'Lay Expertise' and the Limits of Grassroots Politics

A significant number of political scientists notices and regrets the fact of voters’ ignorance, especially in the so-called “post-truth” era. However, political literature, focused on evident successes of populist parties and politicians, does not suggest any solutions to this problem. The philosophical literature, especially theory of epistemic democracy, often tries to prove that the irrationality of majoritarian decisions does not speak against the epistemic function of democracy. I claim that both of these approaches are unsatisfactory, as they do not grasp the complexity of citizens’ alleged (in)competence. This error is often avoided by sociologists of scientific knowledge, and I think that the theory of democracy and, more generally, the theory and philosophy of politics, could gain a lot by taking some of their conclusions into consideration. For example, within social studies for science for the last half-century, a debate reminiscent of political and philosophical argument concerning citizens’ political competence has been carried out. Its two opposing camps are, on the one hand, advocates of broad empowerment of citizens in deciding on technical issues and in technology assessment (Sh. Jasanoff, B. Wynne, R. Sclove), and on the other, advocates of granting a dominant role in this field to scientific experts (C. Sunstein, S. Breyer). In my opinion, the results of this debate lead to surprising conclusions for political theorists. The debate shows that the laymen's relationship to experts is much more complicated than it is generally assumed within political science and philosophy. The rigid division of laymen from experts (often made by political scientists) is widely rejected in social studies of science. For example, the theory of expertise proposed by Harry Collins and Robert Evans pictures laymen with relevant experience as experts deserving participation in decision-making, even on technical issues. Such an expert definition allows a new look at the issue of civic participation. In my opinion, Collins's and Evans's theory implies that local, participatory democracy is the only way to guarantee democratic governance not only with legitimacy, but also with effectiveness. Only on the local arena, laypeople may turn out to be experts worthy of considering in political decision-making for epistemic reasons. In my paper I would like to analyze some contemporary debates concerning participatory democracy from SSK perspective. It will claim that a number of theories, which in philosophical and politico-theoretical literature are presented as participatory, in the light of theory of expertise turn out to be epistocratic. Their authors postulate the transfer of decision-making procedures to the lowest possible levels of governance with a view of improving their effectiveness. These authors do not see, however, that they are switching to the epistocratic position - they recommend such subjective limitation of the group of decision makers that it includes only experts - citizens with experience relevant from the perspective of the problem under consideration. This, in turn, proves that the divisions between democracy and technocracy or democracy and epistocracy are not as obvious as they are usually assumed to be.