An Epistemic Conception of Democracy Author(s): Joshua Cohen Reviewed work(s): Source: Ethics, Vol. 97, No. 1 (Oct.

, 1986), pp. 26-38 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381404 . Accessed: 27/10/2011 14:00
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An Epistemic Conception of Democracy* Joshua Cohen

Following common practice, Riker'sLiberalism againstPopulismdistinguishes populist from liberal conceptions of democracy.1 Intuitively, populist conceptions emphasize that political participation and public deliberation can serve to articulate and advance a "general will,"while liberal conceptions emphasize the role of regular electoral tests in limiting the power of public officials. Riker assesses these two conceptions in light of social choice theory and draws two main conclusions from that assessment: (1) populism is incoherent and (2) liberalism survives intact. My remarks here begin (in the first section) by discussing three objections to Riker's argument.2 With those objections as background, I then consider (in the second section) what Jules Coleman and John Ferejohn call "the epistemic interpretation of voting" (p. 15) and the role of that interpretation in a populist conception of democracy. The aim of the second section is exploratory. My intention there is not to defend populism but to consider in more detail the structure of epistemic populism and to suggest that it represents a coherent and more plausible interpretation of populism than the version that Riker rejects. LESSONS AND OBJECTIONS Riker describes populism as the view that "the opinions of the majority must be right and must be respected because the will of the people is the
* This paper was originally written in reponse to Jules Coleman's Weingart conference paper on "Democracy and Social Choice" (California Institute of Technology, March 1985). The paper by Coleman and John Ferejohn on "Democracy and Social Choice" that appears in this volume is a descendant of Coleman's paper and pursues several issues that were not prominent in the first draft. To avoid that awkwardness of discussing the unpublished draft, I have (with the exception of n. 2) cited the Coleman-Ferejohn version. I have not, however, changed the substance of my remarks to accommodate the changes between the two versions. 1. William H. Riker, Liberalismagainst Populism: A Confrontationbetweenthe Theoryof Democracyand the Theoryof Social Choice (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982). 2. The first two issues were developed in Coleman's "Democracy and Social Choice," while the third is discussed in Coleman and Ferejohn, pp. 22-24. Partly because of differences in emphasis on the first two points and partly because the third objection was not in Coleman's draft, I have kept my own statement of each of the three difficulties here. Ethics 97 (October 1986): 26-38 t 1986 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/87/9701-0010$01.00

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liberty of the people."3 Riker's populist is thus committed to the existence of a popular will, to the view that liberty consists in obedience to that will, and-what is most important from the standpoint of connecting the theory of democracy and the theory of social choice-to the thesis that the popular will is revealed through voting. According to Riker, social choice theory undermines populism by showing that the third featurethe notion of a popular will revealed through voting-is incoherent. This incoherence is shown in particular by the instability theorems-that is, by the existence of cyclical majorities, by their ubiquity in the face of modest interpersonal variations in preferences, and multidimensional and continuous alternatives, and by the fact that, when majority cycles exist, they cover the entire space of political alternatives.4 Intuitively, the widespread existence of cyclical majorities implies that the outcomes produced by voting do not, in general, have the consistency we require of a will. Riker concludes, therefore, that we should reject populism "not because it is morally wrong, but merely because it is empty."5 But Riker in fact objects not only to the emptiness of populism but also to its morally objectionable consequences. Populism is morally objectionable because the populist identifies the will of the people with the choice of a majority and then uses that identification to defend "populist institutions" that eliminate all constitutional checks on majorities.6 But, Riker maintains, constitutional checks on majorities are required for the preservation of a system of regular elections in which officials can be removed from office. And since a system of regular elections protects "negative liberty" by constraining actually or potentially tyrannical officials through the threat of removal from office, the preservation of elections is required for the preservation of liberty. Populism is, therefore, morally objectionable since it justifies institutions that tend to undermine liberty. Strictly speaking, only the incoherence objection derives from the problem of cyclical majorities. The immorality objection depends on claims about the operations of institutions with and without constitutional limits on majorities and on an implausible account of the institutional commitments of populism. I will therefore put it aside here and come back to the institutional issues below. Returning then to the problem of incoherence, Riker is surely correct that decisions of majorities are sometimes wrong and often hard to interpret.7 And it is true as well that, like all other notions in political theory, the idea of a "popular will" has been subject to considerable abuse. The problem is to find someone who would disagree. In fact, I can think of no one who endorses the view that, for Riker, defines populism:
3. Riker, p. 14. 4. See Riker, chaps. 5-7 for a summary of these instability results. 5. Ibid., p. 239. 6. Ibid., p. 247. 7. On the difficulties of interpretation even in the case of "landslide" elections, see Stanley Kelley, InterpretingElections (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).

