transformed her perspective through deliberations. Being included in a decision-making process merely as an epistemic input is not normatively sufficient. 2) Under non-ideal conditions, procedural values should have priority over epistemic ones. For example, mechanisms to ensure an equal distribution of decisional power should be prioritized over improving the quality of the judgments of a few decision-makers. 3) Yet it does not mean epistemic requirements should be completely abandoned. On the contrary, the epistemic analysis presented here could help better understand these requirements.