Jonathan Wolff: Democracy Lecture 2 - Handout

1. Plato’s Argument

a. Ruling is a skill

b. It is rational to leave the exercise of a skill to the experts

c. The people are not experts

d. In a democracy the people rule

e. Therefore: Democracy is irrational

2. The assumptions’s underlying Condorcet’s argument that in a large enough electorate a majority vote is virtually certain to get to the right answer: (i.e. that the people are expert)

a) Voters trying to get to the truth

b) More likely to be right than wrong

c) Make decisions independently of each other

d) Makes sense to characterise issue as one on which there is truth and falsity

3. The Mixed Motivation Problem

From: Democratic Voting and the Mixed Motivation Problem; Jonathan Wolff, Analysis 1995

1. Suppose voters are choosing between A and B.

2. A is in the interests of 40% and B is in the interests of the remaining 60%.

3. Suppose among the electorate 80% believe B to be for the common good, while 20% believe this of A. Suppose also, that such belief is independent of interests: i.e. the A-believers and B-believers are spread evenly through the electorate.

4. Suppose, finally, that those for whom A is in their interests (the A-interest people) vote according to interest, while the B-interest people vote according to their ideas of the common good.

It follows from these assumptions that 52% of people will vote for A, even though it is in the minority interest, and believed by just 20% of the population to be in the common good. (52% is arrived at as follows: sum all the A-interest people [40% of the population] and 20% of the B-interest [20% of 60 = 12% of the population].)