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"The opinions of the majority mustbe right and mustbe respected because the will of the people is the liberty of the people." In particular, the populists who provide Riker'schief targets do not identify majority decisions with correct answers. Bentham, for example, distinguished correct answers (given by the principle of utility) from majority opinions, though he also believed that "general consent" provides "the surest visible sign and immediate evidence of general utility."8 And while Rousseau thought that the general willwhich aims at the common good-is 'always right," he denied that it "follow[s] that the people's deliberations always have the same rectitude" since those deliberations may reflect insufficient information, or be dominated by private interests, or subordinated to factional conflict, or addressed to issues on which there is no common interest.9 He concluded that majorityjudgments are good if fallible indicators of the general will under certain specific background conditions, including good information, widespread political participation, absence of factions (or else a multiplicity of factions), limited economic inequality, and the rule of law.10And even with these qualifications, Rousseau did not endorse rule by simplemajorities. Rather, he thought that, on more fundamental issues, it would be reasonable to require larger majorities. In fact, only on "business matters," as distinct from laws, is it in general true that simple majorities should be decisive. l The incoherence argument misses its intended target because Riker assumes that the populist is committed to a purely procedural account of the general will.12 He supposes, that is, that the populist defines the will
8. Cited in Ross Harrison, Bentham (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 214, emphases added. 9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract,ed. Roger D. Masters, trans. Judith R. Masters (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), bk. 2, chap. 3, p. 61. 10. Ibid., bk. 2, chaps. 3, 6, 11; bk. 3, chaps. 12-15; bk. 4, chaps. 1, 2. 11. Ibid., bk. 4, chap. 2. 12. I should say that Riker assumes this generally because he does acknowledge in a footnote that populists need not identify the object of the general will-the common good or the public interest-with the opinions of the majority: "The notion of a public interest, so cherished by populist propagandists, is not, technically speaking, rendered meaningless simply because the populist interpretation of voting is meaningless." But he claims that if populists distinguish the public interest from the outcomes of voting, then they should have no interest in voting: "By definition ... a common or public interest is held in common, so voting is unnecessary to reveal it: Any randomly chosen member of the society can articulate public interest [sic] as well as any other, provided he or she thinks about the interest of the society rather than his or her own private interest" (Riker, p. 291, n. 2). But this is not at all obvious. In considering actual collective choice procedures, as distinct from idealized models ofjustification, why should we suppose that one person who adopts the perspective of a group is as good at judging common interests as the wider group itself? Nor, in this same context, is it obvious that a "randomly chosen member of society" who is given the power to make political decisions is at all likely to make decisions on the basis of "the interest of society rather than his or her own private interests." See Coleman and Ferejohn, pp. 17-18 for additional objections. I will return to these issues in the second section.

