Citizen Knowledge: Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy

by Lisa Herzog

Many democratic societies currently struggle with issues around fake news, distrust of experts, a fear of technocratic tendencies. In Citizen Knowledge , Lisa Herzog discusses how knowledge, understood in a broad sense, should be dealt with in societies that combine a democratic political system with a capitalist economic system. How do citizens learn about politics? How do new scientific insights make their way into politics? What role can markets play in processing decentralized knowledge?

Herzog takes on the perspective of "democratic institutionalism," which focuses on the institutions that enable an inclusive and stable democratic life. She argues that the fraught relation between democracy and capitalism gets out of balance if too much knowledge is treated according to the logic of markets rather than democracy. Complex societies need different mechanisms for dealing with knowledge, among which markets, democratic deliberation, and expert communities are central. Citizen Knowledge emphasizes the responsibility of bearers of knowledge and the need to support institutions that promote active and informed citizenship. Through this lens, Herzog develops the vision of an egalitarian society that considers the use of knowledge in society not a matter of markets, but of shared democratic responsibility, supported by epistemic infrastructures. As such, Herzog's argument contributes to political epistemology, a new subdiscipline of philosophy, with a specific focus on the
interrelation between economic and political processes.

Citizen Knowledge draws from both the history of ideas and systematic arguments about the nature of knowledge to propose reforms for a more unified and flourishing democratic system.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics

352 pages, Hardcover

Published September 15, 2023

Reviews

[Hugh Grant-Chapman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. It tries to tackle an interesting and important question: how do democratic polities process information at a societal scale, and how can institutions be reformed to produce better epistemic outcomes? Herzog’s answer to the question involves recalibrating to the epistemic responsibilities of three kinds of institutions—markets, expert communities, and deliberative forums—based on the kinds of knowledge needing to be processed, and the kinds of decisions to be made. Unfortunately, her argument never quite crystallizes into something concrete or very original. The first few chapters start strong, but most of the rest of the book reads like an extended literature review, and a lack of tangible examples makes the whole feel less than the sum of its parts. On the flip side, the book is extremely well-researched, and the many scholarly references provide ample jumping off points for future reading in the area. Hopefully more researchers pick up this area of inquiry moving forward.

[José Pereira · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really excited about the book, but it was quite disappointing. Herzog goes into way too many topics in social epistemology - from markets to social media, from climate experts to mini-publics -, and ends up making very superficial arguments.
Beyond the many smaller arguments she makes throughout the book, she goes for an overall normative goal: to demarcate the limits of different social-epistemic spheres, so as to establish the shape of an epistemically well-ordered society. Herzog believes this is a worthy objective because she attributes many of the problems we see today - e.g., poor public service management, distrust in science/climate skepticism, political polarization and online aggression - to the common intrusion of the logic of one epistemic sphere (say, the logic of democratic deliberation) into another (say, the logic of expert communities).
Her diagnosis is cogent and relevant, but, again, the normative picture she draws in response is extremely ruff and unsystematic. One may come way understanding why the market epistemic logic is specifically useless for public management, for example; but one gets no general principle(s) that may serve as general guidance for navigating the limits of the many spheres that exist.
Herzog makes, nevertheless, some quite interesting points in the book - e.g., about the need for an “epistemic infrastructure” in markets made by non-market epistemic factors, like confidence, information networks, regulations, etc.; or about the epistemic consequences and troubles of unequal societies; and the book provides an interesting, broad literature review on social epistemology. You won’t, thus, come way empty handed.
What’s clearly (and surprisingly) lacking, however, is an illuminating, fresh normative argument (or set of arguments).

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review forthcoming in Ethics.

[shritha · Rating 4 out of 5]

made some insane memories at gourmet kingdom discussing this book. ngl herzog is onto something but i can help but think it's all too idealistic. also such a timely read! + got to meet the author!!