The epistemology of democracy

According to Elizabeth Anderson, democracy concerns how people discuss, analyze and give their feedback on important problems and issues within the framework of their institutions. She explains that democracy is grounded on three functions—the participation of people from diverse backgrounds, the active interaction of the electorate by way of thematic discussions of public issues, and periodic elections that serve as feedback mechanism for leaders. Ancient Greece, Josiah Ober argues, was a successful democracy because of knowledge management.

Public interest is secured by engaging people with a diverse knowledge of any matter at hand. In this sense, democracy ensures the presence of procedures and systems that allow people to voice their concerns. The epistemic background of participants is important because the interaction of people needs competent inputs from professionals and experts in the field. Democracy is viewed generally as that political system in which human agency plays a crucial role. It matters, however, that there exists a collective approach as to how people build a common knowledge about their government, its structures and practices.

When one asks a random person on the street about Philippine democracy or its politics, the same individual will surely talk about corruption and how the government has been remiss in its mandated duties. This is understandable and honest. Our society is characterized by the never-ending narrative of the rich-poor divide. Expectedly, a poor person who feels shortchanged by a society that is perceived to serve only its elite and educated members will assume that social injustices are a matter of fate and that his or her life depends on how the powerful make intelligent decisions.

But knowledge is quite different from moral virtue. Thus, the health of any democracy cannot be measured by the arbitrary judgments of policymakers in the government, however intelligent they might be. The common man, though less educated, has a stake in the state. For Anderson, the basic democratic norms of “free discourse, dissent, feedback, and accountability function to ensure collectivity.” What this means is that the participation of diverse groups and individuals should not be suppressed because democracy is about how we make all citizens a party to state and nation-building through and by means of fair deliberative processes and systems. Public interest is always a collective interest.

In order to ensure that a just decision on a public concern is arrived at, people need to know the ethical consequences of a project. Usually, the government only considers the clear economic or social benefit of a proposal, but its ethical impact in terms of equitability, inclusiveness and the immeasurable costs to the lives of people is often left to academicians to discuss. But their inputs, as a matter of practice, remain on paper. Obviously, all the problems that we have as a society are things that we have created. Our society is chaotic because some of our public officials invent their own troubles by not adhering to inclusive principles and collective norms.

We cannot do away, of course, with the elites in our society. The state as an organic whole will always have individuals who, by means of intelligence and skill, will surely surpass the capacities of others and, thus, will create greater opportunities for themselves compared to the common tao. Precisely, any conflict in society arises out of the pathology of social injustice and oppression. This leads to the chaotic configuration of the state in which principles and cultures clash, pushing millions more to the margins of history. To attain unity within the democratic state, parties need to sit together and work out the terms of social cooperation. This requires some balancing and for both parties to commit to nation-building rather than to their self-serving ideologies.

Christopher Ryan Maboloc, PhD, teaches philosophy at Ateneo de Davao University.