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of any particular group in terms of a procedure that yields consistent rankings from sets of individual rankings in general. Because there is no such procedure, he draws the skeptical conclusion that no groups at all have wills. Call a populist who endorses this view a "purely procedural populist." But as the example of Rousseau underscores, populists can hold (and have held) instead that, at least in its broad features, the object of the general will-that is, the common good-is defined prior to majority decisions. Decisions of majorities (sometimes of simple, sometimes of qualified majorities) provide (given appropriate background conditions) "the surest visible sign and immediate evidence" about how best to advance the common good. For such populists-call them "reasonable populists"the judgments of majorities, made under suitable conditions, provide a reasonable, although imperfectprocedurefor determining the general will.'3 Once we shift from purely procedural to reasonable populism, it is no longer clear how the challenge that Riker proposes will go. On one version of reasonable populism-and I will restrict the term "epistemic populism" to this version-votes are expressions of opinions or judgments about how best to advance the common good.'4 And in the second section, I will give a more detailed rendering of this variant of populism. First, however, I will continue the skeptical review. Riker's second conclusion is that a liberal or "Madisonian"conception of democracy withstands the challenge of social choice theory. The reason it survives is that the liberal conception is committed only to the thesis that elections can serve to remove officials from office: "All elections do or have to do is to permit people to get rid of rulers."'5 Elections need only provide "an intermittent, sometimes random, even perverse, popular veto."'6 Since it does not require that voting reveal a coherent popular will, this liberal conception-call it minimal liberalism-is unembarrassed by the absence of such a will. Minimal liberalism obviously faces no problems from social choice theory because nothing in that theory suggests that elections "prevent the rejection of offenders-and that is precisely the condition liberalism requires."'17 Riker rightly emphasizes "how easy it is for liberalism to survive the criticisms of social choice theory."'8

13. On the distinction between pure and imperfect procedures, see John Rawls, A TheoryofJustice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 85-86. 14. Coleman and Ferejohn seem in places (esp. on p. 16) to run together the claim that the general will is not characterized purely procedurally with the conception of votes as expressing judgments of the common good. But these two matters are independent and do not appear together historically. Bentham, for example, endorsed a preference interpretation of voting, while Rousseau held the view that votes are judgments of the common good, but both endorsed the view that voting is an imperfect procedure. 15. Riker, p. 244. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., p. 243. 18. Ibid., pp. 243-44.

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But like the defeat of the populist, the victory of the liberal is too easy.'9 Just as the important forms of populism are reasonable and not purely procedural, the important forms of liberalism are not minimal. For the thesis of minimal liberalism-that it is possible for elections to result in the removal of officials-does not distinguish elections from random assassinations, select bombings, threats of revolution, and military coups. Elections do not create a popular political action or popular vetoes; instead they institutionalize such action and channel it into electoral arenas.20 A liberal defense of elections should show that elections are better at imposing restrictions on rulers than other arrangements-better for example than "a little rebellion now and then." But if the outcomes of elections are genuinely "random," then electoral "discipline"-the possibility of throwing the bums out-does not by itself provide rulers with any reason for not being bums since they would be equally likely to be thrown out if they were not bums. So, if social choice theory really shows that electoral outcomes are random (I do not mean to endorse the claim that it does), then it challenges the rationality of preferences for electoral as opposed to nonelectoral methods of constraining power. If the preference for electoral methods is rational, then the liberal view requires somecoherence in election results, enough, at any rate, to provide potential tyrants with incentives to refrain from grosser violations of liberties. But once the demands for coherence are thus increased, it is unclear why the liberal conception does not run up against the same difficulties as the populist conception. Coleman and Ferejohn come to a broadly similar conclusion about Riker's account of social choice theory and liberalism. In arriving at it, however, they misconstrue Riker's strategy and thus state their objection in a misleading way. They accuse Riker of inconsistency, attributing to him the claims that (1) elections are a good method for protecting "negative liberty"and (2) electoral outcomes are random. But Riker is not inconsistent since his actual claim is weaker than claim 1. He does not say that elections are a good method, only that elections can result in the removal of offending officials. Riker recognizes that what he calls "liberals in the populist period" might have expected more. But when it is "strictly interpreted," liberalism "requires only that it be possibleto reject a putatively offending official, not that the rejection actually occur."'21 The problem in Riker's discussion of liberalism is not that it is inconsistent but, rather, that the minimal liberalism-the "strict interpretation"-that he secures against the challenge of social choice theory is so weak as to be uninteresting. The point of highlighting the distinction between my objection and the
19. Riker responds to this point in the final footnote in the book, but I find his response unconvincing. 20. For an interesting discussion of this issue, see Benjamin Ginsberg, The Consequences of Consent:Elections, CitizenControland Popular Acquiesence(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1982), chap. 3. 21. Riker, p. 243.

