The epistocracy debate has turned largely on the character of the electorate-what voters know, whether competence filters can be designed well, and what filtered selection produces. Another strand has focused on the legitimacy of epistocratic justifications. I ask instead about the equilibrium effects of the institution. Epistocracy shifts some political authority from the median voter toward citizens selected on competence grounds, and existing critiques press legitimational, epistemic, abuse-based, and demographic objections against such proposals. I develop a different objection, focusing on one especially plausible form of epistocracy: Jason Brennan's epistocratic veto, a competence-selected council empowered to override legislation it judges incompetent. Drawing on Acemoglu and Robinson's account of democratization, I argue that the franchise solves a credible-commitment problem between elites and the poor under conditions of revolutionary threat: universal suffrage puts redistributive authority in majority hands in a way elites cannot easily reverse, because reversing it requires revoking the franchise itself. The institutionally realistic veto hands some of that authority back to a body whose preferences systematically diverge from the median voter's, reintroducing the commitment problem suffrage solved. I give empirical and theoretical reasons to worry that the magnitude of the problem could potentially be significant, while its actual size (and its comparison with democracy's own commitment problems) remains an open empirical question. A formal appendix maps the veto to Acemoglu and Robinson's imperfect-democracy parameter and shows that the range of conditions under which democratic institutions avert revolution strictly shrinks.
ABSTRACT Lottocracy is a novel political arrangement that replaces elected politicians with ordinary citizens selected at random. It is unlike any political system that currently exists, so it is natural to have anxiety about how it would work in practice. To mollify these concerns, many lottocrats point to the successful performance of mini‐publics as evidence that lottocracy would work well, if tried. This inference resembles a claim about external validity, I argue, and develop a framework for evaluating it by relying on work from the social sciences and philosophy of science about when such claims are warranted. With this framework in hand, I show that mini‐publics teach us little about how lottocracy would work in practice, although the strength of this conclusion depends on which specific version of lottocracy is under consideration. Mini‐publics, however, do provide evidence about the abilities of ordinary citizens more generally, undermining some of the strongest claims about their lack of political competence. The framework developed here applies to a broader class of arguments in political philosophy: arguments that use the performance of existing institutions to predict how similar but untried institutions would perform.
ABSTRACT The submission of rap lyrics as inculpatory evidence (Rap on Trial) is an active prosecution tactic deployed in United States criminal trials. In this paper, I argue that interpretive ambiguity in rap lyrics is exploited in Rap on Trial cases, constituting a novel form of discursive injustice: extractive discursive injustice. Rap, a historically Black American artform, has core oral‐traditional elements such as its usage of Signifyin(g) that render it interpretably ambiguous. Utilizing the concept of hermeneutical impasses, I explain how a pernicious interpretation of rap lyrics nonetheless receives evidentiary uptake, revealing a crucial junction where injustice seeps into the courtroom. I argue that two speech act‐theoretic sites of injustice are present in Rap on Trial cases, detailing how one strain—discursive injustice—occurs. In doing so, I theorize novel forms of constitutive refusal and discursive injustice that occur when an utterance is extracted from one conversational context and deposited into another. I argue these are distinct from traditional forms in the method of arisal, though congruent with their function and display. I conclude by addressing an objection questioning the denial of truth‐telling value within rap lyrics and considering how a valid evidential use of rap lyrics might occur.
Aristotle's analysis of stasis in Book V of the Politics offers a striking example of "distinctively political thought," as advocated by Bernard Williams's political realism, and in contrast to the moralist approach exemplified by John Rawls. Aristotle identifies disputes over justice, driven by partial and conflicting conceptions of equality, as a principal cause of civil conflict, advocating institutional measures to manage such disagreements rather than relying on citizens converging on a correct understanding. This focus on stability as the first function of politics, aimed at preventing constitutional breakdown, parallels Williams's "first political question" and emphasizes the pragmatic safeguarding of order to avert catastrophe. By contrast, Rawls treats politics primarily as a means to realizing justice, positing that stability depends on an overlapping consensus. The paper critiques Rawls's neglect of the historical-institutional foundations of liberalism, his underestimation of the durability of modi vivendi, and his ideal-theoretic abstraction from the circumstances of politics. Aristotle's realist alternative provides a more plausible framework for understanding the relationship between justice and politics-a necessary corrective to Rawlsian political moralism.
ABSTRACT In The Democratic Marketplace , Lisa Herzog offers a damning indictment of democratic capitalism. Among other things, she argues that capitalism has led to increased inequality, fosters an unhealthy culture of competition, that it is bad for the environment, and that it is ultimately bad for democracy itself. To save democracy we must pursue various reforms: we need to address economic inequality; we must abjure the unsustainable pursuit of economic growth and instead democratically determine the functions of the economy; and we should give citizens more time for meaningful civic engagement. In this review essay I push back in defense of democratic capitalism, arguing that while Herzog overstates the negative aspects of capitalism, she also greatly understates its many benefits. Additionally, I show that her own distinctive proposals for how to democratize the economy face serious issues that should not be overlooked. Overall, expanding the scope of democratic politics is not as promising as many seem to think, while democratic capitalism is unjustifiably underappreciated.
