François Blais (Université Laval)

Epistemic theory of democracy and the “voters’ ignorance”
The Condorcet jury theorem (CJT) was generally considered to be of little use to justify or even attempt to improve democracy. The truth conditions of this theorem are simply too far removed from political realities. In their latest work An Epistemic Theory of Democracy Robert E. Goodin and Kai Spiekermann challenge this skepticism and propose to widen the field of application of the CJT to different aspects of contemporary democratic reality. I will discuss one of these challenges: the voters’ competence to make “the right choice” .