On the Delegitimising Force of Democracy’s Epistemic Dysfunctions: An Institutional Integrity Account

Democracy endows citizens with political decision-making powers, which are mostly exercised in the context of voting. Yet democratic societies display epistemic dysfunctions – widespread political misinformation or ignorance, epistemic injustices, polarisation, propaganda, etc. – that obstruct the ability of citizens to act as informed and competent political decision-makers. While few would doubt that this is a problem for democracy, whether it is something that impinges on the legitimacy of its institutions is a more complex issue. In this paper I contend that said dysfunctions do, to an extent, undermine democratic legitimacy. However, I explain this in terms that diverge from the more common instrumentalist approach, which focuses on their impact on the quality of political outcomes. I argue, instead, that said dysfunctions have delegitimising effects because they undercut at least one important precondition for legitimate political decision-making. Namely, they undercut the institutional integrity of practices such as voting (as well as political deliberation). They do so by thwarting their ability to achieve their own self-proclaimed goal and normative rationale: a proper joint co-authorship of political decisions by citizens. This amounts to a corrosion of the conditions that are meant to confer authoritativeness to democratic decision-making that is normatively significant regardless of its impact on the quality of political outcomes. The argument is developed as follows: (1) Building on similar accounts in the literature, I spell out and support the key premise that deficits in institutional integrity impinge on the legitimacy of institutional practices. (2) I contend that the normative rationale of democratic decision-making practices such as voting - and thus the standard against which their integrity is to be assessed - is that of achieving a broad ideal of joint co-authorship, where this means securing that citizens reach, together, political decisions that they can acknowledge as their own. (3) I argue that political equality and deliberative inclusiveness are not sufficient to secure a proper joint co-authorship of political decisions. Proper joint co-authorship requires that citizens uphold conduct that is consistent with its demands, which in turn requires a meaningful connection between their political beliefs or judgements and the political issues they are called upon to address when they vote. Since said meaningful connection rests on epistemic preconditions such as responsiveness to valid testimony or understanding, we should conclude that proper joint co-authorship rests on epistemic preconditions. (4) I explain how the view supports a novel account of the delegitimising force of epistemic dysfunctions in democracy. By severing the meaningful connection between political beliefs and political issues that is necessary for a proper decision-making conduct by citizens, epistemic dysfunctions undermine some of the conditions required for institutions like voting to achieve their self-proclaimed goal. In doing so, they create integrity deficits that have delegitimising effects regardless of their ultimate impact on political outcomes. I conclude by exploring the implications of the account for normative democratic theory.