In Citizen Knowledge, Lisa Herzog challenges thinkers like Jason Brennan and Brian Caplan who call for a reduced scope of popular rule and correspondingly greater role for technocratic expertise or markets. Herzog argues instead for the primacy of democracy, not just normatively, but epistemically. Approaching her analysis from a perspective she calls “democratic institutionalism,” Herzog examines how the relationship between markets, experts, and democratic practices needs to be recalibrated in order to achieve better epistemic outcomes. In her account, democratic deliberation has priority over markets because it constitutes the arena in which we discuss the frameworks of markets, and these frameworks have a decisive impact on whether markets actually achieve the epistemic goals their defenders ascribe to them. Democratic deliberation has priority over knowledge generation in expert communities because it is able to integrate different forms of knowledge and challenge their claims by questioning the assumptions on which they are based and the appropriateness of the process through which they were created (84).
Herzog’s core argument in Citizen Knowledge is that we need to reform each of the three knowledge-generating processes—markets, expert communities, and democratic practices—to enhance its distinctive epistemic capacity and improve its interaction with the other two mechanisms. Instead of using epistemic arguments for deregulating markets, she contends that this line of thinking needs to be turned on its head, such that we recognize and act on the fact that the epistemic benefits of markets can be reaped only when those markets have been carefully designed and regulated (145). Moreover, a model of “accountability,” premised on an assumption of self-interested behavior and executed via a framework of rules, is insufficient to ensure a constructive relationship between expert communities and society at large, according to Herzog. Instead, she argues for supplementing an accountability model with what she calls a “partnership model,” which understands the relationship between expert communities and society at large in moral as well as functional terms and emphasizes the need for trust (178–80).
While granting the positive potential of lottocratic decision-making bodies of the sort that theorists like Joseph Fishkin and Hélène Landemore have championed, Herzog counters that, before we invest all our hopes in the capacity of new institutions to save democracy, we need to repair existing ones. We also need to develop epistemic infrastructure for all citizens, not just ones who happen to be chosen for lottocratic forms of participation (220). She thus lays out a vision for reinvigorating schools, the media, and civil society organizations, with a particular focus on unions. Herzog devotes an entire chapter also to the epistemic benefits of social justice, arguing that, the greater the socio-economic inequalities, the more difficult it becomes for citizens to develop trust and interact in a deliberative way. In this vein, Herzog’s engagement with Miranda Fricker’s work on epistemic injustice throughout the book shows her awareness of the extent to which questions about inclusion and about collective intelligence are intimately bound up.
The relationship between knowledge and popular rule has been a theme in Western political thought since its founding in Ancient Greece. Citizen Knowledge is a wide-ranging and valuable contribution to this long-running conversation. Herzog synthesizes an impressive range of scholarship from political science, philosophy, and economics as well as related disciplines; those already working in political epistemology as well as scholars new to the field can learn from the breadth of literature with which she engages. Indeed, the consistent attention to how to realize democratic ideals in concrete institutions and practices as well as the clear, accessible prose should make this book valuable for political scientists and policy-makers as well as political theorists. A major focus of Herzog’s argument is how market thinking and deregulation of markets in developed democracies around the world have allegedly harmed the epistemic functioning of deliberative processes, expert communities, and markets themselves. The book will thus be of particular interest to those investigating the intersection of economic systems and political processes—though Herzog wisely avoids using the term “neoliberalism” on the grounds that it has become a “fighting word of limited usefulness” (6).
Moreover, Herzog frames her call to recalibrate the relationship between markets, experts, and democratic practices as one way to address the seeming “crisis of democracy” (8, 287). Herzog’s book therefore warrants being read alongside other works that take on this theme, such as Danielle Allen’s 2023 book Justice by Means of Democracy, that do not focus primarily on knowledge generation and processing. What Herzog adds to these conversations is a detailed examination of how the different parts of a political community work together to contribute to its overall epistemic functioning: She turns her lens not just on formal political institutions and regulatory frameworks, but also on the structure of society and people’s attitudes and dispositions. This range is a major strength of the book relative to existing literature in political epistemology, and a key reason why it warrants a wide readership.
Of course, a work with a scope this broad must paint with a relatively broad brush, a limitation Herzog acknowledges (17). Nonetheless, Herzog’s focus on the interrelationship between markets and democracy leaves the relationship between democracy and expert communities underexplored, especially in relation to this theme’s current salience. That said, her reflections on the place of experts in democracy in chapter 8 furnish fodder for future thought, especially when read in conjunction with her subsequent discussion in chapter 10 of the epistemic importance of reducing inequality, not just based on wealth and income but also on status.
When examining social phenomena that inhibit or undermine a society’s epistemic functioning, Herzog focuses primarily on socio-economic inequality. But she grants that this is not the only possible obstacle and notes that partisan polarization may constitute another one (251, n. 4). She briefly considers potential approaches to mitigating partisan polarization near the end of the book and suggests that her previously discussed strategies for reducing inequality would be helpful here too (277–80). Yet she thus leaves the question of how much value pluralism a democratic society can tolerate while still preserving its epistemic functioning open for further inquiry. Given that political cleavages in the United States today to a significant degree map onto broader differences in worldview, this question merits examination. As Herzog herself grants, more research into the preconditions and features of beneficial epistemic cultures is needed (286). I am particularly intrigued by her suggestion that we drop the metaphor of a marketplace of ideas in favor a metaphor of a playful sporting competition, in which “the will to let truth win over falsehood is stronger than one’s attachment to the ideas one brought to the sports field” (114). This seems a valuable ideal for which to strive, but also one very distant from the climate of political contestation we currently inhabit.
