TY - JOUR
T1 - Epistemic aspects of representative government
AU - Goodin, Robert E.
AU - Spiekermann, Kai
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright European Consortium for Political Research 2011.
PY - 2011/8/22
Y1 - 2011/8/22
N2 - The Federalist, justifying the Electoral College to elect the president, claimed that a small group of more informed individuals would make a better decision than the general mass. But the Condorcet Jury Theorem tells us that the more independent, better-Than-random voters there are, the more likely it will be that the majority among them will be correct. The question thus arises as to how much better, on average, members of the smaller group would have to be to compensate for the epistemic costs of making decisions on the basis of that many fewer votes. This question is explored in the contexts of referendum democracy, delegate-style representative democracy, and trustee-style representative democracy.
AB - The Federalist, justifying the Electoral College to elect the president, claimed that a small group of more informed individuals would make a better decision than the general mass. But the Condorcet Jury Theorem tells us that the more independent, better-Than-random voters there are, the more likely it will be that the majority among them will be correct. The question thus arises as to how much better, on average, members of the smaller group would have to be to compensate for the epistemic costs of making decisions on the basis of that many fewer votes. This question is explored in the contexts of referendum democracy, delegate-style representative democracy, and trustee-style representative democracy.
KW - Condorcet Jury Theorem
KW - Federalist papers
KW - epistemic democracy
KW - referendum
KW - representative government
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84875957371&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S1755773911000245
DO - 10.1017/S1755773911000245
M3 - Article
SN - 1755-7739
VL - 4
SP - 303
EP - 325
JO - European Political Science Review
JF - European Political Science Review
IS - 3
ER -