PrologueEpisode IEpisode IIEpisode IIIEpisode IVEpisode VEpisode VI

Let’s Talk

Democracy and Hong Kong’s Constitutional Reform

 

An Imaginary Dialogue between Two Hong Kong Citizens

 

Episode VI

On the Epistemic Power of Democracy

 

Visionary Kong:             I think it is incorrect to dichotomize political equality and the quality of political decisions.

 

I want to argue that the epistemic power of democracy lies in its essential institutions which embody and extend the value of political equality.

 

Pragmatist Hong:          I am glad to learn that the tradeoff between political equality and the quality of political decisions may not be inevitable. Please continue.    

 

Visionary Kong:              I hope I will be able to convince you.

 

The epistemic power of democracy lies in its three constitutive features[1]:

·          diversity

·          discussion/deliberation

·          feedback mechanism

 

For the feature of diversity, let us start with some facts:

·          “Most of the problems democracies are asked to solve are complex, and have asymmetrically distributed effects on individuals according to their geographic location, social class, occupation, education, gender, age, race, and so forth.”[2]

·          Likewise, the effects (both intended and unintended) of policy solutions on individuals are similarly distributed.

·          It is obvious that information on such effects is crucial for devising wise policy solutions.

·          However, as discussed before, individuals are more sensitive to their own interests as well as the harms they undergo. In other words, they are “more familiar with effects of problems and policies on themselves” than on others.

·          Thus, the information about these effects is asymmetrically distributed[3] and is not readily accessible among citizens or to decision-makers.

 

Let us call this asymmetrically distributed information citizens’ situated knowledge. The unique characteristic of situated knowledge is that unless you are in the position of those concerned, you may not be able to have a thorough understanding of such knowledge.

 

Do you believe the facts I just mentioned? Can you follow so far?

 

Pragmatist Hong:            Yes. Please continue.                  

 

Visionary Kong:              The epistemic merits of democracy rest on its requirement of equal consideration of interests and opinions and universal inclusion.

 

Granting the right of political participation to highly diversified individuals can bring individuals from different walks of life to the decision process. This enables democracy to have a capacity to pool the asymmetrically distributed information about the effects of problems and policies on citizens – citizens’ situated knowledge – to the decision-making process.

 

Such a pooling function hence greatly enhances democracy’s power to formulate quality policy solutions.

 

                                           I believe no other political system has comparable information pooling ability.

 

Pragmatist Hong:          I do not totally agree. But please go on.

 

Visionary Kong:             OK.

 

For the feature of discussion/deliberation, I think we have already touched on its role in a democracy in our discussion on majority rule. It is basically a learning process.

 

Deliberation allows citizens and decision-makers to learn from each other’s situated knowledge. This learning process thus allows interests, needs, understandings of problems and policy solutions to be defined or refined.

 

Here let me emphasize the importance of the norm of “participation as equals” for the efficacy and even the existence of deliberation.[4]

 

A citizen’s incentive to listen to another whose views he disagrees with diminishes when the other person does not have equal political rights.[5]  The same disincentive also applies to decision-makers – their incentive to listen to citizens’ voice declines when citizens have no political rights. It is only when citizens’ political rights are fully recognized that their voices will be given respectful hearing and will not fall on deaf ears, regardless of social status.

 

Equally important, a citizen’s incentive to express her views and to think about political matters declines when she has no equal political rights.[6] 

 

Now let me highlight some theorists’ comments on deliberation in this connection.

