Wisdom and Numbers

Social Science Information, Vol. 49, No. 1, PP. 29-59.

By Eerik Lagerspetz

There is a permanent tension between the requirements of substantive goodness or wisdom and those of formal legitimacy in public decision-making. This article charts the various attempts to reconcile the two requirements within decision rules. First, the history of decision rules from medieval times to the 19th century is briefly reviewed. Second, it is shown that the most popular contemporary attempt to justify a decision principle in epistemic terms, based on Condorcet’s famous Jury Theorem, does not actually support democracy. Finally, it is argued that the contemporary theorists of deliberative democracy are ultimately struggling with the same old problem as the medieval political theorists. All attempts to combine the two requirements in a systematic way are doomed to fail.

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