When Private Knowledge Shapes Public Rule: Nonprofit Epistemic Power and Democratic Authority

My contribution aims to examine the kind of epistemic political authority that can be exercised by nonprofit organizations and to discuss its implications for democratic authority. Far from being shaped by elected officials alone, the content of democratic decisions is influenced and informed by a myriad of private entities that provide knowledge, expertise, and unique perspectives to policymakers. Among them, nonprofit organizations such as lobbies, citizens’ interest groups, expert committees, and think tanks are non-negligible actors: they can shape political agendas, structure information, inform the concrete implementation of public policies, and exert influence during parliamentary or pre-parliamentary discussions. While these actors do not control what is decided—lacking authority in a practical sense—they nevertheless help shape what is decidable through the exercise of their epistemic political authority. Without calling their permissibility into question, the epistemic contribution of nonprofit organizations raises significant concerns for democratic authority. Their interventions are defined entirely by their own priorities: they decide unilaterally which issues to push, what evidence to produce, and which reasons to advance, guided by interests and values that need not be democratically accountable. Since their influence is sustained by unequally distributed resources, nonprofit organizations risk disproportionately shaping which voices are heard and which policy options are considered. As a result, they may steer democratic decisions toward their own factional priorities rather than toward the interests of the broader citizenry. For this reason, assessing the justification for democratic government requires careful consideration of how these private epistemic authorities influence democratic decision-making. I propose to conceptualize epistemic political authority as the claim of a morally permissible power to contribute to political decisions and to analyse how such authority can be exercised. This will allow me to discuss the implications of these claims for the normative evaluation and justification of democratic authority.