The Role of Experts in a Democratic Society
Journal Title: Journal of Education Culture and Society - Year 2016, Vol 7, Issue 2
Abstract
Democratic procedures are characterized by the equal status of all citizens participating in the decision-making process. This procedural fairness represents one of the central aspects of democracy's legitimacy-generating potential and should not be rejected or weakened. However, citizens specialize in different areas and inevitably some citizens become more competent (i.e. become experts) regarding some political issues. Democratic procedure would loose much of its appeal if it would be unable to take advantage of the experts' knowledge. In this paper I follow Kitcher and Christiano in embracing a form of division of epistemic (and political) labour - citizens and their political representatives should deliberate and set aims the political community is to pursue, while experts and policy-makers should devise means (laws, public policies and political decisions) needed to achieve the aims set by citizens. However, citizens should not blindly trust the experts - their epistemic authority is derivative and social and academic networks and structures should be employed in order to enable citizens to assess and evaluate experts' competence, but experts' impartiality regarding the issue at hand as well. Consequently, the process should not be unidirectional: experts should be able to help citizens select feasible and coherent aims, while citizens should be able to help experts in creating policies and decisions. Deliberative democracy is an appropriate political setting for this kind of bidirectional communication.
Authors and Affiliations
Ivan Cerovac
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP191140
- DOI 10.15503/jecs20162.75.88
- Views 115
- Downloads 0
The role of space, activities and skills in outdoor education - using visual methods to explore experience in qualitative research
The article is a synthetic analysis of the of space, activities and skills in the Outdoor education model in the context of Using Visual Methods to Explore Experience in Qualitative Research. The gathering of research ma...
Nostalgia after the communist regime in Romania
The present paper focuses on the nostalgia after the communist regime in Romania. This small study is a general overview of the progress I have made during the period between march and august on my PhD thesis regarding t...
STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVES ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF MUSICAL ACTIVITIES IN PRESCHOOL EDUCATION
Aim. The aim of the study is to find out students’ perspectives on the necessity, readiness and disturbing factors of implementing musical activities in preschool. The theoretical part of the paper describes the particul...
The role of Facebook in the process of acquiring information. Own research study
This paper focuses on the social network sites (SNSs), especially on Facebook, and their role in people’s daily life. It focuses on people who are statistically not at risk of the digital exclusion (young and still educa...
Sylvia Plath and the Dangers of Biography
2013 marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Sylvia Plath and was commemorated by a flurry of new publications on the life and work of the late poet. The renewed interest in Sylvia Plath also revitalized the decades-...