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Coleman-Ferejohn criticism is not to quibble about the interpretation of againstPopulismor to indicate a point of substantive disagreement. Liberalism Rather, I want to emphasize that Riker's explication of liberalism, like his account of populism, is nonstandard and seems motivated more by the aim of providing doctrines on which the results of social choice theory can be brought directly to bear than by the plausibility or interest of the doctrines themselves. The third objection concerns the relationship between institutions and incoherent outcomes and follows naturally from the first two points. The reasonable populist holds that democratic decisions can provide evidence for the general will; the liberal holds that they can restrain power. Both require some coherence in outcomes. But Riker suggests that the instability results of social choice theory show that such coherence cannot be expected. This, however, overstates the conclusions about incoherence that follow from those results. For as Riker recognizes, the range of political outcomes can be and is reduced by institutional constraints.22 Outcomes that are consistent with underlying preferences may be rendered effectively inaccessible by, for example, amendment rules, or by the existence of a single-member district plurality system that reduces political alternatives to two parties, or by the restrictions on the political agenda that result from the private control of important political resources.23 Constraints on outcomes that derive from such background conditions may, of course, come at a high price. Stable outcomes can reflect institutional constraints that are "exogenous to the world of tastes and values" as much as they reflect those tastes and values themselves.24 And there is little comfort from the fact that outcomes are confined to a very restricted space if the boundary of the space is fixed by force and fraud or merely by tradition and habit. The fact that outcomes reflect institutional constraints is plainly of great importance. But I do not see that any skeptical conclusions about populist conceptions of democracy follow from it. The fact that outcomes reflect institutions, and not just preferences-that, holding preferences fixed, the outcomes would be quite different if the institutions were different-does not by itself imply that outcomes are morally arbitrary. Instead, it underscores the central role of institutions and the importance to the populist of ensuring that the basic institutions that provide the framework for political deliberation are such that outcomes tend to advance the common good. But this is a point that populists have commonly
22. Riker, pp. 188-92. 23. For recent discussion of resource-based constraints, see Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, On Democracy(New York: Penguin Books, 1983), chap. 3; Thomas Ferguson, "Party Realignment and American Industrial Structure: The Investment Theory of Political Parties vol. in in Historical Perspective," in Research PoliticalEconomy, 6, ed. Paul Zarembka (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1983), pp. 1-82; and Charles Lindblom, Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977), chaps. 13-14. 24. Riker, p. 190.

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emphasized since populists have commonly thought that the primary expression of the general will is precisely in the specification of the basic institutions of property and politics that provide the framework for collective decision making.25 It might, however, be argued that this is not really an out for the populist, at least for the populist who (like Rousseau) construes the justification of basic institutions as itself a collective choice problem. For it might be thought that social choice theory undermines such justifications by showing that they land in paradox. But this is not at all obvious and certainly does not follow from the fact that paradoxes arise on unrestricted domains of preferences. For populist institutionaljustifications can proceed in more ideal terms, abstracting from a wide range of actual preferences, and may be able, as a result of such abstraction, to secure agreement on fundamentals. This is certainly true for Rousseauean populism. Rousseau wanted to find a form of social association in which each member could count on the protection of their person and their goods and yet be autonomous.26 Like the Rawlsian restriction to primary goods, this restriction to common interests in security of the person, securing of basic goods, and autonomy may permit the avoidance of paradox. Whether or not it does, one should be careful not simply to assume that paradox will arise when the problem of political theory shifts to assessing basic institutions. Thus, one version of populism that survives Riker's criticism has a two-tier structure. The general will is characterized in terms of an ideal procedure of deliberation or collective choice, while democratic decision making is construed as an imperfect procedure which, when suitably organized, has the property of providing evidence about how best to achieve the object of the general will. It may, of course, have other desirable properties as well. Coleman and Ferejohn rightly suggest that, even if voting does not produce coherent outcomes, it might nevertheless be true that it "strengthens allegiance, increases competence, develops a sense of community, and the like."27 But the epistemic populist wants to show that democratic decision making also provides evidence about how to advance the general will. And in the discussion that follows, I will fill out this view in more detail. EPISTEMIC POPULISM My remarks on epistemic populism will begin with some comments on "interpretations" of voting. This will be followed by a brief account of epistemic populism and a discussion of some institutional issues in light
25. Rousseau, for example, held that each meeting of the popular assembly should begin with the question, "Should we retain the present form of government?" See Rousseau, bk. 2, chap. 18. 26. Ibid., bk. 1, chap. 6. 27. Coleman and Ferejohn, p. 22.

