Against Democracy: New Preface

Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence, and we forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign. Education has spread, but intelligence is perpetually retarded by the fertility of the simple. A cynic remarked that “you mustn’t enthrone ignorance just becau

Faith in the democratic process is in decline. If other systems deliver the goods, and provide prosperity and other results people care about, then the democratic method faces a serious challenge on the basis of the outcomes it produces.

Democracy is inevitably messy, in part because the availability and affect heuristics that guide citizens’ beliefs and attitudes are inevitably biased, even if they generally point in the right direction. Psychology should inform the design of risk policies that combine the experts’ knowledge with the public’s emotions and intuitions.

Depuis la fin du xviiie siècle, tout un courant – très largement majoritaire – de la philosophie politique considère que la démocratie n’est pas possible dans des sociétés devenues à la fois trop grandes et trop complexes pour que les citoyens ordinaires puissent participer aux affaires publiques. L’argument réapparaît très fortement dans les texte