Deliberation, cognitive diversity, and democratic inclusiveness

an epistemic argument for the random selection oF Representatives

Helene Landemore

pp. 1209-1231

in: Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij, Klemens Kappel, Nikolaj Pedersen (eds), The epistemology of inclusiveness, Synthese 190 (7), 2013.

Abstract

This paper argues in favor of the epistemic properties of inclusiveness in the context of democratic deliberative assemblies and derives the implications of this argument in terms of the epistemically superior mode of selection of representatives. The paper makes the general case that, all other things being equal and under some reasonable assumptions, more is smarter. When applied to deliberative assemblies of representatives, where there is an upper limit to the number of people that can be included in the group, the argument translates into a defense of a specific selection mode of participants: random selection.