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of that account. The aim of the discussion is to deepen the response to Riker's criticism of populism by showing that epistemic populism provides a more plausible account of populist ideals than the populism Riker rejects. This will require a fuller characterization of the structure of epistemic populism and a discussion of how that characterization enables us to understand populist views about the framework of collective decision making. Interpretationsof Voting: Explanatoryor Normative Theory? In suggesting populist avenues of response to the problems raised by social choice theory, Coleman and Ferejohn distinguish different interpretations of voting. But it is not clear just what the dimensions are on which they suppose interpretations to differ. In some places they focus on the relationship between voting and the general will (semantic or evidential), in other places on the psychology of voting (judgments about how to advance the common good or expressions of personal preferences). Furthermore, they do not distinguish the different roles that interpretations of voting might play in a conception of democracy. I want to begin my discussion of epistemic populism by clarifying the point of providing an interpretation of voting and bring the other dimensions into the account in due course. One task of an interpretation of voting is to provide a framework for explaining why people vote, what the determinants of their voting decisions are, and how those determinants vary across circumstances: whether, for example, those determinants are in fact judgments of the common good or, rather, assessments of what the candidates are likely to do for me soon on the basis of what they have done for me lately. If this is what is meant by an interpretation of voting, then whether we ought to "interpret" votes as expressions of preferences or as expressions of beliefs about the common good depends on which view, or which combination of views, provides the most plausible explanation of voting behavior. But this is not how I will understand an "interpretation of voting" for the purposes of the present discussion. Rather, I will suppose that an interpretation of voting is part of a normative political theory, in particular, that it is part of an account of the operations of the institutions of a just, democratic society. In presenting such an account, one needs some conception of the determinants of voting in order to characterize the operations of the political iystitutions-for example, whether those institutions are stable and what their outputs are likely to be. A plausible interpretation of voting, for the purposes of a normative theory, need not take current determinants of voting as authoritative, though it also cannot just be made up. For example, if the interpretation is that people vote their opinions of the common good-their beliefs about the general will-rather than just their preferences, then it is important that such voting be psychologically plausible. And it is important as well that it be

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plausible that members of the society would develop such opinions and have incentives for voting on the basis of those opinions. An interpretation of voting for the purposes of explaining voting behavior is relevant to the account of voting in a normative theory. But the reasonableness of the view is not settled by deciding which interpretation best serves explanatory purposes. EpistemicPopulism An epistemic interpretation of voting has three main elements: (1) an independentstandard of correct decisions-that is, an account of justice or of the common good that is independent of current consensus and the outcomes of votes; (2) a cognitive account of voting-that is, the view that voting expresses beliefs about what the correct policies are according to the independent standard, not personal preferences for policies; and (3) an account of decision making as a process of the adjustment of beliefs, adjustments that are undertaken in part in light of the evidence about the correct answer that is provided by the beliefs of others. Thus, the epistemic conception treats processes of decision making as, potentially, rational processes of the formation of common judgments. According to the epistemic populist, the "independent standard" is a "general will" or "popular will." A group has a general will if (1) the members of the group share a conception of the common good; (2) the members regard the fact that an institution or policy advances the conception as a reason for supporting it; (3) it is fully common knowledge that the conception is shared; and (4) the conception is consistent with the members of the society regarding themselves as free and equal.28 To fix matters for the sake of discussion, think of the content of the general will as given by Rawls's requirements of equal basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity, and the difference principle, and of a society regulated by a general will as a society in which there is a publicly shared view that institutions and policies ought at least to satisfy these principles. Agreement on these general principles is, of course, compatible with disagreements about the institutions and policies that are best suited to these principles and their continued satisfaction over time. What the epistemic populist claims is that, when there is a general will, and public deliberation is guided by the principles that define that will, the decisions of majorities about which policies to pursue can provide good evidence about which policies are in fact best. The epistemic populist is not committed to the view that all decisions should be subject to popular judgment-the populist that I have described here does not think that there is a general will on all issues-but, rather, to the claim that on those that bear on the basic principles, majorityjudgments can serve as reasonable and sound indicators of the general will.
28. Condition 4 is intended to capture the idea that the shared interpretation of the common good is not forced-that there is genuinely a shared will.