 

Thomas Christiano says: “Deliberation can help individuals become informed about their interests, the interests they share in common with others, as well as the differences between their interests and others. Furthermore, deliberation forces individuals to think of reasonable accommodations of their interests to others. They must attempt to find fair resolutions to the conflicts between their interests and others. Hence, deliberation plays a part in a learning process and a process of moral accommodation to others that is vital to a democratic society.”[7]

 

In another context, he says: “[P]ublic deliberation increases the chance that the decision making in a democratic society will lead to good outcomes. Public deliberation among equals may well do this job better than public deliberation simpliciter since it increases the information about the interests of all the different groups of people in society, and it brings in a greater variety of perspective on justice and the common good with which to test and compare any particular conception of these matters.”^[8]

 

Amartya Sen considers this learning process as the constitutive role of democracy. He says: public discussions play a crucial role in the formation of “our conception of needs [that relate] to our ideas of the preventable nature of some deprivations” and “our understanding of what can be done about them.”[9]

 

He also suggests: “Political and civil rights, especially those related to the guaranteeing of open discussion, debate, criticism, and dissent, are central to the process of generating informed and reflected choices. These processes are crucial to the formation of values and priorities, and we cannot, in general, take preferences as given independently of public discussion, that is, irrespective of whether open debates and interchanges are permitted or not.”[10]

 

Iris Young conceptualizes democratic deliberation as a process of producing social knowledge – knowledge of the sources of social problems and possible sound solutions to them. She says: “If discussion reflects all social experience, and everyone can speak and criticize freely, then discussion participants will be able to develop a collective account of the sources of the problems they are trying to solve, and will develop the social knowledge necessary to predict likely consequences of alternative courses of action meant to address them. Their collective critical wisdom thus enables them to reach a judgement that is not only normatively right in principle, but also empirically and theoretically sound.”[11]

 

I hope this makes clear to you the contributions of citizens to the political decision-making process.

 

What citizens bring to bear on the political decision-making process is their situated knowledge, not knowledge or expertise in governing.

 

There is a division of intellectual labour[12] in governing in modern democracies: political representatives, government officials, advisors and professionals contribute their respective professional knowledge or expertise; citizens contribute their situated knowledge.

 

Both types of knowledge are indispensable to good governance.

 

Pragmatist Hong:          Division of intellectual labour in governing. This sounds interesting! Please continue.

 

Visionary Kong:             Let me now turn to the feedback mechanism of democracy. By feedback mechanism, I mean such features as periodic elections, a free press skeptical of state power, petitions to government, public opinion polling, protests etc.[13]

 

The feedback mechanism contributes to the quality of governance by subjecting public policies to continuous scrutiny and by feeding information on the consequences or outcomes of policies back to policymakers.

 

Apart from this information role, the mechanism also provides an incentive structure …

 

Pragmatist Hong:          Does not consultative government also emphasize gathering public opinions and deliberation/ discussions?

 

Does not consultative government also allow a free press, petitions, protests and welcome comments on policies?

 

Visionary Kong:             Yes, it does.

 

But consultative government lacks one crucial feature of the feedback mechanism of democracy that greatly undermines its ability to deliver quality decision-making. The feature is periodic elections.

 

As we discussed before, in addition to choosing representatives, elections are also a control mechanism controlling elected representatives. The control mechanism exerts control on elected representatives through the latter’s incentives to be elected to office and not be removed from office.

 

Thus, elections constitute an incentive structure that

·          pushes decision-makers to take citizens’ protests, petitions, complaints, and comments seriously and, in light of all these, to revise policies promptly

·          pushes decision-makers to learn about citizens’ situated knowledge seriously

·          pushes decision-makers to deliberate with citizens on public issues seriously

 

If citizens’ right to vote is denied, decision-makers have far less incentive to listen to their complaints/viewpoints or to respond to them!

 

The feedback mechanism functions to “institutionalize fallibilism and an experimental attitude”^[14] with respect to public policies. These two, I believe you will not disagree, are the necessary conditions for seeking the truth.

 

To conclude, the epistemic power of democracy lies in its

·          diversity of inputs

·          open deliberation

·          feedback mechanism, which provides

-              the information necessary for improving policies

-              the incentive structure that induces policymakers to improve policies promptly, to take citizens’ policy inputs seriously, and to deliberate with citizens seriously.

 

My answer to your question “Will giving equal political rights to Hong Kong people and allowing them to participate in the decision-making of the governing process improve the quality of governance in Hong Kong?” is affirmative.

 

Have I persuaded you?

 

To be continued….