Condorcet’s jury theorem: General will and epistemic democracy

Epistemic Democracy: Generalizing the Condorcet Jury Theorem*

Classical debates, recently rejoined, rage over the question of whether we want our political outcomes to be right or whether we want them to be fair. Democracy can be (and has been) justified in either way, or both at once. For epistemic democrats, the aim of democracy is to "track the truth." 1 For them, democracy is more desirable than alternative forms of decision-making because, and insofa...

The Premises of Condorcets Jury Theorem Are Not Simultaneously Justied

Condorcet’s famous jury theorem reaches an optimistic conclusion on the correctness of majority decisions, based on two controversial premises about voters: they are competent and vote independently, in a technical sense. I carefully analyse these premises and show that: (i) whether a premise is justi…ed depends on the notion of probability considered; (ii) none of the notions renders both prem...

Extending the Condorcet Jury Theorem to a general dependent jury

We investigate necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of Bayesian-Nash equilibria that satisfy theCondorcet Jury Theorem (CJT ). In theBayesian game Gn among n jurors, we allow for arbitrary distribution on the types of jurors. In particular, any kind of dependency is possible. If each juror i has a “constant strategy”, σ i (that is, a strategy that is independent of the size n ≥...

An Epistemic Case for Democracy; Analysing the Performance of Voting Groups 3 1. Condorcet's Jury Theorem and the Epistemic Superiority of Groups 1.1 the Wisdom of Crowds

Approx. 21 000 words 2 This thesis argues that, given certain assumptions, democracies are epistemically superior to other forms of government. Using quantitative results calculated with Condorcet's Jury Theorem, it will assess the performance of different voting groups. These groups will be models of current systems of governance or those that could feasibly be adopted. To achieve this it will...

Epistemic Democracy