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How can the epistemic populist support the claim that majorities provide sound evidence about the general will? One reason is provided by arguments modeled on the Condorcet jury theorems. Such arguments attribute a "judgmental competence" to the members of a group-that is, a probability of getting the correct answer as specified by an independent standard. They then assess decision rules by considering the probability that a group will arrive at a correct answer by using those rules. So, for example, if there are two alternative policies, and the average individual competence is greater than 0.5, then the probability of getting the correct answer from a simple majority increases rapidly as the size of the group increases. On the other hand, if average competence drops below 0.5, then confidence in the judgments of majorities diminishes as group size
increases.29

The jury theorems thus support the confidence of the populist in majority decisions-but subject to two obvious constraints, namely, that individuals are good judges and that individuals who are good judges vote their judgments and not their preferences. But the epistemic populist cannot simply assume that judgmental competences are fixed and high, and that individuals vote their judgments. Instead, the populist must be attentive to the way that rules and the collective choice institutions in which they operate shape the competence and motivations of voters. Furthermore-and here I depart from Coleman and Ferejohn-the epistemic populist cannot be satisfied with assessing procedures in terms of their reliability, apart from any public confidence in the reliability of the procedures.30 For the populist needs to be concerned as well about the confidence of those who choose according to the procedures that their procedures produce decisions that conform to the general will. Thus, in assessing the institutions and rules that shape collective decisions, the epistemic populist needs to consider more than their capacity to produce good collective decisions from competent individual judgments. In the discussion that follows I consider three such aspects and illustrate how the concern to accommodate each helps to explain characteristic epistemic populist views. 1. Judgmental competence cannot be taken for granted since levels of political cognition plausibly depend on institutional conditions.3' Because of this dependence of political cognition on institutional context, an
29. For a more precise statement of this generalized Condorcet theorem and a summary of related jury theorems, see Bernard Grofman, Guillermo Owen, and Scott Feld, "Thirteen Theorems in Search of Truth," Theoryand Decision 15 (1983): 261-78. On the relevance of the Condorcet theorems to a Rousseauean view, see Brian Barry, "The Public Interest," Proceedingsof the AristotelianSociety 38 (1964): 9-14. 30. Coleman and Ferejohn, p. 17. 31. See Walter Dean Burnham, "Theory and Voting Research," in The Current Crisis in American Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 78-87; and V. 0. Key, Public Opinion and AmericanDemocracy(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), esp. pt. 6.

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epistemic populist needs to consider the effects of the framework of collective decisions on such competence, that is, on the inputs to the decisions. Concern with the effects of different forms of decision making on judgmental competence is reflected in the populist emphasis on the educative effects of political participation.32 And it is reflected as well in other populist concerns about the framework of collective decision making. So, for example, consider a political system in which there is a singlemember-district plurality system, and, as a consequence, considerable barriers to the development and persistence of third parties.33 Partly as a result of this system, there are in fact only two parties, and the two parties are close on the issues. Their closeness, in turn, reduces the scope of public political debate and dampens interest and involvement in politics. Reduced interest and involvement may then diminish judgmental competence, and this diminishing may in turn prompt the continued narrowing of the scope of political debate. This provides the epistemic populist with a reason for supporting a system of proportional representation, though this consideration needs, of course, to be balanced against the disadvantages of proportional representation systems. Or, consider a system in which political information is largely subsidized by interested private actors. Such a system may also diminish judgmental competence by producing systematic biases in the information on which judgments are based. And even if the information is in fact reliable, citizens may tend to discount it in virtue of its source and may suppose that uninformed judgments are as good as beliefs based on available "information." And so the epistemic populist has some reason for dissatisfaction with arrangements in which political debate and competition is largely subsidized out of private resources. 2. If individuals are reasonably good judges about how to advance the common good, and if they vote their judgments, then there can be confidence in the outcomes. But the epistemic populist cannot assume that the mere existence of a general will is sufficient to provide individuals with an incentive to vote their judgments of the common good rather than their personal preferences. For even if there is a general will, and there are sound judgments about what promotes the common good, individual preferences may still conflict with those judgments, and the decision procedures themselves can tempt people to vote those preferences-for example, by encouraging the belief that others are likely to be so tempted. Just as it is unreasonable to suppose that people never resist such temptations, so, too, it is unreasonable to think that all incentive problems are solved simply by the existence of moral and solidaristic motivations. So, in assessing the decision procedures, we need to know
32. See Pateman for a discussion of these concerns. 33. E. E. Schattschneider, Party Government(New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1942), p. 75; Maurice Duverger, Political Parties (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1954), p. 217; and Anthony Downs, An Economic Theoryof Democracy(New York: Harper & Row, 1957), p. 124.

