Eric Shoemaker

In this paper, I argue that on an equality-based theory of democracy's value, randomly selecting legislators is more democratic than electing them. In sections 1 and 2, I describe how a legislature composed of randomly selected legislators might operate and what an equality-based theory of democracy's value consists in. In section 3, I evaluate arguments made in support of election-based democracy by democratic theorists and demonstrate why these arguments fail on their own terms. In section 4, I argue that when compared to electing legislators, randomly selecting legislators better answers to four democratic ideals embedded in equality-based theories of democracy's value.

For a given decision, when an undemocratic procedure would result in a good outcome, and a democratic procedure would result in a bad outcome, which decision procedure ought we to use? Epistemic democrats, such as Joseph Schumpeter, argue that all else being equal, we should prefer the procedure with the good outcome. Schumpeter’s argument for this position is that we must reject the view that only democratic procedures matter when evaluating government institutions (pure proceduralism), and the only alternative to pure proceduralism that can coherently describe the relationship between democracy and the public interest is pure instrumentalism. I argue that Schumpeter’s argument for epistemic democracy does not succeed. In this paper, I outline three alternative ways of conceiving of the relationship between democracy and the public interest, which I call evaluative dualism, impure instrumentalism, and impure proceduralism. I explain how, with any of these three alternative views, we can evaluate government institutions without rejecting the intrinsic value of democratic procedures or the public interest.