Dietrich, Franz and Spiekermann, Kai 
ORCID: 0000-0003-4983-5589
(2013)
Epistemic democracy with defensible premises.
Economics and Philosophy, 29 (1).
pp. 87-120.
ISSN 0266-2671
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Abstract
The contemporary theory of epistemic democracy often draws on the Condorcet Jury Theorem to formally justify the `wisdom of crowds'. But this theorem is inapplicable in its current form, since one of its premises -- voter independence -- is notoriously violated. This premise carries responsibility for the theorem's misleading conclusion that `large crowds are infallible'. We prove a more useful jury theorem: under defensible premises, `large crowds are fallible but better than small groups'. This theorem rehabilitates the importance of deliberation and education, which appear inessential in the classical jury framework. Our theorem is related to Ladha's (1993) seminal jury theorem for interchangeable (`indistinguishable') voters based on de Finetti's Theorem. We prove a more general and simpler version of such a theorem
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJourna... |
| Additional Information: | © 2013 Cambridge University Press |
| Divisions: | Government |
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) J Political Science > JF Political institutions (General) |
| Date Deposited: | 25 Apr 2013 11:01 |
| Last Modified: | 13 Nov 2024 21:12 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/46542 |
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