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what the inputs to the procedures are likely to be, and this depends partly on the sorts of motivations that the procedures themselves encourage. Concerns about such incentive problems provide the epistemic populist with a rationale for placing some issues out of the reach of simple majorities. Rousseau, for example, recognized the problem of temptation, and it led him to restrict popular decision making to votes on laws, rather than the implementation of those laws in particular cases. The thought was that the impact of laws was sufficiently indirect and uncertain that citizens would be able to put their preferences or "particular wills" aside in their deliberations. Similarly, there are cases in which we know that we are subject to temptation-for example, the temptation to interfere with free expression because we are angered by its content-and therefore likely to come to incorrect collective decisions if we were able to decide these matters by simple majorities. 3. Coleman and Ferejohn suggest that the populist can appeal to a reliability theory of justification on which procedures are justified if, in fact, they are more likely than alternatives to yield correct outcomes, quite apart from the views of citizens about the reliability of the procedures. But considerations of reliability are too narrow here. For political procedures are not just ways of shaping inputs and turning them into decisions. They also lend legitimacy to the outcomes. The populist does not simply want procedures that in fact produce outcomes that are more likely to be correct than alternative procedures-that is, procedures that are in fact reliable apart from their legitimacy effects. It should also be manifest that they have the property of producing good outcomes. That is, the populist wants procedures that are reliable, and that citizens have reason to expect to be reliable as well. The concern about public confidence in the reliability of procedures is reflected in populist concerns about the funding of the political process and the ways that different funding schemes shape the political agenda and the strategies of political actors. Even if it were true that decisions that result from publicly and privately funded campaigns would in fact be exactly the same, still, doubts about the reliability of decisions are reasonable in the latter case. Similar considerations might be reflected in views of populists who support an expanded use of referenda. Suppose that there are two ways of organizing referenda that would in fact yield exactly the same outcomes. But on the first, there are always two votes taken at six-month intervals, while on the second, only one vote is taken. Even if they would in fact yield exactly the same outcomes,'still, it is reasonable to prefer the former because of the greater confidence in the deliberative character of the process and the increased confidence in the outcomes that results.34
Participatory 34. For a proposal along these lines, see Benjamin Barber, StrongDemocracy: Politicsfor a New Age (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 288-89. For doubts about referenda, see Riker, p. 251.

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These remarks about epistemic populism are, as I indicated at the outset, not intended as an argument for populism. Rather, the aim has been to further substantiate the doubts expressed in Colemand and Ferejohn and in the first section of my discussion about the force of Riker's criticisms of populism. Populism is not a precise theory, and there are many ways to elaborate its central commitments. The purely procedural populism criticized by Riker is one interpretation of populism. But that interpretation offers, I think, a far less plausible rendering of populist ideals and institutional concerns than the epistemic populism I have sketched here. Riker, I conclude, overstates the major conclusion of his assessment of populism. He has shown that one interpretation of populism is incoherent, and that social choice theory can serve to clarify other interpretations. He has not, however, shown that populism itself should be rejected as empty and incoherent.