Ordinary citizens chosen at random would govern better than a university's faculty.
William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in 1963 that he would rather be governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand members of the Harvard faculty. The line became a standard statement of conservative scepticism about rule by experts.
In practice
- A panel of randomly selected citizens produces a practical recommendation that a committee of specialists could not agree on.
- A village meeting settles a dispute that the council's consultants had studied for a year.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is incentive: ordinary citizens bear the results of their decisions and carry fewer ideological commitments. Another is diversity, which can improve a group's judgement.
- In its favour
- Consistent with research on the limits of expert political forecasting and with the record of citizens' assemblies chosen by lot.
- Against it
- Specialists outperform laypeople on many technical questions, and a randomly chosen body can be steered by whoever frames its options. Critics read the line as anti-intellectualism rather than a claim about government.
- Standing
- Compare fox and hedgehog forecasting and the wisdom of crowds.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- The paradoxes of democracy and the quips of partisans