Civic Learning on Campus: Bringing Political Science In Mini-Conference I: Rethinking Citizen Competence in Democratic Theory and Practice

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Part of Mini-Conference

• Civic Learning on Campus: Bringing Political Science In Mini-Conference I

Session Description

One of the most long-running debates in political science concerns the competence of citizens and the implications for what we can expect from democracy. It is 80 years since Schumpeter spoke of “a lower level of mental performance” when citizens engage politics. Skeptical empirical researchers and more enthusiastic normative theorists can continue to talk past each other. Recently the debate has moved in a more productive direction that seeks not either positive or negative sweeping generalization about citizen capacities, but rather looks at the precise circumstances under which competence is revealed or absent. The big difference appears to be between solitary reasoning, where incompetence, ignorance, and bias dominate, and interactive reasoning, where (depending on the precise conditions) competence, knowledge, and reasonableness can come to the fore. This roundtable will build upon the recent contributions in this idiom of Chambers (2019), Farrell et al (2022), Niemeyer et al (2023), and Minozzi et al (2023), with participants from the authors of all of these papers. The precise questions to be addressed in this roundtable include:
• How adequate is the existing empirical investigation of competence in interactive settings?
• What do we know for sure about the conditions that either facilitate or obstruct competence, and what now needs to be researched in light of what we do not know?
• How do we reconcile this evidence with more skeptical findings from social and political psychology?
• Is it possible to apply lessons learned from the conditions that promote effective reasoning in micro contexts (such as deliberative forums) to the macro level?
• How do these lessons apply to both formal institutions, and more informal communicative practices?
• Does the macro level require a different kind of inquiry when it comes to studying the interactive nature of reasoning?

References

Simone Chambers, “Human Life is Group Life: Deliberative Democracy for Realists”, Critical Review (2018)

Henry Farrell, Hugo Mercier, and Melissa Schwartzberg, “Analytical Democratic Theory: A Microfoundational Approach”, APSR (2022).

William Minozzi, Ryan Kennedy, Kevin M.Esterling, Michael A. Neblo and Ryan Jewell, “Testing the Benefits of Public Deliberation”, AJPS (2023)

Simon Niemeyer, Francesco Veri, John S. Dryzek, and André Bächtiger, “How Deliberation Happens: Enabling Deliberative Reason”, APSR (2023)

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Chair

• Simone Chambers University of California, Irvine

Presenters

• John S. Dryzek University of Canberra

• Henry Farrell Johns Hopkins University

• Hugo Mercier University of Pennsylvania

• Melissa A. Schwartzberg New York University

• Simon J. Niemeyer University of Canberra

• Michael Neblo Ohio State University